Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
Kevin Ksen says he was arrested for distributing flyers. He was picked up while promoting an event for people concerned with how the Worcester Police Department is behaving while COPS is filming in the city.
Talked to him on the phone today. I hope he will go public with more details. For my part, I find this to be, all hyperbole aside, scary.
Wow! The Pitstop Ploughshares were acquitted!
Back in 2003, these Irish activists damaged a US military plane. (P&C post #2 was about them. I’ve been told the AP has a story about this, but the only other reportage I find online is from Counterpunch.)
Flickr: Photos of San Francisco’s homeless. Less dramatic: my South Bend photo stream.
COPS: The TV show “COPS” has been taping in Worcester, and reports are flooding in that the taping has had a major impact on the behavior of the local police. Indymedia is covering some of the opposition to this foolishness. Buck Paxton shares the concern, but writes:
I’m not a big protest guy preferring instead to take down my adversaries with tried and true methods such as kidnapping, torture and assassination.
Worcester: Today the Telegram notes that over-the-counter needle sales are now legal in Massachusetts, and that Worcester City Councilor Barbara Haller opposes this move.
Los Angeles: P&C friend Julia Scott is now writing for the LA Daily News.
South Bend Library: I have a “temporary” St. Joseph County Public Library card. I am told that the policy here is for people living in known homeless shelters to be limited to checking out 2 books. The Catholic Worker residences in South Bend are relatively new, and I haven’t checked to see if they’re on the “you are a bunch of lying thieves” list.
As of today, the library computers are banned from contacting BoingBoing because Smartfilter considers it to be “nudity.” Smartfilter is stupid, stupid, stupid. For now, I’ll be reading BB with a web-based RSS reader. Google’s cached version of “BOING BOING’S GUIDE TO DEFEATING CENSORWARE” pointed me to http://boingboing.hexten.net/, which seems to have solved this problem.
Speaking of which, might as well link to their post on the 95 Theses of Geek Activism.
New Tour de France champion Floyd Landis was raised in a conservative Mennonite community in Pennsylvania, though he left the church at the age of 17. Here’s the article. And a quote:
One of Martindale’s pastors, David Sensenig, said recognition of individual accomplishment is frowned on in Mennonite faith. Nevertheless, he said Floyd Landis was still the talk of the congregation.
“Winning the race isn’t the big deal,” Sensenig said. “It’s what he does with the results, with the fame and fortune. He can use his influence for the betterment of the church, of Christ.”
Paul Landis said he sees the victory as a chance to spread the Gospels and looks forward to meeting people he never otherwise would have met.
“I want to hear their victories and their sorrows, and we can encourage each other,” he said.
I’ve always admired the faith of the Amish and the Mennonites, but doesn’t this point out something of a paradox with insular communities— publicizing the church is only possible for people who leave it?
Webcam: Last fall there was an illegal memorial of 2,000 crosses installed behind Worcester City Hall to commemorate the first 2,000 US troops killed in the latest Iraq War. I used the City Hall Webcam to make a 4-minute movie in Windows Media format (wmv). The movie is now available as Quicktime and MPEG-4.
Continue reading “Items”
I’m at the South Bend Catholic Worker.
The community here occupies a rectory and two houses. There are a handful of guests (homeless and otherwise) and one or two Catholic Workers in each building.
The South Bend Tribune happens to have interviewed a couple of the Catholic Workers for an article in today’s paper about Deus Caritas Est:
There is a difference, [Mike Baxter] says, between “bourgeois do-goodiness” and truly seeking to “love thy neighbor.” When striving toward the latter, “you end up wanting and having to rearrange your life.”
Among other news I can share, seeing as it’s blogged elsewhere, Ms. Brenna Cussen is back from giving some talks at the Ekklesia Project, where her presentation was one of the “highlights.”
Mike Baxter and Brenna Cussen. South Bend Tribune photo/Su Anderson.
Just got word that Worcester has taken down the signs for their much-criticized “anti-panhandling” campaign.
More details when this is confirmed.
One of the more popular posts on Pie and Coffee is the one with Mike Ciul’s check designs for people who don’t like money.
Mike finally had some checks printed with his designs; click the picture below for a closer look.
Capitalism is a pyramid scheme/The love of money is the root of all evil
Here’s an article in the L.A. Times about day laborers in a Southern California suburb (near where my wife’s parents live) demanding $15.00/hour minimum wages. Pretty cool that they’re able to organize like that, although there is a relevant point made by a dissenting worker that the wages should be tied more to the type of work. Banding together for one minimum wage is strong; perhaps if they wanted to implement some sort of graduated scale for the type of work, they could draw up and approve a relatively simple wage schedule that still ensures good pay.
The Telegram’s Matt Stone is digging into the Worcester Public Library’s stupid lending practices that have gotten it sued.
No bombshells in these reports, but it’s good to see that investigations are in progress. Mr Stone has looked at lending policies of other Massachusetts libraries, and the sloppiness of the Worcester library’s policy.
One sentence I noticed in the most recent article:
Social service agencies have largely been satisfied with the policy, [head librarian] Ms. Johnson said.
Mr Stone notes that at least two of the agencies affected by the policy had no idea it existed.
The Catholic Worker shelter, also on the list, was never contacted about the policy, either before or after it was enacted, as far as anyone there remembers.