Marching with the Mennonites

They came to town, six thousand of them: Mennonites. I know next to nothing about the Mennonites. My Uncle Harvey was a Mennonite, a fine man and a nice uncle to have. He died before I was old enough to ask him about his religion. I knew that they were mostly farm people, for peace no matter what, kind of like Amish but not as strict about cars, electricity, blue jeans.

I had heard that they were to be the first to use our new convention center. And I was informed that they wanted to demonstrate during their convention about the treatment of the homeless by the city. This struck me as an insult to us. I don’t mind being critical of the city, its my city. But outsiders here for whom we are host, pointing out our inadequacies? Didn’t sit well.

Sister Mary Scullion called me. Wanted me to be part of a demonstration she was organizing with the Mennonites. Would we make a hundred sandwiches? Would I speak? Would we support? I told her that there are only a few things I hate more than stewed tomatoes; demonstrations are one of them. Always so adversarial, Hell-No,-We-Won’t-Go- speeches; too many of them all bombast, righteous demands, and slogans, little thought. News people scud about hoping something outrageous happens. Weather's always bad.

I hold a belief that those of us who came of age in the sixties marching, chanting, demanding, made enemies of friends, broke faith with our fathers’ generation. We didn’t allow that they were trying to use their immense powers wisely. They sent 60,000 of their own sons off to die in some country whose name they couldn’t even pronounce on the flimsiest of reasons, The Domino Theory, for God’s sake. We exploded then in a rejection of everything they built and meant, and cared about. The demonstrations, the sex, drugs, music, hair; we drew borders, crossed them, and said good-bye. I felt then as Isaac under the upraised sword of Abraham - whatever it was that held the sword back, it was not my tears. We should have stayed and helped to find a way through it all. The breach of faith, the rejection - I wish that we had found some other way. I don’t think any of us were doing it very well then, no better than now.

But Scullion has no patience with my demons. "This is how we build up the community of faith and hope, Joe." Stand with one another, rich ,poor, farmers, well-scrubbed Nebraskans, and guys a day away from the streets trying to hang on. "Bring sandwiches."
At the demonstration I meet an older woman, Mrs. Kanagy. We are waiting for the march to begin, at the front of the new and handsome Convention Center. She is from the valley of the Willamette River, Oregon ( I imagine apple orchards, cool damp forests running up mountainsides, salmon and steelhead trout heading up the Willamette to spawn). She thinks Philadelphia is beautiful. I am proud. Later I see her again, the searing heat taking its toll on her, she is resting on a broken stoop of an abandoned house near sixteenth and Fairmount. Tending to her are two guys, graduate and residents of Rev Well’s One Day at a Time recovery program: guys stuck on the street until not too long ago. Behind me in the line of march a group of Mennonite teenagers, who could have been in the hotel pool instead are here, and they are singing hymns I’ve never heard before, voices only, with lovely complex harmonies making a prayer out of this uphill hot walk.

I listen to the speeches - too many of them, and too long, all of them. We have such a long way to go yet, but I’m glad to have gone whatever place we went this day with Mrs. Kanagy and with Tom Gaddy and Matt Creul. We can still find ways to further split the community over this Convention center - pushing the poor out of sight, or groveling before the International Conference of Louts - but we couldn't have given it a better start than to have it and us blessed by the convening of the Mennonites.

Joe Ferry, Bethesda