June 29, 2023 • 29 mins
The Reverend Garrett Harper with Urban Ministry in Birmingham joins us to talk about the mission and service provided by the Will Café. This restaurant has a unique “Pay what you can” structure to provide food for people of all economic backgrounds in the Woodlawn area of Birmingham. For more information, visit https://www.urban-ministry.org/
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This is Viewpoint Alabama on the AlabamaRadio Network, a show where we talk
about the people, places and thingsmaking news in and around our state.
I'm your host, John Mounts.Imagine a restaurant with the best food you've
ever tasted. How much would youpay for this kind of food? What
do you think is fair? Howabout whatever you think is fair? That
sounds crazy, But joining me rightnow in our Viewpoint Alabama Studios is a
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crazy man with this crazy idea,or so you might think. It's the
Reverend Garrett Harper. Welcome to theshow and tell us about the earth.
About the Weak Cafe. All right, I'm glad to be here, Thanks
John. The Weak Cafe is ahey as you can restaurant at Er Ministry,
which is a nonprofit in Birmingham's WestEnd. So in West End,
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now, for those people who don'tlive in and around the Birmingham area,
and the West End is not necessarilyknown for being the most up and coming
area. There are there are goodthings happening there, but there's a lot
of people who live in the overthe mountain part of town who they don't
go to West End and it haskind of negative reputation. But it's the
kind of thing that the people westEnd really need. Yeah. So west
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like many inner city neighborhoods, westEnd doesn't have the best reputation, and
most folks who don't live there orhave family who live there, avoid our
side of town. Usually when youhear about west End, it has to
do with the crime or the hobbis, homicides, or the drugs. But
to have something beautiful like the WeeCafe, a restaurant at Urban Ministry in
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west End, it's a real giftto the community. So describe the Wee
Cafe. What is it? Whatis it like? When you go in
there, it's it's different than McDonald's. What's it like? Yeah, so
when you come in, it's beautiful. We renovated the space. There's real
plates in civil ware, there's plantsin the windows, and some smooth jazz
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usually playing over the speakers, andpeople from all different places and all different
economic situations are all eating at tablestogether. So this is not a soup
kitchen. It's not a soup kitchen. So I want to in order to
understand where the week Cafe is now, I need to back up a little
bit. Okay, So Urban ministryis a nonprofit in a really low income
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area, and traditionally we've done directservices. Now direct services is often rent
in utility assistance. People come inbecause they can't pay their light bill,
or they can't pay they're about tolose their home. They come in and
they get help from us. Now, while this kind of service helps someone
temporarily, it's our conviction that itactually has an unattended consequence that does long
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term damage. It's one of thosegive a man a fish and you'll eat
for a day, you teach aman to fish and eat for a lifetime
kind of things. A little bitso when you come into an organization like
ours to get help with rent utilityassistance, Now, of course you come
in, we give you that kindSouthern hospitality, but the first thing you're
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met with when we get down tothe business is implicit distrust. So you
come in and you know we're reallykind, but we say what brings you
in today? And you say,well, you I lost my job and
I can't pay my lights, towhich we say, not in these words,
but prove it, because we don'ttrust your word. In fact,
we have all these grants and theyrequire certain evidence to show that what you're
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saying is true. And so canyou give us a statement from your landlord.
Well, you tell us that yourlandlord's from Massachusetts, he's never been
to Alabama, he's a slum lord, he's awful, and we say,
well we trust him, or atleast our grant. His signature satisfies our
grant. Well, and being cynical, it's a it's a natural human thing.
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I mean, we are necessarily cynicsby nature, I think a lot
of times, so we don't alwaystrust the words of individuals, especially if
they might look at they might presentthemselves in a manner that you might think
this person could be on some they'regoing they might be misusing this money.
I want to check it out.I mean, it's it's a natural thing.
Well, I don't know if it'snatural, but that is an assumption
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that we have, and that thissystem of doing nonprofit work in low income
areas, that's that's the assumption wecome in with. So let me keep
going though. So you come inand you prove you're as poor as you
say you are, maybe you giveus some stubs that show you're fired.
Maybe you go get this paper notarizedby somebody trustworthy. Anyway, we believe
you. You lost your job andyou can't pay your lights, you're as
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poor, you're poor enough to meettheir eligibility requirements. Then you get to
sit down with a social worker rightnow. Traditionally, this kind of social
work is oriented toward figuring out everythingthat's going wrong with you. They're trying
to get a holistic picture of allof your needs, and so there's actually
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a checklist. And so say youwere coming in, say that you lost
your job and you're having struggled,you're struggling to pay your lights. It
says, okay, John, whatbrings you in? Okay, delinquent lights.
Oh, you're already told me aboutyour housing, unstable housing. How's
your water bill? Well, rightnow, Birmingham water Works is all over
the board, the name the mayoreven tweeted about it. And they're not
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sure if you've paid your water ornot. You say, I'm not paying
the water right now because the billsare wonky. And we say okay,
okay, unstable water, delinquent water. And then I might show you a
piece of paper and say can youread this? And you squint and squirm
and blush and you say, Idropped out in third grade to help my
mom. I can't read. Hey, John, that's okay, it literate.
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I saw you squinting when you lookedat these words. Do you need
glasses? Oh? You do,visual deficit. How are your teeth?
You weren't thinking about your teeth.You were thinking about your light bill.
But you hadn't been to the dentistin twenty years. Needs dental? Do
you have any kids? Well,say you do. You perk up because
you love your kids. But myreal question is is there a teenage pregnancy
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in your house? Oh? Thereis, okay, because there's a lot
of money for that, right,teenage pregnancy. After we have a list
of all the ways you're failing tobe the person that you want to be,
and, from my framework, theperson that God's calling you to be,
then we say sit tight, We'regoing to get you some help.
Now. The only thing we knowabout you is all the ways that you're
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failing. We don't know that theperson across the table grows the best tomatoes
in the southeast. We don't knowanything good about the person in this system.
The only thing we need to know, the only thing we're interested in,
is the ways that you're bad.Right, So then you go through
this whole process, you're reduced toeverything that's going wrong. Maybe you get
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five six hundred dollars towards your housing. Then you get in your car,
you drive across town to Salvation Armyand on the way you fine tune your
pitch about how awful you are.And the better you are at selling your
failure, the more eligible you arefor funding. So you do it at
Salvation Army. Maybe you're pitch isa little bit better than you did at
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Urban, so you go over toUnited Way. You do it there,
you're getting even better. You goto a couple of churches, pull on
their heartstrings, hit Avondale, Samaritanplay. You're eligible at Urban and Ministry
again, so you come back tous. Before you know it, a
couple of years passes by. You'vebecome an expert at one thing, thinking
about how awful you are. Youdeveloped a skill set that's really not one
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you should be working on. Yeah, and what I see happening is,
so say there's a person that livestwo blocks of Urban Ministry. They have
a good job, their neighbor acrossthe street has a heart attack. People
are going hysterical. They run acrossthe street, give them CPR and they
save his life. Everybody's praising themup and down. You're amazing. But
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two months later they lose their job. They resist coming to Urban because they
don't want to be humiliated, buteventually they swallow their pride. They come
to us, they're met with implicitdistrust. They're reduced to all the ways
that they're failing. And maybe theyget five six hundred bucks and then they
drive to Salvation Army, then UnitedWay than a church, this church,
that organization. They come back toUrban. They do that cycle for two
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years. Two years later, neighborhas a heart attack again. People run
over, help, help, help, We need you, we need you.
It happened again. You say,I can't do that. I'm not
good enough. No no, no, you did it. We need you?
No no, no, Let thepeople in the white coats do that.
I can't do that. Who taughther that she wasn't good enough?
Or ministry did? Right? It'sthe pro So yeah, she yes,
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she received thousands of dollars over thosetwo years, but at what cost?
Sure? So I preach all thetime and I work really hard on my
sermons, and when I do.When I preach a sermon, it's not
very good, and somebody gives menegative feedback, I beat myself up for
a week about it. I can'timagine somebody only being interested in all the
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things that are wrong with me,that would destroy me. So the reason
this is important is that the weekCafe is designed to be the opposite experience
of rent and utility assistance. Sowhen you come into the week Cafe,
there's a counter, a paycounter,and the first thing you're met with is
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implicit trust. There's a black metalbox mounted on the wall. You pay
what you can and we trust thatthat might be a dollar, it might
be twenty, it might be ahundred, it might be a quarter,
but we trust that you're going topay what you can pay today. If
you want to pay with a card, it's the same thing on the iPad.
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You choose the amount that you're goingto pay for your meal. If
you have no money, because lifeis just so hard right now, you
can commit to volunteering in the neighborhoodto cover the cost of your meal.
You sign this little covenant and youput that card in the cash box,
and we trust you're gonna do whatyou say you're gonna do. The whole
system is built on trust and alsoit helps people as it gives them a
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meal, which is good you feedsomebody, but it also helps people because
people are able to participate in theprocess. I do you have any paid
employees? Are these all people whovolunteer there at we cafe? Yeah,
we do have paid employees. Sofirst, we have a culinary trained chef
who cooks the food. And thisis one thing that sets us apart from
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a food to kitchen is the foodis really really good. Second, we
hire young adults from West End whohave skills or gifts in cooking, and
we hone those culinary skills through teachingthem cooking skills in the cafe. So
the meal that you're when you eatwhen you come to us as a culinary
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trained chef overseeing it, but there'sa couple of young adults who live right
down the street who are learning tobe chefs working underneath them. How about
the ingredients that you use it?Do you just go to the Sam's and
just get and just get some stuffor as it donated a little both or
a little bit of both. Wehave a pretty large community garden. And
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so right now we'll have one hundredpounds of radishes and they'll incorporated, or
potatoes, or we had some sweetcorn we harvested recently, so a good
bit comes from our garden and therest it's just like any other restaurant.
We have a Cisco partnership. Theydrop they bring a big truck once a
week and and there's a menu.And I went to the website, and
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what's the website, by the way, urban dash ministry dot org. Urban
dash ministry dot org. And Iwent to the website and I saw it
where under the week cafe there isa menu where it shows what's being served
most days, and so people cango there and see what's what's on the
menu. That's right. So there'susually one meat option and one vegetarian option,
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and you can hop on the websiteand see what's being served. Now,
are you aware of that? Becausethis is a radical idea. I've
not heard of this before, butI've got to think that you You're not
the first person to come with somethinglike this. Is this done in other
places in the state. I don'tknow about it being done in the state.
There is a group called One Worldeverybody eats where these pay as you
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can cafes is kind of a coalitionwhere they come together and share ideas.
What I've found through studying other modelsis that we're the only ones that are
rooted in the middle of a lowincome neighborhood. Most of the time,
they're in places that are either inan intercity or they're on the line between
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area of town that has more moneyand the other side of town might not
have. But it's usually in closerproximity to people who can pay more.
That's true. And I guess you'renot quite near downtown Birmingham and the hospitals
and all that kind of stuff,so people do have to make a little
bit of a trip a lot ofthem to go there. Do you have
a lot of people who come fromover the mountain or maybe you know,
even the next county over to checkthe place out. Yeah, we do,
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And we have a little side roomthat seats about twenty five people,
and different businesses around Birmingham will sometimescome and have a team or staff meet
in that room and they'll all payfor that meal, and that really helps
balance out and cover the cost ofpeople who are paying through volunteering. Can
you tell me a story. Youdon't have to give any needs, but
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tell me a story of somebody whowas helped through urban ministries and specifically the
week cafe that they came Maybe theycame in and they didn't have much,
but they paid what they could andit made a real difference. Yeah,
So we have people all the timewho come in and some days they'll pay
and some days they'll volunteer, andit just depends on where they are,
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how much money they have. Wehad a local artist come in and he
painted this beautiful mural for us onthe wall. When you walk in,
you look up, you can kindof see it, and that was one
of the ways he paid for hismeal. We had another person recently who
just got out of prison and hecame and ate a meal and he said,
that's the best meal I've had ineighteen years. And man, he
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picked up a mop in. Ourfloors have been cleaner than I've ever seen
them before. And he helps outevery single day. And unlike a soup
kitchen, it's a two way transaction. It's a relationship. It's not somebody
has resources and somebody doesn't. It'swe all have something to give. Everybody
eats and everybody gives something. It'sa it's an amazing concept. Have you
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thought about expanding into a situation whereyou can deliver stuff because not everyone is
mobile enough to be able to walkthrough the doors. Maybe somebody needs delivered
to their house. Have you thoughtabout doing something like that? We have
a little bit. So one ofour goals is to build community, and
so one thing we don't do rightnow is to go boxes. If we
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did to go plates, people wouldcome in, grab their food and leave.
But our goal is to bring peopletogether around tables to sit down,
eat a great meal, and getto know each other. So the sense
of community is a big part ofthis. It is now we have talked
about when there is say we havea really stormy day and we overcook,
we have too much food. Wehave folks who can package that up into
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go boxes and take it to peoplewho are sick or shut in, so
we can we don't waste any food. Although I'll have to say we've we've
been serving more and more people everysingle day, so we rarely have extra.
Well, that's that's actually a verygood thing. It sounds like the
portions are decent, you know,one of the things you also think about.
I'm comparing this to like, say, the Wednesday night meals they have
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at church a lot of times,and you kind of go in there and
here's this little tiny piece of chicken, here's three grains of rice, and
you know, go off and studyyour Bible. But this isn't that.
It sounds like you're actually going toget a full meal of this place.
Yeah, it's a good meal.Well, Reverend Garrett Harper, thank you
so much for coming in for moreinformation again that website, yeah www dot
Urban dash Ministry dot org and checkout the week cafe and uh what what's
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what's the special? Today is aToday is a Thursday? Does it the
same every day of the week,like every Thursday is the same thing?
Or change all the time? No, it changes all the time. And
usually the menu is a month out. But today is Polish Polish sausage.
Delicious, wonderful. Well, Garrett, thank you so much for coming in
and being on Few Point Alabama.Thanks for having me. And up next,
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we turned to Ryan Gorman with abit of a history lesson just in
time for your July fourth holiday weekend. Ryan, who are you talking to
this week? We're joined by historianand best selling author Kenneth C. Davis.
He's author of the Don't Know MuchAbout book series, which you can
learn more about at Don't Know Muchdot com. Kenneth, thank you so
much for coming on the show inadvance of this July fourth holiday. And
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let's start with a very basic question, a quick refresher for everyone. How
did July fourth become the day thatwe celebrate our country's independence. Well,
John Adams, who was there backin seventeen seventy six, wrote this nice
letter to his wife Abigail, andhe said, this day will be the
most memorable history of America. Itought to be solemnized with pomp and parade,
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with shows and games and sports,guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations
from one end of the continent tothe other. He wrote that on July
third, and he was talking aboutJuly second, because that was the day
that the Continental Congress actually voted infavor of a resolution of independence. But
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it was two days later, onJuly fourth, seventeen seventy six, that
that same Continental Congress debated and thenadopted Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence, which
explained why these thirteen states had madethis decision to separate from Great Britain.
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So it was an extraordinary day,and John Adams was right about how we
would celebrate it. He was justwrong about the date. So on July
fourth were celebrating America's independence and thosevery very important ideas. All men are
created equal, they are endowed withlife, liberty, and the pursuit of
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happiness, unalienable rights to those things. And finally, and maybe most important,
governments are instituted among men, derivingtheir just powers from the consent of
the government. That was a radicalidea in seventeen seventy six, and perhaps
we take it for granted today whenwe looked at what led up to the
declaration of independence and the decision bythose thirteen colonies two break free, knowing
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the battle that was to come.What were some of the major underlying reasons
they felt it was necessary to proceeddown that road. Well, it wasn't
just taxes and tea and stamps.That's maybe you're what you remember from eighth
grade civics, if you learn civicsin eighth grade. We seem to be
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struggling with that these days in socialstudies or American history or civics. There
were a lot of issues. Obviously, certainly one to a man like George
Washington was the fact that they hadfought a war a few years earlier in
the Thirteen Colonies. We called itthe French and Indian War. The rest
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of the world called it the SevenYears War. And after that Americans expected
that they were going to have apiece of what the British had won,
especially by defeating the French. Andthey learned, to their chagrin that they
weren't going to that. The Kinghad made a proclamation in seventeen sixty three
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and the fruits of that war werenot going to fall to people like George
Washington. So a lot of ithad to do, like most wars,
with power. Who was going tohave the power over this extraordinary continent that
was, of course, at thattime a handful of colonies stretched out along
the Atlantic coast. But they knewhow big and rich and what the possibilities
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were. But they also believed thatthey were Englishmen and that they had the
rights of Englishmen, and they weren'tbeing they were being denied those And perhaps
most important, and especially to aman like Jefferson, they were living in
the time of what we call theEnlightenment or the Age of Reason. So
when Jefferson writes those words about allmen being created equal, that we have
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the right to life, liberty inthe pursuit of happiness, that the governed
must consent, these were radical ideas, but they were part of what was
going on in the world that especiallythe European world at that time, when
people were questioning the old order,and kings and monarchs around the world were
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being challenged, and the Church wasbeing challenged. So it was an extraordinary
time of change and revolution. Theideal that these men stood up for expressed
in the Declaration were very much whatthe revolution was about. But it almost
always comes down to power. Who'sgoing to have the power to divide up
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the spoils of this great continent.The men behind the creation of the Declaration
of Independence and those ideals tell usa little bit about them and who the
main players were. Oh, that'sa great question, and I can be
more specific in point to my websiteDon't Know Much dot com, where I
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have a series running around this timeof year every year about the fifty six
men who signed the declaration and whatbecame of them they pledged in that document
their lives, their fortunes, andtheir sacred honor. And it sounds like
pretty poetry to us today, butit was very true in seventeen seventy six
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that they were taking their lives andcertainly their wealth into their hands by challenging
the man who was perhaps the mostpowerful man on earth at the time,
the King of England. Men likeJohn Adams, men like Thomas Jefferson.
Obviously, the five people most involvedin drafting the declaration, in fact,
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included Jefferson, John Adams, andBenjamin Franklin, who at that time was
the most famous American, not onlyin America but in the world. So
these were extraordinary men gathered together atthis time. But I also have to
say one thing, and is veryimportant to point out, especially in these
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times, that forty of those fiftysix men who signed the document talking about
all men are created equal were alsomen who enslaved other people. And this
is the great contradiction in American historythat a nation conceived in liberty was also
born in shackles. And we haveto talk about that when we talk about
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American history and the Declaration of Independence. They slavery was part of the foundation
of this nation, and that's areality that some people are trying to bury
right now. I'm Ryan Gorman,joined by historian and best selling author Kenneth
C. Davis. He's author ofthe Don't Know Much About book series,
which you can find at Don't KnowMuch dot com. So when the creators
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of the Declaration of Independence were goingthrough this process, were there disagreements about
what's put in, what not toput in? How did all of that
play out? That's an interesting questionbecause of course I should back up a
minute here, Ryan and say thewar had already started. It didn't start
when in America declared its independence.The war had started a full year earlier,
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in April seventeen seventy five, withthe battles of Lexington and conquered up
in Massachusetts. The movement towards independencereally gathered steam in seventeen seventy six,
and by June when it was proposedthat the United States should declare itself independent,
it was quite a popular idea,although not every voted for it.
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New York abstained, for instance,from the vote at first, later on
joined to be unanimous. So therewas a considerable range of opinion. But
once it was announced, it wasreally quite accepted and celebrated in the United
States, and the popular movement towardsindependence became quite strong. Once they all
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decided to move forward with the declarationof independence, did they have a plan,
some kind of an idea of howthey wanted things to proceed from their
assuming they were to defeat the British, how they would implement these ideals that
were laid out in this document.Well, that's a really good question as
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well. And what they created atfirst with something called the Articles of Confederation,
which is a loose kind of almosta mutual defense pack as opposed to
a true national government. And almostfrom the very beginning, the question of
slavery was in there. One ofthe delegates from South Carolina said that if
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you started to talk about putting attackson slaves, we're going to walk out,
and the whole thing is over.The first threat of secession over slavery
comes barely two months after the declarationis signed. They do have a Congress
that organizes a war. They haveGeorge Washington, who was indispensable as the
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leader, not as a brilliant militarytactician, but as this incredible survivor who
keeps this rag tag army together longenough until the French come in and provide
a significant number of arms and chipsand the ammunition and soldiers to help George
Washington win this war. But itwas now another eleven years, from seventeen
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seventy six to seventeen eighty seven beforewe have the Constitution, because all those
years that it worked, for thoseeleven years getting through the war and afterwards,
it was a very weak form ofgovernment. And that's why in Philadelphia,
in the same place that the Declarationhad been adopted in seventeen seventy six,
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some of the same men go backto draft the United States Constitution in
seventeen eighty seven to form, aswe know, a more perfect union.
I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by historianand bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis.
The ideals that we find in theDeclaration of Independence, when did they start
to spread beyond our shores and impactthe rest of the world, Which almost
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immediate when you when you look aroundthe world. Certainly almost immediately. The
French begin their own revolution, whichtakes a very different and very violent course.
The French Revolution ultimately leads to areign of terror, ultimately leading to
a general named Napoleon taking over andwiping out the French Republic and replacing it
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with a Napoleonic Empire. More importantly, perhaps or equally important, and often
neglected, is the second Revolution inthe Western Hemisphere is clearly inspired by Jefferson
and the Declaration, and that's therevolution in Haiti, where formerly enslaved people
rose up against their owners for mostlyFrench, and created the second independent republic
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in the Western Hemisphere on Haiti.And that was clearly a result of what
had happened in the United States ofAmerica. So the impact was immediate and
sent reverberations around the world world thatcontinued for two centuries. And finally,
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for those who maybe you want tospend part of their holiday learning more about
all of this, tell us aboutthe books that you've written on our country's
history. Okay, don't know muchdot com it's my website, and right
now I have this series talking aboutthe men who signed the Declaration, what
became of them. Some of themare very obscure to us, some of
them are well known. You canread more about this subject in my very
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first book in the series. Don'tKnow Much about history. I also wrote
about this subject more specifically in termsof enslaver in The Shadow of Liberty,
which talks about five people who wereenslaved by Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
and Andrew Jackson, and it showsthe real human side of this story and
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this contradiction, as I call it, that this nation had to struggle for
a long time through the clear contradictionbetween its founding ideals and the nation it
would become as we know it today. And we're still struggling, and that's
why it's so important to understand itshistory. Best Selling author and historian Kenneth
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C. Davis, author of theDon't Know Much About book series, which
again you can find at Don't KnowMuch dot com. Kenneth can't thank you
enough for all that fantastic insight intoour founding. We really appreciate the time,
but thank you. Ryan. Historyis not boring. It's not dates
and battles and speeches. It's realstories of real people, and it's fascinating
(29:33):
and I am grateful for the chanceto talk about it. So now go
pursue happiness. You've been listening toViewpoint Alabama, a public affairs program from
the Alabama Radio Network. The opinionsexpressed on Viewpoint Alabama are not necessarily those
of the staff, management, oradvertisers of this station.
This is Viewpoint Alabama on the AlabamaRadio Network, a show where we talk
about the people, places and thingsmaking news in and around our state.
I'm your host, John Mounts.Imagine a restaurant with the best food you've
ever tasted. How much would youpay for this kind of food? What
do you think is fair? Howabout whatever you think is fair? That
sounds crazy, But joining me rightnow in our Viewpoint Alabama Studios is a
(00:22):
crazy man with this crazy idea,or so you might think. It's the
Reverend Garrett Harper. Welcome to theshow and tell us about the earth.
About the Weak Cafe. All right, I'm glad to be here, Thanks
John. The Weak Cafe is ahey as you can restaurant at Er Ministry,
which is a nonprofit in Birmingham's WestEnd. So in West End,
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now, for those people who don'tlive in and around the Birmingham area,
and the West End is not necessarilyknown for being the most up and coming
area. There are there are goodthings happening there, but there's a lot
of people who live in the overthe mountain part of town who they don't
go to West End and it haskind of negative reputation. But it's the
kind of thing that the people westEnd really need. Yeah. So west
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like many inner city neighborhoods, westEnd doesn't have the best reputation, and
most folks who don't live there orhave family who live there, avoid our
side of town. Usually when youhear about west End, it has to
do with the crime or the hobbis, homicides, or the drugs. But
to have something beautiful like the WeeCafe, a restaurant at Urban Ministry in
(01:26):
west End, it's a real giftto the community. So describe the Wee
Cafe. What is it? Whatis it like? When you go in
there, it's it's different than McDonald's. What's it like? Yeah, so
when you come in, it's beautiful. We renovated the space. There's real
plates in civil ware, there's plantsin the windows, and some smooth jazz
(01:47):
usually playing over the speakers, andpeople from all different places and all different
economic situations are all eating at tablestogether. So this is not a soup
kitchen. It's not a soup kitchen. So I want to in order to
understand where the week Cafe is now, I need to back up a little
bit. Okay, So Urban ministryis a nonprofit in a really low income
(02:12):
area, and traditionally we've done directservices. Now direct services is often rent
in utility assistance. People come inbecause they can't pay their light bill,
or they can't pay they're about tolose their home. They come in and
they get help from us. Now, while this kind of service helps someone
temporarily, it's our conviction that itactually has an unattended consequence that does long
(02:39):
term damage. It's one of thosegive a man a fish and you'll eat
for a day, you teach aman to fish and eat for a lifetime
kind of things. A little bitso when you come into an organization like
ours to get help with rent utilityassistance, Now, of course you come
in, we give you that kindSouthern hospitality, but the first thing you're
(03:00):
met with when we get down tothe business is implicit distrust. So you
come in and you know we're reallykind, but we say what brings you
in today? And you say,well, you I lost my job and
I can't pay my lights, towhich we say, not in these words,
but prove it, because we don'ttrust your word. In fact,
we have all these grants and theyrequire certain evidence to show that what you're
(03:24):
saying is true. And so canyou give us a statement from your landlord.
Well, you tell us that yourlandlord's from Massachusetts, he's never been
to Alabama, he's a slum lord, he's awful, and we say,
well we trust him, or atleast our grant. His signature satisfies our
grant. Well, and being cynical, it's a it's a natural human thing.
(03:45):
I mean, we are necessarily cynicsby nature, I think a lot
of times, so we don't alwaystrust the words of individuals, especially if
they might look at they might presentthemselves in a manner that you might think
this person could be on some they'regoing they might be misusing this money.
I want to check it out.I mean, it's it's a natural thing.
Well, I don't know if it'snatural, but that is an assumption
(04:09):
that we have, and that thissystem of doing nonprofit work in low income
areas, that's that's the assumption wecome in with. So let me keep
going though. So you come inand you prove you're as poor as you
say you are, maybe you giveus some stubs that show you're fired.
Maybe you go get this paper notarizedby somebody trustworthy. Anyway, we believe
you. You lost your job andyou can't pay your lights, you're as
(04:31):
poor, you're poor enough to meettheir eligibility requirements. Then you get to
sit down with a social worker rightnow. Traditionally, this kind of social
work is oriented toward figuring out everythingthat's going wrong with you. They're trying
to get a holistic picture of allof your needs, and so there's actually
(04:53):
a checklist. And so say youwere coming in, say that you lost
your job and you're having struggled,you're struggling to pay your lights. It
says, okay, John, whatbrings you in? Okay, delinquent lights.
Oh, you're already told me aboutyour housing, unstable housing. How's
your water bill? Well, rightnow, Birmingham water Works is all over
the board, the name the mayoreven tweeted about it. And they're not
(05:14):
sure if you've paid your water ornot. You say, I'm not paying
the water right now because the billsare wonky. And we say okay,
okay, unstable water, delinquent water. And then I might show you a
piece of paper and say can youread this? And you squint and squirm
and blush and you say, Idropped out in third grade to help my
mom. I can't read. Hey, John, that's okay, it literate.
(05:34):
I saw you squinting when you lookedat these words. Do you need
glasses? Oh? You do,visual deficit. How are your teeth?
You weren't thinking about your teeth.You were thinking about your light bill.
But you hadn't been to the dentistin twenty years. Needs dental? Do
you have any kids? Well,say you do. You perk up because
you love your kids. But myreal question is is there a teenage pregnancy
(05:54):
in your house? Oh? Thereis, okay, because there's a lot
of money for that, right,teenage pregnancy. After we have a list
of all the ways you're failing tobe the person that you want to be,
and, from my framework, theperson that God's calling you to be,
then we say sit tight, We'regoing to get you some help.
Now. The only thing we knowabout you is all the ways that you're
(06:17):
failing. We don't know that theperson across the table grows the best tomatoes
in the southeast. We don't knowanything good about the person in this system.
The only thing we need to know, the only thing we're interested in,
is the ways that you're bad.Right, So then you go through
this whole process, you're reduced toeverything that's going wrong. Maybe you get
(06:39):
five six hundred dollars towards your housing. Then you get in your car,
you drive across town to Salvation Armyand on the way you fine tune your
pitch about how awful you are.And the better you are at selling your
failure, the more eligible you arefor funding. So you do it at
Salvation Army. Maybe you're pitch isa little bit better than you did at
(07:00):
Urban, so you go over toUnited Way. You do it there,
you're getting even better. You goto a couple of churches, pull on
their heartstrings, hit Avondale, Samaritanplay. You're eligible at Urban and Ministry
again, so you come back tous. Before you know it, a
couple of years passes by. You'vebecome an expert at one thing, thinking
about how awful you are. Youdeveloped a skill set that's really not one
(07:21):
you should be working on. Yeah, and what I see happening is,
so say there's a person that livestwo blocks of Urban Ministry. They have
a good job, their neighbor acrossthe street has a heart attack. People
are going hysterical. They run acrossthe street, give them CPR and they
save his life. Everybody's praising themup and down. You're amazing. But
(07:42):
two months later they lose their job. They resist coming to Urban because they
don't want to be humiliated, buteventually they swallow their pride. They come
to us, they're met with implicitdistrust. They're reduced to all the ways
that they're failing. And maybe theyget five six hundred bucks and then they
drive to Salvation Army, then UnitedWay than a church, this church,
that organization. They come back toUrban. They do that cycle for two
(08:05):
years. Two years later, neighborhas a heart attack again. People run
over, help, help, help, We need you, we need you.
It happened again. You say,I can't do that. I'm not
good enough. No no, no, you did it. We need you?
No no, no, Let thepeople in the white coats do that.
I can't do that. Who taughther that she wasn't good enough?
Or ministry did? Right? It'sthe pro So yeah, she yes,
(08:28):
she received thousands of dollars over thosetwo years, but at what cost?
Sure? So I preach all thetime and I work really hard on my
sermons, and when I do.When I preach a sermon, it's not
very good, and somebody gives menegative feedback, I beat myself up for
a week about it. I can'timagine somebody only being interested in all the
(08:52):
things that are wrong with me,that would destroy me. So the reason
this is important is that the weekCafe is designed to be the opposite experience
of rent and utility assistance. Sowhen you come into the week Cafe,
there's a counter, a paycounter,and the first thing you're met with is
(09:13):
implicit trust. There's a black metalbox mounted on the wall. You pay
what you can and we trust thatthat might be a dollar, it might
be twenty, it might be ahundred, it might be a quarter,
but we trust that you're going topay what you can pay today. If
you want to pay with a card, it's the same thing on the iPad.
(09:33):
You choose the amount that you're goingto pay for your meal. If
you have no money, because lifeis just so hard right now, you
can commit to volunteering in the neighborhoodto cover the cost of your meal.
You sign this little covenant and youput that card in the cash box,
and we trust you're gonna do whatyou say you're gonna do. The whole
system is built on trust and alsoit helps people as it gives them a
(09:58):
meal, which is good you feedsomebody, but it also helps people because
people are able to participate in theprocess. I do you have any paid
employees? Are these all people whovolunteer there at we cafe? Yeah,
we do have paid employees. Sofirst, we have a culinary trained chef
who cooks the food. And thisis one thing that sets us apart from
(10:18):
a food to kitchen is the foodis really really good. Second, we
hire young adults from West End whohave skills or gifts in cooking, and
we hone those culinary skills through teachingthem cooking skills in the cafe. So
the meal that you're when you eatwhen you come to us as a culinary
(10:39):
trained chef overseeing it, but there'sa couple of young adults who live right
down the street who are learning tobe chefs working underneath them. How about
the ingredients that you use it?Do you just go to the Sam's and
just get and just get some stuffor as it donated a little both or
a little bit of both. Wehave a pretty large community garden. And
(11:00):
so right now we'll have one hundredpounds of radishes and they'll incorporated, or
potatoes, or we had some sweetcorn we harvested recently, so a good
bit comes from our garden and therest it's just like any other restaurant.
We have a Cisco partnership. Theydrop they bring a big truck once a
week and and there's a menu.And I went to the website, and
(11:22):
what's the website, by the way, urban dash ministry dot org. Urban
dash ministry dot org. And Iwent to the website and I saw it
where under the week cafe there isa menu where it shows what's being served
most days, and so people cango there and see what's what's on the
menu. That's right. So there'susually one meat option and one vegetarian option,
(11:43):
and you can hop on the websiteand see what's being served. Now,
are you aware of that? Becausethis is a radical idea. I've
not heard of this before, butI've got to think that you You're not
the first person to come with somethinglike this. Is this done in other
places in the state. I don'tknow about it being done in the state.
There is a group called One Worldeverybody eats where these pay as you
(12:05):
can cafes is kind of a coalitionwhere they come together and share ideas.
What I've found through studying other modelsis that we're the only ones that are
rooted in the middle of a lowincome neighborhood. Most of the time,
they're in places that are either inan intercity or they're on the line between
(12:28):
area of town that has more moneyand the other side of town might not
have. But it's usually in closerproximity to people who can pay more.
That's true. And I guess you'renot quite near downtown Birmingham and the hospitals
and all that kind of stuff,so people do have to make a little
bit of a trip a lot ofthem to go there. Do you have
a lot of people who come fromover the mountain or maybe you know,
even the next county over to checkthe place out. Yeah, we do,
(12:50):
And we have a little side roomthat seats about twenty five people,
and different businesses around Birmingham will sometimescome and have a team or staff meet
in that room and they'll all payfor that meal, and that really helps
balance out and cover the cost ofpeople who are paying through volunteering. Can
you tell me a story. Youdon't have to give any needs, but
(13:11):
tell me a story of somebody whowas helped through urban ministries and specifically the
week cafe that they came Maybe theycame in and they didn't have much,
but they paid what they could andit made a real difference. Yeah,
So we have people all the timewho come in and some days they'll pay
and some days they'll volunteer, andit just depends on where they are,
(13:33):
how much money they have. Wehad a local artist come in and he
painted this beautiful mural for us onthe wall. When you walk in,
you look up, you can kindof see it, and that was one
of the ways he paid for hismeal. We had another person recently who
just got out of prison and hecame and ate a meal and he said,
that's the best meal I've had ineighteen years. And man, he
(13:56):
picked up a mop in. Ourfloors have been cleaner than I've ever seen
them before. And he helps outevery single day. And unlike a soup
kitchen, it's a two way transaction. It's a relationship. It's not somebody
has resources and somebody doesn't. It'swe all have something to give. Everybody
eats and everybody gives something. It'sa it's an amazing concept. Have you
(14:20):
thought about expanding into a situation whereyou can deliver stuff because not everyone is
mobile enough to be able to walkthrough the doors. Maybe somebody needs delivered
to their house. Have you thoughtabout doing something like that? We have
a little bit. So one ofour goals is to build community, and
so one thing we don't do rightnow is to go boxes. If we
(14:41):
did to go plates, people wouldcome in, grab their food and leave.
But our goal is to bring peopletogether around tables to sit down,
eat a great meal, and getto know each other. So the sense
of community is a big part ofthis. It is now we have talked
about when there is say we havea really stormy day and we overcook,
we have too much food. Wehave folks who can package that up into
(15:05):
go boxes and take it to peoplewho are sick or shut in, so
we can we don't waste any food. Although I'll have to say we've we've
been serving more and more people everysingle day, so we rarely have extra.
Well, that's that's actually a verygood thing. It sounds like the
portions are decent, you know,one of the things you also think about.
I'm comparing this to like, say, the Wednesday night meals they have
(15:28):
at church a lot of times,and you kind of go in there and
here's this little tiny piece of chicken, here's three grains of rice, and
you know, go off and studyyour Bible. But this isn't that.
It sounds like you're actually going toget a full meal of this place.
Yeah, it's a good meal.Well, Reverend Garrett Harper, thank you
so much for coming in for moreinformation again that website, yeah www dot
Urban dash Ministry dot org and checkout the week cafe and uh what what's
(15:52):
what's the special? Today is aToday is a Thursday? Does it the
same every day of the week,like every Thursday is the same thing?
Or change all the time? No, it changes all the time. And
usually the menu is a month out. But today is Polish Polish sausage.
Delicious, wonderful. Well, Garrett, thank you so much for coming in
and being on Few Point Alabama.Thanks for having me. And up next,
(16:14):
we turned to Ryan Gorman with abit of a history lesson just in
time for your July fourth holiday weekend. Ryan, who are you talking to
this week? We're joined by historianand best selling author Kenneth C. Davis.
He's author of the Don't Know MuchAbout book series, which you can
learn more about at Don't Know Muchdot com. Kenneth, thank you so
much for coming on the show inadvance of this July fourth holiday. And
(16:38):
let's start with a very basic question, a quick refresher for everyone. How
did July fourth become the day thatwe celebrate our country's independence. Well,
John Adams, who was there backin seventeen seventy six, wrote this nice
letter to his wife Abigail, andhe said, this day will be the
most memorable history of America. Itought to be solemnized with pomp and parade,
(17:03):
with shows and games and sports,guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations
from one end of the continent tothe other. He wrote that on July
third, and he was talking aboutJuly second, because that was the day
that the Continental Congress actually voted infavor of a resolution of independence. But
(17:23):
it was two days later, onJuly fourth, seventeen seventy six, that
that same Continental Congress debated and thenadopted Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence, which
explained why these thirteen states had madethis decision to separate from Great Britain.
(17:45):
So it was an extraordinary day,and John Adams was right about how we
would celebrate it. He was justwrong about the date. So on July
fourth were celebrating America's independence and thosevery very important ideas. All men are
created equal, they are endowed withlife, liberty, and the pursuit of
(18:07):
happiness, unalienable rights to those things. And finally, and maybe most important,
governments are instituted among men, derivingtheir just powers from the consent of
the government. That was a radicalidea in seventeen seventy six, and perhaps
we take it for granted today whenwe looked at what led up to the
declaration of independence and the decision bythose thirteen colonies two break free, knowing
(18:36):
the battle that was to come.What were some of the major underlying reasons
they felt it was necessary to proceeddown that road. Well, it wasn't
just taxes and tea and stamps.That's maybe you're what you remember from eighth
grade civics, if you learn civicsin eighth grade. We seem to be
(18:57):
struggling with that these days in socialstudies or American history or civics. There
were a lot of issues. Obviously, certainly one to a man like George
Washington was the fact that they hadfought a war a few years earlier in
the Thirteen Colonies. We called itthe French and Indian War. The rest
(19:19):
of the world called it the SevenYears War. And after that Americans expected
that they were going to have apiece of what the British had won,
especially by defeating the French. Andthey learned, to their chagrin that they
weren't going to that. The Kinghad made a proclamation in seventeen sixty three
(19:41):
and the fruits of that war werenot going to fall to people like George
Washington. So a lot of ithad to do, like most wars,
with power. Who was going tohave the power over this extraordinary continent that
was, of course, at thattime a handful of colonies stretched out along
the Atlantic coast. But they knewhow big and rich and what the possibilities
(20:06):
were. But they also believed thatthey were Englishmen and that they had the
rights of Englishmen, and they weren'tbeing they were being denied those And perhaps
most important, and especially to aman like Jefferson, they were living in
the time of what we call theEnlightenment or the Age of Reason. So
when Jefferson writes those words about allmen being created equal, that we have
(20:30):
the right to life, liberty inthe pursuit of happiness, that the governed
must consent, these were radical ideas, but they were part of what was
going on in the world that especiallythe European world at that time, when
people were questioning the old order,and kings and monarchs around the world were
(20:51):
being challenged, and the Church wasbeing challenged. So it was an extraordinary
time of change and revolution. Theideal that these men stood up for expressed
in the Declaration were very much whatthe revolution was about. But it almost
always comes down to power. Who'sgoing to have the power to divide up
(21:12):
the spoils of this great continent.The men behind the creation of the Declaration
of Independence and those ideals tell usa little bit about them and who the
main players were. Oh, that'sa great question, and I can be
more specific in point to my websiteDon't Know Much dot com, where I
(21:33):
have a series running around this timeof year every year about the fifty six
men who signed the declaration and whatbecame of them they pledged in that document
their lives, their fortunes, andtheir sacred honor. And it sounds like
pretty poetry to us today, butit was very true in seventeen seventy six
(21:55):
that they were taking their lives andcertainly their wealth into their hands by challenging
the man who was perhaps the mostpowerful man on earth at the time,
the King of England. Men likeJohn Adams, men like Thomas Jefferson.
Obviously, the five people most involvedin drafting the declaration, in fact,
(22:15):
included Jefferson, John Adams, andBenjamin Franklin, who at that time was
the most famous American, not onlyin America but in the world. So
these were extraordinary men gathered together atthis time. But I also have to
say one thing, and is veryimportant to point out, especially in these
(22:36):
times, that forty of those fiftysix men who signed the document talking about
all men are created equal were alsomen who enslaved other people. And this
is the great contradiction in American historythat a nation conceived in liberty was also
born in shackles. And we haveto talk about that when we talk about
(22:56):
American history and the Declaration of Independence. They slavery was part of the foundation
of this nation, and that's areality that some people are trying to bury
right now. I'm Ryan Gorman,joined by historian and best selling author Kenneth
C. Davis. He's author ofthe Don't Know Much About book series,
which you can find at Don't KnowMuch dot com. So when the creators
(23:21):
of the Declaration of Independence were goingthrough this process, were there disagreements about
what's put in, what not toput in? How did all of that
play out? That's an interesting questionbecause of course I should back up a
minute here, Ryan and say thewar had already started. It didn't start
when in America declared its independence.The war had started a full year earlier,
(23:47):
in April seventeen seventy five, withthe battles of Lexington and conquered up
in Massachusetts. The movement towards independencereally gathered steam in seventeen seventy six,
and by June when it was proposedthat the United States should declare itself independent,
it was quite a popular idea,although not every voted for it.
(24:11):
New York abstained, for instance,from the vote at first, later on
joined to be unanimous. So therewas a considerable range of opinion. But
once it was announced, it wasreally quite accepted and celebrated in the United
States, and the popular movement towardsindependence became quite strong. Once they all
(24:36):
decided to move forward with the declarationof independence, did they have a plan,
some kind of an idea of howthey wanted things to proceed from their
assuming they were to defeat the British, how they would implement these ideals that
were laid out in this document.Well, that's a really good question as
(24:57):
well. And what they created atfirst with something called the Articles of Confederation,
which is a loose kind of almosta mutual defense pack as opposed to
a true national government. And almostfrom the very beginning, the question of
slavery was in there. One ofthe delegates from South Carolina said that if
(25:18):
you started to talk about putting attackson slaves, we're going to walk out,
and the whole thing is over.The first threat of secession over slavery
comes barely two months after the declarationis signed. They do have a Congress
that organizes a war. They haveGeorge Washington, who was indispensable as the
(25:38):
leader, not as a brilliant militarytactician, but as this incredible survivor who
keeps this rag tag army together longenough until the French come in and provide
a significant number of arms and chipsand the ammunition and soldiers to help George
Washington win this war. But itwas now another eleven years, from seventeen
(26:03):
seventy six to seventeen eighty seven beforewe have the Constitution, because all those
years that it worked, for thoseeleven years getting through the war and afterwards,
it was a very weak form ofgovernment. And that's why in Philadelphia,
in the same place that the Declarationhad been adopted in seventeen seventy six,
(26:25):
some of the same men go backto draft the United States Constitution in
seventeen eighty seven to form, aswe know, a more perfect union.
I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by historianand bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis.
The ideals that we find in theDeclaration of Independence, when did they start
to spread beyond our shores and impactthe rest of the world, Which almost
(26:48):
immediate when you when you look aroundthe world. Certainly almost immediately. The
French begin their own revolution, whichtakes a very different and very violent course.
The French Revolution ultimately leads to areign of terror, ultimately leading to
a general named Napoleon taking over andwiping out the French Republic and replacing it
(27:14):
with a Napoleonic Empire. More importantly, perhaps or equally important, and often
neglected, is the second Revolution inthe Western Hemisphere is clearly inspired by Jefferson
and the Declaration, and that's therevolution in Haiti, where formerly enslaved people
rose up against their owners for mostlyFrench, and created the second independent republic
(27:41):
in the Western Hemisphere on Haiti.And that was clearly a result of what
had happened in the United States ofAmerica. So the impact was immediate and
sent reverberations around the world world thatcontinued for two centuries. And finally,
(28:03):
for those who maybe you want tospend part of their holiday learning more about
all of this, tell us aboutthe books that you've written on our country's
history. Okay, don't know muchdot com it's my website, and right
now I have this series talking aboutthe men who signed the Declaration, what
became of them. Some of themare very obscure to us, some of
them are well known. You canread more about this subject in my very
(28:25):
first book in the series. Don'tKnow Much about history. I also wrote
about this subject more specifically in termsof enslaver in The Shadow of Liberty,
which talks about five people who wereenslaved by Washington, Jefferson, Madison,
and Andrew Jackson, and it showsthe real human side of this story and
(28:47):
this contradiction, as I call it, that this nation had to struggle for
a long time through the clear contradictionbetween its founding ideals and the nation it
would become as we know it today. And we're still struggling, and that's
why it's so important to understand itshistory. Best Selling author and historian Kenneth
(29:10):
C. Davis, author of theDon't Know Much About book series, which
again you can find at Don't KnowMuch dot com. Kenneth can't thank you
enough for all that fantastic insight intoour founding. We really appreciate the time,
but thank you. Ryan. Historyis not boring. It's not dates
and battles and speeches. It's realstories of real people, and it's fascinating
(29:33):
and I am grateful for the chanceto talk about it. So now go
pursue happiness. You've been listening toViewpoint Alabama, a public affairs program from
the Alabama Radio Network. The opinionsexpressed on Viewpoint Alabama are not necessarily those
of the staff, management, oradvertisers of this station.
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