We continued further south, stopping at Koinoinia Farm in Americus, Georgia. This was the backwater Selma to Montgomery of the Civil Rights Movement. On this farm in the late ’40s, blacks and whites lived and worked together in community — receiving the same pay. The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses and did drive by shootings. The town ostracized those on the farm. But the community stood firm. Community founder Clarence Jordan wrote a series of books called the Cotton Patch Gospels. The crux of the books was Jesus coming to earth in southern Georgia in the 1940s to confront the issues of the day, including (that’s right) prejudice. Jordan, along with Millard Fuller, were also the co-founders of Habitat for Humanity. Up the street from the farm was a settlement of blacks living in what amounted to a shanty town. People from Koinonia, hammers in hand, set out to help them. From this grew a phenomenal international agency that’s goal is: “To provide adequate housing for everyone in the world.”
Bill, birds and ‘Buford’…
We have launched on our next tour leg… Our first stop was Macon, Georgia — not by design. We got a flat. At Yancey Tires, owner Bill Yancey (calloused greasy hands and a rumpled shirt that read: Bill) said it was, indeed, ‘time for a change’ (some simple common sense) in D.C. His belief: If you’re a lawyer, you’re not allowed to be in Congress. Everything has gotten too complicated, and too convoluted, he added. I underscored that by saying to him that the tax code book in D.C. is now a mind boggling (literally) 15,100 pages long. Written, in part, by (You guessed it.): lawyers… While at Yancey’s, I also checked the condition of our spare tire. It’s mounted on the back. When I took the cover off, I found a bird had built a nest in it over the winter — complete with five fledgling birds! Our Sarah took the birds onto her bed in the back of the camper and became, well, ‘mama bird.’ For several hours, as they perched on her hand, her arm, her shoulder… she tried to get them to eat (cracker crumbs, bread crumbs…), but they weren’t biting, so to speak. When we got to Tobesofkee State Park later in the afternoon, the family consensus was Sarah’s best bet was: worms. She proceeded to find a couple small worms and was trying, again in vain, with these. I mentioned that the mother bird ingests the worm then regurgitates it for their young. Sarah rolled her eyes and said: “I’m not doing that dad!” Eventually we decided to take the birds out by the woods, and wouldn’t you know: they all flew off as natural as if they were, well, birds. An addendum: When I got back to the campaign vehicle, I turned on the radio. The dial happened to be on a local Christian radio station out of Macon. And the first thing I heard was this pastor talking about God “…taking care of the birds of the air.” (Honest.) Note: While at Tobesofkee, I talked with a Bibb County Sheriff (who resembled Buford Pusser, minus the big stick). He said the county has a Sheriff’s Department support program called REACT, which consists of 100 area citizen volunteers. These citizens go about town calling in infractions, help with crowd control at events, aid with water mishaps in the local lake… Part of our crime prevention platform calls for a lot more citizen involvement if we really want our streets to be safer.
“…growth compounding on itself.”
I met with Tevyn East who travels the country putting on a one woman The Affording Hope Project stage performance. The crux of the presentation (combining song, story telling, prayer…) is to explore the links between faith, ecology and the global economy. Ms. East performs with a sense of urgency because of the “environmental crisis that is upon us.” She said she sees the dominant paradigm, “growth compounding on itself,” as the crux of the problem. That is, an almost out of control growth that is profit driven, as opposed to a much saner pace that revolves around providing for the common good. How this would translate, Ms. East said to me, is the establishment of many more small, alternative economies within the context of local community. That is, a premium would again be placed on local production for local consumption, much more of an emphasis on quality craftsmanship as opposed to mechanized assembly line work, and so on. What Ms. East’s performance reflects, in part. is what we believe about the economy as well. That is, we need to establish a “New Economy,” quick.
…a little too violent?
In the last couple weeks, I found myself working out in the free-weight room at the local YMCA with two professional football players. One was Anthony Cannon, who was drafted in the 7th round out of Tulane University and played linebacker for three years for the Detroit Lions, until a bad shoulder injury temporarily ended his career. The other player was another linebacker as well. John McRae played for several years for the New Jersey Bears, a semi-pro team. His career ended with a knee injury. A degenerative injury that has become so bad he sometimes has to have gel inserted with a needle into his knee to keep the bones from rubbing. While talking with Cannon, he said he’s rehabbed his shoulder this last year and has recently signed with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League… Now, I used to play football in high school and really loved the sport. Yet how the violence level seems to be escalating of late, it does give one pause. The NFL is, for instance, looking at the frequency of concussions and their long term impact on the brain. Then there’s things like full-paralysis, happening at all levels of the sport (even grade school). Maybe it’s time to take step, or two, back, and come up with a version of the sport that is considerably less violent. Sure, it’s a rush to watch football as it is now. But at what price? Note: Now on to a decidedly less violent sport. Running. My wife Liz ran the Atlanta Publix Half-Marathon this last Sunday. She’s been training pretty intensely over the winter and finished in a respectable: 2 hours and 24 minutes. And while the nation is transfixed on Michelle Obama’s arms, you should see Liz’s calf muscles! (Liz would shoot me if she knew I just wrote that.) Have I mentioned our gun control stance?
interview
I was interviewed for an online magazine recently. I was asked about the budget, taxes, health care, guns… To view the interview, see.
“We want what we want…”
The Japanese scramble to avert a complete meltdown at a nuclear facility today. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down, spewing massive amounts of radiation throughout Russia and Europe. The Deep Water Horizon catastrophe spewed massive amounts of oil throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Then there was the Exon Valdez fiasco in Alaska… I could go on with this, but I think you get the point. We are awash in consequences because of our addiction to fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources. Extrapolated out, we’re addicted to comfort. Many in the U.S. for instance, have central heating, central air-conditioning… and don’t, for a minute, want to feel the least bit ‘uncomfortable’ in our homes. Likewise, we drive practically everywhere now in temperature controlled vehicles because we don’t want to feel ‘uncomfortable’ in the elements, or through physical exertion. Meanwhile we drill more, we erect more nuclear power plants… even in the face of what is becoming these tremendously lethal consequences. Because, as with any addict: “We want what we want when we want it!” Note: I am just finishing up a position paper on transportation, with a special focus on “fossil-fuel driven motorized transportation.” Did you know that we average now about 33,000 road deaths a year in America? That’s like half an airliner going down, every day. And if the latter was happening, do you think for a minute that we’d still be flying? But, well, when you’re “auto-addicted” your denial can be pretty deep. As these cars can be pretty intoxicating.
Nuclear madness
As the drama plays itself out with the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, it would seem an opportune time to reiterate our campaign’s stance on nuclear energy. It’s an ill-conceived energy solution and our administration would work to nix it. We traveled to Luck, Wisconsin, several years ago and met with Bonnie Urfur who is co-director of the watchdog agency “Nukewatch.” Ms. Urfer, at the time, pointed to the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant meltdown as a prime example of why we shouldn’t use nuclear energy. And here it is repeating itself again, maybe in spades. At what point do we say: “Ok, I get it.” Note: The Obama administration has recently proposed a new generation of 80 nuclear power plants. While part of this is all about doing a ‘bi-partisan dance’ to appease Republican interests, part of it is not. Hopefully we can all rise above partisanship in general for the sake of future generations, not of nuclear power plants, but of people.
homeless
We’ve spent the winter volunteering at an outreach to the homeless in Atlanta. The last few days, Atlanta has experienced another cold snap and there has been a steady stream of people at our door for blankets, hats, gloves… One incident that particularly pulled at my heart strings was a middle age man, his wife and the man’s elderly mother (who was using a walker) asking for blankets. They, too, were homeless. According to statistics, there are some 15,000 homeless people in the Atlanta area alone. Meanwhile just north of here in the suburb of Buckhead, many people live in $150,000 to $500,000 homes, shop at the fancy malls, drive Lexus’s, eat three full meals a day and all kinds of snacks, have wide screen TVs… It’s such a glaring disparity. Dorothy Day, a Catholic Worker social activist, proposed every Christian have a “Christ Room” in their home for the homeless. And our family has taken that to heart. At our homes (or even apartments) over the years, we have reserved a room for the homeless. And when we get to D.C., I recently told the Amarillo Globe News, we will reserve the Lincoln Bedroom for the homeless as well. Homeless people like the man, his wife and the mother I just met. Note: We are leaving on another campaign tour April 1 and are trying to raise donations for this. Those can be sent to: Joe Schriner Presidential Election Committee, c/o The Open Door, 910 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30306-4212 Note 2: I just gave a talk on homelessness here in Atlanta, with the help of my daughter Sarah. The beginning of that talk can be found at…
still have a ‘slave class’
I met with a group of Vanderbilt University students (and others) who were traveling from Tennessee to Tampa, Florida to stand in solidarity with farm workers protesting for better pay. The students are part of a Workers Dignity Project out of Nashville. Katy Savage said to me that the farm workers are “being squeezed” by corporations these days. One of the corporations, according to Ms. Savage, is the grocery store chain Publix, which is apparently not paying a fair enough price for produce. (The pickets will be staged in front of these stores.) …Several years ago, we toured the San Joaquin Valley in California looking at migrant farm worker issues. At the Chavez Center in Keene, California, we learned farm workers were woefully underpaid and lived in what amounted to shacks. What’s more, throughout the Valley there were a high frequency of “cancer clusters,” with farm workers regularly exposed to large amounts of pesticides. With the ongoing treatment of these farm workers, we still have in essence a ‘slave class’ in this country. As president I’d make it a priority to dramatically switch this around. For our position paper on this, see… Note: Bumper sticker sighting in Atlanta over the weekend: Why doesn’t America lead the world in saving the planet?
…the real hope for our cities.
Liz and I gave a campaign talk at the Open Door Community in Atlanta today. The Open Door is an outreach to the homeless. We said that as a family over the years, we have regularly taken homeless people into our home. And what’s more, we had moved into the urban core of Cleveland for the last five years. And when we’re not on the road, we work with a group of Catholic Workers who have rolled up their sleeves trying to make the neighborhood a better place. They’ve set up a drop-in center for the poor, established an urban farm, coach at the Rec Center, give out micro-gifts to neighbors… This is the real hope for our cities… I started the talk today with an excerpt from an AOL News article about our campaign. It notes that as president I’d open the Lincoln Bedroom to homeless veterans living on the streets of D.C. And I would. Note: We are readying for our next campaign tour and we are trying to raise campaign funds. (Has anyone seen the price of gas lately?) We will be leaving Atlanta April 1 and donations can be sent to: Schriner Presidential Campaign, c/o The Open Door Community, 910 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30306-4212