Politics/Community Involvement

Well that’s sort of the thing about the Catholic Worker in particular, the idea is that you’re working for peace and you’re doing the works of mercy at the same time.  So the idea of hospitality, you’re opening up your home to people, and Peter Maurin who was one of the founders with Dorothy Day, that was his idea. We just had a clarification of thought, at the session last night at the Mustard Seed, that’s part of Peter Maurin’s idea that you’re serving and you’re also thinking about things and working on clarifying your thoughts.  And you had the intellectual side of this movement and then the real direct service.  The whole philosophy with Dorothy Day is that it’s a very personal movement, so you’re serving the individual, you’re really getting to know a person. And that’s what I really like about it because I really think that people can be moved much more easily and convincingly on helping people and just having an idea about a policy if they actually get to know someone or the facts. And so this idea of a Christ-room or something as a part of the Catholic Worker Movement and maybe you wouldn’t need so much government if everybody took on someone in their own home or that sort of philosophy.

I am the co-founder of a lay Catholic community that’s ecumenical, interfaith, and open to all. No one is unwelcome here under any circumstances and so Brayton and I co-founded this community with two missionaries from Haiti and a priest. He’s a Melkite priest in the Eastern Rite, in 1982. So now I am part of this whole sustainable operation and we teach. We do courses here. We do programs here. We have hundreds of college students come here every year for the immersions. We started this community, Agape, but [first] in Brockton, sort of in the inner city of Brockton, with the idea that we would become more residential. People would come and live with us. We started a community with this family, but then we had this dream after five years that we really needed to reduce our lifestyle even more, grow our own food, not use fossil fuels, heat by wood. We drove a car that drove on vegetable oil, we had a grease car for a while. Now we have an electric car. So we really wanted to scale down even more so this afforded the opportunity to come to this land and we got interest-free loans and we got donations. By the time we moved here in 1987, people knew us fairly well. We had been at the peace issues or doing one thing or another with peace-making for about 15 years, so people knew us and people were willing to support donations.  ...... All of our protesting came out of our faith. So before we went anywhere and witnessed against anything, we said we would pray together. We said we would have long periods of prayer together. What is God calling us to?  How is God calling us? How is God touching our hearts?  Before we would act, and then we would act nonviolently.  

So, this very emaciated man with a burlap bag was ferreting through that trash looking for something to eat. And I went in the house and got two pieces of bread and spread jam. And just held it out because I didn’t speak Hindi. But he came over and we were, you know, just holding it like this. And I remember, kind of our two hands connected. And just, that curiosity about who’s the person on the other side of the fence, [laughs] in my life I think has been an early trait of mine. And that was just who I am [laughs]. But in India there were lots of opportunities to ask that question: who is on the other side?

The school [was my inspiration].  My children had been finished with grammar school for a long time, but I kept pursuing it knowing that they needed a new school there.  I mean the play yard was all broken  in front of the school, the cement or whatever it was made of.  So, I kept pursuing that and we did get a new school.  They put in the new school and they put in the library, which we didn't have, and then they dedicated the library to Jane Petrella.  If you want to go down, my picture is there.  Again, it was a neighborhood event.  We had a true artist in the village who painted my portrait.  The "mothers’ club" engaged his doing it.  I guess it is the "parents’ group" that they call it now.  People come up to me and say, "Thank you for the school."

Some of the kids I worked with unfortunately would meet their goals, but then they would go backwards and then we would talk about it in session. It was always domestic violence. That was the key for all this, I want to say with 90 percent of my clients. I decided I needed to be more informed about domestic violence. So I got a part-time job working for a shelter that focused on domestic violence. I think I did that like once a week and I fell in love with that.  I saw how the dynamics played out. I saw how it impacted the children that were just witnessing it. I saw how survivors were so strong. Just keep going after being broken down. I really enjoyed it and I loved what I could bring to the table for them and how I can support them. So I did some of that and that's how I ended up shifting my career and life in an instant.

They don't like when you speak out.  You're vulnerable and people try to bring you down. But there's a community here with you that is very supportive. They may not be visible to the powers that be, but they're doing it.

So that was my beginning at the YWCA and an understanding of the complexity of poverty and the impact on women and girls and not having an opportunity to see the world as a possibility for growth and a place that was so hindered by being poor and uneducated.  And I paid attention to that.  Of course I was in a fertile place because the YWCA of Central Mass is all about the empowerment of women and the elimination of racism.

So it’s a really important time in our history and in our lives not to be incredibly discouraged, but to move your efforts and energy elsewhere. And to really educate yourself on what’s going on in your community as opposed to the national government. I think also I’m always really reminded of the radical feminist phrase, “The personal is political,” in that we always are engaging in political rights and activism just by virtue of living as marginalized groups. As women, as queer people, whatever, I think for me getting active in the various dyke marches I have participated in, [laughs] it has been very powerful to see communities and people who look like me and are like-minded and often that I don’t see in my visual sphere.

It kind of saved my life in a way. I had a learning disability growing up and I didn't speak until I was in first or second grade and school was very difficult.  My parents have always been wonderful and just encouraged me in whatever I did.  So I would draw and draw and draw and they’d buy me whatever paper, pens, paint to draw.  They took me to the Worcester Art Museum as a kid to take classes there even though they didn’t have a lot of money. And full circle is when I got into high school I ended up teaching there.  So here I am eight years old taking classes and seeing my artwork up on the wall and then high school I get accepted to teach at the Worcester Art Museum. So I see the benefits of the arts and I grew up in music as well and how it can change someone’s perspective from being, “Ugh, I can’t do this, I’m a failure,” to “Oh, guess what, you can attempt and you can do things.” As long as you can find that niche of something to keep you going, that passion, that drive, that place where you can fall back on when things get tough.

My work has been very rewarding in this job in that I’ve been able to see change happen in a community that I love and be a part of that change which is really exciting for me. I was just talking with a group of students a couple of weeks ago and they asked why I liked my job and I said because I love being able to be a part of something that you can see. And I always say that I don’t know that I would be able to do my job as it is today in Boston. Because I have lived in Boston, but I do not have that type of connection to Boston. I grew up here and being able to improve an area where you grew up, that’s something special. That is one of the highlights of my job.