Coming Face to Face on US-Mex Border, Ethical Business, and Sustainable Economics

Last year, 2011, the Jubilee Community grew nicely as a web presence via this website, The Common Good Podcast, Facebook and YouTube. (Have you been part of it?)  Now we want to get familiar face to face too. In January 2012, we’ve begun new venues for getting together in person.

Another Perspective on Immigration

The year’d hardly begun before we co-hosted a gathering about the US-Mexican Border featuring author Lane Van Ham talking about his new book. Lane commented on the fertile, transformative, chaotic places that borders are as he introduced over 25 of us to his writing in A Common Humanity: Ritual, Religion, and Immigrant Advocacy in Tucson, Arizona. There he amplifies the voices of immigrant advocates as they imagine a world in which borders are perforated, and therefore differ greatly from any corporations, governments, and people who try to make them thick, dark lines. The book contrasts the expansionist and restrictivist views of borders that have operated throughout the several centuries of nation-states (since 17th century) and continue to ignite and excite today. Co-hosts Friends of Friendship Park (a border park compromised by the wall and border militarization) helped more of us come face to face with one another on these transformative themes.

Coff-Tea Time

Then on a Saturday afternoon fifteen of us gathered for a different kind of coffee break—a jubilee “Coff-Tea Time” at Cafe Virtuoso, an independent coffee and tea business that is 100% organic and 80% Fair Trade. Two guests from recent episodes of The Common Good Podcast were featured throughout the afternoon: Steve vonKolkow, part owner and virtuoso roaster at the shop, and Harry Watkins, from the business school at Point Loma Nazarene University where he has created a minor in sustainability and teaches the triple bottom line of profit, people, and planet. We heard no speeches; did no fundraising; but had lots of hang-out, animated conversation and lots of sippin’.  Goals that we met included (1) introducing new people to a local business dedicated to an ethical, sustainable business model (Cafe Virtuoso); (2) people who’d never heard of one another having the fun of finding new colleagues equally devoted to sustainable living, for example, some who’d never heard of the Catholic Worker movement met two residents of San Diego’s Catholic Worker House; (3) having the chance to talk to a business professor from an evangelical tradition who teaches that the bottom line must be about more than profit, that the planet and people must be included in a successful bottom line. Oh one more thing! Denys Horgan won the raffle and went home with a bag of Peruvian coffee.

If you missed out, you can still get in on what Steve vonKolkow and Harry Watkins were busy talking about all afternoon by going to the Common Good podcasts (linked to above) and listening to the programs on which they were interviewed. 

More face to face opportunities will be announced here on the blog and on Facebook in the near future. Hope to come face to face with you there.