3 | Loving the Least of These While Working for Justice with Martha Hennessy and Dr. Cornel West

Listen Now

Welcome back to Under the Ginkgo Tree. Today we revisit a panel conversation moderated by Liam at Maryhouse Catholic Worker with Martha Hennessy and Dr. Cornel West on May 1st, 2022. This conversation was a celebration of Mayday, which is known as the "birthday" of the CW movement. On this day in 1933, Dorothy and her friends went to Union Square to hand out the first edition of the newspaper.

In this episode, Jim and Liam frame the conversation by recalling their own shared connections with the Catholic Worker movement. We also lift up prayers for the late Pope Francis.

About the Guests

Martha Hennessy is a retired occupational therapist, grandmother of 9, and seventh grandchild of Dorothy Day. She volunteers at Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York City and works on the family farm in Vermont, where she raises self-sufficient crops with her husband. Martha has traveled to Russia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Korea, and Afghanistan to educate herself on the effects of United States foreign policy and war making on countries and families around the globe. She has been arrested and served prison time for resistance to torture used in Iraq and Guantanamo, the use of weaponized drones for long distance killing, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and the production and use of nuclear power and weapons. She speaks on the issues of war and poverty, the need for prison and nuclear weapons abolition, and the practice of the works of mercy and Catholic Social Teaching.

Dr. Cornel West is an American philosopher, theologian, political activist, politician, social critic, and public intellectual. Affectionately known to many as Brother West, he is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects – including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Links and Resources

Interactive Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by machine and may contain errors. It’s shared here in an interactive, searchable format to make the conversation easier to explore and revisit.