In Americus, Georgia, we met with Tripp Pomeroy and Bill Harris, who are partners in Cafe Campesino. This is an organic, fair trade coffee cooperative that stretches from “the Yukon to Florida.” Mr. Pomeroy said his cooperative is way more than just about “a few more cents a pound” for coffee beans. It is about promoting fair wages, cooperative work places, consumer education, environmental sustainability, respect for cultural identity… Mr. Harris said their co-op is about networking like-minded roasters who believe strongly in helping promote all the latter. And the Cafe Campesino, for instance, is currently teaming with Catholic Relief Services to promote more fair trade education in the churches across America… Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Harris have just returned from the Pangoa area of Peru where they toured one of their more well-oiled farmer’s co-ops, that is not only making great strides in growing and selling, but in improving housing, village infra-structure in general , water quality, environmental stewardship… Note: Several years ago, I interviewed a representative from the Atkin Institute, which is headquartered in Michigan. He said the Institute regularly brings together business people, clergy, ethics professors… to discuss how to “rise above the logic of the Market.” Translated: How do we rise above ‘business is business?’ These men in Americus seem to have figured out a way of, not only doing this, but, in some measure, helping bring a more equal distribution of resources and quality of life to the world.
2/20/07
After our time at the “Open Door Community” in Atlanta (see last entry), we hopscotched down Rte. 19. We stopped in Griffin, Georgia, where a gas station worker was singing Louisiana Nights to the radio while she was waiting on me. I gave her a brochure and told her I wanted her to sing at the Innaguration. (I’ve got to stop doing that. We’ve got about 1,000 singers and musicians lined up so far.)… We then stopped in Barnesville, Georgia, where Annie Robinson said: “You’re running for president of what?” A historic marker here said Barnesville was the site of an improvised Civil War hospital to treat soldiers injured in the “Battle of Atlanta.” We then headed further south to Thomaston where we learned for Arbor Day this week, some 20 council people, the mayor and town Tree Board members planted one tree at the Thomaston-Upson Civic Center. Given the current scope of climate change, you’d think if you had 20 people assembled (even if it was for a photo-op), the least they could have done is planted a few trees. Note: At Big Chic Uptown Restaurant in Thomaston (we try to eat at all the five star places as we travel), there are six absolutely great Norman Rockwell paintings, all with children’s sports themes. We often say we’d like to see the country revert to a time when there was a slower pace and Norman Rockwell was again big.
2/19/07
In honor of President’s Day today, I’ve decided to become president. (It’s kind of a Norman Vincent Peale thing.)… I recently referenced a talk I went to in Rome, Georgia, about the writings of G.K. Chesterton. During the talk, presenter Tom Farmer read a number of famous Chesterton quotes. In referring to modern man being lost in a fog of mental thought, Chesterton said: “Mankind has always lost his way — but now he has lost his address.” And that, indeed, is metaphorically correct in our post modern society. However at our next stop in the heart of Atlanta, we met a good number of people who have lost their physical address as well… We arrived at the Open Door Community in downtown Atlanta to do research for a position paper we’re drafting on poverty. The Open Door is a Catholic Worker House serving the poor and homeless. We were given a tour of the house by Calvin Kimbrough. He said in the lead up to the Olympics in Atlanta, “the city was turned into a Disneyland for people with money.” One of the byproducts was a lot of low income housing was torn down for parts of the Olympic Village, and so on. Coupled with this, metropolitan Atlanta is going through a major “gentrification” process in general. That is, more low income housing is being demolished, and in turn, more high-priced condos, and the like, are going up for such demographic populations as young urban professionals. The result: More poor are on the streets, like Rob… I talked to Rob outside the Open Door while he was waiting to get into the Soup Kitchen. He told me he’d been homeless the past six months. And with temperatures in the mid-20s the night before, he said he’d slept at a homeless shelter a couple miles away. There had been 700 people in the shelter, and some 15 fights had broken out during the course of the night, Rob lamented… Later that night before dinner for the volunteers, Mr. Kimbrough prayed: “Oh Lord, afflict those of us who are warm and full…” Continuing on that theme, the next day I gave a talk to a group of volunteers who had come in to help from all parts of metropolitan and suburban Atlanta. I said that the ultimate social justice irony is that we shelter cars in this society, while people like Rob sleep on the streets… And not only are they on the streets, but Atlanta, of late, has made it even more uncomfortable for them to be on the streets. Open Door volunteer Lauren Cogswell told me the city has passed ordinances to create a “Vagrant Free Zone,” in tandem with those on the streets being arrested for things like “urban camping,” jay walking, loitering. “They are called ‘Quality of Life’ ordinances, but they are really ‘Quality of Death’ ordinances for the poor,” said Ms. Cogswell, who added Atlanta seems much more concerned about tourist dollars than they are about their own poor… And in this paradigm (tourist dollars, gentrification, cars in suburban garages while children sleep on the streets…) is the crux of the problem, according to Georgia State University Philosophy Professor Jeannie Alexander. (She also volunteers at the Open Door.) Professor Alexander said that a person of faith’s economic philosophy, in the face of current inner city, and Third World, poverty, should be: Once your basic needs for shelter, food, clothing, medicine and transportation are met, to increase your comfort is nothing short of “acting immorally.” Professor Alexander added that why this is seldom, if ever, heard from the pulpit is because most modern day priests and ministers are living square in the middle of their own ‘comfort immorality.’ Note: During the three days at the Open Door, I came across a New York Times article about people buying mini-factory built “second homes” for vacation properties. These homes range from, say, a 10-foot-square cabana for about $9,000 to a 700-square-foot “weeHouse” from Alchemy Architects in northern Minnesota… I couldn’t help but think as I read the article, how these places would look like mansions to the Robs of the world. And if we put these houses on the properties of our primary residences and shared, for instance, a common kitchen, the homeless would start to feel like family. And in all this, who knows, God might start preparing at least weeHouses for us in a place where the “last will be first.” Translated: This means Rob will be in the mansion. (See the ‘rich guy and Lazarus the beggar’ biblical parable.)
2/16/07
Black History Month: At Berry College in Rome, Georgia, this week, I interviewed Professor Brian Carroll who is the author of the just released When to Stop the Cheering (The Black Press, the Black Community and the Integration of Professional Baseball). The book tracks the Negro Baseball League from 1879 to the 1960s, when it dissolved. Professor Carroll said that blacks, for the most part, lived in a “mirrored society.” Their formal institutions, their newspapers, their baseball… all mirrored their white counterparts. This stemmed from the 1896 Supreme Court “Separate but Equal” Decision. This segregated our nation along racial lines, again. “And that separation was cemented by physical demarcation,” said Professor Carroll. That is, city planning of housing and roads allowed for separation between poor black sections and more affluent white sections. Professor Carroll pointed to the poor, black southside of Chicago as a prime example of this. And this demarcation continues through today in many metropolitan areas… On a research trip to look at inner city poverty, we went into a gang war zone on the still primarily black southside of Chicago. There at a homeless shelter, I interviewed a woman who had been living in her car through part of the winter — with her three sons. The week before we arrived, two teens were gunned down on a street corner because the criteria to get into one particular gang here is: to kill someone… Later during Campaign 2000, I told the Pittsburgh (KS) Morning Sun that blacks and whites in many metropolitan areas are still, not only segregated, but the blacks continue to be “slaves” to inner city poverty loops. Note: Professor Carroll is quite a wordsmith. And his book should be a fascinating read.
2/15/07
Rome, Georgia, experience continued: I gave presentations at two Journalism classes at Berry College. After talking a bit, I turned each into an open forum session. One of the questions was what I thought was the most important issue leading up to 2008. I responded that I was “Pro-Life across the board.” And in the wake of the just released U.N. report on climate change, I said this may well become the most pressing “Pro-Life” issue. That is, if global warming continues to lead to more and more droughts, famine, super-charged hurricanes and typhoons… the death tolls will be staggering and, ultimately, the planet may no longer be able to sustain life at all… After the classes, I was interviewed by a reporter from the campus newspaper. I said at the core of our platform was a “What Would Jesus Do?” philosophy. A reporter from the campus television station asked me what my stance on gay marriage was. I pointed to an excerpt I had read in class from some writing of Rome, Georgia’s Tom Farmer. He says of practicing homosexuality: “Here the virtue of love runs uncecked into lifeless sexuality and moral relativism. This is a fundamentally religious issue for me because marriage is a fundamentally religious institution. It is meant to mirror the procreative union of Christ with his Church that will bring about God’s kingdom.” I told the reporter that I lined up with this as well.
2/14/07
In Rome, Georgia, we attended a study group about the writings of G.K. Chesterton Saturday evening. Facilitator Tom Farmer presented a number of famous Chesterton quotes. The one that particularly struck me was: “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” (…from the book Orthodoxy.) Things that have become ‘fashionable’ these days in America include, for instance, both parents working in pursuit of moving further (and often unnecessarily so) along the “American Dream” continuum. The trade off, and a tragic one at that, is many children are now raised in Day Care, or in front of televisions, or computers… One Christian man in the group said he and his wife had made a calculated decision that the wife, not only stay home with their children, but that she home school the children as well. As a suffix, he ruefully smiled: “When someone asks me what my wife ‘does,’ I tell them: ‘She’s at home with our children preparing them for an eternity in Heaven. What does your wife do?” Note: The next day we went to Mass at St. Mary’s Church in Rome. A visiting priest said it’s ok to “enjoy nice things,” but we must also be mindful of the poor. My wife Liz challenged him afterward, questioning whether it’s spiritually sound to affirm current American consumer patterns (again, the “fashion” of the day), while so much of the world lives in dire abject poverty. The priest’s response, and a gracious one at that, was: “Well, I guess I’ve still got another Mass today to get that right.”
2/13/07
We are in Rome, Georgia, on the next campaign stop. I was interviewed by WGAR radio yesterday. And the following is a blog entry my wife wrote last night: “I am conscious today of the privilege in which we live, Not the privilege of the wealthy who can buy a new Cadillac vs an old Dodge Dart. But rather, the privilege of the ‘secure.’ All over the world as I write this, there are people who suffer the anguish of insecurity. A mother in Iraq who has lost the security of a husband and a home — to the bombing. A woman in Africa who lost her security when her son was taken by para-military troops who are training him to kill. She awaits anxiously the next attack where she will likely be raped, even killed. A boy in Asia became aware of the loss of his innocence, and childhood security, when he witnessed a neighbor boy being sold into slavery to provide the next month’s food for the rest of the family. Will he be next? Over and over again, the security of childhood, personhood and livelihood is being lost in so many countries; while we in America, Canada, Europe… are quite secure by comparison. Doesn’t justice cry for a response? A response that changes things? Cleveland’s Joe Mueller responded by going to Iraq unarmed as part of Christian Peacekeeper Team. Bluffton, Ohio’s Matt Meyer went to Belize on a mission trip to work among the poor. We moved to the turbulent inner city of Cleveland to work with the homeless. Isn’t it time in America for all of us to ask ourselves where we can risk our ‘security’ in an effort to build real peace and justice for those less secure.” –Liz
2/10/07
We are in motion on our 20th tour leg for Campaign 2008… A few hours out of Cleveland, we stopped in Jeffersonville, Ohio, where I said to a man wearing a Brown’s hat that when we got to D.C. one of the first things we were going to do is have the Capital Dome painted orange and brown (Brown’s colors), “then have a big face mask put around it.” Not necessarily concerned about ‘partisan football,’ he said he was more concerned about: partisan politics. And what he’d really like to see in D.C. is a lot more cooperation ‘across the isles.’ Note: Driving into Nashville on Rte. 65, we found ourselves in a sea of vehicles rushing along, merging, exiting… An apt metaphor for our current society (materialism, technology…) speeding along these days at the same almost unchecked pace. To subscribe to the Catholic Worker philosophy is to slow down considerably, cut back considerably, and pay attention to the rhythms of the family, the rhythms of our neighbors, the rhythms of the earth. And in that, the American family would heal, communities would solidify and global warming would reverse. It’s simple on paper…
2/1/07
For the past month I’ve been working with Prescott Valley, Arizona’s Pablo Sanchez (web designer) to update our 2005 and 2006 Tour Maps. Each map shows a particular tour leg and includes a corresponding series of campaign vignettes. For the past two years, we have done 20 tour legs spanning some 25,000 miles for this election cycle. This on the heels of traveling some 60,000 miles for Campaigns 2000 and 2004. Note: Mr. Sanchez is also the founder of “Pro-Life Joe’s,” which is an international forum and information center for post abortion fathers, and reaches out to all those who share in the experience of abortion. They are: “pro-life, pro women and we regret our lost fatherhood.”
1/23/07
We have just finished our position paper on the Iraq War.