The iconic 1967 film “The Graduate” shows Benjy frantically trying to locate the wedding of his girl friend about to marry someone else. He rushes to a students’ rental and confronts the suspicious landlord. Perhaps too well experienced with rowdy tenants, he comes up in Benjy’s face and demands, “Are you one of them outta-town agitators?”
It was a spoof, as was much of the film, of the life and times of the sixties, chiding the paranoia of establishment people threatened by anti-war and anti-racism youth. But as with all good humor, it had a base in reality. There were and still are real people who organize people for social causes. But because social reform usually requires offenders to stop offending, they are sometimes unwelcome. Why, recently Glenn Beck warned us to rid our churches of social justice proponents. You know what kind of trouble they make.
Come and meet some of them and see for yourself if they warrant the suspicion. They want to buy you breakfast. It is that time of year when I invite all my loyal readers to join me at the annual breakfast sponsored by Camden Churches Organized for People (CCOP). The folks who run CCOP will challenge your mindset if you think as the landlord, especially since they have earned the reputation of getting things done for the people of Camden when no one else can. This reputation stretches to Trenton and Washington.
What things? If you are not a city dweller, their accomplishments might make you wonder if people need to be organized to get them. Suburbanites generally are not afflicted by neighborhood shooting galleries or brothels because police there patrol against such public nuisances. Despite the many cop dramas on TV, police are not always there in real life to arrest drug merchants who furnish crash pads where urban and suburban junkies can shoot up or rent some carnal pleasure. Usually houses are not abandoned in the suburbs or ex-urbs, so there is no need to board up properties. City life is different, especially if you are talking about the city featured on “60 Minutes” several times, and not for having hosted Campbell Soup, RCA Victor or New York Ship Yards. CCOP has gotten thousands of abandoned Camden houses boarded up. And that’s just for starters.
Who gets organized? City residents who live there through it all. They have an interest in seeing to it that their streets are safe for themselves and their children, a desire most people feel. Who organizes them? Someone from out of town, trained in what motivates people, might come in and start the basic formation of an action group, but that is only temporary. He or she steps aside quite by design when the locals are ready to take over and have learned to knock on the right door at city hall. They stay long after the community organizer has left for a new city. CCOP’s leaders are the clergy and laity of the many faiths of Camden, united for the common advantage of people who may — or may not — go to any church or mosque or temple.
And they have accomplished much more than boarding up abandoned homes.
I invite all to the May 20 CCOP breakfast at Camden’s Riversharks Stadium and its Diamond Café at Campbell’s Field., 401 N. Delaware Avenue. It’s a good chance to get into the minor league stadium that brings so much baseball enjoyment all summer. The time is from 10 till 11:30. While it is free, you would make a base hit for CCOP if you brought your checkbook and used the confidential donation envelopes they leave on each table. Rutgers University’s Chancellor, Wendell Pritchett, is one of the dignitaries who will briefly address diners about the kind of good they see CCOP doing in Camden. Call 856-966-8869 weekdays to reserve a place for you and friends you might want to bring with you. It’s free, but they need you to reserve a seat.
Notwithstanding Glenn Beck, the care for people in society that Jesus showed outcasts and establishment types alike is a constituent part of the Gospel that proclaims Jesus. It is called the social gospel because it has to do with society, that community of all God’s people, even those who look different from us, or who have less, or who came from another country. Doing charity for them is something we do when we take up collections in church. But doing justice precedes any charity since it sees to the bare minimum everyone has because of their simply being human and therefore qualifying for human rights.
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