Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Murder of One Does Not Stop Christian “Radicals” from Supporting Workers in Sri Lanka


Workers in Colombo demand their rights.

COLOMBO--Christian priests and nuns were among hundreds who took to the streets of Colombo yesterday to protest what they say is government repression of workers’ rights and a witch hunt against trade union activists.

In a statement yesterday, August 30, 2011,  the demonstrators also condemned the government’s “lack of action” in providing justice for a Catholic worker who was killed during a police crackdown on a strike at the Free Trade Zone near Colombo on May 31.

The strike was called to protest a proposed pension bill aimed at private sector workers, which the workers say will leave them much poorer.

The government is using the judiciary as a tool to deny workers their rights and police intelligence units to hunt down trade union leaders, according to Linus Jayatilleke, president of the United Workers Federation.

Two strikes by the country’s banking and telecommunication workers were stopped as a result of court orders, he said

This and the government’s failure to provide justice for the dead Free Trade Zone worker, Roshen Chanaka, and those injured in the May crackdown shows the government’s blatant disregard for workers, he added.

Protesters at yesterday’s demonstration promised further action if the government fails to bring Chanaka’s killers to justice.

They also announced yesterday the launch of a fund to help the more than 100 people who were injured in the police crackdown.

We are doing this because “we can’t expect justice. We are sure the police who killed the young worker and injured the many others will not be punished,” Jayatilleke said.

Pledging the support of Christian right activists, Holy Family Sister Deepa Fernando of the Christian Solidarity Movement (CSM) said “if we are to serve the people we should be with the workers in their struggle.”

The few Religious who have come forward “will be a great strength in this journey to protect workers at this crucial moment in time,” she said.

Source:

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Protest Air Force Association "Arms Bazaar" in Washington DC


What: Protest Air Force Association "Arms Bazaar"
Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Time: from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. (During the AFA $330 per plate banquet)
Where: Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, 201 Waterfront St., National Harbor, MD 20745

We will meet for the vigil at the corner of Waterfront St. and St. George Blvd. directly across from the Gaylord National Resort.

Sponsored by:
Dorothy Day Catholic Worker.

For more info contact:
Art Laffin
202-360-6416

Background:

The Air Force Association’s Annual Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition is the premier event for weapons companies who wish to do business with the US.

The Conference promotes itself with claims like,
 " Air Force. Air & Space enjoys exceptional visibility among Air Force and DoD leadership as well as international air force attendees 2010 saw the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Air Force on the exhibit floor throughout the event, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense also made time to walk the exhibit floor. The exhibitors on this event run the gamut from military units and government agencies to small businesses and the giants of the defense industry." (From AFA web Site)

This year's speakers list and bios:

 _____________________________

Dear Friends,

The immoral and illegal U.S. wars against continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, over 2 million Iraqis have died since 1991 from bombings, sanctions and a brutal occupation. In Afghanistan, tens of thousands of civilians have died since 2001 as a direct result from U.S. bombings and an unrelenting war and occupation. In both wars, over six thousand U.S. soldiers have died and countless more have been injured and traumatized for life. For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.

The U.S. has also dramatically increased its military intervention in Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. At least 2,200 people have been killed and more than 1,100 others injured by the unauthorized U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a new study conducted by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The study also revealed that up to 168 children have lost their lives in more than 291 attacks since they began under George W. Bush. The aerial raids have escalated since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. At least 236 attacks have taken place during his term.

And the financial cost of U.S. warmaking has been staggering. A recent Brown University study shows that U.S. warmaking has cost $3.7 trillion over the last decade, a major contributing factor to the $1.4 trillion government deficit.

The Air Force and some 150 arms contractors taking part in the AFA Air & Space Expo have played a prominent role in U.S. warmaking. These arms dealers are profiting from war and literally are making a killing! But that's not all. The Air Force and numerous arms contractors are committed to U.S. nuclear superiority and militarizing and controlling space.

From September 19-21, speakers and seminars will be addressing how the U.S. can continue and refine its warmaking and remain the preeminent nuclear-military superpower on earth and in space. And on September 21, the AFA will hold a $330 per plate banquet which is being sponsored by Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons contractor.

For over 25 years many of you participated in nonviolent protests at the annual AFA Air & Space Expo, what we call an ”Arms Bazaar,” that were held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (formerly the Sheraton) in Washington, D.C. Now the AFA is holding their "expo" outside of D.C. at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, located on the National Harbor in Maryland. Last year over 20 people witnessed in resistance to this blasphemous event. We prayed in memory of all the victims of U.S. warmaking. And we urged all Arms Bazaar participants who could see and hear us to resist this celebration of weapons and war and join with us in creating the Beloved Community.  On September 21, as the AFA holds it's opulent banquet, The Dorothy Day Catholic Worker will once again sponsor a nonviolent vigil to decry this sinful Arms Bazaar.

Friends, can we let these arms merchants, who are displaying the latest killing technology and weapons, conduct their gala banquet without protest? Who will give voice to the victims who have suffered and died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere as a direct result of U.S. warmaking, and weapons, like the Drone ”Predator” and “Reaper” bombing planes, produced by the arms contractors participating in the “Arms Bazaar? In the name of God who calls us to love and not to kill, it's time to end this scandalous Arms Bazaar! It's time to repent of U.S. war crimes and make reparations to all victims of U.S. warmaking. It's time to bring all the war money home, meet urgent human needs, and save our environment. Please consider coming (and bring a friend) to this important vigil, and say Yes to Life and a resounding No to the war profiteers. We must not let this Arms Bazaar go unaddressed!

With gratitude,
Art Laffin


Directions from Downtown D.C. and Parking and Meeting Place
Take 395 South (off of New York Ave. or Constitution Ave. at 9th St. NW) Merge onto 295 South via exit on left (crossing into Maryland) -7.4 miles. Take the exit toward National Harbor. Take ramp to National Harbor Blvd. Bear left on National Harbor Blvd. and go two blocks to St. George Blvd. Make a right on St. George Blvd. Go to one block before Waterfront St. and look for street meter parking Also St. George Parking Garage is on right in case you can't find street parking (just past the cross street called Mariner Passage). The garage is one block before Waterfront St., where the Gaylord National Resort is located. We will meet for the vigil at the corner of Waterfront St. and St. George Blvd. on the sidewalk in front of the Gaylord National Resort.  If you are coming from Maryland or Virginia I suggest you Map Quest the most precise route to the Gaylord Resort Center.

Public Transportation
If you would like to use public transportation, take the Green Line to Branch Ave. Get off at Branch Ave. and take the NH1 National Harbor bus line. This bus takes you to the corner of St. George Blvd. and Waterfront St. across from the Gaylord National Resort. Call 202-637-7000 and select “ride guide” for best directions. Or go to WMATA web site.


Saturday, August 27, 2011

Sixteenth Thomas Merton in the Mountains Contemplative Retreat for Peacemakers


The Sixteenth Annual “Thomas Merton in the Mountains Contemplative Retreat for Peacemakers” will take place September 9-11, 2011, at Pyramid Life Center in the Adirondacks.


The retreat will be facilitated by Walt Chura of the International Thomas Merton Society and Emmaus House Albany Catholic Worker.

The fee for the retreat is $130.00 all inclusive. For information about registration or accommodations contact Sr. Monica Murphy at 518-585-7545, e-mail monicaplc@aol.com or visit www.pyramidlife.org.

For info on retreat content contact Walt at: wwchura@yahoo.com or call 518-456-3201.

Veterans, Peace Activists to Challenge Arrests in Pro Se Trial on August 29th


Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) was among those arrested.
WASHINGTON, DC--On Monday, August 29, 2011, 19 veterans, including a WWII veteran and several Vietnam combat veterans, members of the Catholic Worker community, and other long-time peace activists will have a pro se trial in DC Superior Court, stemming from arrests on the White House sidewalk on March 19, 2011, the eighth anniversary of the US war in Iraq. The March 19th action raised issues of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of the wars to American society, and the continued detention of whistle-blower Bradley Manning. One hundred thirteen persons were arrested on the White House sidewalk by US Park Police, and 19 of those will proceed to a trial on charges of Failure to Obey a Lawful Order and Unlawful Assembly-Disorderly Conduct.

At 8:00 a.m. on Monday, August 29, 2011, the veterans and peace activists will be available to speak with the media. They will then proceed to a trial, which will begin at 9:30 a.m. in Courtroom 313 of DC Superior Court.

Press Contact: Elliott Adams, President, Veterans for Peace, (518) 284-2048, elliottadams@juno.com

Press Availability at 8:00 a.m. at DC Superior Court, 500 Indiana Ave., Washington, D.C.


An earlier story about these arrests may be read here.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

“Every day I work on cleaning up my act”


An Interview with Jim Forest

by Frank Mulder

“Jesus loves Wikileaks” reads the banner in front of the American consulate on Museum Square in Amsterdam. A group of Christian activists are calling attention to the fate of Bradley Manning, the whistleblower who passed on military secrets to Wikileaks and has been imprisoned for several months without trial.

One of the participants is the 69-year-old peace worker Jim Forest. “Manning has been kept in solitary confinement for months,” says Forest. “People who dare to stick their necks out to expose abuses are the people I want to support.” He’s not very enthusiastic about the text on the banner. “Julien Assange of Wikileaks is not my role model. And you shouldn’t claim Jesus for your own particular cause. But I do know that Jesus told us to tell the truth. And that’s why I think we should be grateful to whistleblowers, especially when they expose what’s going on in Iraq.”

Forest is known in America mainly as a writer of books on spirituality. Recently he published a biography of Dorothy Day, the woman who founded the Catholic Worker movement in1933 and serves as a model for many Christian activists.

Forest himself lived in community with her in Manhattan during the sixties. “That was one of the ‘houses of hospitality’ for which the Workers are still known: communities, often in run-down neighborhoods, where addicts, refugees or other people in need can come for food, clothing and shelter. Since then hundreds of such communities have been established in all the cities of America and outside the US as well.” Catholic Workers are devoted to living out the Gospel in a literal, simple way, and they own as little property as possible. “Just like the early Franciscans. In a culture where many people prefer to live alone with their families, Dorothy challenged people to experiment with hospitality.”

Dorothy Day, says Forest, is still relevant for her radical social critique. “She didn’t think charity was enough. She wanted a society in which it was easier to be good, a society that was more hospitable to the poor and the stranger. Her action on behalf of trade unions and for peace often brought her into conflict with the authorities. She called herself an anarchist, by which she didn’t mean overthrowing the government but being loyal to the Gospel first and then to the government.”

Most Catholic Workers have spent time in jail, following the example of Day herself. Forest also spent more than a year in prison for burning draft records in 1968 during the Vietnam War. He conducted the action in public along with a group of clergy, while the Gospel was being read. “Sometimes you have to commit civil disobedience. But the purpose should always be to convey a message, never just to be confrontational.” His radicalism is not leftist, he says. “The good thing about the left is that sometimes they’re the only ones who do something about unemployment, war or racism. But when it becomes a religion, opponents are soon seen as political objects. Are you a follower of Wilders? Then I’m supposed to despise you! According to Christianity, however, I must always give the other the chance to repent by not getting in the way with a sense of my own self-importance. Every day I work on cleaning up my act.”

In 1977 Forest and his family came to the Netherlands to work for an international peace organization. “We were involved in the movement against nuclear weapons. They were being stored in Bergen, within cycling distance of my house. The movement was very important − internationally, too − but I always felt there was something lacking. The work of consciousness-raising was focused mainly on fear. ‘If the Russians launch a nuclear weapon on the storage site, all of North Holland will be destroyed!’ But it was that fear that was the most important cause of the Cold War.” For real peace you have to get to know the person behind the enemy, Forest believes, and for this reason he decided to visit the Soviet Union. He was so impressed by the church there that in 1988 he and his wife joined the Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam.

The Eastern Orthodox are not among the most progressive Christians under the sun, Forest admits, and he even has a joke about it: “How many Orthodox does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “None! What is this ‘change’?” The Orthodox churches have a survival mentality, Forest explains, which is quite understandable. “They’re in countries where you want to be seen as little as possible. But the social tradition is very rich. This is why we set up the Orthodox Peace Fellowship − to tell those stories. We talk about the most important compiler of the Orthodox Liturgy, for example, John Chrysostom, the fourth-century Patriarch of Constantinople. He was exiled by the emperor for being too socially radical. According to him, you cannot find Christ on the altar if you have failed to see him in the beggar at the church door. Every day you must try to see the face of God in the other.” Forest laughs: “Christianity is really so bloody simple!”

Without that attitude, working for peace becomes a matter of dividing people into the good guys and the bad guys, and you have to choose which one you want to belong to. “The other side is never going to listen to you. If you want them to change, you have to enter into a relationship with them. Peace work is tied up with love, even if ideology sees that as betrayal.”

For Forest, peace work is more than solving violent conflicts. “It’s about everything that makes relationships, families and society more healthy. If you’re not working for peace − if you’re making things that people don’t need, for instance − you’re probably not in the right place. Hospitality is peace work, too. Peace work begins when you open your door, when you open your face.”

That can be exhausting, Forest knows from experience. There are so many people in need. “The people who inspire me − Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi − all say that you won’t last without prayer. It was a daily discipline for them, and it was more than meditating. Prayer is conversation with God, in which God is usually silent. But that doesn’t mean you can’t hear him. There are deathly silences but there are also audible silences.”

This is how we find the strength to keep from doing what society and advertising tell us to do. “They tell us we ought to be afraid. We must always refuse to listen to them. This is less exciting than exposing abuses, of course, but it is just as much a form of civil disobedience.”


Jim and Nancy Forest
Jim Forest (1942) is a journalist. He is married and has five children. [We sent in corrections − born 1941, six children − but they didn’t make it into the article.] Despite his communist upbringing, he soon found his way to Christian belief. Through Dorothy Day he was introduced to the Catholic Worker community in New York. At that time he was actively involved in the civil rights movement and campaigns against the Vietnam War, for which he spent more than a year in prison. “A great year,” he calls it. “I could finally read Dostoyevsky, at Dorothy’s recommendation. And I had time for the Bible.” Forest was also a friend of the famous monk Thomas Merton.

In 1977 Forest was appointed general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in the Netherlands. After traveling to the Soviet Union in the eighties he became Russian Orthodox. Since then he has been international secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, for which he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine In Communion until this summer.

He has written several books on spirituality in addition to a few children’s books, and has recently published a new biography of Dorothy Day entitled All is Grace. Day (1897-1980) was an American journalist who, along with Peter Maurin, founded The Catholic Worker, a movement for nonviolent action dedicated to helping the poor that is also active in Amsterdam.

English translation: Nancy Forest

Source:

Memphis Dorothy Day House Continues Legacy of Helen Caldwell Day


by David Waters

MEMPHIS, TN--Family photos on the dining room wall tell the story of a home nobody wanted but everybody needed.

There's Aniece and her 7-year-old son, who were homeless for six years. The money she made as a part-time floral designer and short-order cook wasn't enough to keep a roof over their heads.

There's Arlene and her two teenage sons, who lived with a car roof over their heads for more than a month after they lost their apartment and all of their belongings in a fire.

There's Sherry and her children, ages 3 and 7, who lived in a motel parking lot for several weeks after a friend wrecked her car and she lost her job because she couldn't get to work. She took her kids to a nearby Walmart every morning to get them cleaned up for school.

There's Delphany and her three children, who suddenly found themselves homeless after family difficulties forced them out of an apartment she had been working in vain to pay for. A relative was cashing her checks and using the money for drugs.

All were homeless or on the verge. All found a home here at the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality on Poplar near Cleveland.

Sister Maureen Griner, with baby Preston at the Dorothy Day House in Memphis
"This is a place nobody wants to be, so they're not necessarily grateful when they get here," said Sister Maureen Griner, who volunteers as the house's day-to-day director. "But by the time they leave, they are part of the family."

The ministry has provided a temporary home for 20 families over the past seven years. But there's room for only three families at a time, not nearly enough to address the growing need.

Already this year, the ministry team has turned away 71 families for lack of space, including 11 families during a four-day stretch last week.

"The safety net has never before been so strained," said Katie Kitchin, executive director of the Community Alliance for the Homeless. She was also a consultant to the Mayors' Action Plan to End Homelessness. "When the (federal) stimulus funds are gone, it will be even more stressed."

According to Kitchin, the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association screens about 500 families each month who are homeless or about to be. Most have no income. MIFA typically places about 30 families a month in available shelters or transitional housing. Last month, MIFA screened more than 800 families.

"You see a lot of homeless men, every now and then a homeless woman, but you don't see the families that are living on the street," said Michael Synk, a business consultant who is board chairman of the Day House.

"Homeless families hide. They know that if they get caught, their kids might be taken away from them. This ministry tries to keep families together."

This ministry began with a 2003 discussion about Dorothy Day, a journalist and social activist (and daughter of a Tennessee man) who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in New York City in the 1930s. Day and her friends sought to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ" by opening "houses of hospitality" to serve the poor.

"The mystery of the poor is this," Day famously said. "That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him."

The following year, several members of the discussion group bought and renovated a large, old house on Poplar near Cleveland, with the help of a no-interest loan from the Ursuline Sisters of Mt. Saint Joseph, a religious order in Kentucky.

The house's four-member volunteer ministry team includes two Ursuline sisters -- Sister Maureen, who is also director of music at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and Sister Margaret Ann Zinselmeyer, who is director of Hope House. Catholic lay leaders Paul and Judy Gray also are on the team.

Team members don't live in the house, but they oversee it, making sure residents follow house rules -- including no visitors and a nightly curfew (residents don't get a key). They also monitor each family's progress plan.

"So many families end up homeless because they experience some personal catastrophe -- a job loss, car wreck, major medical bill, a fire, a death," Sister Maureen said.

"Most of us would have family or friends to turn to for help. These families don't have that support, for whatever reason. We become their extended family."

Ministry team members help families dig their way out of debt (back rent, overdue utility, phone or car bills), reconnect to support systems (food stamps and other benefits), deal with legal issues (car tags, court fines, custody issues), get the kids back in school, and find education and job training programs for the adults.

The team is supported by two physicians, a dentist, an accountant and several educators and attorneys, as well as a large network of volunteers who maintain the house and yard, provide a weekly family meal, help raise funds, and deal with larger issues. When a family is ready to move out on their own again, the team helps them find a place to live and furnishes it.

Some of the families who lived here couldn't or wouldn't follow the house rules. Others couldn't or wouldn't find jobs. Still others followed the plan, dug themselves out of a hole and then fell (or jumped) into another one. But most are making it.

Aniece has a full-time job and a nice apartment. So does Sherry. Arlene moved to California and says she's doing well.

Delphany went back to school, graduated from the University of Memphis last May and now works as a teacher/counselor with Youth Villages.

"I also lost 67 pounds," Delphany added.

"I hated this place when we got here, but it was a godsend. There's no other way we would have stayed together as a family. "

Dorothy Day in Memphis

The late Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement, visited Memphis in October 1952 to support the work of another house of hospitality. It was called the Blessed Thomas House, a day care for black children whose parents were too poor to afford day care while they worked cotton field in Arkansas.

Helen Caldwell Day faced racist 
opposition from priests in the 1950s.
Memphian Helen Caldwell Day, an African-American nurse who had worked alongside Dorothy Day (no relation) in New York City, quit her job and rented a storefront on South Fourth Street. She was particularly inspired by a 1951 fire that killed two black children who had been locked in a rented garage while their mother worked the fields.

The Blessed Thomas House was dedicated in January 1952, and supported by black and white members of the Outer Circle, an interracial group that often discussed Catholic social justice teachings.

The local Catholic bishop initially supported the effort, but Helen Day and her interracial, anti-segregation supporters soon faced opposition, according to a short history of the effort written by former Memphian Clare Hanrahan, whose mother, Alice, befriended and actively supported Helen Day and her work.

"Priests who disagree with us claim to speak for you and say to us and others that you disapprove of Blessed Martin House, except as a nursery for poor children and a shelter for poor women," Helen Day wrote in a 1955 letter to Catholic Bishop William Adrian, according to Hanrahan's history, "Looking Things Over -- Again."

"(The priests) do not see why we should be concerned with the very problems which have made nursery/shelter necessary. I guess, though, I am too much of a nurse to be satisfied with treating the symptoms only while the cancer grows."

Helen Day closed The Blessed Thomas House in May 1956. "Up till May, there were still thirteen children in that little six-room house, and very little support coming in," Dorothy Day wrote a few months later in "On Pilgrimage."

Source:


San Bruno Catholic Workers Believe Homeless Are not All Counted


San Bruno Catholic Worker
SAN BRUNO, CA--A recent San Mateo County Human Services Agency report found that only 20 people were counted as homeless in San Bruno, a figure that has dropped by more than half since the last homeless survey in 2009.

Of those 20 homeless people, 14 were living in the streets, according to the report.

To Peter Stiehler, of San Bruno’s Catholic Worker Hospitality House, those figures don't seem right.

The number of hardcore homeless people—those sleeping on the street—has definitely gone down, Stiehler said. But the number of people seeking shelter and eating in the Catholic Worker's dining room has only increased as a result of the economic downturn.

“Some are sleeping in their cars or staying on someone’s couch and maybe recently lost their jobs or got evicted from their apartments," Stiehler said. "They typically don't have an educational background or a family support network. They’re living on the edge, but still trying to find work."

Some may have a place to live but still need assistance with food. "They're not so easy to count as people on the street are."

Stiehler said he’s seen a 25 percent increase in the number of people eating in the dining room since 2008 and that the nine-bed shelter is always full.

To get a sense of this not-so-visible homeless population, Patch recently talked to four people currently using the shelter’s services.

'You Can’t Just Sit There and Curl Up and Die'

Ken Clemo, 47, was driving a truck for a construction company when he was laid off from his job in December 2010. He’s been out of work ever since. But it’s not for lack of trying. Every day, the tall, lanky Clemo walks the streets in San Bruno, South San Francisco, Daly City and beyond looking for work.

“It’s slow in the trucking business, so I’ll take anything,” he said. “Every store I pass, I go in and ask, 'Are you hiring?' You can’t just sit there and curl up and die. You’ve got to keep going.”

Unable to pay the rent on his apartment, Clemo lived in his car for two months. Recently he’s been spending the night at the Catholic Worker shelter. He said that his unemployment check isn’t enough to secure an apartment, pay rent or buy groceries.

Clemo, who was born and raised in Pacifica, has been driving trucks for 15 years and has a clean commercial Class A license. “As long as I have a Class A license, I see a great future,” he said. “People need trucks to deliver good, so I’ll always have a job.”

In the meantime, he’s pounding the pavements looking for work. “I have two cats, which my sister is taking care of. I want to get to place where I can get them back,” he said.

'I’ve Been Floating for More Than 10 Years'

When Fred Peña, 50, had his driver’s license taken away in 2007, there went his job prospects. He was able to do occasional work as an installer for an alarm and communications company, but that ended when he lost his license.

It wasn’t the first time that Peña, a friendly man with an easy manner, found himself jobless. He worked for PG&E for 18 years, but he lost that job in 1996. He moved to San Diego in 2000 and had a succession of jobs, driving a bus, working for the Salvation Army and serving as a mess attendant at Camp Pendleton. But in between there were long dry spells. “I’ve been floating for more than 10 years,” he said.

A San Francisco native, Peña returned to the Bay Area several years ago. His aunt and cousin live in South San Francisco, and he stayed with them for a while. But now he's living in a shelter in East Palo Alto. During the week, Peña takes the bus to San Bruno, where he eats breakfast at the Catholic Worker shelter.

The morning Patch spoke to him, Peña told us he planned to do his laundry that day at a friend’s house in San Bruno. “I keep my clothes in a storage place behind Tanforan, so I have to go and get them first and then I’ll take them to my friend’s house," he said. "That will take me a bit of time. Afterwards, I’ll start the long trek back to Palo Alto."

“It’s been 10 years since I’ve lived some place," he added, "but I hope that will change when I get my license back and find a job.”

Tough Luck Finding a Job After In and Out of Jail

After being in and out of jail for 27 years, Raymond Garcia, 53, is looking to start a new life. But the going has been rough.

Since being released in 2005, Garcia, who has both hearing and speech disabilities, has lived in several halfway houses in San Francisco and held jobs as a dishwasher and a porter. Then last year, he entered a job-training program to become janitor.

“The training was on Treasure Island, and I used to clean the mayor’s office there,“ Garcia said.  “Then I got a job at the St. Vincent de Paul shelter in the City, but I was laid off last year.”

Now collecting unemployment, Garcia has been temporarily living at the Catholic Worker shelter. He stopped paying rent on a tiny place he had in San Francisco because of a dispute with the landlord over a mold problem. "I had to throw all my clothes and furniture out," he said. "Now I’ve started legal proceedings.”
Garcia attended San Bruno schools and first got into trouble when he was just 15. “My father was a heroin addict and my mother was abusive,” he said.

His father died in 1988 and his mother and sister live in South Carolina. Garcia now has no family left in the Bay Area.

“I need to work,” he said, “and now that I’m a certified janitor, I hope to find something.”

'The Future for Me Seems Very Grim'

Shanen Way, 38, used to be a limousine driver but hasn’t worked for five years.

“I don’t have a GPS, or a suit or a computer, so it’s hard to find a job,” the soft-spoken Way said. But he said that he has been asking small-business owners for work.

Way was raised in Cupertino but has no family in the area. Currently, he’s staying at San Bruno’s Catholic Worker shelter. When not there, his home is a campsite at an undisclosed location in San Bruno.

“The future for me seems very grim,” he said,  “and I don’t see it getting any better.”

Source:




Kate Chatfield and her husband Peter Stiehler opened the Catholic Worker Hospitality House in San Bruno in 1996.


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Congregational church has helped ‘soup kitchen’ for quarter century

Preparing chicken dinner for The Dorothy Day

Hospitality House in Danbury are Anne and John Boehle of The First
Congregational Church. —Melody DeMassa, photo

DANBURY, CT--It is a Friday and mission-minded members of the First Congregational Church of Ridgefield gather in the church kitchen to cook a complete chicken dinner for 100 guests.

The meal will be served at the Dorothy Day Hospitality House on Spring Street in Danbury. Church members have been engaged in this labor of love for 26 years now, every month when there is a fifth Friday.

First Congregational Church’s partnership with the mission in the city of Danbury fits into a pattern that focuses about half of its outreach efforts locally, with the other half responding to national and global needs. And it goes back to the early 1980s when a group in Danbury addressed the need for a soup kitchen in the area.

That soup kitchen opened its doors in February 1982, named in honor of the famous Roman Catholic social activist whose wide-ranging work began among the poor in Depression-era New York City and who had died in 1980.

The Dorothy Day Hospitality House in Danbury would follow her philosophy of “Ask no questions of the guests, just welcome whoever comes as a sister or brother in Christ.”

Today, an average of 100 guests come for a hot meal, which is served every day of the year by groups of volunteers. Various groups prepare and serve many different kinds of meals; the Ridgefield church has become famous with the guests for its baked seasoned chicken, green beans, salad and potato dinner, topped off with dessert. It is a high protein nutritious meal which the guests are quick to say they appreciate.

Although the First Congregational men are on the team, Dorothy Day guests long ago named the group “the chicken meal ladies.”

“They love the meal and we love them.,” said organizer John Boehle. “We bake 240 chicken legs. Why 240? Because that’s all our convection oven will hold. On cooking day the aroma throughout the church building is wonderful.”

Once a year the church’s mission group also serves the “Dorothy Day meal” at a Wednesday evening fellowship event in order to publicize the effort among the congregation.

Anyone interested in learning more or becoming a volunteer is invited to contact the church at:
office@firstcongregational.com

For more info on the Catholic Worker in Danbury contact:
Dorothy Day Hospitality House
11 Spring Street, Danbury CT
Mailing Address: PO Box 922 Danbury CT 06813-0922
Tel: (203) 743-7988
E-mail: webmaster@dorothydaydanbury.org

Source:

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Winona Announces Dan Corcoran House Re-Opening


With great joy and excitement the Winona Catholic Worker is humbled to announce the reopening of Dan Corcoran House to provide hospitality to single women and families.  After over two years of sitting vacant due to a lack of live-in volunteers we have finally secured commitments from enough volunteers to fully run both houses of hospitality.  It's been a long journey of ups and downs, but after going through a stringent discernment process with seven potential volunteers we have invited and received commitments from three new volunteers. Matthew, a teacher from Minneapolis will be joining us in mid August, and James from North Carolina and Molly from Chicago joined us in July. We plan on giving our new volunteers time to settle into life in Winona and our community, and reopening Dan Corcoran house by mid September.

  Our community is growing, and with its growth we will face new challenges inward and outward. The division of resources between two houses has the potential to bring entirely new rigors to daily communal life. We are glad that our community has grown into its most stable point in years, and we're confident in our ability to meet these new challenges.

With more volunteers in the community, we will have a greater ability to focus some of our energies on other Catholic Worker ideals beyond offering hospitality. Resistance work and further community activism will have a greater opportunity to become a regular staple of our community.

  Now more than ever, support from the wider community is essential. We will continue to conserve our resources, (financial and environmental) but our expenses are going to rise as we fully open Dan Corcoran house. If you've contributed to us in the past we would like to thank you and encourage your continued support. Just as important as financial, we would like to thank all those who have helped us around the houses, from those who cook for us monthly, to those who help us keep the lights on and taxes paid, we would not be able to continue our mission without you.

  In our works of hospitality, we are humbled to play a role in bettering countless lives. From those who stay with us for weeks, to those who stop in for dinner are coming for something. Sometimes that something is just a meal or a warm place to sleep, but most often it's for the camaraderie and companionship that we are able to offer with your help. We couldn't continue without your support and prayers.

Source:

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering: SUGAR CREEK 2011

This year's Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering:  SUGAR CREEK 2011 will be September 16, 17, 18.

Dear All,

Soon it will be that wonderful time to gather together with friends old and new at Sugar Creek, the beautiful retreat center where the Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering is held annually.

Our small, humble, and sometimes disorganized team here at the Mustard Seed Community Farm CW will do our best to help this event happen, and we are grateful to know that our Catholic Worker friends will help it all come together beautifully.

Here’s the SCHEDULE  we have tentatively assembled:

FRIDAY:
Arrive Friday afternoon and evening.
Friday evening – dinner 6pm, or as you arrive, made by us, with some help from Dubuque
After dinner, an optional fun activity to help us get to know each other.

SATURDAY:
Saturday morning – introductions and Roundtable planning
Saturday day,     Roundtable discussions including,
Saturday afternoon – craft share
Saturday night – Skits and talent show

SUNDAY:
Sunday morning – Liturgy 10am?   Silent quaker meeting beforehand?
Cleanup and leave – after liturgy.
Yes, there will also be meals regularly during the weekend, prepared by us all.

Accomodations:
For those of you who haven’t been there, or have new questions, we have a pretty deluxe set-up with big rooms of bunk beds.  Also, folks are welcome to tent in the yard (though NOT in the cemetery, and I’d also recommend leaving ample space for a soccer field).  There are a few private rooms; if you have special sleeping needs – families with small children etc., please call us in advance and we will hold a room for you.

What to bring:
Please bring ideas for roundtables, enthusiasm, and CRAFTS!  Yes, we’re planning on having a craft share, gifting, swapping, or even selling time.

The gathering has gotten very large, and we’re hoping to do some preparation before we all come together.  If you have Roundtable topics you’d like to discuss, please call us with your ideas.  If you’d like to put some activities on the schedule, prayer time, game time, kids time, please call us.  If you want to help or have ideas about anything else, please call us (on the telephone).

Please bring: food to share, coffee and drinks, sleeping bags, towels, flashlights, musical instruments, toiletries, a jacket, song books, house propaganda, firewood, large garbage bags and money to help raise the $150 fee for the rental of the property.

Also, remember these two rules - no pets, and no sleeping in the cemetery.

Love,
Alice McGary and
The Mustard Seed Gang,
(The 2011 Hosts for the Gathering)
515-460-1467
(or nleete@gmail.com if you must email)

Direction Links to SS Mary and Joseph Church - home of the Sugar Creek Retreat Center 3218 110th St, Preston IA - site for Midwest CW Gatherings: 
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF-8&q=3218+110th+St,+Preston+IA&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&cid=2672859541067606339 
______________________________________________________________________

Pre- and Post- Sugar Creek OPEN HOUSE at New Hope CW Farm

Greetings!  New Hope Catholic  Worker Farm is inviting folks who are headed to the annual Midwest Catholic Worker - Sugar Creek gathering (see above) to stop by our place. We are open to visitors from Wednesday, September 14th until Friday the 16th and from Sunday, the 19th to Wednesday the 21st.

For any that are interested, a few folks from New Hope have expressed a desire to bike down to Sugar Creek from the farm (about 50 miles).  We'll be leaving the morning of Friday the 16th. Others will be driving and leaving Friday afternoon. We'll be returning to the farm on Sunday afternoon. Tenting space is ample. There will be plenty of time for food, fun, labor and more.

Please phone us if you would like to come: 563.556.0987.

Peace,
New Hope Catholic Worker Farm & Agronomic University
6697 Mitchell Mill Rd.
La Motte, IOWA 52054
563.556.0987

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Hiroshima-Nagasaki Resistance Report from Washington, D.C.


Art Laffin being arrested at another disarmament event in 2010.


by Art Laffin

Focusing on the theme: "Remember the Pain, Repent the Sin, Reclaim the Future," about 25 people attended the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki Faith and Resistance retreat in Washington, D.C. sponsored by Jonah House and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. The retreat included prayer, viewing the compelling new film by Bud Ryan and Susan Overbey, "The Forgotten Bomb," presentations on the U.S. Bomb complex and the Drone and Trident weapons systems, and three nonviolent nonviolent actions.

On August 6, the feast of the Transfiguration and the 66th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, we witnessed at the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb, which was on display at The National Air and Space Museum Steven Udvar-Hazy Center. As we knelt in silent vigil in front of this warplane of unspeakable horror as a tour guide told the myth about the bombing, we held photos of the A-bomb victims, and placed peace cranes near the plane. From a catwalk above the plane, a banner was unfurled with a quote from Pope Paul VI, referring to the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima as "butchery of untold magnitude." We concluded the witness with a reading of Dan Berrigan's poem, "A Shadow on the Rock," and processed out of the museum singing "Child, Child."

On August 9, the anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, and the martyrdom of Sr. Edith Stein and Franz Jagerstatter, the community held two actions were held at the Pentagon and White House.  At the early morning Pentagon witness, Catholic Workers' Amber and Kevin Mason and Bill Frankel-Streit, peace activist Rosemary Thompson from Baltimore, and Sr. Margaret McKenna from the New Jerusalem community in Philadelphia, were arrested as they stood outside the designated "protest area" near the visitor's entrance holding photos of the A-bomb victims and a banner that said: "No More Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's." Following their arrest, other retreatants who were in the designated protest zone read the entire "Original Child Bomb," by Thomas Merton, as well as an account of a Nagasaki survivor.  Selections from the writings of Franz Jagerstatter and Sr. Edith Stein were also offered.

Later at Noon at the White House, the community offered a similar action as was held at the Pentagon. During this witness many of the same readings that were read at the Pentagon were offered, as well as a recent quote from the Apostolic Nuncio to the UN stating there is no longer any justification for nuclear weapons (see below quote). Songs were also sung remembering the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An urgent appeal was made to abolish all nuclear weapons and war, to stop construction of new bomb facilities at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Kansas City, and to redirect all the wasted money and resources going into modernizing the U.S. bomb complex to instead meet urgent human needs. We also invoked the names of all the peace prisoners and recounted their life-giving actions for a world without weapons and war. And finally, a powerful peace poem was offered by Palmer, from the New Jerusalem Community.

Ron Greene
As the witness concluded, Ron Greene, a veteran, biologist and activist from Oregon, was arrested as he sat on the sidewalk in front of the White House holding a sign announcing his hunger-strike to save birds that are going extinct where he lives and calling for a peaceful, sustainable planet.

We continue to keep our eyes on the prize as we strive together to forge the beloved community.




Dorothy Day CW
503 Rock Creek Church Road, NW | Washington, D.C. 20010
Phone: 202.882.9649 or 202.829.7625