Vote for Joe

After Mass at St. Augustine’s Church in Cleveland Sunday, I stopped at the social hall there where, every day, there are meals for the poor. It’s not uncommon for 50 to 75 street people (or people on the edge of being on the street– a majority Black) to be here. Their countenance, more often than not, is depressed, frustrated, angry… mixed with quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, desperation. However, yesterday there was a wholly (not to be confused with: ‘holy’) different atmosphere. That is, the tables were filled with a bunch of neat, well dressed (and for the most part smiling) White people. More than a few of them had on $40 sweaters with Notre Dame insignias. I asked. One man explained this was Cleveland’s “Notre Dame Club.” ND alumnus, and their families, get together regularly around the Cleveland area for these meals. “We also do community service,” the man stressed. And I’m sure they do. That is, these rather well off surburbanites may do a bit of fundraising periodically, maybe drop some second hand coats off for the poor down here occasionally — then head back to their comfortable suburban worlds… thinking they’ve done their bit for God. At the Mass just before, Fr. Ben said he wondered how Jesus would feel seeing a good number of people down here who were homeless? And I couldn’t help but wonder how Jesus would feel about a system that allows for the children of the privileged in suburbia to head off to Notre Dame, Stanford, Bowling Green State University for that matter; while youth down here grow up dodging drugs, hunger and bullets — with little hope for college and a ticket to that suburban world… My wife Liz has been reading a book on social justice of late: The following is an excerpt from it: “Where charity tends to involve individuals or small groups of people acting to meet the immediate needs of others [a coat for the homeless here, a few bucks there]; work for justice involves a more communal, and even global, awareness of problems and their potential long term solutions. Where the notion of charity calls to mind voluntary giving out of one’s surplus, the notion of justice suggests that there is an absolute obligation to share the benefits of God’s creation more broadly than we see in the present order. Translated: People in suburban America need to slow their upward mobility climb, cut back on their lifestyles (read: sacrifice), and put a lot of energy, resources, and smarts — into shifting the ‘present order’ toward: education systems, healthcare systems, business systems… that are much more equitable — for all. That is, if one takes the gospel message seriously.

I have spent the last few days updating our position paper on: crime. It contains a tremendous amount of research per:, not only creative crime prevention programs, but precipitating factors that lead to crime: alcohol and drug addiction, poverty in the inner city, dysfunctional families… Note: In Columbiana County, Ohio, several years ago, I interviewed Wayne Zeitler, a former bartender. Zeitler wants to see the establishment of a: “drinking license.” Like driving, Zeitler told me Americans should look at drinking as a “privilege,” not an inherent right. And as one has to sudy to pass a written driver’s license test, it would be the same for a drinking license. Topics might include: how many drinks it takes to go over the legal limit of alcohol for your particular height and weight; the degree of slower reaction time you experience with each drink; signs and sympotms of alcoholism… Zeitler added with this system, a drinking license could be revoked for repeated incidence of drunk driving, domestic violence, drunk and disorderly conduct… After interviewing Zeitler, I told the local newspaper in Columbiana County that this was the kind of creative, outside-the-lines, approaches our administration would be looking for — from ‘average Americans.’

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 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?

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.