So we take our stubbly faces to Atlantic Beach Habitat for Humanity, the neighboring program to Jacksonville's "Habijax", the biggest Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the world, yet nonetheless Atlantic Beach works its strip of land between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway efficiently and well in a way that consistently wins them national awards and attention. We join several motivated retired folks on a big duplex, fastening vinyl siding up the walls, sliding the pieces together carefully so hurricane and other high winds won't rip them off. Josh and I work with Ron, an enthusiastic Philadelphian in his mid-60s who still sweats profusely despite living down here for the past eleven years. As we dodge around the scaffolding to the wall, I don't know how it starts, but I tell him of Europe, and he launches into his own grand tales of traveling, which are vast and, perhaps one day, comprehensive. In Transylvania, he says, the castle that is really Vlad the Impaler's castle is way off the beaten path (because he's been there), but everyone else seems to settle for the one they see in the Dracula movies, the vampiric character based on one of Hungary's national heroes who, Ron says, simply turned the invading Turks' own tricks against themselves. "A Hungarian George Washington", he says.
Josh, our laser-eyed Americorps site leader, detects the slightest defect in the vinyl siding as if he were Stevie Wonder trying to pick out a note on the piano, or Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman beset upon by some angry ronin. It is as if he feels it, and as soon as he feels it, he harps on us to take it all down and put it back up correctly. "A hurricane would rip that straight off," he says, and has a point. He brings us popsicles in the hot, Florida humidity, and everyone is excited, but I tell him I can't have them, as strange as it is, because of sensitive teeth. "Even if my teeth barely touch the ice, I get shivers up and down my whole body," I say, which is true. I can hardly look at popsicle-consumers during ingestion of the things. He gives me a cockeyed look: "I can't eat them either," he says, "I do the same thing." We are not alone in the world. Soon, during the break, we all come down under the shade of a tree and drink from our Camelbaks, hanging on posts, the water-filled tubes reaching around to wherever its owner is standing and drinking from it. I can't shake the idea that we all look strikingly like funny-looking elephants.
Perhaps the coolest thing about Atlantic Beach Habitat isn't just their efficiency or the passion of their volunteers, but that now that those two things have been developed, among other things done well, they can use their funds to expand into other things to fight the affordable housing crisis. Now, for students who grow up in a Habitat house, they have a large endowment that will send them to college at FSCJ (Florida State College of Jacksonville) or UNF (University of North Florida) for four years. They will break the cycle of poverty in Atlantic Beach by giving students the tools to move out of it.
I should say that lately I have heard a particular conservative commentator railing against social justice. He says we should have "equal justice", not "special justice" or "social justice". While equal justice may be a great idea -- that everyone gets justice proportionally and we move forward together -- it's unrealistically idealistic. It's easy to say we want equal justice for everyone when we, like he and myself, have grown up in a life of privilege. Social justice is, in part, giving a fair shake to people who, by circumstances often historical and out of their control, have not received a fair shake. Certainly a student could "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", so to speak, and get to college without aid, but, as a grad student with good credit can attest, sometimes the only way to get this education is to have aid. It is accessible to me, it should be accessible to all who can put in the work. That, to me, is social justice, the kind exhibited by Jesus when he hung out with all sorts of people the Far Right of his time avoided, and anyone who fearmongers about social justice saying it reeks of Nazism and Communism despite it being so much a part of the life and teachings of Jesus like oh you so misguided and destructive Glenn, well... we always get bent out of shape when most of what we think of is ourselves. No wonder he's angry. Giving a hand to another can be uncomfortable. But we are made to give a hand, and we feel the joy in our hearts when we do. After loving God, Jesus says the second greatest commandment is loving one's neighbor as one's self, and then he talks about who that neighbor is, and, in a modern sense, that reeks of socialism. But we're talking about an interpersonal socialism, let's call it community, that we're made for. If it bugs you, it's a reality of our human selves; get over it.
