Check out the motivation! [View all]

[Thats my opinion]

“RELGION, ETHICS AND SOCIAL PRACTICE”—AND 20 AMAZING COLLEGE STUDENTS
This past semester my wife and I were enrolled in Religion, Ethics and Social Practice, a class composed of 20 undergraduates and 10 elders. This academic offering was part of the curriculum offered by the college’s Department of Religious Studies. While we sign up for a class each term, this intergenerational experience was different. I had never before encountered a group of 20 year olds as turned on to what their faith had inspired them to do in the community or the wider world, as were these bright men and women. Each undergraduate designed a project she/he was prepared to execute. Here is a sampling: Teach women’s soccer in the slums of Nairobi as a way to encourage self-respect. Work with women ex-convicts who make jams and jellies for sale in local stores. Work for a Constitutional Amendment overturning the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision. Mentor minority youth, by teaching them the meditative skills which might help them prepare for college. Assist kids on drugs by providing them the testimony of ex drug addicts/

One of the proposals that got my attention was nothing quite so grand. A nearby city, here unnamed, had passed an ordinance which provided guards and locks for the toilets at the public library. No one is permitted to use them unless thev have a valid library card. Who does this bar? Why the homeless, who have no address, and therefore cannot obtain a card. And that restriction defines the purpose of the ordinance. If the homeless have nowhere to do you know what, maybe they will gravitate to some other city where they can.

This student, and those who will work with her, will do the hard political work necessary to reverse the ordinance. This will involve, among other things, discovering who promoted the ban in the first place, who are the others in the community who want to reverse it, and what necessary steps need to be taken.

Saul Alinsky, the nation’s best-known community organizer, faced a similar issue at a municipal airport, so he organized a “sit in” by which his group controlled every toilet in the terminal! It didn’t take long until the terminal’s operators realized they had a losing battle on their hands, and Alinsky got the changes he wanted. Rational discourse is one way to institute change. Guerilla theater is another.

At the same time, a spin-off of a local Occupy has secured a grant to find ways to provide the homeless with the personal identification needed to get a library card, a Social Security card, a driver’s license, voter registration, a post-office box and other documents necessary to re-enter society. Street people often have none of these things. These twin projects plan to work together. If the homeless in this community can get a card, then the toilets at the library will be free for the sitting!

But back to the class. From time to time I get disheartened by what is going on in America. Few things have more soured my appreciation of our nation than the rise of the Tea Party. Its inherent racism, selfishness, bitterness and support of inequality caused me for a while to wonder just where we were headed. And then I ran across this group of students, most of them coming from affluent families, who. had a vision of some noble possibility for their lives. While most of these young adults have a religious motivation which impels them on their journeys, there are others all across the country who have come to some nobler way to live through other motivations. Maybe there is yet hope for the re-flowering of America’s more gracious spirit. At least the students in this class have provided me with fresh hope.