SILVER
SPRING CATHOLIC WORKER and
ALL-BELIEFS HOSPITALITY HOUSE 15405 Short Ridge Ct.
Silver Spring, Maryland. 20906
(301) 598-5427 h
e-mail: CathWkr@aol.com
Welcome. The Silver Spring Catholic Worker
gives hospitality on a small scale to seniors and those who come to Washington, D.C. for demonstrations, lobbying, internships and studying. Our legal clinic provides free legal assistance at Superior Court in Washington, D.C. in landlord-tenant disputes, small claims, immigration, mental health and mental retardation rights, social security and disability rights and child custody.
Members of the community include Patricia, Veronica Robinson, Barry Hale, Robert and Karen Jones, Patrick K. and Toby and Hazel Terrar (1914-2005). We often have a meal and watch a video together on Saturday or Sunday evenings. The public is invited. We are located in a two-bedroom house and garage-bedroom. It is
fifteen miles north up Georgia Avenue from downtown Washington, D.C. It is eight miles north up Georgia Avenue from downtown Silver Spring. The mailing address is Silver Spring, because that is what it was fifty years ago when the community was established. But we are closer to Aspin Hill and three miles north of the Glenmont Metro station.
Veronica
At the house is a desktop publishing
cooperative. Its name is CWP (CWPublishers).
We are self-supporting and do not need financial
or other contributions. When we started about ten years ago, we had ambitions
of re-establishing the pre-tmarial house that used to exist at Fourteenth and N
St. NW, Washington, D.C. from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. But because we
have had to take care of our own family members, this larger project is on
hold.
The Silver Spring Catholic Worker has an agrarian connection. It is at Dalzell, South Carolina, which is about seven hours (400 miles) South, near Sumter, South Carolina. Right now the farm consists of an old house that is not in good shape and a garden that is also not in good shape. If you are interested in visiting or staying on the farm, we will be glad to give you more information.
The Dalzell, S.C. Catholic Worker Hospitality House
b69 Click on the small photo to the left to view a larger photo of Pat on the roof of the Dalzell CW farmhouse on 6/1/06. The sweet gum tree that Hurricane Hugo blew over onto the house in 1989 had been left unattended for the past seventeen years. But one afternoon we finally got to it.
b72 Click on the photo to the left to get another view of the cleanup. Owner Robert Jones is on the roof of his father's, grandparents' and great-grandparents' house. The roof is supported by one foot in diameter beams and the tree did no damage. A few more work sessions and the place will be as hospitable as it was one hundred years ago.
Activities and Upcoming Events in our Neighborhood
Each Friday, 7:00-9:00 P.M. On-going vigil at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (North Gate) 7200 Georgia Ave., at Elder St., NW. The vigil is organized by CODE PINK, the women’s peace vigil. The first vigil was on March 25, 2005. It is designed to draw attention to the late-night arrival of seriously-wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers are the most seriously-wounded – with shattered limbs, brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorders. They are flown into Andrews Air Force base and delivered to Walter Reed (and Bethesda Naval Medical Center) under cover of darkness, at 10 p.m. or later. The night-time arrivals appear to be scheduled purposely to minimize public attention to, and knowledge of, the flow of seriously-wounded soldiers from the war. This is consistent with the Bush Administration policy prohibiting the photographing of coffins arriving at Dover AFB.
Click here
to view the CODE PINK web page which has a flyer describing the vigil as well as their other activities.
CODEPINK DC, DAWN, MilitaryFreeZone and Veterans for Peace DC sponsore from time to time a counter recruitment demonstration at the United States Armed Forces Recruiting Center, 8202 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland. The purpose is to tell the military that we will not tolerate dishonest and illegal recruitment methods and to tell the administration that the high school records of our children are not "free" under the Leave No Child Behind Act. We demand "opt-in" instead of "opt out" of access to information of our students. The flyer for this event reads:
The Army Stands Down, But We Stand UP!
Stand UP Against Predatory Recruiters
Stand UP for Money for College, not Combat
Stand UP for Paredes and Benderman
Stand UP for our Troops in Iraq - Bring them home!
Stand UP against war profiteers
March 13 to 16, 2008. Iraq Veterans Against the War’s "Winter Soldier" at the National Labor College 10000 New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring. The veterans provide accounts of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. See IVAW.
Catholic Worker Resources in the Washington, D.C. Area
There are a number of Catholic Worker houses and Catholic Worker type
communities in the Washington, D.C. area which provide substantial social
services and solicit for volunteers and financial aid. These are:
Dorthy Day
House (Art Laffin/Kathy)
503 Rock Creek Church Rd. NW
Washington, D.C. 20010
202 882 9649
202 829-7625
Clark
Massey
A Simple House
1816 Minnesota Ave SE
Wash. DC 20020
202 678 5898
asimplehouse@fastmail.us
www.aSimpleHouse.org
Quixote
Center
POB 5206
Hyattesville, Md. 20782
301 699 0042
quixote@quixote.org www.quixote.org
Simone Weil and Peter Maurin House--Monastic
Krystyna and Steven Startari
308 Baltimore Rd., Apartment # 2
Rockville, Md. 20850
301 762 3474
http://monastic.angelfire.com
Baltimore, Maryland is about 30
miles from Silver Spring, Maryland. There are several CW communities in Baltimore:
Jonah
House Community
1301 Moreland Ave.
Baltimore, Md. 21216
410 233-6238 http://www.jonahhouse.org
Baltimore CW
Viva House
26 S. Mount St.
Baltimore, Maryland21223
(410) 233-0488
There are also Catholic Worker Communities in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. The latter two are both about 300 miles from Silver Spring, Maryland. They are:
Silk Hope Catholic Worker
3355 Woody Store Rd.
Siler City, North Carolina 27344
(919) 663-4334
Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm
(120 miles from Silver Spring)
16560 Louisa Rd
Trevilians VA 23170
Phone: 540-967-5574
Email: littleflowercw@wildmail.com
St Francis Catholic Worker
(85 miles from Silver Spring)
9631 Peppertree Rd
Spotsylvania VA 22553
Phone: 540-972-3218
For information about D.C. area social services, Barry Hale is working on a database that assists those needing services. Click on Crisis Navigation.
Barry Hale
3572 Dean Drive, Apartment 2
Hyattsville, Maryland 20782
(301) 559-0032
barryahale@netscape.net
Silver Spring CW Bibliography
"District of Columbia History and Dorothy Day".
Click here.
for an article about Dorothy Day, her jail time at the District of Columbia's Occoquan Workhouse and the failed effort in the 1990s to return the workhouse to its earlier beneficial purpose. This article originally appeared in Hospitality (Atlanta, Georgia: The Open Door Community, November 1998), vol. 17, no. 11, p. 9.
"On Solving Silver Spring's Illegal Drug Problem."Click here.
for an article by Dean Richards "On Solving the Illegal Drug Problem." This article originally appeared in a modified version by Rion Scott in Washington City Paper (November 2-8, 2001), vol. 21, no. 44, (Drug-PM.doc).
"A History of and Solution to Silver Spring's Adoption and Foster Care Problem Viewed from the Bottom Up."Click here.
for an article by Dean Richards "A HISTORY OF AND SOLUTION TO D.C.'S ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE PROBLEM"
(7/23/98, p181-ad.doc).
Coalition to Support Domestic Worekrs, Casa de Maryland, 734 University Blvd. E, Silver Spring, MD 20903, no web page, but e-mail is: adesimone@casamd.org
Women in National Parliaments
(Informed citizens recommend parliamentary gender equality, about which this site reports, as the single best indicator of how decent any land is for working people and indeed, all inhabitants, including children, and a critical factor for sustaining the planet.)
Women’s History
(This site, recommended by women of the community, is about women’s history. Typical of its features is Julia Ward Howe’s work to establish a “Mother's Day for Peace” in which women came together across national borders to recognize what they held in common above what divided them. Howe’s work started in 1870 in response to the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War. Today, another Julia, Senator Julia Morgan of
Wales and her husband Prime Minister Rhodri Morgan,
have brought women and men as partners in the legislature of Wales, which, like Rwanda, has gender
50-50 in office, and is within the range of mid-thirties to 50 percent for each gender believed to best represent and protect humanity and life in any region, and throughout the planet. All Scandinavian countries, most of Europe and many other countries, such as Costa Rica, Argentina, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, the cities of France, the villages of India and others, and others have already reached this level.)
