Okay, this isn’t necessarily my solution, just the most recent thing I’ve come up with, but it would take a LOT of effort for it to happen, and there are probably a great many problems to it as well (my more conservative brethren can speak up now). But, here’s my idea.
I think urban centers that have experienced the negative affects of absentee landlords (many slum lords) and now the recent foreclosure crisis, should make homesteading mandatory in those neighborhoods. What homesteading means is that a home must be owner occupied, they must live there. I slightly looser option would be that all owners of property in that zip code or neighborhood must live in the same neighborhood. Basically, this would mean you can only own property in the neighborhood if you lived in the neighborhood.
One of the primary things I believe this will do is create a vested interest in the community. Many of our problems today from slum lords to sweatshops exist because we are able to distance ourselves from the injustices we often passively (or actively) contribute to and participate in. Requiring all owners of pieces of a community to actually be a part of that community would create geographic proximity that would build awareness and sensitivity to the problems within that community.
As it relates to the foreclosure problems currently, it would force banks to liquidate the properties in a community, rather than being able to sit on vacant houses in hopes of riding out the low parts of the real estate trend. And, those properties would then be available to people who are interested in living in that particular community and not a wealthy investor who is interested in the bottom line rather then the interest of the people in the community. This would more then likely drop the value of the property in a neighborhood considerably, since those interested in purchasing and living in the neighborhood might not have the financial means to offer what the previous market values might have been. However, the benefits of increased homeownership in a community, vested interest, and the possibility for individuals to build equity would far outweigh the loss in property value.
It seems this sort of thing has been done in a few cities before, but the goal was more for a sort of ‘urban renewal’ that brought middle and upper class folks back into cities. It in effect pushed the people of the neighborhood out and basically gentrified the neighborhood to the degree that the original people of the community were no longer there. I think efforts toward this sort of required homesteading would need to be done sooner in a city facing a lot of abandon and foreclosed houses, so that the original community isn’t displaced.

I haven’t thought through all the ins and outs but it seems like, with the right planning, it could be a very beneficial solution to many urban neighborhoods.

Another thought provoking piece from Adbusters. This is a painting from one of the pages of the recent issues.

Disclaimers from me: I in no way want to encourage or suggest that George Bush should be waterboarded. I think it is an inhumane and gruesome torture practice. Nor do I think Bush’s support of, involvement in or encouragement of torture in any way makes him deserving of equal treatment.

I simply think the painting is a profoundly thought-provoking piece.

I’ve been emailing with a friend concerning politics and this question came up:

“I have never understood why some people want the government to provide services that the Church is supposed to be doing. For example, isn’t is our job as Christians to take care of the poor?”

(below is part of my response)

“Here’s a story related to your question about Christians taking care of the poor.
When I lived in Nashville, I had opportunities to be involved with the homeless in the city. I did that primarily three different ways.
1) I worked with an incredible group of people called Food Not Bombs. It was a group of people who gathered together ever Sunday and prepared a large meal, went to the Veteran’s memorial in downtown Nashville and feed and ate lunch with about 40-50 homeless every week. The group of people where not Christian at all, but rather a rag-tag bunch of folks who shared an ‘anarchist’ philosophy (topic for another time, but trust me, it’s not bad). They were wonderful, caring, consistent and loving people.

2) The church we attended did not have any consistent ‘ministries’ during the time we were there. The general ‘ethos’ of the community was to go out to eat somewhere every Sunday afternoon after church. I encouraged, asked and pleaded with people to join me in hanging out and feeding the homeless in lieu of or in addition to eating out, no one ever came. No one. I encouraged and pleaded with the pastor to invite a homeless advocate to come and speak at sunday service or right after about the homeless, to educate and inform and help us learn what we could do to help, he never let us do that. And it’s not that our church was full of bad people. They where nice wonderful and caring people. Individually I think they probably did a lot of neat things to care for others. There was a homeless guy who started coming to our church for a while and they treated him with the utmost respect. But, if you asked me if the ‘church’ collectively did things to care for the poor I would say no.

3) I worked with a group called Nashville Homeless Power Project. They are an incredible organization of homeless and formerly homeless individuals advocating, mostly on a political level, for dignity, housing and human rights for the homeless. They practiced civil disobedience at times to make their voice heard, took mayoral candidates on an ‘urban plunge’ to experience a glimpse of what homelessness was like, they advocated for more humane laws to keep homeless out of prisons simply because they had no where to go, and a lot more. I loved working with them, but they where quite political, and though many were Christian and there was a spiritual (primarily Christian) element to many of the things they did, they were not exclusively ‘the church’ and much of what they did was to advocate for the government to do things the church by and large had failed to do. And they did a good job of it, they cared for the poor in our community.

I, just like you, only have a finite number of hours to work or help with any given organization, task, or need. That being the case, I had to split my time between those groups. If your goal is to care for the poor and the ‘least of these’ where would you commit your time to?

When I entered middle school my family moved to a house in Madison Wisconsin. It was our house, our walls, inside and out, and with that it began to take shape and look like our family. Somewhere early on, my mom painted some dancing, flowy stick figures of us on the garage door. The house is a purple color (my mom’s favorite) and the stick figures, a deeper purple, adorned the garage door.

I remember being quite embarrassed of this display of art when ever a new person would come by or drop me off from school or soccer practice or what not, I was a middle schooler and I wanted to be cool. Little did I realize just how cool it was. That house is a beautiful display of art. The kitchen cabinets black with white specks splattered all over, Jackson Pollackish. There are palm trees painted on the wall in the basement. There’s writing on walls in the kitchen, each room a different shade, or multiple shades. My mom painted one of the toilet seats once, but it slowly flaked off on our bottoms. My brother and I had painted our room the team colors of the Charlotte Hornets (way before they started offering official team color paints). I lacked in the creativity side, but my brother and sisters rooms have been unique pieces of art for years. I love hanging out at that house. My brother has farside cartoons painted on the door and the wall, graffiti of every shade covers the walls. My sisters room has changed so many times I can’t keep track, but it’s incredible the personality she and her room have had.

I don’t know when we decided it, but somewhere along the way we adopted The Big Orange Splot as our family book. It’s a little new-agey in it’s language, but it seems to embody our family. The story goes Mr. Plumbean lives on a neat street where all the houses are the same. A seagull drops a can of orange paint on his house and after some contemplation he leaves the splot and paints the rest of his house to fit all his dreams. One by one his neighbors try and persuade him to paint it back, but each time they go away and change their house to fit their dreams. The line goes, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.” I love it.

I think the book, and my family’s house, seem to capture some of what the journey is all about. We had a conversation about cool a week or two ago on here, and I think this is what I was thinking about when I wrote that post. I want to break away from the unspoken rules and restrictions that we place on ourselves to conform. It comes in all places and avenues of life, but one place it definitely comes is in what you and your stuff is supposed to look like. God created us and the things around us to bloom and blossom and encompass God’s dreams for us, which many times our the stifled dreams that resonate in our hearts. I want my house to look like that.

We don’t have a garage in our new home, just a gravel spot for a couple cars. Every time I pull up to the back of our house I see the big backside of our house and I picture a beautiful mural painted there. Art is an amazing thing (my brother understands it way more than I do). There is a couple large murals on the sides of buildings in our community, amazing pieces of work done by youth in the neighborhood through a summer arts program. I stopped by and talked to them the other day about allowing them to use our house as a canvas, they sounded interested. I was so giddy with excitement about the possibility I called my mom as soon as I walked out the door.

Enough rambling, I’ll give you more details as they work out. But I’ll leave you with this thought or encouragement, break free of the need to conform, paint your dreams, fulfill others dreams, leave your job or any commitments that are keeping you from doing what your called to do. This is your orange splot.

I went to a community meeting yesterday and got to hear the crime update from the Inspector Michael Martin who is the commander of the fourth precinct where I live. He comes to the Hawthorne Huddle every month and updates the community on the safety and crimes in the area, allowing himself to be accountable for what is and isn’t happening. Yesterday, he shared a interesting bit of news.

Currently in 2008, North Minneapolis has the lowest Crime Rate in Minneapolis (According to Part 1 crime stats, which are all the serious and likely to be reported crimes). It is 2+ months into the year, and it is cold outside, but those are the same factors for the rest of the city as well, downtown, south, East Bank, etc.

What’s unfortunate, is that you won’t find a newspaper story anywhere about this encouraging bit of information. Why not? Your guess is as good as mine. According to the media, North Minneapolis isn’t a real place with real people living there, it’s an archetype for an adventurous place where danger lurks around every corner. Reality shows are big on TV, so are action films and murder mysteries, so the newspapers and local news stations compete by creating North Minneapolis into their own reality adventure. Don’t look at the news and tell me you know anything about North Minneapolis.

Since I haven’t written any real blog posts in a week, it’ll take me a little bit to get back into the groove of things. With that said, I figure I could ramble about a few political thoughts. Don’t worry nothing inflammatory or profound here. Just random.

I’d really like to find a Christian who considers themselves a republican to dialog with. I realized when I started learning about politics (which wasn’t till about freshman year of college, and even then I didn’t know R from D, Left from Right or which animal was which), I never really gave the Republican view a chance to explain itself. I looked at my views as a Christian and then looked at the political views and being Republican just didn’t make sense to me. I don’t mean that as an attack, just my honest thought. So, what I’d love to do is be able to hear from someone about why the believe and support the political views that they do in light of Scripture. Not a debate, just me listening and asking questions for clarity. Just don’t know anyone… Any suggestions?

I’m interested in politics this year, but it seems to be for different reasons then four years ago. I’m still quite skeptical of the political parties, Democrats and Republicans specifically, I’m more of a third party guy. But, it’s exciting to me that for the first time in this countries history we could have a president who isn’t an old white guy. I’m trying to avoid any bandwagons, but that is exciting.

Local politics. Not that I’m interested in running, but for a variety of different reasons, I’ve been thinking about the impact of local political power. One of the council members for our neighborhood is Don Samuels, from what I’ve read and heard he’s a pretty awesome guy, and he happens to go to the same church as us.

Politics and Protest. I’ve attend my share of protests, not an insane amount, We don’t make cross-country road trips to break windows and get tear-gassed, but I have taken the opportunity to raise my voice (and sign) in solidarity with others to make our message known. The more I’ve done it the more I’ve realized how much creativity is lacking in the protest movements of the day. We need some inspiration from old school activist. Which reminds me of this awesome book I read a few years ago called Rules for Radicals.

Those are my political thoughts.

This is mostly a personal update. The weather has finally been beautifully nice up here, but the kiddo and I have been sick the whole time so we haven’t gone outside to enjoy it. Today, hopefully, we finally will. The sickness is mostly to blame for the lack of substantive postings, as well as some fun games of Scrabulous.

But, the real news is this. My friends, Daniel and Amanda, community members from Nashville, are going to be on the Oprah show today. So, find your TV mid-afternoon and enjoy. It’s channel 4 at 4pm here in Minneapolis. Check your local listings.

They’ve already got some great pictures and quotes on the Oprah website for you to check out.

Newlywed Freegans

Freeganism and Christian Values

Alright folks, the Giving Spree is on it’s way. Here’s the basic idea: Take your rebate check that you receive in May and do follow the purpose of spending it to stimulate the economy, but do it in a unique way, give it to meet the needs of others! Here’s some ideas:

• If your a teacher, or care about students, books and supplies for kids that need it.
• If you care about the environment purchase CFL light bulbs and give them away to people.
• or Purchase fair trade cloth bags and give them to people at the grocery check out.
• Take a homeless person asking for food out to a fancy restaurant, and order dessert.
• Host a Pizza Party in the park where lots of homeless people hang out.
• Buy Fair trade chocolate bars and give them away to people at a bus stop.
• What’s your idea?

If your interested in participating then click the link below and sign the pledge. The hope is to use a pledge to build some momentum to the Giving Spree. You are free to give money away even if we don’t reach the pledge numbers, and your also free to give away all of your rebate check. But either way, sign the pledge!

The description of the pledge reads:

Recognizing that the Economic Stimulus rebate checks we will receive in May sole purpose is to be spent to help stimulate the economy, we are willing to follow through, but not as expected.

In a prophetic statement against the rampant consumerist culture that we live in, as a declaration that more money and capitalism will not save us or our economy, and as a statement to those around us that we follow Christ’s teachings (Matt. 23) and the only true hope is through him,

We will take a large portion of these government issued checks and begin a ‘Giving Spree’ to meet the needs of those around us, pressing, important and immediate needs.

(if you think I should edit the text of the description in anyway, let me know.

So, if you’ve checked the news lately you’ve heard about this $168 Billion dollar ‘Economic Stimulus’ package that is supposed to help revive the economy. I’m not an economics expert by any means, so I’m not really interested in discussing those details just yet. Basically, the plan will in effect mean that I’m going to get a nice fat check from the government in May, a gift with the express purpose of ‘stimulating’ the economy. And here is my dilemma.

My family operates on a budget. We’ve looked at our finances, decided what was an appropriate amount to try and live on, and that is what we live by. What we do with the excess usually falls into some pretty boring categories, like paying off our debt. From what I’ve read, if everyone took the stimulus checks and paid down their mortgages, paid off outstanding debts, etc. then the goal of the whole deal would not be reached, it would basically flop. I’m not sure if that’s the case or not, but I do think the point is to use the money to stimulate the economy, i.e. spend it.

So, I run into two dilemmas as I think about this money, and I’m curious of your input.

1. Should we take this money and actually spend it on consumer goods? or just pay off debts?
2. If we spend it on consumer goods, how should it be factored into our budget? Shopping spree? Or giving spree?

Barack Obama’s Speech at Dr. King’s Church (34:00)

(ht. Keane)