This was originally posted on July 21, 2017. This is the first post of our new series to highlight the work of the four founders of FAR, Garrity-Bond, Caroline Kline, Gina Messina and Xochitl Alvizo
Technically I was employed as a lab assistant at our community
Considered standard prison procedure, Michael was scheduled for an autopsy the following day. While my grief over Michael’s death was considerable, it was the pending autopsy that caused my immediate concern. As I pictured Michael on the cold table of steel, the crude instruments sawing and cutting into his already weathered body, I took it upon myself to somehow ease this last assault. I phoned the Tucson corner’s office, hoping to speak to the pathologist who would be performing Michael’s autopsy. With surprising bureaucratic ease, I was transferred to him. After introducing myself, I explained he would be receiving Prisoner 74799, my brother, from Tucson General, and that by all appearances this was just another disposable inmate whose criminal past simply caught up with him, sort of a karma-like ending. His thin, emaciated body, I warned, is covered in tattoos, which I feared might induce a harsher judgment upon this cast away soul. I asked the pathologist that when he begins the post, he please remember Prisoner 74799 was somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, father and friend and more importantly, that this man was loved. “Please” I pleaded, “try to see beyond the obvious signs of poor choices mapped onto his body, instead see he is more than his prison issued number and that Michael Paul, while far from saint, was a man who loved and was loved.”
I watched this short video on facebook about Sisa, an Egyptian woman who spent forty years a man in order provide for her family. There is a longer version on YouTube. Sisa, a widow, decided to work to feed her children, and consequently grandchildren. In Egypt, a woman can only do unpaid jobs within a home. So Sisa had to pretend to be a man by wearing male clothing and head wear. She takes casual jobs, such as shoe shining or brick laying.
Then Sisa made the news and was honoured by governmental officials. There is footage in the report of Egyptian men watching that footage. Apparently, the men were impressed by Sisa’s efforts and they developed respect for her. One man, who knows Sisa personally, says for camera: “I treat her like a man, because she works like a man”.
The implication being, I assume, that Sisa is only worthy of respect because she acts like a man is expected to act. And another implication is that Sisa is an exception. He only prepared to treat her differently, as all the rest of the women in Egypt apparently cannot work as men.
Technically I was employed as a lab assistant at our community hospital. This position entailed multiple responsibilities, from receptionist to actual bench work within the laboratory. The task I dreaded most was my assistance at autopsies. Beyond a strong constitution, it required no measurable skill set. This job was not the high-tech, immaculate setting of any of the CSI programs of today; instead the morgue was a stark, condensed room with two pullout refrigerators for the deceased, a stainless steel table the autopsy was performed on, and the necessary instruments and accouterments, some suspended from what appeared thin air. These tools of the trade ranged from the expected scalpels and retractors to saws and garden-like shears.
Fast-forward fifteen years. It is the morning of July 11, 1991. Prisoner number 74799 has just been transferred from the Department of Corrections, Arizona State Prison in Florence to Tucson County General Hospital in critical condition. Eight months prior to his admittance to the prison hospital, Prisoner 74799 was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. While considered inoperable, he was administered the customary chemotherapy treatments until four months later when the cancer spread to his brain, taking most if not all of his cognitive abilities away. Within one hour of his transport, Prisoner 74799, my brother, Michael Paul, died at the age of thirty-nine.
Like Crosley-Corcoran, I was raised in poverty. After my parents divorced in the early 1960s, our fall into poverty was pronounced. My mother liked to move, so much so that I attended no less than 15 different schools before high school. We lived in one house for two years without hot water. I learned early on the stigma of poverty, when even a Catholic school uniform could not protect me from signs of inferiority. Perhaps worse was the alienation I experienced as a young girl when other children’s parents discovered my father’s second job as a tattoo artist. Once that was known, most friends could no longer play with me outside of school. My psyche situated itself between shame and love, with the burden of keeping my humiliation a secret from the rest of my family. Continue reading “White Privilege: Confessions of a Poor White Girl by Cynthia Garrity-Bond”
Winter’s bone-chilling, relentless cold makes it the most treacherous season in the north when you don’t have a warm place to sleep or enough to eat. Poverty may look different in the city and the country, in various countries and continents, but it can be devastating to body, mind, and soul anywhere.
When I lived in New York City, no day went by that I wasn’t aware that people near me were hungry and homeless. When I moved to a more rural community, I found that, while small groups of volunteers ran food pantries and emergency assistance programs, many in my generally well-off town did not know that they had neighbors who were in need. While contributing to organizations that assist people around the globe is essential, clearly we must also consider what we, as human beings and especially as feminists with a focus on religion and spirituality, must do to support those who live within a few miles of us. Continue reading “A Place for Everyone at the Table by Carolyn Lee Boyd”
After doing my usual pre-travel research (expected weather, electrical plug usage and currency exchange rates) I tried to amply prepare for a continuous trip between India and Switzerland on one ticket: not too many clothes in my suitcase, but enough for the climate disparity. At the time I checked in, that disparity was something like 90 to 60 degrees (F) respectively. I opted for cotton clothes with layers and sandals with or without socks. As it turned out, India got hotter (nearly 100F) and Switzerland got colder (45F) with biting rain and winds. So I spent a LOT of my down time in my hotel room.
I had stuff to read, casual and work related and managed to keep myself busy. On occasion, I would turn on the TV. All the stations in Fribourg were in French or German with one exception: the financial news channel. I could only take that news for so long. My last day in Fribourg, there was a break in the news and instead they played back-to-back episodes of some program about the “super rich”. It turned out to be more distressing than the news. You’d expect people with so much money to have one thing you might wistfully dream about. But nope, I really have no interest in private planes or huge yachts with custom fitted gold faucets, or Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Yes, I would like to live near the beach, but a small bungalow would do me just as well—no need for the 25,000 square feet vacation home they were showcasing. Continue reading “Who’s Got the Money by amina wadud”
This week I had started my blog in commemoration of Black History Month. Alas it has sat in my computer unfinished as the deadline is well past for my bi-monthly post. So here is why.
As I was listening to NPR one day, a man was describing the “types” of thinking developed as a consequence of the types of intellectual and physical exposure. “Higher” thought (I hate that assessment of it, but it’s his word) he equated with things like knowledge of Shakespeare. “Other” thought went with the days before (or current places and peoples without) access to some of our own human intellectual ventures (like Shakespeare’s plays). What I, the abstract thinker (of course, I’m a theologian…) took away from this was that maybe I had ventured well into the realm of so-called higher thinking and as such had LOST touch with some basic thought for survival.
So I had a medical emergency. I have a hiatus hernia. It was diagnosed just before I went to India, and medication prescribed. I filled that prescription for over a year at my local pharmacy for about $10-$12 per 100 pills. India is in a patents war with the US over medicine production, because they refuse to play into the over-costly game that is our US norm. When my supply ran low I went to get a new prescription filled at my now local pharmacy. They asked for over $300 for a 3-month supply! Even if I only got one month it would be $169. I opted to do without altogether. I figured my dietary adjustments, no citrus, no mint, no tomatoes no night time eating would be enough to suffice. Continue reading “To Your Poor Health by amina wadud”
This year I want to resolve to help more and worry less.
This is the number one thing I worry about most right now:
Children and hunger.
Right now in the United States approximately 20-30% of children go to bed hungry. Twenty percent or more of the child population in 37 states and D.C. live in what are called “food insecure households.” New Mexico (30.6%) and the District of Columbia (30.0%) have the highest rates where children live without consistent access to food.
How often do we say “I’m starving?” What we mean is we are hungry. It’s true some of us don’t take care of ourselves all that well and maybe we realize—God, it’s dinner time and I didn’t eat all day—I need to resolve to eat better throughout the day. I totally agree with that resolution.
At the same time—we are not starving. I’m going out on a limb here and saying most of you reading this blog are not starving. (However, and this is something I worry about—many of you might be anorexic…and starving, most definitely—which would be another column.)
Poverty is the principle cause of hunger. Children who are malnourished lose about 160 days of illness a year. That’s almost five months! How are you going to get an education and go to school if you are missing almost 5 months of it?
Malnutrition can also stunt your growth. Stunted growth because of malnutrition affects almost one third of children in developing countries.
In many of these cases, this story begins with a malnourished mother. In many developing countries where the mother has not had adequate nutrition…the baby is born with stunted growth and at risk for among other things blindness and premature death.
Here’s what I worry about:
We have enough food to feed everybody. And we aren’t doing it.
The hungry in the world total 870 million people. That number is equivalent to the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Where are the hungry people? Mostly in Asia and Africa: east, central and southern Africa. However, the share of the hungry in urban areas is rising.
No one want to think about images of starving children…especially after Christmas or whatever variant of winter holiday you are celebrating. What we might be worrying about at this time is how much we actually did eat/indulged in over the holidays.
Be that as it may. Children are starving. Children go to bed hungry in every city in the United States every night. So, although this is a time of year when many among us worry about over-indulging in food, it is also the time that a quarter to a third of the population feels want most keenly, to quote a line from A Christmas Carol, when the men come to see Scrooge and try to get him to give to the poor. And he responds, “Are there no workhouses?”
There is a quiz on the Feeding America site to test your knowledge about hunger. You can take it here:
I’ll give you a few of the answers—1 in 6 Americans are hungry. Hunger is in homes where there is at least one working adult (almost 40% of them); and that same percentage is also true for hungry families who have folks in them who have a college education (almost 40%)—but they are still going to bed hungry. Among other things, hunger means that hungry children will not perform as well in school as those who are fed. And also hunger exists just as much in people with homes as in those who are homeless.
In the parable of the loaves and the fishes, Jesus says (John 6:1-14) don’t waste anything. Gather everything up. He feeds 5,000 people with the five barley loaves and two fishes that a small boy in the crowd has. But many folks forget that Jesus did not just perform the miracle that generated enough food for those 5,000 present. He also gathered up all that was left over—twelve baskets worth “so that nothing would be wasted.”
Why do we have enough and we are wasting so much? Why are children going to bed hungry? Why is there a surplus that is not being gathered up and distributed?
I don’t have the answers to really much of this–just my questions and my worries. However, many food kitchens for the homeless and those in need name themselves after this parable. They are not questioning the miracle or pondering the answers. They are practicing faith by works. There is one in San Jose, CA, The Loaves and Fishes Kitchen.
Also, when we talk about those who are hungry, and I have been talking about children here—there is another thing I worry about—the elderly and hunger. In my home state of California—47% of the elderly cannot afford basic needs. That is almost half of the population of the elderly in California!
The Loaves and Fishes Kitchen is the only provider of hot food for low income and homeless people in eastern Santa Clara/ San Jose, CA area. They describe their mission as one of providing some sense of “food security” to needy people /families. Food security—I have never heard of hunger and its abatement as not just as eating but as providing “food security,” before doing some basic research for this blog. I’m sure many of us have heard of the phrase, “worrying where the next meal will come from,” but food security means not just getting the next meal and feeling full. Food security means stopping having to worry about where the next meal will come from.
In Los Angeles where I live according to a recent Los Angeles Times article—there has been no let up in “food insecurity.” In fact, things are getting worse. According to this article, many folks have to decide between eating and paying rent, or eating and getting medicine.
Almost ten percent of Californians are out of work. This means more folks are hungry. Another worry: while this is happening house Republicans want to slash the food stamp budget by another 40 billion over the next decade “to prove fiscal responsibility.” The myth of the American Dream—where if you just work hard enough you will be OK, is what fuels the myth that cutting food programs, public welfare money– helps people “work harder.” When in fact, there are no jobs; people are paid less for working more—and the wealth in the country is owned by the elusive 1%.
There’s a great blog that recently went viral by a woman, Linda Tirado. She talks about the decisions that poor people make because they are the best decisions they can make then. I understand a lot of them because I was brought up lower middle class. If you looked away from your hamburger in my house one of the many siblings might snatch it off your plate. We did not have excess protein. However, I was not starving. I ate. Did we always eat healthy? No. But we ate.
Ms. Tirado’s piece helps us understand why slashing the budget that provides some relief to those on subsistence incomes, many living in motels with no stove, and working two jobs already…is not going to help those folks buck up and work harder. The poor are already some of the hardest working Americans there are, and some of the hardest working citizens of the world in any country.
Although there are many other things I worry about, such as:
–the torture of animals and that I still eat meat.
–The torture of dairy farm animals and that I still eat cheese and drink milk and have a daily cappuccino.
–I worry about the pollution of the ocean and that we, humans, represent such a small part of Earth—we are less than 29% of earth and the ocean in 71% of it and we’re screwing up the ocean. It is a variant of the 1% amassing the resources and hurting the 99% on a horrifically magnified scale.
Yes, there are many other things I worry about. I could go on here and talk about all the things I worry about. Sometimes I lie in bed and I can’t help thinking—somewhere a child is being hurt, or starving, a woman is being beaten. This might be happening somewhere close to me…maybe within walking distance. Somewhere in the great cities I have lived in…somewhere someone is almost always being hurt…and it is often a child.
I’m not sure if other folks worry like this. I know I do. And through the course of my life I have done work in various communities—social justice work that hopes to address and change these worries.
I could add to this list of current worries.
But, as I said right now I am very concerned with children and hunger—20 to 30% of American children going to bed hungry. And that is not even addressing the majority of the hungry in the world which do not even live in the U.S.
Children are dying, and their growth being stunted. Perhaps also on a small side note, because I am a teacher I am really concerned about the absolute unfairness of going to school with others who are well-fed when you are not and having to compete for the same grades. It worries me. As a professor who just finished grading over 200 finals—if I knew that some of these students were finishing their final work without enough food to fuel them, would I grade grade them differently? Should I? And maybe more importantly—should I know that they are hungry? Doesn’t it seem grossly unfair to apply the same grade to those who are hungry as to those who are well fed?
This blog does not mean that I could not list so many things I am also truly grateful for. I am—truly grateful. I had a book published this year. My wife and I performed an amazing balancing act of loans in order to purchase our first home. I am so grateful for this forum, this feminism and religion blog and the women who maintain it.
Yes, there are wonderful things in the world. Yes, it is a wonderful life. Or it can be. But, just as in the movie a wonderful life does not happen when people are hungry, when others want more than their share. What is our fair share? And how is it corporations become more important than the people who make them up? This is so much “food” for thought.
But, today I am writing about actual food. Not food for thought. I am thinking about resolutions, and I wanted to share mine. Children and hunger. I can’t resolve to stop worrying, but I can resolve to give money to the local mission (for me that is most likely to Catholic Charities or the Long Beach Mission, which I give to occasionally/regularly—but which I want to give to just regularly and on a schedule. There is also a food pantry at St. Luke’s in Long Beach that I will donate to with either time or money or both.)
I don’t know how much I’ll give—if it will be every month, four times a year or something else; if I will go work at the food bank or not. I want to do all of those things and I am realistic to admit I may not do them all but I will do something, in terms of a workable resolution by the first of the year.
I resolve to stop worrying about children and hunger so much. It doesn’t put food in a child’s belly—my worry. Faith by works.
I resolve to pick up the loaves and fishes of my life and work whatever miracle I can with them.
And you…what are your resolutions/ revolutions?
Marie Cartieris a teacher, poet, writer, healer, artist, and scholar. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of New Hampshire; an MA in English/Poetry from Colorado State University; an MFA in Theatre Arts (Playwriting) from UCLA; an MFA in Film and TV (Screenwriting) from UCLA; and an MFA in Visual Art (Painting/Sculpture) from Claremont Graduate University. She is also a first degree black belt in karate, Shorin-Ryu Shi-Do-Kan Kobayashi style. Ms. Cartier has a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University.
Charlene Spretnak is one of the Founding Mothers of the Women’s Spirituality movement. She is the author of eight books, including most recently Relational Reality. She is a professor in the Women’s Spirituality graduate program in the Philosophy and Religion Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For further information about her books, see www.CharleneSpretnak.com.
In the 1990s a broad coalition of Christian organizations and development NGOs mounted a successful international campaign known as Jubilee 2000, which pushed for a just resolution to a moral issue: the crushing interest payments on “Third World” development loans that had been forced on those countries in ways that had enriched the Northern banks and drained the South for decades. The campaign resulted in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, which provides systematic debt relief for the poorest countries as well as new safeguards to assure that aid money is actually spent on the alleviation of poverty, and also the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), which offers 100% cancellation of multilateral debts owed by HIPC countries to the World Bank, IMF, and African Development Bank. Continue reading “RESTORE THE REVENUE STREAMS! By Charlene Spretnak”
I watched this short video on facebook about 
Then Sisa made the news and was honoured by governmental officials. There is footage in the report of Egyptian men watching that footage. Apparently, the men were impressed by Sisa’s efforts and they developed respect for her. One man, who knows Sisa personally, says for camera: “I treat her like a man, because she works like a man”.
Winter’s bone-chilling, relentless cold makes it the most treacherous season in the north when you don’t have a warm place to sleep or enough to eat. Poverty may look different in the city and the country, in various countries and continents, but it can be devastating to body, mind, and soul anywhere.
Feminism and Religion 