May/June News:

Congratulations to Steve Taylor and Barbara Zelter for their work on the Smithfield campaign in North Carolina; it was supported by a resolution of the Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth earlier this month (read the statement). Props also to campaigners at Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, who helped janitors in Los Angeles win an important victory (read the LA Times story).

We celebrate with Kathryn and Gary Moran the birth of Eliana Grace on April 18, 2008 (left, mother and daughter). Please pray for Joyce Hollyday, who is struggling with serious health issues. Rick Zemlin is working hard to update our Click & Pledge functions on the website so book ordering will be easier. Remember that he will be sending out a Partner’s Circle ENews Reader Survey in July. Please respond so we get a sense as to what you are actually reading in this ‘zine.

Mike Little of Ministry of Money writes that a professor friend at San Francisco State told him: “Our church will be doing a series on money management sometime this year (a lot of people are in debt and in foreclosure). I read Sabbath Economics book with great interest, and was quite convicted. I talked to my wife about it last night, and we’re going to set up a no-interest loan fund for our church to help all the people in debt.” Mike, who we saw briefly at Duke, also reports that a new Church of the Savior worship group is organizing around our Sevenfold Covenant. We’ve also gotten inquiries from Australia about folks working the Covenant down under!

Finally, thanks to our friends who helped us at another Oak View work party in April (right).

John Parker writes from N.C.: “I am pleased to announce that on St. Patrick’s Day, Monday, March 17th, Easter “Rockstar” Maynard delivered Sawyer Davis into the world at the Women’s Birth & Wellness Center in Chapel Hill. The stats: 10 pounds, 7 ounces, 24 inches long, and a head of reddish hair.” Big sister Lila (4½) and big brother James (20 mos) are thrilled. Congratulations!

Speaking of cute kids, here’s a must-see: Lucy Colwell (left) singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”! Jill Colwell writes from Pasadena, CA: “Here’s something to help you celebrate the coming of spring and the start of baseball season: Click here to watch Lucy sing! Lucy had just returned from a trip last year to Petco Park in San Diego to watch the Braves face the Padres and was full of enthusiasm! Ed Loring wrote from Atlanta to say he appreciated my tribute to Norman Gottwald in the last issue. Early in April, I had a very successful consultation with Norm and several other pioneering scholars in the field of socio-political readings of the Bible. About a dozen academics and activists gathered to assess possibilities for establishing a “Center for the Bible and Social Justice” that would house the world-class libraries of these scholars, and be available for folks coming from the “seminaries, sanctuaries and streets.” Stay tuned!

Bill Gerred from Philly writes: “I just wrote a letter through the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s website. I hope you’ll take a look at their action alert and do the same. As a proponent of clean renewable energy, I have spent the money necessary to install solar panels on my own roof. I am not a wealthy person, but feel so strongly that we need to be about this. Imagine if all the flat roofs in each city like mine had solar panels! My own installation is scheduled to reduce my own carbon footprint by approximately 30% per year. Please join in to help us be not so dependant on foreign oil.” Take action now - use the FCNL’s website: http://capwiz.com/fconl/.

Robert Ellsberg, publisher at Orbis Books, writes: “I’m happy to let you know about the April release of The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day (Marquette University Press). An abridged paperback will follow from Doubleday in a year or two.”
Note: There was an error in the last issue: Gloria Kinsler is translating a book on Judges written by Dr. Edecio Sanchez, not Elsa Tamez.

On the home front: Elaine led a seminar on Restorative Justice for leadership of the California Conference of Bishops in L.A. this month. If you or someone in your network are interested in a week intensive study of Matthew’s gospel with me—perhaps someone who wanted but was unable to attend one of our Bartimaeus Institutes this winter—we invite you to consider attending the Maryknoll Mission Institute, June 22-27. CLICK HERE for more information.

The BCM staff and board held our annual retreat on the central coast this month, and planned for the coming year. We came up with some great ideas for developing our Bartimaeus Covenant Investment Community work, which will debut at the end of the year. Rick Zemlin will be sending out a Partner’s Circle ENews Reader Survey in July. Please respond so we get a sense as to what you are actually reading in this ‘zine.

This picture below is from my last check up with Dr. Samuel Small, the surgeon who worked on my spine in early November. It shows before (l) and after (r) x-rays of my cervical spine. The difference is dramatic—but note the 3 titanium bolts! Though I have permanently diminished mobility in my neck, the pain is almost gone, and I am begin-ning to feel almost normal. For that—and all your prayers and well wishes—I am deeply grateful. Finally, after another great work party in Oak View (thanks Gloria and Ross, Rick & Myrna, and Sandy Lejeune), Elaine and I are off to Durham, North Carolina for a 6 week writing fellowship at Duke Chapel. This begins an over 3 month stretch out of state for us. Keep us in prayer, and thanks for your continuing support.

Continuing the Road of Recovery…

I continue to heal from the November surgery, but very slowly. This season of recovery is truly an exercise in patience. Thanks for all the prayers and well-wishes. If you haven’t yet checked out the “blog” chronicling the journey, you can click HERE to do so. Elaine and I continue to lie low, and have appreciated help from visitors such as Franky and Rafael Arechiga. The BCM board met in Oak View on Dec 7th, and we rejoice in the fact that the Cooperative is financially stable heading into 2008. Thanks for your continuing support.

We wish you a restful Advent and Christmastide (at right, Elaine and Alice Linsmeier decorate the Oak View fruit trees with Christmas lights).

Word and World Memphis School Focuses on Living Wage Struggles Past and Present

By Ched Myers

 After two years of planning, the fifth week-long Word and World School convened in Memphis, TN in the last week of July.  The focus of the School was “Faith and Labor,” and the central storyline was that of the ongoing struggle for worker justice and a living wage.  The school was anchored in the history of the Sanitation Workers strike of 1968, during which Martin Luther King Jr. was killed (left in his last march, March 1968). 

Site visits around Memphis included the National Civil Rights Museum at the old Lorrain Motel; the New Chicago neighborhood of north Memphis, which still suffers from the closing of a Firestone Fire plant years ago; and the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees office where the memory of the Sanitation Workers strike is kept alive.  The week culminated with an action at the Quebecor plant (one of several non-unionized plants operated by the second largest printing company in the world) just across the state line in Mississippi, where low-income workers (predominately African American) have been harassed for trying to organize a union to obtain better pay and safer working conditions. 

In various panels we learned about current living wage campaigns in Memphis and elsewhere; examined the ongoing injustices stemming from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; and heard from elderly veterans of the fateful 1968 strike: Rev. Frank McRae, Taylor Rogers, Ida Leachman and Rev. Ezekiel Bell (pictured l to r; photo Commercial Appeal).  Classes included a history of the labor movement in song and pictures; Jesus, Work and Wealth; Sabbath Economics; A Womanist Look at Labor; Doing Good in the Jewish Tradition; The Church as Beloved Community; Labor and Immigration; Engaging Seminaries in Worker Justice; Prison Labor; The Farm Worker Movement; Community Unionism; White People as Allies of People of Color; and Establishing Worker Centers.

This year the School had two additional parts which were co-sponsored by the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change: a midweek, day-long academic symposium on labor and globalization; and a weekend conference focusing on building ties between Black churches and the trade union movement.  Overall some 200 persons attended these overlapping events during the week, including more than 40 young adults.  Two thirds of the participants were from the Southeast, 60% were persons of color, and a dozen trade unions were represented from both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations.  Although we didn’t get as much participation from local and regional pastors as we had hoped, all who attended were deeply impacted by the spirit of the “learning village” Word and World creates. 

Musicians Ange Smith and Charlie King and poets Jim Perkinson and Tiffany Gray highlighted the many cultural contributions, and we heard powerful preaching from Alexia Salvatierra (left) and J. Herbert Lester (right) as well as Nelson Johnson and John Mendez from North Carolina.  In the closing worship service an “altar call to commitment” inaugurated a Southern Faith, Community and Labor Alliance (below Mendez addresses a SFCLA organizing meeting in Greensboro, Jan 06). We hope this network will help promote and deepen collaboration between people of faith and struggles for economic and labor justice throughout the Southeast and beyond. 

Once again Word and World managed to put on an excellent School, despite our shoestring budget and thin infrastructure.  A young African American seminarian said to us toward the end of the school, “I feel like I’ve had the kind of conversion experience that Malcolm X had in jail.  I’ll never be the same.” 

Click here for more information on Word and World Schools. 

Click for more information on Word and World Schools. 

Peg and Ched work closely with the SEC, a partnership project with colleagues around North America that helps resource education and action around issues of faith and economics from a Jubilee/Sabbath perspective.

Our Chicago consultation on Community Investing at the beginning of June was very successful, co-sponsored by the Faith Traditions Working Group of the Social Investment Forum.  Some 50 people gathered to talk about how better to promote and resource community investing among faith communities.  Participants included representatives of Community Development Financial Institutions (such as ShoreBank, OikoCredit, Self-Help Credit Union, Shared Interest and Calvert Fund), professional financial advisors and managers (including Upstream 21 and Just Money Advisors), educators and animators and regular investors.  A highlight was an interfaith Shavuot/Pentecost service featuring reflections by Donna Katzin and Kazi Joshua (left).

Vast financial resources are invested in the U.S. with little awareness of how that money might contribute to, or detract from, the common good.  We looked at how invested dollars can promote justice, community, and economic opportunity for the poor, instead of being concentrated on Wall Street and making the rich richer.  We examined how faith communities can become more aware and engaged in socially responsible investing, particularly as it relates to the growing strategic arena of “community investing.”  The theologians, educators and activists of the SEC joined financial professionals of the SIF Faith Traditions working group and other interested persons to network, strategize and promote a message and vision of economic justice and the common good.

We gathered on the weekend that Christian churches celebrate Pentecost and Jewish synagogues celebrate Shavuot to explore these great faith traditions of economic justice and compassion. The conference included in-depth conversation about the spiritual, philosophical and practical aspects of making surplus capital available to poor communities, both domestically and abroad, through community development financial institutions, micro-credit organizations, cooperatives and other strategies. A unique half-day exposure trip to ShoreBank, the country’s first and leading community development and conservation bank, offered an opportunity to learn about this progressive model of community investment, followed by a visit to some Southside Chicago neighborhoods to hear stories of individuals and organizations that have benefited from ShoreBank’s practices.  Other sessions focused on equipping and resourcing participants to further explore, engage and promote community investing.

Meantime, Ched’s booklet, The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics, is still being widely used as a popular study guide (see our Resources webpage). Be sure and also look for Ulrich Duchrow’s new book, Property for People, Not for Profit: Alternatives to the Global Tyranny of Capital (Zed, 2004), an important examination of the historical construction of our economy of possession.

In April 2005 Ched gave a talk at the WNC entitled “From Country Roads To Mean Streets… The Road to Emmaus,” accompanied by jazz musician Warren Cooper. You can view it as a realtime video: click here. (Right, “Friend of the Humble,” Léon-Augustin L’hermitte, 1892.) 

Click here to look at several recent articles by Ched:

• “Rolling Away the Stone of Empire”: Reflections on Good Friday and Easter, 2005
• “Led by the Spirit into the wilderness…” Reflections on Lent, Jesus’ Temptations and Indigeneity (February, 2005)
• “…to see what will become of his dream.” Martin and Jesus (Jan, 2005)
• Same-Gender Marriage as a Theological/Ecclesial Issue: Reflections on Isaiah 56:1-8 (December, 2004)
• Same-Gender Marriage as a Social Justice Issue: “Splitting the Difference?” (May, 2004)
• Mel Gibson’s “Passion,” Anti-Semitism, and the Gospel: Mark’s Trial Narrative as Political Parody (April, 2004)
• “’All the words of the scroll…’ A Eulogy for Daniel Berrigan.” From the Catholic Agitator, October, 2003
• “Caretaking the Gift: A Journey of Hospice.” From the Catholic Agitator, October 2002
• “Conjuring Ground on Which the Future Might Stand” (Comments at Mary Ramerman’s Ordination, Spiritus Christi church, November, 2001)
• My Big Fat Letter to the IRS, outlining the theological and political rationale for my witness of War Tax Resistance

Thanks to the work of Australian friend Paul Dyson, you can also now download some of Ched’s talks on various topics from this website.