Jim Harney

Dawn Powell

Today, shopping and weeding the gardening, I crossed paths with two of my living heroes. One is Dawn Powell whom I saw today at the DMZ Garden, where she was working. Dawn first appeared in this web site with the story of Dawn’s Porch, the story of woman whose heroic works to serve persons with disabilities was misrepresented in the media, causing her and her work great harm. However, she did not let it get her down but came back stronger. Dawn runs three, soon to be four, houses for persons with disabilities, especially mental illnesses. She takes in many ill persons other agencies and landlords do not want to deal with. To keep her work going she has had to take some part time jobs just to meet expenses. Today at the garden that she and Marna of Mothers Against Gun Violence maintain, she was telling me of recent struggles she has had with residents at her houses and how she wishes someday to be able to take a vacation, something not possible now. Besides bringing her some brochures on her houses, called Foundation Dwellings, I gave her some coffee grounds for the DMZ compost piles, and got in return from the DMZ some wood chips for my own compost pile. She, like many of us, finds solace working the garden.

The other hero I encountered today, by way of the net, was Jim Harney a member, like myself, of the Milwaukee 14, a nonviolent action for peace of 40 years ago. Jim has become a photojournalist documenting the plight of the immigrants from Latin America, the undocumented who come here for work and to feed their families. He has lived with and traveled with them and in this time has come to identify with the undocumented and live his life in solidarity with them. This is especially true now that he is preparing to die from terminal cancer. Recent videos you can find links to on his M-14 web page document his walk in solidarity with the undocumented, and present a recent celebration of his life and work. In one of the“youtube” videos Jim tells in his own words about the deep solidarity he feels with the undocumented and why he is walking 200 miles to demonstrate that solidarity. Jim, like Dawn, in struggling and suffering has found a deep solidarity with poor persons with a mental illness or undocumented. There are many other living heroes I am blessed to know. Jim and Dawn are two I was blessed with today when I was weeding.

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