What a fruitful few months we’ve been having! Between building community and resisting the filthy rotten system here, there and everywhere we've been staying busy.
Our St. Louis Catholic Worker debut party was a ton of fun! On the eve of the Catholic Worker movement’s 90th birthday, roughly 60 folks showed up to get to know us and each other through breaking bread together. A big thanks to our friends of the Sophia House community for hosting us and especially Annie who’s wonderful work hosting earned her the moniker of “first volunteer.”
Soon after Chrissy sped off to Indiana to help host a conference as part of her work with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
Theo soon followed, heading out on his 3 month adventure visiting the Catholic Worker communities of Europe (with a stop at the New York City CWs on the way). Starting with the annual European Catholic Worker gathering, he then traveled all over the northwest corner of the continent finding himself in The Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK, and even northern Sweden! The conclusion of his travels saw him protesting US nuclear sharing at Dutch and German NATO bases and his arrests there earned him a one year ban from traveling in Europe.
While he was away Lindsey and Chrissy continued fostering what has already become a loving extended support community for a Catholic Worker in St. Louis. Big thanks to Mary, James, Virginia, and Tim who have all been involved in previous Catholic Worker manifestations in St. Louis and who hosted the potluck at the end of July. We’re feeling lucky to have found so much love and excitement for this blossoming project.
In September the three of us traveled up to the annual “Sugar Creek” Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering in the middle of nowhere Iowa. Our trio cooked a tasty dinner for the congregated CWs, shared about war tax resistance 101, and played some serious soccer. Our friends Ellen and Shane of Pacific, MO decided at the gathering to officially start claiming the name `Catholic Workers’ and decided to call their already bountiful homestead the Ozark Foothill Catholic Worker Farm. We feel lucky to have our very own CW farm friends right in our backyard. Especially since Shane’s greatest passion seems to be growing garlic!
After discerning amongst our community, September had Theo volunteering with the Community Peacemaker Teams and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. Alongside such groups, he worked to support Apache Stronghold’s struggle to prevent their sacred land at Oak Flat from being turned into a copper mine. While traveling to their training in Arizona he caught covid and got stuck in Tucson! Our Apache partners called for folks to pray in their own ways and places. So on Nov. 4 us St. Louis Catholic Workers hosted a small prayer service at Tower Grove Park’s Lily Pond shelter.
In October, Chrissy and Theo joined our friends from the Interfaith Committee on Latin America to support indigenous Guatemalans who are demanding an end to the attempted coup in their country and that Bernardo Areévalo be sworn into office. Thanks to our friends at Stomp the World, we also hosted a roundtable discussion on Cop City in Atlanta in October.
With the invasion of Gaza all of us and many of our friends have been in the streets regularly calling for a cease fire. Theo and Lindsey joined in with folks from a variety of organizations including the St. Louis Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Dissenters, and Resist STL to block the entrance to Boeing’s St. Charles factory where many of the bombs that destroyed hospitals are made.
While they were doing this action Chrissy was off to New York for another war tax resistance conference (it turns out they hadn’t stopped using half our tax dollars to pay for war since May). As soon as she was back all three of us traveled to Atlanta to support the Block Cop City mass action. It was awesome to meet so many folks who envision a future full of forests instead of police! Unfortunately, it was Chrissy’s turn to catch covid out of town, leading us to postpone our discussion of Pope Francis’s Laudate Deum.
Theo then returned to Oak Flat to accompany the land defenders there. The day after traveling back from Atlanta he flew to Phoenix for a couple weeks, missing Thanksgiving (much to his mother’s shagrin) but confident in the work of battling settler-colonialism. Since May, Lindsey has continued to support our recently housed friends through her work at Assisi House. This has looked like many things - from getting folks into housing who were sleeping outside, a pumpkin party, as well as numerous moments accompaniment in emergency rooms, doctor’s offices, and bureaucratic phone calls.
Maybe that’s all the big exciting stuff but our days have been full of all the less glamorous CW work we do in our everyday lives too. Drinking coffee, praying rosaries, handing out supplies to folks living on the street, leading war tax resistance classes, meeting, supporting recently housed friends; these are what really make up the day to day lives of CWs. We hope by the next time you read we’ll be doing more of the same, but this time with our very own CW house.
"Have you found a place yet? I know someone with nowhere to stay.” “I wish the Catholic Worker in St. Louis was up and running, I’m aware of a mother and daughter in need of housing for a few nights.” Ever since we announced our plans to open a new Catholic Worker house in the St. Louis area we’ve received inquiries like these. We live in a world where a handful of billionaires control as much wealth as 4 billion people and so people go without housing, without food and water, without healthcare. People die. In our own city those without housing have slept on the very doorstep of city hall, until they were unceremoniously evicted. Our city government mirrors that of our state and federal counterparts, they do not want to be confronted with these problems, they do not want to see the sufferers of an uncaring and inhuman system, but they are unable if not unwilling to offer any real and humane solutions. We at the budding St. Louis Catholic Worker know we cannot help everyone...