Seminar at Columbia University on February 6, 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012 12:15
Sheila D. Collins
The Columbia University Seminar on
Full Employment, Social Welfare & Equity #613
February 6, 2012
“Can the Occupy Wall Street Movement Reinvigorate Progressive Faith Communities?”
Rev. John Collins, Rev. Paul Mayer, Rev. Michael Ellick, Dr. Ray Blanchette
In recent years, the progressive elements in faith communities across the United States have been eclipsed by the rise and political influence of the Religious Right. Yet people of faith have been active and often influential leaders in some of the great movements for social justice and peace throughout U.S. history—from the Abolitionist movement through the movements for labor, civil liberties, civil rights, peace, full employment, women’s rights, and LGBT movements. Today, a new manifestation of that progressive vision is occurring through the Occupy Wall Street movement. Religious activists with roots in previous social justice struggles as well as in the Occupy Faith movement will discuss their histories in the movements for social justice and peace, the lessons they have learned about organizing, the reasons for the seeming eclipse of prophetic religion over the last thirty years and what is now happening as the Occupy Faith movement participates in and seeks to support the larger Occupy movement.
DATE: Monday, February 6, 7:15 - 9:00 p.m. in Faculty House
(http://facultyhouse.columbia.edu/). The seminar is at 7:15 p.m. in a room that will be announced in the Faculty House lobby. Please look for a bulletin board posting. To reach Faculty House, enter the Columbia University campus via the gate on the east side of Broadway at 116th Street; go through campus and cross Amsterdam Avenue. Continue on West 116th past the Law School and turn left through the gate, turn right beyond Wien Hall on the right and go down the ramp to Faculty House.
OPTIONAL DINNER: Members of the seminar will gather for an optional dinner in Faculty House at 6:00. The cost of the dinner is $24 per person and payable only by cash or check made payable to Columbia University. (RSVP required - please see bottom of email.)
PLEASE RSVP to Sheila Collins (
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) by Wednesday, February 1, 2012 with a phone number where we may reach you on the day of the seminar in case of a last minute cancellation.
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University Seminar on Full Employment #613
____ I will ____ I will not attend the seminar on February 6.
____ I will ____ I will not join the group for dinner.
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The seminar on Full Employment, Social Welfare & Equity is chaired by Sheila Collins,
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; Gertrude Goldberg,
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; and Helen Ginsburg,
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.
Biographies of Speakers
John Collins is a retired United Methodist Minister who has served parishes in East Harlem and the South Bronx as well as working with interreligious peace and justice organizations. In the 1960s, while a student at Union Theological Seminary he helped to found the Student Interracial Ministry which sent hundreds of white seminarians from the North to work in black churches in the South and black seminarians to work in white churches. During the late 1970s he worked with the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility on a campaign to try to get the Carter administration to provide government guaranteed loans to enable the steel mills that were closing in Youngstown, Ohio to be reinstituted under worker-community ownership. He also worked on the campaign to pass the Community Reinvestment Act which prohibits the “redlining” of low income neighborhoods by banks. During the 1980s he co-Directed Clergy & Laity Concerned a national interreligious peace and justice network that organized many national and international campaigns for peace and human rights. CALC was a leader in the formation of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and also founded Witness for Peace, which sent hundreds of Americans to the war zones of Nicaragua during the Contra war, to be in solidarity with those affected and to oppose U.S. policy. Collins led several of these delegations. In 1984 he helped organize Religious Leaders for Jackson during the presidential primary campaign and, with Pau Mayer, wrote speeches for Rev. Jackson on peace. While serving a church in the South Bronx Collins worked with South Bronx churches to build hundreds of units of affordable housing for community residents. Collins has been arrested in several peace and civil rights actions over the years and currently teaches in the Fishkill Correctional Facility
Paul Mayer A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and a Benedictine monk for 18 years, Mayer’s more than half century of social activism has included work in the barrios of Central America applying the tenets of liberation theology, involvement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement in the South, participation in the effort to end the war in Vietnam as well as co-founding peace and environmental organizations. He served as coordinator of the Catonsville Nine Defense Committee in support of religious non-violent actions during the Vietnam War by the Berrigan brothers and others. In 1978 he founded the Religious Task Force, a national network to convene the various faith communities to work together on issues of peace and social justice. He was also founder of the Children of War, a leadership organization that helped transform the lives of teenage survivors of international and domestic wars, founder of the New Jersey Sea Alliance calling for the joint abolition of nuclear weapons and power after the Harrisburg nuclear accident, founder of a spiritual peace community in inner-city East Orange, NJ, where he still resides and more recently co-founder of the Climate Crisis Coalition to convey a sense of urgency around the climate crisis and to broaden the constituency for the issue beyond the tradition environmental organizations. His peace and justice ministry has taken him to Japan to work with atom bomb survivors, to Cuba with Pastors for Peace to challenge the US blockade, to the Middle East for reconciliation work in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, to the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and to Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002 as well as to the San Francisco 1984 Democratic Convention where he addressed the convention on nuclear disarmament. Paul has been involved recently with United for Peace and Justice and the New York City Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders in work for peace and justice in Iraq and the Gulf region. He was recently arrested in one of the Occupy Wall Street actions, one of many arrests throughout his career. He is a Yoga practitioner and teacher and has an active wedding ministry as a non-canonical, formerly married priest.
Michael Ellick is the Minister of Judson Memorial Church, and one of the founders of Occupy Faith in New York City. In his ministry, he has worked as an organizer and a social justice advocate for Immigrant Rights, Marriage Equality, Single Payer Health Care, Economic & Environmental Justice, and Islamophobia. Rev. Ellick is particularly interested in understanding the Christian Passion Story in an America threatened by falling Empire and failing Plutocracy. Raised in a Conservative Baptist church in Washington State, Rev. Ellick studied Comparative Religion and Philosophy at the University of Washington before earning his M.Div. at Union Theological Seminary in 2000. Still hungry for new ways of understanding the Gospel, as well as real world practices for embodying its prophetic compassion, he studied closely under a Tibetan Buddhist teacher for the next five years. Over the course of his life, he has also worked as a courier, a fast-food cook, a fact-checker, a fresh juice delivery person, a copy-editor, an event planner, a barista, a financial analyst, an internet help desk, and even as an assistant at a Marine Biology lab. At Judson, Rev. Ellick has embraced Judson’s legacy as a Research & Development Laboratory for American Christianity. Committed to establishing a new Christian vocabulary for a post-Christian world, Rev. Ellick’s exploration of new theological forms has grown out of his commitment to the social gospel in action, and the practice of God’s presence in silent prayer, reflection, and meditation.
Dr. Ray Blanchette is Director of the Black Institute Clergy Campaign for Social and Economic Justice. He has been active in mobilizing the black religious community around issues of social justice and in working with unions to protect the rights of workers that are under assault.
Sheila: THE CAMEL AND THE NEEDLE’S EYE
Friday, 18 November 2011 13:48
Sheila D. Collins
Sheila D. Collins
A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? . . . Jesus said to him, You know the commandments . . . . He replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But when he heard this he became sad; for he was very rich. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of god! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
(Luke 18: 18-25)
On November 15, 2011, along with an interreligious contingent of clergy and laypeople who had been meeting at Judson Baptist Church in Greenwich Village to discuss how best to support the Occupy movement (providing places for occupiers to sleep was one decision that was taken), my husband and I walked south to Sixth Avenue and Canal St. in lower Manhattan to lend our solidarity to the remnants of those members of the Occupy Wall St. movement who had been brutally evicted from their encampment in Zucotti Park the night before. On the corner of Sixth and Canal is a large open site, Duarte Square. Normally, the site is a park that is open to the public 24 hours a day. But now, the park was surrounded by a high board wall, the entrance barred by chain link fences with a sign declaring, “Private Property. No Trespassing.” The site is owned by Trinity Wall St. Church and licensed to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for a temporary art installation that was ostensibly closed for the season. This 17th century Episcopal church in the heart of the financial district was founded by royal charter in 1697 from King William III. Trinity is reputed to be the largest landowner in lower Manhattan. It’s property, totaling in the billions, giving it a lucrative endowment for its charitable foundation came about as a grant of the "Queen's Farm" by Queen Anne in 1705. Arriving at the site, we saw hundreds of people gathered in front of the barricade that faces Sixth Avenue. Some were sitting on the ground, others had climbed the fence and were sitting on top, holding large yellow banners and signs that said, “Occupy Wall St.” “You destroyed our homes, but you can’t destroy our spirit. We are the 99%.” Still others were listening to an array of speakers express their outrage at the actions of the police the night before, but with a spirit that indicated, “you have only made us stronger.” Flanking the protesters on two sides of the square were hundreds of stoney-faced policemen and women waiting for something to happen. One could see dozens of people looking down from the surrounding office towers.
The protesters had been hopeful that they could move their encampment to Duarte Square. One of them said that they intended to have an interfaith service inside. They had been told that some clergy were even then negotiating with Trinity Church so that this could happen, but as time dragged on they were becoming impatient to find a new home. While waiting for the “something to happen,” my husband, who was sitting on a bench, got talking to a woman who had been sleeping in Zucotti Park for the past month. She was looking weary and still in a state of shock by what she had experienced the night before. Jeanie looked to be in her late forties or early fifties. Dressed in layers of clothing, she carried a torn knapsack on her back bulging with all her belongings. Jeanie told us that she had come here to participate in the Occupation of Zucotti Park because her mother and aunt are out of work. “Too many people are suffering,” she said. She had worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street for 13 years. When asked why she was part of Occupy she replied, “Because of what I have seen by working on Wall Street. She had seen the financial crash of 2008 coming. Now she is putting her knowledge of how the system works to use by conducting research on the financial industry for the movement. She told us that it was Goldman Sachs who had pressured the leaders of Greece and Italy to name bankers to run those countries and bypass the people and that the London bond market just reached its lowest level since the 19th century. This is absolutely terrifying she said. This is Jeanie’s account of the night of November 15 when the encampment at Zucotti Park was destroyed.
At about 1:30 I was awakened by people shouting, they are coming! This is it! They are going to evict us!. Police in full riot gear had surrounded the park and had put up barricades so that people couldn’t get out. The police presence was massive, maybe 2,000 police. They tore up our tents, took through all our belonging into garbage dumps. I managed to get out of the barricades and tried to get to a nearby mall. The police treated us like the worst kind of terrorists. There were pregnant women in our group. About 200 people were driven out of the park. Then came the violence. Police started pulling the people who were left into the street and then saying, “Now you’re in the street (which is closed). You’re under arrest.” 10-15 police in full riot gear blocked all the exits. The police then began beating them and using mace and pepper spray right in people’s eyes
By about 3:00 AM most of the occupiers had been dispersed. We were walking uptown, not knowing what to do. The streets were empty and we had nowhere to go. A police helicopter followed our group with searchlights. Police then caught us and arrested many. Those of us who were not arrested walked north to Foley Square near the Federal Court House. Police surrounded us in Foley Square, pushing their billy clubs in front of them and squeezing us into a tight circle. I learned this morning that they had destroyed our library of several thousand books, many on capitalism, socialism, economics, history, cooking, children’s stories. They just threw them all into garbage trucks, just like when the Nazis burned the books. We talked and talked, had some breakfast and came here [Sixth Ave and Canal Street]. This was the most terrifying night of my life.” [Note: some 200 people were arrested that night.]
We learned from reports the morning after that the carefully planned siege, using police trained in “counterterrorism” tactics, had been kept secret until the last moment from all but a few of the highest ranking officers, that all subway stops surrounding the area had been closed, that Google Maps had been shut off, and the Brooklyn Bridge shut down so that neither supporters from other parts of the city could come to help, as they had done during rumors of an earlier eviction that was called off for fear of its political repercussions, nor could journalists report on what was happening. In his book, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, Stephen Graham documents how ever since 9/11 there has been a shift of states targeting states to states targeting civilians. Around the world there has been a blurring of police and military functions. Cities are being policed with the same counterinsurgency tactics and strategies used in the war zones of places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking “enemies.” Helicopters, infrared sensing technology, video surveillance systems, tasers and pepper spray, have become common props in U.S. cities and are increasingly being used against peacefully protesting, unarmed people who have taken to the streets because that is the only way to get the attention of the country’s political and economic elites.
Shortly after listening to Jeanie’s story, a young man stood up on top of the barricade, asked for a “mic check” and then said that it was time for some of the protesters to enter the site. While I can’t quote from him verbatim, he said something like, “Trinity Church is our ally, and if it is our friend, it won’t mind our making use of that friendship.” There was a reason for the protesters to think that they had a friend in Trinity Church. The church’s public statement on the Occupy Movement had said: “Trinity Wall Street respects the rights of citizens to protest peacefully and supports the vigorous engagement of the concerns that form the core of the protests – economic disenfranchisement and failure of public trust.” Trinity had opened the doors to Charlotte’s Place, its neighborhood center, to protesters who had made use of their meeting room to rest, use the toilets, get warm, catch up on email, or chat with other protesters. Believing they had the church’s trust and that a positive answer would be forthcoming from the negotiations with the church, someone announced that the gate was open (apparently it had been opened with a bolt cutter) and a few protesters, perhaps not more than two or three dozen, started climbing over the barricade and surging toward the gate. But as they did so, the police, who far outnumbered the people who had managed to get inside, began to line up in formation. We could see orders being given by the commanders, and soon a squadron of riot helmeted, baton wielding police were headed for the inside, with shouts of “Shame! Shame! and “The Whole World is Watching,” arising from the crowd. All eyes, cameras, cell phones and video recorders were then focused on the narrow slots in the wall through which the action inside could be glimpsed. Trying to get a peek through one of these portholes, I could see that the occupiers were simply milling around when the police rushed in, batons at the ready. In one corner, behind some bushes about two dozen policemen bending over someone who was obviously pinned on the ground. “Overkill,” I thought to myself.
Shortly thereafter, word came down to the clergy, who were waiting in the square outside the barricade that Trinity Church had said “No,” to the occupation of the space. In his internet message to the congregation, the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, Trinity’s rector, stated in the diversionary way so often used by those in power when they don’t dare to state the real reasons they are rejecting the pleas of the powerless that “while Trinity supports the Occupy movement’s right to protest peacefully and lawfully, and provides responsible assistance, the parish simply cannot be turned over to a single cause. Trinity welcomes protesters to participate in parish life, but not to occupy parish life in such a way that excludes anyone from taking full part in the vital and dynamic place of faith that is Trinity Wall Street.” (Since Occupy Wall Street encampments welcome everyone, his presumption that the Occupiers were exclusionary rang hollow as did his assumption that an empty lot that was several blocks from the church was somehow part of its “parish life.”) It was the same kind of diversionary language used by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg when he claimed he had to clear Zucotti Park to protect the health and safety of the protesters and the neighborhood. All the while his police were affecting the health and safety of the protesters and the neighborhood. Kleiglights swept the area, helicopters buzzed overhead, loudspeakers roared, police sirens screamed and hundreds of people were violently roused from their sleep, some handcuffed and thrown into police vans, while others were sent away, bewildered and terrified to wander the silent canyons of New York.
When all of the two dozen people who were arrested in the next day’s police crackdown at Duarte Square were led away, the crowd began drifting north toward Zucotti Park. By nightfall of November 15, 2011 the park was again packed with people, the yellow-orange fall foliage above the park giving it a festive air despite the disappearance of the accoutrements of a “community.” Gone were the tents that had been ripped apart, the tent poles that had been sawed in pieces, the blankets, pillows and sleeping bags, the boxes of food, the brooms and mops, the laptops that had provided communication with the outside world, the bicycles that had provided power after the mayor had confiscated the generators—all were thrown into a heap and carted off by the sanitation department. But, like a butterfly escaping from a mine, protesters had already managed to replace about 100 of the 5,000 books that had been carted away from the “people’s library,” the night before.
The Trinity Church leadership had supported the British in the first Revolutionary War. Over 200 years later, on July 12, 2011, about a dozen people gathered in the churchyard of Trinity Church to mark the 207th anniversary of the death of Alexander Hamilton, first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, founder of the Federalist party, and patron saint of the aristocratic wing of the founding elite. Canon Anne Mallonee, Vicar of Trinity Wall Street, spoke of Hamilton’s continued relevance. “His beliefs affect our daily lives to this day,” Mallonee said. Therein hangs a tale.
Pictures of Methodists@OWS
Friday, 18 November 2011 10:54
Rev. John Collins
John: THIS IS WHAT FASCISM LOOKS LIKE
Tuesday, 15 November 2011 13:23
Rev. John Collins
John Collins
The New York Police Department broke up the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zucotti Park at 1:30 am this morning. Several hours later, on a park bench at the intersection of Sixth avenue andCanal Street, amid heavy police presence and continuing arrests, I met Jeannie, a woman in her ‘40’s. She has been camped in Zucotti Park over a month. She is from California. Her father is a child of the Depression. Her mother and her aunt are out of work, Jeannie has been a financial analyst on Wall Street for 13 years. I asked why she was part of Occupy. “Because of what I have seen by working on Wall Street.. Goldman Sachs pressured the leaders of Greecc and Italy to name bankers to run those countries and bypass the people.”This is Jeannie’s acccunt of last night.
“At about 1:30 I had awakened to get a cup of coffee. Police had surrounded the Park. They put up barricades around the park. I got out of the barricades and tried to get to a nearby mall. The police treated us like the worst kind of terrorists, There were pregnant women in our group. The police presence was massive, maybe 2000 police. About 200 people were driven out of the park. Then came the violence. Police started pulling people into the street and then saying, “Now you’re in the street (which is closed). You’re under arrest.” 10-15 police in full riot gear blocked all the exits. The police then began beating them and using mace and pepper spray right in people’s eyes
It was now 3am. Most of the occupiers had been dispersed. A police helicopter followed our group with searchlights, Police then caught us and arrested many. Those of us who were not arrested walked north to Foley Square near the Federal Court House. Police surrounded us in Foley Square, pushing their billy clubs in front of them and squeezing us into a tight circle. I learned this morning that they had destroyed our library of several thousand books, many on capitalism, socialism, economics, cooking, children’s stories. They just threw them all into garbage trucks, just like when the Nazis burned the books.
We talked and talked, had some breakfast and came here (Sixth Ave and Canal Street, still a large police presence and several arrests.)
This was the most terrifying night of my life.”
My wife, Sheila, and Rev. John Scott also heard Jeannie’s story. We offered to help her find a place to stay overnight.
When they came for the communists, I said nothing because I was not a communist. When they came for the trade unions, I said nothing because I was not a trade unionist. The same when they came for the Catholics and the homosexuals. When they came for me there was no one left to speak out.
- Martin Niemöller, describing the rise of Nazism in Germany.
Today they have come for the young Americans occupying Wall Street, Who will speak out on their behalf?
(for more information on how you can help, go to Occupyfaith.org)
Sheila: Occupy Wall Street: The Making of a New World
Monday, 07 November 2011 00:00
Sheila D. Collins
Sheila D. Collins November 7, 2011
To the superficial eye Liberty Park (Zucotti Park) in lower Manhattan is a circus—a mass of people all packed together in one rather small city square, towered over by the gleaming multistory offices of the 1%, ringed by metal police barricades and overseen by a tall police tower at one end and a solid row of police vans along one side. Boxes, plastic bins and tarps covering all manner of equipment surround the perimeters, tents sprout like mushrooms down the middle. The park is a cacophony of sound. People of all ages, races, nationalities, sexual orientations and interests—some in wheel chairs, some who can breathe only through a tube, some in down jackets, others in the tatters of the homeless, some in military fatigues, others in clerical collars—mill around in seemingly random fashion or stand and sit around the perimeters on all four sides with hand lettered signs, many on scraps of cardboard boxes, expressing their sentiments:
End Wall Street greed. Tax the rich!
I am a union ironworker. I vote. I work. I pay taxes. I’m pissed. So I’m here! All the way from L.A.
We are the 99% and we are one!
Jobs for All!
Bring back Glass-Steagall!
Free higher education!
Second time I’ve fought for my country. First time I’ve known my enemy.
The church is occupying Wall Street. We’re putting the protest back into Protestant.
Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline!
End hydrofracking!
Stop Monsanto from poisoning our food!
Restore funding for mental health.
But as you continue to watch this tableau you realize that this is a living organism, creating and recreating itself. Like all living cells it has a boundary and yet is permeable. It is constantly in motion, continually changing, yet remains the same. Sometimes, amoeba-like, the cell splits into two, or four or more, sending these new cells to other parts of the city—to surround City Hall, to march on Washington Square, to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, to protest outside Verizon’s corporate headquarters on behalf of CWA employees, to march to the headquarters of Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, or to commit civil disobedience at a Brooklyn police station notorious for its use of racial profiling. At other times, the protest becomes a river, sending its rivulets rushing through the canyons of the city, between cars, through police netting and over police motorcycles until it settles in a pool in some other part of the city to make its statement: We will not be afraid, we will not be silenced, we will not stand quietly while police brutalize peaceful occupiers. We fight for true democracy, and we fight to end the tyranny of the 1%. This is only the beginning.
When you finally spend some time inside the organism you realize that the seeming randomness of the movement has an underlying organization, a structure. What we are seeing at Liberty Park and in the hundreds of other Occupy movements that are spreading across the country and the world is an entire society in microcosm built, not through conquest or war as most of the societies on our planet were formed, but from the bottom up and inside out, organically. Inside the cell’s membrane are several “departments,” each focused on meeting a specific function needed by the body as a whole, just as each organ in the human body. There is a legal institution (where occupiers can get information on and help with legal issues from law students and members of the National Lawyer’s Guild); a medical unit staffed by doctors and nurses that is now affiliated with an outside clinic; a food kitchen serving up delicious—and generally healthy—food brought by individuals, donated by organizations, or ordered from nearby restaurants by sympathetic supporters across the country and around the world (orders have even been phoned in from Egypt); an entertainment center where performers drum, dance and play other musical instruments; a meditation corner where people of every and no faith meditate around an altar made up of the sacred symbols from all of the worlds’ religions; a press/communications department where on any given day, news about Occupy events around the world is sent digitally across the country and across continents via Skype, Facebook and Twitter; a “comfort” department where warm coats, pillows, blankets and other things necessary to occupying a square of concrete in cold and inhospitable weather are available; a clean-up/recycling department where brooms, mops, bleach and buckets indicate a concern to keep the area free of refuse and vermin; a library containing over 3,000 books all logged in an online card catalog according to subject, open and free to anyone—and with no fines for late returns; and a security department to make sure that Occupy’s ground rules—peacefulness, nonviolence, respect for differences, are enforced through gentle persuasion. The entire park has become one big university where teach-ins are held on money and finance, healthy eating and food security, the mortgage crisis, police brutality, renewable energy, alternative electoral systems, and any number of other topics necessary to the creation of a new world; and the park has become a giant workshop where “guilds” of artists and other craftspersons teach others the tricks of their trade. The park operates as a people’s government where whose who wish to participate learn about and debate the issues that confront our society and the world, practice participatory democratic decision making, and hear from experts who drop by from time to time to learn, bring information and encouragement. On Sunday afternoons one end of the park is dominated at its center by a papier maché golden calf (resembling the Wall St. bull) held aloft and labeled “false idol,” “greed,” and “money.” The appearance of the golden calf signals that this end of the park has become a church/synagogue/Hindu temple/ethical culture meeting house/Friends meeting house/Baha'i temple; Buddhist gathering as an ecumenical “service” of song, prayer and exhortation is led by people representing differing pathways to the transcendent, but all united on the ethical values that should guide the good society.
Occupy Wall St. is a unique adaption to an age in which the old hierarchies of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and religious dogma are breaking down amongst a younger generation, but are stubbornly clung to by those who still hold power. At a time when more and more of the world is beginning to suffer a future of joblessness and homelessness, the poisoning of our food, air and water and the imminent threat of climate catastrophe, the Occupiers model for us a way of surviving and adapting to reduced circumstances and of working together to build a new world in the midst of the old order that is crumbling. Incredibly creative, they are transforming long discarded modes of operating into new possibilities. Denied a sound system or even a bullhorn by the city’s mayor, they have created the “people’s mic,” a unique restoration of the oral history tradition where each speaker’s words are repeated by others so that the message gets transmitted throughout the crowd. When the police took away their generators, threatening the cut-off of lights, heat and communication with the outside world, they found a way to generate electricity with bicycles. At a time when the book industry is threatened with extinction by the electronics industry they have created a library of real books donated by bookstores, publishers, libraries and individuals. At a time when 535 people in the U.S. Congress cannot make one intelligent decision, they have found a way to gain the consensus of as many as 3,000 people at a time. Without housing or public toilets they have found a way of surviving outdoors, on hard cement in the midst of a freak October snowstorm that left hundreds of thousands of homes without power across the northeastern U.S. Starting with no money and no formal organizational backing, they have attracted as much as half a million dollars to their cause, all the food they need to eat, medical, legal, and psychological assistance, and tents (donated by Riverside Church) as colder and inclement weather approached. Using the power of nonviolence, risking comfort, security, their health, and some even their lives for the sake of a greater good, they are demonstrating that creativity and selflessness, generosity and the longing for community still lie embedded in the human spirit despite a system that has sought to stifle creativity through an education system focused on standardized testing, computerized learning and budget cuts that eliminate the arts from school curriculums; despite a system that rewards ruthless competitiveness; and despite a system that insists we are all individuals and don’t need the help of others to survive and thrive.
And the 1% still don’t get it! Neither do their handmaidens, the politicians or the media pundits. The billionaire mayor of New York still says, “I hear your complaints. Some of them are totally unfounded.” Rather than complaining, he says, the protesters “should be out there trying to change the world and make it better.” (Michael Bloomberg, quoted in Kate Taylor, “Two Mayors Deeply Split Over Blame on Fiscal Ills,” New York Times, November 2, 1011, p. A25.) I have news for you, Mr. Bloomberg, they have already made the world a better place. You seem not to have noticed that because of the Occupiers, the public discourse has now turned from one that is focused on deficits and austerity, to one focused on justice and fairness; from one that is focused on division and partisanship to one focused on what the majority have in common; from one that calls any kind of protest from below “class warfare” to one that more accurately describes the class warfare that is really being waged on the great majority of the world’s people by those at the top of the economic pyramid. The Occupiers have already exposed the folly of police crackdowns, caused at least two mayors to back down from further repression, and have spawned the first general strike (in Oakland, CA) of the new era.
Changing the public discourse is, of course, only the first step in the creation of a better world. But the world as we know it was not created overnight. The forces of the Old Order are still formidable and are already trying to subvert it—to co-opt the movement to the ambitions of the Democratic party in the next election or; like MTV, to reap corporate revenues by turning it into a reality show; or, like the neo-Nazi Right to exploit the movement’s populism to sow seeds of anti-Semitism and racism in order to win converts for its perverted agenda. But I like to think that these remnants of the Old Order are like a concrete bunker built on sand. The tide has turned, and it is coming in. As the protesters say, “This is only the beginning.”
Sheila D. Collins is Professor of Political Science Emerita at William Paterson University and a co-founder of the National Jobs for All Coalition, on whose Executive Board she serves.
John: MY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ON WALL STREET
Monday, 10 October 2011 00:00
Rev. John Collins
John Collins
Last week, I took a walk on Wall Street and had myself a religious experience. My wife, Sheila, and I had decided to join the Occupy Wall Street rally to show our support for the young people who had been camping out in a small park near Wall Street for the past few weeks. I wore my clerical collar because I wanted the marchers to see they have some support from the religious community (Also, the collar comes in handy if there is a disturbance).
We gathered for the rally in front of the federal courthouse in Foley Square where Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for stealing $60 billion. There were more police on hand than ever went after Bernie and the banks. The words inscribed over the courthouse steps were “The True Administration of Justice is the Foundation of all Good Government.” It seemed that the crowd was an appeal to those words.
Because the crowd was so big and the sound system so inadequate, we couldn’t hear the speeches, so we occupied ourselves in talking with those around us as the march proceeded slowly down Centre, Chambers and then Broadway. It was in these encounters with other marchers that I had my religious experience.
- A man in his ‘50’s, noticing my walking sticks and my unsteady gait, said “I’m walking with a 6-inch hernia protruding from my gut – I’ve got it in a pouch at my waist.” “When are you going to have it repaired?” I asked. “As soon as I can get $5000.” He is an unemployed jazz musician who last year did a 25-city tour in Germany.
- The march was difficult because the police herded us onto the narrow sidewalks, slowing the march to a snail’s pace. I spotted an officer whose white shirt denoted higher rank, and said “Why don’t you let us walk in the street? It’s closed to traffic.” Not surprisingly he refused, but a Black woman nearby said “Thanks for trying.”
- One of the cops was a community relations officer. I held up my sign saying “JOBS FOR ALL AT DECENT PAY” and asked her “Do you agree with that?” She said “I can’t comment” but she was smiling.
- A young woman marching near us came over. “We can’t tell you how inspiring it is for us to have you here.” I don’t know if she was referring to the collar or our age, but it was lovely either way.
- I told another marcher who was taking time off from work that I had to cancel a session with my therapist to be there. He replied “This is the best form of therapy!” He had a point.
- The faith community was not very visible. I walked for a while with a woman from the Community Church of New York, which is Unitarian.. A little later we passed a woman minister holding a sign which said “On earth as in heaven.” But as we passed St Paul’s Chapel, which still has George Washington’s pew, the great iron gates were locked – no sign saying come in, rest and have a cup of water.” That’s when I realized Jesus was in the street with us.
- We heard a cheer ahead and soon we were passing a group of young doctors from Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, wearing their white jackets and stethoscopes, holding signs to support the march. I walked over to one of them and said, “Since you’re here, Doc, I have this sore knee.” We both laughed.
- There was a noisy contingent from the Socialist Workers Party, along with schoolteachers, public employees, and the unemployed in great numbers.
- There were straightforward signs like “Good Jobs for All,” held by a friend from the Consumers Union. He engaged in conversation with a West Indian who wanted to know “Where are you going to get the money for those jobs?”
- There were other, less subtle signs, like “Screw You, Alabama’” a reference to George Wallace’s state’s passage of new Jim Crow laws for immigrants. Another advised “Take all your money and invest it in Pepper Spray.”
- Suddenly, while greeting Connie Hogarth, a long time fighter for peace and justice, I was embraced from behind – it was Amir, who three years ago was in a class I taught in an upstate prison. He is out on parole and studying to become a social worker so he can aid others coming out of prison.
- Finally, as darkness descended, and feeling my bad back and knees, we left the march at Murray Street to get a bite at the Stage Door Deli. Before I could sit down, a young man with a camera asked “were you on the march?” When I said yes he asked if he could interview me. He is a documentary film maker, originally from Poland who makes films to support himself so he can make the ones he really cares about. Today was the latter, and for half an hour he questioned me about whether Christianity and Jesus have anything to say about Occupy Wall Street and the issues which gave rise to it. We talked about Jesus’ parables of the Laborers in the Vineyard and the Wicked Tenants, the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. He seemed pleasantly surprised to find a Christian minister linking Jesus’ teachings to class struggle and the cause of the poor and the earth.
- While I was being interviewed, Sheila fell into conversation with two young women marchers from Jersey City. Both were unemployed. One had worked for Verizon in retail but quit because of the pressure to sell things to people even if they couldn’t afford it. “Only the sharks succeed” was the way she summed it up.
- I asked the other what her last job was, and she said “retail.” What kind?” “Shoes – nothing important.” “No work is unimportant,” “What do you do while not working?” “I write poetry.” Can you share one with us? And she recited from memory and with passion a beautiful poem. Then the other woman said “I have one on my phone,” and she graced us with a wonderfully humorous piece. They are both performance poets. We exchanged emails.
- As we trudged to the A train for the ride uptown. I realized again that I was having a religious experience – 4 hours on the streets of Manhattan and I connected with more people than I usually do in a year – and I am pretty gregarious. People were friendly, shared their personal struggles and hopes, exchanged emails and did all the things I never thought could happen in the public square. We were a COMMUNITY.
- Whatever else these young people are doing, they are rediscovering political hope in solidarity. I hope to God the rest of us support them. We don’t have a lot of time.
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