Politics at St. Patrick's

With the upcoming election, politics is definitely a word that is being thrown around a lot. When I hear it, the most obvious definition that comes to mind is anything concerned with the governmental elections. Besides that, there is a more broad definition that can be meant when politics is used, and that is when someone tries to gain a higher position in some organization. When I use the word, I could be using it to describe the presidential election, or maybe the actions that someone is taking to become the president of a club at Loras. It can be used in a variety of ways, and that has been apparent so far at the suppers that I help out with at St. Patrick’s.

After hearing about the Catholic Worker houses that Dave McDermott has worked at in class on Monday, we got the impression that there is almost no politics at the Catholic Worker house, as pretty much everyone works together to make all decisions. It seems to be the same way at St. Patrick’s, especially the first two weeks when local parishes were in charge of the suppers. Whenever a decision needed to be made, like when the mashed potatoes were edible, for example, a group of people would discuss it and make a decision. There is one worker who’s there every week and I seem to get the impression that he would be in charge if ever needed, but so far, he hasn’t ever had to stop in and make any big decisions. This past week, though, a local union from Dubuque organized the supper instead of a parish. While once again no one person was in charge of everything, there was definitely a marked difference in how the supper was organized. It was set up just like a factory, with each person doing their own job. The atmosphere was a lot quieter and less enjoyable. When it came to politics, each person more or less made their own decisions, and things went faster because there was no debating.

Concerning the definition of politics dealing with the governmental elections, I did notice that the presidential election is a very hot topic among the people that attend the suppers. Throughout the tables the last couple weeks, I have heard a lot about why each person supports a particular candidate. I didn’t really pick up on any trend for either Obama or McCain or any common issues at hand, but I did talk to one woman who had a very biased perspective of the candidates because of her background. She was raised on a small farm in Iowa, and has been around whites her whole life, so when it came to this election, she was clearly against Obama solely because of his race. She even went as far as to say that this country would become the “United States of Africa” if he was elected. While I didn’t hear any other reasons as extreme as that one for a particular candidate, it was clear that they were very interested in the election. I would guess that their interest is in the hope of the next President being able to help out the lower class more, and enable these individuals to get their life back on track. As a result, I’m anxious to hear their thoughts on the election as it continues to approach, since some of them are very informed on why they would vote for someone, while others (the woman mentioned) clearly are not voting on the issues at hand. The supper on the day after the election could be a very interesting night as I will be able to get their reaction to the election results.

The impression that I’m getting from Ellison about politics is that in nearly all of the organizations mentioned, it seems like there was one person clearly in charge, and the others were all below him. Whether it was Bledsoe at the college, any of the contacts in New York the narrator was sent to, or Kimbro at the paint factory, there was always one person who made all the decisions, and the politics involved was everyone below him trying to strategize and work their way up to that position at some point. Bledsoe even talked about that to the narrator when talking about how powerful he was in the position he had worked his way up to, and that he didn’t ever want to give up that power. In addition, a white person always was in power unless it was an all-black organization, like the union or the college.

It seemed like Ellison was trying to emphasize how one person held all the power, and everyone else just wanted to get to that position, unlike today, where there isn’t any power figure at St. Patrick’s, as the decisions are all made as a group. I’m curious to see if the role of politics is any different when I work with another different organization at St. Patrick’s each of the next two weeks, since different organizations organize the supper each week of the month, and the union supper was definitely different from the other suppers.