Cultural differences have always fascinated me, most likely because I grew up in an ethnic community. Fifty years ago 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 French-speaking Catholic parishes, 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 main language.

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.

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 became interested in the links between religion and social activism. 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 social justice.

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. 

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. 

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. After ten years I set aside this work as it became evident that the international network associated with the Movement of the Landless had grown and was now the significant effort to support.

In 2007 I began teaching in the Boston University Prison Education Program, following the inspiration of another mentor, Dr. Paule Verdet, who has taught in that program for many years and remains involved in it, even as she approaches her ninetieth birthday. This work sparked my interest in the School-to-Prison Pipeline, which was the subject of research during my recent sabbatical. But my main focus at the present time is the development of the Human Services Program at Mount Ida College, for which I became Program Director in 2009.

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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.