SHOPPING CART CULTURE, COPS, AND JUSTICE IN L.A.

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"THE UNIVERSE BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE"
by Jeff Dietrich, an L.A. Catholic Worker community
member, and editor of their newspaper the Catholic Agitator.
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It looked like an anti-terrorist takedown; five cop cars,

ten police officers, a yellow skip loader, and a five-ton dump truck.  They screeched to a halt and blocked off Sixth Street in front of our soup kitchen.  But their target was not a suicide bomber or a hidden nuclear device; rather it was the four red shopping carts parked in front of the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.  Those of us who have worked on Skid Row for a while were not surprised; we have seen it all before.

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Despite numerous court rulings, police and city officials continue to act with impunity, destroying personal property, seizing such things as pillows, milk crates, and "excess blankets" as contraband because they are "comfort items."  Like a battle-weary soldier, your heart gets hardened sometimes.  But on this particular occasion, one of our soup kitchen volunteers from the suburbs also observed the entire procedure.

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Richard was shocked.  "Can't we do something about this?  They just took everybody's stuff.  They were just eating lunch and when they rushed out to grab their shopping carts, the police said 'No, this is abandoned property.'"

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It is embarrassing when volunteers come from the suburbs.  They think that the same rules that apply there apply everywhere.  But that is not how it works on Skid Row.  If you are gone for five minutes to wash, eat, or relieve your bodily functions, you lose all of your possessions.

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If you leave a friend in charge of your shopping cart and the police suspect that your friend is not the actual owner - boom, gone to the city dump.
  I felt like the cop in that old Jack Nicholson movie.  In my mind I imagined myself saying to our suburban volunteer, "Jake, this is Chinatown; just let it go."

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So inured  had I become to the way things are on Skid Row,

I did not even bother to contact our civil rights attorney, Carol Sobel, who years ago in Federal Court affirmed the right of homeless people to security in their person and property.  Fortunately, mutual friends did contact her.  She came, took depositions, collected photos, and took it all back to Federal Court.
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I was heartened, but still did not expect anything in the way of results.  The way city officials and police articulate their story of Skid Row is that everyone on the streets is either a drug addict or a drug dealer, and those people do not actually have a constitutional right to security in their person and property.  When we gathered in the federal courtroom, I was expecting an affirmation of police immunity.
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So, I was as unprepared as the City Attorney was for the announcement that Judge Gutierrez made: "Before we begin today," he said, "I need to inform the court that in 1980 I was a summer intern at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.  I chopped onions, I served food, I cleaned toilets.  But I have had no contact with them since.  Therefore I see no reason to recuse myself from this case."
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Whoa!  You could have heard the City Attorney's jaw drop to the table from here to Santa Monica.  And quite frankly, mine as well.  We were all shocked; none of the old-timers at the Catholic Worker recognized Judge Gutierrez's face or his name.
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Two days later we got a permanent federal injunction, affirming the right of homeless people to security in their person and property.  Richard was elated.  For him, it was an affirmation that the system works.  For me, I am in a state of shock.  Where did this come from.
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We are all formed by our own individual life experiences.
We were all raised Republican or Democrat; Protestant, Jewish, or Catholic; pro-life or pro-choice.  But Judge Gutierrez, however improbable, was formed in some measure by his experience of chopping onions, cleaning toilets, and serving food to the homeless at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen.  All formations being equal in the eyes of the law, it was appropriate that he did not recuse himself from this case.  From our perspective, and the perspective of the folks who push shopping carts containing the last of their earthly treasures, it is like one of those unlikely biblical stories.  Just when you had given up all hope, just when you thought that the authorities had the final word, just when you thought that the rules of the suburbs did not actually apply on Skid Row, there is a
"parting of the waters," and "The Universe,"
 in the words of Dr. King, "bends toward justice."
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A GIFT FROM THE INDIANS

This is a passage from The Soul of an Indian,

published in 1911. It was written by Ohiyesa,

a Santee Sioux Indian from Minnesota, who took on

the white man's name Charles Alexander Eastman.

He knew traditional ways and believed in the workings

of the Great Mystery, yet also believed in Christ,

went to Dartmouth, and received a M.D. from

Boston Univ. He became an adviser to presidents,

and spent much of his life building bridges

between the two cultures.

Amazon lists a number of sellers who have his

writings in stock - all have been republished

in recent years.

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I am an Indian;

and while I have learned much from

civilization, I have never lost my Indian sense

of right and justice.

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When I reduce civilization to its most basic terms,

it becomes a symbol of life based on trade.

Each man stakes his powers, the product of his

labor, his social, political, and religious standing

against his neighbor. To gain what?

To gain control over his fellow workers,

and the results of their labor.

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Is there not something worthy of perpetuation

in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth,

our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to

impoverish or enslave his neighbor?

Where the good things of Earth were not ours to

hold against our brothers and sisters, but were ours

to use and enjoy together with them, and with whom

it was our privilege to share?

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Indeed, our contribution to our nation and

the world is not to be measured in the material realm.

Our greatest contribution has been spiritual and

philosophical. Silently, by example only, in

wordless patience, we have held stoutly to our

native vision of personal faithfulness to duty and

devotion to a trust. We have not advertised our

faithfulness nor made capital of our honor.

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But again and again we have proved our worth

as citizens of this country by our constancy in the

face of hardship and death. Prejudice and racial

injustice have been no excuse for our breaking

our word. The simplicity and fairness has cost us dear.

It has cost us our land and our freedom, and even the

extinction of our race as a separate and unique people.

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But, as an ideal, we live and will live, not only in

the splendor of our past, the poetry of our legends

and art, not only in the interfusion of our blood

with yours, and in our faithful adherence to

the ideals of American citizenship,

but in the living heart

of the nation.

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OLD TIME RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE

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From: SELLING GOD - American Religion

in the Marketplace of Culture,

by R. Laurence Moore

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Religious leaders had started national life

aware that they had to deal with competition.

They said so in many forums, and in one way or

another they declared it a problem.

All procedures were in the beginning ad hoc.

Innovation was a forced option. One locus

of competition was between denominations,

but in some ways that was the easy part of it.

The unexpected proliferation and prosperity

of new religious groups aided church leaders

generally. Looming as a bigger problem was

competition with non-religious enterprises on

the cultural landscape that attracted people's

attention and energies. Many of those

enterprises were changing the nature of leisure

in the United States. Increasingly, they turned

casual pastimes into organized businesses.

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Religious leaders entered a long struggle

to try to control the direction that commercial

culture took. In many ways, religion's determined

intrusion into the marketplace of culture made

that arena the central moral battleground of

American life. What religious leaders did early

in national history, they continued to do later.

They opposed many new forms of commercial

culture as they came along. They tried to set up

attractive, alternative diversions under church

sponsorship. They fought with cultural

entrepreneurs who resisted the idea of running

their businesses according to guidelines dictated

by a Protestant moral economy.

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These efforts gave American religious life a

distinctive quality that was radically different

from what it had been in the colonial era.

For one thing, almost all of them committed

religious leaders to a process of popularization.

They had to attract people to what they were doing.

Whether they were trying to clamp controls

on the marketplace of culture or not,

they found themselves using the language

of selling and commodification.

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