Class and Activists

The more I think about it, the more I realize how we will never build a real, effective movement for change if we do not recognize class differences. I have noticed my own struggles as a working class woman in middle class organizing situations. There are strong cultural differences that get in the way. Here are some that I have noticed…

•Middle class, especially young, activists are proud of their subculture of healthy food, scruffy clothes, and communal living. I understand this, and even participate in some of it, but it is still jarring for me to walk into a young college activist group. I grew up in a working class family, where cleanliness, good hygiene, and home cooked meat and potatoes or great enchiladas were the norm.

•Middle class activists are strongly anti-military. I am both a pacifist (and strongly anti-war) and have family members in the military. For working class and rural people, the military is a source of economic survival and many young people who feel they have no other options join. Middle class activists often don’t seem to understand this reality and can make blanket assumptions and cruel comments about military personal.

•Middle class radicals love the earth. They may even grow an organic garden on a city lot. As a rural farm girl, however, I am amused by the lack of practical understanding that urban, middle class activists have of rural living. For example, urban environmental activists won a great victory in the 90s when they were able to shut down national forests to logging. However, for the people of my hometown, that also meant that the local economy collapsed. Poverty has skyrocketed and fueled a mass exodus from the area. I grew up in the forests and love them deeply, but I also feel deeply for the people who lost their jobs. Isn’t there a way that rural people and environmentalists could have worked together to find a solution that would benefit all?

•There are a lot of stereotypes of rural, working class people. They are rednecks, homophobes, backwards… and the list goes on. Sometimes radical middle class activists use these stereotypes themselves. The reality is that working class culture in general can be rich in hospitality, acceptance, and community.

•The response of people on the left that irritates me the most is the insinuation that working class people are less intelligent, especially if they are more conservative. There is a crass elitism in these assumptions. The accusation that working people are simply stupid, brainwashed, and uneducated is insulting. Some of the most intelligent people I know never went to college.

Oscar Romero and the Cross

Thirty-one years ago today, Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador.

Those of us who are progressive theologians in the United States are generally skeptical of the language of sacrifice, and for good reason. We have seen it abused in so many ways. Women have been told for centuries to “bear their cross like Jesus” and endure domestic violence. Children have been abused in the name of a Father God who put his own Son to death. And, if we are honest with ourselves, we just don’t like to think too much about blood and pain. We would rather envision a happy Jesus, a resurrected Christ.

I wonder, though, for a person like Oscar Romero, who watched friends and parish members die all around him, if the image of a dying Christ was not some comfort, an image of solidarity.

Oscar Romero was appointed archbishop of El Salvador in 1977 during some of the most violent and repressive years just preceding the Salvadoran civil war, a time when the military was torturing and killing any who resisted their rule. The 70s and 80s were years of civil war and political infighting. Interestingly, Romero was chosen because he was viewed as a moderate who would not bother with political issues, who would keep the Catholic Church closely aligned with the rich and powerful. He had been educated in Italy and was known as a bookish sort of man, certainly not a revolutionary, not a prophet.

Just a few weeks after he took office, Father Rutilio Grande, a close friend of Romero’s, was assassinated for his political leanings, along with two of his parishioners. From this time on, Romero’s views changed drastically as he became more and more aware of the suffering of the poor around him. As archbishop, he was strongly influenced by liberation theology, so strongly in fact, that the Reagan administration labeled liberation theology a threat to national security. After only three years as archbishop, 31 years ago today, Romero was assassinated by a paramilitary member. He was one of at least 75,000 people who died during this time in El Salvador, including 16 priests and 4 Maryknoll nuns.

It seems to me, in this context of suffering and death, that the cross took a whole different meaning. In 1998, toward the close of the El Salvador wars, the Oscar Romero Pastoral Center reflected on what the cross meant to them. They noted that, more and more, the official Roman Catholic hierarchy was stressing the life of Jesus and his resurrection and minimizing the cross. But they also noted that the people of El Salvador still clung to the image of the cross, “because the poor and oppressed have identified since the beginning with the suffering of Jesus on the cross that has been associated with their own suffering, cruel and unjust, imposed and inescapable, which accompanies them from birth to death.” They ask this; “The wise should not be scandalized and the powerful should not make fun of the poor when they are seen walking behind a dead Christ.” In this dead Christ, they see their own suffering. Jesus in solidarity with them, giving them the dignity the rest of the world denies them. One of the martyred priests of El Salvador, tortured and murdered in the college complex he taught in, Ignacio Ellacuría said to his people; “You are the crucified people, the presence of Christ crucified in history.”

And what does it mean to stand with these crucified people in history?

For Jesus, who said that he had come to preach good news to the poor and proclaim a kingdom of justice, it meant his life. In our gospel passage, Jesus foresees his death, as he puts it, that “his hour has come.” Knowing this, he still set his face toward Jerusalem, to preach truth to power. As Lent progresses, we remember this journey toward death.

He knew. And yet Jesus went. Why? Why do some people go forward in the face of almost certain death to do what they know they are called to do? Romero too knew that he might encounter death for what he stood for. He had watched friends and fellow priests die for taking a stand on the side of the poor of El Salvador. Jesus has watched the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, for his message. Why this level of commitment? What is important enough to die for?

Romero might give us a few clues. He preached constantly about God’s preferential option for the poor. He says this; “We are a product of a spiritualized, individualistic education. We were taught: try to save your souls and don’t worry about the rest. We told the suffering: be patient, heaven will follow, hang on! No, that is not right! That is not the salvation Christ brought. The salvation Christ brings is a salvation from every bondage that oppresses human beings.”

I was deeply inspired by the EDS dean Katherine Ragsdale’s vision statement earlier this year. She observed; "few, if any, institutions have grappled adequately with the complex and threatening problems of classism in our churches and our society." This, I believe is our new challenge.

For Romero, his commitment to the most marginalized was very concrete and very real. He didn’t just talk about it. He lived it and ultimately died for it. So did Jesus.
Most of us in seminary are in a place of privilege. Like Romero, we are well educated and well read. We could choose a pretty comfortable life, though I would guess most of us are not planning to do that. But, whatever our backgrounds, we are graduate students, one of 9% of Americans who have that privilege. Romero has something to say to us. “When we say ‘for the poor’ we do not take sides with one social class. What we do… is invite all social classes, rich and poor without distinction, saying to everyone: Let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own—indeed, as what is really is, the cause of Jesus Christ.” We are invited to take up the cause of Jesus for the poorest among us.

We do not live in the El Salvador of the 80s and most of us will probably never face death for what we believe or teach. But we do live in one of the richest nations on earth that has a dark underside of poverty, of homelessness, of exploited labor, and of an abusive prison system. During morning and evening prayer here at chapel during Lent, we have been exploring this reality. Who are the crucified people of our own cities and towns and countryside? Every one of us walks past members of the homeless community every day. On the border earlier this year, I met more crucified people, people who were forced to flee their homes to survive, who are abused and hated and even die trying to enter our country. These were, these are Christ among us, crying out in pain among us. Our prisons are full of young and desperate people, and a large percentage of communities of color, revealing the dark underside of both racism and classism in our society.

In all this suffering and death, is there any hope? Romero said; “If I die, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.” When I was on the border, I saw so much suffering that it was hard to see hope. Yet, I found it in a mural painted on the side of a priest’s office in Altar, a place of so much hardship for migrants as they begin their journey across the desert. In this mural, bones and the death are strewn across the desert and people are staggering along toward the horizon. Yet, above the horizon is an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, the patroness of Mexico and the revelation God’s love to them. She holds her hands in prayer for her people and beckons them toward hope and resurrection. As we face a monumental task of solidarity with the poor among us, as we as an institution face the task of calling the church to become the church of the poor, we hold to the hope of resurrection, of the realization of the kin-dom of God among us.

I leave you with these words from Oscar Romero;
“God’s reign is already present on our earth in mystery. When the Lord comes it will be brought to perfection.” That is the hope that inspires Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.

Only moments after he spoke those words, reportedly as he raised the cup during Eucharist, Oscar Romero was shot through the heart at the altar.

Class and Immigration

The one thing we don't usually want to talk about in the U.S. is class. Class seems fluid and tricky. For some, the term is too Marxist. For others, it just makes them uncomfortable. But we still use terms like "middle class" and "working class" or "working people" all the time. We all know, especially those of us from the working class, that there is indeed a class system in the United States.

Even though I am now in seminary, and in an academic world, I still identify strongly with my working class roots. My dad works in a warehouse and my mom runs a dog kennel on their farm. I grew up there, learning the value of hard work and working-class values. We never went hungry, but we never had a lot of money either. We lived in a mobile home and my dad built a barn to house our goats and chickens and we all dug a garden to grow our vegetables. My sisters and I are the first in our family to receive a university education, thanks to scholarships.

As I have been more and more involved in immigrant communities, as an ESL teacher, as an activist, and as an advocate, I have seen people who are working hard to make ends meet for their families. Immigrant workers are often exploited in the workplace, receive low wages, and struggle to survive and feed their kids. I've seen the same in the majority white, rural, working communities I grew up in.

That's why, when I attended a meeting hosted by the MA state governor's office last week in Framingham about Secure Communities, my heart dropped to see so many working class white people show up with their support. Secure Communities is opposed by the immigrant community because it creates a partnership between ICE (the branch of Homeland Security responsible for arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants) and local police. Many white people from the local area showed up with signs that were particularly offensive to the immigrant community ("I love gringos" "Go home, Illegals!").

Working class people have been told over and over that their own woes should be blamed on immigrants who are stealing their jobs. In this way, people who should be natural allies are pitted against each other.

I wanted to say; "Look, we are all in this together!" The reality is that the government policies that drive so many people to immigrate to the U.S. are the same policies that are hurting working class people in the U.S. For example, NAFTA allowed large corporations to import their products without tariffs into countries like Mexico. This drove corn prices down so low that millions of subsistence farmers in southern Mexico have been forced to migrate or starve. It is no coincidence that 1994 marked both a massive increase in border crossing and the implementation of NAFTA. At the same time, large corporations also have consolidated their landholdings, forcing U.S. farmers out of business and into poverty. Factories and industries in the U.S. that have employed most working people have been closed, because trade policies allow corporations to move offshore to make a better profit. Workers, both white and immigrant, are facing a massive economic squeeze for the same reason. Yet we are fighting each other!

If only we could recognize this and work together!

My Two Favorite Spiritual Practices

As a seminarian, I tend to talk a lot about my spiritual practices. And I have many. However, this weekend, I was reminded of two practices that always rejuvenate my spiritual life; taking time outdoors and protesting.

The hardest thing for me moving to the city has been the distance I feel between myself and the earth. I have lived most of my life in rural areas, surrounded by nature and sky and trees. This weekend a friend and I borrowed a car and drove out to the Ipswich Wildlife Sanctuary. It was so quiet! That was the first thing I noticed-- I could hear the silence, without the sound of traffic or people or machines. And I could truly see the sky, with the winter sun turning it gold and silver. I saw eastern red squirrels for the first time, chattering and fighting all over the place and clouds of chickadees landed periodically. We walked around the frozen lake and through the trees. There was an ancient Red Cedar, its branches worn through the decades, firmly rooted by the lake's edge. The smell of the tree as I sat besides it was warm and sharp and I felt like I finally had the time to clear my mind. My times of deepest prayer are nearly always in the quiet of the woods. It is there that I find God most present. I find it deeply saddening that the wild places are continually getting taken over by highways and development parks all over the country. I think we losing something precious, something many of us do not realize we have.

My other favorite spiritual practice is as loud and noisy as the woods are quiet and still. I do not go to protests just simply to go. Protests are a way for me to voice my solidarity with people who are marginalized in our society. Just as the woods call me to renew my sense of the presence of God, so protests call me to renew my sense of solidarity with my fellow human beings. This particular protest yesterday was in support of the Immokalee farm workers from FL, who were demanded a raise. A group of farm workers travelled from FL to Boston, in the snow no less, to highlight the fact that those who pick our tomatoes have not received a raise in decades and are often abused and exploited. This is the side of immigrant rights that activists sometimes forget-- migrants who obtain a job in the U.S. generally obtain a low wage job in the agricultural or service industries and often have very few rights. This group from Immokalee was courageously demanding fair treatment. It is tragic that the people who feed us, who clean our hotels, and who package our food are in possession of so few rights. It is in their faces that I find the face of the crucified Jesus today.

My Thoughts from the U.S.-Mexico Border

"1,950 mile long open wound…The U.S.-Mexico border es una herida abierta, where the third world grates against the first and bleeds." Gloria Anzaldúa

I spent the first three weeks of January on the U.S.-Mexico border on a grant for cross-cultural studies. After spending years involved in immigrant rights, I wanted to witness firsthand what was happening on the border. I was less prepared than I thought for what I saw and heard. It was jarring to see miles of hideous fence cutting through the beautiful desert landscape. It was even more jarring to see the hundreds of shacks lining the hillsides on the Mexican side and the mansions on the streets of the U.S. side and the heavily armed guards on both sides. I talked to migrants from shelters all along the border—in Nogales, in Agua Prieta, in Altar. They all told me the same story. "There is no work. We need to feed our families." Several repeated over and over, "We are not coming for a better life. We are coming just to survive." The border has separated so many families and many of the people I talked to were desperately trying to return to children in the U.S. Some had tried multiple times to cross, been caught and processed by Border Patrol and were returning to try again.

"People who experience trauma live in the suspended middle territory, between life and death… Neither a figure of life or death exclusively, the cry from the wound is the hinge that links the two. It is a cry of witness from the middle." Shelly Rambo

This middle territory is no metaphor on the U.S.-Mexico border. It is literally a fight between life and death in the borderlands. Everything is against the migrant—the desert, the patrols, the roaming gangs, local ranchers, and time. Even with the economic downturn, many estimate that up to 1400 people are crossing through the Sonoran desert every day, driven there by U.S. border policy. Operating under a policy of deterrence, the federal government consciously decided to funnel people into the desert, hoping that the harsh conditions and high death toll would keep others from following. But people are desperate enough to keep coming—and many do die. 253 people were found dead in the desert just last year, many who were never identified.

Those who are shuffled back and forth by unjust economic policies and harsh anti-immigration laws give witness to the wound on the border. The twelve year old girl trying to take care of her sick mother and baby brother who had just spent two days in custody after being found in the desert. She told us about the girl she met, crying in Border Patrol custody, who had miscarried in a Border Patrol van after being kicked by a patrol's horse. The Guatemalan woman who had fallen off the train on her way up to Nogales and was now crossing the desert alone with her husband because they could not afford to pay a coyote. She told me; "I am afraid, but God will protect us." The couple who had left their children behind in Michoacán and were heading to San Francisco to try to make enough money to take care of them. They set off across the plaza in Altar with their backpacks, ready to try again after being deported on their first attempt. They had been on the road a month so far.

"War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it." Elie Weisel

One person warned us about the border; "It is a low intensity war zone." She was not joking. The desert is full of high tech tracking equipment, low flying helicopters, and armed Border Patrol. Driving the back roads with humanitarian groups looking to provide food and water to migrants, I quickly lost count of the dozens of Border Patrol vehicles and checkpoints and Wackenhut buses used to transport people to detention. At border checkpoints, guys with machine guns are everywhere. Parts of the fence are electrified and crowned with rolled barbed wire. All of this largely to keep out an invasion of the poor.

I met a young Border Patrol agent at a checkpoint who seemed eager to go home to San Diego. He laughed; "As long as they keep making Mexicans, I'll have a job." The dehumanization didn't end there. ICE agents I met with were unable to refer to people crossing borders as anything other than aliens, illegals, or worse, "bodies." There is no accountability for agents who abuse people in their custody and reports of violent abuse, such as kicking, punching, threatening, and even raping migrants are common. The week I got there, a 17 year old kid was shot on top of the border fence by a Border Patrol agent, a kid who ended up being on his way to or from a party he went to with his U.S. girlfriend on the other side.

The war zone spills into U.S. federal courtrooms, where Operation Streamline processes seventy people a day in Tucson solely for the crime of crossing the wrong border. The day I visited, I saw sick women and men who could barely walk, fully shackled, led up in groups of seven to the front of an English speaking court with minimal translation and forced to give up their rights and plead guilty. Seventy people, one at a time, said; "Cupable." Guilty. Guilty for wanting to feed hungry families. Guilty for fleeing economic policies largely induced by U.S. policy. Guilty for entering away from a port of entry without documentation it is impossible for poor people to obtain.

Throughout my trip, these words from Elie Weisel kept haunting me; "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented… When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe." And, in the last three weeks, I was visiting the center of the universe.

Christmas Thoughts

Christmas is a time of expectation and joy. It falls within a few days of the winter solstice, the time when the darkest days are over and the earth awaits the slow return of the sun. We celebrate the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, we sing carols about joy and hope, and our children do pageants remembering the joyful birth of a baby two thousand years ago. Advent reflections are full of thoughts of birthing new life and looking forward in our lives. But, I wonder, how often do we reflect on just how painful birth can be? The picture above reminds me of just how difficult and bloody birth can be, and reminds me just how lonely and isolated the birth of the Bethlehem babe must have been.

It also reminds me of how painful the bringing forth of new life can be. When we allow ourselves to be pregnant with possibilities, with life, with hope, we also invite pain and birthing. It is not always a fully pleasant experience. We experience waiting and pain and labor in both our personal and collective lives.

I think about what the journey has been like for women seeking equality in a patriarchal world and, pertinant to my context, seeking the right to preside at the table, to re-present Christ at the altar.

Susan Ross quotes Frances Frank in her poem on this struggle;

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,
After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Well that she said it to him them,
For dry old men,
brocaded robes belying barreness,
Ordain that she not say it for him now.

For a better part of my life, I struggled with a call I was told could not exist because I was a woman. There was much pain in the birthing of new possibility in my life. I have faced and continue to face the angst and the pain of birthing new life, new possibilities. I am grateful to have found competent midwives-- in the church, in seminary, in all the friends who have supported me through this time of new discovery. It may be painful, but it also wonderful to bring new life into the world.

A Country Girl’s Meditation in the City

When I walk in the city I am afraid. Not of the cars or the people or the culture I don't always understand. I'm afraid of losing what I love. When I walk past the homes of the wealthy with BNWs parked in front, I see the bags of good mulch leaves left out for garbage pickup. The roots of an old oak still push up the concrete and asphalt, pushing down below the ground where everything is still free, its last remaining leaves dancing in the road. A pine tree rustles up ahead, but its whispering voice is overcome by the sound of sirens rushing past. When I finally reach the river—that beautiful running water that runs through Boston, I see the sun reflecting on the little waves and the geese flying low, staying for the winter because they know there will be enough food. Runners pass me constantly, their iPods to their ears, blocking out not only the traffic, but also the soft lapping of the water on the bank. Garbage floats in the corners and I turn into the little patch of woods that reminds me that nature still exists. The trees are young and small, growing on the roots of the large trees that once towered over the place and are now probably a rotting boat somewhere on the harbor. Robins and jays pick their way through the leaves, rustling and calling each other until a car horn drowns their voices.

And then I am really afraid. I am afraid that there are no wild places left, that since my leaving, the open places and the forest places have been swallowed up by concrete and asphalt, that all rivers are running with sewage and pollution, that every place is now full of the sound of cars and the smell of fumes. I try to smell the crisp autumn air full of the tangy smell of rotting leaves, but I catch only a whiff beyond the exhaust and the lady's perfume up ahead. I can't feel the soft spongy earth beneath my feet because nearly every inch is covered in walking trails. A few old trees are left in that corner, to be sure. What have they seen? Have they seen the demise of the forest and the fishing grounds that these places once were? When I look, I can see no place to retreat. There are just miles and miles of concrete jungle and brick building, concrete sidewalks and traffic jams.

I am constantly reminded in the city how important our countryside is, how important the wild places are, how important it is that we learn to live with and on the land in a way that will allow future generations to not only survive but thrive. I am reminded that we are all interconnected—human beings and the cycle of life, the wild animals and the farm creatures that feed us, the forests and the rivers.

Perhaps what scares me most in the city is that it is hard to find God. I can see God in the faces of the people that I meet and in the little cracks of nature that appear in broken sidewalks. But I always hear God's voice best in the wild places.

Wendell Berry shares my fear in his poem, A Timbered Choir.

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

…the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.