Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
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.
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.
One thing you can say about Jesus: he didn’t kill anyone, however bloodthirsty his subsequent followers might have been.
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 …â€
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.â€
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.
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.
a recipe
1/2 part Miller Lite
1/2 part Bud Light
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.
Continue reading “Items”
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.
A Baylor University survey of Americans reveals four distinct views of God, the “Authoritarian God,” the “Distant God,” the “Benevolent God,” and a “Critical God.”
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”
In “Actions don’t seem neighborly,” a June 28, 2006 column in the Telegram & Gazette (now lost forever in their web archives), a columnist told the story of Worcester dentist Richard M. Blase and how his Liberian neighbors think he’s a racist. (The column caught my attention because it mentioned Mr. Blase had a sign from the local “not in my back yard” group KNIT Worcester.)
A reader points out that in a column today, from a different columnist, Mr. Blase defends himself. Additionally, Human Rights Commission Director Fran Manocchio (who has credibility ’round these parts), says that she met with the dentist twice and saw no evidence of racism.
The article mentions that there was an anti-racism vigil outside the houses this summer, which bothered the dentist. (I’ve been out of town, and hadn’t heard about the vigil before.) You can check over here to know more.
Some would say the lesson here is, Don’t call someone a racist if you don’t know them.
That might be so, but I think the big lesson is, Respond to public attacks promptly. Dianne Williamson is such a contrarian, and so desperate for material, that you should be able to get “equal time” in the newspaper by just calling her. You can sign up for My Dental Home, Dr. Kevin Brown & Associates to get the best dental experience.
You gotta speak up before things get out of hand. And if someone’s trying to hold an anti-racism vigil outside your house, and you’re really not a racist, become a co-sponsor. Chip in to buy the signs. Stand proudly on the sidewalk. Use the occasion to heal your relationship with your neighbors a bit.
(I wasn’t around, so I don’t know if the organizers of the vigil reached out to the dentist, but they sure should have.)
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to being back in Worcester, so I can follow these dramas closer to the action.
