Human being back again

7/17

I go to bed at night looking for the answer. Wake up in the morning and go through the day with the same questions on my mind.  It is this feeling of limbo, of purgatory,of suspended animation needing one piece to be put into place so that one by one the rest will follow. It is exhausting.

Back from a morning with the Religion-Labor Coalition. My friend Father Duffel is right...it’s not about an annual Labor Day weekend speaker in our congregations, a once a year ritual. It’s about a way of living faith. And what I’m thinking about are my own members who are workers. Their struggles. Their triumphs. Making a sense of solidarity with our own members in their working lives.

I step outside. Find Edward Green spread out on the steps. Asleep. Or passed out. Edward, you can’t be here.You’ve got to get up.

He seems to stir.

Edward, you have to get up. You know the rules You can’t be here.

I hear you, leave me the fuck alone.

Edward, you’ve got to go. I’ve got kids showing up here any minute.  (The JCC kids are due to arrive soon.)

You take care of the goddam kids, I’ll take care of my own damn self.

You got to go.

Tell me again.

You need to get up, you need to go.

Tell me again. 

That’s it Edward, you’re leaving me no choice.

So it’s 9-11. Edward rolls over, sprawled across the steps, goes back to sleep.

First to arrive is a fire engine with sirens screaming. The fire guys jump out. I explain the situation. They look over at Edward. OK, now we got wait for the EMT’s and the ambulance. I know that the heat wave has resources strained all over town.

Soon enough the EMT’s arrive. Walk over. Edward sits up. 

You OK?

I’m OK.

Can you get up?

Yeah. I’m OK.

So c’mon, get up.

Get the fuck outta here. I’m a 55 year old grown ass man and don’t need nobody tellin me what to do. Leave me the fuck alone.

So I guess we’ll have to help you, says the EMT, turns to his partners, OK, gloves.

What the fuck! You think I got the virus? 

It’s what we do man. It’s what we do. You ever been tested?

Get the fuck outta here.

As the EMT’s approach, another siren, NYPD.

They push past the EMT’s . 

So what’s your name?

Edward gives him his cockeyed smile. Human being. (Ah no Edward, not that again. http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2011/06/i-am-human-being.html )

So Human Being, can you get up?

I’m a fiftty-five year old grown ass man...

Can you get up?

Yeah. 

So show me you can get up.

Edward begins to slowly pull himself up by the scaffolding railing.

You want to come with us?

No man, I ain’t doin that.

Then you got to move along.

Shit man, I’m a fifty-five year old...

You need to get moving. Show us you can move.

Where am I supposed to go?

The park. Up the street. Anywhere.Not here.

Shit man...he pulls himself all the way up. Takes a shaky step or two. Starts walking up Amsterdam. Shaking his head as he moves slowly north.

I thank everyone. Firefighters. EMT’s. Police. It’s a hot day.

I come inside. Shaken. More than I’d normally expect. RL comes in. What’s with you, son?

So I tell him. And he tells me the story of the Dalai Lama and the flies that ends with ...three strikes and your out...Point taken. So on to our next logistical, psycho emotional what to do about this problem conversation that seems to call for changing locks and ...

RL has work to do. Just as I begin to settle down to my own, the mumbling man comes in with his shuffle, raised palms, rolling eyes and impossible to understand mumbles. Again, lifting his pants leg to show me his edema.

Sir, you’ve got to understand...I’ve got nothing. Nothing.

Which is true. I feel my anger and frustration rising. I’m about to come off on this mumbling man. He’s really no different than any other day. It’s me who’s off. So I take a breath. And I help him with subway fare. He nods a thanks. Touches a finger to his forehead in salute. And is off.

Outside, the JCC kids are gathering on the steps. Just like nothing had ever happened. The steps just empty, waiting for them. Their high pitched laughter echoes off the scaffolding.

I’m off to Chelsea to meet Zeljko’s friend Zoran for a screening at the School of Visual Arts.

A unique organizing model is emeging

11/29

The day begins with a burst of activity. Deacon James has arrived and is sweeping. Hope is here. John and Teddy from Occupy Wall Street are here ready to get to work to help  us get ready for the upcoming gala. They’ll start in the Chapel, fixing the hole in the floor, scraping some peeling paint off the walls, fixing bathrooms. Anthony and his partner Gary are sitting like sentinels on the steps. 

The representatives of the National Movement Against Sweatshops, Justice Will Be Served and Sweat Shop Free Upper West Side have gathered in our sanctuary to prepare for  meeting with a representative from the New York Foundation. We’ve applied for a grant to fund an organizer for this project. 

The group includes a veteran union organizer, Chinese and Latino workers, a Barnard grad student organizer. We talk through our strategy. 

The foundation rep arrives. We make our case. This has been a unique organizing story. It began with the Saigon Grill workers demanding justice. They attracted the attention of a Chinatown based union. Which reached out and connected with NMASS. Mexican workers in the neighborgood noticed what was going on and wanted justice in their workplaces. As the coalition grew across racial ethnic bounds, Justice Will Be Served emerged as an umbrella. 

The concept of a sweatshop free neighborhood began to grow. Members of the faith community began to be drawn in. And then as the outreach to businesses began, locally based small business people joined in. The only demand was to get businesses to agree to just obey the existing fair labor laws. Other issues, like closing escape routes for owners like the Saigon Grill owners would emerge. 

The Foundation is impressed that what we are developing is a community based approach to joining labor, the faith community, small businesses and residents together to build a more just and humane world in one neighborhood. In some ways, it just happened. But what is emerging is a model that can be replicable in other neighborhoods in the city. Competition will be tough, only 7 out of 17 applicants will be funded. But what we have here is special. It’s living out the vision of Occupy right where we live. 

Meanwhile, Sandy has come back to furhter pursue the vision of a community of Occupiers in residence that could develop a presence in one local neighborhood. Where a new kind of community could be built. Where we could begin to build models of what a new way of relating  economically might be. 

The vision almost makes my head swim. I could see the church being a place where the Occupiers could meet the workers could meet the faith community, the neighbors, and engage in serious conversation and dialogue. And maybe even theological reflection. Hope joins the conversation. Brings a cautionary note that none of us knows where we might be come January. Life is that tenuous. And then we return to concrete, practical plans for the day’s work. John will supervise. Sandy will remain as well  throughout the day.  Later Jason of #OWS will arrive to discuss possible meeting place arrangements. I feel excited that this is moving from political theatre to serious discussion of alternative models. 

The boiler work has progressed to about 75% completion. We just might make it by Monday. All that’s left is to devote the afternoon to an all court press to get people out  to Monday night. 

As I leave to go home in the dark, the doorways are filling with homeless people settling in for the night. Our independent environmental entreprenuer  has his shopping cart of bottles and cans with him.

The temperature is dropping, it’s getting cold. 

What I said at the rally

Tracy, Bob and Carlos

Pastor Heidi and Sarah

Councilmember Gale Brewer

Tracy

Hope

11/16

Brothers and sisters...

We live in an age, a time, a day, of Occupy. And we know that it is not just Zuccotti Park, or New York City or even the United States. All across the world voices are being raised up against a global economy that doesn’t work. That has no future.  A global economy that makes its profits on the backs of exploited workers. It’s a sweatshop world. 

But we are not here today to occupy Wall Street. We are here to Occupy Verdi Square. Because the struggle for economic justice does not take place just inside the walls of 

congress or the chambers of City Hall. The struggle takes place in our own neighborhoods, where we live out our daily lives. Every decision we make, which restaurant to eat at, where we order our take out food from, where we get our nails done, where we get our hair cut, where we buy our groceries....every one of these decisions is a choice for or against economic justice.

What we are here for today is not radical. Please. We are not here to demand the overthrow of an entire system. (Well, not today.) We are not even here to demand a new law or a change in public policy. No. We are only here to demand that one business, one global business in this city that makes its profits on the broken backs of its workers simply obey the law. Simply provide for its workers the basic minimum requirements of fair labor. That’s all. To treat all its workers, citizen and immigrant, papers or no papers, with the same dignity that any human being deserves.  And that across this city we will refuse to support a business that will not treat ts workers with the minimum of fairness. 

Look around you. It has been exciting to me to see in my own neighborhood Chinese, Latinos and now West Africans crossing boundaries to join together in solidarity, to declare that the struggle of one is the struggle of all and that labor cannot be divided.  Look around you. You are a sign of the future. A day when workers across the world will demand...and recieve...justice. Only then can there be true community. 

We in the faith community support you because we believe that we are called to create a more just, humane and sustainable world. And that we must do that here where we live.

And so on this day, we call on all our fellow New Yorkers to boycott Dominos Pizza until they agree to honor the most minimum of fair labor standards.

Justice will be served. 

We will be sweatshop free.

Boycott Dominos Pizza, now. 

No justice no pizza

11/16

I arrive at the church soaking wet and cold after the rally at Verdi Square to launch the citywide boyott of Dominos Pizza on behalf of the Sweatshop Free campaign. On a cold day in steady rain, Latino, Chinese and West African workers rallied to demand that Dominos live up to its legal fair  labor obligations. Here at what used to be called, for obvious reasons, Needle Park, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panic_in_Needle_Park) we seek to atttract the attention of the Upper Westside subway riders as they come and go. 

Back at the church, Danielle and I work to get ready for that night’s center meeting and the looming West-Park gala. Rudolfo our friend from Cuba, is asleep in the sanctuary. As Sarah arrives, Danielle insists that I go talk to him.

He’s spent some time in the shelters. He’s got diabetes. If he had some help, he could take care of himself.But tonight, what he really needs is a meal.  I call Goddard-Riverside. The Outreach folk can’t get beyond street emergency. So I call my friend Ray at Jan Hus. He refers me to his Spanish speaking outreach worker, Felix. He gets Rudolfo a hook up for an evening meal and agrees to meet him in the morning for a more comprehensive look at his situation. Sarah and I come up with the money to get him over to the East side, I shake his his hand, buena suerte, Rudolfo.

Gina, Craig and Michael are in the sanctuary for a run thorugh of the play being prepared for our gala/benefit. I’m surpised, and moved.  Though occasionally a bit heavy on exposition, Bella the playwright has somehow captured the spirit of the place. 

Time for Danielle and I to gather our things and head for the Center meeting at Mim’s. 

Earlier today, at the rally, Eric the union organizer and rally MC happened onto the word of the day. He started into the standard No justice, no peace and somehow wound up with No justice, no pizza. 

I kind of like that, he says. No justice, no pizza. 

The Sunday before

9/8

The Sunday before, before 9-11, was September 9th, 2001. A beautiful sunny day. It was the weekend the city had its labor celebrations. (Never on Labor Day weekend, even workers deserve the holiday named for them.) West-Park was participating in Labor to the Pulpit Sunday where union representatives woild come and speak as part of regular Sunday worship.

Our music director at the time, Bill Schimmel, accordionist extraordinaire, who Andre once described as beyond brilliant, had brought his friend Paul Stein, a long time cultural worker who plays for unions and homeless people. Paul brought a collection of old union/worker songs even including some yiddishkeit. Our guests were restaurant and service workers. Our religion/labor coalition had joined in their struggle against the Metroplitan Opera, it’s restaurant and cafes. We had plannned a picket line for the Met’s opening night. 

Opening night was to be Thursday. Tuesday, of course, was 9-11. Thursday I called a clergy friend. Look, I said, I’m assuming the protest is off...just wantng to be sure.  Oh, he said, you don’t know. The union lost over 150 workers at the Towers....

Later, we would have a memorial service at St. Mary’s in Harlem to remember them. We also leaerned that among the dead were many undocumented workers. People without papers. People who technically didn’t exist. Their families, fearing deportation, never reported them missing. They were never counted. How many might there have been? Their names will not  appear on the memorial.  A few weeks later, the Franciscans at Holy Name Church, spiritual home of many immigrants,  organized a service in memory of those unreported persons who had died.

Behind my desk, in my old office, was a photo taken on September 5th at our last organizing meeting before the scheduled action. Clergy and workers,  mostly Latino, standing together, smiling. I would look at the photo, wonder how many made it, how many did not.

Asbestos abated, crisis averted

7/30

Good news!  The crew under CES has worked all night and the asbestos crisis has been averted. The random test samples have proven negative. We are officially certified to reenter. The show will go on...

The Justice Will Be Served  anti-sweatshop team has  gathered in the sanctuary. Ready to hit the streets of the neighborhood to approach more businesses to sign the pledge to observe minimal labor standards. Just what the law requires would be a good beginning. Tracy, the organizer, has all kinds of questions.  I tell her of my background, growing up in Pittsburgh My ten years in Oklahoma doing urban ministry. My work with the farm workers. (Who can forget those menudo breakfasts? Tripe stew at 7 AM. The t shirts they had reading Menudo: El desayuno de los campeones....ie, breakfast of champions). My international work in Central America and the Middle East. My ten years in Pittsburgh. Work in the public housing projects. The collapse of the steel industry. My friendship with Barney, how he left steel worker organizing to become an unemployed organizer, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee. 

I’m surprised that Tracy knows nothing of the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike. How Carnegie and Frick brought in the Pinkertons as a private army. That she doesn’t know about the Pinkertons, the Halliburtons of their day.  And how the steel workers and the community held off the Pinkertons for nine days. It was just awhile, says Barney, but sometimes awhile means a lot. The Lutheran pastors, profiled in the documentary the Fighting Ministers, who barricaded themselves in their churches when the hierarchy rejected their support of the steel workers in the early 80’s. Renegade organizer Charles Honeywell and the provocative  Denominational Ministry Strategies (later DMX) cadre.  The devastation of the Mon Valley as the industry collapsed and the exodus from Pittsburgh. She needs to know this American labor history. She wants to know if I consider myself a labor organizer. No, no, no. But I have lived in solidarity with those who  do. My relationship with Rabbi Michael and the Religion Labor Coalition.  I need to get to a family birthday party so I wish them well. 

Later that night, I stop by the  speakeasy. Talk with a young man who is a sound tech. Developing new technologies for the recording industry. Working with theatre companies. And his girlfriend.  Two couples  are dancing in the kitchen. Eugena has given her keys to CES so I will need to lock up. We move everyone out. Go through the building, turning off all the lights. We get to the last switch, turn it off. As the lights go out, Eugena says, And good night moon.

Third Sunday in Lent: We have moved back

3/27

Sunny. But still below freezing. Nearing the steps, it’s apparent someone was sick here last night.

As I go to the door to unlock, three people are walking behind me. An older couple, a young adult man. I hear someone say, “So is this a church?” and someone else answers, “well we’ll know when we look  at the signs...” So I turn around, smile and say “yes it is a church an we’re open at 11.” And as we turn the corner and start down 86th, I tell them our story. They are from Chicago, the young man relocating to our neighborhood. They comment about the lines at the restaurants, I joke about brunch vs. church. They tell me they’re catholics and got their mass in yesterday. So I tell them about my friend, my parish priest, Father John Duffell at Ascension Church. And his monthly martini mass. (First Sunday every month, 6 PM) I reach the door. They say thanks. We shake hands. 

Holly comes up the steps as I’m beginning to sweep, her arms filled with choir robes and other Christian Ed materials that had been left at SPSA. Our move back day has begun. From up the street I hear “pastor Bob” and look up and see Brian Taylor. He promised me he’d come here when he was back. 

He asks what he can do to help. I send him to see Holly. He’s quickly back. “Listen” he says “you should let me do that. You need to be getting ready for worship.” I explain that for me, it’s a kind of spiritual discipline. “yes, I know, so give me a chance, ok?” I always enjoy his boyish enthusiasm.  So I let him take over and he does all of 86th Street. 

I greet Deacon Linda on her way from before church grocery shopping. I notice someone is taking pictures of our Lenten signs and walk over to see who it is. And realize it’s Uli. I invite everyone inside. It’s time to begin. I introduce Uli. And Brian. Recall how he’s been Winky the Clown, Santa Claus, and even Spiderman but with us he’s just  Brian.  

Folks are a little slow in gathering. I start with remembering three obituaries from the week. We start with Elizabeth Taylor. What was your favorite movie? I ask. The answers come back: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and of course Cleopatra, Butterifield 8, and for me, the enigmatic Sandpiper with its Shadow of Your Smile. We each had our own favorite. But we lifted her up for her early advocacy for justice and compassion for people with AIDS. She opened the door for the rest if us to follow. 

And Geraldine Ferraro who opened another kind of door for women and elected officials. A door through which would walk both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. And finally, Lanford Wilson. I ask who can identify him and Brian answers right away. He was able to take the everyday language of the people and turn it into lyricism. From his Circle on the Square theatre came the Talley Trilogy, Angel’s Fall, the incandescent Burn This and Hot l Baltimore. That one play makes so clear his capacity to lift up the beauty, the sacredness of all of our lives, even in a seedy hotel. The Missouri he wrote about was an easy drive from Tulsa where my friends from the American Theatre Company introduced me to his work. We celebrate these lives, even as we celebrate the lives of these around us. 

I read a letter for Japan that my new friend has forwarded to me from Emiko Iinuma. Simply the personal experiences of one person, but filled with words about hope, cooperation, solidarity. I had to share it. 

The gospel story of Jesus and the woman at the well is so long, I divide it up, with non-traditional casting: Samantha as Jesus, Brian as the woman. And when the gospel is finished, I say that I’m about to step outside of myself. And I  sing Jesus Met the Woman at the Well...

I remember Peter, Paul and Mary singing this song. There’s a video on Youtube, Mary rocking, flicking her head to keep the bangs out of her eyes. (Yes, I am old....) But as with most of their songs, it didn’t begin with them. Online I found recordings by the Alabama Singers, Dave Van Ronk, Ian and Sylvia, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Pilgrim Travelers, and my personal favorite , the Swan Silvertone Singers. Must be something about that story...

Today is the third Sunday in  Lent.

And Friday was the 100th Anniversary of Triangle Shirt Waist fire.  Uli, Katherine, Andrea and I went Friday night to a performance of a new work, From the Fire. About that fire. The victims were women,  all immigrants . They spoke Yiddish and Italian. Some were as  young as 15, two even 14,  the oldest only 48.The tragedy  led to lots of changes, child labor, fair labor, etc.  But far too much is sadly the same.

Today the immigrants  are speaking Spanish, Chinese....

I can’t help but wonder:  what sermon was preached here right in this place that Sunday 100 years ago?What did they think, feel, say?  And down in the Labor Temple?  On Union Square. How did they respond? What was the conversation in its neighborhood? This neighborhood?  This is the context in which our church was born.

Lot of images of water this week. In Japan, I learned from our friend Takako, children under four can’t drink. the water. So what if your child is four? And yesterday they declared the tap water unsafe. And as Emiko reminded me, so with water,so with vegeatables: spinach, lettuce, broccoli..the whole food supply has been compromised...So Emiko and her friends are are gathering non-perishable food items to send to Japan.

And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the control of water is almost as important as the settlement issue. On one  side of the wall are irrigated fields and swimming pools. on the other, parched gardens. 

Water.  Meanwhile, in Exodus, in the wilderness,people getting impatient..Freedom hasn’t brought them what they expected. At least back in Egypt, back in slavery, there was certainty. Can you relate? And so they grumble...

"Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?"

And Moses’ lament. Most of us  pastors understand.. Which one of us, at some point or another, has not felt what shall I do with these people? They are just about ready to stone me..Been there.

And so Moses is instructed to strike the rock.(I always thought that was strange, with God on it?) So in Psalm 95 that we Andre chanted, the  rock of salvation is not about solidness, but about the source of water. Living 

water.

Marsha, Luis and the table

Luis, Alma and Marsha

In light of our struggles Romans 5:3 give me pause. 

 ... but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Well, yes...but sometimes, no. Two people, two children of the same family, same neighborhood, same parents, same family life and yet....radically different lives,lived, experienced...Suffering can also  wear us  down, wear us out...

It’s back to Frankl again, his book I’ve been reading this Lent  ....Man’s Search for Meaning..Like I told my son Nate a couple of weeks ago, very few things have inherent meaning of and to themselves. They take the meaning we give to them. We choose, (though our tradition would tell us some can’t)....

As we’ve talked about before, hope is not optimism. HOPE is radical.One of our touchstones in this congregation comes from Jim Wallis and what he has to say about hope, that hope is to have faith despite the evidence and the courage to work to make the evidence change.

So now we come to Jesus and the woman:  water again...Some say that the whole story is a parable. That the five husbands symbolize who had occupied Samaria, who they intermarried with. And this new one is Rome...That it reflects on the conflict between Jews and Samaritans.That grew out of a divided kingdom. Different worship mountains. Different cultures. Prejudices. Politics...

But all I’m interested in is the story of Jesus and the woman. Just like the all those singers of the song. It’s elements are  set up like a classic courtship story. Like Jacob, like Moses. You see an attractive woman at a well. You ask her to draw you some water. If she does, it’s on.

What surprises her is that he sees her as she is, not as how she presents  herself. And he sees her as who she could be. She sees that he knows her. And she calls him a prophet.This shows that she is on a  journey. it’s not an epiphany, an all in one shot getting it, it’s a process. We move from the season of epiphany into the season of Lent, the season of  journey. 

In this season I notice that Jesus’ food is to do God’s will...as we are on our journey, may we be fed in the same way. By seeking to act, to be who we are called to be. 

And as we move towards the celebration of our hundredth anniversary, we think of those who came before. May they go with us too on this journey...

Andre sings Rock of Ages. And we all sing Guide My Feet. As we gather around the table for our final blessing, I give Brian and Uli pieces of the building that have fallen off this week. Uli is very touched. Will put it on his desk. Like my Berlin stone. 

A young couple with a child comes in. Wants to know about the story. The woman is interested in offering health screening services. 

It’s time to move back. We gather and walk together down to SPSA remembering the day we left. Brian has a brunch date but plugs in the vacuum and cleans before he leaves. 

We’ve got quite a crew. Luis and his van. Marsha. Pat and her husband Larry.   Alma. The girls, Jamie and Amanda. Just about everyone. (Hope has gone to join the Saigon Grill picket line.) Luis loads the communion table, the biggest  symbol of our life in diaspora, at the center of every worship in our SPSA space, onto a dolly. And Marsha and I pull it back up the street. Ahead I see the girls struggling with a file cabinet on wheels. One has come off. At every intersection, random people appear to help us with the move. 

Finally we are done. We turn the communion table upright, wheel it into place in the center of the sanctuary. Read the carved  Do This in Remembrance of Me on the front. 

We did it. We have moved back. Not exactly as we imagined it. But we are home. Every day like this, I believe, in spite of the evidence.  I hope.