Our Country Has Chosen The Path To War

It seems we are in the the process of starting a war the likes of which has never been seen.  The new President of the United States is determined to take us there and it will be sooner rather then later I fear. In one week he has raised his fist to the rest of the world. He has increased tensions with China, Mexico and the entire Muslim community.

China has moved nuclear missiles close to the Russian boarder aimed at the US. A trade war with Mexico seems pretty imminent and cooperation with that government over security issues is threatened. But worst of all, Donald Trump has in effect declared a war on the Muslim religion with his ban on travel and immigration from Muslim countries. His ban is clearly a religious ban since he has indicated that Christians from those same countries will be allowed entry to the US. His action in this area is most likely illegal and unconstitutional but it is also shameful and goes against every American value. Worse yet it will incite more hatred for the US.

Lets be honest. Terrorism is based on grievances and Donald Trump has just provided more grievances to many people in the world. In doing so he has put us all at risk. Of course if something terrible happens, he and his advisors will point to the actions themselves and not the causes. He and his advisers will take swift and ramped up actions that will again put us all at greater risk. The tough man image and attitude is the last thing needed at this point in such a dangerous world but that is what and who was chosen in the November election.

The only hope we have is that some people who advise him and with specific levels of real authority will stand up to him and let him know that his approach as well as his orders are wrong and dangerous and will not be followed when they cross moral and constitutional lines.

People have argued that he needs to be given a chance. It is only one week he has had in office they say. Perhaps that could have been a valid argument a few days ago but when his actions put us all at risk and in fact go against so much that the US is built on, from values to laws, chance is not the issue. He has shown his mental instability and it could impact the world at this point. We are stuck with a Congress that can't negotiate with itself. They, who should be leaders, are in fact scared followers and weak opponents.

So the path to war is the one we have taken unless Donald Trump changes his ways, his directions and his actions. Everything we've seen doesn't indicate that will happen. In the meantime people who believe in peace have to take actions that they're comfortable with -  from prayer to petitions to protests to active non violent resistance. Our world really depends on it this time.

Judith Gregory 1932-2017 - Memories & Lessons of The Catholic Worker

Judith Gregory, who lived at the NY Catholic Worker in the late 50's and early 60's, died on January 20th, 2017 at the age of 84 in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. She became a close friend of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. In 1997 Jude wrote the piece below which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter. I have tried over the years to write about and in various ways explain the importance of the Catholic Worker and its influence on me. I have never succeeded very well. There are many others who have written well and captured the experience of the Worker like Nicole d'Entremont and Jack Cook to name a few, but this piece paints a clear picture of the Catholic Worker. The physical space, the work and the characters (including all of us) that made up and continue to make up the Catholic Worker are all found in this article. I knew most of the people talked about here. Good people all. I am certain that my experiences at the Catholic Worker helped me with my ultimate vocation working with and supporting people with disabilities, learning and believing that we are all very equal travelers in this world needing the support of each other.

So I share this piece with all of those who wish to read it, hoping that you get a sense of the seriousness along with the humor that made up life at the Catholic Worker.  May Jude Gregory graciously rest in peace and justice but her memory live on through her written word.
JW - The Gadfly

Catholic Worker Lessons Stayed With Me

Judith Gregory was acquainted with many of the original Workers. She was a member of the Catholic Worker community in New York from 1959 to 1962 and remained an editor of the legendary little Catholic Worker newspaper until 1970. This gives her a unique vantage point from which to remember.

By JUDITH GREGORY

In March 1959, I drove to New York City in my black Chevy sedan to live for an indefinite time at the Catholic Worker house of hospitality near the Bowery. I gave the car to the Catholic Worker community, and when I had handed over the keys I was, I guessed, ready to settle in.

I had no clear sense of what that would involve. My first impression of the Catholic Worker on a visit the year before had been of a uniform gray. The Worker had a loft in the midst of the Italian neighborhood close to old St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Bob Steed, an editor of the paper who was about my age -- I was then 27 -- showed me where I would live temporarily in one of the neighborhood apartments. Scotch Mary had moved into one of the hotels so that I could have her place. I said that seemed unfair, but Bob told me she was glad to do it.

Bob and I walked up the five flights. I never saw an uglier apartment. It was at the rear of the building, where at least it did have sun, and consisted of two small rooms. The toilet was in a closet just big enough to turn around and sit down.

Hattie Crafts lived in bed in the larger room, just large enough for her old metal bedstead. As far as I know she was not sick; she simply lived in bed. I got to know Hattie during the month I stayed with her and the subsequent months when I visited her, bringing her detective stories and cans of Dinty Moore beef stew, which she considered a great treat. She was a spirited, stringy, very thin old woman, her face and hair both a thin gray color, her eyes alight with intelligence. She never went out after she moved into the apartment. I gathered she had had some close calls while dancing blind drunk on the fire escape at the Catholic Worker house on Chrystie Street.

Scotch Mary’s room was empty except for a bed and a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I peered at the bed, a grayish swirl of sheets touched with a lime-green cast reflected from the walls. I realized that this bed was what I had expected, but what I’d refused to articulate even to myself. This was what life would be like at the Catholic Worker. The sheets obviously had never been washed. That night, I lay on my raincoat on the bed and covered myself somehow with my heavier clothes.

The next day, stealthily -- for I thought it would be impolite to let Hattie see what I did -- I gathered up the bedding and took it to a laundromat. I had no trouble neatening the room, for there was nothing to neaten. I set my belongings in it, made up the bed afresh and walked over to the loft to begin my new work.

We talked about her

A month after I got to the Worker, someone found an apartment for me on Cleveland Place around the corner from Hattie’s, two rooms on the second floor above a small restaurant. Dorothy Day, founder with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement in the 1930s, was to share this apartment with me when she was in town. Dorothy was 62 the year I came to New York. Much of the time she traveled, visiting friends and coworkers all over the country and speaking on the Catholic Worker movement.

Though Dorothy was often away, her presence was felt. We talked about her, of course, and complained about her habit of arbitrary responses, her volatility, her tendency to change her mind.

Dorothy was not a good listener. She was impatient to be off to her own work, especially to write her abundant correspondence, her articles and books. She liked to see others go ahead and do something, anything, whatever they thought was to be done. She did not like to give directions nor to feel others giving her responsibility for their work. She wanted people to take responsibility on their own.

I remember one noon having deli food (which Dorothy loved) with her and Bob. Bob told Dorothy that he’d heard she was the model for the painting “Nude Descending a Staircase.” She didn’t deny it. She said she’d known artist Marcel Duchamp in Paris. To my eyes she did have the large, angular shape of the “Nude.”

When Bob asked if she had really drunk Eugene O’Neill under the table, she said testily, “When you stay up all night you have to have something to keep you going.” She rarely talked of her youth. We used to speculate that if Dorothy were ever to be canonized, she would, in the missal, be called a penitent like Mary Magdalene, for she was neither a virgin nor a martyr nor a widow. She disliked this kind of talk. She said people talked about her being a saint in order to dismiss her, so they wouldn’t have to think about changing the way they lived in the world.

Dorothy was by no means always repressive and severe. She could enjoy the comic aspect of things. In the winter of 1962, some young people started a magazine called F--- You, and composed it in the Catholic Worker office. When Dorothy discovered this, she told them to leave. They were taken in by the American Friends Service Committee, where they changed the name of the magazine to F--- Thee. When Dorothy heard about this, she laughed out loud.

Dorothy didn’t so much share an apartment with me as take in Cleveland Place on her travels -- “On Pilgrimage,” as she called her column in the paper. According to an apparent law of hospitality, Dorothy’s intended bed in the apartment was immediately taken by someone with no other place to go, despite her instructions to me to save the bed for her.

I settled in this comfortable apartment and lived there for a year and a half, through the summer of 1960 with the exception of the summer I stayed at Peter Maurin Farm. In addition to fixing up the apartment, I learned the usual routine of the office and loft, which had daily, weekly and monthly cycles.

The monthly cycle revolved around publishing the paper, The Catholic Worker. Articles would be written by us in New York or by friends and others. Dorothy would read these or delegate someone else to do so. Articles were rarely edited. Proof sheets would come from the press but, at least while I was at the Worker, were seldom read.

A truck delivered the papers and some of the men hauled these up to the loft. Keith produced the packets of cut addresses, arranged geographically, by city, state or foreign countries. Most of us did our stint, folding, labeling, wrapping, chatting, watching the life of the loft.

We mailed about 85,000 copies each month. A subscription cost 25 cents. The Catholic Worker is said to be the only periodical that costs more per year to subscribe to than to buy on the street, where it costs a penny a copy. If you once subscribed, you would receive the paper whether you paid again or not -- in some instances whether you wanted it or not.

When you have helped to mail the Worker, you are astonished that it comes as regularly as it does.

The weekly routine

The main event of the week was the Friday night meeting. An invited guest or one of us would give a talk or we would debate some subject of likely interest. We set chairs in the kitchen and dining area and the room filled with a variety of listeners, local or visiting subscribers, students, friends and those who wandered in -- like a woman I remember who sought shelter because she thought Cardinal Spellman was after her. When the talk and discussion were over, we chatted and drank sassafras tea.

We sold the paper on the street. Some, like Ammon Hennacy, kept a weekly schedule. He sold papers in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue every Sunday morning. He sold it on Wall Street one weekday, at Fordham University on another, and one day a week he stood on Lexington Avenue not far from a Catholic church whose politically reactionary pastor he loved to bait. He talked with anyone willing to talk with him -- or more likely listen to him.

What most struck me about Ammon were his perfect fearlessness, his good temper and sharp tongue. He would say awful things about people without the least trace of animosity. Some reproached him for his “holier than thou” attitude. “You’re damned right I’m holier than thou,” he’d say, “I’d be in a hell of a fix if I wasn’t.”

Ammon nearly managed to live the impossible ideal of anarchism. In his fear of nothing and in his determination to harm no one -- except verbally! -- he lived his own saying: “Good men don’t need laws and bad man don’t obey them, so what use are they?” When he became a socialist, he thought he also had to become a vegetarian, that it was part of socialism; eventually he preferred it.

Ammon was a thin, active man of medium height, always simply and neatly dressed, with wavy gray hair, cut short except for a stiff, curly flourish in front. He walked briskly with a springiness like his alert gazes and his witty responsiveness in conversation. He worked hard and kept a strict schedule: answering letters on a typewriter in the office, selling papers, fulfilling speaking engagements and fasting every year, starting Aug. 6, one day for each year since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Ammon seemed to have a talent for fasting and for civil disobedience. He not only believed in the efficacy of these acts, he liked them. Some months after I came to the Worker, he left to join a group that climbed the fence of a missile site in the Midwest, for which he got six months in a federal prison. After he came back, he spoke of the relatively pleasant life in a federal prison compared to state or local facilities.

Once the loft opened in the morning, some ate breakfast, some started to make the great vat of soup for the line at lunch, others wandered in when they felt like it, to answer mail, to talk to visitors or to sit around and talk with each other. The anarchism or personalism so often mentioned in the paper is probably more descriptive of the daily life at the Worker than of any ideal state. People arranged their own lives in the context of the community, often slipping out of it, and back, without giving any sort of notice.

Reliable people could be found to be in charge of the loft, to drive the car -- though someone once drove off with a car -- and to do other jobs. Still, many of us at the Worker were temperamental, eccentric, neurotic or verging on crazy; many were alcoholic. Rules and routine remained minimal.

Bob always said, “There’s a reason for every one of us to be here.” For myself, the Worker was definitely a temporary refuge. I had problems with intimate personal relationships, yet I liked to be around people. The Worker suited me well: It was stimulating, entertaining -- and safe.

All income came from individual gifts, for Dorothy would never take grants, considering subjection to the IRS too high a cost for tax-exempt status. None of us was paid any wage. When we needed money, we asked for it and usually could have it.

The soup line would form earlier in cold or wet weather. Men and a few women climbed the stairs and waited. Slowly they would all be fed. Every morning we got day-old loaves of crusty Italian bread made around the corner. We all ate the same lunch, and it was a good one: a hearty soup, tea with milk and sugar if you wanted it, and bread with margarine.

The floor of the loft was rough and dirty -- swept but not clean. Two toilets enclosed in closets just large enough to stand or sit in stood on one side wall. You would sometimes find wine bottles tucked into the grimy pocket behind the toilet bowl or crammed into the tank, for no drinking was permitted on the premises. The men in the line -- so few women came just for a meal that they did not stand in the line -- seemed, usually, very patient.

Some people liked to say the rosary every day. Millie, a thin, neat, diffident and kindly woman in her 50s, would ring a bell and several people would gather outside the office to pray. Bob would mutter some violent epithet, irritated by this sign of piety, fling down whatever he was doing and get out of earshot as fast as he could.

The daily routine included supper for about 75 people, the entire Catholic Worker community. I looked forward to these meals: good meat, vegetable and potato fare, cooked well considering the conditions. One evening Bob and Michael Kovalek and I were in the loft late. Bob said he wanted to try something. We went into the kitchen and Bob lit the oven in the large stove and opened its door. We watched the exodus of cockroaches, a solid rippling outward from the heat. The cooks always lit the oven before placing the food inside.

I took a liking to roaches. They seemed to breed in the desk drawers. Cockroaches waving their feelers gave me an impression of alertness and a certain shy sociability that I found charming.

After supper, whoever was in charge would hand out tobacco to the regular smokers. Sometimes one of the women or men was drinking or drunk and needed to be guided to a Salvation Army hotel or flophouse.

Peter Maurin Farm

Many Catholic Worker communities have had a farm. Peter Maurin, who died in 1949, wrote and talked about farming communes, living on the land, scholars becoming workers and workers becoming scholars. Peter Maurin Farm on Staten Island was a rural house of hospitality and a working farm as well. There was a modest house with outbuildings. In the barn was a small chapel, its hand-wrought pews, an example of the work Maurin so much extolled.

Deane Mowrer and a dozen others lived at the farm. Slim, who had once lived at the house in the city and been known for his violent temper, washed the dishes, then stood in the yard for hours, looking out over the landscape, or sat inside reading The New York Times. He rarely spoke but his laugh told me he was listening. Hans had been a cook in the Norwegian merchant marines for many years. He made bread, a tiny man with thin arms kneading two loaves at once, one with each hand, his blue eyes shining with pleasure.

Stanley Vishnewski lived in a small room on the second floor, partly filled with his press. He printed prayer cards and stationery by hand. When he was 17 years old, he used to tell us, he was walking across Union Square and saw this old woman carrying a typewriter. It was the 35-year-old Dorothy Day. He followed her and spent his life at the Catholic Worker. He published several books. One summer I was put in charge of the farm, which meant generally keeping an eye on things. Years later, driving from Virginia to New England, my family and I had a breakdown near Trenton, N.J. I called the farm, asked for help and we were put up for two nights while our car was fixed. It was wonderful to be on the receiving end of Catholic Worker hospitality.

The Catholic Worker became my image of Christian life: to live with poor people, with few possessions of one’s own, sharing food and drink and clothing and shelter, practicing all the works of mercy, praying, crying out against injustice, working for clarification of thought and enjoying the immediate company of a diverse and colorful community. Stanley used to say, “We feed the naked and clothe the hungry at the Catholic Worker, and we know one another in the breaking of heads.”

We lived according to no rule, nor out of any book except, in some ways (we hoped), the gospels and -- as Dorothy liked to say -- a novel by Dostoyevsky. No matter. I do tend to think of that life as exemplary. The Worker was a community in voluntary poverty, a surprising, difficult ideal even to strive for, let alone to achieve. The Catholic Worker has over the years made it possible for many of us to live this life for a while and perhaps to achieve at least aspects of it later on in other places.

That such a life is possible, that it has in it much enjoyment, intellectual interest, congeniality and spiritual learning -- though it can often be confining and stressful -- is knowledge that has stayed with me and helped me not to be afraid. The Catholic Worker is still a powerful presence in my life and remains my ideal, however little realized. 

National Catholic Reporter, June 20, 1997

Telling Lies And Making Enemies As A Management Strategy - Does It Work?

I spent the last 30+ years as an administrator and a manager of a nonprofit organization. My experience - the work was hard, the hours long and strategy always important. Whether it was new or additional funding, budget constraints, labor relations, program services or fair and honest communications, a clear and consistent strategy was always necessary.

One of the things I learned over time, sometimes the hard way, was that truth telling and friend making was absolutely necessary. We've all been tempted to tell that little white lie or to possibly bend the truth a bit but what I found over time, was that it was better to not respond at all if you couldn't respond honestly. I also found out that I was much better off with a bigger list of friends then enemies. It's true that no matter how hard we try there will always be some people who end up on the enemy portion of the ledger but that should be kept to a minimum if you want to get anything done.

All of this revolves around what seems to be Donald Trump's approach to management. I have to say I'm pretty shocked at his way of doing things. My organization impacted a thousand or so lives. Donald Trump's actions as President of the United States could and will impact many millions of people and lives.

Lying has an interesting way of catching up with you. Sometimes people get caught in their own lies. In some of the worst cases, people tell so many lies that they truly begin to believe them as their own version of the truth or perhaps 'alternate facts'. It's a very dangerous game for any leader to wage a war on the truth. People look to leaders as truth tellers. People want to believe their leaders. They may not, but they certainly want to. Once a leader lies, credibility begins to diminish and when credibility diminishes the people you lead loose faith. There is no question in my mind that Donald Trump has told some pretty serious lies. There are tapes and transcripts to show them all so I won't go over them here. Something that is perhaps more serious, is that he has people working under him who defend words and actions of his that can be proven to be false. The reality is that people will catch up.

There is a similar but perhaps more dangerous scenario when it comes to enemies. Enemies need to be managed.  The more you have, the harder it becomes. You become their agenda item. You can fend them off for awhile but they sit, waiting in the wings ready to pounce the minute they see an opening. I watch Donald Trump trying with authoritarian tactics to control a growing list of enemies. Intimidation and bullying are some of his tactics. Minimizing their importance is another. But the list grows daily and it grows and grows and grows - the media, the Intel Community, world leaders, individuals of all sorts. Soon it will be like a cancer that can't be cut out.

I expect the chickens will come home to roost and Donald Trump will find himself undone by too many lies and too many enemies in the end. The question is, how long will it take and how much damage will everyone experience along the way?

Why People Are Marching

On January 21, 2017, literally millions of people marched around the world in solidarity. I participated in the historical village of Seneca Falls, NY where thousands of people marched from the Women's Rights National Historic Park to the Presbyterian Church about a mile down the road. The diversity of the crowd was amazing. People were bound together by a sense of community and a strong resolve to send a message to the world that was watching.

As the day wore on, cable news commentators and political pundits, some hired guns of both major political parties, raised questions about why people were marching. After all the newly installed President had barely been in office for 24 hours and no-one really knew what he was going to do, say, or order. Wasn't it unfair not to give him a chance?

There lies the real problem with many in the media and most politicians. They just don't get the really simple stuff. They can't accept the reality that's put in front of them. They pause. They ponder. They wonder. They debate and argue the obvious.

Here is the plain and simple truth that not only Donald Trump needs to hear but all of the political machine in Washington, D.C. and across the US. People refuse to go in reverse. People refuse to be turned around. It's that basic and the message has been sent loud and clear. Women, people with disabilities, the gay and lesbian community, people of color, immigrants, artists, musicians, elders and so many more refuse to go back, refuse to be put back in their place. This is not a complicated message. People feel threatened by the hateful rhetoric and promised actions but sometimes you just can't put the jelly or the genie back in the jar/bottle.

It doesn't mean people in authority won't try to silence individuals or groups. History reminds us of the tactics of dismissal, intimidation, insults, bullying, and name calling. Some of it has begun or actually never stopped. But I see brave people out there in the streets. Some who are veteran protesters and some who have never marched or held a sign. They are a force to be reckoned with and they can't be turned around without a pretty nasty fight.

Anyway, that's why people are marching. Good luck to us all.

The Fourth Estate, Accountability & Politics

The media, the press, pundits, etc. have all taken hits lately and much of it is deserved. The reality is though, that journalism is not only a noble profession but also one that all societies need for the sake of accountability and in the search for truth. We can certainly argue about who presents the truth as we know it or perhaps how we may want to know it, but someone has to put their fingers to the keys or voice to the microphone. We as readers, listeners and consumers also have a great deal of responsibility in this exercise. Sadly there are many who would like all of this to be much easier then it is, this consumption of ideas and this search for truth. It's not and it won't ever be.

Journalists are far from perfect. They're like most of us. They see and hear facts through their own lenses. No matter how hard they try, they have personal biases. All of this has gotten more complicated in the past few months. Many are learning that there really is personal responsibility in our search for the truth.

 So called 'fake news' has been around forever. Disinformation has been a tactic and method of people in power. Taking people through dark tunnels, winding ways and down holes have been ways to confuse and redirect. Policies and actions become sanitized, justified and promoted. Sometimes it's not that significant and perhaps harmless. Other times it justifies war, war crimes and serious criminal activity. Journalists try to help us navigate all of this. Sometimes they are successful and other times they may be complicit in the misinformation. But in general I believe journalists understand their role in keeping both the public informed and people in power accountable. They have to navigate the blockades and confusion for us.

After yesterday's so called press conference with President-Elect Donald Trump all of this becomes more important and more clear. I say so called because the event was really a mix of a rally and a press conference. Trump brought his supporters to the event to applaud and approve his pronouncements. Of course that's his right but it does change the advertised event of a press conference. The shouting match and authoritarian encounter with the reporter from CNN made for great TV for the 45% of the people who supported Trump in the recent election. Many of these folks hate the media because........they're easy to blame for just about everything. But it was a raw show of autocratic behavior that could be very dangerous if it continues and there is little indication that it won't.

I think most of the other journalists present were caught off guard so in the heat of the competitive nature of their business they just continued to shout out for recognition or their questions. I would hope this isn't their response in the future. Journalists really need to pull together when this kind of behavior is exposed by Trump or anyone else. They should call him out and stand with their colleague who is trying to do his or her job. If unchecked, the next move will be to throw journalists out of news conferences, uninvited the troublemakers or belittle them in other ways. It is a form of intimidation that is already occurring with businesses, Congress and government agencies.

A free press is an awesome thing that needs to be protected vehemently. Yes, sometimes, some of them get it wrong and sometimes we don't like to hear what they have to say. The reality is though that they're doing important work that many of us don't have time for.  I'd rather have the diversity of their opinions then one, controlled story.