More on our Sweet Home Alabama Tour… Coming across the border from Georgia, we first stopped in Phenix City, Alabama. This was once billed at “the most corrupt city in America.” With the Army’s Ft. Benning nearby, soldiers regularly came to town here. There were illegal gambling parlors all over, prostitution, taverns everywhere, mob influence… At Patty’s 50s style diner here, one of the employees, Barbara, told me that in the mid-50s marshal law was declared in Phenix City, with federal troops descending on the town to shut down a lot of the illegal activity… On the walls at Patty’s are old 45 records, pictures of Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe… And a whole wall dedicated to the Andy Griffith Show… While in Phenix City, I gave a pro-life talk at St. Patrick’s Church. I said that we’d just crossed the 50 million abortion mark in America and for this to end, pro-life people need to go to the streets and mount a dramatic, sustained protest — like the protests to end Segregation in the South. While in Phenix, we met with Fr. Thom Weise who spent time with Mother Theresa and Dorothy Day (co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement). He had an absolutely great sense of spirituality about him. Fr. Thom gave us a tour of the town, including a stroll down a scenic river walk. Fr. Thom, 74, road his push-scooter side-by-side with our son Jonathan along the walk… The next day, I talked at Mother Mary’s School, an all Black elementary school in Phenix City. The topic, again, was abortion. Our daughter Sarah, 14, also talked to the students. She explained she had protested abortion all over the country. She said she had prayed with others on the street, held protest signs, pleaded with mothers not to go into the clinic… Sarah exhorted the students to consider doing similar things… I then talked at an eighth grade class at St. Patrick’s School in Phenix City. I asked the students: “If you were president, what’s the first thing you’d do?” One boy didn’t skip a beat, immediately saying: “I’d end the war.” I asked why. “Because my father is over there.” My heart fell as I looked at this kid… After the school events, we got a tour of The Riverside Antique Mall, complete with the first Thunderbird model ever built (1955) and the last Thunderbird model ever built (1995). Both were cherry red. The antique mall also has the largest lunch box collection in the world — and I’m not making this up. (It had just been featured on CNN’s Most Unusual Museums Show.) These particular lunch pails primarily had scenes from movies and television shows. The rarest was a metal lunch pail with Hop-a-Long Cassidy on it. Cost: $600. I decided to pass on that… After the tour we headed south, stopping in Montgomery (see last entry), then it was on to Owassa where Jonathan and I passed out a flier to a man out watering flowers in his front yard there. Unsolicited, he said he had an answer to gridlock in D.C. “Throw everyone out and start over,” he offered… Then it was further south to Evergreen, Alabama, where I put up a campaign flier at Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store. (Ya gotta wonder why you would name a place where people were going to get there food: “piggly,” complete with a big graphic of a pig no less. I mean what’s that going to do to the average shopper unconsciously? Anyway… From here,, it was on to Atmore, Alabama, where we parked our camper for the evening in a dirt lot next to a Chevron station, amidst a few 18 wheelers. It was late. And after we got the kids to bed, I went into a small restaurant at the station to do some writing. My table was right below a wall hanging that read: You might be a redneck racing fan if: 1) Your drive to the race track takes longer than the race. 2) You can change a tire faster than you can change a diaper. 3) You get in and out of your car through the driver’s window. (Incidentally, this is how I get in our campaign vehicle.)
“…order them shot.”
We’ve started on our “Sweet Home Alabama Tour.” (We continue to try to be as original as possible with the campaign.) Yesterday we stopped in Montgomery at a park. While the kids watched a youth baseball game, I got in a political discussion with a guy also watching the game. He said a hot button issue for him was illegal immigration. He said that if he were president, he’d end the wars, bring the troppos home and “…station them at the [southern] border.” Then he would try to send all the illegal immigrants back. “And if they tried to return, I’d order them shot, with instructions to leave the bodies where they fall — as a warning to others.” I asked him if he had a particular faith. He said he was a Christian. I then asked him how he saw his plan squaring with the: Good Samaritan story?
a perma-culture at the White House
I was interviewed by the Americus Times-Recorder yesterday. I noted Koinonia Farm, where we’re currently doing some research, has a perma-culture. (This is a design system for sustainable human habitats that work in harmony with nature to provide an abundance for all our needs. For instance, Konoinia’s perma-culture has fruit trees, berries, gardens, pastured livestock… all working together in a closed, organic eco-system. People from all over the country come to Koinonia to learn about perma-culture. I told the reporter that when we get to the White House, one of the first things we’ll do is tear out the toxic, chemically-treated green lawn (the one that’s polluting the groundwater) and put in an organic perma-culture. And we’ll ask many Americans to do the same. Note: Koinonia is a Christian cooperative farming community located in rural Sumter County, Georgia. It was started in the 1940s.
…like selling his soul
We’re in Americus, Georgia, at Koinonia Farm. Koinonia is a Christian farm community that was the backwater Selma and Montgomery of the Civil Rights Movement (way before Selma and Montgomery). It was here that Whites and Blacks worked side by side for equal pay in the fields. And this was segregated southern Georgia in the late 1940s. One of the community co-founders, Clarence Jordan, went on to write the Cotton Patch Parables. The parables revolved around Jesus coming to earth, not 2,000 years ago to the Middle East, but rather in the 1940s to southern Georgia. What happened at Koinonia was not without a lot of struggle. There were drive by shootings, Klansmen burning crosses across from Koinonia, local stores boycotting selling things to the farm… When Jordan was approached about buying the farm out (at a significant price), he said it would be like selling his soul.
bloody civil war
Catching up on my notes… A couple weeks back we were at Jubilee Partners Community in Comers, Georgia. This is a Christian community that takes in refugees from all over the world. While at Jubilee, I interviewed Liz Purdy who volunteers here. She recently graduated from Gonzaga University in Washington. She was also in Tanzania for three years doing humanitarian outreach. She worked in an orphanage there and was overwhelmed with the malnutrition and disease that she saw. “There’s tremendous injustice and inequality in the world,” she lamented. “Where did we go wrong?” …Jubiliee Partners currently has a group of refugees from Burma. The Burmese government is currently a militarily controlled junta. The government is aligned against pro-democracy forces in the country. A bloody civil war has erupted and some Burmese have fled to refugee camps in Thailand. A small percentage of these people have come to America… A Lenten reflection from a daily meditation book was on the wall in the community room at Jubilee. It read: “Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to make his point. Compassion and service make a neighbor, not nationality, proximity or race…” Note: With all eyes on the miner saga in Montcoal, W.Va., a question: Is our energy gluttony in America setting the stage for these people to go into these dangerous mine shafts in the first place? We’re all, it seems, complicit in this tragic accident.
Alcohol is a drug.
I stopped in at a Community Action for Teens’ Safe & Sober Prom Campaign event over the weekend in Decatur, Georgia. At the event was a display with some of the following statistics. 1) Traffic crashes currently are the greatest single cause of death for people ages six to 33. At a Driving School in Loudonville, Ohio, owner Brad Porter told me 33,000 people die on our nation’s highways every year. That’s the equivalent of, for instance, a half-full airliner going down: every day! 2) Some 45% of these traffic related deaths are alcohol related (among the six to 33-year-olds)… During some of our cross country research, we stopped at Mothers Against Drunk Driving Headquarters in Dallas, Texas. One room is devoted solely to a wall with the photographs of some people who had been killed in drunk driving accidents. From the babies, to the children, to the moms… it was tremendously impacting. A police officer at the event in Decatur said to the youth that she too had seen tremendously impacting carnage in the aftermath of some of these accident scenes… In Columbiana County, Ohio, several years ago, we met a former bartender who proposed to us that each state consider introducing a “drinking license.” One that can be revoked for various periods of time for, say, a DWI or other criminal offenses where alcohol is involved. Note: Program literature this day in Decatur included the following: “Every year more money is spent promoting the use of alcohol than any other product. Perhaps through its elaborate and creative marketing, the most basic, yet important fact about alcohol is often overlooked. Alcohol is a drug.”
worked closely with former President Carter
A few weeks back, we were at Jubilee Partners Community in Comers, Georgia. (They’re mission is taking in refugees from all over the world.) While at Jubilee, I interviewed Don Mosley, 71, who is the co-founder of Jubilee. He was the Peace Corps Director in South Korea between 1967 and 1969. He’s helped start Habitat for Humanity Projects all over the world, and he is currently working with the Fuller Center for Housing, to establish clusters of low income housing in: North Korea. Mosley said he believes a key to building peace worldwide revolves around a lot more humanitarian outreach. Mosley said he has also worked closely with former President Carter on a number of humanitarian projects… An issue that is becoming alarming to Mosley is “environmental refugees.” He said this group’s numbers are starting to surpass war and other forms of political refugees. Mosley said because of climate change, there is more drought in arid regions, as well as more flooding in other regions. He also said refugee camps also become “incubators for terrorism.” That is, youth trapped in the often dead-end, abject poverty of a camp, are prime recruitment targets for terrorist groups. Mosley said he believes that one way to help stem this is that every church group in America should sponsor at least one family in a refugee camp. Note: “average Joe” T-shirt sighting in Decatur, Georgia, today… “If you’re not going to talk to your cat about catnip… who will?
death row and ‘Stations of the Cross’
For Good Friday, I went with a group for a prayer service in front of the State House in Atlanta. One t-shirt read: “Jesus was a victim of the death penalty.” The group leader this day, Calvin Kimbrough, said we were gathering in front of the State House because the legislation for Georgia’s Death Penalty law was crafted inside. (The group does a protest vigil here on the day of practically every execution.) Ed Weir has a ministry to those on death row in Georgia’s Jackson Prison. He said the first time he went there, upon entering, he was questioned by a guard — positioned high up in a 50 foot tower. “He was the receptionist,” Weir laughed (only sort of). He said once past this guard, he was led through an underground tunnel, past a series of heavy metal doors and finally into the room where the prisoner was. A prisoner who is confined to his cell for 23 hours a day. A prisoner who has little hope of ever seeing the outside again. “There is more to a person than the worst moments of their life,” Ed quoted Murphy Davis, co-founder of the Open Door Community here. Note: I also saw a very dramatic “Stations of the Cross” depiction today at the Open Door. It was a series of posters from around the world depicting each station. Some examples: For “Jesus carries his cross,” a Mayan father carries a small wooden casket on his back through the streets toward the cemetery. His son had just been killed in war-torn Guatemala… For “Simon helps Jesus,” two six-year-old South American boys push a heavy cart of rocks with the caption: “They bear each others’ burdens where children have no time for study or play…” And for “Jesus falls a third time,” there is a picture of a stick thin woman in India dying alone on the sidewalk below a shop window featuring expensive, pristine statues of Jesus. The caption: “When people ignore the true image of God in one another…” And so it will be today in ‘pristine’ churches with pristine statues across the country. People, many people, will go, will pray, will sing laments about Jesus’ death… and then give hardly a thought (much less any significant money or volunteer time) to help those dying without health care insurance; to help those dying of starvation in the Third World; to help those violently dying on the urban streets of America… It’s like we’ve bought into this ‘Hallmark Card’ version of Jesus, while the ‘true’ Jesus sleeps in the back alleys with the homeless. And we sleep in our comfortable beds next to the expensive, pristine cross on the wall. Note 2: Leo Chang comes to the Open Door Community for Holy Week from Memphis Theological Seminary every year. He goes out on the street for the week in solidarity with the homeless. Last year he was robbed at gun point. Undaunted, he’s back again this year. “I feel a call to be out here with the people who are poor,” he said to me. Note 3: The day I was homeless in the city, a group of us were discussing the Biblical scene where Jesus angrily turns over the tables in the temple. During a short talk at an Open Door service later that evening, I said if Jesus came back today to Atlanta, I believe he’d ‘turn over’ the huge Coca Cola sign shadowing Woodruff Park. They make non-nutritional beverages at a profit, while one sixth of the world doesn’t have access to clean drinking water. I said Jesus would then overturn the Georgia Pacific Lumber high rise just beyond the other end of the park. I said if GP is like so many other lumber companies these days, they rape the land without much of a second thought about environmental consciousness. Then… I said Jesus would probably come to our apartment in Cleveland, where he’d turn over the maybe a-little-too-nice kitchen table made of Georgia Pacific wood — spilling the Coca Cola can on top of the table in the process. We Americans are, indeed, complicit.
nuclear ‘omnicide’
I interviewed Ron Santoni this week. He has been a professor of philosophy for over 40 years at Denison University in Ohio. Professor Santoni, as he’s done for the past 10 years, was in Atlanta for Holy Week to help with outreach to the homeless. Professor Santoni is also involved with the group Concerned Philosophers for Peace. Professor Santoni has written extensively on any number of subjects, including war and peace. He said one of his group members coined the phraseology “omnicide” to describe what would happen to the earth if a full scale nuclear war happened. “It could well exterminate all of humankind,” said Professor Santoni. He said that nuclear weapons, of themselves, are actually immoral –whether they’re intentionally being launched, or not. By their very nature, he contends, they are “uncontrollable, unpredictable and subject to accidents.” We, too, believe this. What’s more, even if the nuclear missiles forever stay in their silos, America is, indeed, using the weapons. That is, we’re using them (at a cost of $50 billion a year) to protect ourselves, while the people Professor Santoni is helping on the streets of Atlanta continue to sleep in cardboard boxes below busy underpasses — and while Third World children continue to starve to death.
a ‘chasm’
I was ‘homeless’ in Atlanta today… I went out with a group of guys from the Open Door Community early this morning to stand in solidarity with the some 10,000 homeless people. We took no money, no food… and headed off to walk the streets of downtown Atlanta all day going to places where the homeless hang out. Our first stop was a downtown park in the shadows of sparkling high rise office buildings. Here I observed a number of homeless people being rousted for sleeping on the grass. Other homeless shuffled about trying to stay awake after, for many, a few (if any) hours of sleep under some church ground bushes, or makeshift tent camps below underpasses, or… For lunch we went to Our Lady of Lourdes Soup Kitchen where I got in a conversation with one of the fellow Open Door group members. We discussed college degrees. I had a degree in journalism. He got a Fulbright Scholarship to study philosophy in France and is a professor at a university in Ohio. Across the table from us was an African American homeless man with a mental problem. He spoke to himself in what could be described as gibberish throughout the meal. As the professor and I talked, I would periodically glance over at the other man thinking to myself what a tremendous social disparity (read: injustice) between our side of the table and his. Some might even refer to it in what could best be described (in Biblical terms) as a “chasm.” In the afternoon we walked about a rather rough area of the city, homeless people dotted the street corners. In mid-afternoon, we went to a worship service at the Common Ground drop-in center, an Episcopal Church outreach in the city. Today was Holy Thursday and there was the traditional washing of the feet. In this particular “church,” you couldn’t help but notice the tremendously dirty feet, gnarled toes, callouses… from all the walking and standing the homeless do each day. Part of Psalm 22 was read during the service. One line was “the poor will be satisfied.” I couldn’t help but think that the poor in Atlanta won’t be satisfied until us folks on this side of the “chasm” start sacrificing tremendously and using the money to set up solid, multi-tiered programs to not only get the homeless off the street, but into adequate housing, into quality mental health and job counseling, and into eduction programs to help them develop their God given talents… Anything other than this is a band aid approach to something that needs major surgery.