Faithful, Not Effective: A Loving Critique of Catholic Worker Activism
It was a cold and snowy Ash Wednesday in St. Paul Minnesota. We pulled up to the Archdiocese’s cathedral in a mini-van. I was with a group of fellow Catholic Workers and a few other friends. We waited nervously in the car, hoping to time our direct action to coincide with the end of Ash Wednesday mass. When the time was right we flung open the van doors, pulled out ladders, candles, and a banner from the trunk and rushed toward the cathedral doors. Two in our group quickly used the ladders to climb up the massive marble pillars on either side of the cathedral entrance and hung a banner that read “Speaking up for unborn lives more than black or brown lives is white supremacy”. After our banner was up we assembled candles on the cathedral stairs and knelt in silent prayer.
Our action was on March 1st 2017, two months after Donald Trump had been inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. We hoped to call out the complicity of specifically white Catholics in the rise of Trumpism (a solid majority of white Catholics voted for Trump in 2016, many voting for an ostensibly “pro-life” candidate), and the silence of the institutional Catholic Church amid a moment of burgeoning white nationalism.
Mass ended and the parishioners began to trickle out. Nearly all of them walked past us on their way to their cars, perhaps glancing briefly at our banner. We struck up conversations with a few people walking by, but a vast majority of mass-goers would likely never hear about why we were there.
Eventually the priest of the Cathedral came out with other church staff. They read our banner, quickly tore it down and rushed back inside. We stayed on the Cathedral steps a while in prayer, eventually packed up the rest of our gear, and headed out to eat dinner at a Thai restaurant.
Over dinner we effused over our action, the few conversations we had with parishioners, the shock on the priests face when he read our banner. We felt good about what we had done, about doing something during a time of great despair, about practicing our spirituality in a way that attempted to combat white supremacy, about bonding with each other in the nervousness and excitement, about solidifying our identity as radical Catholic Worker activists.
By many measures our Ash Wednesday action, like many Catholic Worker direct actions I have participated in, was ineffective. Outside of the few conversations we had with parishioners and encouragement from friends on social media, our banner drop would go almost completely unnoticed. Its unlikely we changed many hearts and minds at the action itself, and those we engaged with about it afterward were almost completely people who agreed with our worldview and who admired what we had done. Ultimately, the majority of the local Church hierarchy stayed relatively silent regarding Trump’s ever-escalating chauvinism, and white Catholics' support for Trump has remained virtually unwavered (Trump again won white Catholics handily in 2020).
At the time our ineffectiveness didn't really concern me. I was enmeshed in an anarchistic Catholic Worker culture that tends to emphasize how well an action prefigures our spiritual and political views over its efficacy. Our Catholic Worker activist culture usually focuses primarily on the spiritual, emotional, and interpersonal journey of the group engaging in an action and how well the process of planning the action adheres to our ideals. This tendency is embodied in the classic Catholic Worker mantra, that we should seek to be faithful, not effective. Given these measures, our action was a great success. While I continue to believe that this particular aspect of Catholic Worker culture is important in some ways (so often political action is void of a concern of the emotional and spiritual health of those participating), after a decade of engaging in activism rooted in the Catholic Worker I’ve started to question whether many Catholic Workers lack of concern for our efficacy marginalizes our movement from larger, more powerful social movements. I’ve also started to wonder whether our primary orientation toward highly symbolic direct action, internal processes, and our own political purity is, perhaps, a little selfish. Especially given the socio-economic composition of the Catholic Worker (most, but certainly not all, Catholic Workers are white and many come from middle-class backgrounds), do we have a deepened responsibility to be concerned with concrete material gains for poor and working class people, even if the means for achieving those gains bend our political commitments, and are usually a little less flashy?
This isn't to say that symbolic direct action can’t be strategic, or that the inner life of a group participating in politics isn't crucial. Ex-Catholic Worker Jonathan Matthew Smucker writes about the importance of building and maintaining the internal cohesion of radical groups in his book Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals, Smucker writes, “In modern US society, many of us suffer from a lack of adequate community in our daily lives. Indeed, social alienation and psychological strain seem to be endemic to late-stage capitalist society...we come together with others because there is political strength in numbers...but we also come together with others because it feels good to do so - because we find a deep sense of community and belonging.” (Smucker 76-77).
However, as Smucker explains, issues arise when the inner life of the group becomes the focus of the group's existence. “The problem here is a matter of imbalance: when a group’s internal life becomes a more important motivator than what the group accomplishes as a political vehicle for change. To the extent that a group becomes self-content - encapsulated in the project of constructing its particularized lifeworld - what motivation will participants have to strategically engage broader society and political structures?” (Smucker 114).
Smucker articulates more specifically how his experience in the Catholic Worker was emblematic of this dynamic; “...when I moved into the Catholic Worker I had intended for it to be a temporary move - eventually I would return to where I was from, rejuvenated and more experienced, and I would make change there. Instead the Catholic Worker had served as a diving board into the deep waters of subculture. Somewhere along the way I had lost myself to a sub-culture whose first point of reference often seemed to be itself...I longed to belong in a community that centered explicitly around social justice values. That was an understandable and worthy goal. But now I felt like I had carved out this identity at the cost of connecting with everyday people -’non-activists’- which also meant a severe cost in political impact.” (Smucker 29).
I propose that for many, but of course not all, Catholic Workers, concern for the inner life of our groups has been given primacy over the efficacy of our work, and that this imbalance has come at a price. I believe this tendency often alienates our movement from mass movements of poor and working-class people and has resulted in the Catholic Worker movement remaining relatively small and marginalized with a very strong, sometimes impenetrable, internal culture. While our internal movement culture is attractive to some, a vast majority of people seem to be unable to see themselves as a part of our movement and our work. So often it seems that the focus on spiritual and political purity encourages non-Catholic Workers to either disengage, or to place Catholic Workers on a pedestal, to write us off as “saints”. (Dorothy would hate that!) While this dynamic is often empowering and exciting for many Catholic Workers (myself included), it is not an effective way to build a political power which could overthrow the systemic evils that Catholic Workers deride.
Does this Catholic Worker idiosyncrasy have to come at such a cost? Does it have to render our movement so isolated from mass social movements? Must we be locked in an internal movement culture which almost exclusively honors highly symbolic direct actions and an often costly, not particularly strategic, and sometimes strangely competitive, willingness to spend time in jail? Must these direct actions be prioritized over long-term organizing rooted in exploited communities and oriented towards mass movements? Do we have to sacrifice working for actual material gains for the oppressed in order to adhere to our movement’s ethos? Is there a way to adjust this imbalance while still remaining true to the core of the Catholic Worker tradition?
I would argue that there is space for such a balance within our movement, and at times, the Catholic Worker has been more oriented to concretely assisting poor and working people in building political power. I believe that one place in our movement’s history where this is clearly evidenced is the Catholic Worker’s engagement with the labor movement during the first two decades of its existence. During the 1930s and 40s the Catholic Worker’s commitment to organized struggle in the workplace was unwavering. Catholic Workers provided strike support on several occasions, famously relocating the operations of the Catholic Worker during the 1936 longshoreman's strike in New York in order to better serve the striking workers. Dorothy Day also traveled to, and reported on, many strikes throughout the country, including one particularly interesting trip into Flint Michigan where striking auto workers helped her sneak into an occupied factory to interview the strikers.
The Catholic Worker’s steadfast commitment to the labor movement, and the Movement’s theology around solidarity, was made clear in a speech Dorothy Day gave during a seamen's strike, recorded in her book Houses of Hospitality; “Month by month, in every struggle, in every strike, on every picket line, we shall do our best to join with the worker in his struggle for recognition as a man and not as a chattel. We reiterate the slogan of the old I.W.W.’s, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’ St. Paul says, ‘When the health of one member of the Mystical Body suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered’...We are all members, one of another, in the Mystical Body of Christ, so let us work together for Christian solidarity.”
In a reflection after her visit to the factory in Flint, Dorothy Day explicitly names the Catholic Workers commitment to long-term labor organizing; “My reflections as I came away from Flint had to do with the future of labor in the United States. Not only the necessity for organization but the necessity for a long range program of action, for an educational program which would deal not only with co-operatives and credit unions, but also a philosophy of labor.”
The first generation of Catholic Worker’s steely commitment to the labor movement, to long-term organizing, and to building political power can provide us with insights on how to rebalance our movements prefigurative tendencies with a desire to materially improve the lives of the oppressed and exploited. In this history we see Dorothy Day, and other Catholic Workers, embrace the nuances and messiness of working within already existing mass movements. Most of these Catholic Workers held fierce critiques of union leadership, of the violence some strikers used against scabs, and the concept of “class war”, yet these areas of disagreement did not prevent them from jumping onto the picket line and joining a movement which would alter the political and social landscape of America.
Today, like the 1930s, mass movements of poor and working class people are growing in size and power in a way that has not been seen in the United States for generations. While the threats to liberation are daunting, the American “left”, while still relatively small and weak, has the potential to impact the political terrain in a significant way for the first time in decades. I believe that it is crucial that Catholic Workers act to graft our communities into these movements in long-term, strategic ways. Now is the time to reconsider an emphasis on activism which is primarily concerned with our own political purity and spiritual growth, and to join with workers, with the poor, in manifesting Christ in the masses.
Our action was on March 1st 2017, two months after Donald Trump had been inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. We hoped to call out the complicity of specifically white Catholics in the rise of Trumpism (a solid majority of white Catholics voted for Trump in 2016, many voting for an ostensibly “pro-life” candidate), and the silence of the institutional Catholic Church amid a moment of burgeoning white nationalism.
Mass ended and the parishioners began to trickle out. Nearly all of them walked past us on their way to their cars, perhaps glancing briefly at our banner. We struck up conversations with a few people walking by, but a vast majority of mass-goers would likely never hear about why we were there.
Eventually the priest of the Cathedral came out with other church staff. They read our banner, quickly tore it down and rushed back inside. We stayed on the Cathedral steps a while in prayer, eventually packed up the rest of our gear, and headed out to eat dinner at a Thai restaurant.
Over dinner we effused over our action, the few conversations we had with parishioners, the shock on the priests face when he read our banner. We felt good about what we had done, about doing something during a time of great despair, about practicing our spirituality in a way that attempted to combat white supremacy, about bonding with each other in the nervousness and excitement, about solidifying our identity as radical Catholic Worker activists.
By many measures our Ash Wednesday action, like many Catholic Worker direct actions I have participated in, was ineffective. Outside of the few conversations we had with parishioners and encouragement from friends on social media, our banner drop would go almost completely unnoticed. Its unlikely we changed many hearts and minds at the action itself, and those we engaged with about it afterward were almost completely people who agreed with our worldview and who admired what we had done. Ultimately, the majority of the local Church hierarchy stayed relatively silent regarding Trump’s ever-escalating chauvinism, and white Catholics' support for Trump has remained virtually unwavered (Trump again won white Catholics handily in 2020).
At the time our ineffectiveness didn't really concern me. I was enmeshed in an anarchistic Catholic Worker culture that tends to emphasize how well an action prefigures our spiritual and political views over its efficacy. Our Catholic Worker activist culture usually focuses primarily on the spiritual, emotional, and interpersonal journey of the group engaging in an action and how well the process of planning the action adheres to our ideals. This tendency is embodied in the classic Catholic Worker mantra, that we should seek to be faithful, not effective. Given these measures, our action was a great success. While I continue to believe that this particular aspect of Catholic Worker culture is important in some ways (so often political action is void of a concern of the emotional and spiritual health of those participating), after a decade of engaging in activism rooted in the Catholic Worker I’ve started to question whether many Catholic Workers lack of concern for our efficacy marginalizes our movement from larger, more powerful social movements. I’ve also started to wonder whether our primary orientation toward highly symbolic direct action, internal processes, and our own political purity is, perhaps, a little selfish. Especially given the socio-economic composition of the Catholic Worker (most, but certainly not all, Catholic Workers are white and many come from middle-class backgrounds), do we have a deepened responsibility to be concerned with concrete material gains for poor and working class people, even if the means for achieving those gains bend our political commitments, and are usually a little less flashy?
This isn't to say that symbolic direct action can’t be strategic, or that the inner life of a group participating in politics isn't crucial. Ex-Catholic Worker Jonathan Matthew Smucker writes about the importance of building and maintaining the internal cohesion of radical groups in his book Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals, Smucker writes, “In modern US society, many of us suffer from a lack of adequate community in our daily lives. Indeed, social alienation and psychological strain seem to be endemic to late-stage capitalist society...we come together with others because there is political strength in numbers...but we also come together with others because it feels good to do so - because we find a deep sense of community and belonging.” (Smucker 76-77).
However, as Smucker explains, issues arise when the inner life of the group becomes the focus of the group's existence. “The problem here is a matter of imbalance: when a group’s internal life becomes a more important motivator than what the group accomplishes as a political vehicle for change. To the extent that a group becomes self-content - encapsulated in the project of constructing its particularized lifeworld - what motivation will participants have to strategically engage broader society and political structures?” (Smucker 114).
Smucker articulates more specifically how his experience in the Catholic Worker was emblematic of this dynamic; “...when I moved into the Catholic Worker I had intended for it to be a temporary move - eventually I would return to where I was from, rejuvenated and more experienced, and I would make change there. Instead the Catholic Worker had served as a diving board into the deep waters of subculture. Somewhere along the way I had lost myself to a sub-culture whose first point of reference often seemed to be itself...I longed to belong in a community that centered explicitly around social justice values. That was an understandable and worthy goal. But now I felt like I had carved out this identity at the cost of connecting with everyday people -’non-activists’- which also meant a severe cost in political impact.” (Smucker 29).
I propose that for many, but of course not all, Catholic Workers, concern for the inner life of our groups has been given primacy over the efficacy of our work, and that this imbalance has come at a price. I believe this tendency often alienates our movement from mass movements of poor and working-class people and has resulted in the Catholic Worker movement remaining relatively small and marginalized with a very strong, sometimes impenetrable, internal culture. While our internal movement culture is attractive to some, a vast majority of people seem to be unable to see themselves as a part of our movement and our work. So often it seems that the focus on spiritual and political purity encourages non-Catholic Workers to either disengage, or to place Catholic Workers on a pedestal, to write us off as “saints”. (Dorothy would hate that!) While this dynamic is often empowering and exciting for many Catholic Workers (myself included), it is not an effective way to build a political power which could overthrow the systemic evils that Catholic Workers deride.
Does this Catholic Worker idiosyncrasy have to come at such a cost? Does it have to render our movement so isolated from mass social movements? Must we be locked in an internal movement culture which almost exclusively honors highly symbolic direct actions and an often costly, not particularly strategic, and sometimes strangely competitive, willingness to spend time in jail? Must these direct actions be prioritized over long-term organizing rooted in exploited communities and oriented towards mass movements? Do we have to sacrifice working for actual material gains for the oppressed in order to adhere to our movement’s ethos? Is there a way to adjust this imbalance while still remaining true to the core of the Catholic Worker tradition?
I would argue that there is space for such a balance within our movement, and at times, the Catholic Worker has been more oriented to concretely assisting poor and working people in building political power. I believe that one place in our movement’s history where this is clearly evidenced is the Catholic Worker’s engagement with the labor movement during the first two decades of its existence. During the 1930s and 40s the Catholic Worker’s commitment to organized struggle in the workplace was unwavering. Catholic Workers provided strike support on several occasions, famously relocating the operations of the Catholic Worker during the 1936 longshoreman's strike in New York in order to better serve the striking workers. Dorothy Day also traveled to, and reported on, many strikes throughout the country, including one particularly interesting trip into Flint Michigan where striking auto workers helped her sneak into an occupied factory to interview the strikers.
The Catholic Worker’s steadfast commitment to the labor movement, and the Movement’s theology around solidarity, was made clear in a speech Dorothy Day gave during a seamen's strike, recorded in her book Houses of Hospitality; “Month by month, in every struggle, in every strike, on every picket line, we shall do our best to join with the worker in his struggle for recognition as a man and not as a chattel. We reiterate the slogan of the old I.W.W.’s, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’ St. Paul says, ‘When the health of one member of the Mystical Body suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered’...We are all members, one of another, in the Mystical Body of Christ, so let us work together for Christian solidarity.”
In a reflection after her visit to the factory in Flint, Dorothy Day explicitly names the Catholic Workers commitment to long-term labor organizing; “My reflections as I came away from Flint had to do with the future of labor in the United States. Not only the necessity for organization but the necessity for a long range program of action, for an educational program which would deal not only with co-operatives and credit unions, but also a philosophy of labor.”
The first generation of Catholic Worker’s steely commitment to the labor movement, to long-term organizing, and to building political power can provide us with insights on how to rebalance our movements prefigurative tendencies with a desire to materially improve the lives of the oppressed and exploited. In this history we see Dorothy Day, and other Catholic Workers, embrace the nuances and messiness of working within already existing mass movements. Most of these Catholic Workers held fierce critiques of union leadership, of the violence some strikers used against scabs, and the concept of “class war”, yet these areas of disagreement did not prevent them from jumping onto the picket line and joining a movement which would alter the political and social landscape of America.
Today, like the 1930s, mass movements of poor and working class people are growing in size and power in a way that has not been seen in the United States for generations. While the threats to liberation are daunting, the American “left”, while still relatively small and weak, has the potential to impact the political terrain in a significant way for the first time in decades. I believe that it is crucial that Catholic Workers act to graft our communities into these movements in long-term, strategic ways. Now is the time to reconsider an emphasis on activism which is primarily concerned with our own political purity and spiritual growth, and to join with workers, with the poor, in manifesting Christ in the masses.
Thank you, Joe, for starting this conversation. I have always been annoyed by the suggestion that "we are not called to be effective, we are called to be faithful." I think that this is a false and a harmful dichotomy. It is often attributed to Dorothy Day, but as with many of the "as Dorothy always said" quotes, any actual occasion of her saying this is elusive. I do not believe that it reflects her thought at all. It is a false dichotomy, I think, because being faithful is our best shot at effectiveness. Cesar Chavez said, "we’re not nonviolent because we want to save our souls, we’re nonviolent because we want to get some social justice for the workers." Dan Berrigan warned, "Do not allow yourself to be sidetracked into mini-battles that the system allows you to win." If we only do what appears to be immediately effective, we will forever be accepting half measures or even less, electing the lesser evil evil candidate, accepting meaningless "reforms" because the real change we need seems out of reach. While we are being "realistic," people are dying. Community organizers of the Saul Alinsky type often refuse to take on any issue that is unwinnable- only accept the struggles that we can win, they say and then build on those wins to others. This is called being "effective." Here in Iowa there is one such organization that I have worked with on many issues, but they will not take on militarism or any of its aspects because these are unwinnable and would alienate their base. Alinski might have been right in his time, but today we might win every winnable issue and still all die in the next generation or sooner. To be effective today, we must win the unwinnable battles. I fear that some of our allies today might agree with those civil rights activist in 1967 we criticized Martin Luther King for taking on the Vietnam war. I was asked about this by a friend some year ago and answered: “I do nonviolent direct action not for the sake of my own purity or just to be faithful but because I seriously believe that it is the way that I can effect change…. I cannot afford face time with a senator. I cannot call a press conference and have the world media come. All that I have is my body to put on the line. Especially since the Supreme Court knocked down corporate political donation limits in ‘Citizens United’, direct action may be the only effective tool people who are not rich have
ReplyDeleteleft. What I can accomplish might be small but it is not nothing. Engaging in direct action is the single most effective thing I can do."
thanks for your response! you wrote, "If we only do what appears to be immediately effective, we will forever be accepting half measures or even less, electing the lesser evil evil candidate, accepting meaningless "reforms" because the real change we need seems out of reach. While we are being "realistic," people are dying." I guess my appeal isnt that CWers forgo our revolutionary principles for any and all forms of "effectiveness "(like you, i most often doubt the efficacy of voting). however, I do think there are forms of activism (organizing to build mass movements of poor and working class people) that can both point toward our revolutionary aspirations and achieve concrete gains for oppressed people. You also write "To be effective today, we must win the unwinnable battles." I agree, and I think the only way to do this is through mass movements (which primarily engage in direct actions), not the highly symbolic, clandestine rather small protests/actions that have more or less characterized the modern CW movement. Again, my intention is not to deride all aspects of CW anarchistic activism, but to call for a balancing, an orientation that considers the immediate needs of people suffering in the here and now and acts to actual alleviate their suffering. I think that there are many movements that have done both, the work of Cesar Chavez and the UFW (and the CW's support of the strike/boycott) is a great example.
DeleteI agree with the commenter above who says, "It is a false dichotomy, I think, because being faithful is our best shot at effectiveness," but I want to raise some other clarifications around this... Dorothy did talk about the seemingly ineffectiveness of her work (I'm not going to go hunting for quotes RN... it's probably in Loaves and Fishes as I read this for class last term), but that she believed that her work was the only thing that would truly be effective in the long-run. Reminds me of MLK's "the arc of justice is long." What we could call this instead is faithfulness in the effectiveness (the reality, the possibility, the eschatological inevitability) of God's kingdom and consequently the faithful prefigurative activism isn't done because we don't care about effectiveness, but because we are convinced that the Kingdom of God is near (the Son of Man is coming, there is an immanent apocalyptic moment). This is not a temporal or spatial statement, but a statement of activity. In any time or place we center ourselves in the activity of God in order to benefit and contribute to its transforming power for all people, especially the oppressed. It which case we can say "The Kingdom of God is near," or with a glib pop-culture reference, "its all happening." : )
ReplyDeleteSo I agree that faithfulness is not opposed to effectiveness, but my concern with utilitarian ethics (that is: a focus on effectiveness), is that I am convinced that we are terribly limited, prideful creatures who rarely know what would be effective in creating the truly beloved community. Catholic Workers, Anarchists, Liberals and Progressive, Communists and Neoliberals and Capitalists. Every single one of us. I am interested in arguments about effectiveness only if we engage in them humbly and continue to foolishlessly and with lightness remain faithful to our understanding of what is faithful (what Christ calls us to).
Having been around CWers, Lefty Community organizers, and Mainline progressives, my experience is that we are much more tempted by effectiveness than faithfulness. I appreciate the lightness that comes from faith that the Kingdom of God's way is the only way that will be effective in the long-run. It is a lot harder to stay close to that vision, but brings so much more joy and real sense of possibility than anything else I have experienced.
Yes, Sarah Lynne, you are right that Dorothy did often "talk about the seemingly ineffectiveness of her work" and but as you say too, she was willing to act in seemingly ineffective ways precisely because she intended to be effective. My point is that so far as I know, Dorothy never rejected effectiveness. she often quoted William James, “I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.” She had cards printed with this quote, enclosed them in all her letters for some years.
DeleteThese words, attributed to St. Oscar Romero, have helped me stay grounded and engaged a bit:
ReplyDelete"We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own." As it turns out these words originated with Ken Untener and were drafted for a homily by Cardinal Dearden in 1979, but have gained stature over the decades and been cited by no less than Pope Francis. A fairly invisible act of faith has had a good bit of unplanned and constructive impact for years now.
Don't have lengthy or learned contribution here, but I've always thought the either/or dichotomy too easy. I like the notion that we act in faith and keep faith and have faith that it will have an effectiveness which we neither can predict or control. Let's think about some of the unanticipated fruits of the Catholic Worker Movement's history and praxis.
Catholic Workers come from all perspectives. I came to the Catholic Worker in a time when queer priests were not welcome in the mainline churches to form a pastoral ministry, the practice the works of mercy and personal-ism. In nearly 27 years of working with street kids, burying 200 plus, and walking with them I take to heart a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert:":You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.". That is my only answer--stay with commitment. Jesus calls us to walk the way of the cross. Fr. River Damien Sims Temenos Catholic Worker, San Francisco, California
DeleteEven before I was a Catholic Worker, Tom Lewis, of the Catonsville Nine, always told me that each action should have three components: planning, action, and evaluation. An action that has no impact or fails to communicate can be improved and should be. We should not be acting exclusively to wash our own hands of social evil, but also to help with its eradication. The danger of an excessively pragmatic approach, though, is that fundamental principles like nonviolence can be set aside in a dash to achieve quick results. Nonviolent action, according to many researchers has more long-lasting impact, but continues to be seen by many as slower than violence.
ReplyDeleteOn another level, though, Tom Lewis used to say "There is value in a person being in jail for their conscience, even if no one knows about it." There is a mystical and deeply spiritual effect of doing something like the anonymous person in Tianamen Square who stood in front of the row of tanks. Christ's witness on the cross had personal, social, and political impact, but also was profoundly emotive. Hearts can be reached with spiritual witnesses too.
It's good to reflect on our actions and motives, but we need to keep in mind that no action is ever going to be perfect. As Gandhi said, "Nonviolence is an experiment in truth." We learn from Scripture, the saints, and our sisters and brothers how to be better Christians and how to make a world where it's easier to be good.
Thanks for your response Scott. I think youre right to point out the danger of forgoing fundamental principles for the sake of efficacy, especially given what you say about the efficacy of nonviolence over the long term (making enemies might get quick results, but will plant the seeds of conflict down the line). I guess my hope with the article is to acknowledge that our adherence to our principles is a spectrum we are always negotiating. And I would argue that the CW movement that I have experienced is out of balance in its willingness to bend principles, to de-center the internal life of our group, in order to build mass movements with other groups. To me, its not a matter of forgoing our moral commitments completely, but perhaps being willing to question our strict adherence to them (our purity?) more frequently, when the result is deeper solidarity and collaboration with the poor and oppressed.
DeletePerhaps the words of Merton to a Nonviolent Catholic Worker discouraged activist might apply:
ReplyDelete"We have got to be instruments of God and realize at the same time that we are very poor and defective instruments. It is important to resist the feelings of resentment and impatience we get over our own failings because this makes us project our faults onto other people, instead of bearing their burdens along with our own…"
— from letter to Jim Forest, January 5, 1962, The Hidden Ground of Love, p 261
Thank you Joe for this conversation, as I think it is critically important. I think often effectiveness is not always readily seen and can take decades to truly obtain some goals. I also think the Catholic Worker is more interested in building a new, more just world than mucking around with reforms within the existing rotten system.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that each action should involve careful discernment and planning beforehand, and critical evaluation and reflection afterward. Gandhi famously said that nonviolent direct action is an experiment in truth. So in this post-truth era of "fake news" and where we are siloed in social media and our algorithms, direct action is needed more than ever.
I do think it is a false dichotomy between practicality/effectiveness, and being true to our faith. It is quite often our faith that guides us and inspires us in our action.
As for working toward building something new, or an alternative, Gustavo Guiterrez said, "The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” And of course Dorothy Day called for a revolution of the heart starting with each one of us. That personalism drives many of us, and it can, I believe, drive us to find more effective ways to act.
Thanks for your comment Pete! I agree that it is a false dichotomy, I think our actions can be both effective and true to our spirituality, but I would argue that, generally but not completely, the CWer's emphasis is unbalanced, stressing (not negating) one over the other. And thats what Im hoping to point out. I love the Guiterrez quote and and interested in this idea that our personalism can drive us to both be spiritually grounded and effective.
DeleteJoe, in response to this- “I think the only way to do this is through mass movements (which primarily engage in direct actions), not the highly symbolic, clandestine rather small protests/actions that have more or less characterized the modern CW movement.”
ReplyDeleteThis seems to me to be another false dichotomy, mass movements as opposed to “the highly symbolic, clandestine rather small protests/actions that have more or less characterized the modern CW movement.” I would further offer that there are no mass movements without those smaller actions. Two examples: In 1963, to protest the war in Vietnam, one 22-year old conscientious objector, Eugene Keyes, set fire to his card on Christmas Day in Champaign, Illinois. The next May, the War Resisters League and the CW had a protest of about 50 people in New York’s Union Square (Dorothy Day spoke then) where four people burned their draft cards. Within a few months there were mass protests and thousands of young men burned their cards, a felony at that time, and helped bring that war to an end. In 1955, Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott and demonstrations around the country.
The first people who burned their draft cards might have thought that their small highly symbolic action might have sent them to prison for many years to no effect, but they did it anyway. If their priority was to be “effective” in ending the war, they could have joined the millions who voted for LB Johnson in 1964, and we know how well that worked! Of course, Rosa Parks was a seasoned activist who had already taken many (less “effective”?) actions before the one that sparked a mass movement. The White Rose activists in Germany during WWII were arrested, imprisoned, some executed before they could raise a mass movement against fascism, but they are still a model for us today. Gandhi called nonviolence “experiments in truth” and like in scientific experimentation, many, many, seeming failures are necessary before there is any success and the one who is unwilling to fail has little to contribute to an eventual success.
For many years I have helped organize protest actions small and large. Some deliberately “highly symbolic, clandestine rather small protests/actions,” but others with the intention of attracting a larger crowd. On several occasions in the 1980s we were able to gather more than a thousand protestors to the Rock Island Arsenal between Illinois and Iowa to protest weapons produced for South Africa, Israel, El Salvador, etc. More recently, I have worked just as diligently to invite people to join protests against the war in Yemen and drone wars to name a few. While on a couple of recent occasions a hundred people have shown up, but more often a couple of dozen is a good showing.
It is most discouraging when the people who decline the invitation to act tell me “I don’t do small demos.” I hear this often from CW friends who would gladly be out in the streets with a thousand people but cannot bother to join with a dozen, with 50 or even a hundred. It is discouraging, too, that often the people who refuse to show up blame the people who do for the poor showing! I can’t help but imagine that if everyone who is waiting for a mass movement before they show up, we would have that mass movement now.
PS the first post from 'unknown' was mine. not to be mysterious, just having trouble with the technology
Thanks for the response Brian. I agree that the sentence you quote about is too divisive/ frames a false dichotomy. You site good examples of social movements which contain both "clandestine, small" actions, and mass movement components, which interact and build off each other. My intention isnt to say that this combination/interplay is impossible, or that it hasnt happened in and around the CW. What Im trying to convey is that despite notable exceptions, and despite what Dorothy said or wished for, the Catholic Worker activist culture that I (and I think many others) have experienced is out of balance (but not all one thing or the other.) Generally CW activism, in my experience, consistently seems to skew more toward smaller prefigurative actions, where the experience of the group and the action itself take priority over longer term strategic, more concrete goals. My sense in learning CW history is that this started to become a dominant trend in the CW with the rise of what some call the "New Left" in the 1960s,70s. What do you think about this? How did the CW shift during that time? Also, why did the CWs emphasis on labor activism diminish during this time (not completely of course)?
DeleteReplying to this section, "at times, the Catholic Worker has been more oriented to concretely assisting poor and working people in building political power." Knowing the history is part of your inspiring message Joe. My spouse, a union organizer, was this Friday listening to Bill Fletcher Jr. sharing story of 1903 letter from Mexican and Japanese union
ReplyDeleterequested to join the American Federation of Labor. President Samuel Gompers told them their union would only be admitted to the Federation if they agreed to barr Japanese workers from joining. The Mexican workers were unwilling to accept those terms , as they explained in letter archived (shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/2261).
Fletcher is embracing the idea that labor struggles were themselves not pitted with racial and gendered injustice to their core. When he said, "I think that this eruption among teachers' unions needs to be seen on a continuum that starts with the Arab Spring and then goes to the Madison (Wis.) uprising and then goes to Occupy, and then we see the uprisings after Trump was elected. There's a continuum where these resistances are growing, and it could translate into a new movement." (streetroots.org/news/2018/05/11/guns-capitalism-and-race-conversation-bill-fletcher-jr). During this period Alice, who spoke to us for the national gathering discussion, about farming, can tell you I wrote a small piece of fiction reflecting on the White Rose Catholic Worker Farm in Monee, IL. Jake Olzen and I were harvesting carrots discussing Occupy's call for arrests. Our community would be sure to contribute, personally, and collectively, welcoming 125 Catholic Workers to counter NATO "Communities feed people, not war" said one of the banners whose message Jerica Arents facilitated the consensus.
Re: "Now is the time to reconsider...it is crucial that Catholic Workers act to graft our communities into these movements in long-term, strategic ways." As Above, Marie Shebeck of White Rose was resident social movement scholar who I shadowed at dozens of meetings from Sept 2011 thru the winter and spring to coordinate CW presence so that our Resistance Retreat action came Monday, first, to be ahead of the week activities and second, to ensure the clarity of our message from the thousands, and not coincidentally Antonio Gramsci was on our mind, read thru Michael Hardt--On Multitudes. The attempt to talk of political love developed in the writing of our newsletter edited by Jerica A. and Amy Nee Walker. Recently, longtime NATO resister Rick Rozoff, who Kathy Kelly sent to us, reminisced that he still remembers the breakfast we served at the house on Devon street: eggs fresh from the chicken coup out back. (see antibellum679354512.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/u-s-led-war-games-with-natos-71st-member-partner-kosovo/). The element of strategy will always be a part of the months of plowshare meetups aware of needed movement building, crafting a message, yet as a school of the heart resisting traditional disciplining, my experience of CW discipleship has meant asking questions, that grow like carrots in good soil, but delicate and easy to break if the harvester is too forceful with the points of his broadfork.
DeleteHey Joe, thanks for bringing this question up to the surface again. You are not the first CW to raise this as I can remember many conversations about this very thing back in the days of Jonah Houseand plowshare actions . You know plowshare actions have often been described as ineffectual, sometimes self-centered and quite silly. And for some it seemed that the action was only good if one went to prison for a righteous period of time. I think the worst damage was done to those actions when they were seen as the one and only act that had value in standing up against the crimes of our government, particularly with regards to the crimes of nuclearism.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that small, seemingly ineffectual plowshare action was magnified 100 fold by the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst the action. And it is our faith that allows us to recognize the Spirit amongst us. In the 2 actions that I was part of, I saw things happen at such a mystical level and I was certain that we were cloaked in the Spirit. The same happened in our valve turning action. However if we do not recognize and join with all those actors and movements and actions struggling for the common good, whether they be political, cultural, or educational, we would just be arrogant fools.
Put in their proper perspective, CW faith-based actions are an incredible testimony to love. Without love, without that little mustard seed, no mass movement will take hold. To do these actions only for ourselves and not for the common good is self-centered and egotistical. To take that little mustard seed and integrate it into other movements for the common good, to add our bodies to the struggle, to add to the power and strength of the 100th monkey, can be a key to real societal change.
I know that we are struggling with face to face meetings because of the pandemic. Having dialogue on such an intense topic through a two-dimensional medium like this is pretty difficult. I think this would be a great zoom clarification of thought. God knows, we might get to go back to Sugar Creek this summer and meet in person again.
I just wanted to end this with a little reflection I wrote in my diary with regards to "protest".
"Those of us who have witnessed and acted for disarmament of weapons of war or for clean water and protection of our earth have often been called "protestors". But these actions born in faith are not acts of protest. Rather they are acts for love and life. We go about them not in hopes of getting arrested or crucified, so to speak, but we go about them with the hopes that we can help set things back on the right path - the path of love and justice for the common good. But we are also not stupid. We know this will rock the rulers and the rich and they will likely came at us with their laws and punishments. We face them, not to be heroes, but to prove that the Resurrection is real and the death of the body in which we cam into this world is not and never will be the death of our Spirit". Peace, Michele
I meant to sign out as Michele Naar-Obed from Hildegard House, not as anonymous. Like Brian, I'm at a loss with this technology.
DeleteMichele, thank you for your beautiful words. And thanks for sharing that this is not a new convo, I'd figured as much (Im not that original, lol!). Sometime I would love to talk to you more about how those past conversations looked. And I so agree that this would be such a better conversation offline. Perhaps I should have waited until a different medium was possible. I do think a zoom roundtable around this topic might happen in the future, but hopefully it could happen at sugar creek. I think what your comment gets to for me is the truth that the spiritual dimension of our actions, the ways in which we connect to god/creation through them, is, in and of itself, important and necessary. I honestly dont mean to downplay this, and perhaps my article does so. My intention, or question, is whether or not we can balance fulfilling this spiritual need with building deeper solidarity with broader movements, with groups/organizations/people who are not a part of our internal group culture (this is work you are already doing I think). And my wager is the CW movement, especially since the rise of the "New Left", 1960s, 1970s, has been generally (but not completely) out of balance in this particular way.
DeleteGood reflections, as always.
ReplyDeleteHere are some somewhat disconnected thoughts.
1) As others have pointed out, faithfulness vs effectiveness is a false dichotomy. They aren't mutually exclusive. And, in fact, effectiveness should factor in as part of our way of discerning faithfulness. Any time any action falls into the broad category of "witness" it makes zero sense to not consider the questions "How will this action influence others and towards what end?"
2) Effective for what? Towards what? It would help, I think, if we could name different sorts of effects. Is an action an attempt at influencing policy? Changing narrative? Changing individual hearts and minds? Changing ourselves? Normalizing dissent? Etc.
3) In the action given at the outset, the only clear effect was that it emboldened those of us doing the action. It was, in a way, a rather elaborate prayer meeting. An act of subversive worship. It might have also had the effect of agitating folks into reflecting more deeply about the relationship between the church and white supremacy. But there is no way to know if any of that was accomplished at all. We have engaged in other actions thate were very similar that were more effective at stirring discomfort and sparking conversation.
4) I think the problem with many Catholic Workers and others with a similar approach to activism is that we use pious language to cover over sloppy thinking. If something is primarily and at of worship for ourselves, we should name it as such. If it is about witness we should ask "who is being influenced and how." Not everything we do needs to focus on policy change. Or a massive reframing of a dominant narrative. But if we say we want such things, we should discerningly and deliberately connect those dots.
5) I think a big breakdown in CW circles is (as we've discussed before) that everything is so inwardly focused and self-referential. I remember the tensions that arose when we had the Faith and Resistance retreat here in the Twin Cities with local black activists leading the way. That it wasn't done in the Catholic Worker "way" was upsetting to so many of the (mostly older) CWs. To me, that demonstrates the larger issue of not being able to engage in CW style direct action in a way that is conversant with larger movements.
6) I wonder if one of the things that has weakened the CW movement is that we've lost touch with the practice of solidarity. In the beginning, worker solidarity was part of the DNA...and in a society experiencing depression, there was a real understanding of how homelessness was a symptom of a deeper set of issues. The works of mercy were seen as part of the work of solidarity.
With the decline of worker movements and the growth of theological liberalism, it seems to me that CWs drifted away from a model of solidarity to one of service. And that shift tainted and diminished the idea of direct action and witness.
I was one of the older Catholic Workers at the
DeleteMinneapolis Faith and Resistance Retreat who was at first dismayed that done the “Catholic Worker way.”
But interrogating that preliminary conclusion resulted in a complete rethinking of my narrow definition of non-violence and a realization that I was confusing practice and theory. That learning has enabled
me to work and walk and be led by others who are also working for justice. One more thing: we could have a zoom on this now and also work for a Sugar Creek gathering. I have all the lists we used for the international zoom gathering last fall but please write me at riegle@svsu.edu if you want to proceed.
Thanks so much Mark and Rosalie. Mark I think your second question is really important and was something I was thinking about a lot while I wrote. I wanted to include something more about this, but didnt want it to get too long. Something that is both beautiful and a burden for CW activism is its "bigger picture", eschatological orientation, meaning that so often CW activism isnt set on ushering in policy reform, socialism, or full communism, but the kingdom of god. This is beautiful because its good and true in so many ways, and allows the CW (in characteristically anarchistic fashion) to critique the power-hungry tendencies on the left. Its a burden because of what Im talking about in the piece. Also I think your 4th, and 5th points are really powerful. I totally agree that some of these pitfalls could be avoided if we were clear-eyed about what purpose various forms of activism are playing. I think maybe this is part of what I mean about being "strategic".
DeleteThe “isms” we profess spring neither from faith nor practice but are barriers to life itself. I can’t seem to get over the story that Jesus was not a writer and that he died at age thirty-three. The light that blinded Paul was apparently the understanding that the kingdom of heaven was at hand and that human beings could understand that and be spiritual bodies in the present. However, he still made tents. That is where we are today. We have quit making tents and doing anything other than virtual exchanges which have made us completely dependent on usury, manufactured goods, and wage slavery from the bottom of the social classes to the top.
ReplyDeleteHere is what I see that may contribute to the discussion. The core problems to solve are:
1. Money
2. Health Care
3. Housing
4. Food
5. Education
6. Transportation
7. Environmental Destruction
Currently, governments and religions don’t solve any of those problems and there are no gods involved because absolute power keeps reducing the universe to ashes and rays of light. We only get from one to one hundred years to use our spiritual presence to solve any of these problems.
If you are going to work on money then first laugh at what you have seen and heard about from the last 5,000 years. It’s not metal, paper, cod fish, beads, or electronic signals in a clearing house. It is just an agreement to trade something between people and enforce that with an army.
If you are going to work on health care then cry because the contest is between your physical body and nature and in a short time you will lose. People in the past with the best ideas about that problem said to just focus of the relief of suffering and know that you are temporarily able bodied.
If you are going to work on housing then separate it from usury and have dwelling that people can build for themselves that are not “ticky-tacky” thirty-year mortgages that triple the real cost of the material and labor that went into the construction.
If you are going to work on food then you might want to decide whether to promote manufactured and processed mystery stuff or to hunt and gather it if you are lucky enough and smart enough to do that. Apparently, a diet of sugar and flours in all forms will make you fat and sick and that is what is available and somewhat cheap unless you buy it already prepared. Eating meat seems not to make you as fat or as sick but if it comes from the factories it is full of drugs and poisons. Plus, meat is expensive.
If you are going to work on education, you are lucky. The brains we get when we are conceived and after we have been born and about as good as the ones that were developed a million years ago. If we don’t abandon our children in the crib and we feed them real food and not sugar water and crackers there is an excellent chance they will learn to walk and take and think despite of our lack of teaching skills. Supposing we don’t turn over all instruction to the television and to tik toc the next generation could learn do something with their senses, their hands, and their brains. Imagine that they could not just write in a language with a pencil but could make the paper to white on and a pencil to write with. Here is another area in which cooperation is important and in which we could consider not sending everyone to the factories and offices to get their credits in the electronic clearing houses but just being real through teaching and learning.
The transportation problem is to live closer to work and walk, or work from home if you must be that kind of wage slave. The environmental problem may resolve itself by humans not able to service it except that they gave up on the relief of suffering and became the breath of god. Remember Bruno warned his inquisitors that there were many universes and they burned him at the stake for it. Knowledge is not always rewarded. Maybe we should just sing and dance.
I’ve been wrestling with many of these same questions since at least 2014, if not earlier. That summer I participated in a not specifically Catholic Worker action, but one that would be readily recognizable to many CWs. Folks symbolically blocked the entrance to a nuclear weapons related sight. Police helped these activists on and off their bus and even gave them bottled water.
ReplyDeleteNot long after, Ferguson, a municipality immediately adjacent to where I grew up in Normandy, MO, was in the news. 2 months later I moved back to the area and was in the streets when the non indictment came down.
We know how the police treated the Ferguson protestors and can juxtapose it to what I saw at that anti-nukes protest. I had to wonder to myself, “its almost as if the filthy rotten system finds one of these two things threatening…”
The response from some Catholic Workers to the Ferguson uprising was heartening, others though called it violence and not only refused to support the movement but spent time critiquing it. Unfortunately their thought was not dissimilar to the Fox News pundits, “MLK would not approve...”
A gas station was burned on one of those nights in Ferguson. Some of the same voices who celebrate our Plowshares actions called this property destruction violence; others of us did not, but regardless it got the goods. It was effective. Today conversations about white supremacy are common. Are conversations about abolishing nukes?
theo
I believe that tied up in this whole conversation are so many conversations we need to keep having: What is our relationship to those outside our own CW bubbles? How much can we accomplish by simple arrest actions as we've come to know them and have we even developed a fetishization of such actions? And what is our understanding of what we call “violence”? (This includes what I think has been an incomplete reading of figures like MLK or Gandhi, missing the significance of their positions as leaders of full fledged resistance movements and simplifying their positions on forms of resistance deemed violent by those in power.)
DeleteI do want to take a moment for some words of defense for the types of actions I associate with the CW, action which I have participated in many times and will most likely participate in in the future. Dennis from the Guadalupe CW found himself in jail for 4 months for crossing a line at Vandenberg Air Forces Base(as he had many times before) and because of this the newspaper in Santa Barbara ran a series of letters from prison about his opposition to the nuclear weapons tests going on at Vandenberg. Would Dennis have been more effective phone banking? I also recall when I spoke to the person my sister dated for a couple years, a man from the Marshall Islands where those Vandenberg test missiles are targeted, polluting the area with depleted uranium. The mere fact that we had been protesting this practice was meaningful to him. “I didn’t think anyone in the US cared or even knew about it.” The CWs seem to be among the few folks trying to shine a light on things like drones or on nukes.
But it does often feel like the action for the sake of having made an action is often thought to be enough. It sometimes feels that getting arrested for its own sake or as a right of passage or as a sign of courage is also considered enough in reference to itself. We can also ask how our relative position societally, often economically stable, often white, affects our understanding of and interactions with the carceral state. What does our valorization of interacting with it on its own terms mean for folks who don’t hold these positions on the social hierarchy? Ipersonally know of Black CWs who have faced brutality and legal jeopardy that others of us have not. Is it healthy to encourage, implicitly I acknowledge, these actions?
I have read similar critiques to “#the resistance” of Trump, that is an action for the actions sake without particular concern for material gains, the anti-Trump Woman’s Marches presented as an example. Is it enough to show up once a year (even with millions across the US!), say that you don’t like something and then go about our lives? Can we CWs hope to be more effective than the Woman’s March when mobilizing fewer folks?
theo
In recent years I have started to think that maybe the best we could do is be useful to other folks' movements. I started attending BLMLA’s weekly protest outside the DA’s office and even went to lobby the state legislature with them (lobbying was an experience itself!). I began to reason that not everyone can skip work in the middle of the day to go to a BLM protest but us CWs had a level of flexibility that allowed it. I know other folks have done this too from Karen House doing support work for Ferguson protesters to the current people showing up to stop Line 3 to Cherith Brook supporting Fight for $15 to the LA worker providing food to Occupy or teachers' strikes.
DeleteI’ve been reading and rereading Lincoln’s recent edition of Peter Maurin’s complete Easy Essays. A line that I’d not previously encountered has stuck with me more than perhaps any other: “The thing to do is to restate the never new and never old principles in the vernacular of the man on the street. Then the man on the street will do what the intellectual has failed to do; that is to say, ‘do something about it.’”
How good are we at speaking to the person on the street? Do we know their vernacular? Do we speak so they can understand? Do our actions move them? I question if I can answer affirmatively to these questions.
I have not come to answers or full blown positions on these types of questions, but I do believe they’re important and have felt them to have been insufficiently considered in recent Catholic Worker conversation.
-theo
Hi Joe,
ReplyDeleteSeems that I kept an old announcement from you Joe about a walk you made April 20-25 2015. "I will be participating in a Nibi (Water) Walk along the
Chippewa River from New Post, WI to Wabasha, MN. "The Nibi (Water)
Walks are Indigenous-led, extended ceremonies to pray for the water.
Every step is taken in prayer and gratitude for water, our life giving
force." For more information please visit nibiwalk.org." How about reflecting on this experience for us with regard to Michelle Naar-Obed's recent invitation--Christopher Spicer