The Hazards of Love I Love You

It has been a while since my last blog. I guess I am just not much of a writer. This story is just a small part of a much bigger story. The story of human kind is very large and all of our lives make up a part of that story. Some of those stories are not worth telling. Not because those people's lives are not interesting but because we all have boring parts throughout our lives, even the most interesting lives have boring parts. The Decemberists are storytellers. And storytellers in general I have grown to Love over the past couple years. The Decemberists are musicians also and for me music is my ultimate Love. Even though I do not put use to what little musical talent I have I am much more content just being a Lover of music. I have heard the name Decemberists for many years. In fact I think that anyone who is interested in contemporary non pop culture alternative music has heard of the Decemberists. But only until recently, (ok, a year ago) when I started dating my new true Love, Allison McGillivray, have I started to pay attention to what the Decemberists are doing. Since those early days in our relationship we, I think, have fallen in Love with each other as well as with the work of the Decemberists. And then came that wonderful night when we were lucky enough to witness their skill and creativity first hand when we got to see them play at the Hollywood Palladium. They played the entire Hazards of Love album before even introducing themselves. At that point I fell in Love with that album and I have been listening to it, almost non-stop, ever since. Now I have always known that the whole album is a long story, I figured it out when I fist heard them play it. But I have never taken a good look at the lyrics and at the story as a whole. I always just Loved to listen to it and catch what lyrics I could from listening. But today I followed along with the lyrics as I listened and it has transformed my Love for the album into something entirely different. Now I know that when a story is told all the listeners are all picturing something completely different from everyone else, as well as the storyteller. So there is no way that I could show you what is going on inside my head. But I will just assure you that it is a wonderful and beautiful thing. I would also like to share something with you that I recently found online. It is one person’s interpretation of the story of The Hazards of Love found here. I Love how the author has gone back and changed what he originally thought about the story. It just goes to show you that your idea about a story can change over time and that no one will ever know which idea about a story is correct. I think that is why I like the Bible so much. No matter how long you study it, it continues to surprise you and the stories continue to change. They change in the meaning in which you identify with them and they change in themselves. So when you read this person's interpretation of the story do not hold it as the one and only interpretation of the story but as just one of millions of different interpretations. I think it is very important that you create your own idea of the story. It is a living breathing thing and just like my life or the lives of everyone in the world they are there to be enjoyed and Loved. So keep listening and keep writing your own story.

The Soloist: A Real Life Look at the Movie

I have been hearing about the soloist since just after I moved out to Los Angeles I was intrigued by it from the very beginning. I think because when I saw the trailer it made me think, "That looks really good". Ever since those early days in LA I have changed quite a bit. I have also come to learn a lot more about the story than I ever would have if I was still living in Illinois. Just to fill you in the LACW does extensive work on skid row and that is exactly where this story takes place. We also don't have that great of a relationship with Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr's character). Way back before I had ever heard of the Catholic Worker they were fighting to get port-a-potties on the row. Which they finally did get accomplished after a lot of hard work I am sure.
So here comes Steve Lopez who works for the LA times and he starts writing columns on skid row and about Nathaniel (Jamie Foxx's character). He writes an article about the port-a-potties on the row and how they are being used for prostitution and drugs. But he neglected to also say that these port-a-potties were being cleaned out daily and they were removing thousands of pounds of fecal matter per day. That's a lot of shit that would otherwise have to be defecated on the streets out in front of the whole world. So as soon as this article came out the public demanded that these port-a-potties be removed from skid row. Which was a huge defeat for our community and we blamed Steve Lopez for it, although he did not take responsibility for it. We really just don't understand how he could see what is happening to Nathaniel and all the rest of the homeless population and then concentrate all his efforts on one individual who has an interesting back story.
So you could see why our community really doesn't like Steve Lopez. But also we see this relationship between Steve and Nathaniel and we know that this is a meaningful relationship because we have the same kind of relationship with many of the guys on skid row and many of them have just as fascinating a story as Nathaniel does.
As for the movie, I went and saw it last night. It was heartbreaking on so many levels. The severity of mental illness that I see every day was very apparent. The abuse of the homeless by the police was also portrayed well, another thing which I am reminded of almost daily. The complete exploitation of this individual to make money off his story was heartbreaking. The self-righteousness of Steve Lopez was also sad. The fact that he thought he was a more important person than these people that live on the street. The fact that he saw this man and immediately demanded that he see a doctor and then get medication was heartbreaking. The fact that there are 90,000 homeless in the Los Angeles area was just a blurb before the credits.
This was in no way an inspiring movie. Nor was it even a very good movie I think as far as movies go it lacked many elements that could have made it better. A more complete back story on Nathaniel, a more extensive look at Lopez's relationship with his ex wife. They could have also left out several scenes about Lopez's pest problem which has nothing to do with the story. But I do think that it portrayed the mental illness of Nathaniel, life on skid row, and the police's solution to it very well.
There was one scene that showed skid row at night also. They made it look very animated. Everyone was getting high or drinking and there was fights in the middle of the street. At first I thought, "That's not even close to what its like on the street at night". Whenever I go to the kitchen at night all you see is people lining the sidewalk trying to sleep. However this morning I was telling Jeff about it and he was like you know back when Lopez was writing those articles that kind of thing would not have been to uncommon down here. So I guess it is more accurate than I thought.
They also used many of the people that eat at our kitchen as extras. I recognized several of them especially the old lady with the scarf over her head that Steve Lopez talks to at the lamp community. We call her the cat lady, she always leaves cat food at our back gate for the many stray cats that live in our garden, we have to sweep it up every morning. I think her name is Caroline. They actually show her feeding some cats during the part when Nathaniel is saying the lords prayer.
After the movie was over on the way home I was talking to Jason, one of our volunteers that took me to the movie (thanks again Jason). We were talking about the police harassment scene and to my surprise he put the relationship between the kind of thing that police are doing here now with the type of thing police were doing in New York back when he lived there. Which is because the police commissioner Bill Bratton who successfully "cleaned up" New York with more police moved to LA. Since then he has began something called Safer City Initiative. Under SCI the number of cops on skid row has doubled and people are arrested for jaywalking or spitting or sleeping on the sidewalk during the day. The problem of homelessness translates to unlawfulness to people like Bratton.
I guess what I really want to get across is to remind you that there are people that have given their whole lives to helping the people of skid row. They work without any recognition and dedicate all their time to helping these people. And then here comes Lopez with the power of a global audience of the LA Times. He spends a little time down here he writes a few articles and then leaves. I also want to stress the fact that Nathaniel is just one case out of tens of thousands many of them just as sever or worse than his. But yet he is the only one you will hear unless you come down here and get to know some of them.
I would suggest going to see the movie. But just keep in mind that this life is a reality for thousands of people. And don't think that Lopez is some kind of hero. The real heroes are here every day and you will probably never hear about them.

Why do we kill people to teach people that killing people is wrong?

Before I ever came to the Catholic Worker Community or even knew any of the many wonderful people here in LA that I now know there was a protest of nuclear weapons at the Vandenberg AFB on May 19th 2007. At this protest Jeff Dietrich who has lived at the LACW for almost 40 years and Dennis Apel who helps run the Guadalupe Catholic Worker were among those who were arrested for publicly crying out for the victims of war and nuclear weapons in an area which was not the "designated protest area" marked by a green line on the pavement.

This past Wednesday we had Liturgy at our house as we do every Wednesday. The second reading was Dennis' statement before sentencing for that action at Vandenberg. I just thought that his words were incredibly moving and I felt compelled to share his statement with you. This is so beautiful I began to cry while it was being read at Liturgy.

In May of 1998 I went to Iraq to take medicines to Children’s hospitals. To go was an act of civil disobedience, breaking the sanctions against that country and risking the possibility of up to a one million dollar fine and 12 years in prison. But the United Nations was reporting that 5,000 children a month were dying because of lack of medicines banned by the sanctions. So I ignored the law and I went.

When a group of eight of us arrived at the first children’s hospital in Baghdad, the lobby of the hospital was so full of women with their children waiting to be seen that we had to squeeze our way between them to get to the room where we were to be briefed on the conditions of the hospital. One of the women in our group collapsed from the shear hopelessness of that initial scene.

When we were led to the emergency room, I was shocked to see rows of beds lining the walls of a huge room with two or three sick or dying children on each bed. While mothers attended their children, I took pictures as fast as I could, hoping to capture the scene. On one particular bed sat a young mother cross-legged with an infant in her lap. She looked at me weeping and shouted something in Arabic. At my request, the doctor who accompanied me translated, “She says you come here, you take pictures and you go home…but nothing changes.”

When I returned to the United States I related this and so many more stories to anyone who would listen. I talked to Church groups and colleges. I spoke on radio and television programs. I was interviewed by the local paper and I sent mailings out to everyone I knew. A group of us met with Lois Capps, our elected representative, and with bishops and church leaders. But, in the end, the woman was right….nothing changed.

I have stood in the “designated protest area “ at Vandenberg Air Force Base now well over 100 times in the past 12 years. I go almost religiously once a month with a small group of peace-loving and justice-seeking folks to voice our objection to the mission of that Base and its complicity in the terrorizing of humanity by testing delivery systems for nuclear weapons. Twice in those twelve years, I have been arrested and convicted of trespassing for crossing the green line. The first time was in 2003 five days before our government added the obscenity of “shock and awe” to the sin of 11 years of brutal sanctions in Iraq. The second was now almost two years ago when I and three others refused to step back on the “safe” side of the green line without our brothers and sisters in the military who are knowingly or not, or willingly or not, part of the enforcement arm of the policies that, among untold other stories of suffering and death, put that young and desperate mother and her dying infant on that bed in a Baghdad hospital.

The green line at Vandenberg is used for only one purpose. The visitor center, the parking lot, the public bus stop are all on the other side of the green line and the area is open to anyone who doesn’t overtly disagree with the mission of the Base or our government’s policies. Be quiet and you can be on the other side of the green line. The green line serves to mark the point beyond which certain truths are no longer allowed.

You can’t see it, but there is a green line in our courtrooms as well. It’s called “in limine” and it also marks the point beyond which certain truths cannot be spoken. In my case the prosecutor can, and makes it a point to, state without objections my motivations for what I do. “He’s just looking for attention,” she will say. “He wanted to get arrested and he did,” she will say. But if I try to explain my motivations the prosecutor is quick to jump in, “Objection your honor…relevance.” My motivations are clearly only hers to define.

And the limits of allowing for a defense of necessity or breach of International Law or the Nuremberg Principles are so tightly defined that literally not one case of civil disobedience in the United States in opposition to everything from illegal war, to torture, to kidnapping and extraordinary rendition has been allowed such a defense.

We are, all of us, knowingly or not, or willingly or not, caught up in a system that affords greater authority and a louder voice to laws that blockade the truth than to the voice of those suffering and dying. There are those who would have responded to the challenge of a grieving mother in a Baghdad hospital by saying, “I’ll vote for someone else in the next election,” and would have felt satisfied, but I am not one of them. Because, if it were me holding my dying son or daughter, I would have been equally desperate and felt at least as much disdain for the powerlessness of the person documenting my suffering with a camera.

My deep conviction is that love supersedes the law, and while I don’t claim to be an expert at when love requires one to break the law, if opposing what we’ve visited on Iraq in the past 19 years is not it, I don’t know what is. I am neither an anarchist nor one who disagrees with the need for accountability to laws. But laws that perpetuate injustice or protect those who would cause untold suffering are so counter to the law of love, that to allow them to remain unchallenged requires that we relinquish love itself which is ultimately our only hope for justice and peace. And I’m not ready yet to give up hope.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak a little truth before sentencing, but I look forward to the day when “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” are included in the process before consideration of the verdict. In the meantime, a mother’s voice was heard one more time in this courtroom and I’m thankful for that, and to the court for your time and attention.

Vandenberg witness website:

vandenbergwitness.org/