The author and Roshi Bernie Glassman at Upaya Zen Center (photo by Roshi Joan Halifax)

For my longtime readers, I miss seeing you here… for my newer readers, just to get you up to speed, I don’t post very regularly on The Jizo Chronicles anymore. I am focusing my energy these days on my other blog, The Liberated Life Project, as well as on the work I do as Upaya Zen Center’s director of community outreach and development.

I’m having a rare quiet night so thought I’d give this blog a little attention and share some news from the world of socially engaged Buddhism that’s come across my desk this past month:

• Kudos to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship for being smart enough to pick Katie Loncke as their Director of Media and Action. I’ve long been a fan of Katie’s blog, and interviewed her on TJC back in January. I’m really looking forward to hearing more of Katie’s voice on behalf of BPF.

• Rev. Danny Fisher is now not only a reverend but a doctor! This week, Danny received a doctorate of Buddhist studies from the University of the West. Also of note is Danny’s excellent dharma talk based on the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Kristof and WuDunn). You can listen to Danny give the talk here.

• There’s quite a good article on socially engaged Buddhism in May 9th issue of The Washington Post by Losang Tendrol, a Tibetan Buddhist nun. The piece focuses on Thai activist Sulak Sivaraksa.

Even though I am not posting here often, please don’t write off The Jizo Chronicles… I’ll still pop up here occasionally and might mobilize this blog when an important action is needed.

But for the most part, you can find me over at the Liberated Life Project… Go on, check it out… I think you’ll really enjoy it. Here are some recent posts that may be of interest:

• Taking a Stand for What You Believe
• Reflections on Becoming a Buddhist Chaplain and Liberation-based Livelihood
• A Beautiful Wake-up Call

May you all be well,

Maia

Last week, I became a war tax resister. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and finally this spring my actions aligned with my intentions and I sent the following letter to the Internal Revenue Service:

April 17, 2012

Dear friends at the IRS,

For the past 20 years, I have been a Buddhist. This year I was ordained as a Buddhist chaplain. My religious beliefs include a commitment to follow the precepts as originally taught by Shakyamuni Buddha, the first of which is to not kill and not take life.

I have faithfully paid my federal income taxes for all of my working life.  But this year my conscience will no longer allow me to continue to fund a war machine that is, to my mind, unethical in almost every way.

While I do understand the need for some kind of defense system, what I have seen, particularly over the last decade, is that the use of our military forces and budget goes far beyond any sane definition of “defense.” The money that I have paid in taxes has been used to invade countries that posed no imminent threat to us (case in point: Iraq), to build predatory drones and other weapons that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians, to support soldiers who impose illegal torture tactics on those in their custody; I can no longer condone these nor other deadly and aggressive military activities through my tax money.

If there were an option to designate that these funds could go toward other much areas of the U.S. budget that invest in the health and wellbeing of our citizens, such as health care or infrastructure development, I would gladly choose that option (which is why I support HR 1191, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill). Given that is not the case, I am withholding $108 from the money that is due for my 2011 tax and am diverting that money to an organization that helps to cultivate peace rather than war.

My sincere wish is that one day we can all work together to lessen the suffering impacted on both our own citizens and soldiers as well as the people of other countries who have been targets of our military actions.

In kindness,

Maia Duerr

cc: President Barack Obama
Senator Jeff Bingaman
Senator Tom Udall
Representative Ben Lujan
National War Tax Resistance Committee

The amount that I withheld does not come close to the amount allocated toward defense spending (take a look at this calculator to see how your taxes get divvied up to the military), but I wanted to start somewhere and $108 felt like an auspicious number.

I don’t know where this path will lead, but I am hoping that my meditation practice will help with readiness for whatever arises.

I have been inspired by a number of people who have gone down this road before me, and in the past week found this article from Jesse Jiryu Davis, member of the Village Zendo in New York City and  a war tax resister since 2006, particularly helpful. These words from Jesse especially moved me:

I think the greatest danger to me is not that I’ll be punished by the government, but that I’ll forget my intention… I have to keep in mind that the reason I decided not to pay my federal taxes in the first place was because I refuse, as a Buddhist, to use violence to achieve my goals. As soon as I make enemies of those with whom I disagree, as soon as I take pleasure in winning a conflict, I’ve already lost. As Zen Master Seng T’san said, “A hair’s breadth difference, and heaven and earth are set apart.”

I’ll keep you posted on how this goes, dear readers.

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in this one on my Liberated Life Project blog: My Most Beautiful Thing: Taking a Stand for What You Believe

This is the fourth and final installment from my thesis for the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program. In the first post, I covered the context and background of the Protest Chaplains as well as the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In the second post, I shared the findings from my interviews with four of the chaplains. In the third post, I explored five lessons distilled from studying the Protest Chaplains.

This last post is the conclusion to my thesis. Most of it is devoted to a long quote from one of the original Protest Chaplains, Marisa Egerstrom. I was so taken by her words that I felt it was important to give voice to the whole quote.

If you’d like a copy of my entire thesis (complete with references), just drop me a line at maia.duerr [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Conclusion

During the fall of 2011, the Protest Chaplains served as a living example of chaplaincy as a vehicle of not only personal change but of social change as well. This can only be possible, however, if in addition to all the other basic qualities a chaplain should possess, he or she has a working knowledge of systemic suffering and systems change, and is willing to look at his or her own privilege in the context of social inequity and injustice.

I want to end this paper with a potent reflection from Marisa Egerstrom, the Harvard graduate student who along with Dave Woessner was one of the ‘founders’ of the Protest Chaplains. I wasn’t able to meet Marisa in person during my Boston visit, but in our email correspondence in January 2012 she shared these words with me that I feel eloquently describe the revolutionary space that a chaplain can occupy (so to speak) in a social movement such as Occupy Wall Street:

[This experience with Occupy has] planted in me the conviction that true pastoral care IS revolutionary, in the sense that so much of what people experience as depression is a cognitive recognition of the overwhelming reality of just how out of balance, how unsustainable, and how unjust Life As We Know It actually is, without the emotional/psychological/spiritual capacity to deal with that reality.

It’s a tall order, and I don’t think any of us really have that mastered, because, hey, samsara is what it is. But then, that’s the whole reason for the Protest Chaplains experiment.

I constantly call on clergy to help move people through the transition from denial to recognizing that our government, the police, etc., are not, actually, there to protect or help us, but to defend the concentration of wealth. It’s a terribly difficult thing for people who have been pretty comfortable their whole lives. But ordained or lay, whatever tradition you’re in, if you’re not helping people cope with this and find hope in a sense of the goodness of God who is alive in us or whatever your equivalent is, I am now convinced that you are only an agent of illusion.

Maybe that’s harsh, but I’ve seen too much in the last three months to deny it. The whole “wake up” paradigm is kind of cliche, and yet it’s still entirely apt. And believe me, I wish it was otherwise. Crying has become an integral part of my own spiritual practice. It kind of has been accidentally, but I’m more intentional about it now. Real grief is one of the most healing powers I know. And it’s actually a strategy of psychologically breaking down detainees in Guantanamo to keep them from crying. If torturers understand that crying is emotionally necessary in times of stress, then I’m going to cry as often as possible.

So I hope that the experiences of the Protest Chaplains, as we bring stories of our experiences out into various faith communities, will spark a new theology of grief and powerful hope that overcomes the denial-laden pseudo-optimistic think-happy-thoughts crap that so often passes for spirituality in numb, consumerist America.

Then again, I’m a Christian, so I’m somewhat accustomed to the idea of the power of failure. I’ve tried to explain this to other Protest Chaplains when nasty stuff has rattled them at camp. We’re going to lose, things are going to get worse, maybe even horrific. Lots of people may die – in fact are dying from hunger, sickness, homelessness – before this chapter of history is over. That doesn’t change what we have to do. And you’re so right – we don’t know. It is being without knowing. I really think it’s been the influence of my Buddhist therapist/teacher/guru/consultant who’s helped me see this. “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly,” he reminds me.

So, we’ll show up, and figure it out as we go. And have faith enough to be wrong, to change courses, and to keep looking for life in the midst of the rubble.

This is the third installment from my thesis for the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program. In the first post, I covered the context and background of the Protest Chaplains as well as the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In the second post, I shared the findings from interviews with some of the chaplains.

In this excerpt, I explore five lessons that I distilled from studying the Protest Chaplains.

1. The Importance of Creating a Positive Field of Action at the Outset

Creating the field for whatever follows next is critically important, whether as a chaplain who is initiating a pastoral relationship with an individual, or as a movement that is starting to address societal suffering. The seeds that are planted at the beginning of an endeavor are the ones that will grow throughout its life-cycle.

My observation is that Occupy Wall Street and the ensuing Occupy Movement has had a very different tone from other mass protests over the past decade. There certainly are people expressing anger about corporate greed, but as a whole the movement feels less about anger and more about community and creativity. In fact, one sign from Zuccotti Park proclaimed,

This is not a protest, it’s a conversation!

While there have been the usual markers of a protest – large groups of people, chants and slogans, signs – Occupy has been different. From the beginning, there was a sense of possibility rather than simply unrest, and a sense of vitality and optimism. In an October 27, 2011, article for Harvard Divinity School News, Dave Woessner wrote:

Occupation takes a lot of work and a lot of collaboration; occupation is an attempt to build a shared dream. This is an aspect of the Occupy movement that is most overlooked: first and foremost, occupation is a demonstration or model. People living in the village—the collection of tents in Dewey Square, where Occupy Boston is physically based—are showing the world the example of the just community in which they hope to live. (Woessner, 2011)

I found it fascinating that the Protest Chaplains were at OWS from the start (September 17^th) with their commitment to “ground the day in love” (in Dave’s words) and to help create a container of inclusivity and safety for everyone present, including the police. I believe that their presence at the beginning of this movement (in both New York and Boston) has been one of the factors that has helped to give Occupy a more spiritual core.

Heather shared this with me:

One of the defining moments for me was one of the first nights of Occupy Boston. We decided with some of the other protestors that there would be a faith and spirituality group and that we would have a space that would be our own. The first night of the protest we didn’t have a tent, but we had brought blankets and yoga mats and sleeping bags to put on the ground, and we had battery-operated candles and a few religious trinkets…

Within our group, we had this protest prayer and song book we had put together and we sat down and started doing liturgies from the book. People came and sat with us. That was recognition and validation of the idea that something like the Sacred Space tent was really needed among protestors. That night defined for me the kind of purpose that we were going to have in the movement, long-term.

2. Protest Chaplaincy: A paradigm of participation rather than expertise

The entire Occupy movement is based on a value system of democracy and participation. The movement proudly proclaims that it has no leaders, but rather each person is encouraged to develop their own leadership qualities and contribute to the effort. This has carried over into the way the Protest Chaplains have manifested.

While most members of the original group of PCs were graduate students at Harvard Divinity School, few of them were actually training to be professional chaplains. Of the four people I interviewed, only Harrison was formally trained in chaplaincy and pastoral care. I did not interview Protest Chaplains in other cities for this project, but from material I’ve read I surmise that few of them have professional training as chaplains. And yet they felt called to offer spiritual support to this movement in the form of chaplaincy.

Harrison had completed 2 units of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) and had experience working as a chaplain in a hospital setting. He told me how he found this training helped him to be a Protest Chaplain:

In my own case, doing some overnight shifts as a hospital chaplain, waking up at 3 in the morning going to an emergency room, dealing in my own body with my heart rate going faster, seeing a body in any state of injury or surgery, seeing what family members might be in the room… [prepared me for] the speed at which chaplains, at least in some cases, need to process their own internal responses and still be available to respond to others’ responses and reactions across the whole spectrum.

A few nights ago [at the Occupy Boston site] I heard someone call for “Medic.” I felt that training helped me to quickly get out of my sleeping bag—hearing the word “Medic” and realizing there could be something wrong—and then providing background support to someone who had a head injury, and then helping to prevent further escalation in a violent conflict that had happened earlier.

Harrison observed,

There are ways of being a chaplain that are somewhat universal. There are people who can be great at doing chaplaincy work who don’t have training and there are people who do have training who aren’t necessarily good at doing the work. I don’t know if it makes so much sense to say you need to have done formal training to be a Protest Chaplain, and yet…there should be some things you should be good at.

Some of the qualities that Harrison noted as important for Protest Chaplains (as well as all chaplains) included focusing on listening more than speaking and not proselytizing. He said he agreed with all of the guidelines that the Protest Chaplains had developed and published on their website.

The Protest Chaplains have made efforts to document and share their learnings so that there is some sense of shared values across these ad hoc chaplain individuals and groups. They have done a lot of this through their website as well as social media (they maintain a Facebook page and Twitter account), and Dave is in contact with Protest Chaplains from other cities to share experiences and guidance.

3. Dealing With Moral Dilemmas and Burnout

Just like chaplains in other settings, the Protest Chaplains have had to face moral dilemmas as well as the specter of burnout.

During the time that I followed and documented the Protest Chaplains (mid-October to mid-November), the Occupy Boston site (as well as many other Occupy sites in colder climates) was dealing with colder weather that significantly changed the population at the campsite. Many who had come out in the early days of the occupation and stayed overnight had returned to their homes. The site was becoming a home to a more transient population, and that shift brought numerous challenges.

For the Protest Chaplains, one of the biggest challenges was how to find the balance between being inclusive with maintaining the integrity and purpose of the Sacred Space tent. Heather spoke of how she looked at this situation from a spiritual perspective:

“We have made a point of being radically welcoming to any individual who comes into the camp. The whole camp has said that if we’re going to be a movement that claims to be representative of the 99%, we need to let the 99% be here and be a part of the movement. If they want to be here and they’re being semi-respectful, they’re welcome. But with that has come a lot of things that we didn’t really expect.

Over the last week and a half, there have been a lot of drugs and alcohol brought into the camp. This is something that the camp as a whole doesn’t know how to deal with… We have people coming in who are seeking shelter in the Sacred Space tent, seeing that as a place of refuge. But then some people are disrespecting the sacredness of that space. People wake up in the middle of the night and don’t want to go outside to go to the bathroom, so they do it inside the tent. And when there are lots of people sleeping in the tent at 6 or 7 at night, then we can’t have the workshops that are supposed to be going on.

In a Christian context, it’s hard… you hear a lot of people ask, “What would Jesus do?” in this situation. You want to be welcoming of diversity and try to be compassionate to all people, but it’s hard when the people you’re reaching out to are disrespectful of what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s been the hardest thing for me to reconcile, and I still don’t have the answers.”

Robin told me how his perspective on the movement as a whole and its relationship with the police changed after a particularly brutal night when the Boston police force raided the second encampment and forcibly removed people. He shared what he learned about developing resilience as a chaplain:

“We’ve realized that, as individuals and as Protest Chaplains, we need to always hold our affiliation with the movement with a certain degree of lightness. That we don’t equate the movement so much with our own ideology that once there is a dissonance between the two that we all of the sudden feel despair…. One of these days, let’s face it, we’re going to get evicted… the movement will, if not end, will at the very least take on a different shape. If we’re not prepared to be flexible in our relationship with it, then it will be heartbreaking.”

4. How the Occupy Movement and the Protest Chaplains Embody “Being With Not Knowing”

As I listened to the stories of the Protest Chaplains, I was struck by how the approach and attitude that they were taking echoed the first tenet of the Zen Peacemaker Order: “Being With Not Knowing.” The Protest Chaplains are a kind of microcosm of the whole Occupy movement, and this willingness and even excitement to let a process emerge rather than control it can be seen there as well.

This shows up in all kinds of ways. In the Occupy movement, there are no leaders and no explicit demands, and participatory democracy is the basis for process and consensus is the decision-making method.

Within the Protest Chaplains, I heard the first tenet embodied in Dave’s story about telling his clergy colleagues in NY and Boston to simply go and visit the Occupation sites and see what they felt called to do. There was no imperative, no plan, no imposition of a schedule or hierarchy, but an organic process of seeing who felt called to be part of this movement and what were the needs of the people on the ground. As Dave noted, some of the clergy people felt immediately inspired and wanted to contribute in some way to the movement, while others were turned off and left right away. Both responses were fine.

When I explained the concept of “Being With Not Knowing” to Dave, he nodded his head in agreement. “Right,” he said, “the approach really is, ‘Let’s show up here and see what we are responding to… and see what is called for as the next step.’”

Dave went on to tell me, “Keeping that alive and real as the connection is tricky when you think about how this grows, what’s the next step. This is where we are at now.”

5. Protest Chaplains, Occupy, and Systems Change

In her seminal article on systems change, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” Donella Meadows (1999) offers a list of 12 points to focus on in order to transform a system. Her list may be roughly divided into three sections: the first four can be categorized as the physical components of a system, the next four pertain to information flow and control, and the final four have to do with our ideas and mental formations about systems. Meadows explains that the more that we can work in this last realm of ideas and paradigms, the more powerful an influence we can exert on a system.

In both the Occupy movement and among the Protest Chaplains, I witnessed people leveraging that third group of points related to ideas and paradigms.

The Occupy movement has been criticized by some for having no explicit demands. But as a number of people have pointed out, creating demands means giving legitimacy and tacit approval to the state and the current system. Instead, many in the movement resonate with this perspective from Charles Eisenstein (2011):

Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for its lack of clear demands, but how do we issue demands when what we really want is nothing less than the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible? No demand is big enough.

Protest Chaplain Dave Woessner spoke with me about how some people resist the Occupy movement because they feel, to use his paraphrase, “We have the best economic system possible now, given that people will always be greedy and self-interested.” Dave responds to them by asking, “Well, what would it take for you to think otherwise? If you keep telling yourself that, you’ll keep seeing that.”

Dave’s words reminded me of something that Acharya Fleet Maull spoke about in a teaching on how to transform the “Drama Triangle” (originally mapped out by Karpman, 1968) into an “Empowerment Triangle” (2010).  Fleet noted that the role of “Persecutor” on the Drama Triangle can become the “Challenger” on the Empowerment Triangle. As chaplains, he suggested, we can practice being skillful challengers. We can explore how to not comply with unwise decisions that are driven by systemic fear.

In the case of the Occupy movement and similar social change movements, chaplains can play a role in challenging the stories that have been handed down to us and inviting people to create new stories and possibilities, both individually and collectively. As Dave put it so eloquently to me, “People live into the stories that they’re given.”

The Protest Chaplains have helped to cast the whole Occupy Movement in a more spiritual light and have contributed to a paradigm shift in how many of us now think about the economic crisis. Again, a reflection from Dave:

“From the very beginning… We thought that was key, to give people the courage to engage with this in a spiritual way, to use language like ‘my soul is hurting,’ to feel justified in crying out for justice and love and not to feel that it’s hokey or sentimental. To say that we tout these [justice and love] as priorities, but do we live that?”

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Next time (final post in this series): Closing reflections on the Protest Chaplains

Related articles

• Protest Chaplains: “It’s All About Love” (Part 2) (jizochronicles.com)
• The Protest Chaplains: A new paradigm in chaplaincy during a time of social transformation (Part 1) (jizochronicles.com)

New York Times photo by Adam Ferguson

A brief interruption in our series on The Protest Chaplains to mark a milestone in Burma (Myanmar).

Today, April 1, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, appears to have won a seat in Myanmar’s Parliament. This New York Times article does a good job of describing the elation that Suu Kyi’s supporters are feeling, and how this event may mark a turning point in that country’s long period of oppressive military rule.

There is a long way still to go, however. As this eyewitness account from Burma by Hozan Alan Senuake notes, many political prisoners continue to be held and the military junta is effectively holding on to power by keeping the vast majority of seats in Parliament for their cronies.

Even so, today’s election results seem to mark a significant shift, perhaps reflecting the pressure that the junta has felt internally and as well as from economic sanctions imposed by other countries.

As Alan writes at the end of his post:

The conversation [with the Burmese monk] was just beginning, but simply to meet and talk is a radical act.  As I was paying my respects to the monks, preparing to leave, one said quietly: “In the last twenty years we didn’t have such opportunities.  We couldn’t speak with foreigners.”

The opportunity for dialogue — all kinds of dialogue — is an encouraging sign.  But it is not enough.  Real change in Burma, or anywhere is a matter of access to resources, mutual accountability, and the power for people to determine the course of their own lives. When war has ended in Burma, when all the prisoners are free, when there are reasonable laws that apply to everyone — then we can start to celebrate.  Not yet.

To learn more about how you can support the struggle for a truly free Burma, visit any of these links:

• The Clear View Project http://www.clearviewproject.org/home.html
  
• Foundation for the People of Burma/FPB:  www.foundationburma.org/
  
• Burmese American Democratic Alliance/BADA:  www.badasf.org/
  
• Sasana Moli/International Burmese Monks Organization:  sasanamoli.blogspot.com/
  
• U.S. Campaign for Burma:  uscampaignforburma.org/
  
• Assistance Association for Political Prisoners/AAPP:  www.aappb.org/
  
• Free Burma’s Political Prisoners Now: http://www.fbppn.net/

Robin Lutjohan

This is the second installment from my thesis for the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program. In the first post, I covered the context and background of the Protest Chaplains as well as the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In this section, I share the findings from interviews with four chaplains.

A) The Creation Story

The group of 10 students from Harvard Divinity School (HDS) that was to become the Protest Chaplains was present at Occupy Wall Street from day one. I asked Dave Woessner to tell me how it all got started. This is the story he shared with me:

It began with no intention [Dave laughs]…. We heard about this protest on Wall Street, organized by Adbusters…It was just a complete and total word-of-mouth thing. Marissa [Dave’s friend and another Harvard student] and I talked about what we could do. It was real casual – I can’t really underscore how flash-in-the pan this seemed. She sent around a couple of emails to a bunch of our friends. We started talking about what we wanted to do there. We came up with this vague sense of protest and social justice action as liturgy. We started kicking around ideas, in a very casual way. A few people dropped out at the last minute, a few came at the last minute.

We had two cars, we went around and raided all the sacristies we knew to get albs [white liturgical robes]. A lot of us were Episcopalian, some with a church called the Crossing. We also had students from HDS, a Catholic, and a Lutheran-agnostic. Right from the get-go we were interdenominational. [Later on, Harrison, a Buddhist chaplain, would join the group.]

We drove down to New York and we found a great priest at St Mary’s Church in Harlem, Earl Koopercamp. He said we could crash on the floor of the rectory. We left about 6 in the evening and got down there about midnight. A lot of us hadn’t met before. We shook hands and said hello. We had a prayer group on Friday night, held hands around a circle, and said let’s just see what hits us. I think it was in that moment that we had a sense of being something, doing something different.

We took the train down from Harlem on the morning of the 17th, wore albs the whole way, had a cardboard cross. When we got down to Wall Street, the police had already barricaded everything off. They had their riot gear on. The protest was called for out in front of the stock exchange, but because we couldn’t get there, no one knew what to do. Our plan was to go to Trinity Episcopal church on Wall Street, and so we went there. At the beginning it was us and one guy from Veterans for Peace who was waving a flag. We started singing hymns and taize chants. Tourists were walking by and taking pictures of us.

Then a scruffy looking guy came up with a sign that said, “End corporate greed.” They told us to come down to the bull statue because something was going to happen there. Within an hour, there were well over a couple of hundred folks there, and we all started circling around the bull. More and more people joined in….

We discussed how we were going to prepare for this. We agreed it was all about love. No one was coming from the point of view of trying to proselytize. It was all about going and protesting and being there with other people who felt called to act.

A lot of people [at the protest] thought we would be judgmental… But we were there for the same reasons they were: to say that corporate greed is killing our country, our world, and our soul. There’s a simple point, a call for justice, to say that a lot of harm has been done to a lot of people, the most vulnerable people, who are also taxpayers who have bailed out these banks. And we haven’t seen the appropriate castigation and follow through to make sure these practices don’t happen again. That was the very basic call.

Then in a broader sense, as Christians we were called to say, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the peacemakers.” Where are these priorities in our international dialogue?

So our goal really was to do those two things: Anybody who believes those things, we are allies with, and then second, to be a visible presence for Christians looking from the outside, for them to say, “Oh yeah, those are my guys! Maybe I’m not in tune with this system that we’ve built.” Just to create that very dissonance. One of the slogans that was there the first day was “Wake up!”

Since that first day in September, both the movement and the need for Protest Chaplains exploded. The original group of 10 people who traveled to New York that day returned to Boston and became an integral part of setting up the Occupy Boston site. None of them had planned for this new role in their lives; in the ensuing months, each had to figure out how to balance the demands of their new role with the rest of their life – classes, study, jobs, and, in some cases family. Everyone seemed overwhelmed, and yet at the same time absolutely dedicated to their new ministry.

I asked each person I interviewed about their personal reasons for doing this and what being a Protest Chaplain meant to them. Heather’s answer was representative of what many of them said:

I grew up in the Lutheran Church, but solely identifying as a Christian isn’t something I can do any more, because I’ve seen the negative things that Christianity has done in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got my foot half in and half out of the Christian tradition. Part of being a Protest Chaplain is trying to reclaim Christianity and what I would want it to be in the world. Getting the people out of the churches and into the streets to help impact change, and get people involved with social justice work….

Just going into the protest environment and listening to people when they’re frustrated, giving them a hug when they’re crying, praying with them when they want to pray. It’s fundamentally being with people in their struggles, their suffering, and their joy. Most simply, that’s what being a Protest Chaplain means to me.

B) The Physical Setting: The Sacred Space Tent at Occupy Boston

Occupy Boston started at the end of September 2011, about ten days after Occupy Wall Street got its start in New York City. The organizers decided to follow in the spirit of OWS and chose Dewey Square as the site because it was situated in the center of the city’s financial district. Right in front of the South Street “T” station (Boston’s public transportation system), Dewey Square is surrounded by branches of all major banks as well as the federal reserve bank.

Skyscrapers tower over the Occupy tent city and businessmen and women are constantly walking by the site. A nine-foot statue of Mohandas Gandhi (donated by The Peace Abbey of Sherborn, Massachusetts) sits at the intersection of two of the ‘roads’ that make up the Occupy Boston village. If you turn right at the Gandhi statue and walk about halfway down this narrow lane, you run into the Sacred Space tent. This is the locus for most of the spiritually-based events and meetings at the Occupy Boston site.

The tent and the happenings in it are facilitated by the Faith and Spirituality Working Group as well as by the Protest Chaplains. While the F & S group and the Protest Chaplains are not the same entity, there is some overlap. Several of the members of the PC group, including Robin, were instrumental in setting up the physical space that became the Sacred Space Tent. However, in the spirit of the Occupy movement, there is no hierarchy or ownership assigned to oversee this (or any other) dimension of Occupy Boston. Rather, there is a lateral network of people who commit to being stewards for the Sacred Space, including the Protest Chaplains.

The space itself is a tent big enough to accommodate about 10 people at any given time. At the doorway of the tent is a sign that reads:

Sacred Space Guidelines

Respect others and the space
Remove shoes
Finish food outside
Be mindful when speaking: words carry vibration so please keep it positive!
Minimize conversations (unless otherwise agreed) and limit cellphone use/texting, etc.
Bring items to help co-create this sacred space! (tapestries, pieces of nature, incense, photos, totems, other beautiful/sacred objects)
Do not leave personal items in the space. Anything left is to be considered an offering to the space.

A sign-up sheet at the front of the tent invites anyone to offer a workshop or ritual inside the tent during open time slots. One does not need to be a religious “expert” or “authority” to do so. Like everything else at Occupy, the Sacred Space tent reflects a participatory democratic process.

During the days I visited, there was a Bible study group led by a college student, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation group led by another college student, a journaling workshop offered by a writing teacher, and a talk “finding light in dark times” by a Rastafarian man from Haiti.

At the time that I visited Occupy Boston, the Protest Chaplains had committed to having at least one of them stay overnight at the campsite each night, either in the Sacred Space tent or in another tent. As the weather began to get colder, they were in the process of discussing how that presence might change and evolve through the winter months.

C) What Does a Protest Chaplain Do?

This statement appears on the Protest Chaplains’ website:

American Christians have been far too polite, too quiet, and too accommodating of both the injustice and the blasphemous use of Jesus’ name in committing atrocities in our nation and our world. That’s why we want to protest with all those who, like us, know in the deepest places of our souls that another world is indeed possible.

We also want to be of service to those camping with us. We draw strength from the rituals of prayer, song, meditation, and devotion that we have inherited as the very best and brightest points of the troublesome Christian tradition. We’re not out to evangelize anyone – seriously…

…we’re bringing the spiritual practices and our sense of the world as sacred to Wall Street and we hope to be of use to everyone who’s camping out. Because protesters have souls too!

This says something about how the chaplains envision their role. But I wanted to get a better sense of what a typical day in the life of a Protest Chaplain looks like, both from my own observations as well as speaking with the chaplains themselves.

As it turned out, I didn’t get as much of a chance as I had hoped to watch the Protest Chaplains interact with individual campers at the Occupy site. During the four days that I was in Boston, all four of my interviewees weren’t spending as much time at the camp as they had in the previous weeks because of a severe snowstorm and it was also a busy time in their academic schedule.

In our interview, Dave told me this about his experience of the need to offer pastoral care to individual occupiers during the first month of Occupy:

“When they found out that we largely agreed with what they were saying, they just began to pour out their souls and telling their stories. I’m here because I’m really sad about the direction our country is moving in, I can’t pay my bills, we can’t pay for medical care… I never had any idea that people from church would do something like this because in the church I grew up in, nobody talked about this.

We did services and everyone was invited. We did the inter- and no faith blessing at the first meal at Zuccotti Park. Some people came up to us and said this was the first time they’d done anything religious… some said they had never been invited to anything like this before.”

On one of the late afternoons that I visited Occupy Boston, Heather had organized members of a Lutheran congregation to come and offer a liturgy. I joined in as a circle of about 10 people from the congregation gathered at the Occupy site to light a candle, read from the scriptures, and offer prayers.

As it turned out, Protest Chaplains also had a role to play in serving to help people who might normally be turned off by protests to connect with the movement. Robin told me this story:

“[One day] I was wearing the white robe and the cross and being very ostentatiously some sort of Christian ministerial figure. An old lady came up to me and asked me who I was and what I was doing. Then we moved on to what the protest was about, what I believed, how my religion played into it.  I honestly believe she wouldn’t have come up to anyone else, but she came to me because I resembled something she was familiar and comfortable with, in this case, the Christian faith…. Our conversation broke through some of the chanting and shouting and signs that may have taken her aback.”

As a postscript, I received this information in an email from Marisa Egerstrom in January 2012, not long after the Occupy Boston site was finally evicted and dismantled in December 2011:

I’ve been doing a lot of counseling with people’s grief [after the eviction] and also their fears around the NDAA [the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law on December 31, 2011]. It’s interesting, because I didn’t spend time overnight at Occupy Boston, but have been focusing on strategy & outreach to churches, as well as coordinating with other faith efforts in other cities. What’s come out of that is that I’ve built relationships with people who were never involved with the F&S tent, but when shit went down, they came to me.

I was sort of freaked out. I know how to be a good & compassionate listener, but I have no formal training. Yet they sought me out because these are folks who don’t consider themselves religious, and yet recognized something religious in their grief and fear, and I was the person they trusted. So it’s been an experiment in “revolutionary pastoral care” developed on the fly: as one woman said to me, “I have a therapist, but I can’t talk to him about this stuff.”

From my conversations with Dave, Heather, Robin, and Harrison, I compiled this list of the responsibilities that the Protest Chaplains, at least in their Boston iteration, have taken on since the start of OWS:

• Provide ministry/pastoral counseling to protestors. Help people make meaning of the situation, “being with” them in struggles and despair.
• Lead liturgies, services, and ceremonies at the Occupy site.
• Participate in the Faith and Spirituality working group and help to figure out the infrastructure and logistics to keep this group going, and to maintain a spiritual presence at Occupy Boston.
• Commit to an overnight presence at the campsite.
• Act as liaison to churches, congregations, synagogues to educate them on the OWS and to mobilize their involvement and support.
• Create an atmosphere of equanimity and safety for everyone in OWS; build a bridge for good relationships with groups that interact with the protestors and where this is potential for conflict, such as the police.
• Take part in GA (general assembly) meetings in order to bring a voice of nonviolence and spiritual grounding into the governance of Occupy sites.
• Connect with Protest Chaplains in other locations and share ideas and resources. This was primarily Dave’s role and is being done in a very emergent way. There is not an organized network of Protest Chaplains, simply informal connections and linkages through social media, phone calls, and sometimes in-person visitors from other Occupy sites.

Next: Five Lessons from the Protest Chaplains

I’ve been absent for a while from the Jizo Chronicles… my focus over the past two months has been on completing the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program (that’s been my journey over the past two years). Two weeks ago, I presented my thesis and then graduated and received lay ordination as a chaplain on March 11th.

I thought you might enjoy learning about what I’ve been spending my time on over the past few months, so over the next several posts I am publishing my thesis–which I believe is very relevant to socially engaged dharma.

At the end of October, I traveled to Boston to interview four of the Protest Chaplains who were present on the first day of OWS in New York City (September 17, 2011). All four were from Harvard Divinity School. I also spent time at the Occupy Boston campsite as a participant-observer (that’s my anthropology background coming out!). All this material informed my thesis.

Part 1, posted here, offers background on the concept of “Protest Chaplain” as well as the Occupy Wall Street Movement. If any of you would like the entire thesis as a Word document, let me know and I’m happy to share it with you. May it be of benefit.

A) Historical precedents of Protest Chaplains

First, it may be useful to explore the definition of “chaplain” and to understand how a chaplain can be in relationship not only to an individual but also to a social movement.

At the most basic level, a chaplain may be defined as a representative of a religious tradition, usually ordained, who serves in a secular institution (such as a hospital, prison, police department, university, military unit, etc.) and provides spiritual and pastoral care in that setting.

On a more profound level, a chaplain is one who accompanies people as they grapple with issues of meaning and value in their lives.

In his teachings at Upaya Zen Center in August, 2010, Sensei Fleet Maull offered a vision for a new kind of chaplaincy that responds to a world in need of “wisdom-based ministry” (2010). Maull observed that we are dealing with an accumulated toxic level of internalized shame and violence that is perpetuated when we violate our own integrity, and any time war and oppression take root in a culture and system. This level of toxicity is so pervasive that we often don’t notice it – for example, the subject/object relationship and duality is built into our language and how we raise our children. Phrases like “you’re so good” or “you are bad” plant the seeds early in young people for seeing the world through this lens of duality, separation, and inequity.

According to Maull, the role of a chaplain is to be aware of this viral toxicity and to bring relief and comfort to those who are suffering from its effects. The chaplain’s role also includes learning and practicing how to interrupt the cycles of beliefs and behaviors that perpetuate this kind of violence.

So in this sense, a chaplain is one who ministers not only to individuals but also to systemic suffering. This type of suffering may take the form of injustice, inequality, and structural violence (Galtung, 1969). The term “structural violence” refers to the systematic ways in which a government or regime prevents individuals from achieving their full potential or having equal access to resources.

One could transfer the definition of chaplain to a collective of people who are struggling with issues of meaning and value as well as confronting systemic suffering.

While the phrase “Protest Chaplain” was used for the first time during the Occupy movement, the idea itself has an impressive lineage. The role of religion in social change has a long history, including the movements to abolish slavery and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (Nhat Hanh & Berrigan, 1993; Smith, 1996; Marsh, 2006).

Religious figures who played a key role in social movements included, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. James Lawson, who came to speak at the Faith and Spirituality tent at Occupy Boston in October 2011, at the invitation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In addition to these exemplars, there are several examples of chaplains who have been deeply involved in struggles for peace and justice. One prototype of a “Protest Chaplain” was the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Born to a privileged family, in his youth Coffin was passionate about fighting fascism and communism. He served in the Army during World War II and later worked for the CIA. During this time, Coffin grew disillusioned as he witnessed the role that the CIA and the U.S. played in overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala.

After leaving the CIA, Coffin went to Yale Divinity School and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1956. He went on to serve as chaplain at Yale University from 1958 to 1975.

Throughout this period of time, Coffin’s life and his ministry became more radicalized as he got involved with the Civil Rights and nuclear disarmament movements, as well as efforts to end the Vietnam War. He became renowned for organizing busloads of “Freedom Riders” to challenge segregation laws in the South and encouraging young people to resist the military draft. Coffin was one of the founders of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, a coalition of religious leaders who questioned and actively resisted President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war.

In an interview two years before his death in 2006, Rev. Coffin shared this reflection:

What this country needs, what I think God wants us to do, is not practice piecemeal charity but engage in wholesale justice. Justice is at the heart of religious faith. When we see Christ empowering the poor, scorning the powerful, healing the world’s hurts, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work. (Abernathy, 2004)

In essence, Rev. Coffin’s words and lifetime of radical action created the foundation from which the Protest Chaplains emerged in 2011.

Another religious figure who used his pastoral authority to advocate for others was Father Jerzy Popieluszko who served as a chaplain to the striking workers of Warsaw in the 1980s (Zunes, 1999). Father Popieluszko held a monthly “Mass for the Fatherland” during which he spoke openly about human rights and nonviolent resistance. After he was killed by Polish state security officers in 1984, thousands of Poles mourned his death. In 2010 Popieluszko was beatified by the Catholic Church.

B) Background on Occupy Wall Street

In one sense, the genesis of the September 17^th action called “Occupy Wall Street,” which evolved into a larger global movement, was an announcement from the Canadian magazine Adbusters that appeared on July 13, 2011.  The announcement was simple and yet graphically powerful – it portrayed the iconic bronze bull of Wall Street with a ballerina gracefully dancing on top of it:

The AdBusters website elaborated on this call to action:

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices. http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html

According to the magazine Bloomberg Businessweek (Bennett, 2011), from that point, a group called “New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts” did much of the on-the-ground work to organize the event. In June and July, the group had camped out across the street from New York City Hall to protest city budget cuts and layoffs, and they invested their energy in planning for the September call to action.

At an August planning meeting, anthropologist and activist David Graeber entered the process. Graeber, who had done his field research and PhD dissertation on a rural community in Madagascar that was organized around anarchistic and egalitarian principles, immediately noticed that the group was approaching this event with a top-down style of organizing. They were planning for a traditional rally, followed by a short meeting and a march to Wall Street, and then delivering a pre-determined set of demands. That night, Graeber met with a few friends as well as others who were dissatisfied with the NYABC organizing style, and they began to create a different approach to the September 17^th event.

This was a pivotal moment, notes Drake Bennett (2011) in the Bloomberg Businessweek article:

While there were weeks of planning yet to go, the important battle had been won. The show would be run by horizontals, and the choices that would follow—the decision not to have leaders or even designated police liaisons, the daily GAs and myriad working-group meetings that still form the heart of the protests in Zuccotti Park—all flowed from that.
(pg. 67)

From that point on, the September 17^th event and the movement that followed from it took on the imprint of anarchistic values and methodologies. As we shall see in the remainder of this paper, this was also true for the Protest Chaplains.

While Adbusters could lay claim to being the spark that lit the Occupy fire, the impetus for this movement had actually been growing for a long time. Over the past 30 years in the United States, the gap between rich and poor has widened exponentially, while many corporations and those with wealth have benefited from tax laws written in their favor.

According to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office in October 2011, between 1979 and 2007 the incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275% between 1979 and 2007. From 1992 to 2007, the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37% (Whorisky, 2011).

A second factor that contributed to the Occupy movement was public anger at banks. In the wake of the economic crisis of September 2008, the U.S. Congress and the White House hastily put together a plan that authorized the U.S. Treasury Department to use up to $700 billion to stabilize financial markets. In essence, “billions of dollars in taxpayer money allowed institutions that were on the brink of collapse not only to survive but even to flourish” (Barofsky, 2011). While this plan did achieve some amount of stability for banks and other industries, many U.S. citizens experienced the fallout in the form of home foreclosures and rising unemployment rates. In fact, one of the chants at Occupy gatherings was “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

In a September 25 editorial in The Guardian (2011), David Graeber wrote:

“We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt, is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?”

In addition to these economic factors, Occupy Wall Street also built on the energy and momentum of the “Arab Spring” that had emerged in Egypt and other countries in that region of the world earlier in 2011.

All these conditions gave rise to the actual event itself. On September 17, nearly 1,000 people showed up at Wall Street (including the first group of Protest Chaplains, three of whom were interviewed for this thesis). They were diverted by NYC police and ended up, by fortunate chance, gathering at Zuccotti Park a few blocks away. Because the park was private rather than public property, police could not legally force protestors to leave unless asked to do so by the owners.

Somewhere between 100 and 200 people camped there that first night. From that point onwards, there was some kind of constant 24-hour physical presence at Zuccotti Park until the night of November 15 when the campers were finally (and forcibly) removed by police. But by then, the Occupation and its message was firmly rooted in hundreds of other cities, and more importantly in the minds and consciousness of millions of people around the world.

________

Coming next: ‘The Creation Story’ of the Protest Chaplains and What Does a Protest Chaplain Do?

Katie Loncke (photo by Alan Senauke)

This is the fourth in our series of interviews with inspiring and interesting socially engaged Buddhists of our time. Previous guests have been Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi,  Arun (author of the blog Angry Asian Buddhist), and Roshi Joan Halifax.

Today I’m very happy to share this space with Katie Loncke, who among many other things is the mind and heart behind the blog kloncke.com, which she describes as “a public interactive journal where I share my thoughts on Buddhism, radical politics, and how I am trying to live both.” (And where you can some times find some pretty fantastic recipes!)

I have been admiring Katie’s blog ever since I started the Jizo Chronicles, and finally got the chance to meet her last winter during a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area. In person, Katie has the same warmth and deep intelligence that shows up on her blog, and she challenged me (in a loving way) to think about how socially engaged Buddhism can be a more effective vehicle for change and justice.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Katie through this conversation.

The Jizo Chronicles: Where do you call home?

Katie: Born and raised in Sacramento, California; currently nesting in Oakland.

JC: What are you reading right now?

Katie: A few things.  Another Buddhist woman-of-color Marxist friend and I just finished the Introduction to Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver, as a preparation to read Volume I of Marx’s Capital together.  Cleaver’s framework is really compelling, as he advocates using a strategic lens (rather than a philosophical or even economic one) from the perspective of the working class, which isn’t a distinction I ever heard reading Marx in college.

For a socially-engaged Buddhist study group with some folks at the Berkeley Zen Center, I’m excited to dive into a collection of correspondence letters between Gandhi and political leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.  Here in dominant U.S. culture, and especially among convert Buddhists, it would seem almost like heresy to criticize Gandhi.  But a lot of my political South Asian friends are not too keen on him.  So I’m really curious to learn more about the disagreements around the political and/or spiritual issues of the time, especially from a figure as compelling as Ambedkar.

Then, literature-wise, I’m slowly sipping Nikky Finney’s award-winning book of poems, Head Off and Split (gives me chills; I fell in love with her, as did many people, after watching her incredibly moving acceptance speech for the National Book Award).  And also a collection of short stories by Richard Ford, which I love for their crisp, down-to-earth observations of Midwestern working-class settings.

Finally, I’m constantly reading all kinds of articles online, culled from my friends’ Facebook feeds: dhamma pieces in Tricycle; news; political analysis.  It’s like a new treasure-trove every morning!

JC: Who inspires you – Buddhist teachers, activists, writers, artists…

Katie: Oh, goodness — the list would be long!  Just to narrow it down, let me offer a few groups that inspire me.

I think many of us have been inspired by the #Occupy / Decolonize movement, especially here in Oakland.  And of course the Arab Spring uprisings that kind of incited this new wave of imagination and irreverence for law enforcement, which I appreciate.  In figuring out how to build on the momentum, and incorporate this fire in sustainable ways, I really like the model of collective direct action groups — specifically the Seattle Solidarity Network, which bands working-class and poor people together to win specific demands from hyper-exploitative bosses and landlords.  They’ve won close to thirty fights in the past few years, and built some community confidence which I think has contributed to the impressive verve of Occupy Seattle.

Groups that link structural and interpersonal violence, and confront racism and gender hierarchy directly, I also love.  Here in the Bay, Communities United Against Violence (CUAV) does wonderful work.

In the Buddhist world, I’m super inspired by groups that offer teachings completely on a dana basis, and invite a lot of volunteer work.  I think this is somewhat endemic to traditional Asian Buddhist communities.  The main ways I’ve experienced it are through Vipassana meditation centers in the S. N. Goenka school (I lived and served at one such center in Spain for a few months), and through the East Bay Meditation Center.  Both places have been very welcoming to really diverse communities of practitioners (at my last Vipassana retreat, discourses were translated into Burmese, Vietnamese, Hindi, and Khmer — and students themselves also spoke Farsi, Brasilian Portuguese, Spanish, so many languages!), and I think that the dana / volunteer structure really supports that.

Revolutions and mass movements inspire me.  I feel mudita around the recent successful general strike in Nigeria, which restored the oil subsidies.  Waves of strikes in China, hella dope.  Of course there are big names in mass movements, and in some ways it’s wonderful to have heroes, but I’m equally inspired by the way that people get up early every day, try to eke out a living under capitalism, and meanwhile try to take care of each other, organize, and pursue freedom.  That’s wonderful.

JC: What social issue is close to your heart right now?

Katie: I mentioned the Seattle Solidarity Network; I’ve been fascinated and encouraged by the (re-)emergence of solidarity networks for casualized or “precarious” workers.  These are typically “at-will” employees in low-wage jobs, often part-time or temporary with little or no benefits, and scant career prospects at any particular company.  Without a common industry or large shop floor to form the basis of a union, these precarious workers are finding other ways to build their strength in numbers.

I’ve spent the last year trying to form a brand-new solidarity network here in Oakland, for precarious workers and unemployed people, and it’s so wonderful to see the delight and astonishment on people’s faces when they meet perfect strangers who have shown up to support them in their struggle.  Not out of charity, but out of solidarity: asking them, in turn, to support us when we need backup.  It’s really very moving.  A security guard shows up for a domestic worker’s fight, then they both go together to a mass action against police brutality.  A hotel worker shows up for a Whole Foods worker; strangers support someone fighting a bank that’s foreclosing on their home. And over time we work together, organize together, trying to realize and build our own collective power.

JC: How does your dharma practice inform your involvement on that issue?

Katie: On a micro-level, of course, the patience, mindfulness, clear-sightedness and compassion that tend to develop naturally through dharma practice have been a big help to me, and would be to any organizer, I think.  There are a few of us in the solidarity network here who practice meditation, and others have expressed interest in learning, or sitting together.  I dream of getting a sitting group going for anti-capitalist Buddhists, called the Bay Area Radical Sangha.  This might be the year!

On a larger scale, exploring interdependence has really shaped the way I understand solidarity.  I don’t have to “know” someone in order to comprehend that we are connected — spiritually, and through local and global systems.  The workers at the Foxconn factories in China, who face penalties of twelve years in prison for attempting to unionize, probably helped produce this laptop I’m typing on.  And they must continue to work under unbearable conditions; otherwise, they and their families won’t eat.  But their situation won’t improve, necessarily, if I give up my laptop, or stop buying Apple products.  Instead (in my opinion) I am called to practice compassion and solidarity by supporting the actual struggles of the workers, and similar struggles of workers and peasants not only abroad but in the U.S. as well.  (For a beautifully written, Buddhist-informed examination of struggles in the U.S. among Certified Nursing Assistants, I’d encourage everybody to read this piece.  And get ready to support increasing organization of workers in the health care industry!)

Ultimately I believe that a commitment to non-harming means tapping into the interdependence that already exists, but which is laden with structural violence, and transforming it into a new, more loving mode of interdependence.  One based on the premise that ordinary people, just like you and me, are capable of working together to run society!  Historically it has only been the wealthy upper classes and owners who direct the pace and style of production in order to maximize profits.  But I actually think that the regular people of the world could do a much better job of running things.  All kinds of people: queers, women, people of color, the young, the old, fat people, people with various religious beliefs, people with all kinds of abilities and skills and contributions.  I have faith in us.  We will do an excellent job at ensuring universal food, clean water, shelter, clothing, medicine, education — all of these — once we have collective control over the reproduction of humanity.  And solidarity is key not only to this re-imagined society, but to the process of getting there.

JC: If you could invite people to join you in taking one action on that issue, what would it be?

Katie: Well if you’re interested in starting a solidarity network in your town, by all means check out this helpful guide from SeaSol, which lets you know how to get started.  But for those who don’t have that kind of time, I’d encourage folks to explore solidarity through collective direct action like joining a picket line.

Though I’d attended plenty of protests, most of which were symbolic (stop the war, demand reproductive justice, etc.), I had never stood on a picket line before two years ago.  Since then I’ve organized pickets, and also walked with nurses, Red Vines candy makers, university students, hotel workers, former Whole Foods workers — all kinds of people fighting for better job conditions.  It’s given me a much deeper appreciation for one way that people work together to reclaim their bodies, the labor-power of their bodies, in interrupting business-as-usual.  With all the austerity measures and company cutbacks happening all over the country and the world, and all the organized resistance bubbling up, it should not be too hard to find a picket line to join!

JC: What else would you like people to know about you?

Katie: I think it might be useful to say that even though I practice Marxism, and have some pretty strong opinions about politics and social justice, I also love dialoguing with people — not just shutting down debate and thinking that I have all the answers.  I say this because Marxists can get a pretty bad rap as dogmatic and cultish weirdos, lol!  But I — and the communities I run with — we’re just doing our best to engage some big questions that many people have been engaging for a long time — and that you yourself are also engaging here on Jizo Chronicles. How do we create a society that produces for collective need and well-being, rather than privatized profit?  A society where ordinary people exercise direct co-operative control over the places where they live and work every day?  Where no individuals can “own” the resources that everyone — including non-human animals and the earth’s ecosystems — relies on to survive and thrive?

The word I use for this kind of reimagined society is communism.  I know that word is triggering for a lot of people, and especially for those who’ve had close dealings with so-called “communist” regimes that are actually state-capitalist or basically dictatorships.  But that’s not what I mean by it.

Working toward real communism, like vowing to liberate all beings from suffering, may seem futile, but it is not.  We take it seriously.  We even make plans, though we don’t presume to know exactly how everything will happen.  This stuff is complex!

Anyway, thank you so much, Maia, for asking me these simple but powerful interview questions.  It’s been an honor and a real treat.

A bunch of engaged Buddhists out for a walk.... L to R: Jeff Hardin, Kim Behan, Alan Senauke, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Maia Duerr, Katie Loncke