Vote for Joe

Liz and I are currently part of the staff at the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker Houses in South Bend, Indiana.   These houses, based on the ethos of Christian “hospitality,” take in people off the streets and allow them to live here long term.   With the cold weather now upon us, the houses are relatively full.   There was no room at the women’s house, for instance, for a middle-age black woman who came to the door last night.   In turn, a friend and I gave her a ride the South Bend’s homeless shelter for the evening.   She said she was both desperate and she was afraid to be on the streets at night.   And it showed.   The answer, in the short term, was a bed at the shelter for the evening.   The answer, in the long term, is to exponentially step up the help for those on the margins of society.

I went to a talk about nuclear weapons at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies yesterday.   Retired General William Burns, who advocates for an incrementally scaled back U.S. nuclear arsenal, offered some relatively startling numbers.   The one that particularly caught my attention was:   In the year 2008, the U.S. spent $50 billion (that’s right, billion as with a b) on simply maintaining — not even upgrading — our nuclear weapons.   During the Q&A period, I noted that the Catholic Bishops in America had issued a statement that nuclear proliferation in the face of world poverty is a social justice travesty.   In “average Joe” terms, I noted that there are 24,000 people who starve to death every day in the world.   Yet we just spent $50 billion last year to keep ourselves protected.   Given this, do we become spiritually culpable for many of these peoples’ deaths?   It wouldn’t take a moral theologian to, well…   I also asked General Burns, based on his years of worldwide nuclear diplomacy, that if the U.S. disarmed all our nuclear weapons tomorrow, would we be nuked?   He said no.   Note:   During a small dinner gathering with General Burns after the talk, I asked him how we can tell these other countries they can’t have nuclear weapons — while not only do we have them, but some are aimed at these other countries?   The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty notwithstanding, he said because we think we’re right and they’re not.   I couldn’t help but think how ‘right’ it is to spend 50 billion bucks to tremendously over protect ourselves, while little starving children in Uganda are taking their last breaths while their moms and dads look on helplessly?

This last week I met with Mike Cobbler, who is a representative for St. Joseph County’s Bridges Out of Poverty Initiative.   This program examines the sources and impact of generational poverty on families and communities, reveals the hidden rules and norms of social classes, and supports addressing and solving generational poverty.   Mr. Cobbler said:   “God has given enough resources that all life can be sustained.   But people have failed us, policies have failed us and our personal lifestyles have failed us.”   Bridges has set up a series of classes throughout the community that outline some of the systemic reasons for poverty, how people function within each socio-economic strata, and how one can (through goal setting, being mentored, and so on…) break the cycle of poverty.   To help, those taking the courses are twinned with “allies.”   That is, volunteers who will be there for Bridge’s students at every turn to help with strategies for success.   “So often the poor are simply living in ‘the tyranny of the moment,” said Mr. Cobbler.   They are just treading water trying to make the rent each month, scratching to get money for a car repair, sweating over whether there’ll be enough food for the kids…   Mr. Cobbler added that in the three years the program has been in existence in South Bend, Indiana, there have already been some 200 graduates of the 14 week program.   Note:   Bridges liaisons with the courts, with mental health agencies, drug and alcohol agencies, with social services… in the hopes of creating an extensive referral safety net for those in need.

I talked with Steve Flood who teaches a Logic Class at Notre Dame University.   He asked me about our platform in regard to reversing the decaying inner city urban cores of America.   I said the crux of the strategies revolve around mobilizing as much social justice help as possible to these areas, including inspiring many suburban and small town Americans to move back into the cities to help (as we did in Cleveland).   Steve told me he’d done some outreach work on the west side of Chicago and explained the Christian Community Development Association is involved with similar initiatives…   I also talked with a student from Notre Dame who is just recently back from a service trip to Tanzania.   He said what Tanzania really needs is debt relief, help with sustainable agriculture projects, and a better education system.   Our administration would work stridently to help Tanzania (and all Third World countries) to attain these…   Note: To help with agriculture and education we propose (among a number of things) a tremendous expansion of the Peace Corps.   There are currently about 12,000 people serving in the Peace Corps.   We believe it should be 100 times that, and would propose more incentives for Americans to join the Peace Corps.

America deliberately crashed two unmanned NASA spacecraft into the moon to see if they will “kick up some ice,” according to an Associated Press report.   We, I’m sure, have spent millions, if not billions, of dollars on this.   Meanwhile, scores of people in the Third World die from drinking tainted water every day.   Would it not make sense, common sense, to spend some of this NASA money on water purification systems for the people on this planet?   The article headline today read:   Moonstruck: One Giant Thud for Mankind.   It could have also well read: Lunar Lunacy...     I went to a talk today by Dr. Carolyn Woo, who is the Dean of the College of business at the University of Notre Dame.   She said these days the boundary between work and family is tremendously blurred.   That is even when home, people will spend, say, a bit of time with the kids then retreat to a room to work on the computer, then they’re on the cell phone talking business, then…   Many Amish won’t have a phone (even a rotary one) in their home, because they see it as a distraction to focused family time.   Note:   Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today.   One of his stances promotes the wholesale, violent killing of unborn babies.   ‘Peace’ in the womb?