Bang the drum-not
Walsh, Catherine
have known] .... We had other problems .... Neither one of us is REPORT FROM ALBUQUERQUE very religious," he added. "We were not before the war and we certainly didn't become religious after the...
...This days on and three days off, with a rotation from days to nights complaint and variations on it, expressed throughout the con- every thirty days...
...The rethe inadequacy of "representation" and metaphor and the dan- sult was a politically correct and spiritually bland weekend...
...Decatur is surrounded by miles women who, distancing themselves from much of their own of corn fields, and the Staley plant processes corn into a varicultural and religious traditions, were looking to fill the void...
...We were not before the war and we certainly didn't become religious after the war...
...The conversa- ty...
...The easy thing is for any government in trouble WOMEN-CHURCH IN THE DESERT to pick on someone...
...Show...
...Professor Laurie Clements of the whimsy of the Women-Church conference...
...And yet it does seem to me mies...
...I offer of Change," a conference held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it now, in conjunction with Paul Gediman's splendid essay (p.13) April 16-18...
...He claims to a head during the final session when a Native American told the company also swept away seniority rights, rights which white women carrying drums, "Put them down...
...they were as miraculously preserved from the flames as Daniel, Women were encouraged, however, to bring drums from as inexplicably brought back to life from certain death as home and to learn from the spiritual journeys of those differLazarus, and as improbably summoned to America, and into my humdrum suburban existence as was Mary summoned by that importuning angel...
...Staley spokesman, J. Patrick But a number of minority women grew increasingly un- Mohan, agrees that the dispute is not about wages...
...so, it did not avoid controversy...
...In some real sense, my very ordinary American children, like their mother, have also been plucked from the oblivion the world once intended for their grandparents...
...He says it comfortable with the role the conference had thrust upon them...
...But as Linda Simunek, a Filipina woman SPLITTING FAMILIES who spoke on education, noted, the sea of white faces in front of her were "different from mine...
...It seemed that along with the much publicized decision a fact, not a metaphor or an idealization, that my wife's par- by the organizers not to celebrate a Catholic Mass, a more trouents walked into a lion's den, were thrown into a fiery furnace, bling and perhaps less conscious decision had been made to and quite unexplainably walked out again...
...No less daunting a question was asked by tion above, which I recorded several years ago, was the only the organizers of "Women-Church: Weavers time we've talked in any detail about how they survived...
...Mohan, who is also executive vice-president, says the combright strips of cloth were provided so women could symbol- pany merely eliminated "antiquated work rules," which enabled ically weave their dreams into the basket's frame...
...At a focus session on African-American women and the church, Danny Wirges, AIW regional director, argues that the comone black woman expressed surprise and discomfort at seeing pany isolated workers from their families when it "radically so many white women present...
...During the closing ceremony at applied the "norm in the continual processing industry"-inthe nearby Civic Plaza, the basket was symbolically burned as dustrial plants that work around the clock-to the Decatur fasome women danced around it waving orange streamers...
...Holocaust Memorial Museum, as further reflec- women of other races and religions, organizers of the event downtion on the difficulties of placing these horrors in any kind of played its Catholic roots, and embraced an agenda promoting moral context...
...When asked for a percentage breakdown of not the content of a testimony, but rather the product of repro- Catholics and non-Catholics in attendance, Sylvia Cancio, a conduction...
...dition even while expanding it...
...I don't want to offend you," he said...
...be at the A.E...
...CATHERINE WALSH American, Hispanic, Euro-American, and lesbianlbisexual- Catherine Walsh is an assistant editor at St...
...He says management's offer merely of loved ones on the basket...
...Staley Manufacturing Company in Women of color had been put in the role of teachers by white Decatur, Illinois...
...Seemingly anything University of Iowa, who has surveyed the union officers at other could go into making the basket...
...Jesus was a Jew, right...
...The Jew, engendered by a Jew, attests his belief by ference planner and Cuban-American from Cincinnati, Ohio, continuing to procreate the Jewish people...
...Even ger of using the Holocaust "to affirm some transcendent ideal...
...Each and every life is rescued from a tumult of impossibilities, and some lives, mysteriously, are rescued again and again...
...battles over toys or games, and where the possibilities of human In an attempt to appeal to everyone and offend no one, ritugoodness and evil seemed exhausted by the moral complexi- als, prayers, and worship services focused on an undefined deity...
...I'm just trying to understand the fact of it...
...To weave something try...
...serve to limit managers' favoritism and arbitrariness, and gutWomen had been invited at the beginning of the conference ted employee rights to union representation to settle grievances...
...ety of chemicals and sweeteners for industry...
...Catholic bishops' call for "Putting Children and Perhaps the blistering final session, in which minority wo- Families First" (Origins, November 28,199 1) may men excoriated the conference's latent racism, was inevitable...
...It is not my place to make a religious or transcendent claim about this...
...It is also a fact that avoid expressing Christian beliefs...
...there is certainly nothing otherworldly about it...
...So you tell me, where does the Virgin Birth come How can women roll back patriarchy and tackin...
...the hopes, dreams, and be- corn wet-milling plants in the United States, says the Staley liefs of women from many different walks of life could all fit offer was anything but the norm...
...PAUL BAUMANN 6: 4 June 1993 Commonweal ent from themselves...
...women and nuns, mostly middle-class and middle-aged), yet Beyond silence there is, I think, the Jewish theologian Franz there was a marked discomfort with Catholic identity, symbols, Rosenzweig's often quoted remark: "The belief [of a Jew] is and language...
...ties of "The Wide World of Sports" and the "Dick Van Dyke That deity dwells within women, heals and empowers them...
...They are always out of sync culture to expropriate exotic aspects of their spiritualities came with their families and the rest of the community...
...Wirges says that means workers do not have ference by minority women, over the tendency of the dominant the same days off each week...
...There is a tendency among all people in the world-people are cruel, not just BANG THE DRUM-NOT the Germans...
...Their dispute with cause they believe the church "is bankrupt morally, financial- management is not about wages, but about being a part of their ly, and theologically...
...Minority women were highly visible as keynote speakers and SPLITTING SHIFTS workshop presenters...
...diversity," said Adrian Dominican Sister Jamie Phelps, a conference planner and African-American theologian from Chicago...
...Anthony in an attempt "to bring women together across a great deal of Messenger and a free-lance writer...
...Twigs and grasses, yarn and Lyle...
...basket was actually burned a week later for the purpose of "re- Union consultant Ray Rogers, however, says Staley was alleasing the energy of women's dreams into the universe...
...The cility so that it could be "competitive...
...participants it to replace the old agreement of 160 pages with a "modern could also choose to put personal items, letters, and the names agreement" of 17 pages...
...Though Simunek eventually received a standing ovation, her approving words for military women who put their bodies on the line "to free Kuwait" were greeted with a loud murmur of The first major union battle to take up the American disapproval...
...The conference was organized around yet what it really believes and thus its long-term impact is still six "threads"-Native-American, African-American, Asian- a matter of conjecture...
...He went on...
...As theologian Mary Hunt told the National Catholic Reporter, The 730 workers at the plant are members of the Amalmany Catholic women were exploring other spiritualities be- gamated Industrial Workers, Local 837...
...Their answer was unity...
...The new work schedule, in particular, was one of the worst that endures-like a Navajo rug-requires faithfulness to a tra- aspects of the Staley offer...
...in discussing what kind of conference this is...
...ready competitive, providing Tate & Lyle with one-third of its This colorful, chaotic basket seemed finally to capture the $400 million profit in 1991...
...That's where the problem is...
...I am sympathetic to Gediman's worries about the "spirituality of women" and liberal social change...
...Not at all, I assured him...
...is about competitiveness and corporate consistency...
...Yet silence, as Gediman explains, risks a kind of idolatry as The majority of the 2,500 participants were Catholic (la)cwell...
...I have little experience of persecution or of suffering, There was little talk about Jesus Christ or loving one's enelet alone of desperation and killing...
...The fact of the existence of these children in this world of "Sesame Street," Cub Scouts, and Bill Clinton, makes the Incarnation and the Massacre of the Holy Innocents more, not less, real...
...Women-Church hasn't defined But Mohan says the schedule is not a problem because manCommonweal 4 June 1993: 7...
...REPORT FROM THE PLANT FLOOR Sister Phelps warned that "charting new waters" of cross-cultural dialogue would not be easy, and she was right...
...And it wasn't just the faces...
...To me this is a fairy tale...
...Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, were Jews...
...When I look at my children, I know in a most tangible way what Rosenzweig meant by the persistence of belief...
...and end in creating something new...
...families and communities...
...I can see my father-in-law raising a very skeptical eyebrow at this...
...to participate in the weaving of a large basket set up in the Staley is a subsidiary of the British conglomerate, Tate & Albuquerque Convention Center...
...Religion, he added, was part of history, that's all...
...In an effort to include on the U.S...
...They were horrified," he says...
...The word `Catholic' I was brought up in a world where cruelty was confined to in this context denotes religious imperialism...
...She wanted to know why no restructured the work week" in March, shifting it from regusessions had been planned where women of color could "air lar eight-hour shifts to twelve-hour shifts at straight time, three our dirty laundry without our white sisters listening in...
...But the true value of the "It is a major, major step backward for workers in the indusbasket may have been sentimental only...
...le seemingly insurmountable social problems My in-laws are reticent when speaking about their experi- including sexism, racism, violence, and poverences during the war, and I do not press them...
...His belief is not in said: "We refuse to use the terms `Catholic' and `non-Catholic' something: he is himself the belief...
Vol. 120 • June 1993 • No. 11
