Robert Ellsberg: Dorothy in Love

Dorothy and Forster

by Robert Ellsberg

Dorothy Day, founder of the radical Catholic Worker movement died in 1980. Recently she has been proposed for canonization. A new collection of her letters sheds light on her early life, particularly the love affair that helped prompt her conversion.

Generally speaking, there is not much to say about the sex lives of the saints. Yes, they were great lovers of God, and if Bernini's famous sculpture "St. Teresa in Ecstasy" is any evidence, we can appreciate that such love was not merely platonic. But what about passionate, erotic, physical love between flesh-and-blood humans?  Between the lives of the virgin martyrs, the celibate monks, priests, and religious who dominate the religious calendar, it would be hard to fill a page on the subject of sex and holiness.

Of course, there is St. Augustine, who writes at length about his youthful search for "some object for my love." In different forms and persons, including his mistress of many years, he evidently found it.  But in every case Augustine wants to show how the "clear waters" of love were invariably spoiled by the "black rivers of lust." He describes his relationship with his unnamed mistress, the mother of his son, in these unflattering terms: "In those days I lived with a woman, not my lawful wedded wife, but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her."

It is striking to compare Augustine's treatment with a similar passage in Dorothy Day's memoir, The Long Loneliness, in which she introduces the story of her love affair with Forster Batterham, and the role he played in hastening her spiritual journey: "The man I loved, with whom I entered into a common-law marriage, was an anarchist, an Englishman by descent, and a biologist." They met at a party in Greenwich Village in the early 1920s and soon thereafter began to live together – as she put it, "in the fullest sense of the phrase"--in a house on Staten Island.

Among their bohemian set there was nothing scandalous about such a relationship. It was evidently Dorothy who liked to think of it as a "common-law marriage." For Forster, who never masked his scorn for the "institution of the family," their relationship was simply a "comradeship." Nevertheless, she loved him "in every way." As she wrote: "I loved him for all he knew and pitied him for all he didn't know. I loved him for the odds and ends I had to fish out of his sweater pockets and for the sand and shells he brought in with his fishing. I loved his lean cold body as he got into bed smelling of the sea and I loved his integrity and stubborn pride." Wait a minute! Day is here describing, without any hint of Augustine's obligatory shame or regret, her physical relationship with a man to whom she was not married. Needless to say, she was not yet a Catholic. Yet her point is to show how this lesson in love, this time of "natural happiness," as she called it, awakened her thirst for an even greater happiness. She began praying during her walks and even attending Mass. This religious impulse was strengthened when she discovered she was pregnant – an event that inspired a sense of gratitude so large that only God could receive it. And with that came the determination that she would have her child baptized, "come what may."

As a dedicated anarchist, Forster would not be married by either church or state. And so to become a Catholic, Dorothy recognized, would mean separating from the man she loved. "It got to the point where it was the simple question of whether I chose God or man." Ultimately, painfully, she chose God. In December 1927, she forced Forster to leave the house. That month she was received into the Church.

So goes the familiar story recounted in her memoir. But it is not the whole story. In editing Day's personal letters, All the Way to Heaven, I was astonished to read an extraordinary collection of letters to Forster dating from 1925, soon after their first meeting, until December 1932, the eve of her new life in the Catholic Worker.

The early letters certainly reflect the passionate love described in The Long Loneliness. In her first letter she writes, "I miss you so much. I was very cold last night. Not because there wasn't enough covers but because I didn't have you." In the next: "I think of you much and dream of you every night and if my dreams could affect you over long distance, I am sure they would keep you awake." Separated for some weeks, she writes Forster: "My desire for you is a painful rather than pleasurable emotion. It is a ravishing hunger which makes me want you more than anything in the world and makes me feel as though I could barely exist until I saw you again ... I have never wanted you as much as I have ever since I left, from the first week on, although I've thought before that my desires were almost too strong to be borne."

The letters skip over the time of Tamar's birth and Dorothy's conversion, but after her parting from Forster they resume with poignant intensity. Despite the implication in Dorothy's memoir that her conversion had marked and ended, once and for all, their relationship, this was far from the case. In fact, the letters continue for another five years, as Dorothy pleaded, cajoled, and prayed that Forster would give up his stubbornness and consent to marry her.

In vain, she assured him that he would be "involving [himself] in nothing" if he married her "Religion would be obtruded on you in no way except that you would have to see me go to church once a week, and five times a year on various saints' days. I would have nothing around the house to jar upon you -- no pictures and books. I am really not obsessed as you think I am."

At times she could not repress her frustration: "Do I have to be condemned to celibacy all my days, just because of your pig-headedness? Damn it, do I have to remind you that Tamar needs a father?" Her tone fluctuated between tenderness and bitter reproach: "I am not restrained when I am lying in your arms, am I? You know I am not a promiscuous creature in my love ... But it is all so damned hopeless that I do hope I fall in love again and marry since there seems to be no possibility for a happy outcome to our love for each other."

By the fall of 1932 Dorothy was living in New York. In December she traveled to Washington, D.C. to cover a "Hunger March of the Unemployed." There on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, she offered a prayer that God would show her some way to combine her Catholic faith and her commitment to social justice. Immediately afterward she would meet Peter Maurin, the French peasant philosopher who would inspire her to launch the Catholic Worker and whose ideas would dominate the rest of her life. Whether there was any relation between this new door opening and her decision finally to close the door on hopes of marrying Forster, her letter to him of December 10 would be her last for many years.

After describing her strong commitment to the prohibition of sex outside of marriage, she writes: "The ache in my heart is intolerable at times, and sometimes for days I can feel your lips upon me, waking and sleeping. It is because I love you so much that I want you to marry me." Nevertheless, she concluded: "It all is hopeless of course, though it has often seemed to me a simple thing. Imaginatively I can understand your hatred and rebellion against my beliefs and I can't blame you. I have really given up hope now, so I won't try to persuade you anymore."

Of course, even this did not mark the final end of their relationship.  Over the years they remained connected through Tamar. There would be friendly notes, the exchange of gifts, and visits in the hospital. In Dorothy's final years Forster took to calling every day. He was present at her funeral in 1980, and later at a memorial Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

So what, in the end, do these new letters reveal? They certainly confirm the deep, passionate love described in her memoir, thus underscoring the incredible sacrifice Dorothy endured for the sake of her faith. That sacrifice lay at the heart of her vocation; it was the foundation for a lifetime of courage, perseverance, and dedication. It marked her deep sense of the heroic demands of faith. But in no sense did it represent a conflict in her mind between "merely" human love and "higher" religious aspirations. "I could not see that love between man and woman was incompatible with love of God," she wrote. And if she had had her way she would have embraced a happy family life with Forster and the many children she dreamed of.

While her radical friends insinuated that her turn to God was because she was "tired of sex, satiated, disillusioned," her true feelings were quite different. "It was because through a whole love, both physical and spiritual, I came to know God."

If Dorothy Day she is one day canonized, these letters will provide a fairly unusual resource. They serve to remind us, if that were necessary, that saints are fully human--perhaps, as Thomas Merton put it, more fully human: "This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for appreciation for the good and beautiful things of life."  Dorothy considered her love for Forster to be one of the primary encounters with grace in her life, one for which she never ceased to rejoice. That insight and that witness are among her many gifts.

Source:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-ellsberg/dorothy-in-love_b_905023.html

Robert Ellsberg (rellsberg@maryknoll.org) is the editor-in-chief and publisher of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll.  Ellberg was a member of the Catholic Worker Community in New York City in the mid-70s.  He is the author of a number of books concerning the Catholic Worker movement, including All the Way to Heaven The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day.

Chris Knestrick: U.S. wants Free Trade Agreement with Colombia while Human Rights Deteriorate , Culminating in a Massacre

by Chris Knestrick

While the United States considers a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia, the human rights situation in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia has deteriorated dramatically, culminating on the 17th of August with a massacre in the township of El Dorado.

The United States House of Representatives and Senate will probably vote on the long standing FTA when they return from their congressional break. By saying that the human rights situation in Colombia is improving and praising the passing of the labor plan, which does not address the wide spread violence against small farmers and miners, Washington believes that the time is now to move forward on the agreement.

However, facts on the ground in the Magdalena Medio region tell another story. A wave of human rights violations, assassinations, and massacres has shaken the region. For example, in the city of Barrancamerbeja, from August 13th to 18th, the organization Human Rights Workers’ Forum of Barrancabermeja (Espacio de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de Derechos Humanos) documented two assassinations, two forced disappearances, five attempted assassinations, and the kidnapping of three contract workers.

Furthermore, in the Sierra de San Lucas mountain range the agricultural and mining communities are also being targeted. This region is rich in natural resources such as gold. With the price of gold rising, multi-national companies who stand to benefit from a FTA with Colombia are seeking even more concessions in the region. One human rights worker said that, “We are facing wave of violence that has not been seen since the paramilitary group Auto-Defense Forces entered the region the late-90s.”

From November to August of this year, Fedeagromisbol, a federation of primarily subsistence small-scale miners and peasant farmers throughout the entire Sierra de San Lucas mountain range in South Bolívar, documents that there were sixteen assassinations in the region and twenty cases of abuses and harassment.

August 17th marks the culmination of these abuses against agricultural and mining communities. Around 7pm, in the community of Casa Zinc, which is part of township EL Dorado in the municipality of Monte Cristo, Bolivar, twenty armed men entered the community and identified themselves as the Black Eagles, which is a known paramilitary group. They gathered the community together and assassinated Pedro Sierra, a small farmer. They then tortured and cut out the tongues of Ivan Serrano, a local shop owner, and Luis Albeiro Ropero, a young miner, before they killing them. This all happened while the Colombian Army was just twenty minutes away.

On the 21st of August, local human rights organizations, Fedeagromisbol and the Christian Peacemaker Teams among others traveled to the region to investigate the massacre. On their way, they received a call that the paramilitary group still was present in the community four days after the massacre. The investigation commission was unable to arrive to the community and accompany them because the Colombian government could not guarantee the safety of anyone entering the region.

As with most of the human rights violations in Colombia, they are committed with the complacence of the Colombian government and armed forces, a government that is now pushing for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Sadly, the massacre in Casa Zinc is not an oddity. Most of the horrific violence happens either at the hands of the Colombia Armed Forces or with them idly standing by twenty minutes away. The U.S. government cannot move forward on a FTA by claiming that the human rights situation has improved when the reality on the ground tells otherwise.

Chris Knestrick is a member of the Cleveland Catholic Worker Community who is currently in Columbia as part of a Christian Peacemakers Team.  He is writing a blog about his experiences in Columbia at:

http://www.knestrick.blogspot.com

Email Chris: cknest11@gmail.com

Jeff Dietrich: Justice for the Homeless

LA Catholic Workers Stand Up to mistreat of homeless, August 2011.

by Jeff Dietrich

It looked like an anti-terrorist takedown: five cop cars, 10 police officers, a yellow skip loader and a 5-ton dump truck. They screeched to a halt and blocked off 6th Street in front of our soup kitchen in downtown Los Angeles. But their target this spring was not a suicide bomber or a hidden nuclear device; it was the four red shopping carts parked in front of our building. Those of us who had worked on skid row for a while were not surprised; we’d seen it all before.

It has been standard city policy since the mid-1980s to have the aforementioned convoy of skip loader, dump truck and police escort patrol the streets of skid row to confiscate the unattended possessions of homeless people — belongings deemed superfluous, excessive or simply trash. Often these sweeps would take medication, identification papers and family photos, the last vestiges of past lives.

Between 1989 and 2005, three lawsuits, two by civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, were filed and won in state and federal courts against the city of Los Angeles regarding the rights of the homeless. As a result, the police are required to give sufficient notice before removing property of the homeless, and the city must pay damages to homeless people for possessions that had been taken and dumped rather than stored for a certain length of time.

Despite these court victories and the periodic interdiction of homeless activists, the city and police have continued their policy of what amounts to theft from the homeless.

Like a battle-weary soldier who has seen too much, you can get a hard heart. But on this particular occasion, one of our volunteers from the suburbs observed the entire episode and was shocked. “Can’t we do something about this?” Richard asked. “They just took everybody’s stuff. They were just eating lunch and when they rushed out to grab their shopping carts, the police said, ‘No, this is abandoned property.”’

It’s always unsettling for our volunteers from the suburbs. They think the rules that apply there should apply on skid row. But that’s not how it works. Despite those court cases, if you are gone for five minutes to wash, eat or relieve yourself, you can lose all of your possessions. If you leave a friend in charge of your shopping cart and the police suspect that your friend is not the actual owner — boom — gone to the city dump. I felt like the cop in that old Jack Nicholson movie. I imagined myself saying to our volunteer, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

So inured had I become to the way things are that I did not even bother to contact Carol Sobel about the incident. Fortunately, others did. She came, took depositions, collected photos and went back to federal court.

I was heartened but did not have high expectations for the hearing. The way city officials and police tell their story of skid row, everyone on the streets is either a drug addict or a dealer, and those people do not have a constitutional right to security in their person or property. So in June, when we gathered in the august federal courtroom, I was expecting an affirmation of police impunity.

But I was as unprepared as the deputy city attorney was for the announcement that Judge Philip Gutierrez made: Before we begin today, I need to inform the court that in 1980 I was a summer intern at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. I chopped onions, I served food and I cleaned toilets. But I have had no contact with them since. Therefore I see no reason to recuse myself from this case.

Whoa! Our jaws dropped. At the end of the court day we got the federal injunction halting the seizure and destruction of the personal property of the homeless. The judge ruled that homeless individuals have an expectation of privacy in their property, even if left on the sidewalk for short periods. Richard was elated. For him, it confirmed that the system works. I was in a state of shock . Where did this come from?

We are all formed by our individual life experiences. We are raised Republican or Democrat; Protestant, Jewish or Catholic. But Gutierrez, however improbably, appears to have been formed in some measure by his experience of chopping onions, cleaning toilets and serving food to the homeless at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.

I’m not saying that’s the only reason he ruled the way he did, but from the perspective of those of us who work with the homeless, and the perspective of the homeless folks who push shopping carts containing the last of their earthly treasures, it is like one of those unlikely biblical stories.

Just when you give up all hope, just when you think that the authorities have the final word, just when you think that the rules of the suburbs cannot possibly apply on skid row, for a moment at least, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “the universe bends toward justice.”

Jeff Dietrich is a member of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community and has worked on skid row for 40 years. His most recent book, “Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles’ Skid Row,” will be published this fall. 

Source:

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/08/11/opinion/contributors/justice-for-the-homeless/

Ciaron O'Reilly: LONDON - Reflections on a week of riotin', tweetin', lootin', burnin', 1500 arrested & countin' following the police killing of Mark Duggan

by Ciaron O'Reilly

(from Brisbane living in London), Giuseppe Conlon House, Haringey, London

Over the past week at Giuseppe Conlon Catholic Worker House in Haringey London, we have received calls of concern, and requests for explanations, following the rioting and looting over the weekend that started in our borough of Haringey and extended across London and then to regional towns in England.

PHOTOS from Tottenham, Haringey

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2011/aug/07/tottenham-hit-by-riots-pictures

I've been reluctant to write anything as I have yet to get my head around the phenomenon of what has unfolded or unraveled over the last week.

For the past year I have been based at the Giuseppe Conlon House in Haringey, a Catholic Worker project offering hospitality to destitute refugees, nonviolent anti-war resistance and solidarity to war resisters before the courts and in chains. Harringey, like Tottenham where the riots started last Saturday night, is a subset of the borough of Harringey.

 Rioting started around 8 pm Sat night at the Tottenham police station opposite the "Tottenham Chances" club where we usually head on a monthly basis for a cabaret night with the Surviviors poetry group, MC'd by Catholic Worker friend Razz.

 The rioting on Saturday night was preceeded by a disciplined demonstration Saturday afternoon by friends and relatives of Mark Duggan shot dead by armed police in Tottenham on Thursday night. (unlike U.S. and Australia armed police are a specialist group and a rairty in England).  The group (approx 150) had marched from Duggan's home Broadwater Farm estate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwater_Farm , (site of an infamous police killing & killing of a police in the mid-1980's) arriving at 5pm at Tottenham Police Station to demand an explanation from the police about the inquiry into the death. 

The police now admit they failed to inform the family of the death and update them on the inquiry into the death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/08/police-apology-mark-duggan-shooting

The march arrived at Tottenham police station at 5pm Sat and demanded a senior policeman come out and answer questions about the inquiry into the killing of Mark Duggan, father of four. It appears the police did not comply with this request and the vigil, initially planned to last for an hour, dragged on to 8pm.  Against the wishes of the relatives of the deceased, things kicked off on the Tottenham High Rd. around 8pm with rioting. Two police cars and a bus were torched. Later a building containing a furniture store and some accommodation as also burned to the ground.

This is a good Sky TV interview YouTube with Broadwater Farm community organizer Stafford Scott on what occured outside Tottenham police station on Saturday.

 As events on Saturday night developed and police numbers were concentrated on the Tottenham High Rd., what appears to be opportunist looting started in nearby (to us/ CW!) Haringey's Wood Green shopping area in the early hours of Sunday morning and went on until dawn with no police response.  A couple of jewelers shops at the bottom of our street on Green Lanes were ram raided.  Jewelers in this area are often robbed by organized gangs, so maybe a pre-planned robbery was fast tracked.

The large Wood Green shopping centre area was cordoned off Sunday and we were turned away from our Sunday evening free donut pick up.  On Sunday night looting spread to other parts of London.  A generation raised on credit, pumped up/ incited to consume by 24/7 advertising corporations, now having those purchasing possibilities limited in the economic collapse did the predictable.....insurgent consumerism!

Activity was facilitated by new technologies of social networking.  The police force appeared to be outmaneuvered. This was to spread across London and to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and elsewhere as the police lost control.

 The causes for this phenomenon are deeply political whether the activity was political in a self aware sense is hard to say.  It is hard to generalize - payback from frustrations with previous ongoing police harassment, opportunist criminals seeing the cops over stretched, and for a lot of folks it seemed like a congenial atmosphere of mediaeval days of mischief as the paradigm shifted.  For the most part, violence against persons was minimal but recklessness led to 3 deaths in Birmingham and one this morning in London.  For the most part it was property destruction & opportunist looting of unguarded businesses with little discrimination made between small local businesses and corporates, to a much lesser extent direct/confrontational fighting the police and targeting symbols of power.

On Monday evening we attended a multi-faith callout for a demonstration of hope back on Tottenham High Rd. where it had begun on Saturday.  There was a lot of authentic rank and file concern, but alas also the predictable political positioning by aspiring leadership some claiming to "represent the community".

I made a speech pointing out that the government now berating the looters had spent the last 10 years looting Iraq, burning Baghdad and torching Afghanistan. If anything, at their worst the looters are mimicking the rich and powerful without the birthright to thieve and loot. The speech was generally well received by the locals gathered.

 I had walked up to the demonstration with a local friend Ben Griffin who had served with the British SAS in Iraq.  After the local Tottenham MP David Lammy spoke calling for nonviolence, Ben approached him shook his hand and introduced himself as a former soldier. Ben reminded Lammy that he had voted strongly for war and strongly against an inquiry into the war.  See here for Ben's account

https://veteransforpeaceuk.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/vet...ammy/

The deprivation, despair, chronic youth unemployment, recent cuts to social services, in Haringey, pumped consumer culture, capitalism in rapid decline, a trigger happy C019 armed section of the police force, the elements that provided the human fuel to the events of last weekend remain. More detailed stats on Haringey/ Tottenham here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-could-happen-elsewhere

There have been 1500 arrests nationally. 75% of those arrested are under 25.  In London 50% of them are under 18!  75% of those charged are being denied bail and remanded in jail.  The state is in revenge mode promising water cannon, plastic bullets and the army on the streets - options traditionally reserved for populace of the north of Ireland - along with more arrests and punishment.  Any attempt to discuss the causes of the phenomenon are being dismissed as wishy-washy liberal apologetics for thuggery.

I once asked my father how he got his broken nose? His reply was "I was talking, when I should have been listening!"

So it's time to listen, to understand the phenomenon of the last week.  There's not much listening as the state seeks vengeance and the mainstream media act as the technicians of consent.

This clip is an excellent example of the media doing that job and a wonderful human response to it....... (The BBC Vs Darcus Cowe--a voice worth listening to, if the BBC talking head would give the guy a chance.)

This "confessional" piece today by Russel Brand is also valuable "Big Brother isn't watching you"

http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/08/big-brother-isnt-watching-you/

More confessional statements rather than finger pointing might be a way of starting a worthwhile dialogue.

Meanwhile, this afternoon, the police admit misinformation following the shooting of Mark Duggan.

The first trouble began in Tottenham on Saturday evening after a vigil in support of Mark Duggan outside the local police station. One of the Duggan family grievances was poor communication from the authorities in the early stages. They were particularly upset at suggestions in media reports that Duggan had fired first.

This article in the Sun, for example,

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3734274/PC-hit-as-cops-kill-gunman.html

A GUNMAN was killed by cops last night in a shoot-out in which an officer survived when a bullet seemingly hit his radio. He was downed by a marksman after firing first and hitting the officer. Witnesses said police had shouted at the man to stop but he ignored them.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/12/uk-riots-day-six-aftermath#block-39

In response to an inquiry by our correspondent Paul Lewis, the IPCC has sent this statement to the Guardian:

"Analysis of media coverage and queries raised on Twitter have alerted to us to the possibility that we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists when responding to very early media queries following the shooting of Mark Duggan by MPS officers on the evening of 4th August.' The IPCC's first statement, issued at 22:49 on 4th August, makes no reference to shots fired at police and our subsequent statements have set out the sequence of events based on the emerging evidence. However, having reviewed the information the IPCC received and gave out during the very early hours of the unfolding incident, before any documentation had been received, it seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged as this was consistent with early information we received that an officer had been shot and taken to hospital. Any reference to an exchange of shots was not correct and did not feature in any of our formal statements, although an officer was taken to hospital after the incident.

This is significant, as much of the early media coverage referred to an "exchange of shots", with some media outlets clearly implying that police had been shot at first. This issue is one of the key grievances of the Duggan family. 

Related Link: http://www.londoncatholicworker.org

Ciaron O'Reilly, (born in 1960 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) is a long-time Catholic Worker now living in London.

Kathy Kelly: More Lost By the Second

Refugee Camp, photo by Jacob George

by Kathy Kelly

  

It’s a bit odd to me that with my sense of geographical direction I’m ever regarded as a leader to guide groups in foreign travel. I’m recalling a steaming hot night in Lahore, Pakistan when Josh Brollier and I, having enjoyed a lengthy dinner with Lahore University students, needed to head back to the guest lodgings graciously provided us by a headmaster of the Garrison School for Boys. We had boarded a rickshaw, but the driver had soon become terribly lost and with my spotty sense of direction and my complete ignorance of Urdu, I couldn't be any help. My cell phone was out of juice, and I was uncertain anyway of the needed phone number. I bumped and jostled in the back seat of the rickshaw, next to Josh, as we embarked on a nightmare of travel over unpaved, rutted roads in dizzying traffic until finally the rickshaw driver spotted a sign belonging to our school - the wrong campus, we all knew - and eager to unload us, roused the inhabitants and hustled us and our bags into the street before moving on.

We stood inside the gate, staring blankly at a family that had been sound asleep on cots in the courtyard. In no time, the father of the family scooped up his two children, gently moving them to the cot he shared with his wife so that Josh and I would have a cot on which to sit. Then he and his spouse disappeared into their humble living quarters. He reappeared with a fan and an extension cord, wanting to give us some relief from the blistering night heat. His wife emerged carrying a glass of tea for each of us. They didn’t know us from Adam’s house cat, but they were treating us as family - the celebrated but always astonishing hospitality that we'd encountered in the region so many times before. Eventually, we established with our host that we were indeed at the wrong campus, upon which he called the family that had been nervously waiting for our errant selves.

This courtyard scene of startling hospitality would return to my mind when we all learned of the U.S. Joint Special Operations (JSO) Force night raid in the Nangarhar province, on May 12, 2011. No matter which side of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border you are on, suffocating hot temperatures prevail day and night during these hot months. It’s normal for people to sleep in their courtyards. How could anyone living in the region not know this? Yet the U.S. JSO forces that came in the middle of the night to the home of a 12 year old girl, Nilofer, who had been asleep on her cot in the courtyard, began their raid by throwing a grenade into the courtyard, landing at Nilofer's head. She died instantly. Nilofer’s uncle raced into the courtyard. He worked with the Afghan Local Police, and they had told him not to join that night’s patrol because he didn’t know much about the village they would go to, so he had instead gone to his brother’s home. When he heard the grenade explode, he may well have presumed the Taliban were attacking the home. U.S. troops killed him as soon as they saw him. Later, NATO issued an apology.

“The raids occur ‘every night. We are very much miserable,’ said Roshanak Wardak, a doctor and a former member of the national Parliament." I am reading a McClatchy news report, dated August 8th of this year. "Residents of the Tangi Valley area, in eastern Wardak Province, about 60 miles southwest of Kabul, issued similar complaints about the night raids in their vicinity, charging that they have killed civilians, disrupted their lives and fueled popular support for the Taliban.”

Imagine it. People in an Afghan village pass sleepless nights, anxious that their home might be targeted by a U.S. led night raid. Villagers are enraged when they hear stories of elders and imams being roughed up and detained, of wives and children being killed, of belongings stolen and property destroyed. Increasingly, the U.S. military battles against the so-called insurgency are creating a stronger resistance as more Afghans grow determined to fight back.

In Helmand province, in Nad Ali, the district governor told a New York Times reporter one incident in the spiral of violence: a NATO foot patrol came under fire from a family home on August 5th, 2011, killing one soldier and wounding an Afghan interpreter. The NATO troops called in an airstrike. NATO is now investigating a report that the airstrike killed eight civilians, seven of them children. “The home belonged to Mullah Abdul Hadi, 50, a local imam who Afghan officials say was helping the Taliban,” said Mr. Shamlani. “He was killed along with one of his two wives and his seven children, all younger than 7 years old.”

People in Nad Ali are expected to embrace closer relations with the United States and its troops after the deaths at our hands of seven children, children they knew aged one to seven, who had committed no crime.

Now comes the U.S. determination to seal a “Strategic Partnership Declaration” with its client Afghan government. Many in that country (and this one) expect such an agreement to allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases, a permanent occupation presence that will provoke resistance groups there to declare perpetual war.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, a group of young people dedicated to ending wars and inequalities in their country, write in their August 9th statement: “The US-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Declaration will perpetuate ‘terrorism’ and bring it to everyone’s doorsteps: “The ‘partnership’ will allow permanent joint US-Afghanistan military bases to launch and project hard power. The ‘extreme’ Taliban will conveniently ‘use’ these bases as a stand-alone reason for their ‘holy jihad.’ We cannot forget that one of Osama Bin Laden’s reasons for attacking the US on September 11th was the presence of US military bases in Saudi Arabia. ... This Strategic Partnership Declaration will kill any chance for our madness to slow down and our violence to calm down. … It will doom ordinary Americans and Afghans to permanent terrorism. … Why can’t we quiet our nerves, look deep inside humanity, and begin healing?”  

Everyone wants to be safe, but I think of the Lahore family taking us into their sleeping courtyard and their home that night, knowing nothing of these crazy Americans who had been dropped on their doorstep. We had woken them up but they chose to stay awake and take care of us. Americans seem to respond to our endless wake-up calls from Afghanistan by just going, every time, back to sleep, rather than work to make the situation better.  I think of the night raids, families being woken up to sudden horror somewhere every night in the region, children killed sleeping in our efforts to make ourselves more safe (among other motives), and an ever escalating conflict arising from the violence.  

We are startlingly, terrifyingly lost, and we’re getting ever more so. If we see a sign here in the darkness, an opportunity to make contact with the people around us, we should take it gratefully. The letter from my Afghan Youth friends is another sign for me that we do not belong in the Afghan home forever, occupying it at gunpoint. However groggily we may have awakened or reawakened to this dreadful situation and our role in it, we must act now to free our Afghan hosts of their overstaying guests, and get the U.S. safely back to where it should be.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinatesVoices for Creative Nonviolence.  A Voices delegation is presently visiting, in Kabul, with The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.

Both groups are helping organize for the October 6, 2011 “Stop the Machine! Create a New World!” campaign to end wars.

Jeff Dietrich: Home Sweet Shopping Cart

LA Skid Row

by Jeff Dietrich

It looked like an anti-terrorist takedown: five cop cars, 10 police officers, a yellow skip loader and a 5-ton dump truck. They screeched to a halt and blocked off 6th Street in front of our soup kitchen in downtown Los Angeles. But their target this spring was not a suicide bomber or a hidden nuclear device; it was the four red shopping carts parked in front of our building. Those of us who had worked on skid row for a while were not surprised; we'd seen it all before.

It has been standard city policy since the mid-1980s to have the aforementioned convoy of skip loader, dump truck and police escort patrol the streets of skid row to confiscate the unattended possessions of homeless people — belongings deemed superfluous, excessive or simply trash. Often these sweeps would take medication, identification papers and family photos, the last vestiges of past lives.

Between 1989 and 2005, three lawsuits, two by civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, were filed and won in state and federal courts against the city of Los Angeles regarding the rights of the homeless. As a result, the police are required to give sufficient notice before removing property of the homeless, and the city must pay damages to homeless people for possessions that had been taken and dumped rather than stored for a certain length of time.

Despite these court victories and the periodic interdiction of homeless activists, the city and police have continued their policy of what amounts to theft from the homeless.

Like a battle-weary soldier who has seen too much, you can get a hard heart. But on this particular occasion, one of our volunteers from the suburbs observed the entire episode and was shocked. "Can't we do something about this?" Richard asked. "They just took everybody's stuff. They were just eating lunch and when they rushed out to grab their shopping carts, the police said, 'No, this is abandoned property.' "

It's always unsettling for our volunteers from the suburbs. They think the rules that apply there should apply on skid row. But that's not how it works. Despite those court cases, if you are gone for five minutes to wash, eat or relieve yourself, you can lose all of your possessions. If you leave a friend in charge of your shopping cart and the police suspect that your friend is not the actual owner — boom — gone to the city dump. I felt like the cop in that old Jack Nicholson movie. I imagined myself saying to our volunteer, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

So inured had I become to the way things are that I did not even bother to contact Carol Sobel about the incident. Fortunately, others did. She came, took depositions, collected photos and went back to federal court.

I was heartened but did not have high expectations for the hearing. The way city officials and police tell their story of skid row, everyone on the streets is either a drug addict or a dealer, and those people do not have a constitutional right to security in their person or property. So in June, when we gathered in the august federal courtroom, I was expecting an affirmation of police impunity.

But I was as unprepared as the deputy city attorney was for the announcement that Judge Philip Gutierrez made: Before we begin today, I need to inform the court that in 1980 I was a summer intern at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. I chopped onions, I served food and I cleaned toilets. But I have had no contact with them since. Therefore I see no reason to recuse myself from this case.

Whoa! Our jaws dropped. At the end of the court day we got the federal injunction halting the seizure and destruction of the personal property of the homeless. The judge ruled that homeless individuals have an expectation of privacy in their property, even if left on the sidewalk for short periods. Richard was elated. For him, it confirmed that the system works. I was in a state of shock. Where did this come from?

We are all formed by our individual life experiences. We are raised Republican or Democrat; Protestant, Jewish or Catholic. But Gutierrez, however improbably, appears to have been formed in some measure by his experience of chopping onions, cleaning toilets and serving food to the homeless at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.

I'm not saying that's the only reason he ruled the way he did, but from the perspective of those of us who work with the homeless, and the perspective of the homeless folks who push shopping carts containing the last of their earthly treasures, it is like one of those unlikely biblical stories.

Just when you give up all hope, just when you think that the authorities have the final word, just when you think that the rules of the suburbs cannot possibly apply on skid row, for a moment at least, to paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "the universe bends toward justice."


Source:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-dietrich-justice-20110808

Jeff Dietrich is the director of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and has worked on skid row for 40 years. His most recent book, "Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles' Skid Row," will be published this fall.

Gary Kohl: Duty to Warn: Your Honor: I Am Guilty of This

By Gary Kohl

Photo by Joshua McElwee

”I am guilty of loving my planet more than I fear your jail.” 

                       – Steve Jacobs

  

In the opinion of many, including myself, the most courageous, fearless and prophetic people in the world are those tens of thousands of conscientious members of Catholic Worker (CW) Movement communities that, since the 1930s, have been, and “are committed to nonviolent resistance to evil because they trust in the truth and practicality of the radical gospel of Jesus and his ethical teachings.

The prophetic publication of CW founders Dorothy Day and the radical French Catholic peasant-philosopher Peter Maurin, is The Catholic Worker, still sold for 1 penny per copy. It was first published on May Day, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. Since then, through fits and starts, 213 Catholic Worker communities currently persist, in various stages of viability, throughout the world.

The Catholic Worker mission

The following statement from http://www.catholicworker.org/ summarizes the mission of the CW Movement:

“The Catholic Worker Movement is grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person. Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.”

Perhaps its most important ministry, considering our nation’s continuously funded, unaffordable, destructive, criminal and morally bankrupting wars, is its regular nonviolent direct actions against the madness of militarism.

The latest large CW action against the madness of nuclear weapons occurred on May 2, 2011, at Kansas City’s new Honeywell hydrogen bomb-making facility at Kansas City, MO. Honeywell is the infamous Minnesota “not-so-nice” multinational corporation that grew up in Minneapolis and that manufactures (through its spun-off subsidiary Alliant Tech) many highly profitable weapons of mass destruction (as well as weapons of individual and small group destruction). Alliant Tech and Honeywell have been picketed weekly, for decades, by Veterans for Peace, Women Against Military Madness, Catholic Workers and many other peace groups to expose the two corporation’s participation in international war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Steve Jacobs, photo by Indymedia UK

On May 2, 2011, just outside of Kansas City, MO, 53 people of conscience (28 women and 25 men), most of them Catholic Workers, were arrested just after the murder/assassination of the unarmed Osama bin Laden, who, by the way, was not even wanted by the FBI for any part of the 9/11/01 controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Center buildings because the agency found insufficient evidence of guilt. The 53 who were in prison for their trespass charges were fully aware of bin Laden’s extra-judicial killing and the glee portrayed by the average American in the street.

One of those arrested was CW member Steve Jacobs, from Columbia, MO, a person of faith and conscience who objects to the killing, rape, pillage and torture that is an intimate part of all wars, especially “US-led” wars. Jacobs has written a statement admitting his guilt in the action. He planned to read it to the judge and jury at the trial of the 53 on July 19.

Here is Jacobs’ powerful statement. He titled it “Your Honor: I Am Guilty of This:”

”I am guilty of knowing the difference between what is legal and what is right. Jesus tells us that the law is meant to serve humanity; humanity is not made to serve the law. Laws are just when they serve humanity and not when they protect those who create a mortal threat to its existence. Trespass laws which protect the makers of weapons of mass destruction against non-violent resisters have no authority over my conscience and act of resistance.

”I am guilty of trespass like a firefighter or a policeman is guilty of trespass when entering onto property in order to prevent a greater crime from occurring. You may believe the danger of nuclear annihilation is not imminent or that building these weapons of mass destruction are legal but I believe that any weapon that indiscriminately kills hundreds of thousands of innocents along with those who are targeted are immoral and have no right to exist. Creating more weapons makes their use more imminent, so we have a duty to stop their production now.

”Catholic bishops tell us that these weapons are immoral because if used they will continue to kill the innocent year after year from the effects of nuclear fallout and contamination. I am guilty of believing them.

”I am guilty of believing that any city that wishes to operate facilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should have to put the issue to a vote before the citizens and that those who are morally opposed to these weapons cannot be made to pay taxes which enable their production because it is a violation of their conscience.

”I am guilty of believing judges have a duty to protect society from criminal schemes that condemn farm land under "urban blight laws" so that WMD's can be produced there and that they (judges) also have a duty to protect citizens from war profiteers who socialize the construction of WMD's and privatize the profits.

”I am guilty of loving my planet more than I fear your jail.”

Re-Defining the Euphemistic Term, War

If there were only more Americans as courageous as these Catholic Workers, courageous enough to rise up and publicly object to that reality that is euphemistically called war. (The word euphemism is defined as: an inoffensive term substituted for one considered offensively explicit).

I have witnessed the tragic, often permanent consequences of violence suffered by many soldier- and civilian-victims of war through my 40 years of practicing medicine, and I feel strongly that war would be better defined non-euphemistically as: ”the state-planned, state-sponsored, demonization and indiscriminate mass slaughter (including the maiming, starving, sickening, raping, pillaging and homelessness-making) of humans, most of whom are typically unarmed, innocent women, babies, children and the elderly, by well-trained, usually unaware killing-soldiers who obediently follow their lethal orders from command and control centers far away from the battlefield whose hidden paymasters are war-profiteers in government, finance, the media and the weapons industries .”

I have written frequently about the gruesome neurological, mental and spiritual consequences of participation in war and in the training for war. I can also attest to the fact that there is a very high probability that posttraumatic stress disordered veterans are highly likely to be incurable (although they may possibly be partially treatable if monumental efforts are undertaken).

[Ed. Note: Currently it is estimated that 120 vets commit suicide weekly.]

My experience agrees with the published medical literature. It tells me that the deformities that can come from any experience of horrendous violence, whether one is the victim, the perpetrator or the bystander, are likely to be permanent. My experience also tells me that, (surprise, surprise) combat-induced mental and physical ill health is 100% preventable.

The Catholic Worker Movement knows that too and is warning us all. We need to listen to them.

Steve Jacobs is a Colombia, MO, Catholic Worker community member. The nonviolent direct action that he was arrested at was at Honeywell’s new 1 Billion dollar hydrogen bomb manufacturing facility in Kansas City, MO.

For background information on this specific case, see John LaForge’s article about the action, entitled "Up Against the War Machine in Kansas City", at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/04-9 

Gary Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, Minnesota, and a founding member of Every Church A Peace Church. He writes about issues of religion, militarism, peace, justice and mental health.