Vote for Joe

In the last post, I talked about being at a “Prayer Service to Abolish the Death Penalty.”    During the  service, facilitator Tim Musser read the following:   Capital punishment is not what Jesus taught.   It is what he suffered.   But Pilate washes his hands and says:  “I am not responsible.”   …The affluent Christian who spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours a year on sports, alcohol, fashion, drugs and entertainment says to the billions of people caught in the unrelieved miseries of poverty, hunger, disease and injustice:   “I am not responsible.”   …I  noted during the open forum part of the service that our family used to live in Bluffton, Ohio (pop. 4,000).   The town was made up, primarily, of middle and upper-middle class people.   We were there for four years.   There was never a murder.   Conversely, we moved to the inner city of Cleveland (the poorest city in the country) some three years ago.   And I can’t remember looking at a Metro Section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper without reading about three to four murders — for the preceding day.   The cycles of poverty here create a cauldron of hunger, despair, anger… murder.   And for the “affluent” (by comparison) middle and upper middle class people in small town, and suburban, America who are thinking:   ‘I am not responsible.’   Think again.   By hoarding your resources in big houses, nice cars, IRA accounts… you allow these cycles of poverty to go on.   And in a very real sense, you pronounce a “death sentence” to the child killed in a drive by shooting in East L.A., or the elderly  man killed in a robbery on the Southside of Chicago, or the mother of three who is raped and killed on the way to her night shift job on W. 25th in Cleveland…   Note:   If we want to end the “death penalty,” wouldn’t it make sense, common sense, to work at ending the systemic conditions that lead to  a lot of murders  in the first place? I doubt if God bought Pilate’s ‘I’m not responsible’ deal.   And I doubt if He’s going to buy ours either.

On our recent campaign tour, we stopped in Ashburn, Georgia.   Driving into Ashburn, you are greeted with a banner that explains this small town is the home of the “Fire Ant Festival.”   A resident told us:   “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”   In front of the Chamber of Commerce here is a big, red  metal sculpture of (that’s right): a  fire ant.   It is so ominous looking, in fact, that I had a hard time getting our three-year-old Jonathan to pose next to it… While at an Ashburn park playing with the kids later, a couple people approached and said they’d seen us on a television news show recently and wanted an autograph.   After signing some flyers, Liz and Sarah ended up joining these people at an informal house gathering up the street.   (I stayed behind to throw a football around with Jonathan and Joseph.) Liz spent about a half hour expertly explaining the platform, answering questions… Toward the end, a dentist in the group — who had several times said it is time for a change in politics — asked how we were funded.   Liz said we get donations, just like any of the other presidential candidates (only, oh,  a little bit less).   She then said to the dentist:   “In fact, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is…”   Later Liz recounted the story to me.   “I can’t believe you  said ‘put your money where your mouth is’ to — a dentist,” I smiled.   “I never even thought of that,” Liz laughed… And so it goes with the “average Joe” fundraisers.

We went to a talk by Winnona LaDuke at Berea College in Kentucky today.   Ms. LaDuke is an Ojibwe Tribe member from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota.   She is also the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project.   [We had done research at this Reservation several years prior.   And the thrust of the project is to buy back as much Reservation land as possible (from corporate farming concerns, etc.) and reintroduce organic farming, replant native trees, re-stock sturgeon in the waterways, revert to sustainable, Native American  hunting practices…]   When we were at White Earth, Ms. LaDuke (who has twice run as a vice-presidential candidate for the Green Party) told me the Tribe’s environmental practices stem from  the belief this generation is  spiritually responsible for the “next seven generations.”   At the talk today, she said that if we don’t think we have to be reconciled with the natural world, “we’re pretty much in denial.”   Ms. LaDuke, who attended Harvard University,  said she is a “Rural Development Economist” who is interested in moving toward a society that’s based on equitable and just relationships.   America, at present, isn’t there. For instance,  Ms. LaDuke  pointed out that the United States was  developed on land stolen from the Native Americans, and the economy was initially built on the backs of Black slaves.   “History books don’t hardly teach this,” she said.   Current multi-cultural education, in fact, is primarily from an “anglo” perspective, “with a little spicing up,” Ms. LaDuke said… Ms. LaDuke said her interest is in”deconstructing oppression.”   Some 90% of the White Earth Reservation is now held by other concerns (again, such as corporation farms).   There is also a 65% unemployment rate at White Earth.   And even though there is some job training, Ms. LaDuke went on, there are few jobs.   In regard to all this,  she scoffed:   “You tell me to pick myself up by my bootstraps — but you’ve got my boots.”   Part of Ms. LaDuke’s answer to this is to get back as much land as possible and make the Reservation as sustainable within the context of a decentralized micro-society.   Note:   Our platform calls for making tangible amends to the Native Americans for past atrocities, including giving land back in as many creative ways as possible.   One of those ways, we believe,  would be to help fund projects like the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and similar initiatives on Reservations across the country.   And these amends can start — now.

I have jumped ahead a couple entries here. (Will catch up on the rest of the last week soon)…     At St. Mary’s Church in Athens, Tennessee, this morning we saw the remnants of a “Cardboard City” that was set up in solidarity with the homeless.   We learned that for two nights youth here slept outside in order to increase their empathy for the homeless.     Later on WYXI Radio in Athens, I told host Bob Ketchersid that I would hope this kind of empathy would translate to sacrifice.   That is, as president  (and as a presidential candidate) I’d ask people to cut back considerably on consumer purchases, on entertainment… and put the savings in a fund for the homeless.   This, in part, would mean trying to turn a blind eye to modern advertising.   We are so awash in “urgent” messages to get the the new this, or the improved that, or  yet more of  something we already have… that we’ve been brainwashed to believe many of these things are necessities, when in fact, they are in no way necessities.   And in all this, we keep pampering ourselves — while little children and adults sleep, not in new sleeping bags on the soft grass at St. Mary’s, but  under dirty blankets on  the asphalt alley ways of Cleveland, Los Angeles, Atlanta…     Note:   Later in the morning, I told a reporter from the Daily Post Athenian that beyond  money  for the homeless, our family has set aside a bedroom as a “Christ Room” for the homeless in the inner city of Cleveland.   We could end homelessness in this country, if we were serious about ending homelessness in this country.   Sadly,  most of us are way  more concerned about ourselves.   And our actions (consumer buying patterns) show this, in spades.

I gave a talk at the “House of Prayer” in St. Augustine, Florida, last week.   The audience, for the most part, seemed relatively well off socio-economically.   I said billions of people in the Third World were either homeless, or living in cobbled together shacks with no running water, no electricity, little food, virtually no medicine…   What’s more, 24,000 of these people starve to death every day.   I said I didn’t know what the town of Nineveh was doing before Jonah walked through it, but I doubted it was worse than letting 24,000 people starve to death every day.   And that’s exactly what we do as we continue on with our relatively “well off” lifestyles in America in the face of this worldwide abject poverty…   The prayer group leader, Gary Gornick, then did a teaching he had planned for the evening.   He said the talk would, indeed, dove tail with what I had said.   Gornick said if someone has a proclivity to do “wicked things,” they have a strong tendency to  insulate themselves  with people of “like minds.”   As a result, seldom — if ever — are you confronted.   Extrapolated out, if I want to  remain unfettered by my  comfortable First World lifestyle in the face of all this horrendous Third World suffering, I’ll move into, say, a sub-development, church community, etc., of “like minded” people where stock portfolios, lawn care and Florida Gator football are the predominant topics of conversation.   Not Third World poverty, and what  one is  trying to do to help end it.   Note:   Mr. Gornick said:   “We’re going to be judged on what we do.”   I said I  thought the Ninevites “sack cloth thing” wasn’t just about dressing down, but rather about turning from their sinful, gluttonous lifestyles.   And doubting the Gap was going to come up with a “Sack Cloth Fashion Line,” wouldn’t it be about cutting back our lifestyle in America as well?   Of course it would.