I was interviewed by the Kingman (AZ) Daily Miner newspaper today. In relation to Hispanic immigration, I said this is a tremendous spiritual opportunity for us to help some 12 million people by not only offering amnesty, but doing everything possible to make sure these people receive a living wage, have adequate housing, equal opportunity… It is the essence of the Gospel message, I said… After the interview, the reporter told me if I was interested in seeing more of the ‘essence of the Gospel message,’ I should call Pastor Kelly Fallis here. So I did… Pastor Kelly Fallis is the executive director of the Cornerstone Mission Project in Kingman. Cornerstone is a 30-bed homeless shelter. It is a Christian faith-based project that relies solely on donations. Cornerstone provides shelter, food, job training, education help… It’s a holistic approach to helping someone get back on their feet in a solid way, said Pastor Kelly. One dimension that is missing with Cornerstone is a drug and alcohol rehab option. So Pastor Kelly has set out to do something about that. One of Cornerstone’s board members had connections to the local Taco Bell. And last summer, Pastor Kelly took up residence on the restaurant’s roof with a bull horn and a mission. He never left the roof for the next 15 days, no shower, a lengthening beard, the whole thing. What’s more, this was in August and in 110 degree heat. CNN did a naitonal story. Part of their footage showed Pastor Kelly continually called from the roof for people to donate for a rehab. And they did. He raised $60,000 — and lost 30 lbs. (Well, I’d imagine after awhile practically anyone would get tired of just tacos.) What’s more, Pastor Kelly told me he would have stayed up longer — but Hurricane Katrina hit. His motto is we must be as “proactive” as possible for the Lord… And this motto, Pastor Kelly believes, should be translated into our nation’s general policies as well. As an example, he noted there are scores of people regularly starving in Africa, in large part because of drought and lack of water for irrigation in general. Pastor Kelly wondered why America couldn’t build a trans-oceanic pipeline(s) [just as we built the Alaska pipeline] to carry fresh water to Africa for irrigation and other needs. Note: Money, indeed, could be spent on this pipeline; or for that matter, it could be spent on desalinization plants to convert ocean water to fresh water. (Africa is surrounded by water.) At the end of our last tour, there was a front page article in the Monterey Herald explaining the Monterey Bay area was just about to start a desalinization project to convert some of the water from the Pacific there to fresh water for the Monterey Peninsula. Inother words, we have the technology — and we have the money… A couple weeks ago I noted that the Bush Administration is on the verge of proposing we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next couple decades to update our nuclear arsenal, including new plutonium for many of the warheads we already have. I, on the other hand, believe it would make more (spiritual) sense to move the focus away from trying to protect ourselves even more here in America — while all these people are starving in Africa. I believe the Bible verse most apt in this case would be: ‘…he who is willing to lose his life for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’
4/4/06
We stopped at Holy Resurrection, a Byzantine Catholic Monastery out in the desert in Newberry Springs, California. After attending early evening prayers with the Fathers here, we were invited to dinner. It was a simple fare of spinach sandwhiches, salad and rice. We sat in a rectangle with a podium positioned in the middle of the tables. The whole time we ate, one of the Fathers read from the book The Ladder of Ascent by John Climacus (a Lenten ritual at the Monastery). This particular night the essay was: “On Gluttony.” Some excerpts included: “Gluttony thinks up seasonings and creates sweet recipes… If a visitor calls, then the slave of gluttony engages in charitable acts — but for the reasons associated with his love of food… So let us restrain our appetites with the thought of the fire [read: Hell] to come… What we ought to do is to deny ourselves fattening foods, then foods that warm us up, then whatever happens to make our food especially pleasant… Fight as hard as you can against the stomach. The man who fights his stomach causes it to shrink… You should remember a demon can take up residence in your belly and keep a man from being satisfied, even after devouring all of Egypt and after having drunk all of the Nile…” Now while I had been oscillating, it was after this last one that I decided not to ask for seconds… On a more serious side: Several years ago during a campaign stop in Vermont, I interviewed Fr. James Noonan who has been a Maryknoll priest in Cambodia — amidst extreme poverty and hunger. He said to me that we in America are “food terrorists.” That is, we take the abundance God has given us and waste tremendous amounts of money on non-nutritional junk food or spice up (“…make food especially pleasant”) and then overeat it — while scores of little children starve daily in the Third World. Yet from the pulpit (unless it’s a small Monestary in a California desert) do we seldom, if ever, hear this called what it is. The sin of: gluttony. Note: In a case of interesting timing, the next day after the monestary experience, the Arizona Republic newspaper ran an AP story saying the US Center for Disease Control just released an updated report saying a larger portion of Americans, than ever before, are overweight — and we were now one of the most overweight populaces in the world. A phenomenal 30.5% of all American adults are now considered obese and a staggering 64.5% are overweight. And one-third of U.S. kids are now overweight as well… Meanwhile, 17 million people stand on the brink of mass starvation in drought stricken East Africa.
4/3/06
We have finished the Farm Worker Tour leg in California, which was phase four of a four and a half month campaign tour at this point. And we are now headed back across the country… Today on Rte 46 West in California, we came across a large, free standing mural of: the late actor James Dean. It stood 50 yards from Michael’s Corner General Store in the middle of practically nowhere. Michael’s Corner, it turns out, was the last stop James Dean made before his fatal car crash 25 miles west of here in Cholame, California, on Sept. 30, 1955. He was traveling to an auto race in Salinas, California, in his Porsch Spyder sports car when he crashed into a tree… In Michael’s corner, which has a whole section on James Dean memorabilia, were a number of newspaper articles on the walls about the actor. Part of one read: “For better or worse, Dean changed the world… He encouraged a generation to rebel against authority…” Now, I personally believe it’s good to rebel against authority, if the authority is wrong. In the middle part of last century, the American society was moving more and more toward rampant materialism, with little regard for the environment. Television was starting to replace consistent quality parenting time. Both parents were now increasingly starting to move into the workplace, moving on an accelerating treadmill to make more to buy more. And with this dynamic (as with television), kids were getting even more shorted emotionally and growing up empty, confused, angry… Youth of that time, of course, didn’t understand the emotional and psychological dynamics of why they were feeling empty, confused, angry. They just were. So they took their teenage angst, if you will, and tried to express the anger, and fill the emptiness, with alcohol, drugs, sex, fast cars… [read: “rebellion”]. They were thumbing their noses at “the establishment.” An establisment, or ‘authority,’ which was leaving them empty, confused and angry. The problem was that much of this rebellion took the form of self-destructive behavior. Which, when you analyze it psycholigicaly, made sense. That is, these youth didn’t have much self-esteem because of the lack of quality parental attention. And consequently, if someone doesn’t feel good about themselves internally, they have a tendency to do things that are abusive to themselves… James Dean’s most famous movie was Rebel Without a Cause. That title should speak volumes. Note: I left a campaign flyer with the store clerk at Michael’s Corner. I signed it: “Joe Schriner …a Presidential Candidate With a Cause.” –And we continue to do all this without paid political consultants.
3/31/06
In honor of Cezar Chavez Day today, I worked on a position paper about farm worker issues this morning. One of the points I make in the paper is that our administration would push to make this a National Holiday because of the social justice importance of what Chavez accomplished… I also interviewed Jennifer and Ruben De Anda today. They live on the Monterey Penninsula in California. Jennifer was born in America. Ruben comes from Lago de Moreno in the State of Jalisco, Mexico. (He is now an American citizen.)… Ruben proposes a fascinating concept. He pointed to the coming together of countries to form the European Union and wondered why we couldn’t form, say, an “Americas’ Union,” involving as many countries as possible in North and South America. With this Union would come a unified monetary system (like the Euro), open borders, more idea and investment exchanges… In other words, undertaking things together might well create more of a common bond, more conduits for mutual aid, and better camaraderie in general between nations… The De Andas have three young children. The children are learning to speak both English and Spanish. Jennifer explained they get the children bilingual books, attend bilingual church services and are also taught a lot about their father’s country and culture. “Just learning the language doesn’t tell you how people think, or about their customs and social standards,” said Ruben… The couple is also quite concerned about the recent immigration policy debate in the U.S. They said some of the extended family is legal, some not. If the policies enacted are quite stringent, the De Andas are worried about deportation and the havoc that could cause in splitting some of their extended family, and so on… Note: We came across a group of some 50 Hispanic men congregated around a 7-Eleven store parking lot in Seaside, California, yesterday. They were trying to hawk their services. One of the men, Oscar Domingus, said he had arrived at 5 a.m. (it was now 10:30 a.m. and he still hadn’t been hired). Domingus, who moved here from El Salvador four years ago, told me the men gather here every day early in hopes of being hired to do day land scaping, or mechanical work, or contruction work, or farm work. Some get hired. Some don’t. These guys live in quiet desperation on the margins of society, day in and day out. How many of us (spiritually) turn our backs because, well, we’re already ‘hired?’
3/30/06
The kids and I went to a talk last night by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez. To about 350 people at the University of California at Monterey Bay World Theatre, Ms. Huerta said with the pressing immigration debate today, the issues are very much the same as when she helped start the UFW in the late ’60s. That is, some of the nation continues to be fraught with with prejudice toward Latinos. “We have a new Civil Rights Movement,” said Ms. Huerta, pointing to the recent, and dramatic, mobilization of Latino protests across the country. She also said that she believes this issue has actually become a convenient distraction from the Iraq War. What’s more, Ms. Huerta said when you look at history, the Hispanic people are “indigenous” to this part of America. “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” she said… Speaking on farm worker issues, Ms. Huerta said farm workers have always been considered second class citizens. And a refrain that’s often heard in Hispanic families is: “You better go to college, or you’ll end up being a farm worker.” She said the irony is that farm workers do some of the “most precious work in the world.” That is, they help provide us with one of the most essential things of life: food. As an addendum, she said if there were a “Survivor” show where you were to be taken to a deserted island and could bring only one person with you: “Would you take a lawyer or a farm worker?” Note: During the Q&A period after the talk, I noted what I saw as a rather glaring irony. I said I couldn’t help but notice that many of the college students in the audience were Latinos who have been urged to go on to get a “better” education so they can go on to become lawyers and other white collar professionals, with all the pay, benefits and status that comes with this. I wondered out loud that if we want an egalitarian society where the farm workers are on a same par (in every respect) as these white collar professionals: “Shouldn’t we be looking toward changing the whole pre-dominant paradigm in our country?” [It is our belief we should return to an agrarian base in America, with a tremendous resurgence of the small family farm. In tandem, we should move back toward decentralism, with local food production for local consumption. And we should also return to non-polluting, small technology (horse and plow, sickle, hand seeders, hoes…) — many of the same methods the Old Order Amish utilize today. This should all revolve around organic growing again. There should be regular school classes taught by local farmers on farming techniques. And through Community Sponsored Agriculture projects, and the like, all children should have the chance to regularly work on farms, putting them more in touch with the land, natural growing cycles, and so on. In this paradigm, farmers and farm workers would be much more valued in the society. (And there would be more of a need for farm workers because of the shift back in technology.) Also, the work on farms would be much more in line with the way we believe God intended it to be (before huge computerized combines and corporate greed-driven farming): a sacred vocation.]
3/29/06
I picked up a Time Magazine in Seaside, California, yesterday. There was a “Special Report” on global warming. It was titled: BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. And after I read the articles, I was. (That is, even more than I already was.) The crux of the article is that a host of scientists believe that, not only is global warming real, but that the earth stands at an alarming “tipping point.” Glaciers at the North and South poles are turning to slush at a highly accelerated rate, Greenland is also going through a major meltdown. Global warming is also causing wide spread (and rapidly increasing) drought now. It is playing tremendous havoc with plant and animal species. Cyclones and hurricanes are increasing in intensity… It’s as if the earth is trying to “shake off a fever,” reporter Jeffrey Kluger wrote. The article also noted the question anymore isn’t whether global warming is real, but rather: Are we capable of reversing it in time?… This morning at St. Francis Xavier Church in Seaside there was somewhat of a roundtable discussion. I said I believe a big part of the answer to global warming is for the churches to take the lead in teaching that the environment is, indeed, a hugely significant moral issue. And each of us have a major personal responsibility (and spiritual culpability) in all this by the lifestyles we lead. [Hint: The U.S. has 5% of the world population and emits 25% of the greenhouse gasses. Read: gluttony.] And I also prayed this morning that the church members (and the church as an institution) would develop the charism St. Francis had for the environment — “so the next generation, including our children, has a world to live in.” Note: For more on the specifics of what we can tangibly do to reverse global warming in a dramatic way, see our “Energy Policy” position paper under “what joe stands for” on this site.
3/28/06
I talked with Chuck Carter in Sand City, California yesterday. He ran for the House of Representatives three times in the 17th District here. He ran as a Republican in a heavily liberal (Santa Cruz is in the District) area. He, understandably, lost three times. His campaign slogan: “More Chuck and Less Pork.” But it wasn’t enough to go with the slogan. He and his wife also got a pet, 20 lb baby pig that they would bring with them everywhere (on a leash no less, and it did tricks). The pig even slept with them. “It was kind of cudly,” Chuch smiled — although I noticed Mrs. Carter wasn’t smiling as much… Back in the campaign vehicle, my wife (and campaign manager) Liz — who would never go for the pig — said we should try and come up with some “fun” angle for the campaign like the Carters did. Her initial suggestion was to put a megaphone atop the “average Joe” mobile and play the “average Joe” theme song as we passed through towns. Note: To hear the “average Joe” theme song, go to the bottom right hand section of the home page and click.
3/27/08
Our family stood in solidarity with a group of Latinos on a downtown square in Hollister, California, yesterday. They were there to protest current, hot-button proposed new immigration policies that, among other things, would: make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant; entail stepped up deportation of illegal immigrants; significanlty increase fines to employers hiring illegal immigrants; add more secure fencing and stronger “virtual fences” (more border patrol in the air, on the ground…). The group in Hollister comprised one of numerous protests around the country over the weekend, including a phenomenal 500,000 person turn-out in Los Angeles… Hollister’s Cynthia Lee told me she believed Latinos do jobs Whites won’t do, especially in the fields. “You don’t see White farm workers in the fields, period,” she said. (Adding emphasis to Ms. Lee’s statement, more than 100 farm groups have joined together as the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform and are rallying for change that acknowledges a reliance on immigration labor, according to a Sacramento Bee newspaper article.)… Hollister’s Gabriella Recollos told me her people work, raise families, go to church and pay taxes. “And all we want is peace and equal rights,” she said. Ms. Recillos held a sign that read: “I’m not illegal, if you check the history — I’m in my territory.” This is a reference to a time when a good part of California (Texas, Arizona…) was Mexican territory. [I said to my wife Liz that given what we did to the Native Americans “…we’re actually all illegals.”]… Fernando Perez, a Hollister website designer, was also protesting at the square. He said Americans sometimes look at immigration through a rather myopic lens. That is, “they seldom put themselves in our shoes.” Mr. Perez said he was referring to all those who risk everything to come to this country, barely being able to scrape by in taking care of their families (both here and in Mexico), and so on. This is not an issue of criminality, it’s an issue of human rights, he said. “We don’t want pity,” Mr. Perez continued. “We want justice.” He added that he believed if an illegal immigrant has been in America for a time and has been a law abiding citizen who is a contributing member to his community, there should be a provision where he is allowed to become a citizen. Our administration would believes this too, and would push for amnesty. (See our position paper on Hispanic immigration.) Note: Mr. Perez said Mexicans, for instance, often come to America because of poverty in Mexico. We saw this abject poverty first-hand on a research trip to Juarez, Mexico, several years ago. Some 200,000 people in Juarez were living in cobbled together shacks, no running water, no electricity. Parents were working in multi-national factories for $3 a shift and children were going hungry. Our administration would acknowledge this for what it is: a monumental human rights tragedy, and work stridently to try to help Hispanics in as many ways as possible here, while working just as stridently to help (more humanitarian aid, more Peace Corp help…) Hispanics be as sustainable as possible in their own countries. It’s our belief many people would rather not leave their home, family, community, culture. But when your children are hungry… To get tough on all this, to turn our backs on this tremendous human need: flies directly in the face of sound, spiritual judgement.
3/25/06
Yesterday I wrote an entry about breaking the 5th Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill.”) within the context of America’s poor environmental track record and it’s ongoing fatal ramifications. Today the theme continues… San Francisco Chronicle reporter James Sterngold wrote a front page piece this week about a Bush administration proposal to build more than 1,000 replacement nuclear warheads that will cost taxpayers “hundreds of billions” of dollars over the next few decades. The claim (although this is being disputed) is that the current arsenal of warheads have undergone readioactive decay, weakening the explosive force of the bombs, according to the Chronicle article. A question here: Are we the same country that has been telling a good number of other countries that they can’t have nuclear weapons? Perhaps a bit of, oh, duality? Anyway… According to a History Channel Magazine story, Albert Enstein regretted the role he played in developing the atomic bomb. (He had sent a letter to President Roosevelt recommending the atomic bomb be made. “I made one great mistake in my life…,” he said in retrospect.) Since then, the U.S. alone has spent $4 trillion between 1940 and 1995 on its nuclear weapons program, also according the the History Channel Magazine piece. Another question: If I as an American citizen has gotten behind a military ideology that has allowed for the latter build up (or I just tacitly sat back for that matter), have I broken the 5th Commandment? That is, let’s say I know, or at least am generally aware, that 24,000 people starve to death in the world every day and scores more die from drinking contaminated water in the Third World. However, I’m more worried about my own protection and am willing to ok the expenditure of “trillions” of dollars on these nuclear weapons — when the money could keep millions of children from starving to death. Given this, haven’t I, indeed, broken the spirit, if not the letter, of “Thou Shalt Not Kill?” You see, we can allow death by our ommission, selfishness, fear… Note: I just saw a bumber sticker that said “Altered State University …where all you can do is smile, smile, smile.” Yes, we’re still in California.
3/24/06
I was interviewed by a reporter from the Modesto Bee, a large newspaper in mid-California. The reporter asked me how the cross-country campaigning has been influencing the children. I said our Sarah, 10, has been exposed to a tremendous amount of social and environmental issues as we’ve traveled. And this has motivated her to want to make a difference. In the last year, she started a club among her pen friends. The club revolves around what kids can do “…to change the world.” The project they are working on now revolves around how kids can impact pollution in the oceans, and Sarah, for instance, has been diligently doing research and trying to come up with ways to help… And by the time Sarah is an adult, there might be a whole lot more ‘ocean’ for her and her friends to worry about. Today on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle was an article that said two seperate scientific studies show global warming and polar ice cap melting is happening “at a faster pace than believed.” And this could cause sea levels around the world to rise 13 to 20 feet by the end of the century… I gave a talk at St. Joseph’s Church in a hard scrabble area of north Sacramento today. I talked about breaking the 5th Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Kill) in relationship to abortion. But here’s an interesting theological question. If my energy-glutonous lifestyle in America (driving everywhere, central heating and air conditioning, significant consumption of products that take all kinds of fossil fuel to make — cars, furniture, appliances…) contributes significantly to global warming, polar ice cap melting, and, ultimately, the death of my Sarah and some of her friends in the next generation — in God’s eyes, have I (in a very real sense) broken the 5th Commandment? Well, sure. Note: USA Today just carried a piece on ‘Smart cars’ called: Zaps. They are mini-cars developed in Europe that are four feet shorter than BMW’s Mini Cooper. (The joke is the car is so short that Zap boasts it can be parked perpindicular to the curb.) The care gets 85 miles to a gallon — meaning considerable less emissions per mile. While most people would look at this as a positive environmental step, given the alarming global warming trend we’re facing — I see the introduction of a few of these ‘smart cars’ in America as a mere drop in the bucket (or one less drop in cascading glacial melts). What would be tremendously ‘smarter,’ would be for engineers to be rapidly designing these little cars with electric or solar power, in tandem with us going to Walkable communities with wide lanes for pedestrians, bicyclists, buggies… Anything environmentally less at this point is like: rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic… At St. Joseph’s today before I talked,a priest in his homily said one of the “great Commandments” is to “Love our neighbor as ourselves.” Another question: If we were Sarah (or anyone in her generation), would we want our generation just steaming ahead in our comfort and consumptive lifestyle and trashing the world for her (or them)? Is that in any way: “Loving our neighbor as ourselves.” Hardly.