General

508 is a show about Worcester. Today’s panel includes Brendan Melican, Cha-Cha Connor, and City Council challenger Kola Akindele.

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The latest round of debate over Worcester’s pools ended in a contentious City Council meeting this week. Some are seeing the issue as a litmus test in the upcoming City Council election. It has also spurred new calls for a change in the city’s charter.

508 contact info

Upcoming candidates should include Mary Keefe, Rob Diaz, and Grace Ross. Feel free to post questions to them in the comments to this post.

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11 people gathered at Worcester City Hall today to repent, as Americans, for the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to call for nuclear disarmament.

A recent poll found that 61% of Americans think the bombing was “the right thing” to do. There are two ways to look at this. Was the bombing an effective way to bring WWII to an end? Was the bombing a horrible crime?

I think the answer to the second question is “Yes.” As to the first, Wikipedia is a good place to start. Hiroshima: Was It Necessary? is another introduction.

For another take on disarmament, one expressed by several passersby today, see Randy Newman’s “Political Science.”

Related:

• How to: commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Today, May 1, is the 76th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of The Catholic Worker newspaper, generally recognized as the beginning of the Catholic Worker movement.

Art Laffin of the DC Worker read The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker at the weekly Friday White House vigil today:

Matt Vogel, managing editor of The Catholic Worker, shares his thoughts:

More thoughs on the anniversary from the Oklahoma City CW.

Carl Malamud, rogue archivist and information activist, is campaigning to be made the Public Printer (head of the Government Printing Office). “I’m inspired by Gus Geigengack, a working printer who convinced FDR to name him to the post.”

Mr. Malamud’s “Hack 3: Be Government” was the direct inspiration for Worcester Indymedia’s 2008 project to create a free, public archive of City Council meeting videos. (The City refused to sell us copies of the videos or help in any way; in 2009 they finally started doing this themselves.)

I endorse his campaign, and hope that you will, too. He’s done a heck of a job opening government from the outside–he’d do a heck of a job on the inside, too. Read his platform and then endorse away! “To endorse my nomination, simply comment on any blog post (like this one!), tweet me [@carlmalamud], or send me email [carl@media.org]. The endorsements will be harvested, set into a book, and released as a free PDF file with paper copies dispatched to the White House Office of Personnel. Thank you for your support.”

People I read who are endorsing: On the Commons, Boing Boing

Photos at Jonah House.

We are told he was injured falling from a tree. More details to come.

Ithaca Blog:

Peter was a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Marines who became one of the leading anti-war activists in America.

[...]

Peter leaves behind his wife, Ellen Grady, and their 4 daughters.

Democracy Now:

And the longtime peace activist Peter DeMott has died at the age of sixty-two. Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq, DeMott and three other peace activists poured their own blood on the posters, flags and walls of a military recruiting station outside of Ithaca, New York. The activists became known as the St. Patrick’s Day Four. Demott served four months in federal prison for the action. He became a peace activist after fighting with the Marines in Vietnam.

This year I somehow finished most of my Christmas chores in late November. Then things got super-busy, and the last few tasks, like writing this pre-Christmas blog post, got pushed till the last minute.

Civil disobedience through oil and gas bids
Adam sent along this inspiring story of Tim DeChristopher, who de-railed “an oil- and gas-lease sale that caught the attention of Congress and the incoming Obama administration.”

Holiday giving?
If you’re thinking of donating money to an interesting cause, and you’ve already helped your church and local Catholic Worker house, you might consider Worcester’s EMPOWER. This group has been working to start a local biodiesel cooperative, converting waste restaurant fryer oil into home heating oil. They’re raising a few more funds so they can finish crossing the Ts and dotting the Is and begin production. You can learn more about them through EPOCA (their fiscal sponsor), or I’d be happy to put you in touch with the right people.

If you’re looking for a present for post-Christmas giving, you could do worse than the Snow Ghost Community Show DVD box set, available for a $50 donation to WCCA TV13, Worcester’s cable access station (and my sometime employer). Get your copy at WCCA’s office or HBML. I’m slowly uploading the images to the Archive for your DVD-burning pleasure.
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Catholic Anarchy: Why I decided to vote
Iafrate:

Voting in the united states is indeed participation in a corrupt system. Critics of voting are indeed right that casting a vote is, in some sense, to be complicit in that system. There is a real danger, though, in believing that abstaining from voting will make us less complicit with this death-dealing system. While I believe Christians must witness to “the wider culture,” to imagine that we are completely separate from that culture, and that we play no role in making it and perpetuating its good aspects as well as its bad aspects, is an illusion.

Worcester voted….
Against eliminating the income tax 71.7%
For Obama 67.7%
For marijuana decriminalization 66.9%
For the dog racing ban 57.5%

I know that Adam voted against the proposed farm animal care reforms in California, but I’m happy it had enough support from others out there that it passed.

Catholics and the vote
Rocco Palmo lays out the scene:

In record numbers described as “breathtaking,” the nation — and, by the looks of it, the church — have spoken… and they’ve made Joe Biden the First Catholic of the United States.

This post has the details:

Bishops and apparatchiks, you might just want to avert your eyes… not much “good news” here.

I’m looking forward to working hard to oppose or change many of the new administration’s policies, especially the first part of next year. More on this in a few days.
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The site was down awhile yesterday afternoon, and was down again this morning. Routine upgrades.

Thanks to all who complained! It’s great to know that so many people read the site and care about it.

One reader contributed this Word Cloud of recent P&C posts while waiting for the site to return:

Man, too much podcasting, not enough Catholic Worker stuff of late. I’m working to fix that.

“Shoe” panel via The Daily Panel

Oklahoma City Catholic Worker and occasional Pie and Coffee contributor Bob Waldrop is blogging about the impending financial collapse and ways to deal with it.

At times like these, I’m very interested in what the counterculture has to say. It’s like Kaihsu wrote about the people likely to survive tough times: they included “(what we now call) ‘the poor’ and . . . the hippies. These are resourceful people who are self-sufficient and resilient, who have not been absorbed into the globalized monetary economy.”

Dorothy Day:

The only way to live in any true security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.

(Another writer who’s been blogging about the survival value of local economies and Community Supported Agriculture, but who comes from a totally different angle, is John Robb.)

The Agape Community, in the woods about 35 miles from Worcester, has been more-or-less closed for the past year, while core members and residents Suzanne Belote Shanley and Brayton Shanley have been on sabbatical (their first in decades).

That sabbatical officially ends this Saturday with the annual St. Francis Day celebration.

The Raging Grannies at St. Francis Day in 2006

“Breaking the Silence: Unheard Voices in an Election Year”

Saturday Oct. 4, 2008
Promptly at 10 A.M. – 4 P.M. rain or shine

Multicultural Voices: Youth Panel on Hope and Faith

Community Dialogue: Women of Faith and Election Year Politics

Demonstrations–solar energy, vegetable oil fueled car, straw-bale house, compost toilet, and organic garden.

Bring your lunch and a dish for the Pot Luck dinner.

Tribute to Tom Lewis – artist and member of Catonsville 9

Agape Community 2062 Greenwich Rd, Ware
413-967-9369 www.agapecommunity.org
peace@agapecommunity.org

Highly recommended. These folks let me take a retreat there this summer, for which I am very grateful.