A Year of Soup

. . . and other items.

  • From St. John’s parish bulletin this week:

    Free Meal: Our anniversary week was busy. Last year, we were standing outside the church wondering if anyone would come to break bread, and enjoy soup, with us. This year, we barely had enough soup. “Success,” in this regard, is not needing a free meal, but there is a need now, and we are blessed to be able to serve and to offer a place of physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment. We are always grateful for your monetary donations as well as lunch meats, tuna fish, mustard, mayo, coffee, and . . . Thank you!

  • Speaking of Darfur-related fasts, there has been a fast in Lafayette Park for most of July.
  • In I’m So Blue, Barbara Solow pays tribute to the progressive South.

“Telegram” on Panhandling

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette had a long, front-page article on Worcester’s anti-panhandling campaign this Sunday, written by Taryn Plumb. The article gave lots of space to those who disagree with the city’s plan:

“Why are we wasting so much time, effort and money on a few panhandlers?” asked community advocate Peter Stefan, who owns Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Home on Main Street. “We’re turning an M&M into a basketball. We have people dying of AIDS, people starving, people who can’t afford to buy medicine for their kids. I don’t get it.”

And the article quoted a few words from the street:

“It’s legal to stand here and say hello,” Jimmy Fahey said, standing alongside Chandler Street. “You’re not giving money to someone to buy drugs. You’re helping someone keep their head above water.”

His friend, a panhandler who did not wish to be identified, was a bit more indignant.

“Panhandling is not the answer,” he said mockingly. “Not the answer to what? What do they know about my problems?”

Continue reading ““Telegram” on Panhandling”

Items

Weekly items, old and new:

    Oh, Canada!

  • A belated happy Canada Day and Independence Day to all. Pie and Coffee contributor Kaihsu Tai‘s photo of a stop sign in English and Inuktituk is part of Wikipedia’s Nunavut Highways entry. (Kaihsu, like Talking Heads, has been on the Road to Nowhere.)
  • Claire Schaeffer-Duffy comments on Worcester’s anti-poor attitude in National Catholic Reporter. “The gist of the debate seems to be we must hide the poor because their presence diminishes the community. My experience at the Catholic Worker has proved quite the opposite.”
  • In a letter, Karen House Catholic Worker of St. Louis, Mo., writes:

    Our big news, of course, is that in the fall we purchased Karen House and the adjoining Church building from the Archdiocese . . . . Currently, the Church is being rented out, and we are placing the Karen House building into a property trust. So we own our building now!

  • Mike True recommends this article about the draft by Frida Berrigan, and Johan Galtung’s testimony from the recently-concluded World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul. “Criminal acts have to be planned in secret . . . by small gangs with cojones, in Bush’s words. They do not benefit from the dialogue of open agreements openly arrived at in an open society, also known as a democracy. Democracy’s traitors easily become its fools.”
  • The most entertaining essay title I’ve seen in a while is Anthony Mansueto’s Why the New Pope Isn’t Catholic–and Why I Still Am. The gist, as I gather it: the last two popes have been crypto-Protestants. Somehow, I remain sceptical.
  • “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is coming to the Worcester Public Library July 27. Is this the film’s squarest venue ever? (One old Worcesterite tells me that “The last time they showed it at the Palladium, the audience caused $10,000 worth of damage.”)
  • Worcester Magazine continues its profiles of local activists with a piece on Cha-cha Connor. Also: Doug Chapel proposes a better use of the city’s promotional budget–fund “dedicated, driven, obsessed creative types to really focus on creating events to draw people to Worcester!”

Fasting for Darfur

Women in Dereig camp A group of Catholic Workers will be fasting August 1-4 and vigiling each day from 9 am-5 pm at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., and in South Bend, Indiana, for an end to genocide in .

All are welcome to join the vigil at any time for any length of time regardless of whether or not they are fasting with the core group. The embassy is at 2210 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.

For more information on the Washington, DC event, please contact Scott Schaeffer-Duffy at 508.753.3588 or pieandcoffee@gmail.com.

For more information on the South Bend, Indiana event, please contact Brenna Cussen at 781.588.4216 or brennacussen@yahoo.com .

Two of the participants, Scott and Brenna, visited Darfur in December of 2004.

Coffee and crime

File under “coffee-related civil disobedience.”

At the NYC Trial for Cash Register Exorcisms on “Buy Nothing Day 2004”

A young crew-cut attorney from the DA’s office made a gratuitous statement — obviously written by Starbucks executives — addressed to the judge and the court:

‘William Claire Talen must understand that he is banned from all Starbucks establishments world-wide and that if he were to come onto property of the Starbucks Corporation anywhere in the world — this is illegal and warrants prosecution.’

—Reverend Billy (June 21)

Also check out Bill Talen’s mayoral campaign.

Hospitality in Main South

Worcester City Councillor Barbara Haller says that her “Main South” neighborhood is “supersaturated” with residential programs, most notoriously the PIP shelter, a “wet” shelter that allows high and drunk people to sleep there. Others say that the shelters have been unfairly blamed for the neighborhood’s troubles. For example, Dave McMahon of the Worcester Homeless Action Committee wrote in this week’s InCity Times: “Poverty came first–it saturated neighborhoods with its terrible effects after industry moved from Main South–fact. Social service agencies came next to remedy the arrival of the ‘ghetto.’”

Monsignor Francis Scollen, of Main South’s St. Peter’s Church, spoke out on the controversy from the pulpit this week, and put the following note in the church bulletin:

The readings talk also about hospitality. We are asked to welcome people into our homes, to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, to shelter those who are in trouble.

This happens to us as individuals, as family, as a Church, and as a neighborhood. There has been quite a debate these last several weeks about not giving people in trouble hospitality in certain neighborhoods. Well, here in Main South we show hospitality to everyone. And we are better for it.

It’s so amazing to witness politicians trying to come down firmly on both sides of the problem. Real political leadership?

Someone of our esteemed leaders came to St. John’s once and when he finished speaking an older parishioner said to Fr. Lebeau, “I don’t understand a word he said.” Fr. Lebeau replied, “Then his mission was accomplished.”

Sometimes we can understand what they are saying–and avoiding. It’s called integrity and principles.

Items

Weekly items, old and new:

  • As the South Bend Catholic Worker expands, it’s getting some static from the city for housing too many unrelated people in the same house, a zoning violation:

    But Catholic Worker does not seem interested in moving. Instead, it is hinting at a threat of its own: a lawsuit in federal court.

    [A similar case], still pending, involves the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which bars a government from implementing a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a “substantial burden” on one’s “religious exercise” — unless the government can prove a compelling governmental interest in doing so.

    “I’ve come to think that this configuration of events is interfering with our ability to practice our religion,” Pfeil said. “If I as a private resident want to practice works of mercy by sharing my home with people who are homeless, I ought to be able to do that.”

    (South Bend Tribune)
    Tribune update

  • After a New York state jury refused to convict four activists on charges stemming from civil disobedience at a military recruiting station, the federal government has indicted them on federal charges stemming from the same protest. (National Catholic Reporter)
  • A Christian Peacemaker team is visiting a stretch of Arizona border to head off any violence instigated by the anti-illegal-immigrant vigilantes The Minutemen. (CPT newsletter)
  • In the LA Catholic Worker’s recent issue of The Catholic Agitator is an interview with Catherine Morris and Jeff Dietrich. Jeff’s take on the works of mercy:

    . . . as they spoke it just occurred to me that this is what Christianity is about. They were feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, and burning draft files.

A Caring Community

by Jesse Lenney, with a lot of help from Judy Thorslund and Mike Lopez

The following is an example of what can be done by helping guys on the street who need a caring community to get back on their feet and out of homeless shelters and subway beds.

It’s been five years since I lived and worked at St. Joe’s [Rochester Catholic Worker house]. My good friend George McVey has asked me to share with you the promising new little community of which I am now a part.

Currently, there are 14 of us residing in two houses in the Market View Heights neighborhood of Rochester, all of whom were formerly homeless, and once a part of St. Joe’s community. Most work low wage service jobs. The low rent each person contributes allows the essential bills to be paid, and for our community to be self-sufficient. We do not rely on grants or other sources of income. We live on a shoestring budget and cannot afford extras, but the advantages of living in community are immense.
Continue reading “A Caring Community”