Ms. Lucille, 87, being escorted
by police off the SVDP store grounds.

On Saturday, July 18th, a group of concerned people met at the Center Street public library parking lot in North Central Milwaukee to car pool to the new St. Vincent de Paul(SVDP) thrift store located in the suburb of Greenfield, 12 miles away. More importantly, the St. Vincent de Paul store is located in a different economic, social and racial world. Greenfield is an 85% white city with an average household income of $42,586.00, while the North Central Milwaukee neighborhood around the Center Street library is 85% African-American with an average household income of $20,787.00 (53206).

The mission of St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP), the largest Catholic lay organization in the world, is to “serve people in need in a personal way”. People in need around the Center Street library, like many persons in the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee (the second poorest city in the USA) are not being served by St. Vincent de Paul due to a decision of the SVDP central office and central council of Milwaukee. However, any persons in need from the suburban areas like Greenfield can find service through their local SVDP conferences.

At the parking lot of the Greenfield SVDP store we were met by other people, from South Central Milwaukee, another area largely under-served by the Society. We were there to picket the store which was celebrating its belated Grand Opening. Our message was simple: Stop using $4 million dollars, “belonging to the poor” according to the Rule of the Society, for a store serving people in the suburbs. From 9:30am −10am, we, people of all ages from 12-years old to 87 years old, of multiple races, Black, Hispanic and White, picketed on the sidewalk along Hwy 100 in front of the parking lot of new store.

At 10am we stopped, put away the signs and joined the mostly white crowd that had gathered under a big tent in the parking lot. The Archbishop of Milwaukee was the first speaker and he spoke with enthusiasm about Blessed Frederic Ozanam, one of the founders of the Society. He mentioned some details about Blessed Frederic’s life, including the name of the homilist at his funeral Mass in 1853. However, he never mentioned how Frederic and his group of well-to-do Catholic university students attending Paris University during the time of French Revolution, were challenged by other students to practice what they preached. Not knowing what to do they went to Sister Rosalie, a Daughter of Charity religious, who regularly visited the poor ‘across the tracks’ in the slums of Paris. These young men went from the middle class areas of their time (like Greenfield) to the poorest areas of Paris to befriend and serve the poor in personal ways as best they could. This was the beginning of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and its mission of “person to person service” to people in need. SVDP spread like wild fire throughout the world and arrived in Milwaukee in 1849. Retail stores came much later in the history of the Society, as a way for members to store items for conferences to give to the needy or for those that can afford them to purchase items at a lower cost.

After the Archbishop spoke and while he was sprinkling holy water blessings on the people and the new store, the Archbishop’s newly appointed Victor for Urban issues spoke. He spoke and prayed with the crowd acting, honestly or not, as if he was not aware of what some have called “the abominanation the Greenfield store represents”. After a few more speeches on behalf of the Campaign to raise money for this four million dollar investment, a video was shown. It was a very ‘pious’ video showing how one poor woman from the North side of Milwaukee was visited by two Vincentians, received a voucher and a chance to pick up her needed items at the new store. The reality is that the new store is an hour and a half bus ride from the North side and transportation is a major issue. The most egregious thing however, was at the end of the video when a sign on the screen said that 90% of donated money goes to the poor. Using the Milwaukee SVDP approved budget for 2014–2015 year, only 4.5% of the budget goes for direct services to people in need. There is no information to back the 90% figure. Are they using the 40 employees of the new store in Greenfield? Or the fees they pay in lieu of taxes to the city of Greenfield, as part of the 90%?

After the donation envelopes were passed out and after the media and the Archbishop left, a force of about seventeen police officers appeared. One of our members who left after picketing had noticed a number of squad cars parked nearby holding three or four Greenfield police officers in each car accompanied with riot gear. I was approaching the store with Ms. Lucille Berrien, an 87-year old peace and justice activist, who was using her walker. Police approached us and asked us if we were on the ‘approved list to be there’. I played dumb, although a board member had warned me when I was entering the parking lot that I was not welcome and would be arrested if I stayed. A staff member of SVDP came by and told the police officer we were not welcomed and thus trespassing. Ms. Berrien and I started to argue with the police officer about kicking us off the property. I could not believe he would arrest us and pushed him to the point where he said: “Okay you are arrested; put your hands behind your back.” At that point I looked over to Ms. Berrien who was distressed and asked her if staying there was worth an arrest. She said no, and I said okay we would leave. The officer followed us all the way to my car parked in the back of the big parking lot. He kept asking us to go faster although Ms. Lucille was visibly frail and having problems with her walker.

On the way out I noticed other members of our group being harassed by police and being forced off the property. When I got to my car and got Ms. Lucille settled I noticed there was a lineup of additional police in front of the store. On the way out of the parking lot another member of our group met us. She was going into the store talking with the former district attorney when three police surrounded them and pointed to her and said she had to leave the store. Once outside the police said she had to leave the property. Since we were not protesting at this point, I believe they just did not want us to be talking with Vincentians about our “opinions of the truth” and the moral issues involved in spending “money belonging to poor” to serve the suburbs. In retrospect, the police action seemed well planned. We were allowed to picket on the sidewalk before the event and since we were not disruptive during presentations, they waited until the media and the Archbishop were gone to make us leave for trespassing.

On the way home Ms. Lucille asked me to drop by a drug store to get some aspirin. I was unaware that she has a heart condition which was aggravated by this stressful situation.

In the end, we knew that the SVDP staff and central council had lost their way by taking four million dollars of money belonging to the poor and investing it in a store serving suburbanites on the contention that there would be some ‘trickle down’ money in future years. In our opinion, this “trickle down” theory discriminates against poor urban people. From a poor person’s perspective, four million dollars could have been enough for 27,000 beds, stoves or refrigerators needed by people in urban Milwaukee. The store is not self-sufficient and there is little hope that it will be in the near years to come. On July 18th we also discovered that there is no room for the poor, black, white or brown, in the store or even on the property of the Greenfield SVDP.