From Lord Buckley to Freire to Beard Papa

4/19

Stephen has received a response back from the Pantha du Prince people. We’re into negotiations  now. 

Lynnea is looking for an old jail cell set piece from years ago, maybe even a previous production of Measure for Measure. Stephen recalls that it was last used last summer in Glen’s  Dem Dahk Days Down South production as something in the slave trade. Amazingly it turns up. Still here.

RL comes in. He shows me a strange trail of white pigeon feathers leading all the way up to the fifth floor. Fine and white.Like there’s pigeon babies  somewhere. Or a ripped open pillow. Mysteries like this, at the right moments, make want to just give up.Surrendur. Like the building has a spirit of its own. 

RL invites me into his studio.  Shares his concerns about a building issue.  Then plays me an old cassette of the most original hipster, Lord Buckley, performing his beat masterpiece and therefore the Nazz..) story. The Nazz was a carpenter kitty...when he laid it stayed laid....An eleven minute caffeinated florid trip that to your amazement somehow makes sense. In the Eisenhauer 50’s, Buckley was as probably as subversive as he was thought to be. With friends like Lenny Bruce and Ed Sullivan and one of Bob Dylan’s influences, Buckley managed to produce an art that anticipated rap and perfomance art by decades.  Before being  hounded out of show business, he made contemporaries like Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti seem simple and staid. His Nazz is perhaps the quintessential interpretation of Jesus in the Beat era. His performance is what an era was. 

                                                     Lord Buckley performs  the Nazz

My best time of the week? Danielle had a presentation to do in in one of her graduate classes at Hunter. A presentation on Paulo Freire. Gave me the opportunity to talk about one of the most influential figures of this time. (I will resist saying be was the Lord Buckley of education) Gave me the chance to talk about education for critical consciousness. And his idea that people become the subjects of their own history. That their lived lives were part of their curricula. 

Along with Sol Alinsky, Freire is one of the lightning rod thinkers of our time seen as almost demonic by the defenders of establishment and empire. Accused of imposing a Marxist agenda on education, Freire was the opposite. His educational theory flows organically from his   philosophical understanding of the nature of humanity which put into practice can only lead to revolutionary praxis. His thought not only transformed education but deeply influenced liberation theology and community organizing as well. 

Once in a meeting between Newark School of Theology staff and grassroots people, a community representative objected to our use of the term empowerment. That implies we are empty vessels waiting to be filled, she said.What we need you to do is help us discover and put into use what wis already inside us ...that’s the essence of Freirian education.

while I first heard  about t   his  from my friend Mjchael James and his Oakland literacy project in the  late ’70’s , it was my colleague, mentor and friend, Warren Dennis, now the The Dirk Romeyn Professor of Metro-Urban Ministry and Director of Doctoral Ministry at New Brunswick theological Seminary, who showed me what Freirian education is in practice. He was the first educator who ever made it real for me. Working with him in an introduction to ministry practice course with second career adult students changed my teaching style. I would later used what I learned from Warren  with my own students at NST. By helping students read their own lives as text, this model is appropriately  perceived as threatening to structures of domination and power. 

After a dinner with Katie and RL, I’m working late. I hear Chris talking to someone outside. He’s the homeless guy I saw yesterday. Loos like the logo man for the Japanese cream puff chain, Beard Papa.

 Later, I’ll find him inside the church. Tells me he’s homeless. Just needs a place to spend the night. Yesterday Danielle had directed him to the Arc program. He has an appointment for Monday. i tell him he can’t stay here inside, we’re not equipped for that. And he leaves.

Walking home, i see all our doorways are filled....perhaps Beard Papa among them. 

Becoming the subject of your own history

1/24

I find someone asleep on the steps in the south doorway. I start to wake him up then realize it’s Sage. Hey, man, you know you can’t sleep out here during the day. And why aren’t you inside?

I can’t sleep in there, man. It’s madness. Thought someone was goin gto wake me up. 

OK, you know the deal, right?

Yeah.

Inside, Rafael has a whole crew of people together ready to start a construction project. He’s ready to go.

Deacon James comes in. Haven’t seen him for awhile. The chemo is getting to him. Hopes to get his new teeth in tomorrow. I tell him he’s got to come by so we can see. He’s thinking about Luther. How he didn’t give up. I told him Luther’s mantra against the powers, when he felt sore pressed, was I am baptized, I am baptized. James likes that. 

He talks about growing up in Freeport, Long Island. Where Andrea grew up. Where we got married. So many visits. So many years. Freeport, Long Island. Home of Guy Lomabardo. And Public Enemy. And Flava Flav. James says his pops worked for old Guy. I know the territory well. He says he’ll go so I can get some work done. I’m happy to see him.

Late in the day, P_____ comes by to discuss her eviction case. I’ve called someone from the courts who I met at the Martin Luther King, Jr. march last week. She has recommended someone in Gale Brewer’s office. Rosalia. I tell P_____she’s got to call Rosalia. She says, No, that woman says I’m crazy. She wants to put me in the loony bin... So it’s down to me and her again. She wants me to go to court with her on Thursday. She says all I have to do is swear that she sleeps there. If it were only so simple. Now, not only do they want to evict her, they want to force her to pay the difference between her rent stabilized payments and market rate for four years and also court costs. Who is crazy? If only I could talk to the judge.....

Out on the street, Nadia tells me that Rachel is in the hospital again. More fibrillations. Anytime I don’t see her in church, I should know, something is up.....

Jason has organized an impressive group of people to talk about a free university.  Kelly asks us to introduce ourselves and say what we bring or why we came. I recalled how back in the day, yes, 1973, I worked with David Leichman (now of Kibbutz Gezer in Israel)  and sister Dottie Shugrue to form a Free University of Religious Studies at the University of Bridgeport, then a working class university with lots of returning Vietnam vets and an active commie group in a city with a Ku Klux Klan. We had courses like Christianity and Marxism and Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism. 

Then I recall, PRAXIS, the free university at the Canterbury Center for Campus Ministry at the University of Tulsa. How I created courses on Tulsa, the All-American City with David Breed, editor of the city’s black newspaper, the Oklahoma Eagle, and Tulsa After Midnight, which was exactly what it said. 

There was Jason, back from Brazil where he was deeply schooled in the Freirian model of education for critical consiousness and David who lived the same thing in Ecuador and began exploring using a questions technique teaching philosophy and literature at both public and private schools. Bill, from upstate, who built the sphere at the Liberty Science Center and is part of the council of elders and does mentoring in a wilderness awareness program. And Jordan who hated her public schools and  only wants education that makes sense. And Aswad who wants to explore possibilities for homeschooling. And Catherine, a singer-songwriter from Portland (where else), well, grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, who’s been active in Occupy Faith along with her husband Sebastian, and of course Kelly. And we’re later joined by Eve, who works in Theater of the Oppressed (where Freire was required reading.) She’s feisty and strong and take charge. 

(The key in Freirian educaction? people learn to become the subjects of their own history. Their own lives are part of the text, must be in dialogue with it. At the end of the day Paolo Friere is one of the founders of this revolution, as well as contemporary Nicaragua, the Middle East...Paolo vive!...Warren Dennis at New Brunswick showed me the way when I taught with him. And now I've been invited to do the same in Newark, a truly urban city. )

I'm trying to put this all together with the travails of my living, breathing Occupy community in process with all it's chaos, infighting, confusion, passion, caring. Neither one is more the real #ows than the other. They both are part of what #OWS is. 

The conversation goes round. There’s an agreement as to philosophy, principles. And that teaching philosophy is not like, say, teaching making sushi. Later, Joseph walks in, mainly concerned about Native American values. And Eve describes her concept of Occupy Yourself University. So we’ll set some courses. Get them underway. Meet again in two weeks. 

Outside, we hang out talking for awhile. I can see that Eve has made lots of friends among the occupiers. We talk for awhile, she heads home to the Village. 

(Catherine's music is great.....

http://catherinefeeny.com/, http://www.myspace.com/catherinefeeny, 

  http://www.comegatherroundus.org/  )

Thirty-second day of Lent: Nothing Biblical

4/14

Norm, Hope and I meet to to go further with the archives. Hope’s unopened bag and the bag I picked up at Jim’s office on the way here are like bags of unopened Christmas presents. With no other place to work, we gather around the communion table, put what we’ve got down to look at.

It’s a impressive array of stuff, that’s for sure. Old hand written deeds. personal letters. Tintypes, kodak polaroids, examples from the whole history of photography. Lists, records, marriages, baptisms. Blueprints, planned renovations that never took place. A letter of dismissal. The Peacemonger Press. Christmas cards. Unsorted, random. History in our hands. This is being destroyed just by our touching it, says Norm as we go through papers from the 19th Century. 

Norm has a sense of what we have. he needs some color things. Some things  that attract attention. Tell a story. We’ll have to look for those. 

When Hope and I go outside, Marty is there. On the steps. Writing in an notebook.                                           “Hey Marty, what are you up to?” “Nothing Biblical, I assure you. My shopping lists, et cetera.” 

Hope says, “You moved,” gesturing across the street. 

“Too hot over there,” he says, "Monday it was near 80, today, ah, 65? I’m looking to live on the median...” 

We close up. That’s all for now. Later I meet Mim with a friend  from Bank Street, the teacher’s college. We give her a tour. She talks about an exciting film program involving kids and their own neighborhoods and video. Like Paolo Freire’s work with cameras. Where people become the subject of their own history. Take back control of their own lives. Our guest smiles when I mention Freire. Of course, she says.

On the one hand, it’s an exciting opportunity. On the other, I am tired of opportunities. I want to see something real. We shake hands. Agree to talk further. 

We go back outside. In the sun. Marc Greenburg of the Interfaith Assembly is there on 86th.  Knocking at the door. Pushing the buzzer. We go for coffee and popovers. History. The Assembly was started by three giants, Father Daniel Berrigan, Rabbi Marshall Meyer and the Rev. Bob Davidson, my predecessor. Formed to respond to the 200 day homeless sleep-in vigil in City Hall Park. Marc has been the only Director. And I am now the President. Part of our legacy. And present. Each year there’s  a  convocation, march, sleepover and morning meeting with elected officials around the budget and the homeless. A liturgy of remembrance and presence.  Turning the Park and the street into what Bill Tripp would call Ritual Space. We finish our conversation.

Time to go work on the budget.