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San Francisco, Calif., Jul 30, 2020 / 11:04 am (CNA).- San Francisco’s first Black firefighter, a Catholic convert whose faith helped him endure years of racial abuse within the department, will have a city street named after him.
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously June 14 to name a portion of Willow Street between Buchanan and Laguna after Earl Gage Jr. The street runs through the Western Addition neighborhood of the city where the Gage family — longtime St. Emydius parishioners — lived.
“He was a man who kept his strong faith,” his daughter Blondell Chism told Catholic San Francisco July 24. “No matter what happened, all was good and he was blessed.”
Gage converted to Catholicism to marry his Catholic wife, also named Blondell.
While the Department of Public Works readies the new street sign for an as-yet-unscheduled installation date, San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston has commissioned a mural of Gage to accompany it.
Gage was hired by the San Francisco Fire Department in 1955 at age 28 and was the sole Black firefighter for the next 12 years. He retired in 1983 and died in 2017 at age 90.
His hire was a progressive move for the times and not embraced by all members of the department, said Sherman Tillman, president of the Black Firefighters Association.
There were the fellow firefighters who refused to sleep on any mattress Gage had occupied in the communal firehouse, he said.
His mattress was urinated on so repeatedly that the young firefighter took to carrying his own with him from station to station.
“When you think about the discrimination he saw toward himself you’d think a person would be disillusioned and hateful toward the people who did those things,” said Tillman, a longtime parishioner of Star of the Sea Parish on Geary Blvd. “He wasn’t.”
Threats to his safety eventually led Gage away from field work and to a role as the SFFD’s director of community services. There he helped create a new training course for the firefighter’s exam after seeing it was a hurdle for many aspiring firefighters. He was also part of a federal court consent degree that pushed for diversity in the predominantly white, male department.
Tillman called Gage a “man of God who tried to see the best in people despite their flaws.”
It was at his funeral that Tillman decided to petition the city to recognize his character and place in history — a mission that took three years to bring to fruition. Coincidence or not, the sign was approved just weeks after the killing of George Floyd in May by a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on the 46-year-old Black man’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds during an arrest for allegedly passing a counterfiet $20 bill.
Tillman said racial diversity in the SFFD is still aspirational almost 70 years after Gage became the city’s first Black firefighter.
“Right now we are at 156 (Black firefighters) in San Francisco, down from 193,” he said. “We haven’t been this low since the early 1990s.”
The SFFD has approximately 1,500 members.
As civil servants, Black firefighters receive the same pay as other local firefighters of their rank, said Tillman. But few African Americans are appointed to higher ranking positions all around the country.
“There is a handful of people in the fire department who want to hold on to the power,” he said, not just in San Francisco but in all big city fire departments.
At one time there were 16 African American fire chiefs, said Tillman. Now there are six. With anticipated retirements in the next three years there will only be only one.
Blondell Gage said her father wanted to be just another firefighter who happened to be black, not a “Black firefighter.”
He did not consider himself an activist, she said, nor was he in favor of protests.
“I think that being said, he stood his ground for 12 years and kept pushing,” she said.
Reprinted with permission from Catholic San Francisco.
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CNA Staff, Jul 29, 2020 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- Members of the Knights of Columbus in Alberta have built a raised garden for a maternal care home to provide the women and their children with fresh vegetables.
Two new garden beds were added to the backyard of the Elizabeth House in Calgary, which provides at-risk-women and single mothers with a safe place to raise their baby.
Michelle Haywood, the program coordinator for Elizabeth House, told CNA that the garden not only provides fresh vegetables, but the backyard has also become a place of refuge for the women during the pandemic.
“We have green grass that the babies can play on. We have patio furniture that the women can go and enjoy. It has become a refuge especially in a time right now where leaving your house to go anywhere in public you’re taking a risk,” she said.
“It means that they have somewhere in the back where they can play and adventure and feel safe. The garden is also important in terms of it’s a sense of pride, like watching something go from seed to crate is an incredible journey.”
The Elizabeth House, founded in 1996, moved to their current property about five years ago after structural problems were discovered at the previous house. Left behind were a garden and a Marian grotto.
At the residence, the women are provided with a fully furnished bedroom, food, and child care. They are helped to find medical and education resources, and can be given help to connect with estranged relatives.
The program is fully funded by the Diocese of Calgary through private donations.
“We were started by the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis, the Catholic order of nuns here in Calgary, who had a heart for homeless young women who found themselves facing an unexpected pregnancy,” said Haywood.
“We’re here to build relationships, build trust, and to promote healing and to help young women raise their child right in love and security … [It’s] such an incredible time in a child’s life to have this kind of wrap-around support.”
Haywood said the organization has provided many women with the freedom and means to rediscover their faith. She said even the new garden has been a source of teaching.
“We can use [the plants] as a talking point … We can pinch off the broken parts and launch new sprouts. I think when we’re talking about why this garden is here and what it brings to us, it brings a completely new way, a new perspective of looking at, I guess, the challenges that we’ve been through and we’re going through,” she said.
“A lot of times the biggest impact we can have [is] sitting out on that green grass, being with the women in a very connected, very grounded way … It may be the first time in her life that she can trust someone.”
The Knights of Columbus struck up a relationship with Elizabeth House four years ago and have continued to support the women by developing the facility’s landscape.
In 2017, they raised $15,000 to help redo the entire backyard, adding new soil, irrigation, patio, furniture, and a grill. Following the project’s completion a year and a half ago, the Knights then offered another $10,000 to landscape the front yard. This year, they spent $2,000 to refurbish plants and build the garden.
Peter Dugandzic, who has been in the Knights for 15 years, expressed the importance of the Elizabeth House. He said the Knights will continue to support the group, noting that the Knights’ next project will be to construct a Marian grotto in the backyard. He said the Knights are already in contact with the previous designer of the last grotto and they expect construction to begin in the fall.
“[This facility provides] for these young ladies and it brings in the appropriate support to help them emotionally, financially, and from a health perspective to ensure that they’re under the best of care and that they begin a new life with a stable environment for success moving forward in terms of helping them develop life skills, a plan for the future, which would include education,” he told CNA.
“We’ll continue to support this work as the Knights of Columbus because it’s consistent with our faith but also because we believe that we’re having a positive impact on the ladies’ lives moving forward. We take great pride in being able to help any way we can.”
CNA Staff, Jul 29, 2020 / 04:00 pm (CNA).-
Changes to federal fair housing rules undermine the government’s responsibility to guide efforts to overcome the legacy of racial discrimination and economic segregation, U.S. bishops said Tuesday.
“Fair housing regulations remain one of the key tools for addressing long standing inequities and historical disadvantages and must be strengthened, not weakened,” leading figures in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities said in a July 28 statement.
The statement responded to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to replace the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule with a new rule that will have less regulation.
“HUD’s replacement of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule undermines efforts to promote fair housing and human dignity,” they said.
“Discriminatory practices such as redlining, disinvestment from communities, discriminatory practices in selling or renting homes, and racial and economic segregation have undermined fair housing for generations and continue to harm communities of color today. HUD’s new rule minimizes the affirmative responsibility to promote fair housing by removing clear guidance and effective accountability.”
Speaking for the U.S. bishops’ conference were Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development; and Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, chair of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism. Sister Donna Markham, O.P., president and CEO of Catholic Charities, USA, joined the bishops’ statement.
The rule dates back to 2015, and was enacted under the Obama administration. It aimed to encourage local communities to address deeply ingrained patterns of housing segregation that shape how Americans shop, go to school and access health care, ABC News reports. It made federal money to local communities contingent on proactive plans to reduce inequality and to provide fair housing in its rules and its decisions on granting permits.
Critics said the rule was confusing, and said it was difficult to use the computer tool to submit reports and measure progress. The Trump administration suspended the rule soon after taking office.
U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson on July 23 said the previous rule was “unworkable and ultimately a waste of time for localities to comply with” and “too often resulting in funds being steered away from communities that need them most.”
He said the Trump administration programs like opportunity zones drive “billions of dollars of capital into under-served communities where affordable housing exists, but opportunity does not.”
“Programs like this shift the burden away from communities so they are not forced to comply with complicated regulations that require hundreds of pages of reporting and instead allow communities to focus more of their time working with Opportunity Zone partners to revitalize their communities so upward mobility, improved housing, and home ownership is within reach for more people,” said Carson. “Washington has no business dictating what is best to meet your local community’s unique needs.”
On Twitter, Carson characterized the Obama-era rule as “a ruse for social engineering under the guise of desegregation” that turned Housing and Urban development “into a national zoning board.”
Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Housing Coalition, rejected that claim.
“The Fair Housing Act sought to undo decades of social engineering via racist housing policies that created segregated communities,” she said, according to ABC News.
President Trump weighed in on the rule, framing affordable housing as a threat to suburban safety and housing values.
I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020
“I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood,” the president said on Twitter July 29.
“Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down,” he said, noting the rescinding of the Obama-era rule. “Enjoy!” he added.
Trump has previously claimed the housing policies of his political rivals will affect suburban safety. In July 16 remarks on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump accused Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden of wanting to “abolish” the suburbs and to eliminate single-family zoning, “bringing who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.”
The change comes amid significant difficulty for the United States in the wake of the new coronavirus epidemic.
Peaceful protests followed widespread viewing of video of the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man, while being detained by Minneapolis police. In many major U.S. cities, these protests were also accompanied by riots and civil unrest that could be the costliest in U.S. history. They caused hundreds of millions of damage and multiple deaths in Minneapolis alone.
Concerns about police brutality have prompted legislation billed as police reform in several states, as well as calls to defund the police. There are also reports of demoralization among police forces, failure to intervene in crime, and efforts of officers to seek early retirement.
In March, the U.S. bishops and Catholic Charities USA filed joint comments asking HUD to withdraw the proposed new rule on the grounds that it fails to address barriers to fair housing, reduces community engagement, weakens the definition of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, and weakens the role of public housing authorities.
“The responsibility to ensure fair housing choice is more robust than simply guarding against housing discrimination. The previous definition of AFFH was more holistic and included important elements such as overcoming patterns of segregation and fostering inclusive communities,” their March statement said.
The proposed rule, they said, wrongly reduced the definition of fair housing to ensuring that individuals and families have “the opportunity and options to live where they choose, within their means, without unlawful discrimination related to race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, of disability.”
On Wednesday the bishops and Catholic Charities USA cited the U.S. bishops’ 1975 statement “The Right to a Decent Home,” which said “an absence of racial discrimination is no longer enough. We must insist upon effective programs to remedy past injustice.”
“Let us renew this call to action to ensure all people have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing,” they added.
© Catholic World Report