A Walk Home from Work

(this says it's a 2009 entry but I didn't get around to writing it until May 2010...shmem)

Cali, Colombia. From an Andean foothill about 1,000 feet above the city, it looks like this:

I work in the south of the city, which is much better off, economically speaking and all that that entails, than much of the rest of the city. I'm almost through my first full year of teaching at a private school about a 10 minute bike-ride from the safe 'n sound lushly vegetated 'n gated apartment complex I live in. I can look left right now and see only trees out my fourth floor window. I can listen and hear naught but my rotating fan and a plethora of birdsong.

Bubbliscious.

Colegio Bennett. Been working here for almost a year and a half now. It's quite a gorgeous little campus, gated guarded and vegetated.

I show up before 7am, hopefully. I teach children Social Studies, if they're lucky enough to be in 8th grade, and English should they be in 9th or 10th, and in my ever stimulating classes. They never complain about how much I make them learn about poverty, oh no.  Or about reading.  But there are some gems, some awesomes.

Often I bike home. If not it's the bus. At 2:30 I'm free to go, one of the beautiful benefits of Bennett.

Something that's always interesting about Cali, and this parallels with much of the capitalistically undeveloped world, is how inescapable reality is. Yesterday I stepped out of school, and before even leaving the practically private street, I was asked for money by a mother accompanied by her daughter, who she reminded with an air of respect after I parted with about 50 cents, "Ve, son profesores." Mel reminded me right afterward how stupid it was to take out my wallet in front of a stranger like that, no matter how nice she seemed. My naivety, as it so often does, resented the implication of its existence.

On the drive or ride home, you'll pass by the signs of commercialism, an overabundance of shops and restaurants. You also get to glimpse at who's left out - the black boys selling gum or juggling swords or dancing for change in the middle of hectic intersections, the 30 something to middle aged mestizo men and women selling convenience store type goods on so many sidewalks, the people with no clean clothes and no shoes, the drug addicts who may or may not be old, but sure as hell look it, asleep on the street.

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Urban cattle. Another strange semi-regular sight.

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This bridge is a 2 minute walk from my house. It's surrounded by commerce. On one side, the megastore La Catorce which Mel and I shop at all the time. On the other, a shopping center we've under construction for a year now. It's almost all up and running. We joke about going shopping there.

The bridge itself shows a good view of the foothills of the Andes to our west. The higher up the hill you go, the lower the economic status of its people. Many of Cali's poorest have wound up here, displaced by the army, paramilitaries, and/or the guerrilla. Or total lack of economic opportunity due to the similar forces.

Under the bridge, like many in the city, there's always interesting graffiti.

Look carefully.

This wasn't an everyday sight. But it wasn't a total shock, either. Or shouldn't have been.

I see things like this, then I get home. I have a porter open a gate for me, and I enter my luscious compound of safety, wealthy families, and happy little children who I adore and who think I'm cool because I ride a skateboard. I say hi as I walk by, I walk up four flights, and I "unwind" from a "hard" day with a beer in my hammock.

I love my life.

Genius

A Duty Dance With Death

Lord knows what thoughts
lay behind a smiling stranger's face.
Good and Evil occupy the same space.
Same time, Same place.

What's best?
Your first breath?
Or the last before death?

The sun's blowout.
Eclipses broken hearts,
Run amok then again it starts, so
Life flows. It comes, it goes.
Whether or not it's good,
everyone and no one knows.
So on. So forth. So it goes.

Labrador Mountain, NY

Phillip Berrigan

Phillip Berrigan died in 2001. He spent about 11 years of his life in prison, for acts of civil disobedience from destroying draft cards during the Vietnam War to dismantling nuclear warheads in the 80s. His prison publications from the 60s, "Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary," are very much worth a read. Below are his last words.

WHEN I LAY DYING...of cancer
Philip Berrigan

I die in a community including my family, my beloved wife Elizabeth, three great Dominican nuns - Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson (emeritus) jailed in Western Colorado - Susan Crane, friends local, national and even international. They have always been a life-line to me. I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself. We have already exploded such weapons in Japan in 1945 and the equivalent of them in Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2001. We left a legacy for other people of deadly radioactive isotopes - a prime counterinsurgency measure. For example, the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Pakistan will be battling cancer, mostly from depleted uranium, for decades. In addition, our nuclear adventurism over 57 years has saturated the planet with nuclear garbage from testing, from explosions in high altitudes (four of these), from 103 nuclear power plants, from nuclear weapons factories that can't be cleaned up - and so on. Because of myopic leadership, of greed for possessions, a public chained to corporate media, there has been virtually no response to these realities...

At this point in dictation, Phil's lungs filled; he began to cough uncontrollably; he was tired. We had to stop - with promises to finish later. But later never came - another moment in an illness that depleted Phil so rapidly it was all we could do to keep pace with it... And then he couldn't talk at all. And then - gradually - he left us.

What did Phil intend to say? What is the message of his life? What message was he leaving us in his dying? Is it different for each of us, now that we are left to imagine how he would frame it?

During one of our prayers in Phil's room, Brendan Walsh remembered a banner Phil had asked Willa Bickham to make years ago for St. Peter Claver. It read: "The sting of death is all around us. O Christ, where is your victory?"

The sting of death is all around us. The death Phil was asking us to attend to is not his death (though the sting of that is on us and will not be denied). The sting Phil would have us know is the sting of institutionalized death and killing. He never wearied of articulating it. He never ceased being astonished by the length and breadth and depth of it. And he never accepted it.

O Christ, where is your victory? It was back in the mid 1960's that Phil was asking that question of God and her Christ. He kept asking it. And, over the years, he learned
" that it is right and good to question our God, to plead for justice for all that inhabit the earth
" that it is urgent to feel this; injustice done to any is injustice done to all
" that we must never weary of exposing and resisting such injustice
" that what victories we see are smaller than the mustard seeds Jesus praised, and they need such tender nurture
" that it is vital to celebrate each victory - especially the victory of sisterhood and brotherhood embodied in loving, nonviolent community.

Over the months of Phil's illness we have been blessed a hundred-fold by small and large victories over an anti-human, anti-life, anti-love culture, by friendships - in and out of prison - and by the love that has permeated Phil's life. Living these years and months with Phil free us to revert to the original liturgical question: "O death, where is your sting?"

2. Biographical Information

Philip Berrigan, 1923-2002
Born: October 5, 1923, Minnesota Iron Range, near Bemidji to Frieda Fromhart and Thomas Berrigan
1943-1945: Served in WWII, artillery officer, Europe.
1949: Graduated from College of the Holy Cross.
1955: Ordained a Catholic Priest in the Josephite Order, specializing in inner city ministry.
1956-1963: Taught at St. Augustine's high school, New Orleans, a segregated all black school.
1962 (or 3?): First priest to ride in a Civil Rights movement Freedom Ride.
1963-1965: Taught at a Josephite seminary, Newburgh, NY.
1966: Published first book, No More Strangers.
1966: Served at St. Peter Claver parish, Baltimore, MD.
October 27, 1967: Poured blood on draft files in Baltimore with 3 others. Known as the "Baltimore Four."
May 17, 1968: Burned draft files in Catonsville, MD with 8 others, including his brother, Fr. Daniel Berrigan. Action known as the "Catonsville Nine." Convicted of destruction of US property, destruction of Selective Service records, and interference with the Selective Service Act of 1967. Sentenced to prison.
1970: Married Elizabeth McAlister, an activist nun, Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
1970: Became a fugitive when appeals failed. Captured and returned to prison.
1971: Named co-conspirator by J. Edgar Hoover and Harrisburg grand jury while in prison. Charged with plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up the utility tunnels of US Capitol buildings. Convicted only of violating prison rules for smuggling out letters.
1973: Co-founded Jonah House community of war resisters in Baltimore, MD.
April 1, 1974: Birth of Frida Berrigan at Jonah House.
April 17, 1975: Birth of Jerry Berrigan at Jonah House.
1975: End of Vietnam War and beginning of focus on weapons of mass destruction and changing U.S. nuclear policy. Actions included pouring of blood and digging of graves at the White House and Pentagon resulted in several jail terms ranging up to six months.
1975: Atlantic Life Community conceptualized as East Coast counterpart to Pacific Life Community.
1976: First of summer community building sessions; led to triannual Faith & Resistance Retreats in DC.
September 9, 1980: Poured blood and hammered with 7 others on Mark 12A warheads at a GE nuclear missile plant, King of Prussia, PA. Charged with conspiracy, burglary, and criminal mischief; convicted and imprisoned. Action known as the "Plowshares Eight;" began the international Plowshares movement.
1980-1999: Participated in 5 more Plowshares actions, resulting in ~7 years of imprisonment.
November 5, 1981: Birth of Kate Berrigan at Jonah House.
1989: Published The Times' Discipline, on the Jonah House experience, with Liz McAlister.
1996: Published autobiography, Fighting the Lamb's War.
December 14, 2001: Released from Elkton, OH prison after nearly a year of imprisonment for his final Plowshares action.
July 12, 2002: Underwent hip replacement surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital, Baltimore, MD.
October 8, 2002: Diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, cancer in the liver and kidney.
December 6, 2002: Died at home in Baltimore, surrounded by family and community.

News

um...

IPS - Gaza

Former Iraqi PM on Bush

El Salvador

Nukes

Ponderings

Sarcasm at its best

Excerpt from Anwar Shaikh's Capital as a Social Relation

"On the one hand, capitalism is a powerful and highly flexible social structure. It has developed its forces of production to extraordinary heights, and has proved itself capable of dissolving or destroying all previous social forms. Its inherently expansive nature has led to the creation of vast quantities of wealth, and to a dominion which extends all over the globe. But on the other hand, this very same progressive aspect feeds off a dark and enormously destructive side whose nature becomes particularly clear when viewed on a world scale. The capital-labor relation is a profoundly unequal one, and the concentration and centralization of capital which attends capitalist develoment only deepens the inequality. The competitive struggle of all against all creates an alienated and selfish social character, imprisons each in an atmosphere of suspicion and stress, and heaps its miseries precisely on those who are in the weakest postitions. Finally, as capitalism develops, so too does its level of mechanization, so that it is progressively less able to absorb labor. In the developed capitalist countries, this manifests itself as a growing mass of unemployed people at any given "natural" rate of unemployment. In the Third World, as the incursion of capitalist relations lays waste to earlier social forms, the mechanized processes which replace them are able to pick up only a fraction of the huge numbers previously "set free." Thus the rising productivity of capitalist production is accompanied by a growing pool of redundant labor all across the globe. The presence of starving masses in the Third World, as well as of floating populations of unemployed in the developed capitalist world, are bitter reminders of these inherent tendencies.

The above perspective forcibly reminds us that capitalism is only one particular historical form of social organization, subject to deep contradictions which are inherent in the very structure of its being. Precisely because these contradictions are built-in, any successful struggle against their destructive efforts must move beyond reform to the rejection of the structure itself. In the 20th century such efforts have taken a variety of forms, ranging from so-called parliamentary socialism to socialist revolution. Whatever we may think of the strengths and weaknesses of these various fledgling social movements, the general tendency is itself part of an age-old human process. History teaches us that no social form lasts forever, and capital as a social relation is no exception to this rule."

Holiday Saunter at Tinker Falls

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Cali, Colombia - Street Art

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We will have revenge for the assassination of indigenous leaders

Bullets will never silence social struggle

No state terrorism