“If we had been better people we would have been angrier oftener,” the essayist Bentley wrote. In a
period of wanton oppression, holy anger is a virtue that the world craves. Mother Jones is its icon.
Mary Jones was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1830. She worked as a seamstress and schoolteacher, bore
four children, emigrated to the United States and, at an early age, lost both her husband and all her
children to small pox.
After the death of her family, Mary Jones was forced to support herself as a seamstress again, making
clothes for the rich. From this very distinct vantage point she saw in a special way the plight of the
poor who were at the mercy of the controlling corporate class.
With a kind of prophetic passion, she spent sixty years of her life organizing for the labor union
movement. She routed the industrial giants who dragged her off to jails and away from one industrial
site after another by refusing to quit, whatever the abuse they meted out, and by refusing to keep
silent, whatever the cost.
Mother Jones was seventy-two years old when a federal representative called her “the most dangerous
woman in America.” She burned all her life with the fire of justice, and singed everyone she touched
with it.
We need ordinary people like Mary Harris Jones, uncommonly common folk, clerks and waitresses, lathe
operators and stewardesses, nurses and assembly line workers, who refuse to accept the fact that the
government has money to burn on missiles it does not need but has not a penny to spend on milk for
babies or higher education for the poor or an updated infrastructure for a nation.
The problem is, of course, that we so easily abstract ourselves from the ranks of the heroic and the
brave. We admire them and we sometimes even follow them, but we seldom, if ever, see them in the
mirror of our lives. And that’s where Mother Jones comes in: old, female, grandmotherly, widowed,
childless, and financially destitute, she is the phantom of all our powerless lives.
The difference between Mother Jones and most of the rest of the humankind is that Mother Jones
looked at the world through the eyes of God and announced what she saw: exploitation, corruption,
and injustice. Then, piece-by-piece, she did something to change it: a mining town here, a meeting
there. What was, was not enough for her. And thanks to her, a rich and massive system was forced to
change.
“Where is your home?” they asked her. “I abide where there is any fight against wrong,” she answered
them. “My address is like my shoes—it travels with me.”
–from A Passion for Life by Joan Chittister (Orbis)
period of wanton oppression, holy anger is a virtue that the world craves. Mother Jones is its icon.
Mary Jones was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1830. She worked as a seamstress and schoolteacher, bore
four children, emigrated to the United States and, at an early age, lost both her husband and all her
children to small pox.
After the death of her family, Mary Jones was forced to support herself as a seamstress again, making
clothes for the rich. From this very distinct vantage point she saw in a special way the plight of the
poor who were at the mercy of the controlling corporate class.
With a kind of prophetic passion, she spent sixty years of her life organizing for the labor union
movement. She routed the industrial giants who dragged her off to jails and away from one industrial
site after another by refusing to quit, whatever the abuse they meted out, and by refusing to keep
silent, whatever the cost.
Mother Jones was seventy-two years old when a federal representative called her “the most dangerous
woman in America.” She burned all her life with the fire of justice, and singed everyone she touched
with it.
We need ordinary people like Mary Harris Jones, uncommonly common folk, clerks and waitresses, lathe
operators and stewardesses, nurses and assembly line workers, who refuse to accept the fact that the
government has money to burn on missiles it does not need but has not a penny to spend on milk for
babies or higher education for the poor or an updated infrastructure for a nation.
The problem is, of course, that we so easily abstract ourselves from the ranks of the heroic and the
brave. We admire them and we sometimes even follow them, but we seldom, if ever, see them in the
mirror of our lives. And that’s where Mother Jones comes in: old, female, grandmotherly, widowed,
childless, and financially destitute, she is the phantom of all our powerless lives.
The difference between Mother Jones and most of the rest of the humankind is that Mother Jones
looked at the world through the eyes of God and announced what she saw: exploitation, corruption,
and injustice. Then, piece-by-piece, she did something to change it: a mining town here, a meeting
there. What was, was not enough for her. And thanks to her, a rich and massive system was forced to
change.
“Where is your home?” they asked her. “I abide where there is any fight against wrong,” she answered
them. “My address is like my shoes—it travels with me.”
–from A Passion for Life by Joan Chittister (Orbis)
A 4th of July Kind of Woman
 |  |  |  |  |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home||Benedictine Sisters of Erie||Catalogue||Joan in the News||Contact Benetvision Fund for Prisoners||Retreats||About Benetvision||Ideas in Passing Benetvision • 355 East Ninth Street • Erie, PA 16503-1107 • Phone 814-459-5994 benetvision@benetvision.org • Fax 814-459-8066 Copyrighted © 2007 Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA |
