A cold day and a conversation with Helen

2/27

Westside Clergy meets with Helen Rosenthal

The weather has turned cold again. I wake up Joe and La Toya and ask him to stop in my office before he leaves. I’ve been talking with contacts at the Interfaith Assembly. Even though the latest life skills program started last week, Joe could still get in if he shows up today. The program involves what you might call employment readiness plus the kind of basic planning and organizing skills it takes to manage a life. Everyone in the program gets a mentor to walk with them usually there’s an employment internship at the end of the program. And there’s a tie in with housing with Valley Lodge, one of our Westside Federation for Supportive and Senior Housing facilities. We were going to host the program but it wound up at our friend the West End church instead due to some unresolved building issues.  Joe promises to check it out. Later in the day, he tells Danielle there’s a conflict with his GED program and he may not make it.  OK then.

Two guys, one  with Otis on his shirt, are in to look at the elevator. After five years, we’re ready to get it going again. I show them the engine room in the basement and they prepare to open it up and check it out.

Karen comes in to play the piano and Cara is happy for the music as she works.

John H comes by to return  the keys from his Dark Lady Players rehearsal, talk about his upcoming immersive event in Brooklyn and a four day festival he’s planning. As radical as his Shakespeare authorship theories are (http://www.darkladyplayers.com/), John is getting better and better at presenting his ideas in ways that entertain and engage and not just weigh you down with academic argument. He’s still got a long way to go pushing that dramaturgical stone up hill, but it’s a start.

Outside, Marty is sitting in the freezing cold, hand outstretched.

Marty its freezing cold.

It’s cold every winter.

But this is the coldest in years.

Listen, if you’re going to play Broadway, you have to play Fargo, North Dakota first. Without an overcoat. JFK walked down Pennsylvania Avenue without an overcoat. Harry Truman walked down Pennslvania Avenue without an overcoat. Where’s Oral Roberts from? Iowa? Kansas?

No, Tulsa, Oklahoma, I lived there ten years.

He took all the money he made from broadcasts and built a hospital. Who else is from Tulsa, Joel Osteen?

I don’t think so. He’s somewhere else.

I listen to him every week. He knows that if you want to get people to listen to your sermon, you have to start with a good story. Just like my father. Remember that, Reverend.

Marty, stay warm.

                                                      * * * *

Cara, Danielle and I have been scrambling around getting ready for our meeting with our new City Council member Helen Rosenthal. Our neighborhood clergy are gathering to meet with her. She’s been held up by a budget committee meeting. Her first. So we have time to review our agenda before she arrives. Which she does, soon enough, breathless and in need of a little food after a day of no breaks since breakfast.

Here are the issues we raise:

Helen makes a point

* Food justice. Especially the Lunch4Learning campaign to secure universal free school lunch in the city.  Also support for the ongoing work to create a sweatshop free Upper Westside.  We talk about ways to visibly identify the small businesses who have pledged to obey the law and honor fair labor practices. Still strikes us as strange that simply obeying the law is still a fight…She wants to work with us on this and take part in our worker solidarity day in May. And we talk about the overwhelming demand on our food pantries and programs since the draconian cuts last November.

* Homelessness. We’re all experiencing the effects of the doubling of homeless people during the Bloomberg years. And the warehousing of people . And the inefficiency and irrationality of the privatization of homeless services. She writes down those phrases, warehousing, privatization of homelessness. Father Duffel points out that as chair of the contracts committee, Helen has power over who gets these contracts. It’s time to get them away from slumlords and work with successful community based programs like WSSFSH. Helen takes careful notes.

* Finally, landmarking. There are a variety of issues here. It affects many of our congregations. There is the basic church state issue: our buildings were left to us not as ends in themselves but as means to mission. That needs to be primary with no imposition from outside. On the other hand, we are aware of the work done in the UK (sadly not US) in the area of theology of built environment. That is what we build, where we build and how we build, and conversely, what we preserve or tear down, has profound theological and spiritual consequences for the communities we live in. We do believe, however, that if a community deems a particular building as an integral part of its cultural heritage, there is an accompanying responsibility to help preserve that building as part of our common shared legacy. You can’t impose state restrictions on the one hand and then use separation theory to avoid support. Helen admits as to not having known what to do when the West-Park designation came before Community Board 7 while she was chair. And that the community and politicians had left promises unfulfilled. We agree to have one meeting focusing just on this.

Pastors Elise and Bob, Councilmember Helen Rosenthal and Marc Greenberg of the Interfaith Assembly

We’ve reached the end of our agreed upon time.  The Dzieci folks are anxious to begin their  Sacred Harp singing. Elise is anxious to get to Advent and prepare for tonight’s Palestine Film Series movie. Mark G of the Interfaith Assembly, Helen and I retreat to my office to wrap up. She is interested in a regular meeting with our clergy group as a sounding board, values check. I encourage to continue to create her own office, that is be herself and not try and live up to any other images of what a Councilmember is. She is already doing that. An engaging combination of policy wonk, numbers cruncher and boundless enthusiasm for political engagement.  This should be good.

                                                      * * * *

While I’m meeting with Helen and Marc, a friend of my friend Jack, Mark P, drops by a DVD of Jack’s living memorial. When I’m alone later, I watch it and am happy to see that I was there. And that I too was a reader and part of this living tribute. I study the pictures. Remember the day. He left a collection  of 10 poems as well.

Dzieci enters the sanctuary. Lloyd and the Workcenter contingent are in the gym for Open Choir. Martin and Noche still in rehearsal. I’m on my way to join Elise at Advent for the Attack, another in our Palestine series. Raises questions about the complexity of relationships under occupation. And we struggle with insights into what pushes people into terrorism, the limits of liberal tolerance without attention to power dynamics.  Elise asks me to lead the discussion. As always, it’s hard. Very hard. Emotions run deep. We stay at it. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787442/)

Quirky, beautiful diversity

11/20/13

For the first time in weeks, months? I wake up without a sense of dread. Without that feeling in my stomach that in a moment, due to a random circumstance, misunderstanding, annoyance, or deliberate stratagem, or just plain evil, all could be gone and the story brought to an end. Hard to accept. We will be here. We will be OK.

At my morning neighborhood Bible study, one of my colleagues says, It was so wonderful, at the meeting, to see West-Park in all of its quirky, beautiful, diversity. And I accept that. Because it’s true.

Cara and Stephen drop by to review last night. Stephen was responsible to make our presentation so I was worried when he wasn’t arriving and the docket was advancing ahead of schedule. He and Cara arrived just in the nick of time. My friend Mark, arriving from the United Nations, seeing us outside said, So you’ve been put in timeout already? And we laughed and went inside.

Nan, our bookkeeper, stops by to drop off a random piece of meaningless mail that came to SPSA. What she really wants to know, and is afraid to ask, because we’ve neglected to tell her and she thinks if it was good news we would have told her what happened, is exactly that. What happened? And so I tell her, We won. The vote was 59-16. We reversed it from a 38-35 September loss to a resounding win. And that is enough for her. Her usually stoic face relaxes. And she smiles. Good, she says, good.

Carman Moore comes in. He and Lotte want to bring their piece  back only this time with an  emphasis on adult survivors of child sexual abuse. And have an open discussion time, perhaps with social workers. I’m aware that we can actually schedule events for next year. And I’m going to accept that. It’s real now.

Lauren from Project Reachout arrives with Sean in their van. They’ve got anther transitional housing placement for Sean. Who’s been in and out of the hospital all week. Maybe this time it will work. She gathers all his things except for one bag. I go out. He rolls down the window. Shakes my hand. Says thanks. All the best, I say, all the best.

Katherine from Bread and Puppet comes in. I tell her the news. She smiles. Hugs me.

Anna brings Keith in. I call my friends at Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing. Immediately, an alert social worker picks up on some veterans’ angles that could help Keith out. He begins to yes but me. And I tell him that is not acceptable. He’s got to make the appointment, or I’m done. And we talk about his daughter. And how he can’t let her see him like this. And I am losing patience. That’s about you, man, not her. All she wants to do is to love you. Denying her that is about you, not a kindness to her. Suck it up, let her love you, that’s what courage is, being a man is, not some stupid pride thing. Don’t call that courage.

Another dance company comes in for a tour.

RL wants to know the results. Does he have to move his stuff to 78 below? I tell him we’re OK.

David G. in to work out details for a December concert. We can do that.

It’s a normal day. And that in itself is an amazing miracle. It could have been different. Normal is a miracle. Well, maybe not exactly.

It took hard work. It took covering all the bases. Three different meetings/committees/councils to get through. Just to get back on the docket. And then dealing with machinations and strategies of opponents. Shocking surprise maneuvers. And lots of strategizing with cool headed people. Old school organizing.  Relationships.

Going to the meeting totally prepared. Ready for any surprise.  Issue introduced by two separate committees, one re. viability, the other re. finance. Then our presentation. Danielle’s video. Stephen’s power point. A dozen of our congregation standing with us. And then the committees took over. It was them defending their report, not with us defending our right to exist. And we had passed out FAQ pages answering every question. I went to the meeting without one more email to be written and sent and not one more phone call to make. And I went onto the meeting knowing I had 50 votes, if all held. 

And the proof of organizing well done? I never spoke a word the whole meeting. Everyone else carried the fight. And we controlled the debate. Everyone prepared. Still…those moments, waiting for the vote to be counted…your life passes in front of you. And when the count is announced, it feels like grace. And you just accept it.

Learnings:

1.    Do the work. Answer all the questions. Cover every base.

2.   Old school organizing. Relationships. Phone calls. E-mails. And count the votes. My mentor Philip taught me, the problem with liberals is they don’t count the votes.

3.    Pray. And get all your friends to pray. And for those who don’t pray, think good thoughts. Direct intentions. Meditate. And pray some more.

4.    Don’t do number 3 until you’ve done 1 and 2.

Time to tell RL the details.

Almost midnight

5/23

Stephen  and Mitchell and I move the big screen and begin to prepare the space for the Red Bull load in. 

I look up and see Jason from #ows in front of me. He’s back from Atlanta, where he’s been living. Back for an action. And fro planning a reoccupation of Zucotti. Feels like something from the ancient past, not just last year. Stephen quickly hooks him up for working the Red Bull concert while he’s in town. I share with Jason his portrait from Elizabeth Herman (http://www.transtudies.org/Photos_Herman.html#11) and those of his #ows colleagues. He’s impressed. 

I come back late in the day. Angelo’s opening was impressive. he’s got an agent who wants to take his work to a higher level. His agent used to work for wssfsh with Hugo. and is connected with a dentist and a program that uses art sales to provide free dental care for uninsured children and other like the Bowery Mission and Wssfsh. (http://www.wsfssh.org/) Yet another program birthed at West-Park. 

As the sun is fading, I listen to Dzieci in the sanctuary. Tonight in the semi-dark, I hear what sounds like Gregorian or medieval church chant filling the walls. 

Beppe drops in and we go to the Gate to review the Carman Moore concert and organic urban gardening and shamans...When we return, Stephen is playing the piano.  Marc reminds  me that the garbage  has to go out. It’s late . Who can do it? Sergeant Keith and the lost patrol to the rescue. Job finished in a blink of an eye. 

Still a moral  dilemma for me. I know from Reachout  that Keith has housing he can return to. The steps are not a solution for Keith and his platoon. Still it's not bad to have a patrol of loyal Marines at your command, even with post-Afghan PTSD.

I love this, says Beppe. A church, almost midnight. A guy playing  piano, a homeless crew of marines  hard at work. Life. I love this...