Roomin' House Blues

One of the greatest looming crisis in the world today is the global water shortage. Both secular and religious social justice advocates are concerned with this and Catholics in particular are applying CST (Catholic Social Teaching for my non-Catholic friends) to this. I have always been concerned with inequality and it's savage effects, as a Catholic child, as a fallen away Catholic, and as a returned Catholic. But returning late in adulthood, and studying CST I have gained a entirely new set of tools to use on this problem. I thank my old Santa Cruz friend Kim MacKay for this article and here is my take: Water is becoming a a point of conflict between global capitalism and the poor of the world. It is being treated as private property of investors. Catholic social teaching starts with certain simple premises: the dignity and right to survive of every human being, The "universal destination of goods" (that the good things of the earth are ultimately everyone's, ...

To give drink to the thirsty is one of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy I mentioned yesterday. ( http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2011/04/corporal-and-spiritual-works-of-mercy.html )  I have written about water before. ( http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/12/water-fountains-job-applications-and.html ) This article on the NPR website show that water is a big issue politically, scientifically and on a personal level.    The Worldwide 'Thirst' For Clean Drinking Water : NPR

I love water fountains, not only because I get thirsty, but because they are a visible symbol of shared humanity.  A water fountain says that someone is going to come this way and say I thirst, just like Christ did on the cross and I have provided for this person I never met.  I planned it when I built this building, or when I paved this sidewalk. The right of everyone to drink from a water fountain regardless of color became a battle line in the Jim Crow South at the peak of the civil rights movement. It was a central point of humanity that everyone had the same need for water and to deny it was to deny human dignity. I got upset at Seattle's Mayor Greg Nichols when he had the water fountains in Seattle's downtown shut off to save money on the city budget.  It made downtown a little less human.  It said I don't care if another human being is thirsty.   When Seattle's new Mayor, Mike McGinn had the water fountains turned back on I was happy.  I ma...