Couple nurture community on peace and justice

Nick and Linda Braune are spending their retirement gathering community around worker justice and peace issues through the Dorothy Day Labor Forum (DDLF) in Spokane.

Dorothy Day was a journalist and social activist who became a Catholic and in the 1930s started the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combines direct aid to the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. She started The Catholic Worker newspaper and was editor from 1933 until her death in 1980.

For four years, the Braunes have been continuing the spirit of her movement, editing a monthly newsletter, called "Dorothy Day Labor Forum" and holding monthly Zoom forums.

"We are inspired by Dorothy Day, whose community organizing activity was partially faith-based," said Nick. "In the 1960s, she was involved with dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, along with making efforts to reach out to historic Black churches and radical socialists.

"We are happy when there is solidarity among working people who realize that many people are stuck in the system. Even people who have a union to protect them need a broader vision," said Nick.

"We are pleased when we see labor unions calling for a ceasefire, talking about day care, health care and other issues," he said. "We are open to faith and open to wider philosophical concepts of labor, understanding that there are all types of laborers."

As coordinators of a labor forum, the Braunes invite not only labor union speakers, but also other social activists who want to help unions look beyond bread-and-butter issues.

Nick went through Catholic education from age six to age 23, but during his studies was informed by Methodists and people of other faith perspectives and the peace movement.

"In the 1960s, I was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War with support from Gonzaga University's president. Anti-war sentiment stirred me as much as the labor sentiment," said Nick, who earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1986 and a masters in philosophy in 1989 from the University of Washington.

He received a master's in theological studies in 1993 from Drew University in Madison, NJ, focusing on the philosophy of religion. Nick was a community college philosophy professor at South Texas College, retiring in 2018.

Nick and Linda met 45 years ago through their involvement in the antiwar movement.

While Linda attended  public schools, also went to an evening weekly Hebrew high school and received a bachelor's degree in English in 2010 from Thomas A. Edison State College in Trenton, NJ, and her master's in English—specializing in American literature and cultural studies—in 2014 at the University of Texas-Pan American.

In McAllen, Texas, she was a college writing tutor at South Texas College, where she nurtured writers and did professional editing on the side.

"What has impacted my work is the concept of spiritual geography, from having lived in South Dakota close to a Native American reservation and worked with people there. I carried that feeling with me when we moved to Texas on the Rio Grande Valley next to Mexico, where there was a sense of spiritual geography, too. We were working beside La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE or United Farm Workers) there and I think of it in a spiritual way," she said.

Linda has recently reflected on her connection with Judaism.

"Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, is my big connection and the three principles within Judaism of 1) prayer, 2) Teshuvah or repentance, and 3) giving of yourself—Tzedakah or the religious obligation to do what is right and just. It's about making ourselves whole and living to our highest self. That, along with prayer, is the sense that I have of where I want to be in Judaism," said Linda, who has recently participated in the new Spokane Jewish Voice for Peace group.

Nick, who started peace activities early, said that in the 1960s at Gonzaga he participated in a peace group that often met at the Unitarian Church and visited with Spokane radicals.

"During the 1960s, there were many changes internationally, with countries declaring independence, women seeking more rights, Vatican II transforming the Catholic Church and people like Dorothy Day bringing new energy to the church," he said, noting that he left Seattle in 1989 to live on the East Coast.

Now back in Spokane, he has discovered much of what was happening here in the 1970s and 1980s, so the Dorothy Day Labor Forum has interviewed activists from those decades and the 1990s for its monthly newsletter.

Nick found that Whitworth President Edward Lindaman met with Gonzaga activist students. He took his students to China and was nationally known as a futurist who spoke about the importance of NASA and international cooperation.

From connections with Lindaman and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Nick said Gonzaga helped found the Peace and Justice Action Center by donating a house for offices. It later became the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane.

From the 1980s on, there was a transformation in politics in Central America when the Contras were being funded by the U.S. and priests were assassinated for supporting the poor. Many bishops in Latin America had been conservative, serving the aristocracy and silencing the peasants, he said, but big changes happened as many Catholics protested U.S. policies in Central America and welcomed documented and undocumented refugees.

When Nick left Spokane in 1969, he didn't plan to return, but eight years ago they did because their daughter started teaching at Gonzaga University.

Eventually, they started the Dorothy Day Labor Forum, first meeting weekly with different speakers on worker issues. After COVID, they started publishing the monthly newsletter and held a monthly forum on Zoom with local, regional and national presenters.

"When we were beginning, nurses were threatening to strike at an area hospital. At first, the United Food and Commercial Workers, who organize cafeteria workers and other support staff, were also negotiating," Nick said. "The nurses weren't involved. So, we sponsored a forum for both unions, and some of those workers continue to connect with us."

Now 200 people receive the DDLF monthly newsletter, said Linda, who is volunteer co-editor with Nick.

They edit and publish articles by local peace activists, former Teamsters, Gonzaga activists, members of Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi, Democratic Socialists of America, PJALS and people from other local peace and justice movements.

Some supporters continue to discuss their interest in Central America and Vietnam War protests, they said.

Recent topics in newsletter articles have included restoring humanity, decolonization, Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, labor unions, strikes, farm workers, the election, environment, tiny homes, working class economics, police accountability, Code Pink, a Palestinian/Israeli ceasefire, countering militarism and war, remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Hanford nuclear waste clean-up.

Some articles raise questions: "Who creates our reality?" "Can we confine the 'civil war' to discourse?" "What is our connection to the biosphere?"

The newsletters, which people are free to forward and copy for friends and family, are available by email and in print in an up-to-40-page letter format pdf.

For information, call 956-970-0604 or email braune@att.net.