MOBILE SANCTUARY PROJECT

My earliest childhood memory is of drawing an octopus on a piece of paper that felt, to me (from my diminutive perspective), to be the size of a refrigerator. The drawing was used, as I would years later learn, as a poster for a political rally in support of tenant’s rights that my mother had helped organize, with the octopus representing the long evil tentacles of Mt. Sinai Hospital, the slumlord who’s policies my mother was protesting. Mt. Sinai had apparently bought up as much of the property in Spanish Harlem, our home turf, as they could with the intent of converting low-rent apartments into luxury condos. Though many of the apartments in the neighborhood, including ours, were rent-controlled, Mt. Sinai was working feverishly behind the scenes to lobby our representatives to overturn or soften the rent-control laws, while simultaneously trying hard to persuade the local residents to vacate their homes with “generous” buyout offers which were, as you might have guessed, well below the actual value of the apartments. Mt. Sinai Hospital was also, not incidentally, where I was born (It was, to say the least, a complicated childhood).

Suffice it to say I did not conceive of the idea to use an octopus as a metaphor for slumlord corruption. The inspiration for the poster likely came from my father, a photographer and graphic designer. Our apartment was decorated with his eclectic collection of visually dynamic and whimsical pieces in a range of media, one of which was a large framed print expressing solidarity with the Chilean people following the 1973 military coup of their popular socialist president, Salvador Allende. The poster’s main graphic was a simple painting in primary colors produced apparently by a child, depicting bombs being dropped out of a plane flying above a large red castle-like structure (likely the iconic Castillo Hidalgo in Santiago, Chile’s capital city). I can easily imagine my father recognizing the powerful and persuasive impact of depictions of oppression and violence by the most innocent victims of such horrific experiences, and suggesting to my mom that a poster drawn by me might have a similar impact on the local housing issue. 

My mother’s interest in activism was as much informed by family history and identity as it was by the zeitgeist of the era, the early 70s. As Jews of Russian dissent, my mother’s family was radicalized by the Russian Revolution. For us that translated not only into adopting a strong anti-capitalist and pro-socialist ideology but also into a tribal identification with the mythology of the movement. We were (and largely remain) not only card-carrying, but also flag-waving, socialists. The revolution’s “Founding Fathers” for example (Marx, Lenin, Engles, Trotsky, and even the brutal Stalin) were elevated to near saint-like status in our family, and remain perched on a pedestal even to this day. And, as with all fundamentalism, any critiques of the “religion,” no matter how benign, was, and is, met by emotionally charged suggestions of betrayal. “We are Bolsheviks!” my mother used to remind me, referencing the storied revolutionary fighters that overthrew the Czar, any time I tried to engage her in a sober, dispassionate discussion about the pros and (heaven forfend) cons of the Soviet Union. “Don’t ever forget that!”

It was only a short time after I drew that octopus protest poster that my mother wound up living on the streets, although it wasn’t Mt. Sinai’s long corrupt tentacles that dragged her away from us. The narrative at the time was that my mother was suffering from “mental illness,” more specifically Paranoid Schizophrenia. When I got older and learned more details about my family history, I realized that my mother’s so-called paranoia likely had roots in trauma. I learned, from pained and hesitant accounts by my mother and her sister, that behind the aggrandized Bolshevik mythology was a very horrific history of terror inflicted upon our family by the Russian pogroms, waves of anti-semitic violence that lead to the death and diaspora of thousands of Jews at the turn of the 19th century. Our family came to the United States during one such wave. The shocking details of what they experienced in the “old country,” and the subsequent isolation and disorientation they experienced when they resettled in Brooklyn, illuminated for me the long chain of suffering they endured. Cast in that light, my mother’s brokenness looked much less like some kind of biochemical or genetic pathology, and much more like oppression’s multi-generational legacy of pain and suffering. 

In the decades my mother spent on the streets, I bore witness to, and heard her complain about, the harsh treatment she received in most public spaces. From ubiquitous leery stares to frequent taunts, hostile slurs, and law enforcement who generally viewed her as an impermissible intrusion no matter the locale, my mother endured a near daily assault of intolerance. There was one place, however, in which she was always welcomed and warmly received: the Catholic Worker’s “Mary House,” a multi-service facility self-described as a “soup kitchen and hospitably center” on the lower east side of Manhattan.

I visited my mother frequently at Mary House. The space was airy and open with the indigent guests coming and going with ease and without judgement. In addition to serving food and providing sanctuary, they offered beds and showers to those in need and catered primarily to women. The Catholic Worker movement is also deeply aligned with social justice. Not surprisingly, my mother spent a significant amount of time there. And, not surprisingly, when I visited her at Mary House our experience together was palpably more intimate than when we met in more rough and raw locales. The warm embrace of the environment allowed us both to relax and to connect more fully with ourselves, and each other. Our encounters at Mary House were never what one could call “normal,” but the space did allow us to have moments, bitter sweet though they were, to connect as mother and son. 

There was, however, one aspect of the facility that she found less-than ideal: Catholic Worker’s Mary House is, as the name suggests, a faith-based facility. While there was never any preaching, the shelter was humbly decorated with dusty paintings of crucifixes and saints and littered with pamphlets, flyers, and even a self-published newspaper, that espoused the Christian faith. Not exactly a selling point for a militant Bolshevik who considered religion, to her dying breath, “the opiate of the masses.”  It is a testament (so to speak) to the genuine warmth of those that served there that my mother considered Mary House her most favored stomping ground despite its overtly religious character.

Shortly after my mother’s death in 2005, I relocated to Albuquerque New Mexico and started providing service for, and advocacy on behalf of, my brothers and sisters on the streets in various ways. In part because of the compassion my mother received at Mary House, I began volunteering at Grace Meal, a downtown soup kitchen based out of a local Methodist Church. While not nearly as radical in its politics or its hospitality as Mary House, the spot provides much needed respite for the homeless and is a relatively warm and welcoming environment.

Like Mary House, however, Grace Meal is a faith-based service and, as such, is not entirely free of conditions. Preaching is, mercifully, restricted by virtue of the stipulations that go along with receiving federal funding, however with its gospel music repertoire and stained glass iconography, Grace Meal is unmistakably Christian. Not a problem, of course, for those that identify with the faith and culture, however given the limited food and community options available in the area to those on the streets, there is little doubt that we are serving guests who would just assume not consume Jesus along with their meal, if they had their druthers. And given the rather complex, and not altogether glorious, history that the church has had with the First Nation peoples, who are a significant portion of the New Mexican population and, by extension, the Grace Meal demographic, it is reasonable to assume we have Native American guests who feel a fair bit of discomfort while eating their complimentary lunch.

In the years since my mother’s death I have meditated off and on about this notion of “sanctuary” space. Though I am not the militant atheist my mother was I do share with her serious reservations about organized religion, however the Mary House and Grace Meal experiences have opened in me a respect for religious institutions, at least in so far as they tend to be the social entities that carve out arenas of dignity for those otherwise outcast in the community. I have wondered, over the years, if there could be spaces that can provide “sanctuary” to the vulnerable without the religious conditions that may provoke discomfort in some. The issue is not the presence of religion per se in these spaces, it’s the imposition of a particular ideology, along with associated cultural trappings, upon the multi-cultural guests of these spaces, most of whom have no choice but to accept what is being imposed upon them given their vulnerable condition. Other spaces, such as community centers, can, and sometimes do, provide a similar service, and ostensibly don’t include the ideological and cultural impositions that religious services do. However serving the vulnerable is usually an overt, and collectively understood, mission of religious institutions (even if they often hypocritically fail to practice what they preach) and as such they have been granted at least some license within the community to serve the vulnerable. Whereas secular spaces, especially those that are publicly funded, can face more “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) pressure to restrict access to more marginalized (read as more dangerous) members of the community. 

The fruit born of this years-long meditation, The Mobile Sanctuary concept, is in essence about keeping the best of what Mary House and Grace Meal (and similar such places) have to offer while removing the culture-based conditions, inherent in those and other faith-based sanctuary spaces, that are unnecessary and contrary to the ideal of creating a truly welcoming space. The idea is to strip a sanctuary space down to the core features that nurture and facilitate a sense of personal dignity, tranquil centering, and community building, while recognizing that certain constraints (size, safety, time restrictions, etc) will likely prevent it from attaining platonic perfection. A mobile structure may, additionally, side-step the NIMBY issue that permanent stationary spaces face, by virtue of not being a fixed presence within any one community. Mobility could also provide additional benefits. A mobile sanctuary could, for example, offer the capacity to quite literally “meet the homeless where they are,” rather than forcing them to trek, along with their cumbersome personal possessions, to stationary spaces that, given their rare presence within most communities, often represent logistical challenges for many on the streets. I would make an esoteric argument, as well, that a mobile sanctuary represents a more “simpatico” service by mirroring a homeless person’s more nomadic reality, and as such could subtly communicate empathy in a way that stationary sanctuary spaces (which conversely reflect and elevate the predominant community value of permanent residency)  can’t. 

The project is also about sparking a dialog within the community about the nature and causes of homelessness. A mobile sanctuary, and other such services of mercy, can relieve suffering and provide a modicum of dignity for a hurt and oppressed population. However, for a deeper and more lasting impact, the social inequities, injustices, and prejudices that promote and exacerbate homelessness need to be challenged. It is the hope and expectation that the mobile sanctuary, as an unusual and highly visible new feature on the urban landscape, can trigger curiosity and, by extension, facilitate a much needed conversation about homelessness and the related, and interrelated, issues the subject literally embodies in our most marginalized and vulnerable brothers and sisters.

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