Spirit in Action
Organizing Rockford - Stanley Campbell & Rockford Urban Ministries
Stanley Campbell has served Rockford Urban Ministries for almost 25 years, a voice for peace, justice and care for the disadvantaged of Illinois' second city. Stanley knows the ropes, having started as a John Birch conservative who volunteered to fight in Vietnam and having learned to question and reexamine what he's been told.
- Broadcast on:
- 19 Sep 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will deal the echo of our healing ♪ [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be talking to a man who has been organizing Rockford, Illinois for almost 25 years. Stanley Campbell did a 180 degree turn after volunteering to serve in the Vietnam War, learning to question and re-examine what he's been told. One of the things that he re-examined was his rejection of religion and Jesus, and this led him back to the church and to religious activism. For the past quarter century, he served as the Director of Rockford Urban Ministries, a force for peace, justice, and outreach to the poor and disadvantaged in this northwestern Illinois city. I'm very pleased to introduce you to today's Spirit in Action, Stanley Campbell. Stanley, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you very much for having me here. We have a common friend, Craig Schmidt, who is part of Rockford community. He says, "You are a peace man for Rockford, Illinois." Unfortunately, I am. Rockford, being a working-class city, has a preponderance of conservatives and very few liberals, and I tell people I'm the only paid peace activist in Rockford, and it's the United Methodist that pay me. I'm the Director of Rockford Urban Ministries, which is an outreach of 20 United Methodist churches plus five other congregations that have joined on since I've been the Director. I've been working there since 1985, and one of the nice things about working with the churches in this job is the wide variety of issues that I get to speak out about. Everything from peace and justice, community development, the poor, working on the environment, trying to make the inner city, bringing some life back into that. So there's a wide variety of issues that the church has allowed me to speak out on, and since there's not too many other peace and justice organizations in Rockford, and absolutely none that can afford a peace activist or a spokesperson, I probably am one of the more noted liberals in the community. That's interesting that you say that there's no other peace organization, peace group, I guess, that can afford to have paid staff. I think there's a lot of people who are leery of mixing politics and religion. The United Methodists aren't, and this peace emphasis within United Methodists is it because you're United Methodists and that you're a peace activist? How do these two fit together and how is it that this community can support it? Well, they used to appoint clergy to Rockford Urban Ministries' position, and they found that there were many things that the churches wanted to speak out on, whether it was civil rights and justice for minority communities in Rockford, or worker rights, or working on mission projects or areas that needed to be worked on in Rockford, or when it fell on hard times and they had to hire their first non-clergy myself. I'm not even a United Methodist, I'm a generic Christian, and I came back to the church believing that this was a wonderful way of putting my newfound faith into action, and I found that I could really work on a wide variety of issues, as long as I kept real, as long as I was able to help people get involved in urban ministries in helping the poor on easy projects such as serving soup in a soup kitchen. That was one of the first projects that I got involved in. Clothes, donating clothes, and all of us know that we have enough clothes in our classes that don't even fit us, that could probably outfit a small village in Guatemala. These things are easy for people to do, to give them an opportunity to help someone that they probably don't even live in the same neighborhood or would never meet otherwise. The church is a good way of setting up programs in which people can make a difference in other folks' lives without having the wealthy come and live in the poor neighborhoods. Now, there are opportunities. One of the things that I've been working on lately is community development in a neighborhood where the money and capital has fled, there's boarded up houses, there's empty storefronts. The church can bring resources to that and then invite people down, and what we're trying to do is get people to actually move back to the neighborhood, and we've been finding that that's extremely difficult. Yet, when we set up a program, a food pantry or a soup kitchen, housing development, that's successful, the church loves it, the church supports that, and they'll send their volunteers, they'll send their kids. We found that by finding boarded up houses and fixing them up and turning them into homes, that was a great way of getting people involved in the neighborhood who then come back maybe once or twice a year from different, the suburbs of Chicago or from even farther away. So, what I found over the years is that the church really likes success and successful missions and ministries as a way of kind of dipping their toe into the social justice issues that I believe God calls us to do, that we have to get involved with the poor, that we have to get involved in those sections of the neighborhood that are more depressed, and this is a great opportunity allowing people to actually do that. You said, Stanley, you consider yourself to be a generic Christian, and you alluded to the fact that you came back to the faith. I'm trying to figure out, you're not United Methodist, somehow the United Methodist found you acceptable to be their activist leader in the community. What is your faith? I mean, generic Christian could meet a lot of things. How does that tie in with you working for the Methodist and with you being an activist? Well, the United Methodist were desperate. They had lost a lot of funding. They could not afford a clergy. I was, on the other hand, a young kind of radical that had been haranguing the local utility Commonwealth Edison about their nuclear power plant. I had been outspoken on the Vietnam War. I'd been outspoken on war in Central America. So people within Rockford and the United Methodist community, especially the liberals who had really supported me, were pleased to know that, yes, I was a Christian. I had just recently stood up when I heard a folk singer, Keith Greene, singing about a God who hated war and loved the poor. But I found that I could not really determine whether I was someone that believed in the virgin birth or someone that had to have communion served in a certain way. I was raised Roman Catholic. I loved the incense and the prayers and the liturgy. But I could also see that the faith meant more. The spirit meant more than just the routine wrote services on a Sunday morning. I call myself a generic Christian because I don't really think too much about some of the specifics. And I found that by working in a soup kitchen, I mean a person really doesn't care how you serve communion as long as they get served. I found that oftentimes serving a bowl of soup is almost like the best communion or the way of dealing with communion. And so the United Methodists were happy to be able to hire a part-time person who would work full-time on social justice issues and who kind of knew a little bit about some of the issues of the day. And when I found, I was amazed at who they let preach in their pulpit because they asked me to preach in their pulpit, almost immediately after I took the job, it was shortly after Eastern, it was the verse about doubting Thomas. And so I talked about the doubts that I had and that we all sometimes have in our own faith. But I could believe that there is a God, that there is a spirit that responds to a prayer. And when I found myself saying prayers, I would use the Jesus language. And I could visualize that, maybe it is from my upbringing, but that was what kept the spirit alive in me. I found that by sharing just what I believed, a lot of people didn't really care about the theology, but had more longing for putting that spirit to work or sharing the spirit of love, especially with those most in need. And as long as I could do that, people like me, you know, and they thought I was doing a good job. As long as I could raise money for food pantry or soup kitchen or rehab a house or put on a program, have a good speaker, have people show up for the speaker, get some media, the United Methodist and other denominations now have been very happy. You said, Stanley, that one of the things that got you moving in this direction was peace activism, anti-war activism. I think that most mainline churches have to walk a kind of a delicate line with respect to that. Of course, as you know, I'm Quaker, and for us it's kind of a non-issue of where peace church, and so that's easy for us. Did it pose problems to the United Methodist that you were as strong, a pacifist or anti-war activist, or maybe anti-nuclear activist as you are? Did that make you controversial within Rockford or ministries? Yes, especially when I went to one of the bigger churches, introduced myself during the five or ten-minute mission moment that some of the churches have, and I had opposed the nuclear power plant. Just use that as kind of like the introduction, and then when I talked about Rockford or ministries programs, and one of the employees from Commonwealth Edison hit up the pastor, and I've never been invited back to that church to speak in their pulpit. So I found that you have to be very careful when you speak about certain issues in the pulpit, but peace issues know I have it because I've always found support because I start, this is where I'm coming from, and this is what I believe. And then I talk about the hope that all of us have in our hearts, that there will not be a need for any more wars, and how we can bring that about, and whether it's through prayer or through actively trying to put ourselves into harm's way, or trying to assist in lifting up the poor of the world, there's many ways that I think can bring about a more peaceful world. Folks are out there, I think are hungry for a hearing about that. And when we, you know, denigrate the war makers and go after the war makers, I have been, I'm a great sarcastic attacker sometimes, and yet I found that that, you know, might be good for a right-wing talk radio show, as far as trying to talk to the rest of the world, the majority, vast majority of people, they want to hear more about the chances of peace instead of how bad war is. Most people know how bad war is, and to give them hope that there's a way, a much better way about bringing about less conflict in the world, people will listen to that. How do you work for peace concretely when you're sitting in Rockford, Illinois? How do you turn it into peace action? Well, one of the best ways is to find a sucker. I mean, find a volunteer who will actually go to a place that is under conflict, and we found a wonderful folk singer, David Stocker, who volunteered to go to Palestine and live in Hebron, actually work with a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams. When he came back, a lot of the folks wanted to hear his story, and we did a combination of David is thinking about going, a little explanation, and brought speakers in about what Christian Peacemaker Teams is, raising money to send David there, so there were little benefits and programs about that, and then, of course, the send-off party, and then hearing his stories when he was there, and then welcoming him home, and then inviting him to a lot of different areas to speak. Now, all this is educational. All this talk about what the concerns are in Palestine versus Israel. Yet, one of the nice things is that here we have a person, you can put a face to that. Someone who is actually volunteering, someone that people have heard of or talked to a neighbor, it's a way of putting a face on an issue and not making it so far away. When people were able to get emails from David while he was in Hebron, a lot more people responded to those emails than the almost anything else that I have done on peace issues in the Middle East. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] This is Spirit In Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. This is a Northern Spirit Radio production. You can always find our programs on my website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org, and you'll also find valuable links, including to people like the person I'm interviewing right here today, Stanley Campbell. He's the director of Rockford Urban Ministries in Rockford, Illinois. He's been director there for 25 years, almost. Coming up this next year, they do a lot of different things down there, and you were just mentioning, Stanley, one of the things that you do is work camp. Now, you say, fixing up homes in inner cities. Tell us a little bit about this program, what it is, who comes and does the work. I mean, is it because you're a handyman that you can do this, and who's the beneficiaries of this work? Well, we did have a lot of United Methodists from the Wisconsin Conference come to Rockford. It was probably one of our larger work camps, 60 to 70 folks, a lot of kids, but with adult supervision, we gave them seven houses that the city had told us these are elderly and handicapped people that cannot take care of their homes. Their homes are in serious situations that we might even have to condemn them and boot them out, so if you guys can come in and fix it up, and the city even said we'll pay for the materials. So we had these folks come down for one week, they fixed up five houses, such things as front porches, kitchens, bathrooms, and one roof were able to do this work and stay in a church, take care of their own food, and we just provided the places to stay and the supervision of the work to make sure it was done halfway decent. And this was for the whole summer, and we're doing it again this summer, with 12 separate camps coming in. There are work camps like this throughout the United States, in fact, North America. People give money to these camps to come in and do work. The fact that people are actually willing to give money to do work, kind of reminds me of the old Tom Sawyer story, Huck Finn, and Painting of Fence, and making it look like so much fun. It's akin to that outside of the fact that this is really a help for that family that needs the help. It's again giving a good, warm, safe place for you to come in and do what I believe God calls us to do, which is help your neighbor. This then again, too, helps our street cred when it comes to yelling about urban deterioration and the fact that people in Rockford are moving helter-skelter out to these suburbs, taking the best farmland in the world and turning it into subdivisions and their shopping malls and their parking lots, destroying or just leaving and throwing away whole neighborhoods. That's another spiritual aspect of the work of Rockford urban ministries, and so I can get away with yelling about urban sprawl at the same time that I'm trying to do something about building up the inner city. Doing things like that gives me a bit more street cred. I found that by working on social justice issues, you can get conservative Christians involved, you can get conservatives involved by showing how your neighborhood will increase in value if this neighborhood over here is built up, or how you're going to lose something if you take this beautiful, natural area, this park and pave it over. Yes, you can go to a store whenever you want and buy such wonderful things, but how many targets do you need in a neighborhood? Do you have to have a Walmart right across the street from where you live? Conservatives can support you on that. Finding those bridges is a way of dealing with issues that are in your backyard that you would normally never talk to a conservative about. I encourage liberals out there to really find that language, first of all, that doesn't scare people, and then to go and find ways of making those connections. One of the best ways I found was opposing a casino that was being proposed for Rockford, Illinois because by God, Wisconsin is sticking one in Beloit, and if they're going to scale our people, we're going to try and scale their people, and so we better put a casino up like right at the Rockford interchange there at Interstate 90 to catch all the folks before they go up into Wisconsin. That type of mentality is really harmful to those of us who are addicted to gambling, and many of us are not addicted to gambling, and we can go and gamble wherever we want or we can play games or smoke cigarettes or do whatever, but we know people who are susceptible to addictions. Some of us have it in our families or friends or hear about, and do we really want to take advantage of those folks? Because that's what a casino is doing. We were able to make connections with the conservatives who were appalled by a casino and work on issues with them and show them that there's a better way of dealing with the proponents of a casino than that it's sinful. We shouldn't be gambling. In reality, it's big business coming in and ripping off those weaker links in our society. We learn to work with folks who normally wouldn't work with, who now then will treat me with a little bit more respect when I tell them that gay people have as much right to live together and love each other as straight people, which is jaw-dropping for some of them. But at least they'll listen because we've again had this dialogue on something that we could understand. Maybe we can talk about something that we disagree wholeheartedly on. Actually, I'm realizing, Stanley, I don't even know what the population of Rockford is. How big a place is it? When you're talking about having inner city and so on, I don't think in Eau Claire we have an inner city. I think we've got almost nothing that would qualify as an inner city. So how big is Rockford? A rockford is the second largest city. We have a population of about 150,000 in Rockford proper, but then there's little suburbs that have grown up. And so within Winnebago County, there's a quarter of a million people. Rockford is situated right along the Rock River. It's where you could drive your fort across the rock. On the west side is the poorer side. The east side is the wealthier side. It didn't used to always be that way, but once they put the interstate out on the east side, slowly the traffic and the housing went in that direction. And so you'll find that in certain cities where, especially if God's given you a lot of land and you can move out there if you don't like your neighbor. Well, really, we did steal that land from the Indians, but if you don't like who you're living next to, you can just move. And you get sprawl in that because of that. And Rockford is really susceptible to that attitude that developers should have a right to do whatever they want. Farmers can sell their land to whomever they want, and if they want to put up an incinerator or a waste disposal site or shopping mall or keep it in the farm, they have that right too. And so we've been fighting that mentality in that if you want to make a good community, you should probably preserve some of the finer points environmentally of the community. You should try and have a lot more infill, don't allow the city to get depressed, put in good schools in every section of the community, not just in the newer section. Kind of like a share of the wealth, which is roads, sewers and water, at least on the basics, and keep that as contained as you can and don't allow the best farmland in the world to get paved over. In addition to all the peace activism, anti-war activism, have you been active in the past eight, nine years regarding Iraq and Afghanistan? Have you been able to have a stance of Rockford urban ministries, or perhaps the United Methodist Church as regards our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq? Personally, I'm a veteran of Vietnam. I went to Vietnam as a proponent of the war. I volunteered. It took me about four months to realize that I had chosen the wrong side. The Iraq war is like Vietnam, only it's fought in a desert. So it was easy for me to oppose the Iraq war. And by stepping out and calling on people to prayerfully oppose the war, I think we got a lot more people to join in, the demonstrations. And even though we were not successful in stopping George Bush, I don't think anything would have been possible. But it was hopeful. It was the most hopeful that I've again seen the anti-war movement and the most powerful it's ever been. Out of that grew concerns about the soldiers, about recruitment, other aspects of the Middle East, Israel and Palestine. So there were seeds that were spread that really kept people focused on trying to bring about peace. And I think that why there was such an outpouring for this recent election overwhelmingly support for Barack Obama was the hope that we can finally put in a president who might be more peaceful than any president we've ever had. I have to be careful about getting into politics because of the tax laws and it's gotten a lot harder. But at the same time, I found that folks are very supportive of speaking out on peace, even more so than in 2003, mainly because the Iraq war was such a mess. It showed that the government can make horrible decisions. I'd like to delve into a little bit of your personal journey here. You mentioned that you volunteered to go to Vietnam. I think that tells me that you were not a flaming liberal at that time because it's a fair statement. Can you give me a little bit about this path that you traveled being a person who volunteered for war, being an anti-war activist, the change that this included in your life? For some reason, I found myself supporting the John Birch Society when I was in high school. And after high school, I was trying to raise money for college, and I found myself thinking seriously about the army to go after the GI Bill, and it was very generous at the time. And when I enlisted, I fully expected to be thrown into a combat situation, but again, I was put into being a clerk handling personnel paperwork, sent to Germany when everyone else was being sent to Vietnam. After a year there, I got bored and volunteered for Vietnam, and it took me four months to realize that I had made the wrong decision about the war. And I can remember to this day running into a Red Cross donut dolly shop in China Beach, Denang, and getting real angry because these girls were selling little badges that said Vietnam veterans against the war. And I had known that those people were so awful that they probably weren't even Vietnam veterans. Well, two months later, I came and bought up every badge that they had. And in those two months, I had visited hospitals. I had seen how the Vietnamese government treated their own people, the South Vietnamese government. I saw how the American soldiers were fighting this war almost as they destroyed the village to save it, attitude, and I heard these young soldiers coming out of the field speaking about killing all the gooks. And I realized that this war had been turned into a racist attitude and was taking the best minds of our generation and turning them into racist. That's when I really turned against the war. I kept my mouth shut. I did my job. But at the time, 1970 to 71, there were very few people that I ran into that supported the war, that thought that we could win. The joke was, yeah, we can win by taking all of our friends, leveling the land and killing everybody and then sinking the ships. There was really no way to win that war. We went at it all wrong and we were on the wrong side. And I'm so happy that when I came back, I joined with other veterans marched against that war. And I found that being a veteran gave me a lot of credibility when speaking out against war too. Evidently, that realization during Vietnam War, during your service during Vietnam War continued to work to change your life, the thing that ended up leading you to Rockford Urban Ministries. Definitely. I was of the mind that I had made mistakes that I had felt so strongly about this belief that I put my faith into what one organization was talking about the government and the attitude that the right makes might, which makes right. When I got back, I began to question some of my other beliefs on economics, on the government role within our society. I would have great discussions with a lot of friends about different ways of setting up the perfect society. It was these discussions with friends that led me into questioning almost everything. And I began to question my questioning of God, of whether there is a God. My belief that this religion that had taught me that killing was okay was wrong didn't mean that the idea that there's something greater than ourselves was wrong. The opportunity, especially in the 60s and the 70s and 80s, to experiment with different ideas of spirituality led me back to Christ and led me back to a faith that there is something greater than ourselves calling us to be better people. You were opposed to the Vietnam War by first-hand experience. Has that generalized to being opposed to all war or is this situational? Have you had to revise that and say, "Well, most wars are bad, but maybe this war is okay." How's that played out in you? My pacifism really has come under question because of the 9/11 attacks, the idea that there's these fundamentalist radicals out there trying to kill us. And yet I see that if we had laid a good foundation of trust and faith and working for peace instead of arming fundamentalists and giving credence to the enemy of my enemy as my friend, we could have stopped a lot of these attacks that come about today. I think that the pacifist idea that war is bad and should never be used is tempered with the idea that as a last resort we've got to use war to protect ourselves means that a lot of people don't think until it is suddenly faced with the last resort. And you're looking at people banging down your door for you don't know what reason why and you've got to defend yourself. Well, my friend, a lot of the violence that we are experiencing is because, in my belief, we have sown a lot of violence in the world. If we had found other ways of using our resources to bring about more peaceful resolution of conflict, and we had the greatest chance in 2001, I think, to have really brought about a way for the world to look at dealing with violence. Of course, our president at the time was probably the dumbest president we've ever had, and he took our country in the opposite direction, using violence as the first means of dealing with other people's violence did not think about justice, thought about fear and suspicion, a whole lot of other reasons for going to war. It was easy to oppose that war. We should have gained a lot of credence within our community if we've been speaking out. And we should now use that credibility that the community now thinks that we, hey, maybe these guys had something there to educate folks on other ways of dealing with problems in the world than sending in the Marines. There's one thing I'm not quite clear on, Stanley. Is your opposition to war based on logical, like if we did this, I think things would turn out better, or this was a defect of this war? Or is it something more spiritual, more ultimate, more philosophical? I don't want to put words in your mouth. I want you to say the words that represent it best for you. Is it situational, or is it something that transcends the particular situation? I found myself in Miami in front of the Hotel Fontainebleau with about 2,000 other Vietnam veterans, and we were willing to storm the fence to get at President Nixon, who was just enjoying the renomination by his party to run for President. Let me tell you, I was willing to storm the fence, but when it came to running down the street and overturning garbage cans and throwing rocks through windows and I could not do that. I found that I abhorred violence. I could stand with people. I didn't try to stop people from doing the physical violence that other folks did in that poor Miami city that hosted that Republican Party. I think I realized then that I was not going to be using violence or believed in violence, and I began to build my beliefs around that, that since I couldn't actually participate in violence, there's got to be a better way. I've yelled at people to get off somebody's lawn or something, so I guess I get violent every now and then, but I hope that there is a better way that we can set violence aside as one of the tools of the caveman, that there is a path that we're called to use to climb on to take us away from this almost animalistic need of dealing with strength and might. Whether it's philosophical or spiritual, I mean, I do believe that God calls us to accept the fact that we're going to die. If we're anything, we're trying to love one another and bring that love into the world and turn away from anger and hatred, which leads to violence. Well, on a related note, you're an activist with Rockford Urban Ministries, you do peace work, you do all kinds of activist work with them. Would it be better if you were doing this as a secular? Is it important that you're doing it as a religious group, a spiritual motivated group? I'm just wondering about the pros and cons of each one, because, you know, religion, as we all know, has often been the reason, maybe the pretext for an awful lot of violence and division. Would it be better if it was secular? And I'm asking this maybe for the community, but I'm also asking this for you, Stanley, what would be better? Well, I've found that my spirituality calls me to do this work, and I believe that it's in everybody's being that they are called to do good in this world by just growing up, by what we're trained, by the body that we've been giving, most of us stray from that way, and we end up harming not only other people, but ourselves. I believe that the church at least has, at its core, this light of God that calls us to do good, and yes, sometimes it goes running off in different directions, but most of the folks who go to church do have that one hope, even though it's been diverted so many times. And I find it so joy to work within the church and the churches to dry and draw that light and that hope and the resources and the energy into doing physical work, doing good stuff, and then on the side talking about what could be a better world for us all. I think the secularists have as much trouble with pain and violence and want and greed as the religious. I think the religious have one up because there's a little hope there that says something better, and who knows, even the belief that there's a judge there that's going to say, "Oh, yeah, you really messed up there, and you've got to go back and do it over again," or, "You're going to spend a little time in the everlasting fires before you go." You know, enter the gates of heaven, all that, I think that's a way of encouraging folks to do better. That's a little kick in the pants to get us in the right direction. Again, if you just tuned in, this is Northern Spirit Radio Production called Spirit in Action, and the Spirit in Action we're talking to right now is Stanley Campbell. He's the director of Rockford Urban Ministries, and he's joined me mid-ground between Eau Claire and Rockford, Illinois. I'm up from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. My name is Marc Helpsmeet, and this is, as I said, Northern Spirit Radio Production. Go to our website, northernspiritradio.org. You can hear this program again. Listen to it repeatedly until it really sinks in. There's a lot of other good programs there, and you can find links, including links to Rockford Urban Ministries, only I don't even know what the website is. You know, I don't even know what it is, too. It's attached to the General Board of Global Missions of the United Methodist Church, and we're listed under Urban Works. And so, if you did a Google search of Rockford Urban Ministries in Rockford, Illinois, I'm sure you'd find us. And when they do that, they can probably also request to receive your newsletter. Definitely. We've got about 2,000 people on our mailing list, and we're more than happy to send you a hard copy, or update you via email newsletters as well. And I really appreciate the support of the people who've given for our Fair Trade Store and our new wind generator on the roof and the work camp projects that are going to be jumped into this summer. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that Fair Trade Store. Obviously, I know what Fair Trade is. Explain a little bit about it for listeners. What are you including in this store? Where are your resources coming from for this Fair Trade Store? You know, maybe they'll want to make Rockford their vacation mecca so they can go to the Fair Trade Store there. We can only hope so. 201 Seventh Street, Downtown Rockford is the location of Just Goods, which has been operating now for two years and very successful. Thank you very much. It's open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 6, beautiful store with an attached art gallery and music listening room. Folks do travel quite a ways out of their way to visit the establishment and to see this little miracle will soon have a wind generator on the roof, hopefully maybe even some solar collectors. The project, of course, in dealing with Fair Trade is to make sure that the people who make our goods and they're all our gift items except for the chocolate and the coffee. To make sure that these items are made in a fair and just way that it doesn't harm the environment and the people get a living wage. Fair Trade is a movement that's grown tremendously in the United States and we hope to see it even more so. It was started by church groups, missionaries bringing back items that they would then sell and raise money for their mission projects, but it got to be quite a big movement, especially after World War II. Europe seems to have a bigger support of Fair Trade stores and establishments than the United States, which is about 0.01% of our economy, which is still a good chunk of change. And that is growing. It's probably one of the largest economic growth spurts even in these economic dolterum times, so we're getting an increase of visitors and sales, whereas other stores, especially gift stores at the time are either plateauing or dropping off. You mentioned Stanley that you have a room there where there's music that you have, I assume, periodic concerts. Maybe that's where you get Charlie King to come and play. I don't know. Or maybe you mentioned Keith Green and David Stoker. Do you have that kind of concert set up on a regular basis? Is the schedule out there somewhere so they can tie their visit to just goods with the concert that they want to hear? Exactly. And I think that's what brings some of our customers back, is when they come and listen to music, and it's been put on by a few local folk singing establishments, but especially through a group called Charlotte's Web, which used to have its own cavernous old church. They found that our little room of about 50 people is just perfect for musicians like Charlie King, Claudia Schmidt, Brian Bowers, the Hammer Deltzmer, an auto harpist. These musicians, when they come to Rockford, do not draw 100 or so people, yet when they're in an intimate setting like just goods listening room, it's really unique and a special experience. And they come away too, blessed with a night of performing. Well, Stanley, I had not previously entertained the idea of going to Rockford for vacation, but now you've changed my mind. There's so many good things you've been doing with Rockford Urban Ministries, including the Just Good Store, including the work camps that you're doing, including the Peace and Justice work you're doing. So many good things, it really puts a new light on Rockford, Illinois, for me. I want to thank you for doing that work now for 24 years. Exactly, 25 next year. And I'm sure for the 25th anniversary, you're going to invite us all to come down and be part of a special celebration. Thanks for the work, and thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you for having me, Mark. I really appreciate this. We'll send you off from this visit with Stanley Campbell, Director of Rockford Urban Ministries, with a song calling for fair trade, like Rockford's Just Goods, a place that also hosts musicians like Brian Sergio. Brian is from Madison, Wisconsin, just a two-hour trip to Rockford, and it would be so very appropriate for him to play this fair trade advocacy song down there. I'm Mark helps me, your host for Spirit in Action, and this is Brian Sergio and his song I'd just like to know. Well, I don't mind, you try to maximize your profits, but I'm not trying to take a dime from your pocket. I don't want to see anyone lose a job, I know intention to stage a more kind. I just like to know where my money goes. I just like to know if there's a sweat stain hidden in the clothes I buy, tell me why. If you got nothing to hide, you don't disclose the names of the factories that you use. Open up their doors to an independent human rights group, and there's a reason why you don't. I just like to know. The Walmart Disney Nike guess, yet JC penny, I can't name them all. There's just too many. And I know these markets are competitive by nature. Well, I am not saying it, you shouldn't use Third World Labor, I just like to know where my money goes. I just like to know if there's a sweat stain hidden in the clothes I buy, tell me why. If you got nothing to hide, you don't disclose the names of the factories that you use. Open up their doors to an independent human rights group, and there's a reason why you don't. I just like to know. I just like to know, yeah. Tell me, please, let's with these offshore factories. We've borrowed the wire fences and clots at the gate. Tell us, please, we need to know exactly how our clothes are made and what kind of wage those workers get paid in. Let's bring it all to the light of day. I don't find you trying to maximize your profits, and I'm not trying to take a dime from your pocket. I don't want to see anyone lose a job, and I have no intention to stay the boycott. I just like to know where my money goes. I just like to know if there's a sweat stain hidden in the clothes I buy, tell me why. If you got nothing to hide, you don't disclose the names of the factories that you use. Open up their doors to an independent human rights group, and there's a reason why you don't. I just like to know. I just like to know, yeah. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World", performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.