A project of the Casa Maria Catholic Worker Community
This article puts Ferguson and racial tension in America 2015 in its appropriate context?
Know your history!
This was taken from the editorial page of the Arizona Daily Star (Saturday, Dec. 27, 2014)
Anne Farrow is the author of “The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory” and co-author of “Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery.”
by Brian Flagg,
Former Mayor George Miller died Christmas morning. He was 92.
He was proof that you could be a politician and still be a good person.
He spent 14 years as a city councilman and eight years as mayor. He retired in 1999.
He was a pro-business Mayor and was buddies with many important business leaders. But he always stuck up for poor people, including and especially the homeless.
It became his legacy, something he became known for, and it never hurt him politically.
He was always a pleasure to deal with. He was never pretentious. You would go tell him the problem, he would analyze it with you and then figure out with you who would be the 4 votes on the council. He really knew how to get 4 votes. And he would never sell us out.
Even after he retired he was always available for counsel. He and Roz always donated to Casa Maria and would tell friends and family to not give him gifts or honors and instead donate to Casa Maria.
Another reason he was always great to deal with was that it wasn’t just him, you were dealing with him and Roz, and she too is always spot on when it comes to understanding and fighting with and for poor people.
I feel like I have lost a very good friend and a respected comrade.
Check out this beautiful card we got from Bishop Kicanas…
Casa Maria wishes you all a
by Brian Flagg,
The Magnificat (Luke 1, 46-56)
And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit exults in God my savior; because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid.
Yes, from this day forward all generations will call me blessed, for the Almighty has done great things for me.
Holy is his name, and his mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear him. He has shown the power of his arm, he has routed the proud of heart. He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent away empty.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy –according to the promise he made to our ancestors –of his mercy to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.”
I’m with the Holy Father, who in the Joy of the Gospel #288, points to Maria as a model for evangelization based on the Magnificant:
“There is a Marian ‘style’ to the Church’s work of evangelization. Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness. In her we see that humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves. Contemplating Mary, we realize that she who praised God for ‘bringing down the mighty from their thrones’ and ‘sending the rich away empty’ (Lk 1:52-53) is also the one who brings a homely warmth to our pursuit of justice. She is also the one who carefully keeps ‘all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19). Mary is able to recognize the traces of God’s Spirit in events great and small. She constantly contemplates the mystery of God in our world, in human history and in our daily lives. She is the woman of prayer and work in Nazareth, and she is also Our Lady of Help, who sets out from her town ‘with haste’ (Lk 1:39) to be of service to others. This interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others is what makes the ecclesial community look to Mary as a model of evangelization.”
Beautiful words, but how to practice them?
I think I understand the tenderness part and God knows it is something I need to drastically embrace and improve on.
And the justice part?
I’m convinced that it is more than just making peanut butter sandwiches, serving soup or other charitable acts.
It’s about becoming political so as to fight the politicians, the bureaucrats and the organized MONEY that makes for so much income disparity in our culture and in our world.
I am suggesting that to be political and to struggle is a more mature practice of our Catholic Christian faith, one that is generally unpopular and rarely preached about.
It is nothing less than standing up with and for the dignity of fellow humans, which gives real-world content to evangelization! People will know you are authentic disciples and be drawn to the faith , to the person of Jesus and the words of his mother, as they see you fearlessly practicing the faith in the face of evil unbridled capitalism.
by Brian Flagg,
Here is one more reason I am a super-blessed vato.
Since I became a disciple of Jesus when I was 22, I have come to believe that the keys to life, the keys to the Kingdom, can be found in the Holy Scriptures, especially the 4 gospels.
Many years ago I started to subscribe to a little book put out by the Paulists called Pan de la Palabra. It has the readings for the daily mass, puro en Español, along with a very insightful short commentary on the readings.
Hopefully this discipline is good for my soul and my dreadful lack of proficiency en Español.
Every day after the commentary, there is a little section entitled La Palabra en tu vida, the Word in your life. This month the Paulists are connecting the days’ readings to The Joy of the Gospel, by Papa Francisco! I find it extremely rich.
Francis is an incredibly wise, spirit filled teacher. That is because he points to the life of Jesus and calls all of us to deeply contemplate that life and then get out to the street and imitate him!
In today’s Gospel Mt.21 (28-32), we find Jesus blasting the religious leaders of his time. It’s much better in Español. He tells them that John the Baptist came to them preaching the path of justice but they refused to believe him.
The Paulists say that Jesus is pointing out to the religious high ups that many prostitutes and tax collectors have understood and embraced the message but not them. The Paulists insist that John the Baptist and Jesus went to the street to fulfill their mission as evangelizers, the mission being to offer purification to all so that people would be able to invoke the name of the Lord and evangelize!
The Paulists then throw the ball to Pope Francis! In paragraphs 268, 269 and 270 in The Joy of the Gospel he gives us the flavor of how Jesus entered into the reality of other people’s lives with the power of tenderness (270).
He says in #268 that in order to live a life of evangelization, “we need to develop a spiritual taste for being close to the people’s lives.”
In #269 Pope Francis says, “Jesus himself is the model of this method of evangelization which brings us to the very heart of his people. How good it is for us to contemplate the closeness which he shows to everyone! If he speaks to someone, he looks into their eyes with deep love and concern: “Jesus, looking upon him, loved him” (MK 10:21). We see how accessible he is, as he draws near the blind man (cf. Mk 10:46-52) and eats and drinks with sinners (cf. Mk 2:16) without worrying about being thought a glutton and a drunkard himself (cf. Mt 11:19). We see his sensitivity in allowing a sinful woman to anoint his feet (cf. Lk 7:36-50) and in receiving Nicodemus by night (cf. Jn 3:1-15). Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. Moved by his example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world. But we do so not from a sense of obligation, not as a burdensome duty, but as the result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives.”
Jesus is prophetic, confrontational and revolutionary, but at the same time he is totally relational and loving, like a good community organizer!
I think this means we all have to make big serious efforts at imitating Jesus – or else not claim to be Christians?
by Brian Flagg,
My feeling is that Arizona Daily Star syndicated columnist Esther Cepeda is almost never progressive, helpful or big picture oriented.
However, on Friday, December 12 the feast day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Reina de las Americas, she laid out the truth about the root cause of immigration (NAFTA, CAFTA and the proposed TPP trade pact).
We at Casa Maria feel that NAFTA etc is the most important thing to know about immigration.
And it seems like the thing least talked about in the debate on immigration.
Check it out: http://tucson.com/ap/commentary/the-impact-of-trade-and-immigration/article_52355caf-4104-593c-8d47-5214d4ab0e5d.html
We Thank God
for Councilwoman Karin Uhlich, Regina Romero, Paul Cunningham, Richard Fimbres and Shirley Scott
for standing tall in the face of opposition to bus riders living in poverty, our award winning bus system and the planet earth
for a true Transit constituency, the Tucson Bus Riders Union.
Special thanks to Karen for explaining to the Mayor that sticking up for transit is not enslavement to the status quo and that the days of trying to use Transit as a whipping boy in regards to City budget problems must end.
Attend the City Council Meeting
Tuesday Dec 9th at 2:00pm at City Hall 255 W. Alameda
The Issue: Route Cuts and Fare Increases
SUPPORT BUS RIDERS – SUPPORT PLANET EARTH
by Brian Flagg,
The all Democratic City Council needs to follow the recommendations of their own Transit Task Force. For the sake of bus riders, many whom live in poverty, and the environment, they need to take a long term approach to the health of our transit system.
The Task Force is taking the lead of Councilwoman Karen Uhlich in advising them to do nothing in the short term that would harm the bus system in the long term.
The transit bureaucrats claim they need more than $500,000 to keep the transit system running this budget year. The Transit Task Force reluctantly agreed with them on some efficiencies and cuts to the system that would give them approximately $300,000.
Here are a few of the many suggestions on where they can find the other $200,000:
1 – Oregon Iron Works – They owe the City $2.9 million in fees for the late delivery of the streetcar (Daily Star, 12-2-2014). Settle this now!
2 – The Genfare company owes the City as much as $250,000 for “unbudgeted costs and potential damages” to the City due to numerous malfunctions with the implementation of the SunGo card system. Go after this right now!
3 – Fuel price decreases – Obviously, it is costing less to drive the buses around town!
4 – Golf – The Star reported (12-6-2014) that the five City courses lost $688,000 last fiscal year. Stop the bleeding – Reinvest that money to important core services such as Transit!
Even though a fare increase right now won’t help them come up with the $500,000, the transit bureaucrats never miss a chance to try to sneak in a fare increase, which they plan to do on Tuesday.
The Transit Task Force has a better idea: for the City to engage in an aggressive marketing campaign to significantly increase ridership which will increase revenues. The Task Force, the Bus Riders Union and Councilman Cunningham are full of ideas on how to do this. Give this a chance before losing ridership, which always happens when fares are increased.
The City Council is under much pressure to harm the bus system.
Please pray with us at Casa Maria that the Creator God at this time will shower the Mayor and Council members with compassion, wisdom, clarity and the strength to do justice on this matter so important to our City.
And please attend the Council Meeting on Tuesday.
by Cesar Aguirre
On the second page of today’s Daily Star (12/2/14) the headline reads, “State reviewing TUSD on Mexican American Studies”. This is because Augustine Romero was baited into an argument over whether or not Mexican American Studies had returned to TUSD in the form of a federally required Culturally Relevant Curriculum (CRC) that is being implemented because of a 40 year old desegregation lawsuit. Augustine Romero is the new principal at Pueblo High school and from where we sit, on the south side of Tucson, we see a man who is passionate about educational justice, who fights for the rights of those students without a voice, and works tirelessly fighting for our south side schools and communities.
I totally understand “losing it” when it comes to something that you are passionate about. That is exactly the type of leader we need to make a difference. I feel the real news is on page 8 of today’s Star, “Defunct program linked to student Achievement”. UofA professor Nolan Cabrera did a study that describes how the dismantled Mexican American Studies program “helped students with low performance in their freshman and sophomore years of high school succeed when they participated as juniors and seniors.” Not only that but he also found direct links to higher graduation rates and higher test scores (http://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/study-links-student-achievement-to-defunct-program/article_9fe88653-ed85-5217-a321-2148c5e9ab8f.html).
We must keep in mind what this is really about, the achievement of our minority students (http://tucson.com/news/opinion/mailbag/letters-to-the-editor/article_bdb1d823-ee10-54a3-9d2b-0b99792d95d1.html). The district is trying to do what they are ordered by the Federal court by making sure that CRC is available at all schools in the district, but now here comes the right winged politicians from Phoenix destroying anything good that we do for our kids in Tucson. Isn’t it bad enough that these people who control the state are already killing our public schools? They continue to cut funds making it harder for those of us trying to climb out of poverty to educate our kids, with slogans like “school choice”, the voucher programs and of course the charter school movement.
I believe that fear drives this, young minorities thinking critically and questioning everything scares the people in power over them. The work force of tomorrow which the ruling class envision is one of apathy and following orders without question. Noam Chomsky backs me up on this! (http://www.alternet.org/education/chomsky-how-young-are-indoctrinated-obey?page=0%2C0&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark). I want my kids to question everything, and I’m sure you do too. So let’s get behind TUSD and its passionate leaders, like Augie, to make sure that the state does not continue to rob our children of the education and opportunities that all people deserve.
by Brian Flagg,
At the December 9th City Council meeting getting money from Transit will again be the issue – the bureaucrats claim they need approximately $500,000 infused into the system to cover last year’s transit budget short fall ?-
We have a solution to their budget problem.
Councilman Kozachik pointed out (AZ Daily Star 2/2/14) that the City could go after Oregon Ironworks for the $2.9 million they owe the City in late fees regarding their delivery of the street car.
So why not?
Voces de Casa Maria 