Blog #6: James J. Kelly Presentation

James J. Kelly’s presentation “To Create a New Society within the Shell of the Old” is based on local housing in Baltimore as well as throughout the country. This housing benefits those in the lower levels of society. Kelly holds degrees from both the University of Virginia as well as Columbia and is currently an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore. Professor Kelly works closely with the Catholic Worker Movement and the Community Land Trust Movement. The main concept of his presentation is in its title, “To Create a New Society within the Shell of the Old.”

The two aspects of his presentation were the Market and the State. The market and the state represent marginalized communities and people. The shells of these two aspects are the areas in which we choose our own individual interests. The shells we live within push us to the edge as well as come from places on the edge.
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day are both co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement. Without Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker Movement would have never existed. Dorothy put Peter’s words into action. The Catholic Worker Movement provides houses of hospitality, communal farms to connect people to the land, as well as meetings for clarification and thought.

Chuck Matthei is the co-founder of the Community Land Trust Movement. Matthei lives by the quote “Find a group of people doing good work and make yourself indispensable.” Local communities must be able to control basic resources if they will be in the market and state shells. The Community Land Trust Movement solely relies on subsidies. It is a democratically controlled, non-profit organization. It holds land perpetually for community determined purposes. This movement consists of a group of people working with one another to hold land for permanently affordable homes, conservation, and community based economic development. Local communities must be rooted in craft and human need.

Professor Kelly’s speech correlates to Julia Alvarez’s poem Queens. The poem Queens is based on a neighborhood block that must become accustomed to change when a black family moves in. The neighbors that have been living there feel that as if the block is “changing hands.” This is proven in lines 8-9, “Then the house across the street sold to a black family.” This relates to the neighbors surrounding the developments formed by the land trust movement. As more of one racial class moves into the area the surrounding neighbors feel as if they are becoming the minority and that their neighborhood is changing hands. Line 6, “we were blended into the block” relates to the people moving into the communities that are developed by the Community Land Trust Movement. The people moving into these communities blend together as a whole considering that they are all coming from the same social class. It was Mrs. Bernstein who said in lines 42-43, “it was time the neighborhood opened up.” She recalled what it was like to be the first Jew on the block. As a part of the Year of the City initiatives and what the Catholic Worker Movement stands for we must take it among ourselves to open up to the community and welcome those less fortunate than us. Lines 47-48, “But real estate worried her, our houses’ plummeting value” represent the low prices caused by subsidies and price ceilings that the land trust movement puts on the houses in their developments. The subsidies and price ceilings work to favor the low income residents that these developments are built for. This line is also relates to the concerns that the surrounding neighbors have regarding the market value of their homes after these low income housing developments are built.

Together the Catholic Worker Movement and the Community Land Trust Movement create economic diversity within communities. The communities that these foundations benefit help to open their arms to those less fortunate. The Year of the City program runs parallel to these foundations because they fulfill the ideals of what the Jesuits expect of us.