Some Thoughts About Peace, The Catholic Worker and Community

These are two pieces I shared earlier today on Facebook. Both are important because they give some sense of the Catholic Worker philosophy. We are in difficult times. People are not listening to each other. So I'm sharing these thoughts from two of my heroes, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day.

The first appears below and it's a result of thinking about how separated we all are right now. I'm reminded of this Easy Essay by Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day. It goes like this:

Community or Crowd?

People say:
They don’t do this,
They don’t do that,
They ought to do this,
They ought to do that.
Always “They”
and never “I.”

The Communitarian Revolution
is basically/a personal revolution.
It starts with I,
not with They.

One I plus one I
makes two I’s
and two I’s
and two I’s make We.
We is a community
while “they” is a crowd.

And then as I think about war and peace in this difficult and dangerous time I tend to go back to my roots in the peace movement - listening to and reading Dorothy Day speak about the topic. So it seems that it's important to review some important thoughts about peace. As a barely 21 year old volunteer at the NYC Catholic Worker in 1965, this is some of what I heard from Dorothy:

Weapons of Peace

"One of our Catholic pacifists asked me to write a clear, theoretical, logical, pacifist manifesto, and he added so far, in these thirty-three year of The Catholic Worker, none had appeared from my pen.

I can write no other than this: Unless we use the weapons of the spirit, denying ourselves and taking up our cross and following Jesus, dying with Him and rising with Him, men will go on fighting, and often from the highest motives, believing that they are fighting defensive wars for justice for others and in self-defense against present or future aggression.

To try to stop war by placing before men’s eyes the terrible suffering involved will never succeed, because men are willing (in their thoughts and imaginations at least) to face any kind of suffering when motivated by noble aims like the vague and tremendous concept of freedom, God’s greatest gift to man, which they may not articulate by merely sense. Or, in their humility (or sloth, – who knows?) men are quite willing to leave decisions to others “who know more about it than we do.” Without religious conversion there will be few Franz Jagerstatters to stand alone and leave wife and children and farm for conscience sake. But as Jagerstatter said, it was God’s grace that moved him, more powerful than any hydrogen bomb."

The Danger of Tying Local Elections To National Issues

The national and Presidential elections in 2016 caused reactions from cheers to tears and new commitments to resistance, organizing and political action. Many people were outraged. They were dismayed, depressed and shocked. Demonstrations took place across the country and people marched through the streets. I was among them.

But there were also calls for very practical and real responses. People were encouraged to run for office, any and every office. Women were encouraged. Millennials were encouraged. People of diverse cultures, races and economic status were encouraged. The calls went out and people responded. Trainings popped up with good information from experienced campaigners. All of this was good and meaningful from a political organizing perspective. More people were getting involved in the political process and treasuries of political opposition were being filled. In general, people felt good about these efforts and still do.

But as with everything else in life, things get complicated fairly quickly. I believe that after the initial melancholy and then exuberance, it was easy for people to get waylaid or lost. I've seen examples of it in local elections and campaigns. Many seem to have forgotten that old political maxim "all politics is local" as office holders are challenged and office hopefuls look to change "things".

What I've seen on just about every level are simple slogans and messages that go something like - "Vote for Change", "Turn (county, town, state) Blue", "Vote Democrat". In addition, I've seen local candidates tweeting and posting things on Facebook about national issues including immigration, tax reform, national health care, impeachment and foreign policy. Obviously these are all important issues and everyone has a right and sometimes a duty to talk about them, but.....and here's the but. These issues have little to do with what will probably win local elections for school boards, town boards or county legislatures.

Outrage and anger have to get us more then outrage and more anger. Part of why people, voters and non-voters alike, are frustrated and disgusted with politics, is because politicians have so little to offer in terms of real solutions and real work. How will we create jobs? How will we provide more and better public transit? How will poor people and people in need of basic services be treated and supported in our schools and communities? How will we protect and provide basic services like water or sewer service to communities? How will we work together, across party lines, building coalitions to get real work done? To me, these are the issues and the things people need to be talking about in elections. No matter how angry people may be about national election results, it is a huge mistake to think that people will vote for parties vs  candidates who have real solutions and a commitment to work for constituents to bring about change.

I applaud people who make the commitment to run for office, but I for one, want to hear about local issues and local solutions.