Biography

Biography
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Cultural differences have always fascinated me, most likely because I grew up in an ethnic community. In the 1950s Woonsocket, Rhode Island was a small New England city with several textile mills and large numbers of immigrants who had come south from Québec to work in those mills. It was common to hear French spoken on the streets, in many of the churches, and in several of the parochial schools, where bilingual education was the norm.

Religion was closely linked with ethnicity. In addition to five Catholic parishes where French was the language of sermons and announcements (The Mass was in Latin), there were several English-speaking Protestant congregations, a Jewish synagogue, and other Catholic churches for the Italian, Polish, and Ukranian communities. The Irish had two churches, and these were the only Catholic ones where English was the vernacular.

Although my parents were devout Catholics, my father was a bit off the norm for that time period in that he saw religion not only in devotional terms but also in terms of service to other people. That belief would have an influence on the later development of my interest in the connection of religion to social justice.

This interest would be reinforced when I arrived at Emmanuel College in Boston in the late 1960's. At the time I was undecided as to whether to major in sociology or psychology. The decision was sealed on the very first day of classes, when I walked into a large lecture hall and listened to a diminutive woman wearing a white wimple and many yards of black cloth raise the question, "Why are there poor people in a rich society like the United States?"

The woman was Sister Marie Augusta Neal, and she helped set the course for the direction of my life – not only to major in sociology but also to maintain the social justice focus in my work. (Sister Marie passed away in February, 2004.) I have since learned that those of us who were influenced by Sister Marie are part of an impressive company that includes such people as Kip Tiernan, founder of the Poor People's United Fund and of Rosie's Place (a women's shelter in Boston), and Sister Helen Prejean, author of *Dead Man Walking*.
In graduate school at Boston University I simultaneously developed interests in the links between religion and social activism and in Marxian analysis – interests that some of my fellow students informed me were mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, certain mentors – T. Scott Miyakawa, Sally Cassidy, and Paule Verdet – supported my theoretical and methodological meanderings, even when they did not agree with some of my positions. Whenever I needed someone to support a synthesis of Marxism and religion, I could still call upon Sister Marie Augusta.

As I began to develop a dissertation topic, it became clear that I wanted to explore something about liberation theology – the belief that religious salvation is linked to the struggle for a just society. In the course of my preliminary research, I discovered that the strongest social roots of this theology were in Brazil. It was difficult to pursue this interest by means of a field trip, however, because by this time I was married and had two young children. Finally, after many years of postponing the dissertation research, I took off for Brazil.

The very first place where I stayed was the village of Igaraú, a peasant community in the northern state of Maranhão where people were resisting eviction by the Alcoa corporation. This gave me an early understanding of the importance of land to the survival of people in developing countries, as well as the impact of environmental destruction on people's lives.

This was not to be the main topic, however, of my dissertation or of the book that would be published from it. My interests in agrarian and ecological issues would develop later. Opting for the Poor, my first book, was a social-historical analysis of how the Brazilian Catholic Church shifted its loyalties from the elites to the people of the poorer classes – essentially an analysis of where liberation theology had come from.

Because of family responsibilities, it would be seven years before I would return to Brazil. When I did go back for two months in 1990 it was with the intention of investigating the role of church people in organizing grassroots groups (base communities) that often become activist. However, the focus of my research would soon change. One of the first places that I visited during that field trip was the town of Arame, in Western Maranhão at the edge of the Amazon region, where there had been several recent conflicts over land. I had been saying for years that I would not do research in areas of land conflict. Although there might be some causes for which I would have considered risking my life, sociological research was not one of them.

But the impoverished farmers of Arame were so warm in their personal manner, so strong in their religious commitment, and so articulate in their political and economic analyses that I could not leave. I extended my stay there, not only because I liked the people, but also because I was fascinated by the direct links between religion and social activism that they took for granted. In Arame most of the participants in the struggle for land reform were members of grassroots church groups. This discovery led me to shift the focus of the research that would lead to my second book, Promised Land – an analysis of the relationship between base communities and rural activism.

In the course of doing the research for Promised Land I went back to Brazil in 1991 and in 1992, the second time on a Fulbright grant.

It was in 1991 in the town of Rio Maria in the Amazonian state of Pará that I met Ricardo Rezende (first on the left in the picture), a charismatic young Catholic priest who at the time was the main organizer of an international network of people who wanted to put an end to the violence in the eastern Amazon region. Union leaders and ordinary farmers were being murdered by gunmen hired by the big ranchers, who were also destroying the rainforest in the interest of cattle raising.

Becoming involved in the Rio Maria Committee and organizing its U.S. branch was a natural extension of my own ethical commitments. I set aside my work on Promised Land long enough to write and publish a translation of Father Rezende's Rio Maria: Song of the Earth.

On my return to Brazil in 1992, I was somewhat concerned as to whether my role as an activist would interfere with my role as a researcher. What actually happened was the opposite. New opportunities opened up because contact persons who knew of my connection to the Rio Maria Committee immediately trusted me. People were very open about sharing information with me.

In later years I shifted the focus of my research to base communities in and around the city of Rio de Janeiro and to the relationship between a decline in social activism in the communities and the crisis in urban social movements. This crisis was partly a result of the lack of change in the system after a decade of intense activism. Nevertheless, in the countryside the struggle for land reform continues.

A commitment to social justice continues to influence all areas of my life. On January 6, 2001 I married Jonathan Campbell, an environmental justice activist. Our interests have converged as we've listened to speakers from the Brazilian Movement of the Landless express their positions on land reform and in opposition to environmental destruction and the genetic engineering of food. Together we support our common dream of a better world and each other's attempts to make that world a reality.

My life has taken many directions, some of them seeming to lead into blind alleys, but plans for the future are clear: To continue teaching at Mount Ida College for many years and to continue orienting my life toward a vision that is best expressed in the slogan of the grassroots activists who gather annually at the World Social Forum: "Another world is possible."

Photo credits:
The first two pictures are from http://www.woonsocket.org, a wonderful website that contains a wealth of information about Woonsocket, Rhode Island's industrial past and the immigration from Québec. The picture of Emmanuel College is a cropped version of one from http://www.emmanuel.edu. The others are from my personal collection.