The streets of Worcester

From tonight’s City Council meeting agenda:

23. Charles Luster request to change the name of Chandler St., from Main St. to Park Ave., to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

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Worcester Magazine notes that four new streets will be created by the CitySquare project, which the City suggests be called Church Street, Mercantile Street, Trumbull Street, and Eaton Place. You know they could only have come up with such crappy names on purpose, to wave a red flag in the face of those who love the city, in hopes that those folks would respond with a list of excellent names such as Worcester deserves.

Why not name one of the new streets MLK? Follow that up with Abbott Hoffman Way and Harvey Ball Boulevard (which would lead motorists right to Smiley Square).

We now have a street named after Major Taylor. Let’s keep the momentum going and recognize more Worcester heroes this way.

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Speaking of Worcester heroes, Gary Rosen is on his way to becoming my favorite City Councilor with agenda items like this:

37. Request the City Manager consider the feasibility of introducing rubber sidewalks in the City of Worcester. (Rosen)

A worthy follow-up to his rat proposal.

The reader who submitted the above agenda items also sent this one in:

C. Request City Council Accept an Offer from the Worcester Sharks to Provide Transportation, Admission, Food and Refreshments for City Officials to Attend the Inaugural Worcester Sharks Game at the Portland Pirates on Friday, October 6th at 7:05 pm.

More details on arrest of Worcester journalist/activist

Kevin Ksen and Matt Feinstein have written their accounts of an incident in which Worcester police roughed up Mr. Feinstein and arrested Mr. Ksen while the two were passing out flyers. The police version of the story has Mr. Ksen blocking the police from entering a house. Not surprisingly, Messrs. Feinstein & Ksen remember things very differently.

As noted previously, Kevin has filed a complaint relating to this incident.

A token mention of the Regensburg speech

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pope’s now-controversial Regensburg speech, but I’m hardly the person to weigh in on theology, and this is hardly the place to discuss something so widely discussed elsewhere. (In fact, I’ve turned off comments on this post.)

But I wanted to point you to Mike Griffin’s comments on the speech, and especially the pope’s treatment of violence:

George Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus seem increasingly perplexed by the growing pacifism of the Holy See. First they tried to dismiss John Paul the Great as a kindly old man who, of course, wants peace but really should stick to religion and let the U.S. exercise “prudential” warcraft. But now comes along Benedict, the one who in a May 2, 2003 Zenit interview said that “we should be asking whether it is still licit to speak of the very existence of a ‘just war’.”

And again in last week’s Regensburg speech, the pope rejects the very basis for violence. It is not rational. One way of putting the pope’s point is that the authentic commands of God are reasonable, even if faith is needed to penetrate their depths. And, of course, to see what the Father commands, we turn to the Son who shows us the face of the Father. In that turn, to Jesus Christ, we have full clarity. Christ offers a way of nonviolent, sacrificial love of friends and enemies. Period. No wiggle room for building nukes—whether it is Muslim Iran or Christian America-—or using violence to further principles.

Andrew Sullivan:

One thing you can say about Jesus: he didn’t kill anyone, however bloodthirsty his subsequent followers might have been.

Citizen journalist files “false arrest” complaint

Kevin Ksen, a well-respected Worcester activist and frequent contributor to the Worcester Independent Media Center website, has filed a complaint against the Worcester police for “harassment” and “false arrest.”

Kevin and another activist were passing out fliers for a rally protesting the filming of the “COPS” TV show in Worcester when some police showed up, with the “COPS” crew in tow. Kevin says that when he tried to take photos of the situation for Indymedia, things got out of hand.

Good story in the Telegram:

With the first flash, Mr. Ksen said, Officer [Mark] Rojas “quickly grabbed my arms, which were in front of me with the camera, twisted them up behind my back and slapped cuffs on me in seconds. I was pretty amazed how fast I was cuffed.” During the episode, he said, officers deleted a photo from his digital camera and threw away the fliers he and his friend were distributing.

[…]

In an open letter sent Monday to Worcester City Council members and others, Mr. Ksen said his own case was another for “the list of stories we have all watched unfold this past year through which the bad cops have given our City and the (Police) Department a black-eye …”

Lest you forget, a few days after Kevin was arrested, Worcester’s Police Chief kicked “COPS” out of the city, saying:

“I just believe it is in the best interest to ask ‘Cops’ to leave.”

Farewell to the South Bend Catholic Worker

I’m leaving South Bend tomorrow.

From the introduction to John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row:

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

South Bend Catholic Worker community members
The Catholic Worker community: Margie Pfeil, Mike Baxter, Cinnamon Sarver, Brenna Cussen

From today’s reading (James 2:18):

Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

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Henri Nouwen: The other morning, one of the Catholic Workers here was using her morning personal time to make a bunch of phone calls on behalf of a very troubled woman who showed up at the door.

As a show of support, and in case I suddenly became useful, I hung around, drinking coffee and skimming Michael O’Laughlin’s biography of Henri Nouwen. This passage jumped out at me:

The contours of Nouwen’s life were indeed interesting. Although he became a well-known spiritual writer, Nouwen did not embrace the lifestyle of a media-savvy author or pundit. In fact, he declined most of the many speaking invitations he received, and he abandoned his academic appointments, first at Yale, then at Harvard, in order to seek a more clearly spiritual way of life. His first radical step in this direction was to immerse himself in the meditative silence of a Cistercian monastery. Later, he went to the Third World to live as a missionary and worked in a shantytown near Lima, Peru.

While both of these experiences broadened his outlook and added new dimensions to his writing and teaching, Henri Nouwen did not find what he was seeking in either of these settings. He longed for some more satisfying form of life and ministry that would ground him spiritually and give him the feeling of having “arrived home.” Nouwen was searching for some place or situation that might offer him intimacy, continuity, and acceptance.

I know how he felt.
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New library lending policy: follow-up

Jackie Reis covered the library’s new lending policy in the Telegram:

Everyone who has a library card will be treated equally: They can take out two items during their first visit and up to 50 thereafter, [Head Librarian] Ms. [Penny] Johnson said. Previously, people who listed their address as a shelter could only take out two items. The library no longer keeps a list of such addresses, Ms. Johnson said.

Kevin Ksen, one of the activists who’s been pressuring the library about this for months, shares his thoughts at Indymedia:

. . . the library’s reversal will be the second significant community organizing success for Real Solutions in recent weeks. . . . This summer, after continued pressure and discussions, the City of Worcester agreed to remove all of the anti-panhandling signs installed last year around the City. Pair these two changes with the successful reversal of the City’s invitation to the FOX TV show ‘COPS’ in August and you quickly see the vitality of today’s community organizing in Worcester.

Worcester Public Library board: new policy on lending to the homeless

At last night’s Library Board meeting, they approved a new lending policy. The old policy contained restrictions on borrowing by those living in homeless shelters. That policy got the library sued.

Huge jpegs of the new policy:
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Here’s a transcription.
Continue reading “Worcester Public Library board: new policy on lending to the homeless”