Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The Working Catholic: Housing Part III by Bill Droel



 I just returned from St. Paul. In the early 1970s, as part of the War on Poverty, I lived and worked in a St. Paul neighborhood called West Seventh. On this and in previous visits I observe a drastically changed West Seventh. Its anchor, the Xcel Energy Center, opened in September 2000 as the home of the Minnesota Wild. (Lady Gaga performed there just after I left. Too bad she missed me.) There are two hotels, one just opened. Several restaurants and bars line West Seventh, including a brand new brew house. Several medical facilities are there. A short walk down a hill leads to a string of condos on the east bank of the Mississippi River. 


As I walked around West Seventh and around a couple other St. Paul neighborhoods, I thought about Richard Florida, who caused a stir with his Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books [2002]; www.creativeclass.com). A city can recover from its post-industrial slump, Florida says, if it can attract and retain a sufficient number of educated young adults. The way to do so includes universities, trendy neighborhoods, an art scene, sports venues, public transportation, medical and research facilities, skilled jobs and more. Florida uses charts, a global creativity index and examples, including (on the positive front) Austin, Seattle, Boston and more. He implies that any place has the potential to thrive. Thus for a time his book and his talks were popular with regional meetings of mayors, at business conferences, among urban planners and professional associations and even some church organizations.


Now, however, Florida realizes that his prescription has a downside. Yes, “the concentration of talent and economic activity” makes a place thrive, he writes in The New Urban Crisis (Basic Books, 2017). But… think about it logically… those places might perhaps be any place, but cannot be all places. In fact, says Florida (again with demographics, charts and several lists of “star cities”), a concentrated thriving place causes inequality and eventually undermines the wider society, including the trendy place itself. Whereas 15 years ago Florida celebrated one side of the story, he now concentrates on the downside.  


Housing issues are a big symptom of the downside—including wide disparity in real estate prices, lack of affordable housing, differences in municipal services and persistent discrimination. A thriving part of town, Florida convincingly shows, is not merely adjacent to another part of town. Concentrated urban prosperity contributes to “chronic, concentrated urban poverty…which remains the most troubling issue facing our cities.” 


A handful of new books wail against gentrification. (These books will be considered in a subsequent blog.) Florida, who once was an unabashed proponent of gentrification, admits the obvious: Gentrification displaces the elderly and poor; it pushes them into neighborhoods that already have too much poverty. But “direct displacement of people by gentrification is not as big an issue as it is made out to be,” Florida explains. It is only a part of the inequality problem which unfortunately “is driven by the same economic motor that powers growth.”


Some illnesses cannot be tackled wholesale and head on. A change in behavior, however, gets at the illness indirectly. That is, treat the symptom to attack the bigger cause. Within that framework an affordable housing effort undertaken by the community organization in my own Chicago neighborhood, Southwest Organizing (www.swopchicago.org), might be the solution to global inequality. SWOP’s rehab of vacant structures will, of course, assist those families who move into the apartments. With some interplay among other advocacy groups and interested developers, this neighborhood project could be replicated and thereby somewhat offset the downside of the trendy growth that occurs in other Chicago neighborhoods and with more pinball effect the project could have some global implications.


Moralizing is not productive. A revitalized neighborhood is hardly in itself a bad thing. The best future for West Seventh, for all of St. Paul, for my neighborhood and for all of Chicago requires intense interaction among many imperfect institutions—each calling the others back to their original good purpose and each contributing to thick relationships that minimize each institution’s occasional miscues and shortsighted behavior.  


To be continued with more housing examples…



Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work for National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)


Friday, September 8, 2017

Labor Day 2017




There is a nobility in human work, but Labor Day and Catholic Social Teaching is more than just recognizing that fact.

Labor Day is a good time to reflect on Catholic - Social Teaching;  a response to  the horrors of the industrial revolution.[1]    Work is no longer the laborare est orare of a Benedictine Monk (to work is to pray);  work is matter of survival for many and for some alienating.   Pope John Paul II recognized this in his Encyclical on work.[2]   He also stated that labor unions are a necessity.

The Labor Day march is a wonderful experience of celebrating the work and accomplishments of organized labor.

Since it is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 fair housing marches led by Father James Groppi, I asked people about Father Groppi as a labor leader.  Groppi studied at the seminary in Milwaukee where Catholic Social Teaching was emphasized.  One time Seminary director, Rev. Francis Haas, was later named Bishop of Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He was an advisor on labor relations to President Roosevelt and civil rights advisor to President Harry S. Truman.  Groppi was also associated with the Milwaukee Cardijn Center that sponsored ‘Labor Schools’ based on Catholic Social Teaching.

  After he was married Groppi became a Milwaukee County bus driver and was elected as the president of the Bus Drivers Union (A.T.U. 998) in Milwaukee.  The election was disputed  and was finally decided by a coin flip.  A former colleague remembers him as “having a broader view than concern about soap in the bathrooms.”  He looked to community problems such as school bus drivers working for low pay and the need to organize them.

   Latino leader, Jesus Salas remembers Groppi as an ally of Latino workers in Milwaukee.  As a priest Groppi marched with Salas to the Allan Bradley plant to advocate the hiring of  minority workers.  Groppi was also supportive of the farm worker movement.

   This year the Labor Day celebration began with a ‘Fight for Fifteen’ rally.  Young African American leaders led the podium speeches which advocated for better wages for low paid workers and a union.  A large contingent marched from Voces de la Frontera, the immigrant worker center.  A friend commented that the only way this country has a future based on democracy and justice depends on the activism of African Americans and Latinos.  Father Groppi would have agreed.





[1] Rerum Novarum, 1891
[2] Laborem Exercens, 1981

Friday, September 1, 2017

THE MARCH ON MILWAUKEE – 200 NIGHTS


 Despite objections children were included in Father James Groppi’s struggle for justice. 

In a book of poems by Margaret Rozga, the poem, Jeannie’s Birthday Gift, speaks of children involved in the marches.  (200 Nights and one day, Benu Press, Hopkins, MN)


Jeannie’s Birthday Gift

It was Jeannie’s birthday.  We
Had a big family dinner before
Going to St. Boniface to march.

She put on her new tee shirt, just
a plain White shirt, but what she wanted
Mom said no, better not, but she begged

and begged ‘til Mom gave in.  She
never could wash out the egg that
splattered all over Jeannie’s back.


Jesus and the children

People even brought little children to him, but when the disciples saw this they turned them away.  But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”  Lk. 18, vs. 15-17  



Why go through the organizing, the confrontation of hate and violence for 200 nights, in the hope of getting a fair housing law?

Matthew Desmond, in his award winning book,  Evicted,* writes:

The home is the center of life. (p. 293.) The United States was founded on the noble idea that people have “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Each of these three unalienable --- so essential to the American character that the founders saw them as God-given----requires a stable home. (p .300.)

And so the march to Lincoln Avenue.


*Matthew Desmond, Evicted, Crown Publishers, New York, 2016