One of my new year's resolutions is to start blogging more, so here I am! After a lovely and relaxing Christmas and New Year, I am back in the swing of things at work, and nearly all my roommates have returned home.
I was in charge of planning spirituality night this evening. I love Christmas for many reasons, but one is this: when you think about it, this is a holiday celebrating a newborn baby who was conceived outside of marriage, born to a teen mom. This savior, God incarnate, was born into a poor family, rejected by those around him even before he was born. For my community's spirituality night, I read this quote by Thomas Merton:
Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.
On another Christmas-y social justice theme, this week is National Migration Week. As my friend Stephanie said, "Be nice to immigrants." Don't forget, young Jesus was a migrant too.
The School of the Americas protest and vigil is this coming weekend. I won't be going (it's hard to get to Georgia on a JV stipend), but I will be doing a presentation about the SOA and SOA Watch to a church youth group in the area on Sunday. I was preparing for that presentation and went back to an essay I wrote for Digital Democracy (taught by David Silver). It's a decent paper, so I thought I'd post it up here. If I were less lazy/had more time, I would linkify the references, etc., but I added a video and a couple photos to spice it up. The photos are from when I went in 2006 (shortly after I wrote this paper).
Amber McChesney-Young
Digital Democracy
November 7, 2006
Dramatic Action and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas
In November 1990, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Charlie Liteky, and Patrick Liteky, accompanied by local media, entered the U.S. Army School of the Americas at the Ft. Benning military base in Georgia. There they placed images of six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and daughter, who had been killed in El Salvador the previous November, along with a letter calling for the closure of the school. They splashed human blood on the pictures and the floor and the walls, and went outside, where they placed a white cross at the base of the sign marking the School of the Americas. They splashed blood on the sign, then on themselves, and they lay down and waited to be arrested. This was one of the first actions of a movement to shut down the School of the Americas, a U.S. Army-run combat-training school for Latin American soldiers. The movement has grown over the years, but throughout its development the use of dramatic direct action has played a key role in building the movement and advancing its goals.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), which was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC or WHISC) in 2001, was started in 1946 in the Panama Canal Zone and moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984. It was created as a Cold War tool to keep Communism out of Latin America, but it still remains open after the fall of Communism, and it continues to train Latin American soldiers. Over 60,000 soldiers have graduated from the school.
Graduates of the School of the Americas have been responsible for major human rights abuses in Latin America. SOA Watch says, "These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, 'disappeared,' massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins" ("What is the SOA?").
Some of the more famous abuses took place in El Salvador. Two of the three people found responsible for assassinating Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 were SOA graduates.1 Three of the five responsible for the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen (three nuns and a laywoman) were SOA graduates, and ten of the twelve responsible for the massacre at El Mozote in 1981, where over 900 people were killed, and nearly the entire village, along with the surrounding area, was wiped out, were SOA graduates. In 1989, in an action that actually helped bring about the end to El Salvador's civil war because of the outrage it caused, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were brutally murdered at the University of Central America in El Salvador. Nineteen of the 26 found responsible were SOA graduates, according to a 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report. In 1996, in what led to a great uproar, the Pentagon was pressured into releasing manuals that had been used at the school from 1982 to 1991 which taught torture, blackmail, and execution. This was significant in helping build the movement to close the school (Gill 212-213).
To understand the purpose of the SOA, one must look at U.S. foreign political and economic relations. The United States has provided financial and military support to Latin American countries to keep the people it likes in power, and when the people it doesn't like have been in power, the U.S. has backed the insurgency and supported coups. In the 1980's, El Salvador went through a civil war between the right-wing government and the left-wing insurgency, which involved massacres, kidnappings, disappearances, and torture. The U.S. gave significant support to the Salvadoran government throughout the war.
Today many of the conflicts in Latin America have calmed down, but the U.S. continues to train Latin American soldiers, and there continues to be criticism of the school. In the book School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Professor of Peace and Justice Studies at St. Thomas University, looks at the school in the larger framework of globalization and economics. He argues that the SOA is training soldiers in order to maintain rule which favors free trade and structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank. Nelson-Pallmeyer says, "U.S. foreign policy generally and the SOA specifically support policies and systems that enrich a powerful minority while leading to widespread poverty, gross inequalities, a strained environment, and constricted or nonexistent democracy" (14). In other words, the issue is not limited to high-profile assassinations. The SOA is a symbol of U.S. foreign relations and imperialism.
It was a background in a different kind of U.S. involvement in Latin America that led a small group of people to found School of the Americas Watch in 1990. Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, had spent five years in Bolivia as a missionary after his ordination in 1972. His experience there taught him about the lives of the poor in Latin America. He saw extreme poverty, and he witnessed people being arrested, tortured, and murdered. His experience in Bolivia was the foundation for his later activism. He traveled to El Salvador after the killings of the four churchwomen, two of whom were friends of his, and upon returning to the U.S. he traveled to churches around the country talking about the horrors in El Salvador which our government was supporting.
In 1983, before the SOA had moved to Ft. Benning, Fr. Bourgeois read a small story in the New York Times saying that about 500 Salvadoran soldiers had arrived at Ft. Benning for combat training (Father Roy). He decided to take action, so he went to Columbus, Georgia, where Ft. Benning is located. After doing community education and organizing, he and two others snuck into the fort dressed as high-ranking military officials, found the barracks where the Salvadorans were staying, climbed a tree, and waited for dark (Father Roy). They had brought with them a boom box with loud speakers, and when the lights in the barracks went out, they blasted the last sermon of Archbishop Oscar Romero (Father Roy). Fr. Bourgeois wanted to "call as much attention as he could to the training and to 'raise enough hell' to stop it" (Hodge and Cooper 92). This was a precursor of the dramatic direct actions used in the movement to shut down the SOA.
Other early SOA Watch members had also worked in Latin America in the '70's and '80's and the movement was heavily based on what remained of the U.S. Central America solidarity movement that arose as a result of issues like El Salvador's civil war and U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras (Gill 201-202). In The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, Lesley Gill, a Professor of Anthropology at American University, describes the growth and development of the movement to close the SOA. She writes about how the influence of liberation theology; the experience of many priests and nuns working as missionaries in Latin America; and the murders of Romero, the churchwomen, and the Jesuits in El Salvador all created a basis for a movement primarily made up of middle-aged white religious people expressing their outrage at the existence of this institution (Gill 202-203). Because of the work that many had done concerning Latin America, they already had a knowledge base of what the experience was for the people who suffered the most from an institution like the SOA (Gill 202).
The notion of solidarity is important in the movement because unlike most social movements, the members are not the ones being oppressed. Movements like civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights have all been primarily made up of the people who were most affected by the changes they were working for. These movements have involved other people (such as whites in the civil rights movement), but they have been primarily made up of the people experiencing the oppression. The movement to shut down the School of the Americas was started by white people from the United States, and that is where solidarity becomes important. The religious base for the movement helps explain this to an extent. Solidarity is an important value in Catholic social teaching. It is also important to note that the movement is conscious of the fact that its members are the privileged ones. On the SOA Watch web site they say, "We have a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean who have been fighting oppression for the past 510 years. To do so, we must come to grips with our own privilege and recognize how it shapes our assumptions about struggle, organizing and the future" ("Building the Movement").
The church provided ready-made networks, which the movement used to spread the message about the SOA through churches and schools, but it was more the dramatic actions of the movement that grabbed the attention of the public and created the traditions that hold the movement together today. The first actions after the creation of School of the Americas Watch were a 35 day hunger strike at the entrance to Ft. Benning, then the action I described at the beginning of this paper, commemorating the first anniversary of the killings of the Jesuits. That protest started an annual tradition, and every November since there has been a protest at the SOA. Still, these protests did not attract much attention, and the protests remained small until 1995, when a group of thirteen protesters decided to cross the line that marked the boundaries of Fort Benning, risking arrest (Gill 208-9). Their arrest and subsequent jail time of three to six months "stoked the moral outrage of movement veterans and advanced the cause of the movement in a way that neither the judge nor the army anticipated" (Gill 210). After that, as well as the 1996 release of the "torture manuals," the movement grew significantly and crossing the line became a part of the tradition. In 1999, twelve thousand people attended the protest, and five thousand crossed the line (Gill 209).
Crossing the line is one of the forms of dramatic action I will examine here. The movement uses many cultural forms to build itself and to advance its goals, from music to drama to giant puppets, but I have chosen to focus on three particular dramatic actions that take place at the annual November protest and vigil: the funeral march, die-ins, and crossing the line. SOA Watch has combined the dramatic flair of the Black Panthers with the nonviolence and religious component of the civil rights movement. In The Art of Protest, T.V. Reed, Director of American Studies and Professor of English at Washington State University, describes the black power movement saying that much of the movement, "particularly the Black Panther Party, can be understood as a kind of theatrical performance" (42). "All politics involves a theatrical element," he says (42). The dramatic actions at the SOA protest grab the attention of the media and the public, and they attract people to join the movement.
The Sunday morning of the November protest starts with a solemn funeral procession in remembrance of those who have died at the hands of graduates of the SOA. The procession is led by people wearing black cloaks and white faces carrying black coffins. Behind them thousands of people march, many carrying white crosses or other symbols bearing names of the dead. A group of people sing out the names of people who have been killed one by one. After each name, everyone raises their crosses and sings the response: "Presente."
In The Art of Protest, Reed outlines the functions of culture in movements, and the first one applies to this in particular: "Encourage. Individuals should feel the strength of the group. Singing in mass rallies can move a person out of the individual self to feel the strength of the group" (299). As Reed discusses in his chapter on music in the civil rights movement, singing unites people and maintains an atmosphere of calm and nonviolence (29). While the litany of the funeral march is not the same as the songs of the civil rights movement, there are clear similarities in the goals of collective singing. However, this action is not just a mass of people singing together. It is a very dramatic memorial for hundreds of dead people, and the slow solemn march along with the raising of the crosses adds a dimension to it beyond music. The action serves to remind the protesters of their purpose and to convey their purpose to the rest of the world. It is a very visible and striking form of protest, different from most protest marches one encounters. It has become a trademark and tradition of the movement.
As the procession arrives at the gates of Ft. Benning, affinity groups and individuals are invited to participate in direct action ("Call for Direct Action"). For many that means "crossing the line," which, post-9/11, is now a barbed wire-topped fence, and for others it can mean any number of other forms of action. One common form of protest on both sides of the fence is the die-in, where people lay down and pretend to be dead, often with fake (or real) blood, acting out the deaths that result from the military training at the SOA, and helping people understand what it's like to live in a place where you do see people on the ground, shot to death. The die-in is a form of protest that has been used in many other movements, so, unlike the funeral march, which is relatively unique, the die-in links the protest to other movements protesting unjust killings and unnecessary deaths by using the same action. Reed describes how ACT UP, an organization fighting against AIDS, used die-ins for their cause as a way to emphasize that people were being killed, not bringing their deaths upon themselves (195). The anti-SOA die-ins can be looked at similarly. They are directly blaming the SOA for these deaths. One of the first SOA protests was a die-in, as I described in the introduction. Die-ins are very dramatic and theatrical. They can convey very strong emotions and therefore hold a great amount of power for those watching and those participating.
The act of "crossing the line" is very dramatic, and of these dramatic actions, it has probably drawn the most people to the movement. When a group crossed the line the first time in 1995 and were arrested and jailed, the attention raised a lot of awareness which drew more people to the movement (Gill 209). Those first few years, a small number of people came to protest, but it has grown dramatically over the years, and the 2005 estimate by SOA Watch was 19,000 people ("Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced"). As Gill says, in 1999 five thousand people, a large proportion of those present, crossed the line (209). However, since 9/11 the number of line-crossers has dropped significantly because of a newly erected fence. It used to be that if you crossed the line there was a relatively slim chance of jail time (because of the sheer magnitude of people), but now it is almost certain. People can spend up to six months in prison.
With a fence topped with barbed-wire, it takes a lot more effort to cross the line than it did when it was a line on the ground, but as people throw cardboard over the top to go over or lift the bottom of the fence to go under, the drama remains. The fact that there are a significant number of priests and nuns and older people crossing adds even more to the act in what Reed refers to as a "transgression of cultural codes" (297). Of the 31 people arrested and sentenced to prison for the 2005 protest, eight were 70 years or older (two of them aged 81), and fifteen were 60 years or older ("Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced"). Our culture's regular view of priests and nuns is not that of people who would climb on their knees under a fence, trespassing and therefore breaking the law, cover themselves in fake blood, lay down, and wait to be handcuffed and taken to jail. That is a transgression of cultural codes, which, as Reed argues, has a great impact on the influence of a movement on society by altering people's concepts of cultural codes (297).
The movement to close the School of the Americas has had some success over the years, but the school still remains open. Technically, the SOA did close in December 2000 because of pressure from the public and the bad reputation the SOA had acquired. However, a new school called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation opened in the same place with the same people in charge and nearly the same curriculum in place in January 2001. It was clear to many that the name change was essentially skin-deep (Nelson-Pallmeyer 120-121), and while it has increased the amount of human rights training, the school remains basically the same. Still, it shows that the movement was exerting enough pressure that something had to be done, though it was not a satisfactory solution for those trying to shut down the school for good. Another sign of success is the growing numbers of people involved in the movement, and the fact that every year legislation in the House to close the school gets closer and closer to passing.
One key aspect of the movement has been that its actions are not just limited to the November protest, but that every spring Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) regularly introduces legislation to close the school, and SOA Watch organizes lobbying in Washington DC to try to get the legislation to pass. Without the well-known protest which shows that tens of thousands of people support the movement enough to travel to Georgia from around the country, the lobbying would hold much less weight, but without the lobbying and actions in Congress, the protest would have very little actual impact in its goal to shut down the school. These two actions complement each other well in the movement to shut down the school.
One challenge the movement faced was how to frame its goals. Did it just want to shut down the school, or was the real issue U.S. foreign policy, exploitation, and military interventionism? (Gill 227). Closing the school is a feasible goal, but "Doing away with U.S. imperialism was another matter" (Gill 228). However, especially prompted by the growing anti-globalization movement and the 1999 Battle of Seattle, SOA Watch has been framing itself within the larger picture of globalization (Gill 229). If one looks at the SOA Watch web site, there is a page specifically devoted to the SOA in terms of labor and globalization ("SOA, Labor & Globalization"). Still, it is an issue of finding balance, and there are other disputes about methods and attitudes especially as more young, non-religious people join the movement (Gill 230).
Despite some internal disputes, the anti-SOA movement has succeeded in tarnishing the name of the School of the Americas and keeping alive the memories of those who have been killed. It has used dramatic action as an important way to attract attention and members to its cause as well as to build the movement from within, strengthening its resolve and commitment. It has been sure to get the media to cover its actions, and it has produced a number of documentaries about the issue, which highlights the dramatic actions even more. The movement still has a lot of work to do, especially if it is concerned not just with closing the school but changing the structures that create a need for the school. However, the movements used so far have had a significant impact, and the movement is young and still has time to grow and develop.
Works Cited:
"Building the Movement From the Bottom Up." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=724>.
"Call for Direct Action: November 2006." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1091>. Father Roy: Inside the School of the Assassins. Dir. Robert Richter. Narr. Susan Sarandon. Videocassette. Richter Productions, 1997.
Gill, Lesley. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2004.
Hodge, James and Linda Cooper. Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004.
Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. School of Assassins: Guns, Greed, and Globalization. Rev. and exp ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001.
Reed, T.V. The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005.
"SOA, Labor & Globalization." School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/sub.php?id=38>.
"Thirty-one Nonviolent Activists Sentenced to Prison in Columbus, Georgia." 1 Feb 2006. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/pressrelease.php?id=104>.
"What is the SOA?" School of the Americas Watch. 7 Nov. 2006 <http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8>.
Just in case anyone in New York is reading this, I wanted to pass along the info for these events, pushing for the passage of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in New York:
*Friday-Saturday, June 12 - 13 - 24-HOUR VIGIL FOR THE DOMESTIC WORKERS BILL OF RIGHTS*
Many domestic workers, particularly live-in workers, work around the clock without rest. We're asking all New Yorkers who support domestic workers rights, to stand together for 24 hours straight in a symbolic show of support for the passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - so that domestic workers can receive overtime, job security, basic respect and recognition.
8:00 am - 8:00 am
Press Conference Friday 12:00 noon City Hall - across from 250 Broadway Take the N/R to City Hall, or the 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge RSVP, and sign up for a shift, aijendwu@gmail.com, or (212) 481-5747
*Sunday, June 14 - NY CHILDREN AND FAMILIES MARCH for DOMESTIC WORKERS RIGHTS* Bring your entire family, community and congregations to this Sunday afternoon, after-church, "march for peace and justice in the home" to show how many people of faith support and are connected to domestic workers. With children leading the march, many generations will march together with one common message and theme. Let's send a strong message to the NY State Legislature and the Governor that we won't stop until they honor, respect and protect the work that makes all other work possible in New York.
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm City Hall - across from 250 Broadway Take the N/R to City Hall, or the 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge RSVP to joycedwu@gmail.com or (212) 481-5747
*Monday, June 15 - National Domestic Workers Alliance Regional Congress Public Forum - WOMEN AND WORK* Join domestic worker organizers, feminist scholars, activists, legislators, and other allies to raise awareness on how to extend protections to all working women. Featuring a video presentation of women leaders from across the country who are raising their voices to support the work being done on behalf of domestic workers in this country.
7:00 - 9:00 pm Julius Held Auditorium 304 Barnard Hall, Barnard College - Barnard Center for Research on Women 3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027
As many of you know, I spent my spring semester of my junior year in El Salvador, doing a program called Casa de la Solidaridad. The application deadline for fall 2009 is coming up on March 31st, and I wanted to put the word out for anyone who might be considering studying abroad or who knows people who are thinking of studying abroad: Go to El Salvador!
It is not your traditional study abroad experience. You will not go out drinking every night and play the tourist traveling around Europe. You will have a life-changing experience and learn about the lives of people living in poverty in the beautiful country of El Salvador. You spend two days a week in a placement in or near San Salvador, accompanying the community, spending time with people, and sometimes teaching English or participating in other activities. You take amazing classes at the University of Central America, the Jesuit University in San Salvador. You live in community with other American students and Salvadoran scholarship students. It is a time to learn and explore the themes of social justice, simple living, spirituality, and community. (The Casa program was based on the Jesuit Volunteers International program, so there are a lot of similarities between it and what I am doing now with JVC.)
The Casa program had a huge influence on my understanding of the world, of social justice, of people, and of my calling in life. I've never met anyone who did it and was not transformed in some way. You can read my blog for more about my experiences, and check out the program's website for a lot of details and descriptions.
For some reason when it's an inappropriate time to blog (such as in the middle of the work day), I feel inspired and motivated to write in here, but when it's an acceptable time (such as after work or over the weekend), I lose my motivation. There are so many things to write about - work has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. Encouragement and disappointment, a lot of challenges and frustration. The domestic worker project that I've been in charge of is going to switch over to one of my coworkers and I'll be focusing more on casework (mostly wage recovery). It makes the most sense in terms of our skill sets (approaching strangers on the streets does not come naturally to me) and continuity (my coworker will be here long after I leave in August). I think this change is going to relieve some of my stress and allow me to keep a slightly better schedule (yesterday I worked 12 and a half hours!). Tomorrow is our workers' assembly, and we're having our first domestic worker meeting right after. I'm crossing my fingers that people will come.
Last weekend we had an incredible JVC retreat that focused on social justice. I took pages and pages of notes, and I'd like to turn them into a blog entry sometime soon. The retreat was led primarily by Fr. Fred Kammer, former president of Catholic Charities USA, who is absolutely amazing.
If anybody has job leads or ideas for what I should do with my life after August, please let me know. I'm thinking of a second year of JVC, but in the Bay Area. I'm still not sure if that's what I want though...
This is a good article focusing on women in low-wage work and how they're suffering in the current economic situation:
(WOMENSENEWS)--While Washington lawmakers are debating President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus proposal, Blanca is cleaning houses.
We, however, are listening closely, ready to respond to any package that does not include several easy steps, outlined below, to ensure that low-wage working women are also assisted by an economic stimulus plan that could swell to $850 billion. Otherwise we will continue to put forward old solutions to new problems.
Blanca is the parent of four children ranging in age from 5 to 13. She has no health insurance, and if she misses a day of work she also misses a day's pay. She juggles child care to keep her cleaning jobs. Her sister helps with the children during the day before going to her restaurant job at night. Blanca makes about $1,000 per month.
Blanca is a low-wage worker. She is one of 30 million U.S. residents who are heading families that include 20 million children.
Sixty-eight percent of low-wage workers are women. Nearly one-third of women in the work force have low-wage employment compared with one-fifth of male workers. Women bring home at least one-third of all family income, a significant contribution to the stability of the U.S. economy. Any plans for stabilizing the economy will need to consider the larger effects that job loss and women's declining wages have on communities.
I wrote this for the Ragweed, the JVC South newsletter:
Election night was a night of mixed emotions for me. I was excited that Obama had won, but every time my phone vibrated with a call or text message, I was anxious that it might be my sister calling with bad news. She had told me that she would let me know how the California election results were going as soon as she knew. She called me a little while after the polls closed, and I excitedly started talking about Barack Obama. When she said "Yes, but…" I felt my heart sinking. She told me the results so far for Proposition 8, the state proposition that would end gay marriage, adding a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It was winning. I tried to come up with reasons why the reporting precincts might be skewed conservative, but it wasn't looking good. I just couldn't believe it could possibly pass. I felt shocked and betrayed by the people of the state where I was born and raised, in whom I had faith to do the right thing, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes.
As a straight woman, the government will recognize my marriage, no matter when I choose to get married or what man I choose to marry. Imagine being in love with someone, wanting to spend the rest of your life with them and get all the legal and social benefits of a marriage, and the government telling you you're not allowed to. This is what millions of couples are being told in California and in most of the rest of the country.
Earlier this year, California judges overturned a state proposition from a few years ago that defined marriage as between a man and a woman and declared same-sex marriage legal. The marriages officially began after 5 p.m. on June 16, 2008, and a number of cities kept their offices open late that day. I was working in San Francisco this summer, and on my bus ride home after work that day, I passed by City Hall. I saw people with signs protesting the marriages, including one that said gay sex is a threat to national security. I was horrified. Imagine having protesters at your wedding. It's a time of celebration, happiness, and love, and as you walk out of the city hall, you see people with signs saying you're going to hell - going to hell for being in love and committing yourself to your partner for the rest of your life.
I have a very hard time understanding any justifications for banning gay marriage at the government level. No matter what your religious beliefs may be, if the state is issuing marriage licenses, it has no right to discriminate against a group of people and deny them their civil rights. Allowing more people to get married is not going to destroy the fabric of our society – it will strengthen it. As many people have mentioned in these debates, it wasn't very long ago that people of different races couldn't get married in parts of this country. Those laws weren't just, and neither is Prop 8 or any other law against same-sex marriage. This is a matter of equality, and by denying gay people the opportunity to be legally married, we are making them second-class citizens. The government is telling a group of people that their committed relationships are in some way less valid than those of straight people. This is why civil unions are not enough. Not only do they not bestow all the legal rights as a marriage, but by putting the relationships in a different category, the state is saying that they are not worthy of the title of marriage.
On November 15, I had the great pleasure of going to a Prop 8 protest here in Houston. Rallies were held all around the country to call for marriage equality and an end to legalized discrimination. The passage of Prop 8 did not end the movement to legalize gay marriage, and I firmly believe that we will change these laws.
For a recent JVC retreat, each community put together an "Our Town" presentation, to share with the other communities a bit about the places we live. Each of us in my community wrote a brief story from the perspective of someone with whom we would interact through our work. This is what I wrote (this is not a real person's story, but it includes the typical problems we hear):
My name is José Valenzuela, and I came from Mexico to Houston three years ago. I had to leave because I couldn't earn enough money to support my family. The job that I had in Mexico didn't even pay enough for us to buy tortillas. I tried to find work that paid more, but it was impossible. Coming to this country was my only option. I came to the U.S. without papers, and I am always afraid that I will be caught and deported. My wife and three children still live in Mexico, and I send money back as often as I can – they depend on me. I miss them very much. Because I don't have a social security number, it's difficult to find a steady job, so I work as a day laborer. I go to the Woodridge Home Depot every morning at 5:30 a.m. Some days I get paid well, and other days I don't get picked up and don't get any money at all. Three weeks ago, a man hired a group of us to work on an apartment building that was damaged in the hurricane. It had flooded, and the carpet was soaking wet and smelled like mold. When he hired us, he said he would pay us $15 an hour. There were five of us, and we worked very hard. We worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for three whole weeks. He told us he would pay us when the job was finished and he saw that we had done well. After a few days, I started coughing a lot, and I got a rash on my arms. I asked for gloves and a mask, but he said no, and that if I wanted to leave I could because he would just find someone else to do the job. We all kept working, and we did everything he asked us to do. One week into the job, I was ripping up floorboards and got a really bad cut on my hand. The boss took me to the hospital, and he said their insurance would pay for it. At the end of the three weeks, we had finished the job, and he handed us checks for $500 each. I said that he owed us a lot more money, but he told me I had worked too slowly, and that's all I deserved. I told him he was breaking the law, but he said that since I was undocumented he didn't have to pay minimum wage, and if I did anything he would call the migra, and they would deport me. He also refused to pay my medical bills from my hand injury. I didn't know what to do, and I was afraid. What am I going to tell my family?
Note that if someone does a job, all labor laws (including minimum wage) apply, regardless of immigration status.
Friday night at about 9:30 p.m., my roommates and I were relaxing in the living room watching Indiana Jones, and my phone rang. It was Pancho, my awesome Marxist popular education expert coworker, calling to say that he and Laura (another awesome coworker) were with a big group of workers that hadn't been paid, and a lot of them didn't have a place to sleep. He was calling to see if a roommate with a car and I would drive to Casa Juan Diego, the Houston Catholic Worker house, to pick up a bunch of food, and then take it to the Salvation Army shelter where they were going to take the workers.
My very cool roommate Vicky, who has her car here, said she would drive, and another awesome roommate Katie asked if she could come along too. We drove to the house with the food, which was Casa Juan Diego's men's residence, where the door was answered by a young man who no doubt wondered why on earth there were three gringa girls asking for food in broken Spanish. We waited a bit for him to get someone else, and an older man came to the door who knew what was going on. We loaded up 75 small boxes of food in the car, and I called Pancho to confirm where to deliver the food. He said there was a change of plans, and the shelter said it would be best if the workers ate before they arrived, so we took the food to our office. We could have gone home at that point, but I think we all wanted to stick around for the workers to arrive. We started chatting, and pretty soon a guy named Bryan from TEJAS, an environmental justice organization, and his girlfriend showed up. They do some cool media work, and they had been out there with the workers taking some photos and video. A few minutes later, Pancho and Laura showed up with about 15 workers. We gave them food, and as Pancho was describing our organization, the topic of religion came up (since we're an interfaith organization, at least in theory). Pancho started talking about Jesus. Who did Jesus spend his time with while he was on earth? The poor, the exploited. Who would Jesus be spending his time with if he were on earth right now? "Nosotros" (us), they answered. Yes, Pancho said. Jesus is walking with you. He's walking with us. As we organize and and work for justice, we know that Jesus is walking with us. As we try to get stolen wages back, we know that Jesus is walking with us. Even if we can't get the money, Jesus will still be walking with us. (If Pancho had a church, I would definitely go.) As we were talking about how interfaith our organization is, a debate arose about what is the largest religion/denomination in the U.S. One man said the Catholic church was the biggest, and another said the evangelical church. Pancho then noted that capitalism is actually the largest religion in the country. Just look at the size of their temples, he said. A little later, he began to talk about the labor movement and how the rights that we have now are the result of the struggles of many people who came before us. We got these rights because people organized and fought very hard for them. He pointed out to the workers that their efforts to get their money isn't just about them - it's about trying to bring about a more just society for the people who come after them. One man started talking about how terrible his working conditions used to be in El Salvador, and the conversation among the workers turned to structural economic injustices, and how there are so many forces working against them. One man started a rant on neoliberalism.
It was a perfect Friday night.
On Saturday we had an action outside the company office where the workers gathered waiting for their checks. A lot of media came, which was great. I took some photos, which you can see here, and you can see a TV news report here.
The women’s stories seemed to come from a backward country, or from a shameful time in the United States that many would sooner forget.
Sharing stories from the workplace: Violet Anthony, top, was slammed against a wall and subjected to beatings after she arrived from India; Georgia Danan, middle, was paid just $70 for working a 24-hour shift; and Araceli Herrera, bottom, says employers searched her bags before they would allow her to leave for the day.
One woman, too scared to give her name, told of being struck by her employer in Bethesda, Md., as she scrubbed her hands raw polishing the floor. Another woman, Violet Anthony, who is 29 and from Mumbai, said her face became marbled with bruises after her employer in Queens slammed her into a wall and slapped her. Araceli Herrera said some of her employers inspected her bags before she left their homes and refused to drive her to or from the bus stop, a half-hour’s walk away. One employer, she said, fired her after she had a gallbladder operation and needed a month’s rest.
“With each job, I was exploited more. The thing is, the more you suffer, the harder it is to defend yourself,” said Ms. Herrera, 48, who trained to be an optometrist in her native Mexico and now works as a housekeeper in San Antonio. “We come from an atmosphere of violence, of blows, and we think we have to tolerate that.”
All three women were in Manhattan over the weekend for the first National Domestic Workers Congress, four days of workshops, meetings and a rally to demand rights for a work force that organizers describe as splintered, almost invisible, and staggeringly difficult to organize.
I'm happily settling into a lovely house in Houston right now. We don't have internet access at our house, so I'm sitting in a nearby cafe using wireless. I should have regular access at work, but be aware that my internet time will be much more limited than it used to be, and I may be slow to respond.
Here's an entry I wrote a few days ago:
Saturday, August 16, 2008
As I write this, I'm at a retreat center in Pinehurst, TX, a.k.a. in the middle of the woods about an hour away from Houston. There's no internet here, so I'm typing this on my computer and posting it when I get the chance.
I arrived successfully at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Tuesday. When I was flying in, looking out the window, I was amazed at how green it was and how many trees there were. When we landed, I quickly found the other JVC people. As soon as I stepped out of the air conditioned airport, I knew I was facing my first challenge of the year: heat and humidity. We rode together in a school bus (not air conditioned) to the Circle Lake Retreat Center, which is far more beautiful and amazing than I ever would have expected. With the humidity, it feels like we're in the rainforest. We were warned not to swim in the lake because there are water moccasins (for ignorant people like me, those are snakes), and I discovered some large and colorful varieties of bugs. We've had sporadic rain and thunder (fun!).
During our orientation we focused on the four pillars of JVC: social justice, simple living, spirituality, and community. Each day we focused on one. Someone gave a presentation in the morning, we had a chance for reflection, and in the afternoons we had meetings with our community members to discuss how we'll carry out these principles in our communities.
I'll be living with six lovely young women this year: Stephanie (from Knoxville, Tennessee), Katie (from Cleveland, Ohio), Robin (from New Orleans), Emily (from Santa Cruz, CA), Mary (from St. Louis, Missouri), and Vicky (from near Dallas, TX). We're getting along very well, and I'm excited about spending the year with them. We have a mix of personalities, but a lot of similarities as well (including Catholicism, a dislike of cockroaches, and a desire for clean common areas), and we're all committed to making the community work.
The JVC program is based on the four pillars I mentioned above. When we signed up to do JVC, we signed the JVC South Covenant, which we've revisited throughout the orientation. To give you a better sense of the program, here are sections from the covenant:
Social Justice: In order to work for justice we must become aware of our role in society. We are called to change the attitudes and structures, both personal and societal, which create poverty and oppression.
Simplicity of Lifestyle: Honoring simplicity allows us to value relationships over objects. Living simply brings us closer to awareness of God and Creation, our humanity, and our lifestyle's effects on others.
Community: Communal life allows for mutual support and encouragement in the difficult work we choose to do as volunteers. It challenges us to be open, compassionate and willing to grow. We learn that our lives are interconnected and we have responsibility towards all members, as they do to us.
Spirituality: Spirituality is both the awareness of and our reaction to God's presence in the world. It is in realizing God's love for us that we can then turn to others with love. As Christians, we recognize the responsibility we have to each other and follow the Ignatian tradition of reflection and action.
I leave for Houston, TX, in a little less than a month to embark on my JVC adventure. I'll be working with the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center. This is my job description:
Education: Provide Workers Rights Trainings to low-wage workers throughout the Houston Area at the Workers’ Center, churches, community centers and events. Create & distribute educational materials for workers.
Casework/Wage Recovery: Intake of new Cases, Create a plan with workers, connect with allies in the religious community, government agencies, attorneys and social service provides and Execute plan with support of staff. Work with employers to recuperate unpaid wages.
Organizing/Campaigns to Improve Working Conditions: Meet with workers & create spaces for collaboration between workers and aforementioned allies and execute Plans of Action.
Leadership Development: Identify leaders among workers and create plan to develop a leadership at HIWJC. In collaboration with the staff, identify, train and mobilize the religious community on low-wage workers struggles for justice on the job.
I have this problem when I haven't blogged for a really long time that then when I want to blog I feel like I have to write about everything I've wanted to write about since the last time I blogged. But every time I see something that makes me mad, I get a little closer to finally blogging. Here's what pushed me over the edge today:
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.
The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.
"I am extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."
Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.
Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.
This afternoon, our Amnesty International group is doing an immigration thing in Harney during dead hour, in conjunction with SOA Watch's series of events (Not For Sale will have something too, so it will be a big ol' social justice party). I volunteered to make handouts, so I thought I'd share them here. They could be better, but they're all right (the info is mainly copied and pasted from a paper I wrote last semester).
Immigration Facts:
There are over 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, over half of whom are from Mexico.(1)
In 1993, at least 205 immigrants died crossing the border into the U.S., and in 2005 the number was over 460.(2) As more border fences go up and security increases (such as with the 1994 Operation Gatekeeper), immigrants must go through very dangerous places, like the desert, to reach the U.S.(3) People die from suffocation, dehydration, hypothermia, and hyperthermia, among other things.
94% of adult male undocumented immigrants work, in contrast with 86% of legal immigrants and 83% of natives. Undocumented immigrants made up about 4.9% of the workforce in 2005.(4)
In the last five years, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have sent over $90 billion to Mexico. Mexico receives more money from remittances than tourism, and remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, after oil.(5) These remesas help sustain families suffering from poverty.
Passel, Jeffrey S. “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” Pew Hispanic Center. 7 Mar. 2006. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf.
"Finance And Economics: Counting the Cash; Remittances to Latin America." The Economist 6 Oct. 2007: 102.
This semester's School of the Americas Watch group at USF clearly has their act together, and they, in collaboration with some other organizations, have organized a week of outstanding-looking events which I highly recommend you attend. Here's the information:
April 28 SOLID(arity) 8:30 PM McLaren Complex All student teach-in. Awesome presentations, free bread-n-spread snacks, and the opportunity to discuss issues of immigration, fair trade, torture, and the upcoming election with your peers. We'll be heading over to Ocean Beach afterward for a bonfire.
April 29 Harney Plaza 11:30 AM Free airbrushed t-shirts! We have some shirts, but first come, first serve. If you'll be late, you can bring your own shirt to be graffitied, too. There will also be hands on mural painting and an immigration display from USF's chapter of Amnesty International.
April 30 Xavier Chapel 7:00PM Former Prisoner of Conscience and activist, Father Louie Vitale will give a speech entitled "A Nonviolent Response to Terrorism." He was recently released from jail for civil disobedience in protest of Fort Huachuca. Shortly after, he was again arrested at the March 19 anti-war rally in San Francisco. Carlos Mauricio, founder of Stop Impunity, will speak about his experience as a victim and survivor of torture in El Salvador. They are both probably 2 of the coolest people ever-- not to be biased or anything.
May 1 Harney Plaza 10:00 AM Meet to go as a group to the Immigration Rally downtown. Wear your white t-shirt from Tuesday!
Crossroads 6:00 PM CELEBRATION! Wooo. *Free Food *Music *A short talk from Vietnam War Veteran and SOA Watch activist Charles Liteky. *A panel on student activism featuring Mike Aguilar, Drea Hightower, Politics Professor James Taylor, and Mel Hackett. Moderated by former USF student Spencer Rangitsch. *Voter Registration Drive by MEChA *Information from city organizations like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, Grassroots Campaigns, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
In the last couple weeks I've done a bit of enlightening volunteering. Along with other members of Amnesty International at USF, I delivered meals to homebound people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses through Project Open Hand (one of my favorite organizations in SF). I've volunteered a couple times in their Grocery Center, but I had never delivered meals before. We got a couple insulated containers of hot and frozen meals, a map, and a list of clients to deliver to. All the people we delivered to lived in SROs within a few blocks of each other in the Tenderloin. I had never actually been inside an SRO before, and it was intense, horrifying, amazing... I don't know how to express it. The elevators were terrifying. The living conditions were horrible. Still, in one hotel I was waiting in the lobby while some of the other students went upstairs to deliver meals, and I was struck with the community people seemed to have within the building. My roommate, who spends a lot of time with Project Open Hand and is also an intern at St. Anthony Foundation (one of my other favorite organizations in SF), told me that SROs often cost $900-$1000 a month. That's for a single room. Bathrooms are shared with the rest of the floor. That's far more than I currently pay for my own room in an apartment in a pretty nice area of San Francisco.
The other volunteering I did recently was April Action, a service day organized by University Ministry at USF. April Action always has an environmental theme, and last Saturday a bunch of us went to an area of Golden Gate Park where we cleared out blackberry plants that were hurting the magnolias (or something - I wish they had spent a bit more time talking about the purpose of our work). It was going fine, and it was kind of fun except for my arms getting scratched up from all the thorns, until I heard one of the gardeners telling people to stop, saying something like "uh oh, we have a problem." It turned out someone had set up an encampment inside the blackberries. There were some bags of stuff sitting there; it was somebody's home. The gardener called over the woman who was in charge, and I saw her making a phone call, but we kept clearing away the plants. I think those of us who knew what was happening were pretty apprehensive, however. I was glad to hear other students saying they weren't comfortable destroying someone's home. I certainly wasn't. We had a little reflection afterwards, and I brought up the risks of unintended consequences of service. We can be completely well-meaning, thinking we're doing a good thing, but actually do more damage than good.
For anyone interested in social justice and social change, I highly recommend reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. If you're more interested in an 18-page article than a book, check out "Pedagogy for the Children of the Oppressors" by Andrew Christian van Gorder in the Journal of Transformative Education. I don't feel like breaking copyright laws and posting it, but if you're at USF, search for the journal in the library's Journal Finder, then search the article title, and you should find it. It was published in January 2007.
