Yesterday I went down to Marquette University to leaflet about ending ROTC on campus. I knew my regular companions, Brian and Jan, could not make it but, since I had advertised it, I expected other persons to join me. So I made a few extra leaflets at a nearby copy shop and went to our meeting spot near Gesu Church. No one was there and I felt disappointed since leafleting had proved to be effective way of getting information out to students. The first person to take a leaflet was an African-American student. As he was taking the leaflet he asked me if I was Bob Graf. Reluctantly, as I do when someone I do not know asks me if I am myself, I said yes. He thanked me for spreading the word about teaching violence and killing on campus. As we talked I learned he was a graduate student in Journalism and had just been on campus a few months.
A little while later a Marquette Security officer came up to me and asked for leaflet. I gave him one and he asked if I was Mr. Hoffman. I knew he had the wrong name but right person so I said no and then explained to him that the banning order had been revoked by Marquette University, although I was on the sidewalk and not campus property. He went off to the side to call headquarters and came back to me and asked me if I knew I could now be on campus. I said yes and thanked him but was happy being on the sidewalk. I ended up moving up and down Wisconsin Avenue and around campus getting out many leaflets although I think students are more receptive to them when the giver is not me.
Today I made my first trip back to the Catholic Worker archives at Marquette since I was banned from campus. The Catholic Worker archivist, a friend, brought me out some material on the subject I am researching, the nonviolent actions of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. I was hoping to find some recording of her non-violent actions but there is no such thing. He brought me a few archive boxes of Catholic Worker files and a thesis book on Dorothy Day and the Spirituality of Nonviolence. I was near the end of the two hour time period and had not really found any new information when I discovered in the thesis that Dorothy Day and her companions had written a number of pamphlets and leaflets. I sort of new a small part of it since I had discovered a quote from her as she was distributing leaflets against military training on a Catholic university in 1948, (See Dorothy Day and Military Training ) but was glad to hear of all the leafleting done by early Catholic Workers.
Also as I was looking in the last article in the last folder in a file I discovered a quote from Gordon Zahn, a famous peace intellectual and activist I had known in the last years of his life. It was a quote from 1961 but how Catholics who were true to their faith probably needed to pacifist and should accept it and rather than wasting time defending their beliefs should spend time looking at alternatives to war and violence. I often thing that we in the peace movement these days spent too much time on the defense and not go on the offense enough with “weapons of the spirit” as Dorothy would say, as I learned today in my research.
I probably should not have been surprised to see my disappointments turn into blessings. In today’s Gospel reading for liturgy Jesus tells his disciples: “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11: 8–12). All we need to do is ask, seek and knock.
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