04/06/2025
Yesterday, members of our community attended the nationwide protest here in Des Moines. Luke delivered a speech and we would like to share it with you all.
Good afternoon y’all, my name is Luke Clausen and I am a Catholic Worker, board member of Catholic Peace Ministry, and organizer here in Des Moines. It is a high privilege and pleasure for me to speak to you all today. What being a Catholic Worker means for my daily life here in the city is working most days of the week with local unhoused and resource-insecure neighbors providing hot, home cooked meals, showers, clothes, toiletries, and other various amenities to help people survive another day and feel they have a community and home to come into for at least a few hours a day. Though there are large differences between our cities, we model our work after what our Worker counterparts are doing in Los Angeles on Skid Row. Despite the differences, the direct parallel between our two cities is the degradation of spirit, mind, and body that capitalism takes on the most vulnerable in our country and the need for direct, immediate, compassionate remediation of the most extreme forms of poverty our neighbors are experiencing on a daily basis. Another part of being a Catholic Worker is putting out a newspaper, ours being called the Via Pacis, which we have copies of here today, so please grab a copy to get a better idea of who we are and what we do and see if you’d like to get involved.
This extreme poverty is the end result of decades of neglect of those in our society without enough money and power to put the focus on their needs, completely and clearly solvable given the level of wealth in this country, including the wealth here in Des Moines and the rest of Iowa. Severe mental illness and drug addiction play into many of our guests’ lives, but by no means does that make them undeserving of the dignity of a place of their own to fall asleep, have some privacy, and feel safe or be able to reliably feed, clothe, and take care of themselves. I would urge you all to take that so-called radical stance of calling for housing and care for all no matter life circumstances or how much you, I, or anyone else might think they “deserve” to have those needs met. Come and get involved with us by coming to see me or get a hold of me after this event or find some local Des Moines organization, such as Des Moines Mutual Aid, Joppa, Bethel Mission, or others to get involved in. The crisis of poverty in this city, state, and country will only start to improve when each of us, every day and as much as we can, take care of each other and meet each others’ needs no matter who needs it. Those left behind will die and I trust this crowd of people of conscience to be able to listen to the needs of our community and meet them.
This philosophy of mutual aid to each other, a kind of distributism that simply says that those who have should distribute what is needed to those who do not, can be put into practice, beginning even today after this event. When our government and economic system cannot take care of us, we can take care of us and we have a moral obligation to do so. Working from a scarcity mindset, whether with resources, relationships, or organizing, causes us to slowly lose trust in ourselves and with each other and that is a cost we cannot continue to pay for now or in the future. We need to trust each other enough to organize across community lines and find ways to organize ourselves, in existing or new ways, despite differences in perspective or political journeys. We can practice this trust and generosity under this form of late-stage capitalism, and yes, including under this Trump administration, regardless of our success in fighting back.
But regardless of how well we take care of ourselves and each other, we also have a moral imperative to fight back, through direct actions, nonviolent resistance, even up to and especially to the point of risk of jail and incarceration, staying in the public square, and organizing more and more strategically. We need to escalate our nonviolent direct resistance actions to match the escalation by our state and federal governments. We need more than just 5-10 people taking part in each of these actions like one I took at the Federal Building in protest of the genocide in Palestine last May. Look across the world to see what mass movements can affect in their society’s politics. These actions, while the stakes can be high, can also be fun and life-changing when done in community with others who believe just as strongly as you do.
We need that same kind of engagement and energy across the country, but especially here in Des Moines. We can start here. We do not need to wait for those in Democratic-held states to come and save us, nor do we need to wait for the Democratic Party, on a national or state level. Whoever is running in whatever position, they need to earn, and not expect, our votes, or they can expect to lose. We will not wait for anyone or anything to start creating a movement to change the political direction of our city, state, and country. By being here today, you are immediately involved. Please get in touch with us and stay involved. No one of us or our organizations will win this fight on our own. Thank you.
