Letters from the Grate

Rosa Parks: An American Icon

Rosa Parks: Arrested and Finger-Printed

On December 21, 1956 Rosa Parks refused a "white man's" request to vacate her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.  This refusal became the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.  Nearly a half century later, Rosa Parks lay in State in the Nation's Capital. 

This unprecedented honor embodies tremendous signifance, not only for Rosa Parks, but for the entire Afro-American community and the Nation.  For through her stand, Rosa Parks came to symbolize the radiant beauty of human dignity and freedom, much in the same way as did Mother Teresa.  She ennobled Americans with the power of her example and the radiance of her presence.  She was God's gift to us all.  And she inspired each of us to work at healing the festering wounds that blight hearts and minds throughout the American landscape and the world.

A Vision for Rebuilding New Orleans

The following testimony was delibered by Wynton Marsalis at the Joint Hearings of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee and the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Mr. Marsalis' testimony was delivered on October 18, 2005.

A Vision and Strategy for Rebuilding New Orleans 

Wynton Marsalis, Jazz Master

Now the levee breach has been fixed. The people have been evacuated. Army Corps of Engineers magicians will pump the city dry, and the slow (but quicker than we think) job of rebuilding will begin. Then there will be no 24-hour news coverage. The spin doctors' narrative will create a wall of illusion thicker than the new levees. The job of turning our national disaster into sound-bite-size commercials with somber string music will be left to TV. The story will be sanitized as our nation's politicians congratulate themselves on a job well done.  Americans of all stripes will demonstrate saintly concern for one another. It's what we do in a crisis.

Katrina Blues

Daniel Kelley over at The Global Work-Ethic Fund has posted this image along with the caption "A Rising Tide Floats All Ships." 

Wasn't it Jack Kemp who said "a rising tide floats all boats?"  So much for the Calvinist theology of wealth creation! 

An Artist's Depiction

Martha, over at Martha's Art, has just posted her most current artistic project, a pen and ink drawing of two homeless individuals.  This drawing is based on a photographic image I took at the corner of 9th and "F" Street, N.W. in Washington, D.C. 

Entitled "Homeless People Together,"  this image reveals an aspect of homeless life that is often overlooked.  In America, we are conditioned to focus almost exclusively on the social and economic depravity of the homeless.  Yet, there is another story to be told.  This is the story of the dynamics of human relationships that bind homeless individuals to one another.  It is a story of love, compassion, understanding, and mercy.

For me, it was a a great thrill to be part of this artistic partnership -- using two distinct mediums to portray a common insight into the spirit of man.  I  salute Martha for her efforts.  Her work helps to tell this important and very human story.

Visit Martha's site and see her other drawings.  They include landscapes, watercolors, and colored pencil drawings.

Also, check out my photographic image "Homeless People Together" for a "comparative inspiration."

Homelessness in America: Part I

[On February 28, 1999, Gerald L. Campbell gave the first of four one hour lectures on Homelessness in America to a large audience in the main conference hall at St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas.  These lectures were delivered over a period of four consecutive Sundays leading up to and ending on Easter Sunday. The first lecture -- Part I, Individual Freedom and Community -- addressed the implications for national security of the specter of homelessness in America.  The second lecture -- Part II, The Nature of Homelessness -- articulates the spiritual dimension and root cause of homelessness.  The third lecture was a slide presentation of photographic images that he took of homeless persons residing on the streets of Washington, D.C.  This lecture was not recorded.  However many of the images presented can be seen here.  The final lecture -- Part III, The Unmet Need to Belong: A Unique Explanatory Perspective -- was delivered on Easter Sunday.] 

Homelessness in America:

Part I, The Elements of A National Security Challenge

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European empire, the United States towers above all other nations in economic, military, political, and cultural power.  Its influence is enormous and far-reaching.  To the world, America inspires a commitment to personal freedom, democratic values, and market economics.  At home, the economy is a powerful engine of opportunity, as scientific creativity and technological inventiveness ignite dreams for countless dreamers.  Thus it would seem the United States stands poised for a sustained period of prosperity and peace.

Yet such prospects are almost never certain.  Nor are they now.  For moral and spiritual disaffection is at work gnawing away at the foundation and strengths of American society.  People feel increasingly alienated for one reason or another, and this spiritual discontent contains the potential to undermine the magical allure which has traditionally endeared America to the world.

As foreign leaders look for inspiration -- as they seek to chart a course to the future -- America's example is showing signs of uncertainty and weakness.  The glaring inability to alleviate its own social failings has begun to cast a shadow over America's moral promise.  The danger is that such doubts may find increasing resonance with people around the world, perhaps even to the point of calling into question the legitimacy of liberal democracy.  Should that occur, competing views and forces would be strengthened.  And the stage would be set for America to become morally and spiritually isolated in a world that yields all too easily to turbulence and hostility.

Oddly enough, the astonishing specter of homeless individuals living on the streets of America symbolizes this latent security threat in a most unusual way.

Marriage: The Unmet Need to Belong

[The following testimony was presented by Gerald L. Campbell, President of The Impact Group, to the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate.  Hearings addressed the crisis of marriage, the family, and culture.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  It’s a great honor to be here today.

For over a quarter century, Americans have been generally quiescent as a crisis of marriage and the family has raged in silence across the land.  No longer can this dispassion stand firm.  The family is too troubled to concede such luxury.  Its structure is fragmented.  Its intrinsic dynamics have gone awry.  Its integrity labors under great stress.  That is our collective judgment today.  That is our collective fear.  And we struggle to make it otherwise.

I -- A Human Tale

Unquestionably, the story of this crisis is a sad tale.  The vast array of empirical evidence and information presented here today supports that conclusion.  But considered in isolation, scientific assessments portray a sterile and cold reality.  They sketch a crisis disengaged from freedom and dignity, an abstract reality without human personality.  Such is not the milieu of this crisis.  Much more is involved.  The individual is an organic unity, not a collection of discrete pieces.  It has a spiritual center – the person.

To appreciate the full significance of this story -- and to better transform a destructive energy into an ethos of reconciliation – we must explain why this crisis exists and what efficiency, or root cause, creates it.  Somehow we must be able to see beyond the labyrinth of quantitative data and objective correlations into a seething spiritual energy that flows quietly through the inter-subjective relationships of marriage and the family. 

Thomas and His Wife

I have a friend living on the streets of Washington, D.C..  His name is Thomas.  We've known each other since 1990.  Shortly after Thomas and I first met, he got married.  He and his wife lived together on the streets until her death in 1999.  Their residence was a series of abandoned buildings.  They moved from one building to another depending upon what was available.  Each was located within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol.

Thomas and His Wife --
Photo by Gerald L. Campbell

Over the years, Thomas and I shared many interesting experiences.  I remember one hot afternoon, he and I helped break up a knife fight that involved nine or ten street people.  This incident had its origins a few weeks earlier when one person broke trust with another -- a serious offense on the street.  Disrespect was allowed to simmer until it finally welled to violence.  When we arrived on the scene, the guy who had squandered his trust was in danger of being stabbed by a small group of angry people.  Indeed, they were very, very angry! 

Thomas and I struggled to separate him from the others by dragging his body into my Jeep and locking the door.  Yet, our effort wasn't as easy as it sounds.  Believe it or not, this guy actually wanted to fight.  He was frenetic with anger.  So there we were, Thomas and I -- struggling against the crowd and him both.  But we finallly succeeded.  And after getting ourselves safely inside the Jeep, we drove away.  Just in time, too!  For as we turned the corner at the end of the block, the police arrived on the scene with lights flashing and sirens blaring, as wary street people started running helter-skelter. 

Drama, it seems, has become the major stuff of police enforcement.  It never ceases to amaze! 

The Spirituality of Youth Violence

At 11:10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20th, 1999, gunshots rang out from Columbine High School killing twelve students, a teacher, and both assailants.  This gunfire reverberated across the nation like a mighty thunderclap.  It sounded a terror-stricken warning.  It awakened in the lives of countless individuals, families, and communities a truth forgotten, a weakness denied, an anguish concealed.  It unleashed a palpable fear that continues to hang over the nation.  Personal lives, everywhere, paused in suspension as hearts and minds resonated foursquare with the harsh moments of that mournful event.   

No doubt.  Columbine sent tremors throughout the country.  Like a sunlit meadow suddenly overrun by a raging mountain storm, the tranquility of trust became suffused with the wrenching uncertainty of distrust.  Existential angst seeped into our national consciousness.  We asked with uncertain expectation what dreadful journey led those boys to tear the social fabric and tear it so hideously.  We became fearful of what was going on in our own neighborhoods, in our own families, and with our own children.  We became suspicious of our children's actions and our children's friends.  We became frightful of the tribute that might accompany their attendance at school.  We wondered about our children's vulnerabilities and our powerlessness to intercede on their behalf.  We worried about the unknown and the brutal forces that range beyond our control. 

“What next?” became the chilling cry that clanged from the thunderous silence of our fears!

To Heal Spiritual Alienation

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European empire, the United States has become the undisputed economic, military, political, and cultural power in the world.  Abroad, America inspires a commitment to economic progress, individual freedom, democratic values, and peace that is shared in varying degrees by nearly all the peoples and nations of the world.  At home, America's economy continues to be an engine of opportunity and her technological inventiveness keeps on igniting dreams for countless dreamers.  Clearly, the United States stands poised for a new and dynamic 'golden age' full of opportunity, prosperity, and peace.

I -- Institutional and Moral Breakdown or A Crisis of the Spirit?

Nevertheless, the long-term prospects for a bright and auspicious future in America are far from guaranteed.  Dramatic changes in society are already threatening our way of life.  Over the past four decades, the U.S. has become the world's leader in most categories of social pathology.  Violent crime has increased sixfold since 1960.  Over one hundred thousand Americans have been murdered in the U.S. since 1990 -- almost twice

Peeling the Onion

I once took a portrait of an onion I had sliced in half.  All that was revealed in the image was the flat horizontal surface where the knife had made its cut.  Across that surface was revealed layer upon layer of rings.  Each ring got progressively smaller until at the center of the onion was its core.  From the core outward, each larger ring was wrapped around a smaller ring until finally the largest ring was encased by a skin. 

I always thought this was an interesting portrait, pregnant with insight.  It symbolized with graphic simplicity the difference between the outer and inner reality of each being.  Yet, this distinction between an outer and inner reality is one we generally have trouble appreciating.  We trust what we see, but we don't trust our ability to grasp a deeper, and more obscure, truth.  And even if we grasp certain qualities of this truth, we don't know what to do with them.  We tend to feel more comfortable with numbers, facts, and information, and mechanical explanations of events.  But to seek beyond the observable or the mechanical -- and to try to benefit from something intangible -- is less inviting.

Life on the street is like an onion.  It has many rings and it has a mysterious core.  But our understanding of the street never seems to penetrate beyond the skin or the outer ring.  For the most part, our understanding of street life is like that which comes from observing life inside a building we've never entered.  We imagine what's going on inside.  But we don't see the "rings".  We don't see the "core".  We only see what appears from the outside.  In truth, we don't know what is going on inside at all.  But we catalogue our observations nonetheless, and proceed to make judgments that can only be erroneous.  Yet, somehow we manage to convince ourselves that what is going on in there is what we know.  But it isn't.  And almost never do we meet serious challenge to our view.