Vote for Joe

For the last week I’ve been doing some final editing on a book I’ve written about our time in Cleveland.   It’s titled:   America’s Best Urban Neighborhood.   The following is an excerpt:     “At the time of this writing, I have traveled some 200,000 miles through America doing extensive research for our presidential platform.   And never, and I mean never, have I come across a better urban neighborhood.   At the heart of this neighborhood are people who have moved here from various suburbs and small town America.   They moved here to live side-by-side with the poor in solidarity.   They moved here to fight to maintain affordable housing.   They moved here to welcome refugees.   They moved here to coach inner city recreation teams made up of youth who don’t have fathers and/or mothers at home, much less in the stands.   They moved here to reclaim nature in the midst of practically wall-to-wall concrete and broken glass.   And they moved here to speak peace to the violence.”

        I was an adult volunteer faciliator at John Marshall High School in Cleveland yesterday for “Challenge Day.”   This was a day-long event that included 100 high school students, some 20 adults, and a couple staff members from Challenge Day, which is a non-profit group out of San Francisco trying to change the growing culture of hate in our country’s schools.   One of the facilitator’s, Sean, said America is in a tremendously bad state because of  the anger, resentment, violence… that is escalating in the culture in general.   He said it comes from years of repressed anger, sadness, fear… that builds up in people from dysfunctional family environments, dysfunctional peer environments, etc.   He said the key is to start to tap into and vent these feelings in a supportive and loving environment.   And that’s the kind of environment these Challenge Day people created this day, as students (and adults) talked — sometimes for the first time — about parental abandonment, physical abuse, sexual abuse, peer intimidation, fear of the streets…   During one exercise, students were asked to acknowledge how many live in an environment where they hear gun shots.   Half of the hundred students did…   Sean pointed out that people who are abused have a strong tendency to turn around and abuse others — which is at the root of a lot of the problems playing out in our schools today…   Our administration would look at just increasing the security presence in the schools as tremendously myopic.   But rather, we would promote projects like Challenge Day (and Challenge Day ongoing peer support groups) as the real answer to changing a youth culture that seems almost spinning out of control.

Shootings at Columbine, at Virginia Tech and at so many other  schools these days are the far end of a violence continuum.   The other night I went to an information session in Cleveland about how to short circuit some of this violence.   And more, how to teach youth healthy coping skills in general.   Morris Ervin, from the Los Angeles area, is a teacher who stresses non-violent approaches and he has been featured in several documentaries.   He works with Black and Latino gang members in L.A.   He said a key is to create safe venues for, not only dialogue, but the healthy expression of feelings.   And Ervin stressed it’s essential, when possible, for  this to begin at home… This evening there were also students from instructor Kathleen McDonell’s peer support group at Euclid High School.   Each shared how learning about “non-violent communication” and processing feelings in general have helped them.   One youth, who was rather large in stature, said he had a lot of problems at home.   Consequently, he’d take his anger out on the football field or with his peers.   “I was mean,” he lamented.   But after getting involved with Ms. McDonell’s group, he said he learned to open up about his feelings and be more empathetic towards others having problems as well.   As a result, he said he’s become a lot more relaxed, friendlier and is now a volunteer peer mediator when conflicts come up at his school.   Note:   Several years ago, I researched the “Ulster Project.”   Host families in the U.S. would take in one Catholic youth and one Protestant youth from Northern Ireland for a year.   The intent was to break down prejudices, to break down hate and create hope for peace in the next generation.   After hearing the tremendous changes these Euclid High School students had gone through in their own journey towards “peace,” I couldn’t help but think there is, indeed, hope yet for this world.   Note 2:   Our administration would propose a U.S. Department of Peace that would rely on such consultants as Ms. McDonell and Mr. Ervin to ramp up non-violence efforts in schools across the country.

I talked with a group of students from Creighton University in Oklahoma last week at the Catholic Worker around the corner.   They told me they were here for their Spring Break.   That is, while a good number of college students were off caught up in frivilous revelry in sunny, southern Florida, these Jesuit students were here in overcast, 30 degree Cleveland, Ohio.   They told me they were spending the week volunteering at several Soup Kitchens and at a drop-in center for the homeless because, well, that’s what their faith calls them to… I couldn’t help but think of a young couple we met during a campaign stop in North Carolina several years ago.   They were engaged and were to be married soon.   For their “honeymoon” they were going on a two week trip to Guatemala to do humanitarian outreach work.   “We are concecrating our marriage with an act of service,” said Heather.   Note:   While traveling through southern Alabama in 2005, I saw a billboard that simply said:   “That love thy neighbor thing?   I meant that.” –God     It seems these Creighton students and the young couple in North Carolina have figured out how to do this.

I talked with  Bridgette Kelly who recently returned from a Witness for Peace   trip to Nicaragua.   She toured both the rural areas and the city of Managua.   Ms. Kelly said small subsitence farmers there are being tremendously hurt by globalization (NAFTA, CAFTA…)  that allows for corporate farms in America to undersell these Nicaraguan farmers — at their own local markets.   This is a tremendous social justice travesty.   What’s more, Ms. Kelly said of her stop in Managua that she had never seen so many “thin, hungry people.”   Meanwhile, 66% of Americans are now considered “overweight.”   If you do the math, wouldn’t it make sense (spiritual common sense)  for some of us in America to cut back on our food intake and help these people more in Managua?   Sure it would.