A BOOM FOR WHOM?

PHILADELPHIA The Republican convention is a performance on three stages: the
official events at the First Union Center; the streets of Center City, where
350 noisy protesters were arrested Tuesday; and the University of
Pennsylvania campus, where a Shadow Convention is providing a counterpoint
to the first and the intellectual capital for the second. The scruffy,
disjointed bands of activists opposing everything from the death penalty to
welfare reform to genetically modified foods skirmished with police in front
of the posh hotels where the Republican delegates are staying. The Shadow
Convention, featuring academics, community workers, and faith-based
organizations, could translate the protesters' scrambled message if anyone
would listen. "When we have unprecedented growth in this country but one in
five kids is poor, something is wrong," said Jim Wallis, director of Call to
Renewal, a national federation of churches working on issues of race and
poverty. "We live in an America where the two biggest growth industries are
residential gated communities and prison construction," said Chuck Collins,
co-founder of the group United for a Fair Economy. This is what the
drum-beating, puppet-parading marchers are against: 44 million people in
America without health insurance.

Wealth concentrated so densely that the top 1 percent of the country owns
more assets than the bottom 95 percent.

A minimum wage that keeps a full-time worker below the poverty line. A
two-tiered education system that Jonathon Kozol said will perpetuate the
divisions deep into the next generation. If these issues were to come up at
all, the official convention response would probably point to a generous
America that provides for the poor through churches, civic centers, and soup
kitchens.

But Wallis is one churchman who thinks the problem is too entrenched to
submit to voluntary solutions. "This is not about some people helping other
people," he said. "This is about all of us healing as a nation." Charity, in
other words, is no substitute for justice.