Met with Francesca Peterson, who is the co-executive director for INTO (Illuminating Nations Through Offering an Opportunity). A “fair trade” organizaiton, INTO purchases crafts artisans make in their homes in rural Ecuador. Ms. Peterson said the crafts are then marketed here. Besides selling the crafts, INTO puts on education seminars to inform people in the U.S. about “economic social justice.” INTO works to live the words of Proverbs 31:9 that say: “Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” (Translated: Instead of trying to get the cheapest prices possible on foreign goods in, say, Wal Mart; the spirit of this Biblical passage would have us buying these kinds of items at “fair trade” prices, so little children don’t have to go hungry in Ecuador.) Note: Last week was Yogi (of baseball fame) Bera’s birthday. He once said: “If you see a fork in the road: take it.”
Went to a talk on “globalization” by Oberlin College professor Steve Crowley last night. Professor Crowley said that after WWII, the U.S. had a tremendous glut of manufactured items and needed wider markets. Consequently, American media started beaming into other countries with all kinds of advertising. And the rich (read: U.S.) got richer with increased free trade — and the poor got poorer. Professor Crowley said this form of globalization was driven by: “selfishness.” Several audience members said an “alternative vision” to globalization, is the establishment of communities that revolve around “local production for local consumption” — as, for instance, the Amish have maintained over the years. Ithaca, New York has taken a big step in this direction with the printing of “Ithica Dollars” that only circulate locally, as another example. And as we move toward more sustainable communities, a sane international response would be to help Third World communities also move in the same sustainable direction. Instead of ‘selfishness,’ this would be a lot more about the: common good.
Our family did some volunteer work at the Catholic Worker’s “Storefront” on Cleveland’s near west side last night. One man told me he came here from Cuba in the early ’80s when Jimmy Carter’s administration allowed some 21,000 people from Cuba to immigrate to the U.S. The man said conditions were quite tough in Cuba, with a good deal of poverty. He said he liked it in America because he had more of an opportunity for work, he has his own apartment and “the food is really plentiful.” (And he was telling me this sitting in a: Soup Kitchen.) What a tragic take on how bad conditions were in Cuba at the time.
I’m working on a column about a program we researched recently at the University of Dayton. The Chaminade Program at UD is designed to get students thinking about career more in terms of “vocation,” than merely just another secular job. Seminars are offered on: prayer in relation to discernment of career (including a trip to St. Meinrad in Indiana to meet with monks); how to positively impact your community; and so on. In addition, students opting for the program also do a significant amount of “service learning,” such as volunteering at a homeless shelter, working in a Dayton community garden, spending time at a Boys & Girls Club… Note: While walking around the neighborhood with the family last night in Cleveland, we came across a jet black, ’50s hot rod parked in front of a funeral home. There was a large group of people standing outside. I had to ask. It was a wake, and I was told the deceased was “…really into hot rods.” What’s more, one man referred to the man who had died as: “an old roadster.”
Met with a group of Catholic Workers on Cleveland’s near west side who recenly staged a rather fascinating protest. (The Catholic Workers here have a “House of Hospitality” for the homeless in the city.) For the grand opening of an expanisve mall in the suburb of Westlake, to the west of Cleveland, the Catholic Workers showed up with such protest signs as: “WE ARE CONSUMING OURSELVES TO DEATH!” One of the protestors, Pete Qulligan, told me he originally saw that written on the side of a building in a small town in Germany. (Socially responsible grafitti.) Another Catholic Worker, Chris Knestrick, said its such a tremendous irony that a $480 million mall would go up not more than 15 miles from Cleveland — which has recently been dubbed the: “poorest city in America.”
Talked with Meagan Kresge today on Cleveland’s near westside. She is a staunch anti-nuclear activist who traveled to Japan last year to participate in an International Walk for Peace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 59th anniversary of the atomic bombs being dropped there. Meagan said she and her fellow marchers were overwhelmed by some of the rally speakers’ graphic, first hand accounts of the bomb’s aftermath in Japan. And it moved her into a much stronger activist stance as a result. “We just can’t let this (nuclear proliferation) continue,” said Meagan. [Our campaign calls for unilateral nuclear disarmament, not necessarily on the part of Iran; but rather on the part of the: U.S. “What if we let the weapons inspectors into, say, Montana? What would they find (in the silos) there?” I posed to an ABC News reporter in Findlay, Ohio during a peace march — just before the bombs started falling on Iraq.]
Played baseball with our Joseph, 7, in a rather wide alley near our place close to Cleveland’s inner city. While throwing him some grounders, the ball skirted over broken glass and took all kinds of hops on the gravel. Joseph, being a good sport, said he really liked how each grounder “acted different.” Meanwhile in a suburb not more than 12 miles east, or west, of here, another dad was throwing his kid grounders over a nicely manicured infield. Joseph and I made the best of ‘our field’; but I couldn’t help but think of all the dads down here who: just stop showing up at the ‘field’ after awhile.
Talked with archtect Paul Kapczuk Jr. about “affordable housing” initiatives in Cleveland. Mr. Kapczuk said the Cuyahoga Count Community Land Trust buys properties throughout the city, helps rehab them, then offers them at affordable prices to relatively low income people on 15 year leases, with the option to buy.
According to an Associated Press article today, climate scientists agree global warming is happening and believe that if carbond dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions continue to grow, as expected, things could spin “out of our control.” So what do we do? We shift dramatically to non-polluting wind and solar applications across the board. We walk, bicycle and invest in solar and electric vehicles. We cut down on consumerism tremendously. (The less manufactured goods, the less fossil fuel burning to make them.) In other words, we: cut back, read: sacrifice… for future generations. Question: If our gluttonous patterns now, lead to the death of people in the future, will we be held spiritually accountable?
Was doing some research in the book Bread for the World tonight. It said in the early ’60s President John F. Kennedy made two far reaching goals: 1) To land a person on the moon by the end of the decade. 2) To end world hunger “in our lifetime.” So I’m thinking… If we’d pumped all the billions that we’ve pumped into the Space Program into programs to help people in the Third World become sustainable — wouldn’t we be a lot closer to ending world hunger? What a tragic irony, and tremendously misplaced sense of priorities.