Looking for a Sign Part 4: Am I just lucky or was it meant to be this way?

When I was touring colleges out in the Pacific Northwest I almost didn't go to Whitman.  It is out in the middle of nowhere in not in an exciting city like Portland or Eugene.  I did decide to go for it though and made arrangements ahead of time for a tour and all the other trappings.  The e-mail I got said to show up at the admissions office at 8 AM for my tour of campus.

My mom and I rolled into town kind of late the night before my visit and ended up staying in a cinder block Howard Johnsons (now the Walla Walla Vineyard Inn where they busted a meth lab last year) as all the other hotels were full.  HoJos was nice and close to campus though and so we were able to walk over on a sleepy Saturday morning. (I'm pretty sure it was a Saturday, I don't think there were classes going on).  When we showed up at the Admission Office it was all locked up.  We double checked the print out of the e-mail that said 8 and then knocked.  A woman came to the door and said oh no, it must have been a mistake because the first tour that day wasn't until 9, but we were signed up for that one.  No problem, my mom and I went to go snoop around the school.

I knew that I would want to be an Environmental Studies/Biology major so we walked over to peek in the Science building, at that point just having construction finished up.  We tried the doors, but they were locked so just peered through the windows.  Then the lovely Dr. Wallace came up on his bicycle and asked "Are you a prospective student?"  I said that I was and that I was going to major in Biology and he swept us away up the stairs to his new lab to show us the cool new microscopes he had and the videos his Intro to Bio students had made of some little water critters (and at the time I was really into water quality) and he was just so enthusiastic about it all.

We eventually had a really wonderful tour and I had lunch with some cool students and my mom and I agreed that Walla Walla was a cute town, but I can't say for sure that I would have gone to Whitman if it hadn't been for the error on that letter and meeting Dr Wallace.  And if I hadn't gone to Whitman I would have never ended up in Walla Walla and met Matt and Laura and Lina.   And if I hadn't done that I don't know that I would have ended up getting into starting a local food co-op.  And I might not have ended up meeting farmers and then realizing I wanted to be a farmer.  And then where would I be?

Snapshot of a Saturday Detroit

So this snapshot actually begins on Friday night.  My bike's bottom bracket, which had been making funny noises for a couple days, finally gives out.  What this means is that the pedals all but stop turning.  I'm most of the way home from a great book and clothing exchange in Woodbridge, I'm in Corktown, almost back to Mexicantown where I live.  It is a bummer, but not a desperate situation.  I walk my bike up the pedestrian overpass and then ride it down.  Eventually my bike finally slows and it makes more sense to walk than coast.

Then suddenly DOGS ATTACK!  Or not really attack, but three roaming street dogs start barking at me in a way that makes me really unhappy.  This sort of thing occasionally happens while I'm on my bike, but it is way less scary when you can get your vehicle up to 20 mph, rather than having it weigh you down.  I figure if all else fails I can throw my steel behemoth at them, but first try what my coworkers have told me to do at Romanowski which is to say "NO" in a loud deep voice, and what do ya know, it works.

The next day I leave my house around 10 to take my disabled bike to the Hub Bike Shop.  As I may have mentioned before, they are an awesome bike collective that does lots of bike programming with kids.  They also are the nearest bike shop that I know of to my house.  As I walked over I got "Good Morning" and "How do you do" several times.  I passed a really trashy empty lot on MLK Blvd where a street ministry group was passing out food and clothing and blasting praise movement out of some speakers. 

Shortly after that a city bus pulled up beside me and the driver shouted out that I should throw my bike on the front and get a ride.  I pointed out to him that my extra long frame wouldn't fit on the rack.  Very shortly after that a white guy in a winter coast riding a Schwinn rode up beside me and tried to diagnose the problem with my bike, which of course I already had.  He was very friendly though and was the first of three people today to point out the value of having a back up bike.

Finally I arrive at the Hub.  Darrin recognizes me from both the Progressive Dinner ride and the fact that we often cross paths on our ways to work.  He quickly agrees with me that my bottom bracket is totally dead, and unsurprisingly doesn't stock the fancy pants one that I use (that while fancy pants actually holds up decently to the amount of abuse I put it through).  He orders one though and makes sure that I have a bike to ride.  I just want to point out how amazing this is.  I loved/love the guys at Allegro Cyclery in Walla Walla, but they never seemed very sensitive to the fact that my bike was the ONLY way I had to get around.  They never offered to rent me a bike for a week and often seemed pretty casual about delaying getting my bike back to me by a day or more.  I have no doubt that if I had told Darrin I was bike-less while my bike was out of commission he would have given me one of the refurbished bikes for sale in the shop to use for the week, no questions asked.  That is awesome.

Afterwards I walked the rest of the way to Eastern Market.  Picked up milk, oats, stew beef, flour, granola, onions, apple cider, and probably some other things that I forgot.  Found out my cow is giving out plenty of milk and looked at a lot of wreaths.  I think I could make better ones, definitely going to try next year, will just need to find a source of boughs.

On my walk back from Eastern Market I ran into the friendly bus driver again.  This time I was all too happy to grab a ride.  He insisted that I didn't need to pay fare (I'm not sure DDOT would be that happy about that).  He then asked me about my bike and then whether I went to church.  "Well...sometimes." "What's the name of your God?" "er...depends on the day of the week" "Well I'm a minister and Jesus is my God...." and then he went on to tell me about how if I accepted Jesus as my Saviour and was washed in the baptismal waters all my sins would be washed away and I would speak in tongues.  Minister Greg the kindly bus driver, who would have known.  He wasn't giving any sort of hard sell, just wanted to let me know about Jesus.  Then we talked about trees and gardens.

Finally I got let off at the corner of Grand and MLK Blvd and walked the rest of the way home.

Charity vs Sharing

Today I went and helped out at the BBQ for the Homeless/Forgotten Workers that is put on by the Wobbly Kitchen and some other informal groups on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month.    It made me think a lot about what the difference between sharing and charity is.

One of the things I like about this BBQ is that it is out in the park and set up as more of a party.  Those cooking and serving food interact quite a bit with those coming to eat and all of the people serving take a break and get some of the food as well.  To me it seems a lot more like a "sharing" of food and other resources, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly the difference between charity and sharing is.  So of course, I asked Facebook.


My friend Nick said "Sharing in my mind is more of a two-way street than charity."  To me that didn't seem quite right.  I feel like if I share something and expect something else in return it is more of a trade or transaction than real sharing.  There is some aspect of mutuality though.  And I think Margaret's comment: "Charity entails a power differential - the "haves" beneficiently bestowing upon the "have nots." Similar distinction between Serving and Helping."   I think she hit it just right that there is a feeling of equality between people who are sharing as opposed to folks that are engaged in offering charity.  Even with that I felt like there was still something I couldn't quite put my finger on. 


To me part of what sharing is about is not feeling diminished afterwards.  You can share an umbrella with something and never give anything up.  When people engage in charity even if they have a lot of money at the end of giving there is a feeling that they have less than they did before.  Realizing this made me feel like I was getting to something but I still feel that you can "share" food, where you might by definition have less food at the end than you did at the beginning, but you don't feel like you "gave" food, you can feel that it was shared.


The key I think is contained in my good friend El Barto Grande's comment: "Charity is something the [C]hristians do. Sharing is something [S]ocialists do."  Perhaps it is because I was sharing all this food at the BBQ for the Forgotten Worker with the Wobblies, but that really rang true for me.  And I don't think it is just a matter of syntax.  


Handing someone a bowl of soup can only feel like charity if you recognize that soup as yours and that now you have given it away to someone else and now you have less soup and now are poorer.  If you recognize that the riches of society were built by many hands before you and with you and that without the richness of the whole we would all have nothing, then the soup is no more yours than it is mine than it belongs to the guy on the corner than it belongs to the President.  The richness of our country (of our world) is a result of the work of so many hands that to claim any of it as our own and therefore ours to give in charity to someone else is preposterous.

To bring it to another example, many feel that welfare benefits, such as cash assistance, rent assistance, food stamps, etc are charity to the poor, others feel that they are unearned wealth.  Who truly creates that wealth though?  And what person creates that wealth on their own.  Even if we accept that someone like Steve Jobs earned all of his wealth, what of the teachers who taught him the basics?  What of the roads he traveled on to get his goods to market?  What of all the people who grew the food that nourished him?  What of the police that protected the places he lived and worked and created?  Are not all these public goods part of the wealth creation machine?  Without a society that includes all of these goods there could be no millionaire, there could be no wealth and there could be no soup.  And there could be no society with out all of the individual people within it, so we can never give the money, or soup, as charity, we can only share it.

This is what Democracy looks like

Another Occupy Detroit photo post.  I promise I'll post about something else sometime soon.  These are all from the Occupy Detroit Labor Solidarity march.  We started at the Labor monument in Hart Plaza and then marched down for a rally at Grand Circus Park.  Estimates ranged from 500 to 4000.  My guess would be close to 1000.

Occupy Detroit Marching Band

Children are part of the 99% too

Getting ready to march by rallying at Hart Plaza.

The big Labor arch thing

Probably over half of labor folks were from the UAW.  Also lots of folks from AFL-CIO and Steel Workers.  Also saw teachers and letter carriers.  Probably more that weren't wearing as obvious of insignia.

About half the group is in front of me crossing the street in this picture.

Spirit of Detroit.  As we passed a loud speaker said in this very robotic voice "Please Step Away from the Statue"

Babies are part of the 99% too.

Restore the Middle Class

Arriving at Grand Circus Park.  Once again the crowd you're seeing here is only about half.

Lots of speeches made.  This woman had the power for her and her daughter cutoff by DTE for 14 days.  It was DTE's mistake and they figured it out after 3 days but it took them the rest of the time just to get around to turning it back on.

I loved this sign.

Representative from a UAW local speaking.

Secretary General from an AFL CIO and member of the labor working group at Occupy Detroit speaking.  He was AWESOME

Folks milling around and checking out camp after the rally.  Wobblie kitchen was providing delicious food.

Photos from Occupy Detroit Sunday night

I haven't made any signs yet because people keep making signs like this that perfectly sum up my feelings and so I just use them

Lots of people dancing around the center fountain last night.  Some to a bongo drummer, some to a boom box, some to a trombone and trumpet

Folks just chilling out on a Sunday night.  Behind them you can see the new food/comfort/medical tarp all set up.

Here's the inside of the new services tent, looking towards the food side.  Used a fire line to move all this stuff across the park earlier in the day.  Great example of cooperation and many hands make light work.  The new area still needs to be organized, but should be a lot better.

Lots of kids out in the park on Sunday.  Perhaps celebrating the freedom to draw on the sidewalk with chalk?

Juan's awesome cargo bike with a motor.

Another cook bike with industrial strength trailer.

Dancing in the evening light.

Chilling in the park with their kid.

Trombone!

Guy with tie and sweater helping homeless guy to get the fire started.

Screen printing more Occupy Detroit patches and other arts and crafts projects.

A fiddler and some other folks look at the map of Detroit where people are putting dots for where they are from.

Right on.

I assume this sign is leftover from the "International" rally Saturday.  Occupiers from Detroit marched down to Hart Plaza and waved across the river at some Windsor Occupiers.

New welcome banner.

The statue near one of the entrances to the park. Turns out this guy is AWESOME.  He was the mayor of Detroit that gave out land and seeds to poor folks during the depression of the late 19th century, basically the first proponent of urban agriculture.  He fought monopolists and land speculators (Matty Maroun anybody?) I can't find the quote of his that is now written in front of the statue in chalk, but here's another in the same vein: "Unfortunately the laws are generally on the side of the trusts and corporations laws made or purchased by them for just such occasions and so are most often the decisions of courts."  Things apparently haven't changed much in the past 100+ years.

A little union support.  Heard there were lots of UAW folks at the BoA protest Friday.

While I was holding a sign on Friday night a guy pulled his car over to ask where folks were.  I explained that since it was late many folks were hanging out either near the food tent or around some of the little campfire stoves that were going in the park.  He asked why we were there and I told him that we were there because we thought connection between corporations and the government had grown to tight and that the vast majority of people no longer had a voice.  He then asked why were protesting banks instead of the government then and I told him we'd probably do some protests at government offices too, but that this week we'd been protesting at BoA because of all the foreclosures in Detroit.  He said it seemed pretty silly to camp in a park if we were upset with the government.  I said that money talks with our current system but since we don't have any money we have to do this instead, and hey, it had worked since he and I were talking.  Then we said good night.

Saturday night before I talked to the skeptic I talked with a guy on his way to work at Ford Field for a long time.  He works for a cleaning company and would be working from about 10 PM to 6 AM to clean up after the Lions game.  Even though he has a job he can't afford a place to live so is homeless.  He's not without hope though, he got a Pell grant and will be starting a degree in Social Work in January.  He worries that he won't be able to finish his degree though because Pell grants are often under attack by the Republicans.  Having to shelter hop also makes things difficult.  If he loses his Pell grant he said he'd probably go into the military because that is his last option.  We talked for a long time about the state of politics and protest and Detroit and the wisdom of investing in people like him where such a little money can go such a long way