In Tallulah, Louisiana I met with Darryl Ellerbee, former local caseworker for the Youth Opportunity (YO) Program. A federally funded program, Ellerbee said a $20 million dollar grant was awarded to three parishes (counties) in Louisiana. He said people between the ages of 14 and 21 are offered GED training and scholarship money for technical schools, and so on. Tallulah is one of the poorest areas in Louisiana,and it shows. Half the downtown is boarded up, a quite noticeable amount of the housing around the downtown is, at best, delapidated shacks… We then headed to Monroe, Lousiana, which has it’s share of poverty as well. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has established a “Pharmacy” to help. North East Louisiana Community Pharmacy Board member Cindy Smith told me the community pharmacy distributes medication to low income people. Nurses, techinicians and office people volunteer their time and area doctors donate samples, nursing homes donate unused medication, etc. And speaking of the poor… Later in the day, I told Monroe’s News Star Reporter Christy Futch that 24,000 people starve to death every day in the world, which means we experience a “silent tsunami” every 6 and 1/4th days. Ms. Futch said she found that absolutely “shocking.”
1/10/05
In Vicksburg, Mississippi we talked with Mathew Emory of London, Ontario, who was here visiting the historic battle site. Mathew said in Canada there is a lot less gun violence because guns, simply, aren’t as much a part of the culture there. “If someone makes us really mad, we’ll just bug them to death, or something,” he smiled… We also sat in on a Sunday School Class at Bomar Baptist Church in Vicksburg. The topic: “How to maintain your purity in the current society.” The most predominant suggestion was to either lose the TV altogether, or curtail watching considerably. During a talk I gave to a morality issues graduate class at Bluffton College a couple years ago, I explained that while sitting in a restaurant window booth with your spouse, how many people would turn and intently, and in a prolonged fashion, watch a scantily clad woman, or man, walking down the street? “What kind of visceral reaction would that create in your spouse?” I asked. Yet we’ll think nothing of sitting for hours with, or without, our spouse, intently, and in a quite prolonged fashion, watch scantily clothed women and men through another “window” (read: TV screen) on prime time TV without thinking twice. However unconsciously, anger often grows in a relationships as a result of this. Divorce in society increases…
1/8/05
This week I told the Scott County Times in Forest, Mississippi that the Catholic Rural Life Association has come out with a statement calling for a moratorium on big confinement farms for cattle, chicken and so on. The farm conditions prove tremendously cruel to animals, generate large amounts of pollution run-off, and these progressively bigger farms are driving the small farmers off their land. Forest, Mississippi, by the way, has a huge Tyson Chicken complex that helps drive a lot of the local economy. (There goes a few votes.)… While in the area, I also interviewed Sr. Nona Meyerhofer, site director of the EXCEL program in nearby Morton, Mississippi. Among her many duties, she runs an after school program for Hispanic children to help them keep up with their studies, and with assimilation into the American culture in general… We then headed west to Pearl, Mississippi where I interviewed Jo Haley, 43, in regard to our ongoing study of poverty issues in the South. Mrs. Haley said growing up in Pearl, her father was a share cropper and later a truck driver. Her mother was a deaf mute. For four years they lived in one room in the Russums Motel, “apt. 34,” she remembered. Jo said her and her sister, and mother and father, all slept in the same bed in that room. And she remembers more than a few meals being: a piece of bread, mayonaise, black pepper “…and we’d just think about a tomato,” she lamented. I couldn’t help but wonder how many children were going to bed tonight in the “Delta” area of Mississippi hungry. Then I couldn’t help but wonder why that’s so.
1/7/05
We met with Jo Anne Zettler in Meridian, Mississippi two days ago. She is past director of Mercy Associates. (They are the lay arm of the Sisters of Mercy.) Jo Anne said the Sisters of Mercy go into areas where there are no hospitals and try to establish them, or other supplemental medical services. For instance, she said some of the Sisters of Mercy are working in Mississippi’s Delta region, the poorest in the state. What’s more, unlike a majority of the “snow bird” RVers who come south for enjoyment in the warmer weather each winter, she said one RVing couple from up north come south to the Delta region every winter to work with the Sisters there. In that same volunteering vein, Jo Anne is a wonderful example herself. She was the director of the Associates of Mercy for five years, traveling throughout the 7-state St. Louis Region — while also being the mother of: 10. Jo Anne is an “extra-mile American” in the truest sense of that phrase.
1/6/05
We drove into Green County, Alabama, the poorest county in the country — and it shows. Touring downtown Boligee, Alabama, we saw a grocery, a bank, a mechanic shop and a series of other buildings, all closed. Some reduced to rubble. (The only thing open now is the Post Office.) The small farms, cotton gins, and other industry were once the staple here. But agri-business up north and out west has driven most small farmers off their land here, the industry has gone north and most jobs (which aren’t many) pay little more than minimum wage. Gary Burton, 41, said he is one of the lucky ones, working at a small cedar mill for “pretty good money,” $7.10 an hour. When asked how people got by down here, Gary said: “Dollar Stores.” In Epes, Alabama, just south of Boligee, Debra Bock told us a good number of people from here take a bus 2 and 1/2 hours from here to work at the Tyson Chicken Plant in Forest, Mississippi “for a little over $7 an hour.” She said people will get on the bus at 6:30 p.m., work from 10:15 p.m. to 6:15 a.m., ride another 2 and 1/2 hours home — and do it again the following night. [Meanwhile, many of those who are “advantaged,” comfortably sit back over a chicken dinner and the nightly news — without a social justice thought about it all. What an absolute travesty, not to mention a huge moral failing.]
1/5/05
A front page story about the campaign ran in The Demopolis Times newspaper. Editor Theresa Swope noted I was asking Americans (across the socio-economic board) to “sacrifice.” For instance, the story said I relayed that there was a time in this country when people, all people, lived without air-conditioning. My proposition is we go back to that, and take the savings to help people in the Third World have just the minimum in electricity so they can have, say: light. The Bible exhorts that if we have two coats, and our brother needs one — we give him/her one of the coats. And I have to believe when it comes to energy use in the U.S. versus the Third World, our proposal would represent the spirit of this particular Biblical value in a very tangible way.
1/3/04
We headed west on Rte. 80 to Demopolis, Alabama. There we met with Gala Culpepper (Is that a southern name, or what?), who is a member of the Demopolis Historical Society. She said there is quite a thrust here to preserve history, with a series of renovation projects and historic markers all over town. And as they are trying to preserve history, they are trying to preserve a “simpler” way of life, said Gala. That is, going to work each day, church on Sunday and a “family meal at Grandma’s” on Sunday afternoon” — all wrapped in a slower pace… I then met with St. Leo pastor Michael Wrigley who was a sociology professor at Alabama University until he heard the call to priesthood. He told me he gave up his salary, pension, and so on at age 42, because he said he knew God was calling him in another direction.
12/31/04
We headed into Selma, Alabama — the flash point for the Civil Rights Movement. Local Historian Alston Fitts gave me a tour. Alston explained that the first Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery turned into Bloody Sunday, as some 600 (mostly) Black walkers were beaten back by state troopers wielding billy clubs. The TV news cameras were there. And as what many would like to believe was a providential coincidence, the “News Flash” from Selma broke into the showing of the movie The Nuremburg Trials (Nazi Germany) on one of the stations. “People were watching a movie about extreme oppression, and then there was this scene of innocent, non-violent citizens being beaten,” said Alston. Numbers for the next march the next week swelled to 25,000, as people from all over the country came to Selma in solidarity. The march went the 50 miles to Montgomery this time and the eventual result was Lydon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act… I told the Selma newspaper that the courage demonstrated by these marchers (including Martin Luther King Jr.) should not only never be forgotten, but the American citizenry should be inspired by it as people continue to fight battles for equal rights, peace and social justice throughout the land today.
12/30/04
Was interviewed by Montgomery, Alabama’s newspaper. I told reporter Erica Pippins that we still had “slavery” in this country. That is, Blacks, Whites, etc… are still slaves to inner city poverty loops. And to impact this, significantly impact this, people in the suburbs need to slow their upward mobility climb, roll up their sleeves and head into the inner city to help, really help.
12/28/04
I interviewed Auburn University professor Rene McEldowney today for a position paper on health care. Professor McEldowney is a “Health Care Economist” who has traveled the world researching other countries health care systems. She told me the American privatized system is actually quite wasteful, with some 30% of the budget going to administrative costs, or “paper pushing,” as she put it. Making up some of this “waste” (as opposed to direct care) is: money for advertising, salaries for personnel to deal with insurance companies, lawyers to deal with law suits, CEOs who are making six figures to oversee a lot of this… Meanwhile, in countries like Holland that have gone to socialized medicine (government sponsored), many of these costs are eliminated. The professor, who is a proponent of National Health Care because she sees it as a more efficient, and equitable, system for everyone, told me she saw America, sometime in the future, going to a similar National Health Care plan. And she quoted Winston Churchill in regard to this (and other things). “You can always trust Americans to do the right thing — once they’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.”