Thanksgiving. This morning while volunteering at the “Storefront,” a Catholic Worker outreach here in Cleveland, we met a man who had slept outside last night — the temperature: 20 degrees. We invited him to our apartment so he didn’t have to sleep outside again tonight. In his mid-30s, he said he’d been hit on the head during a robbery a couple years ago and is subject to fairly regular seizures (but he has not been able to get social security for his disability, yet). While he said his condition makes it hard to hold down a regular job, he works sporadically with a handyman. (He went to a vocational school in Cleveland.) This man’s mode is primarily just trying to survive down here right now, day to day… Last week, deacon Bill Merriman at St. Patrick’s Church in our neighborhood gave a talk on the gospel reading about the end time judgement (Mathew 25). In this scene, Jesus is saying to one group of people that when He was hungry, they didn’t help; when He was naked, they didn’t help; when He was a stranger, they didn’t take Him in… and as a result, ‘they’ are condemmed to Hell. Conversely, as modern day examples of people helping, Deacon Merriman talked about a couple sitting with a dying man at Malachi House here, a home for the indigent who are at death’s door. He talked about another man bringing sandwhiches and blankets to people sleeping on the streets… each an example from the city… A question: If you’re living in the suburbs, how often do you even see people who are: ‘hungry, naked, or strangers? Note: On a campaign tour of northern Minnesota, we met a man and his wife who lived in a suburb of Minneapolis. The man said in prayer he felt convicted about living in a nice home in the suburbs, while the disadvanted in the inner city of Minneapolis (just as we graphically saw in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina) were living is such desperate travail, day in and day out. What’s more, he felt in living in comfort in suburbia and ‘sitting on $15,000 of equity, which he had in his house, he was, in effect, ‘building another barn’ for his excess (another New Testament Biblical reference), instead of helping others who were in need now. So he sold his house, gave the money to the poor, and moved into an old, converted convent in the inner city with a community of people doing outreach to help the poor — including letting some of the poor live in the convent… During an interview with the LA Times in Orange County, California, I said we should “make war on poverty and social injustice.” And this man and his wife would be right on the ‘front line.’
The last three days I’ve been working on the final draft of a paper on our Health Care postion [see: “what joe stands for”]. It starts off with a quote from an interview I did with The Salina (KS) Journal — while doing a 2,000 mile campaign bicycle tour of the Midwest during Election 2000. It reads: “…(Schriner) firmly believes that health care costs could be cut in half if people got more exercise, ate more nutritious foods, were less stressed and subjected to less pollution.” During Campaign 2004, the Greenville (OH) Advocate newspaper noted my platform was based on: “common sense.” Note: A key to our health care platform is helping reorient America to much more “prevention.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported violent crime is up in the city this year, led by more homicides. And our section of Cleveland, recently, reflects some of this trend… About a week ago, there was a street corner gun fatality a couple miles from us. Then right up our street (also last week), there was an attempted rape of a 13-year-old girl in an alley. (It was thwarted when someone in a bus stop called police.) At the nearby Catholic Worker Storefront the other night, a drop-in place for the disadvantaged, they had to close because one “guest” threatened another. We were there that night volunteering, and the atmosphere could best be described as “on edge” even before the incident… Craig Tame, Cleveland’s chief of public health and safety was quoted in the Plain Dealer article on crime: “Economic conditions, drugs and demographics all affect the patterns of crime…” I am just working on an update for our position paper on crime, and I agree with Mr. Tame. That is, if we really want to curb crime, we have to impact poverty, drug addiction, racial tension… Law enforcement is just one part of it. Note: When asked about crime during an interview with the Worthington (MN) Globe News several years ago, I said I wanted to see: “less.” Is that insightful, or what?
We stopped by the Catholic Worker House in Cleveland after the kids second soccer match at the Micheal Zone Recreation Center here. I excitedly shared about their last minute victory in a “shoot out.” One of the volunteers, Joe Mueller (who is an anarchist), looked up and said that organized sports, for the most part, prepare youth to become “good capitalists and ready for war.” (That is, his point is organized sports, the way they are now, are ultra-competitive — like in the work place — and contain many components of war, including such terminology as: “shoot out, pitched battle, throw a bomb…”) Several minutes later, I asked Joe what he had planned for the next day. He said he was going to a friend’s place: “…to watch the Ohio State / Michigan game.” After a pause, I looked at him, oh, a little askance. He smiled and said: “It’s a total personal failing on my part… but I went to school at Michigan.” (Yet another demonstration of the existential depth of a Michigan fan.) There goes a few Wolverine votes come 2008, huh… Note: On a more serious side, Joe Mueller just came back from a trip to Iraq as a delegate on a Christian Peacemaker Team. He saw, first hand, some of the suffering on the ground there among the general populace, and was quite moved. Mueller is a peace activist, and prior to going to Iraq, he risked arrest with an act of civil disobedience at the Cleveland Air Show. He and another activist strung yellow “crime scene” tape around an F-18 fighter jet. His point was these high-tech planes could well be considered ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ — especially to all those (soldiers and civilians) on the receiving end of their missiles.
Interviewed Ofosu Amponsah as part of my position paper research on the economy. Mr. Amponsah, who is from Ghana, West Africa, teaches economics at the Bryant-Stratton College in the Cleveland area. He said to establish true “competitive markets” based on sustainability (for everyone), we need to revert back to an older orientation where there were, say, five to 10 people in a local company that produced, primarily, for local people. And he said there needs to be a resurgence of small Mom & Pop stores, etc., as well. Mr. Amponsah said the neighborhoods in Cleveland are deteriorating because so many of these shops, and small companies, were now vacant. And what’s more, with people moving from neighborhood to neighborhood desperately searching for work (and/or moving because the neighborhood their family had lived in for generations was decaying), there is no “socio-cohesion” anymore, said Mr. Amponsah. He said to help correct this and breath life back into some of these neighborhoods, a package of significant tax breaks, and other incentives, need to go to small businesses, in tandem with help from local ‘business incubators,’ and so on. Note: Mr. Amponsah said the type of globalization the U.S. is spearheading, is creating “wage slavery” in the sweat shops of the Third World. Meanwhile, us American consumers go on buying the cheapest priced items possible, without a social justice thought.
Talked at length with a man at the Catholic Worker Storefront, a evening drop in center for the disadvantaged in the area. He said several years ago, he was homeless in another municipality to the west of here, and was picked up by the police. He was then transferred to the Toledo Psychatric Hospital, which started a string of psychiatric hospital, and jail, visits over the next three years. While he didn’t say what his diagnosis was, as we were talking he demonstrated features of someone with bi-polar disorder in a manic phase… There seems a significant number of people who come to the “Storefront” who have mental disorders, and are either living on the streets, or living in tenuous, month-to- month situations on low rent apartments, and so on. As a mental health counselor, I worked for a time as a liaison between a drug and alcohol outpatient treatment program in Lorain, Ohio and the Cleveland Psychiatric Institute. I saw, first hand, the desperation of people living (actually often just surviving, or worse) in the hell of mental illness, sometimes coupled with addiction as well. These people need comprehensive help on all levels: quality mental health counseling and proper medication, if needed; job training and/or education; a team of people (from a church, civic group…) to help them with such life skills as budgeting, nutrition, home ownership. Short of all this, many will be left to: “just survive.”
Went to an excellent presentation on the book Moral Politics. The presentation was given by Cleveland’s Dick Weber, who is a social worker. Mr. Weber said the basic theme of the book is that there is a “conceptual link between politics and morality in our country.” What’s more, this dynamic is often shaped, to one degree or another, by a person’s upbringing. He said the book explains two basic family models that the author believes are on different ends of the continuum. Those are: “athoritarian male model vs nurturing mother model.” And how these get extrapolated into the nation, is people growing up in the authoritarian male dominated family lean toward a more structured society based on “conservative priorities” like: moral strength (enforced, for instance, by militarism); moral purity (social movements like feminism and environmentalism are often considered outside the lines of this, so to speak); moral order (male dominated society)… Meanwhile, the assertion is those who have grown up with the nurturing mother model, lean more toward such “liberal priorities” as: moral nurturance (a tendency toward more empathy and less structure); nurturance of social ties (making sacrifices — philisophically and otherwise — to keep community together); moral growth (open mindedness to alternatives to a solely male dominated society)… In the discussion afterward, my wife Liz said these explanations were quite helpful in seeing some of the underlying psycho-social dynamics in our nation. However, she was concerned that describing these models in — in polar ends of the continuum — may be: ‘polarizing.’ What’s more, she said seldom is this as black and white as the author seems to present. That is, in raising our eight-year-old boy, healthy parenting calls for a combination. That is, because he doesn’t have (as most eight-year-olds don’t) strong internal control, he needs a regular degree of authoritarian, parental guidance. Likewise, for healthy support in the developmental stages, he also needs regular, empathetic nurturance. Liz’s point is most families display some of each, to one degree or another. And extrapolated out into society, many peoples’ politics are a mix — from issue to issue. (The conundrum is being limited, basically, to a two party system that is often perceived as: “either/or” on many issues.) Liz’s last point that night was that we need to look for “common ground” in all this and to keep dialogue going — so the best of each orientation emerges and is blended into the best society we can have — all for the common good.
Our children, Sarah, 10 and Joseph, 8, participated in their first soccer league game at the Michael Zone Recreation Center up the street this evening. The league has four teams and is a good mix of Black, Hispanic and White youth. (Not exactly what you’d call an homogenous bubble. Read: suburbs.) The game was a rough one, and our kids took their knocks. But in the end, they both played their best. Note: In our family, we try to de-emphasize ultra-competitiveness. That is, we’re trying to teach the kids that the essence of sports should be about team camaraderie, good clean physical excertion, fun… After the game (which our kids team won), Sarah came up to me and said: “We really killed them Dad!” … Apparently Liz and I might have, oh, a little more parenting to do in this area.
Met with Stephanie Taylor who is on a board for “Affordable Housing” on the near west side of Cleveland. Ms. Taylor said the area is going through a steady process of: “gentrification.” That is, developers are coming into the neighborhoods and rennovating. The problem here is, as the places are rennovated… the rents go up, etc. The lower-income people who have lived in the neighborhoods here for generations, then are basically forced to move, said Ms. Taylor. Note: As a result of some of the lobbying for affordable housing, recently four historic apartment buildings in this neighborhood have been rennovated — and offered as low income residences. An article in the Plain Press here explained the $8.6 million West Side Homes Project was a four-year collaborative effort between local development corporttions, housing groups, the city of Cleveland, the public housing agency, social service agencies and charities. Thirteen of the housing units target families with incomes less than $2,000 a year and rents in these units are $50 per month. Twenty five units are reserved for families with incomes form 30 to 50% of the area median income ($13,520 to $16,240). Rents on these units range from $204 to $304 per month. And so on…
Have spent much of the week starting to work on updates for the position papers on our website. We currently have some 15 years of research to draw from… A main focus during this particular week was putting together an over-arching philosophy on the Economy. (See: Economy category at: “what joe stands for.”)