The Thomas Merton Center is about to lose its entire full-time staff — and some fear it’s in danger of losing its way as well.
The Garfield-based group has focused on peace and social-justice issues for 38 years. In that time, it has led countless demonstrations, and most recently helped spearhead protests against the international G-20 summit in September. But the center has fallen on hard times. April 16 will be the last day for Communications Director Melissa Minnich, Administrative Assistant Miles Dinnen and Leah Samuel, who edits the Center’s quarterly newsletter, The New People. All began working there in 2008.
Merton Center board president Michael Drohan says the move was a financial decision. He hopes the organization will be able to “recall the staff after a period of restructuring and greater financial stability. The staff provided a great service.”
Even so, the center was hurting. Drohan reports that the Center faces a $14,000 deficit by May without taking any action.
In its last available IRS filings — which cover the year 2008 — the Merton Center reported revenue of $326,941 and expenses of $303,438. Its balance sheet has been crippled by problems with its three-story headquarters at 5125 Penn Ave., which the Center purchased a quarter-century ago.
Drohan says the heating costs alone ran to $1,800 a month.
“The building was just pulling the organization down,” says board member Charles McCollester, a recently retired labor historian who is among the center’s newest board members. “The electrical system is really dangerous and there are all kinds of leaks.”
The organization left its own building in January, and has been renting a structure half the size at 5129 Penn, while trying to sell the former headquarters.
To the Merton Center’s departing staff, though, the layoffs represent a self-defeating move.
“If you get rid of the staff right now … it’s just letting all of that [momentum/organizing] go,” says Minnich. “Some folks who are on the board, they are so focused on money, they are missing the point of what’s out there and what’s happening out there.” As for the financial straits, she says, “At least to me, you did this to yourself — and the staff gets to pay for it.”
But more than money is at issue, staffers say. To them, the Merton Center is caught between a generational rift, concerns about gentrification and disagreements about the role of civil disobedience in the 21st century.
“I think we don’t really understand the newer activists as well as we could,” says Leah Samuel, who describes herself as middle-aged. “They’re not going to be like we were. I don’t know that today’s young activist cares that much about some dead white monk” — the Trappist Thomas Merton.
“There’s some tough times ahead for the Merton Center,” Samuel adds. Without the staff, “I’m afraid that the folks who are going to remain there will not be able to keep things going as well as we all hope they do.”
“I don’t know how many people have come to me and said, ‘What happened to The Merton Center? I’m not giving money anymore,'” says Molly Rush, a veteran organizer who founded the center. “And I’m talking about radical folks who have been out there for years on the line.”
Rush stepped down from the center in 2005, but returned to the board in November. Many former loyalists, however, have not come back: Rush says center membership has shrunk from 1,100 in 1999 to about 400 today. Members pay $45 a year (with discounts for low-income members).
Much of the problem, she says, stems from the increasingly contentious role of the anarchist Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG).
Beginning in 2003, POG has joined with the Center for staging anti-war demonstrations and conferences. POG was one of the center’s affiliates; like other like-minded groups, it has relied on the center for a mailing address and logistical support. Two POG members have even sat on the Center’s 12- to 15-member board.
But unlike more traditional antiwar groups, POG does not pledge non-violence in its street actions — and Rush says that put off some members who believed in non-violence. “I think we have to be sensitive not only to groups like POG but to long-term members,” says Rush. But there “was no chance … to discuss what TMC was about” at board meetings. It was just, “‘We want a flat organization'” without a director setting policy.
Alex Bradley, a POG member who once volunteered and interned at the Center, maintains that just the opposite happened: “Based on my direct experience, the Center seems to have flourished most financially, and in its community involvement, during the years when people friendly to anarchists and their ideas … were involved.”
Bradley blames the Center’s troubles on a “mismanaged power grab,” in which Rush and others tried to assert control over an institution that was moving in a new direction. He dropped his own Center membership two years ago, “because I was fed up at the board’s utter disregard for the participation of the general membership.”
The dispute with POG boiled over this March, after the Merton Center moved into its new building. 5129 Penn is owned by the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, a community-development group that Bradley and others have criticized as an agent of gentrification in the area. In an open letter explaining the split, POG argued that “[t]he BGC works closely with the local police,” and faulted it for participating in pre-G-20 meetings where police “talked about the need to tackle ‘the anarchist problem.'” With the BGC as a landlord, the statement asserted, TMC could no longer be “a safe space in which diverse strands of social struggle can interact.” (Rick Swartz, head of the BGC, disputes such allegations, saying they work with police to make sure their response to violence in the community is appropriate.)
But the statement also praised the Center for “help[ing] to build unity,” and acknowledged it “has come under attack for listing us as an affiliate because of our refusal to condemn all instances of property destruction and because of our upholding the right to self-defense.” It also noted a generation gap played a part: “Issues such as ageism … have occasioned sometimes painful moments of growth on both sides.”
“I’m wondering if the Center can survive,” says Rush, who chokes up while discussing the group’s future. “If the center isn’t there, I hope to God something will replace it. … I’ve never seen it like this in 38 years.”
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2010.
The issue at the TMC was and is one of control and lack of trust by the old guard there. From 2001 through 2004 the membership at the TMC grew fast. Tim Vining who was the TMC director at the time moved the Center toward becoming a resource center for groups to organize out of. I was with Save Our Transit and the TMC became our home. Lots of social justice groups came to and joined the TMC. The place was booming.
Not in 2005 but a few years earlier Molly Rush stepped away from the TMC. I remember because we took up a sizable retirement collection for her. She and the old guard at the Center however got concerned because they began to sense that they had lost control of the place.
Molly came back and insisted that the TMC hire organizers. She did not trust the groups that organized out of the Center. She insisted that they be organized under the old TMC praxis of strict pacifism. She had video tapes on non-violent social movements that she wanted us all to watch. She wanted all the groups there to commit themselves to the principles of T. Merton. This idea of support for what is called ‘diversity of tactics’ which then director Vining accepted was and is anathema to Molly and the old guard.
Sometime around 2004 or 2005 there was a push to get the TMC back on the straight and narrow path. This is fine except that it drove away members — not the members Molly is thinking of but the new members whom she never knew. members who did not want to be policed and lectured. The membership boom ended. People left not because of POG but because of an insistence on a strict hierarchical style of leadership there.
The TMC is back to its old self now. Its back to being a club for the catholic left. They can light candles and sing Kumbayaa and everybody can ask Molly what they should do or not do in any given situation just like in the good old days. The old guard has reasserted itself. I wish the TMC luck but the scapegoating of dear friends of mine at POG irritates me a lot.
I am amused that the same Molly Rush who attacked a warhead with a hammer and poured blood on documents – both acts of property destruction, including one that involved the use of a weapon – is trying to blame people who haven’t organized anything violent (that I can recall) but are committed to the principle of a diversity of tactics for the downfall of the center.
Way to own up to your own failures, Molly. Seems like you and your clique just wanted to screw the younger generation out of having a center to inherit.
I do not find my own experience with the center reflected in the comments above and thus I am writing a post. I am a member who, rather than being driven away, stayed and was encouraged to engage in more regular participation by what seemed to me to be thoughtful dialogue regarding the praxis of strict pacifism bumping up against the praxis of diverse tactics. I appreciated then and still do the opportunity to learn about the ideas of pacifism and how those look in a diverse movement. The analysis I read in the New People regarding the Plowshares 8 actions actually being grounded in non-violence really gave me food for thought. I continued to offer financial support rather than leaving not in spite of the dialogue about pacifism but because of that dialogue.
I did not find the focus of the City Paper article nor quoted comments to be ones seeking to find blame nor scapegoating. Rather, I left my reading of the article with a sense of the diverse perspectives regarding the purpose and approaches of the center, and how those remain in flux. Pointing out that there are real differences of perspective and experience is a strength not a problem. The article gave me a sense of each person offering quotes as speaking from their own experience. Different perspectives on the current struggles were conveyed. I think that is a great dialogue to be having, not a problem nor an invitation to choose sides.
If we each speak from our own experience rather than making assumptions about others motivations we might, eventually, reach a point of balance with our diverse perspectives. A messy process for sure, but one that carries with it great potential. On the other hand, that point of balance may never be found and something(s) entirely new may emerge. At the very least, I am working hard to stay open to the various points of view and not make assumptions about what motivations were driving this person or that person. That doesn’t mean I don’t form an opinion nor comment if there are facts that I don’t think are accurate,nor ideas I disagree with. It just means I am working hard to not make assumptions about others motivations.
It is well known locally that POG members have not been involved with the TMC management for years and the recent disassociation was symbolic more than anything, spurred only by the sudden, undiscussed, fait accomplit of renting from the creepy BGC.
There were clearly a lot of things wrong with the TMC that have nothing to do with the POGerchists and everything to do with the Molly Rush-esque regime dominating the TMC board.
It is they who seem most responsible for the death of the organization as a whole. The decision about moving came out of nowhere as a fait accomplit announced by the board chair and a quisling.
People were treated as appendages to the sudden and panicked process of washing hands of the property at 5125 Penn. The three staff mentioned in the article, who had been consulted about nothing, yet had to deal with the chaos caused by this autocratic “dump the property decision” that rippled out into the community were ultimately fired without warning, one while on vacation. By a “peace and justice” center.
This desperate rush to balance the books at any cost could have been avoided. For years, income-earning rental possibilities to local groups were ignored, construction labor exchanges for space opportunities were never explored, and groups that were using the space were either getting it for free or payed nominal rent, all the while never being informed of the overall bleeding effect the property had on the TMC.
There was no heating thermostat timer installed until 2009, prior to which the building temperature was set to 70° 24/7, so the elderly wouldn’t get cold. There were zero attempts to employ any common sense to stop the bleeding, just a sudden “we’re crashing” wake-up call, followed by ally-alienating panicked decisions, followed by the disgusting dash into the welcoming arms of the gross, police-collaborating, crappy community project delivering, public funds exploiting BGC.
Molly Rush comes across in this article as a crotchety old lady yelling “get out of my yard”, blaming the neighborhood kids for the overgrown bushes that she never saw fit to take care of. Put the blame where it deserves to fall: the people that were running the center for the last several years. No one at POG is to blame for the financial bleeding that has clearly been going on for several years, without being even noticed by those elected to represent the organization’s best interests.
Well Molly, the yard appears to be completely clear of life now, it has been concreted over and it’s all orderly now, just like you prefer. What an alienating wasteful end to a respected 30-year-old organization’s history and what a shameful blame you cast every direction apart from your glass house.
I have read and re read all these comments and I am confused that anyone who would not espouse the values of Thomas Merton, an “old white monk” would want to associate with a center carrying his name and philosophy. The Catholic “old guard” left carries some very potent examples of successful nonviiolent organizing such as Dorothy Day and Ceasar Chavez. Some “old” ideas transcend time and there are many young people who recognize that.
If POG feels that the financial support of the center has diminished because the people who support them have withdrawn, then they should have no problem rallying that support and establishing a center that works for them. I wish them well in that.