Based on responding to questions from a Jesuit scholar, here is a discussion regarding the nature of & relationship between the solidarity work of GSC & USAS and the Jesuit mission of Georgetown University. It’s important to note that these are just initial thoughts from one GSC member, which as a group encompasses a very diverse crowd. This is meant simply to be articulation of perspective.

peace,

Marley

January 2010

Of the Ignatian values set forth by the University, we often focus on the following:

• Faith and Justice
• Women and Men for Others

GSC often calls on the Administration (as much as or more often than calling on the student body) to uphold these sentiments that are considered to be the core of our experience here. There is a very extensive Center for Social Justice on campus, which runs predominantly direct service projects that provide necessary services to particular groups in DC and around the country; these projects serve an important goal of raising awareness and addressing the symptoms of injustice in our communities (hunger, illiteracy, etc) as well as creating long-term change by shaping the consciousness of students at Georgetown. I think that GSC serves the community in an equally important and very distinct way by addressing the causes and underlying structures of injustice, such as (to name only a few) the lack of a living wage, or the embedded racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination which breed poverty and inequality.

The University administration, as demonstrated in its historical and continued reluctance to implement social change without strong student pressure, needs us to remind it periodically that this more structural interpretation of justice & service is central and necessary to our campus community’s vision of Ignatian solidarity and spirituality. In short, we find it extremely relevant and appropriate to align the justice of USAS with the justice of Ignatian values.

• “Cura Personalis” (care of the person)

To give a recent example of the connection to Cura Personalis, I would refer you to our recent open letter to President Jack DeGioia regarding the low wages and high turnover of our Department of Public Safety officers (the full letter can be found as an entry on the main website):

“Georgetown claims to address and care for all of the aspects of its students, cultivating and nurturing the heart, spirit, and body as well as the intellect. We must expand this understanding not only to the well-being of all of the person, but to the institution itself: We cannot have a safe, thriving University campus without caring for all of its interdependent members. If one group is neglected and abandoned, the entire community suffers the consequential injury to the common good.”

GSC over its long history has grown to work in solidarity with an incredibly wide variety of communities on a number of different scales: We have the history of the Living Wage here on campus to get the workers who care for us decent living conditions and the right to freely associated; we have been involved with regional campaigns such as the HEI campaign in Northern Virginia, which is being conducted by the UNITE-HERE Union; we just got back from the (inter)national protest of the School of the Americas (”WHINSEC”) and are also a chapter of the Student Farmworker Alliance, a national coalition of students dedicated to supporting the efforts of farmworkers to improve working conditions in the fields of Florida; and we were the fourth of over a hundred Universities to actively work on USAS’s incredible Russell Athletic campaign by hosting the touring workers from Honduras and cutting our contract with Russell due to its deplorable treatment of workers in Central America.

Also, we find it of equal importance to support the campaigns and struggles of ally groups working to end oppression in society. On campus, for example, we work closely with MEChA (the Latino/Chicano student group), GU Pride, the NAACP, United Feminists and other groups to support each other.

This diversity of issues has sometimes been criticized and mischaracterized as a lack of direction. I think this diversity is healthy and reflects a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of solidarity work; every scale and struggle is important, and what’s more, they all interrelate and often stem from the same root causes of discriminatory practices. At times, we engage with a lot of campaigns at once, and other times, we focus our energy on one campaign only. Furthermore, being a consensus-based, non-hierarchical group, I would maintain that we have a constructive and collective struggle to balance different campaigns and different perspectives. In turn, these aspects of GSC fuel our motivation, given that there is constant activity, and that everyone has a voice in the decision-making. More concretely: I think that if we had set leaders, a set constitution, or permanently articulated, specific goals or campaigns, it would hinder our work and dampen our effectiveness and versatility.

To quote the Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” Given (a) the broad range of issues that we work on, and (b) the fact that we assertively challenge communities to address underlying structures which involve all of us as responsible actors in a system of inequity and intolerance, there can be a fairly antagonistic perception of GSC’s work. Our campaigns can deliberately disrupt the status quo – or at the very least, raise consciousness about the aspects of it which are identified as contributing to injustice – and that is sometimes interpreted by students, administrators, companies, and other larger communities/observers as destructive as opposed to constructive. This is an unfortunate and inaccurate understanding of our campaigns and history, which (as I conceive them) genuinely seek to build alternative structures and ways of relating to one another that generate compassion and prioritize human dignity and equality over silence.

“Institutionally, departmentally and personally, we’ll ask ourselves ‘how do I measure up [to Jesuit values]?’ Inevitably we will never measure up perfectly because in each new moment, new challenges and new realities help us realize that we need to re-appropriate these values continuously.”

“How we deal with our deficiencies and our failures to live out our values … will say a lot about the quality of the community we’re forming at the university.”

–Fr. Philip Boroughs, S.J., the head of Mission & Ministry at Georgetown