Abstract
Megan Wilson-Reitz recollects her early life growing up in a diverse community which steered her towards a life of faith and social justice. Wilson-Reitz shares her involvement with community organizing in the Cleveland Nonviolence Network, the Cleveland Catholic Worker, and then her role as a board member for the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation.
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Interviewee
Wilson-Reitz, Megan (interviewee)
Interviewer
White, Bali (interviewer)
Project
Near West Side Housing Activism
Date
7-12-2024
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
76 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Megan Wilson-Reitz interview, 12 July 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 544007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1278
Transcript
Bali White [00:00:02] Hi everybody, it’s Bali White here with the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Today I am here with Megan Wilson-Reitz at the Carnegie West Library in the Near West Side. Today is July 12, 2024. First and foremost, how are you?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:00:21] Doing great. I’m so excited to be here.
Bali White [00:00:22] Awesome, me too. So we’re going to kind of get right into this. So could you introduce yourself, kind of when and where you were born and any important details you feel like including?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:00:33] I can try. So I’m a Clevelander. Native Clevelander. I was born on the east side, so I grew up in Cleveland Heights in South Euclid, went to school at Brush High School, so grew up all east sider. I went to Baldwin Wallace College for undergraduate, and when I was there, that’s when I got connected to the community of the Near West Side. So my family is native Clevelanders going several generations back. So I’ve always felt really connected to the city. I think a lot of folks in my generation moved out and back or were considering leaving Cleveland. And there was a time when Cleveland looked like it was really not the place to be, but that was never something that I considered. I always wanted to stay in the city. So, I mean, you’re a Cleveland State, so, you know. [crosstalk] Yeah. So, I grew up, my parents were teachers. Well, one, my father was a music teacher for Richmond Heights City Schools my whole growing up. And my mother was a social worker. And I think Mom being a social worker really informed a lot of sort of my way of thinking about, like, being, what does it mean to be a person in the world? What does it mean to be a person who’s embedded in community? And so, yeah, I think that was really formative for me. She ran the Social Work program at Ursuline College for the past, I don’t know, 35 years or so, right until she died last year. And she was really, for her, it was really important to give people to the community as social workers, right? So, like, raising up people, educating people to be of service to the community, right? And so I feel like I was sort of raised that way, too. Like, you are a person who’s being raised in service of something and, of other people, and that that’s an important part of who you need to be in the world. And I think that my brother and I both, you know, got that message really clearly from her. Yeah.
Bali White [00:02:51] Absolutely. Could you touch base on your religious background?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:02:54] Yeah. So I grew up Catholic, and we were part of a historically very diverse Catholic church, but one of the few Catholic churches in the city that had a significant African American Catholic population. And so I think that was really formative for me in ways I didn’t really realize until much later. But what does it mean to be a person of faith? What does it mean to be a person of faith in the city? What does it mean to be part of a diverse community of worship? You know, and as an adult, having done a lot of work in the Catholic church as a professional, the whiteness of the American Catholic Church is always jarring for me because I didn’t grow up in a predominantly White church. So for me, growing up as a person of faith was sort of integrated into the sort of other understandings about community. And, you know, I grew up with a fairly progressive, you know, look, progressive way of understanding the faith, right? I always understood being Catholic as being primarily about justice and being primarily about doing the work of God in the world, building the kingdom of God. Like that, that was always, like, a really big piece of my religious formation. And so it was sort of a natural fit with the Catholic Worker and some of the other things that came later, because that was, that I was raised with, but also went to public school. And I think if I had gone to Catholic school, I probably wouldn’t have remained Catholic, because I think Catholic schools, this idea that there’s sort of a hegemony, right? Like, everybody believes this thing, and this is the power structure believes this thing, and you are supposed to believe this thing. I didn’t have any of that growing up, and so I always saw my faith as being something I chose very independently, and it wasn’t forced on me and so that’s probably why I grew into it as an adult the way that I did. Absolutely.
Bali White [00:04:58] So you had mentioned you went to public schools growing up. Could you kind of talk a little bit about that, just your experience?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:05:08] Yeah, public school was a great experience. I grew up in a really, it was a very diverse community. A lot of- There’s a large Jewish community in South Euclid-Lyndhurst, you know, Beachwood, kind of that area where I grew up. And so, you know, a lot of my friends were Jewish. A lot of my friends were from other faith traditions. I had a lot of friends who were from immigrant families from all over the world. I had a lot of friends who just had really different life experiences and perspectives and faith traditions for me. So I felt like I was really- And I, you know, now, as an adult, looking back, like, I was really fortunate to live in a really diverse environment and community and to have had really authentic friendships with people who were very different from me. You know, and now, as a professional, my job is, I do diversity and inclusion consulting. That’s my profession now. And so I think growing up in an environment where I understood people before I understood race, culture, ethnicity, meant that those things were never abstract. Right? They were always personal. And so I think that my school environment was, for me, really important because it was diverse and because I had this, you know, really rich community as a kid growing up where I did.
Bali White [00:06:42] So you had mentioned that you went to Baldwin Wallace. When did you attend Baldwin Wallace? And kind of What did you study?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:06:51] I went there from 1998 to 2002. I studied Theater, and then I did minors in History and Political Science, and I tried a minor in Music, but I didn’t finishing because minoring in Music of Baldwin Wallace is its own thing. But, yeah, so. But Theater major. And I got really involved in a lot of social justice, political kinds of advocacy when I was there. And Baldwin Wallace, if you know anything about Baldwin Wallace’s culture, like, that’s not really a part of the culture of the school. And so I would, you know, have administrators introduce me in meetings as, oh, this is our campus activist. Like, I was the one campus activist, you know? So I sort of got a reputation at school for being like, you know, we have to care about this. And everyone’s like, do we have to care about that? Like, sign this petition. Another one. You know? So I was sort of that I was really annoying in college, but I was- But I was very invested in a lot of different social justice work. And because I didn’t have much community of other students who were doing that work, I started, you know, seeking out connections with organizations and people in the community who were doing it because I needed support. And that’s how I ended up connecting with the folks on the Near West Side was when I was at BW.
Bali White [00:08:04] So that actually brings me to that question of what exactly brought you to the Near West Side?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:08:09] Yeah, so I was very involved at. Well, so, okay, so I grew up Catholic, right? And so as a Catholic, one of the things that I embraced as a fairly young adulthood was the pro-life movement’s message around the preservation of life. And for me, it was like, it just made sense. Right? You’ve got this pro-life movement, but you also have the anti-war movement, and you also have the anti-death penalty movement, and, you know, it’s the consistent ethic of life, right? That’s sort of the messaging or the seamless garment ethic. And so, for me, as a young adult, I saw that as making just a whole lot of sense. And I would say that my thoughts about some of that are much more nuanced as an adult or as an older adult. As a younger adult, though, for me, this connecting the dots on those issues across this ethic of life was really important. And I got really- I took that really seriously. In college I wanted to start a pro-life group on campus, and someone said, convinced me that, hey, you know, you care about all these other issues, too. Why don’t you loop them all in and it can be a consistent ethic of life group? Well, I thought that was a great idea, except nobody was on board. Nobody. Nobody was on board. And so I had, like, three friends, and the four of us were the group, and we were like, we’re gonna have a protest. It would be the four of us. We’re gonna have a sit in. It would be the four of us. Like, we- [laughs] We were very enthusiastic, but we were embattled all the time. And so where were we going? Okay, so I started trying to do all of these different projects with this group to try to talk up like, we’re about social justice, we’re about life, we care about all these things. And everyone’s like, this makes no sense to us. There’s not much of a Catholic population. It’s a very Catholic perspective. Right? But we didn’t have a very large Catholic population at BW, so there wasn’t sort of this institutional or kind of cultural understanding that like, oh, yeah, this is a way that people think about things. It was like, what are they doing? Are they right wing or are they left wing? What are they? Right? So anyway, so we started coordinating a bunch of different activities and things, and I was reaching out to some organizations that I had connected with because I was doing social justice things already on campus. And one of those organizations that I got connected with really early was the Inter-Religious Task Force on Central America. And so the IRTF was coordinating groups of people in Cleveland to travel down to Fort Benning in Georgia to protest the School of the Americas. So you’re nodding. So you’ve heard this before. I’m not the first person to talk about this.
Bali White [00:11:03] I’ve heard a little bit, yes.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:11:04] Yeah. So the School of the Americas was, still is. It does not call The School of the Americas anymore, but it still exists. And it is a military training center on the grounds of Fort Benning in Georgia that trains military primarily from Latin America to engage in the counterrevolutionary and counterinsurgency techniques. Graduates of the School of the Americas have been responsible for a lot of major human rights violations against people of Latin America. So for decades now, people have been going and protesting this. And so I wanted to bring a group down there, but I couldn’t get enough people at BW who were interested. And so I connected with IRTF, and we sort of joined up with them and ended up being part of that for a couple of years. But that’s where I started to meet all these other folks who were involved in the Near West Side. For me, my faith commitment and my work for justice had always been sort of this, like, parallel thing. Like, I saw the connections, but I didn’t see a lot of other people actually doing that. And so going to the School of the Americas was the first time that I really, like, looked around and saw a lot of people living out their faith in this really sort of embodied way, doing protest work. And I was like, this is what I want to do. This is like, this makes a lot of sense to me. I felt a real vocational call to that work. And so I started seeking out more and more connections with that. And the folks who were doing that work who I met and who I knew were people who were already living here on the Near West Side. So. And they were all at the time. So I was in college, 20, 21, 22 years old, and I was connecting with folks who were mostly in their forties at the time. So they had been here doing the work already as adults for a while when I got plugged in. And so there was a period of time where almost all of my friends were, you know, a couple decades older than me. And I was very quickly embraced by that community as a college student. And I think I always felt like- I always felt surprised that they wanted me to be around, like, well, I don’t bring anything to this community. And they were like, we don’t care. We just think you’re cool. And I was like, really? You want me to be? You know, I felt so- And I remember really clearly the moment when I realized that I did not have a transactional relationship with this community, that I was part of it. I remember the very moment because I had been involved with- This was Cleveland Nonviolence Network was in motion at the time, and I was doing a lot of volunteering work with them. And we were doing these peace witnesses where we would go, and I stand on street corners or downtown, and we would. And it was, this was right after September 11, 2001. And so that’s, I got really connected with them because of that. And we would be standing outside with our signs or whatever, and we went to a sign making party for something. I don’t remember what it was. Maybe it was the Peace Show, actually, I don’t remember. But we went to this, you know, gathering at somebody’s house where we were all making these banners, and it was super fun. I’m making the banners. Well, then I was leaving within a few days to start my volunteer year in Chile. And at the party, somebody brought a Polaroid camera, and they took a bunch of photos of, like, me with other people. And then right before I left, they handed me this, like, framed- Well, it’s just, like, a little thing in a frame, and I think it’s a Cleveland Nonviolence Network, and it had photos tucked into the frame of these Polaroids, like, clips of the Polaroids that were tucked in the frame. And they gave it to me, like, so you don’t forget about your community while you’re away. And I was so struck by that. Like, I didn’t realize they saw me as part of the community. Right? It was like I had permission to consider myself in this family of people. So that was really meaningful to me. And I think, you know, As an adult, I try to remember what that felt like. And, like, now that I’m in my forties and I’m seeing young people, like, to remember, like, people need to be invited in, right? People need to know that they belong and that you think that they belong, because most people won’t assume they belong unless you tell them. So, for me, that moment of being told, well, no, you’re one of us, was very meaningful, and it was just a handful of Polaroids tucked in a plexiglass frame. Like, it was not a huge thing, but it was very meaningful.
Bali White [00:15:59] Right, exactly. So, yeah, you know, even as small of a gesture as it may have seemed, it really had, like, an effect, which is important. And that’s something I’ve noticed just being down here doing these oral history projects is everybody’s very welcoming, and it’s an amazing, amazing community, for sure.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:16:19] It is. It is. And, you know, it’s. We’re not perfect, right? But we got our stuff. We got our drama. We got our weird personalities, like, like any community. But I think there’s a sense that, yeah, people are weird. People are hard to get along with, and, you know, we do things that hurt each other, and we do things that are stupid, and that doesn’t change the fact that we are in community, and that that’s- That doesn’t change. Right? And I don’t think we have a lot of good examples of that in our culture. Right? Because, like, yeah, you have a friend who does something stupid or hurtful, it’s like, well, I don’t talk to that friend anymore. Right? And sometimes you have to. Right? Sometimes it’s, what’s healthy is to end relationships. Not to say that that doesn’t happen or shouldn’t happen, but. But the idea that as a community, we are responsible for each other and we belong to each other even when that’s hard, I don’t see that everywhere. And so I think, and for a lot of people, I think that’s why this community has become a chosen family as well, because families of origin don’t always do that well either. Right? I was lucky that I have a family of origin that does do that well consistently. But for those who don’t, this way of being in community, that commitment over time to each other, I think, it’s the family that people don’t always have. Right?
Bali White [00:17:53] Absolutely. So I guess. Could you kind of describe how this area looked upon your arrival to the Catholic Worker in terms of, like, conditions, demographics?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:18:04] Yeah. I didn’t pay a lot of attention.
Bali White [00:18:10] Yeah.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:18:11] So [laughs] I, you know, I saw that question. I thought, I don’t-
Bali White [00:18:15] And that’s okay.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:18:16] Yeah.
Bali White [00:18:17] You’re not the first one to say that.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:18:18] Right.
Bali White [00:18:19] It’s so involved in what you’re doing that you don’t really necessarily.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:18:22] Well, then you just sort of take it for granted. Like, this is what the community is. And then, like, you wake up 20 years later and you’re like, wait, this is really different. Right? So, I mean, just in terms of, like, the way that this particular physical neighborhood has changed in terms of demographic. Yeah, I came in around the early 2000s. That change was already well underway. And so it’s accelerated dramatically in the last 20 years in terms of gentrification, in terms of the kind of the way in which the neighborhood is perceived by people. It’s a lot whiter now. It’s a lot wealthier now than it was when I first moved here in 2004, but it’s, it was already happening, I guess, is what I would say about that. Yeah.
Bali White [00:19:19] So earlier you had mentioned the Cleveland Nonviolence Network. Can you kind of share how you got involved with that and some of the things you were doing?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:19:25]Yeah. A couple of misguided folks flew planes into the World Trade Center. I was a senior in college, and I was living that year in a house, actually in Old Brooklyn. It was an old funeral home that had been repurposed as student housing. And it was supposed to be, like, urban plunge style housing, like urban immersion housing, like, we were supposed to be living in the city and, like, doing volunteer work, and it didn’t work very well, but it was a nice idea. It was- It was a clever idea. So I was living in this house with a few other housemates and felt very lonely. I was, because I wasn’t living for the first year. I wasn’t living on campus. I had been on campus my first three years. And so I’m a senior in college. I’m living in this house off campus with these other roommates, all of whom have their own stuff and are not, like, in the same sort of mindset as I am. And then this thing happens. And for me, it was really- And for everybody, it was big, right? I mean, that’s- You don’t remember probably.
Bali White [00:20:39] I was two. [laughs]
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:20:40] Yeah. So. But for folks in my generation who were very, you know, young adults, it was a very transformative moment. A lot changed in the world for us in that moment. I mean, not just, like, the stuff that we think of in our, like, security theater of TSA and, like, all of that, like, that kind of- That has changed, but you get used to things quickly. But I think in a more profound sense, we had not understood ourselves as being a culture in global conflict, even though we were. We always were. But we didn’t have a self understanding of that culturally until September 11. And from that point till now, there’s never not been a moment when I, and I think most of my peers understand ourselves to be part of a world in conflict. So it really changed my worldview. And for me, as a person very committed to peace already, already working in that world, it was like, I need to get more invested in this message of, like, nonviolence and nonviolent social change that that’s really important right this minute. And nobody on my college campus was interested in that. And so the Cleveland Nonviolence Network was sort of forming out of folks already in the Near West side, people I already knew and had met in other contexts, but that’s when they were- They were starting to meet specifically on that issue, and I joined them, and that’s where I kind of got plugged in. So I already had, you know, met them because of the School of the Americas or the IRTF, other sorts of things. But this was when I sort of showed up as an adult member of the community and was like, what do we do? And put me to work. And I remember it because we had this meeting, and I showed up to the meeting. Somebody had sent me an email and was like, hey, you might be interested in this. I was like, well, I know a couple of these people. I’ve met them. I think I know where this is. I didn’t know where it was. Took me forever to find it. But I finally show up for this meeting, and I walk into the meeting, it’s at the Catholic Worker House. And I walk into this meeting, and they’re all. And they all look at me like, who is that? Or most of them didn’t know me. A couple did. But I was like, hi, I heard there’s a meeting. I want to help. And they’re like, great, we’re having an event next week. Can you help make the soup? I can help make the soup. So, like, I showed up the next week, and I started making the soup, and I’ve been making soup ever since, you know. [laughs] So this would have been 2001. It is now 2024. So for now 23 years, I have been making soup, and I had no idea how to make soup at the age of 21. So I showed up, and Maryellen Fiala was in the kitchen, and she said, here’s how we make soup. [laughs] So I make very good soup, because Maryellen taught me how when I was 21 years old. But that was how I first got connected with them, because I needed to be around people who saw this issue as being so sort of core and so as important as I did, and I didn’t have that among my peers at school, so. Yeah, yeah.
Bali White [00:23:54] So were you- Could you kind of talk about, like, the Peace Show, your involvement in that?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:24:00] I wasn’t terribly involved in the Peace Show. The Nonviolence Network was always involved with it. I never, I think when it first started, the first year of the Peace Show, I think I was already in Chile during my service year, and so when I got back, I just didn’t- That wasn’t a project I got super involved with. I always went to it, right? But I wasn’t involved in organizing it. But we were very involved in the Catholic Worker community in protesting the Air Show.
Bali White [00:24:31] Yes.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:24:31] And so I was always more involved with the Air Show protest than the Peace Show, and they ended up being kind of a combination of both.
Bali White [00:24:42] Talk a little bit about the Air Show, your protest against it?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:24:45] Yeah. So that the Air Show protest, for me, I think, has been really important, or at least, you know, was for a long time a big piece of how I understood myself working in the city because- Okay, so you’re already familiar with the Air Show protests. Probably. You’ve probably heard a little bit about it?
Bali White [00:25:06] I’ve heard some, yes.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:25:07] So there are a couple of pieces that make that particular protest really important to me. One is about personal relationship. So, you know, we had- And this was, this predates me, right? It’s the mid-eighties. We have people who are living in Cleveland, in the Catholic Worker community, who are refugees from Central America and other parts of the world where there’s a lot of war. And the sound of the jets is very triggering to people who have experienced violence in war. Right? It is not a fun thing. It is terrifying and traumatic. So people who were in relationship with the community who had experienced war were saying to us, right? - I use the “us” generally because I wasn’t there yet - but said to us, this is terrifying and traumatic. How can you support this? And we were like, we can’t, actually. You’re right. And so the protest actually came, was born out of this, like, empathy with understanding and walking with in solidarity with the people who were having this experience. And so I felt like that is a very- That’s a very deeply authentic reason to be committed to something. Right? We’re not protesting this because we don’t like it. I mean, we don’t like it, but we’re protesting it because it— Because the people who’ve experienced trauma have asked for a solidarity. Right? So for me, it’s important because of that. It’s also important because it’s a Cleveland thing. Right? Everybody in Cleveland loves the Air Show. We all love the air show. Big planes, boom, boom, boom, right? And there was, there’s this broad cultural acceptance of this thing. And so there was this small group of us going, this is awful. Does no one else see how awful this is? And so there’s a sense that, like, you’ve got to communicate that, right? Don’t you all see how awful this is? [laughs] So for me, it was also, like, part of being a Clevelander. Like, I felt like I needed to be a witness to my neighbors about this thing that I felt like I saw very clearly, and a few of us saw very clearly, but none of the rest of the world seemed to think it mattered. And so it was those- I think it was those two pieces, really, that drew me to that witness, which had been going on long before my time, right? And so I started participating in it. And when I was about 25, 26 years old, a group of us started talking about, hey, we should do a civil disobedience action inside the Air Show. And, you know, there were mixed reactions to that. But I think, you know, on the whole, the community kind of got together and said, yeah, we think this is a good idea. A civil disobedience would be cool. So we got. We got tickets, the Air Show, somewhere, somebody donated. I don’t even remember where we got tickets to the Air Show, but we got about a dozen tickets to the Air Show. And we went in with a group, and two of us did a sort of a public thing. You know, knelt in front of a, one of the bombers, and we had a banner, and, you know, we were forcibly ejected from the- [crosstalk] Probably have a photo of it. So it was just the two of us that first year, and then the second, we decided to do it again the second year. And that year there were five of us. And we did get arrested that time. We were, the first time we were forcibly objected, but the second time we all went to jail. And so, you know, like, that was a- That was very important for me. You know, it was very formative. Like, my parents were horrified. My mother said I was in a cult. You know, she’s like, why are you, what are you doing now? Okay, so remember, my mother teaches at Ursuline College, [crosstalk] She’s teaching at Ursuline College. She’s got all these Ursuline nuns. Well, a lot of the Ursuline nuns who she works with also were very involved with the School of the Americas and everything else because one of the Cleveland Ursuline sisters was one of the four churchwomen who were murdered in El Salvador in 1980. So they have this very long history of solidarity with Latin America and civil disobedience, even in protest of, you know, US foreign policy towards, especially El Salvador. So this is a longstanding part of the Cleveland Ursulines’ tradition. So my mother now works with the Cleveland Ursulines. She’s got all these really close friends who are Ursuline sisters. So she’s at work, you know, and she’s upset because her daughter’s going to jail or just got out of jail or something. It was like, around that time, and one of the sisters came to her office and they said, we heard that Megan got arrested. And my mom goes, yes. Do you believe it? And she goes, yes, we’re all so proud of her. [laughs] And my mother had this moment of cognitive dissonance. Like, she’s horrified that her kid is, you know, engaging in this, you know, completely radical behavior. And the sisters are like, she’s just marvelous, you know. [laughs] So, yeah, so, you know, the nuns are always the most radical people in the block. But anyway, so we- And as civil disobedience actions go, it was pretty mild, right? We did a thing. We got arrested, you know, paid bail a couple days later. Like, it was- It was not a thing we went to in front of the judge, and the judge was like, seriously, why am I dealing with these people? Right, And so most of us, it was just like, you’re a first time offender. Just forget you’re done. They didn’t even do anything. But there were a couple people who had done similar actions before, and they were like, they’re not first time offenders. They need to do something. And so the judge is like, [laughs] says to one of my co-defendants, she goes, I think you need to do some community service. And he’s like, she’s like, how about, like, I don’t know, 40 hours of community service? And he’s like, I do that before breakfast. Right? [laughs] So, like, you know, in the end, it was like people made a really big deal about, oh, Cleveland Catholic, the Cleveland Five, you know, the Peace Show Five or the Air Show Five. It was like, no, I mean, it was very minor, and we were a bunch of privileged White people. Like, we had the privilege to go and do that and not face major consequences, right? But it was important for me to say, I’m willing to put my freedom on the line to call attention to this thing. So, yeah, so the Peace Show was going on while all of that was also happening, and so we were all sort of working together on this collective. And I actually like that the Peace Show is happening. It’s sort of not happening anymore. But the years that it was happening was really great because it was like, there’s this group of us who are out here saying, this is bad, and this other group saying, and this is good. Right? This is the world we want, and this is the world we don’t. Right? And we were doing that at the same time. And I think sometimes in protest movements and social change movements, we’re very focused on what we don’t want. Right? This is bad. This is evil. This is unconscionable. This is, you know, this is a thing we cannot tolerate. And so you’re spending a lot of time standing against things. Right? We go- Like, we go and we protest racism, but, like, what does it mean to have a world where we don’t have racism? What does an anti-racist world, community look like? And are we building it? Are we working towards it? And so I think we’re not real good at that. So, you know, for me, the work of, like, we’re building and we’re building this while we’re tearing this down, and, you know, trying to do both of those, I think, was really important. So I missed the Peace Show. But it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. And so the people who are doing it are like, yeah, if somebody’s isn’t gonna step up and run this thing, we’re nothing. And, like, who could blame them? Right?
Bali White [00:33:23] So you had mentioned that you took, like, a service trip to Chile. Can you talk a little bit about that and kind of what you were involved in?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:33:32] Yeah, I went as a volunteer with the Sisters of the Humility of Mary. So the Humility of Mary volunteer service program. Yeah, it does. Works with mostly, you know, recent new college graduates to do a year of service somewhere, mostly domestically. But for a few years, they sent people to Chile because they had a former sister who lived there, and actually, she had left the community and married, and then she and her husband were Marian missionaries, but she still had this connection with the Humility of Mary sisters. So they were like, we want to send you a volunteer. She was like, great, fine. So they sent- So I was actually the first year of their international program, which just lasted a few years, and so I did a year in Santiago. I was supposed to go to Santiago, and then I ended up- I got down there, they’re like, we’re gonna send you to a bunch of places, and then you pick the one you like and you can work there. I was like, alright. So I picked the one I liked, which was in a small town somewhat south of the capital, and I was living and working in this little, like, a women’s resource center in a very, very poor slum on the edge of this small town. And it was a really, really cool experience. And for me, because I’ve been- I remember I’d been involved in all this, like, social justice work, and I’m gonna save the world, and I’m gonna single handedly go out and, like, make change. And I got to Latin America, and I was like, I can’t even make a coffee. Like, I have no skills. I have no skills. I can’t talk to anybody. My Spanish was poor at best, and I just had- It was like I had to learn how to be a person. And so for me, it was very good, because it was very humbling to have to learn how to be a person all over again. And so, you know, like, did I contribute anything to, you know, anything that- Not really. I mean, I taught I belly dancing classes. Like, I was not terribly useful. It was fun. I had a lot of fun. But in the end, I think it was really transformative for me to, like, see myself as a global citizen of the world and, like, not a terribly important one. You know, it’s like, I have important work to do, and also, it’s okay if I’m not important, you know what I mean? Because the work that we do is not about us individually, about us in community. Yeah.
Bali White [00:35:58] So after you returned from that trip, what were you doing at that time?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:36:07] Poking around, trying to learn how to be a person. I pretty quickly got re-plugged into the work on the Near West Side, and not long after I returned, like, within a year after returning, I got connected with Ohio City Near West Development Corp. That was sort of when I got involved there. That was not long after I got back from Chile. Because I was looking for work, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And Mike Fiala called me up and said, hey, there’s this job opening, and I think you should go apply for it. And then the person, the director of the agency met with me, and he goes, well, you know, I’m glad you’re here to interview. I owe Mike Fiala a favor. [both laugh] So I think I was hired as a favor to Mike Fiala. I don’t really know, but, I mean, I think I did a good job. So it worked out, I guess, for the best. But that’s when I started getting really plugged into the Near West Side, and I moved here and so I was living kind of across the street from here. And, you know, I was like, okay, this is— I’m embedded in this community now. This is my thing that I do, you know, and my mother is still back in South Euclid going, Are you- You’re so far away. [both laugh] But, yeah, I felt like, okay, I’m an adult now, and I want to live my adult life in this place with these people that I know and trust. And it felt really great to move into this neighborhood and to feel like, I mean, I told my, like, my parents were like, well, it’s, you know, and it was, the community was- It’s still a city, right? It’s, you look around now and you see all these, you know, White people jogging with their designer dogs, and you’re like, yeah, this is, the neighborhood is safe. I mean, it’s still the city. And at that time, that was already sort of happening. But there was a lot. There was more crime. There were a lot of drugs. There was a lot of prostitution in the neighborhood. Like, that was a part of what was happening. And I never really felt like I was in danger, partly because I had the hubris of being 25 years old and feeling invulnerable, right? I’m invincible. Nothing can hurt me. But also, like, I knew a lot of people in the community, and I said to my parents, I said, I feel safer in Ohio City than I do in South Euclid because I don’t know anybody on your street. I said, I know a dozen people on my street, and I know I can knock on their doors if I need anything. Like, I feel more protected here by my community, you know. And I still feel like that. I still feel like that.
Bali White [00:39:01] Here’s something I’ve actually heard from many people that I’ve interviewed already. They have the same feeling about this area.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:39:09] Yeah. It’s like, it’s safe because of who we are. Right.
Bali White [00:39:14] Right, So, I guess, can you kind of talk about some of the central goals of the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:39:24] Yeah. So I know that this is why Mike wanted me involved in this project, because Ohio City Near West was- It was messy. It was messy. I came into it at a moment when it was transitioning from being- It was the, you know, the Near West, Near West Housing Network? Is that what it was? Near West Housing Network and Ohio City-
Bali White [00:39:57] Development Corporation. Something. I mean it merged.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:40:00] It merged. Right. So when it merged, it didn’t really merge so much as it was like these people over here and these people over here who were bitter enemies now had to share space. They didn’t stop being bitter enemies just because they were sharing space. They were just sharing space. And it was very uncomfortable. And part of the - I have to do Mike Fiala a favor by interviewing you - was like, I have made- This person was always balancing the needs of these two bitter, you know, camps. And it was like, well, I’ve done some favors for this camp, but this camp over here is kind of mad at me right now, so I’m gonna hire one of their people in this community organizing role to show that I have an forgotten that they’re important. Right? So, you know, it’s a little flippant to say I owe Mike Fiala a favor, because it was really more about, like, we have these two camps of people, and we have to balance their needs and interests. And so I was clearly a hire from this side of the camp, but I didn’t understand that, that that was what I was there for. I mean, I think it ended up working out that way that my, what I was doing there was standing for a particular way of understanding the community. And it had to do with preserving affordable housing. It had to do with community-centered design. It had to do with, yeah, organizing around resident needs, right? And so those were things that I took really seriously and cared about. And I also had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t do it very well. And it was- I had a lot of pride and hubris and made a lot of mistakes. Right? As everybody does. But I didn’t understand that my role in that development corporation was- Well, I didn’t understand my role, and other people didn’t understand my role. So it was a tense and difficult time and place because- Right? We have the, this one camp of people who thinks the role of a community development corporation is to support and stand in solidarity with the needs of residents and community. And there’s a whole other camp that thinks the purpose of a community development corporation is to do whatever will bring economic development to the neighborhood. And those are very different goals. So the- And we shortened it. Right? It’s like the NW people and the OC people. Right? The NW people were the people who refused to call the neighborhood Ohio City. Right? Because that was the name of the people who wanted to develop it and make it all fancified. Right? We’re not a fancified neighborhood. We’re a community. And the more you fancify, the more you gentrify, the more we lose people who can’t afford the rent anymore and can’t pay their taxes or can’t fix up their houses to the standard of their, you know, new wealthy neighbors and end up being forced out. Right? By circumstance or whatever, but it changes the demographic in the neighborhood. Right? We, we lost a lot of diversity in this neighborhood. It’s much whiter than it used to be. So, you know, all of that was happening already when I joined Ohio City Near West. And these camps were, I would say, sort of evenly matched in terms of power at the time. But the power balance was starting to shift as I was there. And I felt like I was standing in the breach of the power shift. And that was a very uncomfortable place to be as a 24, 25-year-old new professional who didn’t know what she was doing. And I had relationships that I had built with people in both camps. Right? And I felt responsible to those relationships. I felt like I had a responsibility to listen to people on both sides. But my roots were in the NW’s, right? My roots were in this particular community over here. And they were very angry with the organization I worked for and the people that it represented. And so, you know, I was struggling all the time. I don’t know how to- I wanted to be an advocate for what was right, and I didn’t always know what that was. And some things were very clear cut. I have one memory of- One of my responsibilities was to go to block club meetings. So they have these block club meetings, and I would go as a representative of the organization and talk about, you know, whatever. Whatever the organization was doing, right? Oh, we’re having this event, come to this thing, and also to hear from the block club and learn what they wanted. That was, in theory, what was happening. But in practice, the block clubs were organized by my organization, right? It was like the Ohio City Near West Development Corp. is having a block club meeting in your community. Come talk to your neighbors. It was forced. It wasn’t really a grassroots effort at all. So I was forced to pretend that I was engaging in grassroots work that wasn’t actually grassroots. So that was the first problem. So then I show up at these block club meetings, and they had various levels of neighbor involvement, right? But I went to one. Well, the neighbors on one side street, were like, we don’t like being part of this whole, like, institutional block club thing. We have our own block club. Like, we want it, and it’s just a block club. Like, you don’t- You can come if you want, but it’s not yours. It’s ours. Right? And I was like, cool, that’s good. And also uncomfortable because I have this responsibility for block clubs, for- I’m supposed to be organizing the block clubs, and they’re like, nope, we’re organizing our block club. Right? So it was like, this is a really awkward thing. But I was like, this is cool. More people should be doing this, right? So they would have these block club meetings, and I would attend, but I was an invited guest. I wasn’t in charge of anything. They made it very clear, and I really- So there was a lot of power stuff happening. So anyway, this block club had taken over an empty lot that was just overgrown and full of garbage, right? So they took this empty lot over, and they turned it into a little pocket garden, a little community garden on their street.
Bali White [00:46:21] Is that Kentucky Garden?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:46:22] No, no, no. This was a little bitty- It was just one city lot, [crosstalk] right? So there’s this one little empty lot, and it was, you know, they transformed it. They made this beautiful community garden. Everybody on the street had a plot at the garden. They took care of it together. I was like, this is perfect. This is wonderful. This is what we should all be doing, right? Take over this empty lot. Do something beautiful with it. Well, one day, one of my colleagues called. Called me into their office and said, you need to go to the block club and tell them they need to get rid of the garden. I was like, what? They said, we need that- We actually own that lot. I said, we do? And they said, yeah, we own the lot, and we need to turn it into a parking lot. I was like, I am not going to a block club meeting and telling the neighbors they have to tear up their garden because we want to build a parking lot. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. So there was a lot of that kind of, like, you are the representative of this organization, and this organization wants a parking lot. I was like, no, we don’t! Right? So it was- It was a tense- It was a tense thing. So I didn’t last very long in that. It was, like, maybe 18 months, but it was a very hectic 18 months. And at the point at which I left, the organization was- The power balance was already shifting, as I said. And the main shift was happening at this- It was an annual meeting where they elected board members to the organization. And people on both sides were- It was bananas. They were going out and they were, like, registering everybody in the neighborhood to vote in this election. And they were doing all sorts of crazy, crazy shit on both sides. So, like, the OC’s were going around to everybody, and they were like, do you have any small businesses? Your small business can be its own, gets its own vote. And now that’s designed in neighborhoods. Like, small businesses have a vote in the- Because, like, if you have at your local bodega or something, like, the bodega is its own, is a stake, right? It has a stake in the neighborhood, and as a stakeholder it should vote. But what they were doing is they were like, you’re a lawyer, and you’ve got three LLC’s that you own as a lawyer. And so we’re gonna register three extra votes for you in your LLC’s. So now we have people who have, like, five or six LLC’s registered under their name for whatever, right? I sell crocheted beanies online. That’s my LLC. I get a vote for my LLC. They were doing that. So, on the right, right? All these people who are, like, into gentrification. And I say right and left as though they’re not all like staunch Democrats. They’re all like good White liberals, right? But in terms of neighborhood politics, they were right wing. Right? They wanted to gentrify the neighborhood. They wanted to build up bed and breakfasts and all the rest of it. And this crowd of people were actively trying to vote out the other camp by registering all of these small businesses as voting members of the organization. Right? So that’s happening. And the other side, the NW’S were like, well, we have lots of stakeholders in this neighborhood who don’t have houses. And so they had, like, huge groups of unhoused people who were living at shelters, and they just went and registered all of them as voters. They’re like, because you’re a stakeholder in this neighborhood, because you use the services in this neighborhood, and you should also be able to vote in the election. These people are like, we have no idea what Ohio City Near West is. We don’t have any idea who these people are. We don’t live in the neighborhood. And it was a mess. Everybody was just trying to boost the numbers of people who were going to support their interests in this election. So the election comes and, and it’s, I mean, it’s just incredibly tense. We got people coming in to inspect the voter rolls ahead of time. It was really, really intense. So the annual meeting comes along, and I’m in charge of coordinating the logistics. I’m, like, ordering the food and that sort of thing, right? So I’m organizing all these things, and I’m, you know, checking people in as they come to vote or whatever. And meanwhile, a whole group of people from my community are standing outside with signs picketing the event for being, you know, the force of gentrification on the Near West Side and destroying affordable housing. And I’m like, you’re not wrong. These are the people who want to build a parking lot over the community garden, right. And also I work for them. And what does that mean for me? Because I’m working there so that I can try to be an advocate, advocate on the inside and to advocate for these needs and this point of view about what community means in this organization that you’re picketing. [laughs] So it was a very uncomfortable moment to stand at the windows of this event I’m organizing and see my friends and my partner out there with their signs, like, are you seriously picketing my event? So, yeah, it’s not been easy. But, yeah, I ended up quitting that job sort of in a huff.
Bali White [00:51:34] Sure, yeah. So I guess what insights did you have while you were working as this organizer for OCNW?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:51:45] I realized that development, community development corporations are not, are not a very good model for doing community development, community organizing. And I don’t even like the word development. Community organizing, community work, it’s not a very authentic way of doing work. I think when they first emerged, the idea was it was a grassroots effort. We bring communities together, and they work together to do things in their community together. And in theory that’s a great thing. But in practice, it ended up getting federal funding through the Community Development Block Grant funding, which was then, much of it was controlled by elected officials. So then elected officials treated the Community Development Corps as their own personal, like, implementation offices, right? I have this policy thing I want to do as a councilperson. So you, the development corp, are responsible for carrying it out because I control your funding. So we ended up just being an arm of the political apparatus in the city, which in Cleveland is not great. The political apparatus in Cleveland is kind of awful. And there’s a lot of corruption. There’s a lot of just, yeah, good old boy politics going on. It’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s gross. And so the community development corporations are being used by the political structure in the city to enact certain policies and enact certain practices. And sometimes they also do good stuff, right? Sometimes they manage things like lead abatement programs that help houses be safer. And sometimes they, you know, manage other kinds of community- Like, I live in Old Brooklyn, and the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corp. does a thing where they plant trees for free. And, you know, you can get a tree in your- I mean, these are like nice things, right? Nobody is against planting trees. It’s just on the whole, what’s the purpose of the organization, right? Who does it serve and who is not served by it? And I learned as I was working there that the people being served were the people who were the landed property owners and the people who had wealth and the people, frankly, who had enough time to come to meetings and be noisy about things that they wanted to do or see or have happen. And they often won. They won more often than they didn’t. And that was very disheartening because I was very idealistic, right? I’m like, I’m doing community organizing. I’m gonna listen to the residents, and then I go to a block club meeting and the residents would be like, we want to get rid of the buses because they kick up too much dirt. It’s like but that’s not- What? You know, but it’s like everybody at the block club meeting thinks the buses, they’re bad. They’re noisy, they kick up dirt. I keep my window’s open. They blow dust into my house. It’s all over my china. I’m like, it’s the bus. People need buses. Like, it’s public trans. What do you mean you wouldn’t get rid of the bus because of your china? I mean, it was just appalling. But because all the people at the block club meeting are from the same class of people. They’re like, yeah, sounds like a good idea to me. And I’m like, no, no, no. Right? But I’m a community organizer, so I’m supposed to be listening to the voice of the people. But what happens when the voice of the people is completely banana crackers, you know? But it’s not- [laughs] No, we’re not advocating to get rid of the bus. Right? Because there are people who aren’t at this meeting who need the bus, and they’re not at the meeting ’cause they’re working a second job. Right. That’s several miles away, which means they’re on the flipping bus. Right? So, I mean, the whole idea that, like, the community, like, how do I put this? There was a sense that there was, that going out and getting the voices of the community is a valuable thing, but there was no attention paid to power, privilege, race, class, socioeconomics, and how all of those things played into what it meant to get the voices of the community. So they were like, Megan, you speak Spanish. We’re really glad you’re here because we want to have flyers go out for our block club meetings in English and Spanish. So I made the flyers in English and Spanish. They said both. And they went. The block club meetings were still in English. So it’s like, well, we’re sending out this flyer in Spanish. Come to the block club meeting, and then what?
Bali White [00:56:36] Right.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:56:37] Right? That’s, you know, and I was thinking about this question of, like, would I, what would I have done differently? And I think that’s the area that I feel like if I had understood it sooner, my work, my professional work, and also, like, my life development would look different today, which is that I would have paid more attention earlier to dynamics of power, especially around race. And I would have done a better job of actually showing up in spaces where most people were not like me, did not think like me, didn’t look like me. I was cautious. I was- I was cautious about going into communities that weren’t mine, right? Going to churches that weren’t mine, if I hadn’t been explicitly invited in by somebody I knew. And so I didn’t make a lot of inroads in communities where I feel like I should have been advocating, not for, but with these communities, you know. I’m thinking, like, there’s all these small churches that are primarily Puerto Rican, right, in this community. I never went to any of those churches to say, hi, I work for the Community Development Corp. And I’m just here to, like, hear what you need. I never did that. I should have done that. Right? I did not make a lot of close, authentic friendships with people of color anywhere in the community then, or not for quite a while. And so I didn’t- For me, even though I had this - remember I said I grew up in this really diverse community - I had a lot of relationships with people who were very diverse, but I never translated that into my professional work until much later. This idea that I have a professional responsibility to be in these relationships and to seek them out and to listen and learn from communities that are not like me because I don’t actually have the answers. I didn’t do that very well. And Ohio City Near West and the development corporations generally don’t do that at all. And so what they’re doing is they’re enacting a certain way of understanding that is coming from people in power and being sort of handed down, like, you should all be grateful because this is a thing we’re doing, right? It’s not a bottom-up experience at all. So, you know, as an older adult, I have gotten more involved in more sort of ground-up and more diverse kind of coalition-based kinds of organizing and advocacy. But I didn’t do that as a young adulthood, and I should have. So, yeah.
Bali White [00:59:15] Well, you know, you learn with experience of course.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:59:15] You do. You do.
Bali White [00:59:20] So I guess we’re kind of going to switch a little bit gears this way. So how would you say historic preservation plays a role in the redevelopment of the Near West Side?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [00:59:33] Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting one. So there’s always that tension, right, between, like, in the physical space, the physical space that makes up the neighborhood. Like, I talk a lot about the community, right? And so when I talk about the community, I mean, the people, but a lot of people, when they talk about the neighborhood, primarily mean the buildings. And so the bricks and mortar that make up the physical environment, those bricks and mortar are old, and it takes a lot of money to preserve and maintain things that are old and when you have a community of people who don’t have a lot of money, disposable income is not available for preserving things that are old. And so things that are old decay and are lost. So there’s a tension between how much do we value the old bricks and mortar, literally. But also in this larger sense the physical environment that is made up of old stuff is expensive. And there are people who live in and inhabit this environment who have needs. And so are we attending to the expensive old stuff that needs to be maintained, or are we attending to the physical needs of the people? And this is an ongoing tension in communities like this one everywhere. And, you know, gentrification is like, as part of that. But it’s not- It’s not just- It’s part of the- Part of the story. Right. Because. Yeah, but old things that need preserving are beautiful. And so people who like beautiful things and who have lots of money to spend will sometimes seek out those beautiful things and say, I want to invest money in this beautiful thing. And that’s what gentrification is. Right? And at this point, it’s more than that. Right? It’s expanded beyond the, I want to preserve this old, falling down Victorian house, and it’s now I want to live in the [chic] neighborhood where everybody has flower boxes, right? Because I think it’s cool and it’s trendy. And there’s a, you know, eight coffee shops in walking distance. I get it. Right? I also like to live in walking distance to coffee shops, but the coffee shops, to me or the old Victorians should never take priority over the needs of the people in the community. Right? And then there’s also that argument that says, you know, if we bring in more money and there’s more economic investment in the community, everybody benefits. And to a degree, that’s true. And to a degree it’s not, because some people can’t stay. So it’s always attention. But I always feel caught in the center of that tension, I think more than some of my friends and colleagues who are like, we just believe in affordable housing. It’s like, yes, and also, this really is objectively a beautiful building, and do we care that it’s falling down? Do we want to do something about that? Can we do it without throwing the people’s needs under the bus? I don’t know. Right? There’s limited, right? We’re in a limited good economy. At some point, some priorities have to be made. And I always feel like we have to prioritize the needs of people, especially the people who are suffering, the people who are most marginalized, that’s, that, that’s a, for me, that’s a given. But there’s also real value in preserving what is old. And, you know, I think that’s just, it’s like one of those question marks you just sort of have to live with.
Bali White [01:03:25] Right, Absolutely.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:03:26] But, yeah, so I think that’s, that’s a big, a big piece of it, especially here because there’s so much historic construction here that- Yeah. So preserving physical, built environment becomes part of this tension, political tension, because you, you know, things that are beautiful, you fix them up and make them beautiful, and then the things that are not beautiful look even uglier by comparison. Right? And so then you have, you know, this, who’s barely hanging onto their house, it’s like, no, they haven’t mowed the lawn because they’re working three jobs to pay for the house. Right? They haven’t mowed the lawn. Well, now the lawn is overgrown. Now it’s the only street, house on the street that’s overgrown because all the other houses are beautiful. Right? And so you end up ostracizing and otherizing people who are struggling because they aren’t living up to this standard. So anyway, it’s just, it’s, it’s discouraging because I don’t feel like there’s easy answers for any of it. And I think that historic preservation ends up being used as an excuse for doing harm to communities, especially communities of color, especially communities that are marginalized. And I don’t think people are paying enough attention to it.
Bali White [01:04:47] Exactly. So I guess what changes have you seen in the Near West Side, Either good or bad? Or what changes do you hope to see for the Near West Side?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:05:02] When I look around the Near West Side today, my sense is that we fought for something and we lost. In terms of the built environment. Right? We were fighting for a balanced development that paid real attention to the needs of the poor, and we didn’t get it. So- And now that development, the, you know, market-rate development is, it’s, it’s out of control. Right? My husband and I, when I, when we married 15 years ago, he already had a house in Old Brooklyn. And so we moved there. And then a few years ago when we were looking to move, we were looking in this neighborhood because most of our community was here. Our church is here at the time that, and the kids school was here. Like, we, everything we did was here in the neighborhood. I was like, well, we really want to move into the neighborhood where our community is. And we couldn’t find a house that we could afford. I mean, it just wasn’t, it was, it was impossible. And so, you know, we ended up buying a house a few blocks away from where we already lived, which is fine. I love where we live. But I would have liked to live among the people who are my closest community, which are, who are here. And it wasn’t affordable. So, you know, I think in some ways, like, I and my family are casualties of that development story. But, like, it’s also nice having lots of coffee shops. Right? Those are objectively nice things to have. Right. I’m not one of those people who’s like, oh, there’s too many breweries. Like, I like breweries. You know? I mean, we probably don’t need as many as we have, but also, I like them. Like, I don’t think businesses, especially small businesses, should be discouraged from setting up shop and doing cool things in the community. I think those are objectively good. So I like some of that. And also, it’s sad because I feel like a lot of people lost out as well. And I think we lost some of our spirit as a community of, like, what we were as a diverse community, as a community that was complicated and wrestling with these issues regularly. The wrestling isn’t happening anymore, at least not in that degree that it used to. It’s like we’ve all sort of said, well, okay, I guess we lost that fight. So we’re fighting different fights. It’s not like we’re not still doing the work. And I also say that as somebody who is not as deeply connected or invested in that particular work now as I was in my twenties. Right? I live in a different neighborhood now. My work looks different. I have different professional things that I work on, but it is still a different place than it was 20 years ago. I mean, just is. So.
Bali White [01:08:27] I am curious, are you kind of still involved with community organizing, if not in this area, just in the Cleveland area in general?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:08:36] Periodically. Yeah. I think that as a parent of young children - my kids are teenagers now - and when they were young children, right, I mean, life changes. There are things you can do and can’t do when you have kids. Or I guess I shouldn’t say it that way because people do. Right? But, like, kids make things different. Right? So, yeah, I think I would understand myself always as a person who cares about bringing people together to try to solve problems and build community. That’s a thing that I care about, and I do it in a lot of different ways still. And so sometimes I do that through my teaching. Sometimes I do it through my professional career. Sometimes I do it through my volunteer work. Sometimes it’s just for fun because I think, you know, I said, we have to do we have to build while also tearing down. Right? Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker, would say, you know, we’re building a new world in the shell of the old. And so, yes, we’re digging out that shell. We’re trying to dismantle the systems that are oppressive. And while we’re doing it, we’re trying to build what we want, right? So I feel like everything we do, even if it’s planting corn at the community garden or organizing the neighborhood kids to have a lemonade stand or- Right? Anything that we’re doing contributes to building the world we want to see. And so sometimes that’s small. Mostly it’s small. It’s rarely very big. But I think some of those small things collect into bigger things, and they happen over time. And there’s a really cool quote I want to share. I was digging around in my files. I was digging around in my files, and I found where I said, okay, it’s gonna take me a second. Some files that we had from the Catholic Worker, different Catholic Worker things that we’ve done over the years. And there’s a quote. This is from Dorothy Day. And she wrote this article in 1954 in the Catholic Worker newspaper, which still sells for a penny a copy, since the thirties. So this article was called, “Have We Failed Peter Maurin’s Program?” And Peter Maurin, of course, was the co-founder of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day. And so she’s got this long article, and she says this. She says, “I know that I will give much satisfaction to many of our fellow workers when I admit that we have failed and that on every front. We have failed to clarify thought and probably will till the end of our days. About all of the above failures, I must say that I am not much concerned. I think that such failures are inseparable to a work of this kind and necessary for our growth in holiness. Such failure, for those of us who have dedicated our lives to this work, is our cross. As a matter of fact, our failure is so continuous that we never think of it. We just go on working without judging ourselves, as St. Paul tells us to. We can list our accomplishments as glorious examples of God’s providence and of our faith in it. We grow in faith in it, and in our very persistence, we are growing in hope and charity. God grant that we persevere.”
Bali White [01:12:19] Wow.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:12:23] So it’s- Yeah. The work is about saying, I don’t know what we’re succeeding at, and we won’t know for decades or centuries if anything we’ve done will make any difference. But it doesn’t matter. Right? We do it because it’s right. We do it because it’s- We see the joy that is at the heart of the work, and we seek out that joy, and we try to build on it. Right? And so sometimes it’s, you know, not very- Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you’re getting very far, but sometimes it does. You just never know.
Bali White [01:13:02] Just the small ripple. It has an effect in ways that we might not even know.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:13:08] We don’t. We really don’t. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s- I think 20 years retrospective is enough to start saying, gosh, I really didn’t understand how important this one thing would be or that person would be or this movement, you know? So. But you just- I think the lesson for me is you just keep showing up. You keep showing up and you keep doing the thing that, like, the next right thing. You do the next right thing. If the next right thing is today, we need you to show up and make soup. Like, you show up and you make soup. Right? It doesn’t really matter that you don’t feel like making soup or that you have other things you’d rather do or that your show is on. Like, sometimes you say, nope, can’t make soup today because my show is on. But more often than not, you say yes to the soup because that’s the need of the day. And so it’s just about trying to lean into what is being asked of you by the moment. And, like, I think we just keep, like, failing forward, right, at it. So. But at least we’re doing it together. Right. You know,
Bali White [01:14:17] I love Dorothy Day’s writing. She really has a way with words.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:14:19] Yeah. Yeah. It’s really powerful stuff. So. And I’m gonna leave these with you, [crosstalk] so you can take a look at them.
Bali White [01:14:26] So, I guess we’re kind of nearing the end of this interview. Do you have any last thoughts?
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:14:35] No, I think, I think those were- I think those thoughts are the encapsulation of it. Right? That we are building something that we can’t see. We’re building a future. We don’t know what it is. And we’re all part of that. Right? Whether we consciously see ourselves as part of it or not, we’re all building our- We’re building a future. We can’t see yet. And so the best thing that we can do is to be conscious of what the choices are that we make and try to make the choices that serve the good as much as we can. Right? Wherever we can do that and, like, recognize that we’re gonna fail at it and just keep doing it anyway. Right? So, yeah. Yeah.
Bali White [01:15:18] Thank you very much.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:15:20] Thank you.
Bali White [01:15:20] I appreciate your time and your effort and being a part of this project.
Megan Wilson-Reitz [01:15:25] It’s so fun. It’s so fun and exciting.
Bali White [01:15:28] It’s been amazing hearing your history and what you were involved in. So I am. Bali White here with Megan Wilson-Reitz at Carnegie West Library on July 12 of 2024. We’re gonna end this interview. Thank you very much.
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