Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

Volume 18, No. 5 May 2012 $1.00

A publication of the American Friends Service Committee

by Michael Eisenscher

The United States is the only super-power left on the planet. Today itpossesses the mightiest military in

the entire recorded history of humanity.With more than 8,500 nuclear warheads,our country has the capability of not onlydestroying, but actually exterminatingmost life on the planet.

The United States now accounts for 42percent of all military spending in theworld, and it maintains more than 1000foreign military bases in 130 countries.

The size of our military arsenal is stag-gering, almost beyond imagining. With 71nuclear submarines, the U.S. Navy hasseven times more than China and morethan twice as many as Russia. In addition,the U.S. fleet includes 11 aircraft carriers.No other country in the world has morethan two and all of the rest of the coun-tries together have only nine. Russia hasonly one and China has none.

The overkill represented by our sea-going arsenal is more than matched byour aerial forces. With 4400 bombers,

fighter planes and attack aircraft, theUnited States has more than both Chinaand Russia combined. Our nation also hasfour times as many attack helicopters asthe whole rest of the world combined.

With all these weapons and such vastlysuperior military might, why is it thatAmericans still don�’t feel safe?

One source of the prevalent feeling of

insecurity is the growing economicinequality that has dangerously eroded thestandard of living for millions of people.Growing poverty, poor health care andmassive homelessness have created aform of �“national insecurity�” that cannotbe alleviated with military spending onthe �“national security state.�”

The 400 richest families in the United

States have more wealth than the bottom150 million combined. As a result, theUnited States has the fifth most unequaldistribution of wealth in the entire world.

As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent ofthe U.S. population held only 7 percent ofall the wealth. The top 1 percent had 42

by Ariel Messman-Rucker

Protesters angry over the unjust eco-nomic divide in the United Statescame from all over the Bay Area

and disrupted business as usual at WellsFargo�’s annual shareholders meeting onApril 24 in San Francisco.

About 2,000 demonstrators marchedfrom Justin Herman Plaza �— the epicenterof the Occupy SF movement last fall �— andconverged on the Merchants ExchangeBuilding in downtown San Francisco whereabout 250 shareholders gathered on the15th floor to hear Wells Fargo CEO JohnStumpf report on the bank�’s $15.9 billionprofits from 2011.

Protesters shut down nearby streets, satdown and chained themselves together atthe entrances to the shareholders meeting,and set up a makeshift stage in front ofWells Fargo on the back of a flatbed truckwhere labor groups, Occupiers, activistsand religious leaders spoke to the crowd.

�“Come out and hold your shareholdermeeting with the 99 percent! Come holdyour meeting with the people,�” shoutedspeaker Tanya Dennis, who is a leaderwith the Home Defenders League, a group

of underwater homeowners fighting banksacross the country.

Energetic protesters filled the streets,shouting �“Embargo Wells Fargo!�” and�“We are the 99 percent, let us in!�” Theybrandished hundreds of signs with slogansreading �“Occupy Wells Fargo,�” �“StopPredatory Loans,�” �“Abolish Student andMortgage Debt,�” and �“Foreclose theBanks Not Homes.�”

More than 150 protesters bought sharesof Wells Fargo stock or had proxy state-ments and attempted to gain entrance tothe shareholders meeting so they couldconfront bank executives about WellsFargo�’s role in the current financial crisis,the high number of foreclosures that arereducing American families to homeless-ness, and its investment in private prisons.

The police blocked off entrances to thebuilding and most protesting shareholderswere turned away, even though they had alegal right to attend the annual meeting.

�“I thought it was important to protest,�”said Rev. Dr. Mario Howell, who spoke atthe demonstration after being turned awayand denied entrance at the shareholders

�“Just Say No To The Violence Of War!�” Women hold vigil on Golden Gate Bridge in protest of militarism. Carol Harvey photo

Spending on U.S. War Machine Creates Rising Poverty

See Campaign for New Priorities page 9

New Priorities Campaignprotests military spending asa direct cause of increasingpoverty and homelessness.

Massive Protest at WellsFargo Exposes CorporateMisconduct of Big Banks

Occupy SF conducts a sit-in to shut down Wells Fargo. Ariel Messman-Rucker photos

See Massive Protest at Wells Fargo page 12

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Ken Butigan

My brother Larry would havebeen 57 on March 15, 2012. Inthe winter of 2001 he died on

the streets. He had spent most of his lifeon the road �— picking fruit, working sea-sonally cutting Christmas trees, but most-ly hitchhiking or riding the rails by clam-bering into open boxcars before the rail-way police could spot him.

He once told me a harrowing story ofscrambling up into the narrow openingbetween two freight cars and finding arickety place to stand as the train whippeddown the line. Not only was it difficultholding on, he had to avoid getting his legcaught in the steel coupling between thecars. Mostly he succeeded, and when hedidn�’t, he was lucky enough to extract hisfoot in time to come away with only somebruises and not something worse.

When Larry was 13, he and a couplefriends were arrested for stealing a six-pack of beer. His friends got off, but Larrywas rocketed into the juvenile justice sys-tem. He spent six weeks in a facility 30miles from home and was never quite thesame afterward.

He graduated from high school andfeverishly held on to his dream of drum-ming in a band, but his restlessness and dis-affection drove him from place to place,and often into the mean teeth of a societythat has little use for poor and homelesspeople. As one of Kurt Vonnegut�’s charac-ters in Slaughterhouse-Five says, �“It�’s acrime to be poor in America.�” This is atruth Larry experienced for decades.

He was jailed for vagrancy many timesand was often physically assaulted. In the1980s, he called me from a mental institu-tion and asked me to get him out �— all thedrugs they were feeding him, he said, weremessing up his head. I talked with the peo-ple there, who eventually released him.

He came and spent some time with meand we visited a nonprofit that found jobsfor poor and low-income people. I was putoff by the unexpectedly harsh tone of thestaffer with whom we met. I suppose itwas some variation on �“tough love,�” but itstruck me as unnecessarily shrill and con-demning of someone the person had justmet. Larry took off the next day.

I�’m one of eight siblings, and each ofus, over the years, offered help, but oftenLarry�’s justifiable wariness of the kind ofhelp he experienced at the hands of thesystem kept him in motion �— and on tothe next arrest or physical altercation.

For years I wondered why I got involvedin political activism. Much of this had to dowith the charged atmosphere I experiencedin graduate school when a number of pow-erful social movements were gatheringmomentum in the 1980s, including thoseworking for a nuclear-free future or peaceand justice in Central America. But slowly Ibegan to realize that this path was rootedmost deeply in a profound poignancy andindignation I felt at the way Larry was treat-ed in this world at every turn: the trauma ofsystemic disregard, disrespect and activeharassment.

Larry taught me that everyone matters,and it was this primal lesson that con-sciously and unconsciously fueled a long-ing within for a world whose policies,structures and conditions reflected thismost basic fact.

In 1993, after a decade of activism

focused on foreign policy, I worked for sev-eral years with Religious Witness withHomeless People. This San Francisco coali-tion of 45 churches, synagogues andmosques, under the leadership of Sr. BernieGalvin, sought to dismantle the city�’sMatrix Program. In a city that at the timehad 16,000 homeless people and only 1,400shelter beds, Matrix criminalized sleepingand eating in public. Under this policy, thecity police made innumerable arrests andissued tens of thousands of tickets that wentunpaid (most homeless people couldn�’tafford the $78.00 fine) that increasinglyrisked being converted into jail time.

Religious Witness mounted a nonvio-lent direct action campaign aimed at alert-ing and mobilizing the populace and poli-cy-makers for change through protests,fasts and lobbying. We organized a seriesof sleep-ins in the city�’s parks, includingUnion Square (at the heart of the city�’sfashionable downtown shopping district)and Golden Gate Park when, usually afterthe late local news signed off for thenight, a phalanx of baton-wielding policeofficers would file in, roust us from oursleeping bags, and haul us off to jail.

We also challenged the law that prohib-ited eating in public. The police were arrest-ing members of �“Food Not Bombs�” andother groups for ladling out soup to hungrypeople on the street. In response, ReligiousWitness organized a banquet for 800 home-less women and men in the space consid-ered most off-limits by the powers that be:Civic Center Plaza in front of SanFrancisco�’s ornate City Hall.

A well-planned logistical operationdelivered to the site dozens of tables,chairs, linen tablecloths, china, silverware,cut flowers, and many succulent dinnercourses. Three choirs provided music.

Both concrete and symbolic, this mealwas a momentary tableau of the world welonged for: where everyone sits downtogether, eats together, relaxes together,enjoys one another�’s company �— whiledisregarding and undoing the regulationsdesigned to separate and diminish.

Faced with the dilemma that this well-publicized feast posed, the police did notswoop down and arrest people from reli-gious communities across the city. Front-page coverage of this event in the localpress accelerated the campaign.Eventually Religious Witness succeededin ending the Matrix program, symbolizedby the then-district attorney shreddingthousands of tickets.

This victory did not mean the end ofReligious Witness�’s work. New versionsof Matrix have crept up over the past 15years, and activists have had to mount theramparts innumerable times in SanFrancisco and also across the country.

This vital tradition of struggling to endthe ongoing attack on homeless humanbeings is one of the many important tribu-taries flowing into the river that is theOccupy movement as it readies to renewits work for economic equality.

After Larry died, there was a proces-sion for him organized by the localCatholic Worker and homeless activists.The police tried to prevent us from goinginto the street, but there was somethingboth gentle and firm in the crowd thatchanged the atmosphere, a sense of rever-ence for everyone everywhere as wewashed into the streets that Larry loved,even though this was one of the places

where he was badgered and arrested andsometimes prevented from occupying.

As we moved in a determined silence,the stance of the police shifted. Theybegan to stop traffic so we could moveunimpeded through the intersections andon through the downtown area, arrivingfinally at City Hall, where a few peoplespoke, imploring the city to do more forthose without homes.

This year, I mark Larry�’s birthday byremembering his life and death and spirit.His ongoing presence stirs a longing for atime and place where the infinite worth ofeach one of us is taken for granted �— andstokes a willingness to take action to helpbring all of us a bit closer to that unendingbanquet.

Everyone MattersA Lasting Lesson from a Lost BrotherAs one of Kurt Vonnegut�’s characters in Slaughterhouse-Five says, �“It�’s a crime to be poor in America.�” This is atruth my brother Larry experienced for decades.

Larry and Ken Butigan in San Francisco. Ken holds a photo of fiveof the family�’s children, with Larry at the top of this �“family tree.�”

Photo by CynthiaOkayama Dopke

Native Son 2012by George WynnImagine being bornand raised in San Franciscoa nonviolent smart kid intoxicated by Jean Paul Sartredrafted into Vietnamlearning to hate and killcoming home a shadowof his former selfin and out of workmostly out

Now at sixty five limping pushing an overloaded shopping cartHe says, "I don't have time to be pissedI have to survive."

How can we expect himto get his footingwhen passers-by and merchantswould prefer he didn't exist

Another HomelessPerson Just Diedby Judy Jonesanother homeless person just diedanother homeless person just diedand not one person criednot one person cried

cuz it�’s just another homeless person that diednot people like you and melike you and me

someone�’s dyingin the gutter somewherewith nothing but their souls laid barenothing but their souls laid bare

homeless child eatingoutta garbage canand not one person seesnot one person sees

ol�’ woman fell on da streetcuz she'd had nothin to eatnothin to eatol�’ woman fell on da street

tonight I looked in the mirrorand criedfor I saw my own soul had diedtonight I looked in the mirror and cried for my own soul had died

OF ESCAPEby Claire J. BakerThe homeless often changesleeping spots:from under a bridgeto near RR tracks;from field-edge, among bushesto under a landing platformof a foreclosed factory;from back of lumber yardto a lean-to in the woods.

They've learned:wiser to shuffle on, not settlelong enough to marka space of one's own.Best stay in the uneasy modeof escape,sleep with ten eyes open.

Jesus Is Watching by Judy Jones money changersmoney lendersbewareone day Jesus will returnand those who did nothingto help the dying poorwill try and hidebut their doors will be barredand all their money burnedin return for theirhearts of stonethat allowed the poorest of the poorto starve before their eyesmoney changersmoney lendersbeware

May 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE TO STREET SPIRIT!Street Spirit is published by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Homeless vendors receive 50 papers a day, earnincome and educate the community about social justice. Please donate or subscribe to Street Spirit!! I enclose $25 for one year's subscription.! I enclose a donation of ! $100 ! $50 ! $ 25

Name: __________________________________________________________Address: ________________________________________________________City: ________________________________ State:______ Zip: ___________

Send Donations to: AFSC65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103

May 2012

by Lydia Gans

When J.C. Orton was hiredas the new coordinator ofthe Street Spirit vendorprogram in September

2011, it proved a big step forward for theprogram. Although he has only been onthe job for eight months, Orton alreadyhas revitalized the vendor program andmade truly remarkable improvements inthe number of vendors actively working,the number of issues sold, and the overallmorale of the vendor team.

Every month, Orton receives 20,000copies of the Street Spirit newspaper to dis-tribute to more than 150 registered vendors.Under his leadership, more vendors havebeen attracted to the program than everbefore, and they have been selling out theentire 20,000 publication run every month.Best of all, vendors now feel they havesomeone who truly cares about them andtheir ability to survive on the streets.

Orton keeps in touch with Street Spiritvendors, makes sure they have enoughpapers and there are no conflicts or hassles.Most vendors are homeless or have verylow incomes, and they keep the entire pro-ceeds from their sales. The entire cost ofproducing the paper is borne by theAmerican Friends Service Committee.

Almost every other homeless newspa-per in America, Canada and Europecharges vendors anywhere from 25 to 50percent of the purchase price of the paper.Street Spirit in the East Bay and StreetSheet in San Francisco are two of the onlystreet newspapers that provide the paperentirely for free. The purity of thisapproach keeps alive the values of com-passion and giving in a nation that tries toreduce everything to the self-seekingmaterialism of the profit motive.

For J.C. Orton, a longtime homelessadvocate and Catholic Worker, directingthe Street Spirit vendor program is onemore way to connect with people on thestreets who are struggling to survive. Foryears, Orton has been providing meals tohomeless and hungry people, collecting anddistributing clothes, sleeping bags and othersupplies, providing mail service, and givinghelp with financial management, advice andmoral support to anyone in need.

Running the vendor program, Ortonsays, dovetails with his other work on thestreet. As he gets to know the vendors andlearns about their situation, he can providehelp with other services they might need.

In signing up a vendor for Street Spirit,he asks only for a name �— no ID is neces-sary. He just needs enough information sohe can issue a badge and have a way tocontact the person. The interview is morelike a conversation, an indirect way ofeliciting information.

Orton says that he asks prospective

vendors where they slept last night. Hedoesn�’t ask if they are homeless, butwhere they spent last night. �“What wasthe situation?�” Orton asks.

�“Well, I slept on somebody�’s sofa,�” isthe reply. �“Homeless, sofa,�” he records.

When vendors tell him they slept in avacant building near University Avenue,or in an emergency shelter, Orton records�“homeless squat�” or �“homeless shelter.�”

�“Some people are vehicularly housed,�”Orton says. �“Some pay rent, which is byfar the minority. So I end up knowinghow bad their situation is.�”

Then Orton gets to their motivation.�“Where are you going to sell the paper,how many days, and at what time? Andthen the ultimate question: Why do youwant to sell the paper? I say, don�’t giveme a floppy answer, tell me your reason.Why do you want to sell Street Spirit?�”

He first assures them, �“I�’m going to letyou sell it. Some people say for money,they need to pay rent. This tells me what�’son their mind at the moment.�”

J.C. Orton continues to check withthem whenever he sees them, asking howthey�’re doing, keeping up with changes intheir lives. If they have problems, hemight give them referrals, and help themmake connections. He lets them know hecares about them.

When Orton began directing the ven-dor program last September, there wereonly about 30 vendors. Now he has 175signed up. About 60 percent are highlyactive, and the others �“come and go.�” Heexplains, �“They get 10 papers and youdon�’t see them for a few months. Theycome back and say, �‘I want to get papersagain.�’ I say, �‘Where have you been?�’ �‘Iwas in the hospital, in jail or I went toColorado and I was there for threemonths.�’ No problem.�”

If vendors lose an ID badge, he printsanother at no charge. Previously, theywere charged, but Orton has already pro-vided 80 replacement badges at no cost,beyond the first batch of 175 he printedup. �“We don�’t charge if you lose or ruin abadge,�” he says. �“The idea is for people tofeel comfortable about coming to me.�”

That leads to a word he uses frequent-ly: �“accessibility.�” Orton has a set of regu-lar hours and locations every day of theweek where vendors can get their papers[see sidebar]. But even beyond that, he isaccessible just about all the time. Hefreely gives out his cell phone number,and he almost always answers the phone!

If a vendor needs papers, he tries toaccommodate them. A vendor namedMike tells about the time he called J.C. totell him he was going to his spot outsidethe Whole Foods Market in Berkeley at 2p.m. and would be needing more papers.At the time, Orton was in San Leandro,but he dropped off the papers on his way

back, saving Mike a trip to his house. Mike has known J.C. for a long time

and talks about all the things he does:�“Does mail call, gets people�’s mail forthem, breakfasts �— grits, boiled eggs,coffee �— all kinds or stuff. He�’s an all-around good person.�”

There are many people out on thestreet who echo what Mike says: �“He�’s anall-around good person. He cares.�”

Orton also provides a mail service bymaintaining a post office box for peoplewho are homeless or have no fixedaddress. They can meet him any time toget their mail. Although many transac-tions and correspondence are now doneelectronically, people still sometimesneed an address to get checks or keep intouch with family and friends.

For 25 years, Orton has been servingas Representative Payee for people withparticular disabilities who need help man-aging their money. Right now he is theRep Payee for five people, paying theirbills. �“But I also make sure they havetheir groceries,�” he says. �“I will get achecking account for (the person) andwhen he needs money, I go to the bankand take the money out, get a writtenreceipt, everything�’s aboveboard. And Idon�’t charge. If we charge we�’d have tobe bonded, lots of hassle. I do it becauseit�’s fun. Because I care about people.�”

And then there are the countless mealshe has served in the East Bay. Workingwith Night on the Streets Catholic Workerover the years, Orton has been preparingbreakfasts and other meals, organizingfood giveaways, and driving his van allover town, offering soup on cold nights.And if a person is hungry or needs some-thing special, he usually can come up withsome goodies or snacks.

Orton also gives away many sleepingbags, blankets, socks, and all sorts ofthings that homeless people need. Hissmall house and garage are like a ware-house, crammed with vast amounts ofuseful resources for people who arehomeless. He is constantly looking fordonors to provide for a never-ending needfor new supplies.

The Catholic Worker philosophy meanstaking personal responsibility for helpingneighbors in need �— a set of values basedon compassion, mercy and justice.

Orton talks about a vision of justice inwhich we are our brother�’s and sister�’s

keeper. �“Let people know,�” he says, �“ifthey allow people to go hungry whenthere is so much food, if they allow peo-ple to go homeless when there is so muchresources out there, if they allow people todo without clothing when there�’s so manyclothes around, if they allow people to dowithout their dignity and their respectwhen there is so much to be given, thenwe�’re really ripping the system off �— rip-ping off each other �— because that�’s whatmakes us who we are. If we don�’t careabout each other, then who are we?�”

New Director RevitalizesStreet Spirit Vendor TeamJ.C. Orton talks about a vision of justice in which we areour brother�’s keeper, our sister�’s keeper. Helping peoplein need is �“what makes us who we are,�” he says. �“If wedon�’t care about each other, then who are we?�”

J.C. Orton distributes Street Spirit to homeless vendors in his van. Lydia Gans photo

Street Spirit Vendor TeamThe Street Spirit vendor program is

managed by J.C. Orton. More than 150homeless vendors sell Street Spirit inBerkeley and Oakland. The vendor pro-gram provides many jobs to homelesspeople in bad economic times, and is apositive alternative to panhandling.

Please buy Street Spirit only frombadged vendors. If you have ques-tions, comments or concerns aboutthe vendor program, call J.C. Ortonon his cell phone at (510) 684-1892.

___________________________

Hours for Street Spirit VendorsVendors can call J.C. Orton at (510) 684-1892.. If he is able, he may be able todeliver the Street Spirit to your location.

HoursMonday through Saturday: 7:30-8 a.m.At the breakfast at 2362 Bancroft Way.Monday through Saturday: 8-9 a.m.At Peet�’s Coffee at Shattuck andKittredge in Berkeley.Mon, Tues, and Weds: 9-10 a.m.He is parked in front of the MASC at1931 Center Street, Berkeley.

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb designer: Ariel Messman-RuckerContributors: David Bacon, Claire J.Baker, Jack Bragen, Ken Butigan,Cynthis Okayama Dopke, Lydia Gans,Carol Harvey, Judy Jones, ArielMessman-Rucker, Robert L. Terrell,Western Regional Advocacy Project,George WynnStreet Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, poems, photos and art.Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.orgVisit Street Spirit on Facebook:www.facebook.com/streetspiritnews

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by Terry Messman

In Birmingham, Alabama, the echoes ofthe civil rights movement can still beheard to this day, and the brave resis-

tance movement that overcame the seem-ingly all-powerful system of segregation isa lasting blueprint of how a seeminglypowerless people can overcome even themost powerful forms of injustice.

Since Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,and many other civil rights leaders wereso inspired by the message and nonviolentmethods of Mohandas Gandhi, it was his-torically symbolic that Jim and ShelleyDouglass, renowned peace activists andlifelong students of Gandhi, should haveinvited peace and justice activists fromacross the country to attend a retreat onGandhian nonviolence in a Birminghamchurch in late March 2012.

My wife Ellen Danchik and I wereamong those who attended the three-dayretreat with Narayan Desai, Gandhi�’sclosest living disciple and one of the verylast living links to the momentous cam-paign of nonviolent resistance that liberat-ed India from British rule.

But if we traveled to Alabama insearch of new inspiration from NarayanDesai, and from visiting the historicalsites of the civil rights movement inBirmingham and Montgomery, we leftwith a deep awareness of what can onlybe called �“the cost of conscience.�”

JIM AND SHELLEY DOUGLASSJim and Shelley Douglass have studied

and exemplified Gandhian nonviolencefor several decades. For many years, theylived in a resistance community near theBangor Naval Base in the state ofWashington, where they led a nonviolentcampaign in resistance to the Trident sub-marine�’s first-strike nuclear warheads.They went on to launch the White Traincampaign which organized activistsaround the nation to hold nonviolent sit-ins on railroad tracks to block trains trans-porting nuclear weapons.

In recent years, Jim and Shelleyformed Mary�’s House, a Catholic Workercommunity in Birmingham, where theyassist poor families and carry out peaceactivism. Jim Douglass is the author ofsuch groundbreaking works on the theolo-gy of nonviolence as The NonviolentCross, Resistance and Contemplation, andmost recently, JFK and the Unspeakable,and Gandhi and The Unspeakable, twobooks that analyze the powerful politicalforces behind these two assassinations.

It was highly meaningful to attend thisretreat with such amazing activists asBishop Tom Gumbleton, one of the lead-ing peacemakers in the nation, and a manwho has long been one of my personalheroes; courageous nonviolent activistsKathy Kelly and Bert Sacks, who werefined heavily for delivering medical sup-plies to Iraqi citizens victimized by thewar; David and Jan Hartsough, lifelongnonviolent activists who exemplify theQuaker witness for peace and social jus-tice; Ken Butigan, a nonviolent trainerand the director of Pace e Bene, aFranciscan peace group; Rose Berger, aneditor of Sojourners magazine; MichaelNagler, co-founder of the Peace andConflict Studies Program at UC Berkeley

and founder of the Metta Center forNonviolence; Patrick O�’Neill of theNational Catholic Reporter; and FatherLouis Vitale, a Franciscan priest who hasserved several lengthy jail sentencesrecently for acts of civil disobedience inprotest of American militarism.

In an interview after attending theretreat, David Hartsough said, �“I personallythink it was a great contribution to themovement for social justice that JimDouglass brought together activists fromthroughout this country to spend a fullweekend with this great disciple of Gandhi.Narayan Desai shared with all of us thespirit and the life and the important idealsthat Gandhi not only taught, but lived.�”

Hartsough said the retreat wasn�’t mere-ly a lesson in the past history of nonvio-lence, but rather an urgent and compellinginvitation to explore how activists inAmerica today can apply the lessons ofGandhian resistance to resisting injustice.

�“Many of the people at the retreat areinspired by Gandhi and Martin Luther Kingin their own lives,�” Hartsough said. �“Someeting together and developing relation-ships helped us cross-fertilize by sharingour activist commitments. We exploredhow these different kinds of activism fittogether as a way to try to help transformour own society.�”

That was one of Jim Douglass�’s intentsfor the retreat �— encouraging today�’sactivists to consider how Gandhian nonvi-olence can deepen our own commitmentsto social justice. Douglass asked, �“So whoare we in relation to this question of carry-ing on this profound, nonviolent, trans-forming, satyagraha tradition of Gandhi?How are we going to explore the possibil-ities of transformation at the point where anational-security state will end, as it must.For all those reasons, I think we had aretreat that is life-challenging.�”

Since Narayan Desai is now 87, wewere aware that this might be his last tripto America. He traveled to Birminghamwith his daughter, Sanghamitra (Uma)Gadekar, a medical doctor, and a nonvio-lent leader in her own right in the anti-nuclear power movement in India.

Douglass said afterwards that one ofthe most moving aspects of the retreat wasseeing Narayan�’s close relation with Uma,�“whom he very lovingly describes as hisdaughter, his doctor and his director �— or,smilingly, his dictator.�” Douglass added,�“They have both have huge gifts and sucha beautiful relationship in a profoundlynonviolent and mutually illuminating way�— illuminating for all of us.�”

THE FINAL WITNESS TO GANDHI

Narayan Desai is the �“ultimate, and, in acertain sense, the final witness to Gandhi,�”Douglass said. Narayan is the son ofMahadev Desai, Gandhi�’s closest personalfriend, biographer, and secretary.

Douglass said, �“Narayan had this total-ly unique experience of Gandhi up to hisdeath. He grew up in Gandhi�’s ashram, hewas the son of Gandhi�’s secretary, and heplayed with Gandhi in the waters of theriver near the ashram. And then he wasalso uniquely involved with Gandhi�’s twogreatest disciples, Vinoba Bhave andJayaprakash Narayan.�”

Narayan Desai worked alongside

Vinoba Bhave in the land-gift movement,collecting voluntary donations of land fromthe rich and distributing it to poor, landlesspeople. He worked with Jayaprakash in theShanti Sena campaigns, the Indian peacebrigades that sought to nonviolently endviolent conflicts.

Later, Desai became the director ofShant Sena, and was involved in foundingPeace Brigades International. He waselected chairman of War Resisters�’International, and has just completed a2,300 page biography of Gandhi.

A FATHER-SON CLOSENESS

As a child, Narayan Desai enjoyed afather-son closeness with Gandhi, or�“Bapu,�” as he called the leader of theIndian resistance movement.

At the retreat, Desai asked, �“How wasGandhi�’s relation to children? I can tellyou, he was first and foremost our friend.Nothing more, nothing less. We came toswim with him. There were 56 yearsbetween me and him. But we went swim-ming, splashing water in his face and hewould be facing us off and we thought, itwas a good game!�”

Satyagraha, the term Gandhi used todescribe his experiments in nonviolentresistance, may be literally translated as�“holding firm to truth.�’ As Desai told usat the retreat, it can be translated as �“truthforce,�” �“soul force�” and �“love force.�”

Desai reminded us that each of thesethree synonyms for satyagraha expressnonviolence as a �“force,�” a forceful wayof struggling, not some kind of peacefulpassivity. Instead, Gandhi�’s satyagrahacampaigns were mounted as a nonviolentinsurrection, a new form of rebellion thatwas based on love and truth and reverencefor life, and yet a force powerful enoughto defeat the might of the British Empireat its strongest.

A FORCE THAT MOVES MOUNTAINSIn the United States, people often mis-

construe nonviolence to mean the merenegation of violence. Yet Desai explained,�“To Gandhi, nonviolence was an activeforce that could move mountains.�”

Desai said that this was a crucial con-tribution Gandhi made to the concept ofnonviolence. Until then, nonviolence wastaken as something very passive and inno-cent. �“Here, nonviolence was consideredas a force that could change the world,�”Desai explained. �“After 1945, Gandhisaid, nonviolence is the only force thatcan face nuclear weapons. He came rightout and said that.�”

Another groundbreaking contributionGandhi made to our understanding ofsocial-change movements is that revolu-tions need to both �“raze an unjust systemto the ground�” while at the same time they

Who Are These Children Dressed in Red?

See Who Are These Children page 5

Narayan Desai, one of Gandhi�’s closest friends and disciples,speaks at the Birmingham retreat on nonviolent resistance.

Terry Messmanphoto

The cost of conscience is shown in this sculpture in a Birminghampark where schoolchildren show their willingness to go to jail.

Terry Messmanphoto

Nonviolent Resistance and the Cost ofConscience, from India to Birmingham Gandhi�’s satyagraha may be defined as �“love force.�” Whatcould be more beautiful than a form of resistance based onlove for life? Yet, as Dostoyevsky wrote, �“Love in action is aharsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.�”

May 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

�“raise up something new.�”To transform society, movements must

go beyond opposing injustices, and alsolaunch what Gandhi called �“the construc-tive program�” to build alternative institu-tions and new economic models andthereby create a renewed and more equi-table society that truly serves human life.

�“Gandhi was one of the very few revo-lutionaries who talked about both the pos-itive and negative sides of a revolution,�”Desai said.

It is fairly easy for activists to see theinjustices they want to raze to the ground.Desai said, �“They see colonialism, theysee imperialism, they see exploitation;they see color prejudice. They may seegender prejudice. And all that has to beremoved �— that�’s clear. They also knowsomething else may take its place, butthat�’s rather hazy, it�’s not very clear.�”

Revolutions and reform movementsusually are so focused on overcoming anunjust system that little thought or effortis spent on developing a new, life-affirm-ing vision �— the constructive program.

�“In Gandhi�’s actions, both processeswent hand in hand,�” Desai said. �“He want-ed to fight against colonialism and change asystem of violence, and in place of that,create a new system based on nonviolence.He started doing that while he was fightingagainst the violent system.�”

3 CONDITIONS FOR RESISTANCEGandhi found that blindly striking out

in an ill-considered, chaotic protest wastoo often futile. In Gandhi�’s nonviolentcampaigns, there were three conditionsfor satyagraha to be conducted withintegrity:

1. The cause must be just. Resistanceto injustice must be rooted in truth andactivists must check and cross-check theiranalysis of injustice. They must be open-minded and willing to change courses ifthat is where the truth leads.

2. Every action must have someexpression of love. It may be called com-passion, it may be mercy, it may be anexpression of generosity. But actions mustflow from love.

3. The nonviolent resister must be pre-pared for the most difficult kind of suffer-ing, physical or mental.

This third point is a very difficult onefor many U.S. activists to accept, or evenconsider. Desai�’s declaration that satya-graha is also known as �“love-force�” isbeautiful in its idealism; but when oneconsiders the sacrifices it may demand, itcan be terribly difficult and full of over-whelming hardships.

On his first night at the retreat, Desaisaid, �“If we have enough faith in love, weare prepared to die for love. Faith in lovemakes us able to cope with the world�’sconcerns. Love force can change situa-tions. It can move mountains. It canchange the hardest of hearts.�”

�“Love force�” is a beautiful way ofdescribing a form of resistance that seeksto overcome systems of injustice throughradical acts of dissent, rebellion and non-cooperation �— yet acts nonviolently, lov-ingly, always honoring life as sacred. Aform of resistance that is based on a rever-ence for life. What could be more lovely?

And yet, I kept hearing an echoingphrase all through the three-day retreat, anecho that became impossible to ignoreafter we left the retreat and visited thecivil rights memorials in Birmingham andMongomery.

The echo was a warning from Russiannovelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky: �“Love in

action is a harsh and dreadful thing com-pared with love in dreams.�” Dorothy Day,founder of the Catholic Worker, discov-ered the truth of Dostoyevsky�’s starkwarning when she attempted to embody�“love in action�” on the cruel, unforgivingstreets of New York City.

THE COST OF CONSCIENCELove may move us to join a nonviolent

movement, or start a Catholic Worker,and such a commitment is beautiful andinspiring �— until one adds in the �“cost ofconscience.�”

Consider the cost paid by NarayanDesai. Let me repeat what he told us at theretreat: �“If we have enough faith in love,we are prepared to die for love.�”

Narayan Desai was only a teenagedboy when his beloved father, MahadevDesai, died in prison in 1942 while nonvi-olently resisting Britain�’s unjust colonialrule of India. Mahadev Desai willinglygave his very life in the struggle forIndian independence, and in faithful ser-vice to his friend and leader, Gandhi.

In an interview, Jim Douglass said,�“The British government took 22 days toinform Narayan and his mother that hisfather had died in prison, which wasunconscionable. And how deep a blow itwas to have that knowledge and to have itso late. It had a huge impact upon him.�”

Yet Douglass explained that MahadevDesai had freely given his life out of lovefor Gandhi. He was obeying Gandhi�’s oft-repeated mantra that Indian resisters mustbe prepared to �“do or die�” for the cause offreedom and independence.

�“This brings home the depth ofMahadev�’s love for Gandhi becauseMahadev understood something so pro-found that he gave his life for Gandhi�’slife,�” said Douglass. �“Gandhi later saidthat Mahadev�’s sacrifice was not a smallthing, and said that his sacrifice is boundto hasten India�’s day of liberation.�”

Narayan was left fatherless because ofthis sacrifice in the name of �“love-force.�”Gandhi had always been his surrogatefather, and Narayan also lived to see this

beloved father figure �— �“Bapu�” �— assassi-nated in 1948 during the bitterly divisiveand violent partition of India and Pakistan.

Narayan himself endured arrests andbeatings during his own participation insatyagraha campaigns and his involve-ment in the Shanti Sena, the Indian peacebrigades. Yet his perspective is that allthese forms of suffering are to be cele-brated, not regretted.

Douglass said, �“At the heart of nonvio-lent transformation is the willingness toaccept suffering. This is a perspective thatwe, as Americans, resist.�”

ACCEPTING JAIL JOYFULLYDouglass related that, even as a small

boy, when his father was going to jail,Narayan accepted his father�’s jail sen-tence joyfully, and would encourage himto get a longer sentence next time!

�“That�’s the perspective of Gandhi�’sashram,�” Douglass explained. �“As thevarious members of the ashram went offto long jail terms, their families hoped forlonger jail terms. That is not our perspec-tive, for the most part.�”

This is not a matter of embracing suf-fering for its own sake. Nonviolent move-ments try to lessen the suffering of theworld by resisting the deadly systems ofmilitarism and economic oppression thatcause untold suffering and deaths.

Even though nonviolent movementsattempt to express reverence for life, thedeeply entrenched enemies of socialchange are free to use every weapon intheir arsenal against unarmed activists.

After all, Narayan was teaching usabout nonviolent resistance in a city thatwas notoriously referred to as�“Bombingham�” because so many church-es and homes of activists were bombed bythe powerful forces of racism.

Douglass drew a parallel betweenGandhi�’s willing embrace of the risks ofprison, beatings and even death, and thecourage of Martin Luther King, Jr., andthe civil rights activists of the South.

Douglass said, �“Martin Luther Kingsuffered the ultimate price as well. King

was anticipating his death and seeing it asa necessary, transforming hope that some-thing might be gained through theredemptive power of suffering.�”

King was even able to see the deaths offour young girls in the bombing at theBaptist Church in Birmingham as havingthe potential to be redemptive.

Douglass said, �“In his sermon at theirfuneral, King talked of redemptive suffer-ing. That�’s not an easy thing to talk aboutin the midst of parents who have just losttheir children in a terribly evil attack. Thisis an understanding of nonviolence that Ibelieve has something deeply to do withthe Gospel, the Beatitudes and the witnessof the crucifixion.�”

King delivered a sermon at the funeralfor three of the four girls on Sept. 18,1963. It has come to be known as �“Eulogyfor the Martyred Children.�”

Speaking only three days after theirdeaths, King said, �“These children �— unof-fending, innocent, and beautiful �— were thevictims of one of the most vicious and trag-ic crimes ever perpetrated against humani-ty. And yet they died nobly. They are themartyred heroines of a holy crusade forfreedom and human dignity.�”

Then King described his belief in theredemptive power of unearned suffering,saying: �“History has proven over and overagain that unmerited suffering is redemp-tive. The innocent blood of these littlegirls may well serve as a redemptive forcethat will bring new light to this dark city.�”

BIRMINGHAM MUSEUMImmediately after the retreat, Ellen and

I went with David and Jan Hartsough andKen Butigan to visit the BirminghamCivil Rights Institute, a beautifullydesigned and extremely moving museumthat shows the high costs paid by theBlack community for their brave acts ofresistance to the evil system of racialapartheid in the deep South.

The Birmingham museum is absolutelyrevelatory in conveying not only the his-

Who Are TheseChildren Dressedin Red?

See Who Are These Children page 6

from page 4

In Kelly Ingram Park, this sculpture shows a child attacked by police and dogs during a civil rights march. Terry Messman photo

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is absolutely revelatory in conveying notonly the history of the civil rights movement, but capturing the feeling of murder-ous racism transformed step by step, mile by mile, arrest by arrest, martyrdom bymartyrdom, into human liberation.

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T6

tory of the civil rights movement, but cap-turing the feeling of murderous racismtransformed step by step, mile by mile,arrest by arrest, martyrdom by martyr-dom, into human liberation.

I wish every American citizen wouldvisit Birmingham and Montgomery towitness the cost of conscience suffered byactivists in the civil rights era. It was ashockingly heavy price paid by principlednonviolent activists who were beaten,arrested, shot, attacked by police dogs andhigh-pressure firehoses, murdered in coldblood, and bombed, simply for taking partin a freedom movement that peacefullytried to end the tyranny of segregation.

We all know the story. It is a beautifulstory, full of some of the most inspira-tional moments in American history. It isbeautiful, like the song lyrics to �“WeShall Overcome.�” It is beautiful like �“lovein dreams.�” But in Birmingham, one isforced to confront the �“harsh and dread-ful�” reality of �“love in action.�”

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institutewas created in 1992 to enshrine theFreedom Movement�’s legacy of courageand confrontation. The museum has anuncanny power to take us back to the timewhen Black Americans threw off thechains of fear and placed their very liveson the line in resistance to a system ofwhite supremacy so vicious and cruel thatit even unleashed all the power of hateand violence and murder against childrenand ministers in prayer.

I have always admired the civil rightsmovement above all other movements.All the odds were against the Black com-munity, who responded with so much per-severance, so much courage, so muchlove, even in the face of deadly assaults.

But when you tour the museum, arrestby arrest, martyr by maryr, murder bymurder, you come to understand the over-whelming price that was paid. It shakesyou to your core just to see how muchwas paid and how much was lost.

For many of us, Birmingham was asacred space to study Gandhian nonvio-lence, a city sanctified by the unimagin-able bravery of schoolchildren who defiedfire hoses, attack dogs and police clubs,and ministers like Rev. FredShuttlesworth who endured beatings,arrests and the dynamiting of his home.

ON HALLOWED GROUNDThe Birmingham museum is located

on hallowed ground, consecrated by theblood of martyrs. After we viewed newsfootage of police dogs attacking childrenmarching nonviolently for civil rights, welooked out the large, floor-to-ceiling win-dows of the museum, right across thestreet at Kelly Ingram Park, a key stagingarea for the civil rights movement.

Kelly Ingram Park is the scene of oneof the most publicized episodes in thecivil rights movement. It is the park whereMartin Luther King and Rev. FredShuttlesworth led protests for votingrights and were attacked in a violentpolice raid ordered by Public SafetyCommissioner Bull Connor.

The shocking footage of activists andyoung children being viciously assaultedby police clubs and attack dogs sparked anationwide public outcry. Martin LutherKing later said that the news reports fromBirmingham moved the nation as nothingelse had, and led to the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawedsegregation in public spaces.

It was eerie and profoundly unsettlingto view the familiar news footage of theseviolent attacks on unarmed demonstratorsand then to look out the window at thevery park where it had all happened. The

museum has an amazing ability to makethose days come alive so one can vividlyfeel the brutality that was endured �— notjust by seasoned activists �— but byschoolchildren.

Inside that museum, our nation is stillon trial. Those lasting images of brutality,and bravery in the face of brutality, havehaunted me ever since we visited it.

In Kelly Ingram Park, sculptures byJames Drake have frozen in time thosemoments of violence and courage so theywill never be forgotten. We were strucksilent by the stories etched in stone �—sculptures of children behind jailhousebars, declaring that they�’re not afraid togo to jail. A sculpture of a policeman andhis German Shepherd attacking a small,defenseless boy. One statue of MartinLuther King and another of children, bothin the line of fire of high-powered watercannons mounted on tripods. A sculptureof three ministers kneeling in prayer.

One sculpture literally unleashes fearon the unsuspecting visitor as viciousdogs leap out of the walls, lunging andsnapping at passers-by, evoking themoment when terror was unleashed onschoolchildren.

After seeing the sculptures, JanHartsough said, �“What was very powerfulwas the sculpture in the park of the dogslunging out of the frame. It was so real. Itwas very powerful. I thought they reallycaptured the feeling and the terror of whatthat would be like.�”

But the terror grew much worse in thefollowing weeks. Across the corner fromthe museum is the Sixteenth Street BaptistChurch. It was a meeting place and orga-nizing center for civil rights activists, andmany marches began with processionsheading out of the church doors.

BIRMINGHAM CHURCH BOMBINGTAKES THE LIVES OF FOUR GIRLSIn the early morning hours on Sunday,

Sept. 15, 1963, four members of the KuKlux Klan planted a box of dynamiteunder the steps of the Sixteenth StreetBaptist Church. At about 10:22 a.m., anexplosion ripped through the church,killing four young girls, ages 11 to 14,and injuring 23 more. The bomb explodedjust before the 11:00 a.m. church service

began. The scheduled sermon that Sundaywas entitled, �“The Love That Forgives.�”

Martin Luther King showed the nationwhat those words truly mean, when hespoke of forgiveness and the redemptivepower of suffering at the girls�’ funeralthree days later. The Love that Forgives.

The bombing ended the lives of AddieMae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, CaroleRobinson and Denise McNair. The muse-um does a remarkable job of telling whothose girls were and how their familiesand friends felt about them.FULL OF PLANS FOR A FUTURE THAT

WOULD NEVER COMEThe museum�’s multimedia displays tell

the stories of their lives at home and atschool, portraying their youthful dreamsand hopes. The exhibits somehow takethese girls out of their historic role asmartyrs and tragic heroines, and bringsthem alive again so we can see the youngladies that their parents and friends musthave known �— smiling and sunny andhappy and all excited and full of plans fora future that would never come.

Then we are confronted by the explo-sion that destroyed those young lives. It isall the more heartbreaking because wehave previously been given a concretepicture of who they really were �— notmartyrs for the ages, but kids with theirwhole lives in front of them..

The story of those four young girlshaunted me after our visit for manyweeks. I had long known the story of thisinfamous bombing, but the Birminghammuseum described their young lives sovividly that you could see their youthfulhappiness, their hopes for the future, theirlove of their families.

All of that was erased, irrevocablyshattered by the hate-filled violence of thebombers. While learning about their livesat the exhibits, I tried so hard not to beovercome, because this museum is aboutthe way the civil rights movement defeat-ed the forces of violence and hatred andracism. I know that we�’re supposed to�“keep our eyes on the prize.�”

But I just couldn�’t. I brought back tomy mind the way Dr. King consoled theirparents, saying that these girls died nobly,as �“the martyred heroines of a holy cru-

sade for freedom and human dignity.�”But I just couldn�’t feel that way, no

matter how I tried. I couldn�’t help it. Iwept.

Maybe it�’s because I�’m a parent ofthree children, and each of them is sacredto me for a thousand different reasons.My son Daniel and daughters Ariel andAlyssa contain all of the meaning of mylife, all of my love, all of my memories.

And those girls�’ parents had the samefeelings and the same memories. And thentheir daughters were annihilated for noreason. Why were those particular girlschosen to suffer for the racism of adults?Why were their families left bereft andheartbroken, with an anguish no parentshould have to experience?

MARTYRS IN MONTGOMERYThe next morning, we traveled to

Montgomery and visited the Civil RightsMemorial created by the Southern PovertyLaw Center in remembrance of 40 martyrsmurdered in the civil rights struggle.

The museum tour begins with a filmabout those martyred in the struggle forequal rights, and has multimedia displaysso you can hear about the lives and deathsof each of the 40 martyrs. Once again, weheard the stories of Addie Mae Collins,Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robinson andDenise McNair. I wept again. I could notfind any peace.

We walked outside to see the perma-nent memorial created by Maya Lin, thedesigner of the Vietnam VeteransMemorial. The memorial is a large circu-lar black granite sculpture with the namesof each of the 40 martyrs engraved instone, while a thin sheet of ever-flowingwater continually washes over theirnames. On the wall is a scriptural passagefrom Amos often cited by Martin LutherKing: �“Until justice rolls down like watersand righteousness like a mighty stream.�”

Visitors are encouraged to touch theengraved names. I touched the names ofAddie, Cynthia, Carole and Denise, andthen went around the circle to theengraved name of the final martyr: MartinLuther King, assassinated in Memphis.

The night before, I kept being hauntedby a song sung by Holly Near and Ronnie

Who Are These Children Dressed in Red?from page 5

Police dogs lunge out of this sculpture to give people the feeling of fear that civil rights marchers faced. Terry Messman photo

See Who Are These Children page 8

May 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

Photos by Ariel Messman-RuckerThousands of outraged protesters

marched through the streets of Oaklandon May Day 2012, demanding economicjustice and an end to wars in Iraq andAfghanistan. A huge immigrant rightsgroup left the Fruitvale BART station ona long procession to join other marchersin downtown Oakland.

Demonstrators represented OccupyOakland, immigrant rights groups andlabor unions. The march culminated inFrank Ogawa Plaza in downtownOakland where more than 5,000 protest-ers rallied to demand an end to corporategreed and bank bail-outs, and to call foran economy that serves the needs ofworkers and poor people, rather than asystem that is rigged for the rich. Manyactivists voiced outrage at the policebrutality aimed at past Occupy protests.

May Day protesters in San Franciscooccupied a vacant building owned by theS.F. Archdiocese, and were arrested.

The massive march in Oakland repre-sented a new surge of energy for OccupyOakland, and new hope for the future.

May Day 2012in Oakland

�“Dignity and Resistance �— May Day.�” A huge and highly diverse outpouring of activists marched through Oakland streets.

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T8

by the Western Regional AdvocacyProject (WRAP)

More than 1.46 million house-holds are currently living onless than two dollars a dayper person in the wealthiest

country in the world. This level of povertyis more than double what it was in 1996.

This shameful fact has had an especial-ly harmful effect on children, whose num-bers in these households ballooned from1.4 million to 2.8 million. Two dollars aday is the figure the World Bank uses tomeasure global poverty.

For people scraping by on two dollarsa day, public housing, Section 8, andother HUD rental assistance programs arelifelines, very thin lifelines. For hundredsof thousands of households, these pro-grams make the difference between hav-ing a home and being homeless. And yet,both Congress and the White House arenow proposing significantly rent increasesin these programs.

As of April 2012, tenants pay a mini-mum of $25 to $50 a month. The increas-es proposed in Rep. Biggert�’s (R-IL) iron-ically named �“Affordable Housing andSelf-Sufficiency Improvement Act�”would raise the minimum to $69.45. Theincrease proposed in the President�’s 2013budget would raise it to $75.

For families with children who live onless than $250 a month and food stamps,such increases could mean as much as a200 percent rise in rent. Families would

have to make excruciating choicesbetween shelter, food, and medicine.

Both Rep. Biggert and the WhiteHouse argue that raising rents willincrease revenues, lower the overall costsof the programs, and allow more people toreceive assistance. These claims are spe-cious at best. At worst, what they reveal isa political establishment far removed fromor indifferent to the daily sufferings ofthose left behind by the new economicorder.

According to the Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities, the proposed hikes couldexpose nearly 500,000 households �—which include 700,000 children and40,000 elderly or disabled people �— toextreme hardship and even homelessness.

Adding insult to injury, the Obamaadministration�’s 2013 budget request forpublic housing, Housing Choice vouchers,and Section 8 project-based rental assis-tance is $1.7 billion below the grosslyunderfunded spending bill of 2012. The

automatic cuts to discretionary programsauthorized by the Budget Control Actbeginning in January 2013 will tighten thenoose even more.

Newly rising rents and continuing deepcuts signal that the nation�’s most afford-able housing is in peril at a time whenmillions of people can least afford it.

Congress is beginning its budget reso-lution process for 2013, one that couldinclude President Obama�’s proposal to cutHUD�’s three major housing assistanceprograms and to raise minimum rents.

Housing advocates are calling on theSenate appropriations subcommittee thatoversees HUD to reject the president�’sproposal and to renew housing assistanceprograms at 2012 levels instead.Advocates are also calling on legislatorsto give housing authorities discretion tonot raise rent on their most vulnerable ten-ants and to increase hardship exemptions.

This is the very least we should do. Butlet�’s not lose track of the bigger picture as

we get dragged from one crisis to thenext. It is not poor people who are respon-sible for the country�’s fiscal woes; it isWashington, D.C,. and Wall Street. Andyet it is poor people who are being target-ed to suffer the most.

Over the last several decades,Republicans and Democrats alike havedismantled affordable housing programs,deregulated housing finance, and passedlegislation enabling the privatization ofpublic housing. These policies are part ofa larger political agenda that ensures ben-efits flow to the top 10 percent while peo-ple at the bottom, especially people ofcolor, immigrants, and the un-housed, areleft with private charity, workfare pro-grams, and the criminal justice system.

We can�’t put our hope in politiciansand organizations that attempt to smoothout the edges of terrible legislation whilepeople lose their homes and programs aregutted. In communities across the country,groups are joining hands to build a move-ment for the human right to housing.

We�’ve all seen what can happen whena community defends a homeless encamp-ment because no other shelter exists,keeps a family from losing their homethrough illegal foreclosure practices, andstops an SRO hotel from being turned intoluxury condominiums, or a public housingdevelopment from being bulldozed.

The organizers behind these victoriesare beginning to connect their local hous-ing struggles to one another. They are alsodoing the difficult work of organizingacross issues by linking housing to educa-tion, health care, dignified work, immi-grant rights, and economic security.

Together we will reclaim our commu-nities from the greed and willful neglectemanating from the nation�’s capitol andcreate a society based on social justice.

Federal Government Shreds Housing for the PoorMore than 1.46 millionhouseholds must live on lessthan two dollars a day perperson in the wealthiestcountry in the world.

Deep cuts in federal housing programs threaten public housing tenantsall across the country with extreme hardships and homelessness.

Robert L.Terrell photo

Gilbert, �“Harriet Tubman.�” The song hon-ors the life of Harriet Tubman �— theMoses who traveled the South rescuingslaves, throwing them a lifeline and free-ing them on the Underground Railroad. �“Hundreds of miles we traveled onwardGathering slaves from town to townSeeking every lost and foundSetting those free that once were bound.�”

�“Setting those free that once werebound�” �— that is also an eloquentdescription of the civil right movement.

The song has an absolutely astonishingending, a vision of a procession of mar-tyrs, an image that will always bring tomy mind the memories of the martyreddaughters of Birmingham.�“Who are these children dressed in red?They must be the ones that Moses led.�”

In my mind�’s eye, I saw the childrendressed in red in a procession, and I had ahaunting image of a long procession ofmartyrs on the streets of heaven, and atthe very front of that march are those fouryoung girls, and Rev. Martin Luther King,still witnesses to the freedom struggle andthe violence that took their innocent lives.

Marchers dressed all in red �— thecolor of martyrdom, the color of blood.

That night, unable to sleep, I kept hear-ing the song�’s disturbing question:�“Who are these children dressed in red?They must be the ones that Moses led.�”

In my half-sleep, the last word keptchanging from Moses to Martin:�“Who are these children dressed in red?They must be the ones that Martin led.�”

For Martin had indeed led the marchesfrom the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

across the street to Kelly Ingram Park.And Martin paid the cost of consciencehimself �— arrested, jailed, his own housebombed, until finally he shared the mar-tyrdom of the children dressed in red.

A VISIT TO MLK�’S CHURCHSo there was only one place to go next

�— Martin Luther King�’s own church, theDexter Avenue King Memorial BaptistChurch. But we had come to Montgomeryon a Monday, a day when the church isclosed and locked to all visitors.

By some unimaginable coincidence,Bettina Vernon happened to drive up tothe church just as we were about to leave.Bettina is the church�’s tour director, andeven though she wasn�’t supposed to giveus a tour on this off day, she graciouslyinvited us into the closed church anyway.

Then Bettina, who turned out to be aseloquent and knowledgeable as she waswarm and friendly, gave us one of themost exceptional tours I have ever experi-enced. She showed us the large mural ofKing on the first floor of the DexterAvenue Baptist Church and pointed outevery single one of the scores of civilrights activists portrayed in the mural.

One amazing image on the muralshows an angelic visitation to Martin inthe jail cell where he wrote his �“Letterfrom a Birmingham Jail.�” Martin�’swinged visitor comes through the jail barsand hands him a piece of paper with aninscribed Biblical passage: �“Blessed areyou when men persecute and revile you.�”

Bettina Vernon then took us on anoverwhelmingly poignant tour of the restof this church where Rev. Martin LutherKing was a pastor. This church was tobecome the cradle of the civil rights

movement when the first meetings to planthe Montgomery bus boycott were held.

THE CRADLE OF CIVIL RIGHTS

The civil rights movement really beganin Montgomery in 1955 when the entireblack community showed the world whatdedication and solidarity could reallymean. They walked, they prayed, theywent to jail, they boycotted the bus sys-tem for an entire year, and they toppledthe segregated bus system with one of themost brilliant and persevering nonviolentcampaigns in American history.

The boycott began on Dec. 1, 1955,when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusingto go to the back of the bus, and lasteduntil Dec. 20, 1956, when the courts ruledthat laws requiring segregated buses wereunconstitutional. Martin Luther King wasthere at the foundation as a planner of thebus boycott, and his church was a co-con-spirator in the Freedom Movement.

I was overawed to see the pulpit whereKing preached, where he baptized, wherehe urged his congregation onward in thestruggle for freedom, where he began tobecome a prophet.

We went upstairs and entered King�’sprivate study. On April 3, 1968, the daybefore his assassination, King said that hehad received many threats on his life. Buthe said he was no longer fearing any man,because �“I have been to the mountaintop.�”

I�’ve always been amazed by his clair-voyance in saying the following words:�“Like anybody, I would like to live a longlife; longevity has its place. But I�’m notconcerned about that now. I just want todo God�’s will. And He�’s allowed me to goup to the mountain. And I�’ve looked over.And I�’ve seen the Promised Land. I maynot get there with you. But I want you toknow tonight, that we, as a people, will

get to the Promised Land.�”KING�’S CLAIRVOYANT VISION

I�’ve always been so awestruck at theprophetic vision contained in those wordsand so heartbroken they came true thevery next day. The day after uttering thosewords, King was assassinated inMemphis.

How did Martin know? Because Godhad let him go up to the top of the moun-tain and look over at the promised land.

So with all that in mind, it struck me sodeeply to see on Martin�’s desk in his pri-vate study, a copy of Ebony magazine. Itwas the May 1968 issue of Ebony, theissue that came out right after his death,with a cover photo of Martin and hiswords: �“I�’ve been to the mountaintop.�”

I was devastated and overcome to seethat. I imagined I saw Martin�’s spiritcome into his study in May 1968, a monthafter his murder, to prepare a sermon, ashe had so many times in the past. Then hesees the May 1968 Ebony magazine quot-ing from his speech, �“I�’ve been to themountaintop.�”

Martin looks around his study one lasttime, and he knows he gave everythinganyone ever could in the quest for justice,and to fulfill God�’s will. Greater love hasno man than this, that he lays down hislife for his brothers and his sisters.

All I could do was send a prayer ofthanks to Martin Luther King, and thankGod for letting me see his church. I car-ried away the haunting image of that mag-azine on the desk of his study, the May1968 Ebony, the issue he never got to seewhile still in his physical being on thisearth.

I told Bettina Vernon, the wonderfulwoman who gave us the tour, that this wasone of the most joyful days of my life.

Who Are These Children Dressed in Red?from page 6

May 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

percent, and the top 10 percent held awhopping 80 percent of all the wealth.

Even though the United States spendsmore on health care than any other indus-trialized country in the world, 50 millionAmericans lack basic health care. Infantmortality rates here are higher than inJapan, Germany, England or Sweden.And 36 other countries have longer lifeexpectancy then in America.

Poverty rates have risen to unprece-dented levels. The number of Americansliving below the official poverty line �—46.2 million people �— was the highest inthe 52 years that the Census bureau hasbeen reporting on it. The 15.1 percent ofAmericans living below the poverty linelast year was the highest level since 1993.Shockingly, more than one in five chil-dren live in poverty.

An estimated 1.56 million people,roughly 1 in every 200 people in America,used an emergency shelter or a transition-al housing program during the 12-monthperiod between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept.30, 2009. Between 2009 and 2010, evic-tions increased by 127 percent.

The foreclosure crisis has touchednearly every community, and made home-lessness and the lack of affordable hous-ing a nationwide problem. From the startof the recession in 2008 until March ofthis year, 3.3 million homes went intoforeclosure. As of January 2012, one inevery 14 homes were more than 90 daysdelinquent in their mortgage payments.

The gap between the rich and the poorhas grown to historic levels. In 1980, theaverage CEO was paid 40 times what theaverage worker earned. By 2010, averageCEO pay was almost 350 times that of theaverage worker.

Since 1979, the average income of thetop 1 percent increased by $700,000,while the average income for the bottom90 percent actually decreased by $900.The top 1 percent now receives 24 percentof the nation�’s income. In 2010, the rich-est 1 percent grabbed 93 percent of all ofthe income gain in the United States.

While those at the top enjoyed sharplyrising incomes, the average family saw itsincome drop by more than $3700 in thedecade of wars and recession, 2000-2011.

Although crime in America in generalhas decreased over the last 20 years, thecountry�’s incarceration rate is the highestin the world �— higher than Russia andChina combined. At the end of 2010, 2.3million adults were incarcerated inAmerica. In total, 7.2 million adults wereunder correctional supervision (probation,parole, jail, or prison) in 2009. The U.S.has one-quarter of all the prisoners on theplanet, more than 35 European nationscombined. Since 1995, the federal prisonpopulation has more than doubled.

In the last three years, 30 of America�’slargest corporations, like GE and Exxon,paid no taxes at all and, together, these 30major corporations received over $10 bil-lion in tax refunds. Oil companies alonescored $4 billion in tax breaks while at thesame time earning record profits, and1470 households earning more than $1million a year paid not a single penny intaxes. On average, Bush-era tax cuts forthe top 1 percent are worth more thanwhat the average family makes all year.

Is it any wonder that so many peopleare outraged? And as bad as that is, it isnot the whole story.

The fact is that real security is not pro-vided by buying more guns. The mostpowerful military on the planet could notprevent the destruction on 9/11. Our coun-try has been turned into �“fortress

America�” to protect the interests of the1% at the expense of the 99%. Nationalsecurity needs to be defined by more thanour missiles, ships, planes and drones.

The real threat to our security is mea-sured by how many are unemployed orworking part time while needing full-timework; how many lack healthcare; howmany are homeless or at risk of losingtheir homes; how many schools are failingour children; how many youth drop outand can�’t find jobs that pay enough toraise a family; how many kids go to bedhungry; how many vets return with trau-matic brain injuries and post-traumaticstress disorder, but can�’t get treatment;how many workers are fired for simplytrying to join a union; how many clinics,elder care and day care centers closebecause local governments can no longerafford to keep them open.

We�’re now spending at the rate of$5,371.54 per second to prosecute the Iraqand Afghan wars. What we will spend thisyear on the war in Afghanistan alone isequal to cover all of the state budget deficitscombined. Total national security expendi-tures since 9/11 come to $7.6 trillion, ofwhich $1.36 trillion is the cost of the twowars, $230.3 billion for nuclear arms, $5.6trillion for the Pentagon�’s core budget and$472.1 billion for Homeland Security.

We could cut our military budget inhalf and we�’d still spend more than anyother country in the world!

Our nation�’s priorities are out of whack.It�’s time to demand new priorities �— onesthat put the welfare of the American peopleahead of the welfare of Lockheed Martin,Boeing, General Electric, GeneralDynamics, Bechtel and KBR.

That�’s why antiwar activists, social andeconomic justice organizations, laborunions, faith groups and other organiza-tions have come together to form the BayArea Campaign for New Priorities (NPC).

NPC began by defining four core princi-ples that all these different groups share:(1) ending the wars, bringing the troopshome, and preventing any new wars; (2)moving resources from the military torestore the social safety net and meet socialneeds; (3) tax reform that forces the 1%and giant corporations to pay their share;and (4) investing in our communities byrepairing infrastructure, replacing oldschools, providing universal health care,providing affordable housing, creating jobsand protecting the environment.

The Campaign for New Priorities hasbrought resolutions calling for thesechanges to city councils and asked themto adopt them and call on members ofCongress to do the same. NPC is buildingsupport for the Budget for All sponsoredby the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

NPC helped to form a national networkof organizations with the same �“move themoney�” objectives. The Campaign is nowraising funds to put ads like the one herein Street Spirit in other publications andinternet media to mobilize the public andput pressure on the politicians.

We agree with Frederick Douglasswhen he said, �“If there is no struggle,there is no progress. Those who profess tofavor freedom, and yet depreciate agita-tion, are men who want crops withoutplowing up the ground. They want rainwithout thunder and lightning. They wantthe ocean without the awful roar of itsmany waters. This struggle may be a

moral one; or it may be a physical one; orit may be both moral and physical; but itmust be a struggle. Power concedes noth-ing without a demand. It never did and itnever will.�”

Join the Campaign for New Prioritiesto build a movement that can effectivelydemand a demilitarized foreign policy thatinvests in more diplomacy, not moreweapons; an economy that supportseveryone, not just the rich; and a societythat cares for everyone, not just those withmoney, power and political connections.

Visit the NPC website at www.newpri-oritiescampaign.org or write to NPC atnewprioritiescampaign@gmail.com.Donations to support this work may besent to New Priorities-Bay Area, 1737Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94703.

Michael Eisenscher is the NationalCoordinator of U.S. Labor Against the War(USLAW) and co-founder of the Campaign forNew Priorities and New Priorities Network.

Campaign forNew Prioritiesfrom page 1

�“IMAGINE PEACE.�” U.S. peace activists are challenging the most powerful military in recorded history. Carol Harvey photo

It�’s time to demand newpriorities �— ones that putthe welfare of the peopleahead of the welfare ofLockheed Martin, Boeing,General Electric, GeneralDynamics and Bechtel.

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T10

by David Bacon

In early April, an anti-immigrant billlike those that swept through legisla-tures in Alabama, Georgia and SouthCarolina was stopped cold in

Mississippi. That wasn�’t supposed to hap-pen. Tea Party Republicans were confi-dent they�’d roll over any opposition.

They�’d brought Kris Kobach, theKansas Secretary of State who co-authoredArizona�’s SB 1070, into Jackson, to pushfor the Mississippi bill. He was seen hud-dled with the state representative fromBrookhaven, Becky Currie, who introducedit. The American Legislative ExchangeCouncil, which designs and introduces sim-ilar bills into legislatures across the country,had its agents on the scene.

Their timing seemed unbeatable. LastNovember, Mississippi Republicans tookcontrol of the state House ofRepresentatives for the first time sinceReconstruction. Mississippi had been oneof the last Southern states in whichDemocrats controlled the legislature, andthe turnover was a final triumph for Reaganand Nixon�’s Southern Strategy.

And the Republicans who took powerweren�’t just any Republicans. HaleyBarbour, now ironically considered a�“moderate Republican,�” had steppeddown as governor. Voters replaced himwith an anti-immigrant successor, PhilBryant, whose venom toward the foreign-born rivals Lou Dobbs.

Yet the seemingly inevitable didn�’t hap-pen.Instead, from the opening of the leg-islative session just after New Year�’s Day,the state�’s Legislative Black Caucus foughta dogged rearguard war in the House. Overthe last decade, the caucus acquired a hard-won expertise on immigration, defeatingover 200 anti-immigrant measures. AfterNew Year�’s, though, they lost crucial com-mittee chairmanships that made it possiblefor them to kill those earlier bills. But theydid not lose their voice.

�“We forced a great debate in theHouse, until 1:30 in the morning,�” saysstate Representative Jim Evans, caucusleader and AFL-CIO staff member inMississippi. �“When you have a prolongeddebate like that, it shows the widespreadconcern and disagreement. People beganto see the ugliness in this measure.�”

Like all of Kobach�’s and ALEC�’s bills,HB 488 stated its intent in its first section:�“to make attrition through enforcementthe public policy of all state agencies andlocal governments.�” In other words, tomake life so difficult and unpleasant forundocumented people that they�’d leavethe state. And to that end, it said peoplewithout papers wouldn�’t be able to get asmuch as a bicycle license or library card,and that schools had to inform on theimmigration status of their students. Itmandated that police verify the immigra-tion status of anyone they arrest, an openinvitation to racial profiling.

�“The night HB 488 came to the floor,many black legislators spoke against it,�”reports Bill Chandler, director of theMississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance,�“including some who�’d never spoken outon immigration before. One objected tothe use of the term �‘illegal alien�’ in itslanguage, while others said it justifiedbreaking up families and ethnic cleans-ing.�” Even many white legislators wereinspired to speak against it.

Nevertheless, the bill was rammedthrough the House. Then it reached theSenate, controlled by Republicans forsome years, and presided over by a moremoderate Republican, Lt. Gov. TateReeves. Reeves could see the widespreadopposition to the bill, even amongemployers, and was less in lock step withthe Tea Party�’s anti-immigrant agendathan other Republicans.

Although Democrats had just lost alltheir committee chairmanships in thehouse, Reeves appointed a rural Democratto chair one of the Senate�’s two judiciarycommittees. He then sent that bill to thatcommittee, chaired by Hob Bryan. AndBryan killed it.

On the surface, it appears that fissuresinside the Republican Party facilitated thebill�’s defeat. But they were not thatdefeat�’s cause. As the debate and maneu-vering played out in the capitol building,its halls were filled with angry protests,while noisy demonstrations went on fordays until the bill�’s final hour.

That grassroots upsurge producedpolitical alliances that cut deeply into thebill�’s support, including calls for rejectionby the state�’s sheriffs�’ and county supervi-sors�’ associations, the MississippiEconomic Council (its chamber of com-merce), and employer groups from farmsto poultry packers.

That upsurge was not spontaneous, northe last-minute product of emergencymobilizations. �“We wouldn�’t have had achance against this without 12 years oforganizing work,�” Evans explains. �“Weworked on the conscience of people nightand day, and built coalition after coalition.Over time, people have come around. Theway people think about immigration inMississippi today is nothing like the waythey thought when we started.�”

Evans, Chandler, attorney Patricia Ice,Father Jerry Tobin, activist Kathy Sykes,union organizer Frank Curiel and other vet-erans of Mississippi�’s social movementscame together at the end of the 1990s notto stop a bill 12 years later but to buildpolitical power. Their vehicle was theMississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance(MIRA), and a partnership with theLegislative Black Caucus and other coali-tions fighting for progressive issues.

Their strategy has been based on thestate�’s changing demographics. Over thelast two decades, the percentage ofAfrican Americans in Mississippi hasbeen rising. Black families driven fromjobs by factory closings and unemploy-ment in the north have been moving backsouth, reversing the movement of thedecades of the Great Migration. Today, atleast 37 percent of Mississippi�’s peopleare African-Americans, the highest per-centage of any state in the country.

Then, starting with the boom in casinoconstruction in the early 1990s, immi-grants from Mexico and Central America,displaced by NAFTA and CAFTA, beganmigrating into the state as well. Poultryplants, farms and factories hired them.Guest workers were brought to work inGulf Coast reconstruction and shipyards.

�“Today we have established Latinocommunities,�” Chandler explains. �“Thechildren of the first immigrants are nowarriving at voting age.�”

In MIRA�’s political calculation, blacksand immigrants, plus unions, are thepotential pillars of a powerful politicalcoalition. HB 488�’s intent to drive immi-grants from Mississippi is an effort tomake that coalition impossible.

MIRA is not just focused on defeatingbad bills, however. It built a grassroots baseby fighting immigration raids at theHoward Industries plant in Laurel in 2008,and in other worksites. Its activist staffhelped families survive sweeps in apart-ment houses and trailer parks. They broughttogether black workers suspicious of theLatino influx, and immigrant families wor-ried about settling in a hostile community.Political unity, based in neighborhoods,protects both groups, they said.

For unions organizing poultry plants,factories and casinos, MIRA was a resourcehelping to win over immigrant workers. Itbrought labor violation cases against Gulfemployers in the wake of Katrina.

Yet despite being on opposing sides,employers and MIRA recognized they hada mutual interest in fighting HB 488. Bothopposed workplace immigration raids andenforcement, which are based on the same�“attrition through enforcement�” idea.

Since 1986, U.S. immigration law hasforbidden undocumented people fromworking by making it illegal for employ-ers to hire them. Called �“employer sanc-tions,�” the enforcement of this law (part ofthe Immigration Reform and Control Actof 1986), especially under the Bush andObama administrations, has caused thefiring of thousands of workers.

Yet over the last decade, Congressionalproposals for comprehensive immigrationreform have called for strengthening sanc-tions, and increasing raids and firings.

�“That�’s why we didn�’t support thosebills,�” Chandler says. �“They violate thehuman rights of working people to feedtheir families. For employers, that opposi-tion was a meeting point. They didn�’t likeworkplace enforcement either. All theirassociations claimed they didn�’t hire undoc-umented workers, but we all know who�’sworking in the plants. We want people tostay as much as the employers do. Forcingpeople from their jobs forces them to leave�— an ethnic cleansing tactic.�”

During the protests, Ice, Sykes and oth-ers underlined the point by handing legis-lators sweet potatoes with labels saying,�“I was picked by immigrant workers whotogether contribute $82 million to thestate�’s economy.�”

MIRA also fought guest worker pro-grams used by casinos and shipyards torecruit workers with few labor rights.�“When it came to HB 488, employers weretactical allies,�” Chandler says. Unions, onthe other hand, are members of the MIRAcoalition. While MIRA and employers sawa mutual interest in opposing the bill,MIRA helps unions when they try to orga-

nize the workers of those same employers,and helps workers defend themselves whenemployers violate their rights.

MIRA, in fact, was started by activistslike Chandler, Evans and Curiel, who allhave a long history of labor activity inMississippi. When HB 488 hit, busesbrought in members of United Food andCommercial Workers Local 1529 frompoultry plants in Scott County, Laborersfrom Laurel, Retail, Wholesale unionmembers from Carthage, Black catfishworkers from Indianola, and electricalunion members from Crystal Spring.

The black labor mobilization was orga-nized by new pro-immigrant leadership ofthe state chapter of the A. PhilipRandolph Institute, the AFL-CIO con-stituency group for black union members.

Catholic congregations, Methodists,Episcopalians, Presbyterians, EvangelicalLutherans, Muslims and Jews alsobrought people to protest HB 488, as didthe Mississippi Human Services Coalition�— a result of a long history working onimmigrant issues.

Groups around MIRA and the BlackCaucus not only fought that bill, but oth-ers introduced by Tea Party Republicansas well. One would ban abortions if a fetalheartbeat is detected. Another promotescharter schools. A third would restrictaccess to workers compensation benefits,while another would strip civil serviceprotection from state employees.

Dr. Ivory Phillips, a MIRA directorand a member of the Board of Trustees ofthe Jackson public schools, says that char-ter school proposals, voter ID bills andanti-immigrant measures are all linked.

�“Because white supremacists fear los-ing their status as the dominant group inthis country, there is a war against brownpeople today, just as there has long been awar against black people,�” he says. �“In allthree cases �— charter schools, �‘immigra-tion reform�’ and voter ID �— what we arewitnessing is an anti-democratic surge, arise in overt racism, and a refusal to pro-vide opportunities to all.�”

Tea Party supporters also saw theseissues linked together. In the wake of thecharter school debate during the same peri-od the immigration bill was defeated, acrowd gathered around Rep. ReecyDickson, a Black Caucus member, in whichshe was shoved and called racist epithets.

�“Because of our history, we had a rela-tionship with our allies,�” Chandler says.�“We need political alliances that meansomething in the long term �— permanentalliances, and a strategy for winning polit-ical power.�”

Despite the national importance of stop-ping the Southern march of the anti-immi-grant bills, the resources for the effort werealmost all local. MIRA emptied its bankaccount fighting HB 488. Additionalmoney came mostly from local units oforganizations like the UAW, UNITEHERE and the Muslim Association. �“Theresources of the national immigrant rightsmovement should prioritize preventingbills from passing as much as fightingthem after the fact,�” Chandler warns.

On the surface, the fight in Jacksonwas a defensive battle waged in the wakeof the Republican legislative takeover ofthe legislature. And the Tea Party stillthreatens to bring HB 488 back until itpasses. Yet Evans, who also chairsMIRA�’s board, believes that time is onthe side of social change.

�“These Republicans still have tricks uptheir sleeves,�” he cautions. �“We�’re wor-ried about redistricting, and a Texas-stylestacking of the deck. But in the end, westill believe our same strategy will buildpower in Mississippi. We don�’t see lastNovember as a defeat, but as the last standof the Confederacy.�”

How Mississippi Beat the South�’s Anti-Immigrant Wave

Labor unions and immigrant groups joined together in a successfulmovement to overcome anti-immigrant measures in Mississippi.

David Baconphoto

May 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

by Jack Bragen

People have a tendency to ignorethe things that are the most obvi-ous. A stimulus which is preva-lent and constant is usually tuned

out by the human nervous system. Ifsomeone lives in a house next to railroadtracks, and there is a noisy train that pass-es by every night at the same time, thatperson will learn to sleep through thenoise without even noticing it. They saythat the people who work at sewage treat-ment plants stop noticing the smell afterworking there awhile.

These examples are for the purpose ofillustrating my next point. Our society issaturated with punishment. This fact issomething we might not notice in ourdaily existence. In the present day, moreincarceration facilities have been built inAmerica than ever before.

It has become much easier to be lockedup for violations of laws that often seem

arbitrary and perhaps senseless. Largesegments of our population are routinelyincarcerated, in some cases with life sen-tences, due to the three strikes law inCalifornia and in many other states.

Two examples of this overuse of incar-ceration are people locked up for posses-sion of marijuana, and those locked upwith infractions that are incidental to hav-ing a mental illness.

Because of how easily someone can belocked up in prison for years at a time, inconditions that most people would consid-er horrible and inhumane, you couldbelieve that we are in another period ofDark Ages.

Two additional supports for the DarkAges comparison are the classism and theinequality of wealth that exist today.There isn�’t much of a ladder for the poorto lift themselves to prosperity and betterconditions. There is less of a socioeco-nomic ladder than there was ten, twentyor thirty years ago.

Especially in the last ten years, we nolonger have heard stories about peoplegoing from rags to riches. The pinholes inthe dam seemingly have been sealed shut,and few lower income individuals cansqueeze through. Oprah Winfrey, TylerPerry and J.K. Rowling are extremely rareexceptions, and those in charge of themonopoly board have made sure thosesuccesses aren�’t often emulated.

Technology has made many people�’sliving conditions materially better thanthey have been in any previous time peri-od, regardless of complaints aboutinequality. The Internet, in one fellswoop, has given a richness to the lives ofperhaps billions of people, without therequirement of a Robin Hood stealingfrom the rich. The modern definition ofpoverty might have been considered anacceptable living situation a few hundredyears ago. Additionally, the humanspecies has become less ignorant.

There no longer exists an excuse for

political leaders and for the wealthy peo-ple who influence them to allow the wide-spread poverty, hunger, disease, violenceand incarceration that continue to mar thelives of a very large segment of the popu-lation of our planet.

Even though in many cases the awfulconditions are relative, the fact that,because of technological advances, wecould be doing much better for all people,bespeaks a horrendous injustice. The star-vation, violence and disease that continueto exist in many places would not existtoday if the people who hoard most of thewealth cared about helping their fellowhuman beings.

The disease that is the most prevalent,affecting more than half of the world�’spopulation, affecting many financiallyrich people as well as many poor, a dis-ease for which we haven�’t found the cure:Human ignorance.

Living in the Dark Ages in Modern America

Short story by George Wynn

Some people lie down on the street atmidnight and are dead at dawn. 64-year-old Mitch taught creative writ-

ing at a prison in the Great Northwest andhad a weakness for the bottle, whichintensified when he suffered the doublewhammy of a pink slip and divorce froma red-haired beauty half his age.

After months of depression and passiv-ity, he arrived in the Golden State andwound up sleeping on the cold concrete ofGolden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.

Mitch and the stocky fellow next tohim stretched out their aching limbs.Mitch extended his hand and smiled,�“Name�’s Mitch.�” The stocky man gave afirm handshake, �“Joey.�”

�“Let�’s have some cheese and Frenchbread,�” said Mitch, while taking the foodout of his big pack. He broke off a bigpiece of bread and sliced a hunk of cheesewith his pocketknife and handed it toJoey, and cut a small piece of cheese forhimself. Between bites, Mitch proceededto tell Joey the story of his life.

�“You�’ve been around some baddudes,�” said Joey.

�“They weren�’t all bad,�” said Mitch.�“Lot of smart ones in prison.�”

�“Guess so,�” said Joey, soundingunconvinced. �“Anyway, I was a prize-fighter, lost my left eye in the ring.Detached retina did me in. It�’s been astruggle ever since.�”

�“I bet it has,�” said Mitch. �“How�’s thecheese?�”

�“Good, real good,�” said Joey. Mitchtalked to him in a language he couldunderstand. They hit it off right away,perhaps because both men were honest,salt-of-the-earth types. The next day,Mitch gathered together some fishing gearand they went fishing down at the wharf.At Muni Pier, they cast for fish in silencewith mindful intent, as if they were cast-ing to quiet their troubled minds.

Slim, mustached Mitch gave Joey adog-eared copy of Hermann Hesse�’s spiri-tual novel, Siddhartha. A few days laterJoey reported, �“Mitch, this is the best little

book I ever read. I�’m ready for anotherbook.�”

Mitch slapped Joey on the back, �“Let�’sgo to the Main.�” At the Main Library, heintroduced his new friend to Hemingway�’sstories, which also engrossed Joey.

Around Mitch, Joey had a sparkle inhis right eye. Something had been missingfrom his life before. When Joey dwelledon the aura of language, his body �—grown cold during evenings spent on

Tenderloin pavements �— seemed to warmitself. Often, Mitch would drift off, prefer-ring to drink in private, not bother anyone,not be a nuisance.

One evening, Joey turned a corner andsaw a man of bulk rummaging throughMitch�’s pants and stripping him of hiswatch. Joey snatched the watch out of theman�’s hands.

�“What the hell?�” exclaimed the bigman.

�“This watch belongs to a good friendof mine. Walk away.�”

The big man stared at Joey but took astep back after seeing the wild look inJoey�’s eye, and the tension in the veins ofhis bull neck, vibrating with latent aggres-sion, and the balled-up fists which stillcarried dynamite in either hand.

�“Wasn�’t nothing but a cheap watch,�”said the big man and walked off.

Joey woke Mitch up, and said, �“I gotpaid today for some casual labor work Idid last week. We�’ll get a cheap hotel forthe night.�”

�“I owe you Joey,�” replied Mitch.�“No you don�’t. You taught me to grab

on to life. I owe you!�”One morning, Joey woke to a terrible

sense of big loss. Mitch didn�’t wake up. Acombination of liver damage from boozeand Tenderloin evening chills did him in.

Now Joey was left alone in this gentri-fied city with the dispossessed fightingover scraps. Once again Joey was in dark-ness. Mitch was the light. His last wordsto Joey were, �“You have to escape fromthe streets of broken dreams.�”

�“I�’ll try.�”�“Not good enough. Trying is dying.

Promise me.�”�“I promise,�” said Joey. It was those

words that led Joey to the Zen centerwhere he meditated to quiet his mind andget focused, like Siddhartha Buddha of hisfavorite book.

After a month of steady, casual laborwork, Joey decided it was time to leave.He would visit his 90-year-old grand-mother in Kansas City whose ramshacklehouse was in dire need of repair. For sev-eral months, he dedicated himself to theworld of wiring and roofing and paintingand all kinds of odds and ends and patch-up work.

Suddenly one morning, just like Mitch,his grandmother didn�’t wake up. ToJoey�’s amazement, she left the house tohim. A neighbor told him, �“She reallyappreciated your help and the other rela-tives were doing fine and you needed abreak big time.�”

Joey got a job in a fast-food diner topay off the mortgage. One evening, hesaw a contest for inspirational people inthe Kansas City Star. Joey sent in his sub-mission about Mitch and to his disbeliefhe won.

�“Imagine that, Mitch, I got publishedin the same newspaper where Hemingwaygot his start,�” he said out loud �— as ifMitch was still around.

Escaping from the Streets of Broken Dreams

The renowned New Directions Paperback edition of Hermann Hesse�’s Siddhartha.

Once again Joey was indarkness. Mitch was thelight. His last words to Joeywere, �“You have to escapefrom the streets of brokendreams.�”

May 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T12

meeting, even though he had bought ashare of Wells Fargo stock so he couldmake his voice heard by bank officials.

�“I�’m here today not just by myselfready to go to jail, but over a hundredpeople are ready to go to jail today andobviously Wells Fargo didn�’t let us in,�”said Rev. Howell.

Howell, pastor of Antioch ChurchFamily, said he has lost many members ofhis congregation because high housingcosts and ever-increasing foreclosureshave driven people away from Antioch.

�“They have lost their hope, and whenfear sets in, then their faith is dominatedby their fear and that�’s pretty bad,�” hesaid. �“So my church went from severalhundred down to about a hundred becausethe people have lost their homes, havemoved away from Antioch. Their dreamhomes have become a nightmare.�”

Howell was arrested at last year�’sWells Fargo�’s shareholders meeting witha group of outraged homeowners andcommunity advocates who entered themeeting and refused to leave.

In a reference to Wells Fargo�’s use ofthe stagecoach as its corporate symbol,Rev. Howell told the crowd, �“People usedto rob the stagecoach. Now the WellsFargo stagecoach is robbing us!�”

Activists were not only protesting WellsFargo�’s overpaid banking executives,predatory loans practices and its role inincreasing the economic gap between therichest and poorest, but also for investing infor-profit, private-prison companies.

Wells Fargo profits from the privateprison industry through its 7.24 percentstake in the GEO Group, one of theworld�’s largest detention organizations,according to Stopwellsfargo.com.

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, executivedirector of Enlace and the National PrisonDivestment Campaign, came to theprotest to demand that Wells Fargo stopfinancing the private prison industry, butpolice wouldn�’t let him inside the share-holders meeting.

�“If we�’re going to have a humane sys-tem and any kind of justice, the financialindustry led by these giants like WellsFargo have got to stop propping the pri-vate prison industry up, which is inessence dictating our immigration poli-cy,�” Cervantes-Gautschi said. �“It�’s inhu-mane and has to stop,�”

Some protesters with Wells Fargoshares were eventually allowed into themeeting, but 15 were arrested while insideand nine more were arrested outside,according to Occupy San Francisco.

Other demonstrators chained them-selves together to block an entrance to the

Merchants Exchange Building. Theylinked their arms through PVC pipes,making it nearly impossible for police tosafely cut the shackles and arrest them.

�“We�’re here to stop the Wells Fargoshareholder meeting from going forwardas long as they�’re continuing to makemoney off of taking families�’ homes awayand saddling students with debt that theycan�’t pay,�” union representative SarahNorr said in an interview while chained tofellow protesters.

The problem isn�’t just with big bankstaking advantage of the 99 percent, butalso with the nation�’s leaders, she said.

�“I think both parties have failed us inholding big banks accountable,�” Norr said.�“Both parties have just bailed out the bigbanks and left homeowners on their own,left students on their own. So it�’s time forus to take things into our own hands.�”

Real estate broker Guadalupe Schmittspoke out at the demonstration on behalfof the many homeowners she has seenlose their homes in foreclosures.

In an interview, Schmitt said, �“I haveworked with the community for over 20years and I have seen how people havereally struggled, families that have losteverything they ever had, who believe inthe system and went and bought proper-ties they can�’t afford because of the kindof loans that they got. And I think theseloans were really designed to fail.

�“The people that really struggled arehard-working people, people that havebeen trying to work with the banks tokeep their properties, and the banks havenot yet listened to them.�”

At the end of 2011, Wells Fargo & Cobecame the largest mortgage servicer inthe nation with $1.82 trillion in loans ser-viced, according to Reuters.com.

Wells Fargo had $17.5 billion worth offoreclosures on its books as of June 2010,according to Stopwellsfargo.com.

Protesters used images of Wells FargoCEO John Stumpf as a symbol of theunjust practices of the banking behemoth.Demonstrators held signs with his imageemblazoned with phrases like �“Wall St.Robber Banker,�” �“They get rich, our com-munity gets poor,�” and �“They get rich, welose homes, schools, services.�”

The Wells Fargo shareholders meeting

went forward despite the protest, electing15 new directors and approving a $19.8million compensation plan for Stumpf.

Jeremy Cutler, 19, came to participatein the demonstration because he�’s angrythat families like his are being forced outof their homes by banks like Wells Fargo.

Cutler was forced to drop out of mid-dle school after his family home was fore-closed on. He has never been able to goback to school and now lives in a home-less shelter.

�“My family lost their home in foreclo-sure and we�’ve been bouncing around thecountry ever since,�” he said. �“We have noplace to stay.�”

Massive Protestat Wells Fargofrom page 1

�“WE ARE THE 99%.�” Thousands marched from Justin Herman Plaza to protest Wells Fargo. Ariel Messman-Rucker photo

Sarah Norr chained herself to other protesters with PVC pipe to shut down the bank.

Thousands of marchers show the signs of the times: �“Occupy Wells Fargo,�” �“Abolish Student & Mortgage Debt,�” �“Boycott Corporate Tax Evaders.�” Ariel Messman-Rucker photos