Abstract
Kristina Walter, an art educator, recollects her early life and how her faith has shaped her experience living in the greater Cleveland area. Walter notes the importance of religion and social justice throughout her education, which led her to join Cleveland's Catholic Worker Movement.
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Interviewee
Walter, Kristina (interviewee)
Interviewer
White, Bali (interviewer)
Project
Near West Side Housing Activism
Date
7-11-2024
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
45 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Kristina Walter interview, 11 July 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 544006.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1279
Transcript
Bali White [00:00:00] Alright. Hi, everybody. It’s Bali White with the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project at CSU. Today is July 11, 2024. I’m here with Kristina Walter. How are you?
Kristina Walter [00:00:14] Doing well, thanks.
Bali White [00:00:15] Good. So we’re going to kind of get directly into this interview, so could you introduce yourself, when and where you were born? You can kind of share as little or as much about your early life in terms of growing up, your hometown, family background, etcetera, things that kind of shape who you are.
Kristina Walter [00:00:35] My name is Kristina Walter, and I was born in 1985 in Richmond, Virginia, and my dad was working there at the time. And my mom also, my mom and dad met in Richmond, and we lived there for a few years before we moved to Louisville, Kentucky. And then while we were in Louisville, my dad lost his job where he was working, and my mom started working full-time. And she got an opportunity to come back to Cleveland, which was her original hometown. And that was attractive to them, I think, because her parents lived here and they could help with childcare. And my mom got a position at Case Western Reserve University. And so we moved to Cleveland in 1996 when I was eleven. So I’ve been living here ever since. Grew up in Shaker Heights on the east side, and currently I live in Cleveland Heights. So haven’t- I’ve lived here the whole time and haven’t moved very far, but I’ve traveled different places and that’s also influenced who I am.
Bali White [00:01:53] So could you share with us what your educational background is? You can go anywhere from K through twelve on to college and whatever you studied.
Kristina Walter [00:02:06] Yeah. I attended Catholic schools in K through eight, and the move to Cleveland was a little bit hard on me because I was entering the 6th grade, and middle school is a tough time anyway, I think, for people, and so to be starting a new school, we all attended Gesu here in University Heights, and that was kind of a difficult transition for me. When I was looking at choosing high schools, I didn’t want to go where most of my classmates were going, and so I ended up at Shaker public high school because most of my classmates were going on to schools like Beaumont and Magnificat and Notre Dame, Cathedral Latin, and things like that. And I just really wasn’t, wasn’t interested. And so that’s how I ended up at Shaker. And I, that was a really great experience for me because Shaker had a lot of robust choices as far as elective programming. I was involved with the theater department and the art department, and eventually I went to art school. I went to Cleveland Institute of Art for a year and then transferred because my mom still worked at Case. It made a lot of sense to transfer for the tuition benefit. And I majored in art education at Case Western, and that was a great experience. It sort of was- I say that I sort of fell into it in a way because I never had a super strong idea of, like, yes, this is the career I want, or this is exactly what I want to do, you know, from a young age. But art education matched my skills really well. I’m pretty outgoing. I like working with people. I love art. And, you know, I think being a full-time artist would be kind of lonely and can be- Yeah. Just requires, like, a different skill set in some way. And so I think the education piece was really important for me, and I’ve really enjoyed it, honestly. I’ve been a teacher for 15 years and couldn’t really imagine doing anything else. I like it a lot. So, yeah, that’s kind of it in a nutshell. And then after I started working, I worked for a year at Mary B. Martin School in Cleveland public, and that was a kindergarten through 8th grade school, and that was a lot of fun. But then that year 2000, in the spring of 2010, Cleveland public schools had a very big round of layoffs. They laid off maybe about 600 teachers from the whole district. And so when that happens, usually it’s most recently hired is the first to be let go. And so then I was looking for another job, and my former painting teacher at Shaker was looking to hire someone. And so I started working part-time at Shaker and then eventually went to full-time, and I’ve been there ever since. So where was I going with that? I had a- I had a- Yeah. So I’ve worked at Shaker Heights High School for the last 14 years, which is my alma mater. It’s been a lot of fun.
Bali White [00:05:42] So you mentioned you went to, like, Catholic schools before high school. Can you touch base a little bit on your religious background?
Kristina Walter [00:05:51] Yes, I grew up Catholic. We went to church every Sunday. I have to say, you know, as much as I appreciate my teachers at Gesu, I wouldn’t- I would say the first time that I really started becoming invested in my own faith was in a religion class in the 8th grade, where the teacher didn’t actually use the standard textbook that was required, but she built her own curriculum, and she taught us some church history. My 8th grade religion teacher, Karen Straub, and she was really interested in social justice, and so she taught religion class on church history, early church history, and then she also showed us a documentary on Oscar Romero and touched on some social justice topics that were really interesting to me. And that was the first time where I was like, okay, you know, maybe I am more interested in my faith than just— Because up until then, I think a lot of Catholic education can be- You open the textbook, you fill in the blank about the Sacraments, you fill out the crossword puzzle, you know, and it’s not really like an authentic education. And so I really appreciated that sort of authentic piece that she brought to the table. And we also went to St. Patrick’s Hunger Center, and we would serve meals there, which it was an after-school activity that 7th or 8th graders could sign up for. And that was something, too. That was kind of impactful for me at that time.
Bali White [00:07:48] So I guess that leads me to how you became a part of the Catholic Worker Movement. Could you kind of share that?
Kristina Walter [00:07:56] Yeah. I first heard about the Catholic Worker from a friend of mine, Ted Steiner, who- We would get together and just have conversations about various things, but he’s a youth minister and a good friend, and he lent me the book “Loaves and Fishes” by Dorothy Day. And so then I was reading “Loaves and Fishes,” I was really inspired by it and really captivated by Dorothy Day’s way of telling stories. And then Ted mentioned that there’s a Catholic Worker in Cleveland. And I said, oh, well, I am going to check them out. And so then I called the Catholic Worker House, and they picked up the phone, and I was really nervous, and I’m like, hi, I heard about you guys, and I’m kind of interested, and maybe I want to move in, but I don’t really know how that works. And, yeah, what do you think? [laughs] And so then they invited me over for dinner. They’re like, oh, the easiest way is just to come to community dinner and see what it’s all about. And so they had community dinner at the Whitman House every night except Saturday, I think, six nights a week. And so I went to community dinner, and I got hooked. It was fun. It was interesting. There were a really big collection of people there. I remember, you know, there were college kids and old people, and there was a man, Cokie, who they were caring for, who was really goofy because he had some dementia, and, but they were playing around with each other and, you know, was flicking off one of the volunteers and, you know, just like, it was just kind of like this crazy, goofy atmosphere, but also seemed like something I would want to be a part of. So that’s how it all started.
Bali White [00:10:18] What year would you say this was?
Kristina Walter [00:10:22] Probably 2011–12, something like that.
Bali White [00:10:30] So what would you consider the main goals of a Catholic Worker?
Kristina Walter [00:10:34] So the thing I think that’s important and attractive about the Catholic Worker, or was for me, especially at the time, is that the idea is that we are all responsible for each other and for caring for each other. And it’s not just the state’s responsibility to care for the poor. It’s not just the church’s responsibility to care for the poor, but it’s all of our responsibility. And so the Catholic Worker offers a way for regular laypeople who aren’t, you know, ordained nuns or monks or priests to connect into that work. And, yeah, I mean, I guess I would summarize it as the main goal is to fight for social justice, to care for the poor. And, yeah.
Bali White [00:11:47] So could you kind of share your experience living at the Catholic Worker House, some of your duties and perhaps some of the people you met along the way?
Kristina Walter [00:11:59] Yeah. So I came to the Catholic Worker in a time of transition. They were just moving out of the Whitman House and moving into the Fulton House. And so after a time of getting to know people in the community and kind of hanging out, we had a more formal conversation of, like, I’d like to be a live-in volunteer. And so then I was the first person to move into the new house, which everyone was very excited about. We had spent the whole summer renovating and working on it. It was- So the house was 2082 Fulton, and it used to be an up-down duplex, two-family home. And we had remodeled and renovated so that it could accommodate the number of people who were moving in. So we tore out a lot of the second floor and put in some smaller bedrooms that would all, like, kind of make sense for the number of people. I think there were eight or nine of us that moved from the Whitman House to the Fulton House. And mostly, I think, Peter Quilligan and Elisa Bredendiek sort of led that. They were kind of the point people for renovation. And we hired some- Some of the work was hired, but most of it, I would say, is volunteer. And so, yeah, and so then, yeah, we moved in the end of August, early September, and then we all started living there together. And it was fun. In a way, I think I was a bit of an unusual volunteer because I had a full-time job and that I felt very grateful that they made, like, kind of that exception for me, because mostly people who are volunteers at the Catholic Worker tend to work more part-time or, you know, have a somewhat more flexible hours so they can be around. The goal of this community in Cleveland was, at the time, was long-term care. So a lot of it was taking our friends to doctor’s appointments or taking them grocery shopping or just kind of being around to help. And so because they were sort of making an exception for me because I was employed full-time at the time, but it seemed to work okay. I came to dinner as much as I could, and I had a dish night on, I mean, the night shifted, but the last I remember, it was Thursdays usually, so everybody would take a cooking night once a week and a dish night once a week, or I guess not everybody took a dish night, but, you know, people chipped in as much as they could, and then I would go to the [Catholic Worker] Storefront and help out at the Storefront Saturday mornings, whenever my schedule allowed. So I think those were my main- That kind of covered the main aspects of it.
Bali White [00:15:43] What were some of your duties at the Storefront?
Kristina Walter [00:15:46] So the Storefront would be putting on the coffee, getting up early in the morning. If it was winter, we heated with a wood stove, and so we kept the thermostat at 45 degrees. And then in the winter, your job was to, maybe as early as 5:00 or 6, or latest, 6:30, 7. You had to get, depending on the temperature outside, you had to go and light the stove and turn on the fan and kind of try to make sure that the room was at least around 60 or above 60 degrees for 9:00 when people started coming. And then part of that responsibility, too, was opening the Storefront for the volunteers who would bring breakfast. So we had a coordinated kind of rotation of volunteers who would bring the meal when we opened. And so to be there to receive them and ask, you know, answer any questions they had, or mostly the volunteers were pretty routine people. So it wasn’t like there was ever any big issues because they were all like, we had a first Saturday group and a second Saturday group, and, you know, and everybody kind of knew what the deal was. So. Yeah, and then, yeah, and then closing up at the end, just kind of cleaning up and making sure everything was all set and locking up the space at the end of the time.
Bali White [00:17:29] Would you say, like, a lot of individuals were coming to access the services from the Storefront?
Kristina Walter [00:17:40] Yeah. I mean, the coffee pot was a hundred pot, 100-cup coffee pot. And I would say most days we either got very low or ran out. So I would say there were always at least, like 30 to 50 people, if you count that each person’s probably gonna have more than one cup of coffee, and maybe somebody would not have any. So that’s kind of, that was always how I, like, sort of gauged, [laughs] but it was, it was a lot of fun. Like, people would come to just kind of for the socializing aspect as well. It was a place to meet up. It was a place to have a shower. We could accommodate- We had one shower. We could accommodate about seven showers in the two-hour period. And people could get, like, toiletries. And sometimes there were odds and ends, like clothes or canned food or just, you know, various odds and ends like that. Yeah.
Bali White [00:18:46] Okay, so I guess I’m going to kind of switch gears a little bit, sort of. How would you describe the overall environment of the Near West Side when you were living at the Catholic Worker House?
Kristina Walter [00:19:00] Um, that’s- Yeah, that’s a good question. I think when I was living there, it was sort of in, maybe in transition, similar to the Catholic Worker itself. I always felt- I never felt unsafe, but I could see where someone might say it was a rougher neighborhood. But just kind of at that time, when I moved in was the time when businesses started to become pretty interested in that area. And I’m sure there’s others who could speak to that way more than I can, but, yeah, it was starting to be kind of a more popular or gentrified area at that time.
Bali White [00:20:05] So could you recall any major events either going on worldwide or right here in Cleveland during that time?
Kristina Walter [00:20:21] I looked at this question, and I was like, I have to- I have to think about something beforehand. [laughs] And then I forgot to think about something beforehand. But, yeah, let me think about it. So we- I’m trying to think of some of the things we protested at that time, because I do have these, like, hazy memories of things happening. Maybe the one that stands out the most is actually not political at all but it was the 2016- It was the- Was it 2016 when they won, the Cavs won the-
Bali White [00:21:10] Oh, yeah. NBA finals [laughs]
Kristina Walter [00:21:13] The NBA finals. So that was a big- That was huge. [laughs] Oh, yeah. And I’m trying to think. I gotta- I gotta think about it more. In Cleveland, there was a big controversy maybe shortly after I moved out of the house. So I lived in the house from 2012 to 2015, and then I moved around the corner next door to Mike Fiala in 2015, and I lived there till 2018. And then I moved a little bit down the street to the Ruth building with Mark Pestak as the landlord. And that was from 2018 to 2021. And then we bought this house in ’21. So that’s kind of how that worked. So where was I going with that? Oh, yeah. There was a big controversy around Denison Avenue United Church of Christ, where they were providing shelter for homeless people, and the councilperson was trying to get them to stop doing that. And so we went to city hall and sort of made our displeasure with that known and tried to support Denison in that effort. So that’s one thing. I know there’s others. [laughs]
Bali White [00:22:49] We could definitely come back to that.
Kristina Walter [00:22:50] Yeah, let’s come back to that question.
Bali White [00:22:52] So I guess, in what ways would you say the Catholic Worker has evolved today?
Kristina Walter [00:23:00] I think- The Catholic Worker in Cleveland, I think, used to be- It’s my impression that it used to be younger and it used to be a little bit more- I don’t want to say it used to be more radical, but maybe it used to be more radical. [laughs] And I know that before my time as a volunteer there, students would come, like, from John Carroll. There was a weekly group that would come every Wednesday and serve at the Storefront, and then they would hang out at the Whitman House with the volunteers. And so there was a more regular influx of student energy. And I don’t know. I mean, I really, I, because I have just overlapped kind of mostly with Peter and Elisa, a lot of their stories are the ones that I know as well from before I was there. But I think currently it’s in a place where it’s a little bit older and kind of uncertain. Like, we’re on this cusp of, like, it could go somewhere else direction-wise and which could be really exciting or, you know, it could continue to kind of, I don’t want to say limp along, but right now there’s not a full-time volunteer who’s living at the Fulton House, to my knowledge. And the community is sort of held together by a lot of people who are sort of doing it in a part-time way. And I don’t know that that’s bad necessarily, but it is- It’s just a little more fragmented.
Bali White [00:25:20] So from my understanding, you actually met your husband through all of this. Could you kind of share that story?
Kristina Walter [00:25:27] Yeah, that’s true. So I was living at the Catholic Worker House, and the Catholic Worker works very closely with the Inter-Religious Task Force on Central America and Colombia and or IRTF for short. And the Catholic Worker houses the German volunteer who works every year at IRTF. So every year, IRTF gets a volunteer from Germany through this program called ARSP, which came out of the Second World War and a reconciliation, with a reconciliation goal, in the Second World War. And so the German that year was David Adams, and he was working at IRTF, and he became friends with this other volunteer who was working at IRTF, Jonathan Cahill. And they would, you know, they hit it off really well. They would play racquetball together after work, or they would, you know, hang out a lot. And Jonathan came over to Catholic Worker dinners pretty frequently. So that’s kind of how we started getting to know each other. And after a few weeks of coming over to dinner one time, it was my dish night, and Jonathan asked if there was anything he could do to help with the dishes. And that, as they say, is history. I was like, oh, you want to help with the dishes? What? Yes, absolutely! There’s something I will give you to do. [laughs] Why don’t you take this cloth? You can try. And so then we chatted away over drying dishes and got to know each other more and more. And then I think our friends were kind of onto it that we sort of liked each other. And so our friend Brian from IRTF mentioned- He’s like, oh, you know, there’s a Hungarian museum in Cleveland to Jonathan, and he says, Kristina’s Hungarian. And so then he’s kind of like- And so then Jonathan asked if I would give him a tour of the Hungarian Museum, which is kind of funny because looking back on it, I’m like, the Hungarian Museum, you know, it’s pretty small. It’s not like an amazing. I mean, it’s, it’s a nice place and they do a lot of good community events, but, you know, it’s a some. So sort of a small. It wouldn’t have been my first. [laughs] first choice on where to go, but. Yeah, but that was great. And we went to the Hungarian Museum and then we went out to dinner afterwards. And then. Yeah, and the rest is history.
Bali White [00:28:21] That’s amazing. [both laugh] So I’m actually going to backtrack a little bit and kind of talk about your involvement with St. Dominic youth group.
Kristina Walter [00:28:28] Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Bali White [00:28:30] So I guess kind of where that was the years you were involved and some of the duties and activities that you did with that group?
Kristina Walter [00:28:38] Yeah. So I would definitely say, you know, kind of like things sort of fed into each other. Right. Like I. My 8th grade religion class was really good for me in getting me more interested in my faith. And then in high school, I had a really good friend in the Hungarian community, Andrew Mazzaros. And Andrew, his family attended St. Dominic and St. Dominic- So having a youth group is kind of unusual for the Catholic church. Like, it’s not really a thing and kind of because of that maybe, I don’t know, I also didn’t get confirmed at the normal time because that’s sort of when you’re 13, 14, you’re kind of transitioning out of, you’re getting more independent, you’re going to high school, you’re like mom and dad, I don’t care about this stuff. You know, I don’t want to do this. So I didn’t get confirmed with my regular class from Gesu, but then my good friend Andrew said, hey, why don’t you come with me? St. Dominic has this youth group, and it’s pretty cool. And so that’s how I met Ted, and I started helping out at the St. Dominic youth group. I would just kind of go to events with them and got to know some of the kids, and that was a lot of fun. And, I mean, I was like, I don’t know, 18, 19. So I was, like, almost practically the same age as a lot of the kids in the youth group, and that was a lot of fun. And an event that they had every year was going on a mission trip or a service learning trip to Mexico, and they had the same spot every year. They went to this orphanage called Pilar de Esperanza, and that was sort of outside of the town of Reynosa, Mexico. And so, yeah, so Ted invited me to go with them to Mexico, and I went. I think I went maybe a total of three times, three different summers. And yeah. And so then that was really informative for my faith or really interest. It really helped me build my faith to think about, you know, just kind of, I guess, stepping out from your own environment and seeing somebody else’s environment and seeing just how much the orphanage depended on community support and God’s grace, and then sort of bringing those reflections back to my own life and here in Cleveland and just realizing, you know, in some ways, you could say how blessed we are, how lucky we are, or I was in my own life. But also, you know, now, further along in that journey, kind of also realizing the problematic nature of US foreign policy and just, yeah, policy abroad is partly what informs, like, why our country is as wealthy as it is and why others are as poor as they are. So. But, yeah, the mission trips, the service trips were amazing. And I always felt like I learned a lot, and it was never the kind of mission trip where we were going to teach. It was always more like we were going to work and help and learn. And I’ve always felt that I learned, like, really a lot and was, yeah, blessed with a lot more than what I was able to take, but.
Bali White [00:32:45] It seems like a very important experience to be a part of, for sure. And then kind of fast forward now, you were on a sabbatical. Can you kind of talk about your experience with that?
Kristina Walter [00:32:58] Yeah. So I- Shaker City Schools offers the possibility of going on sabbatical once every five years, I think. If you want to apply, you can. No guarantees that you’ll get it. But I’ve been working there for 14 years now, since 2010, and so I decided it was time, [laughs] and it worked out really well because my mom and her partner bought an apartment in Budapest, Hungary. And so I thought this would be a nice time to take advantage of that. They were very, very gracious and welcoming, and they said they would love to host us and come anytime. And so I applied, and my application was to work in the Contemporary Museum of Art, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. And then in the spring, I worked in my own studio as an artist, and I painted and drew and was fortunate enough to put on a show. I had two different shows that I was a part of, so it was a really enriching year, and I feel like I got a chance to reflect on my own artistic practice and see some, like, art in the broader world. Yeah.
Bali White [00:34:35] Was that your first time there?
Kristina Walter [00:34:38] No. Well, no, so my family’s Hungarian, and I grew up speaking Hungarian, so that was- That was really great because I was able to translate- I was able to jump into the activities at the Ludwig Museum. I worked as a museum educator or volunteered as a museum educator. And so I would help facilitate student groups who came to the museum. And at the time, while I was there, they had two different exhibits. They- The one exhibit was called “Smaller Worlds,” and it was all about dioramas. And so there were all these little, like, cool, like, things you could peek into and things that you could, like, kind of- They would be different on one side than the other. So you kind of, like, look around and, like, your perspective really makes a difference, you know? And so that was kind of fun. And then the other one was, “I Am Not A Robot,” which they took from, you know, the verification, like the Internet verification, when you have to prove that you’re a person, click all the stoplights or, you know. [laughs] And so a lot of- That was really fascinating because it sort of questioned the boundary of, like, the digital and the physical world. And, you know, how much can you really tell if something is human or AI-generated? One of the displays was these portraits of people, like, kind of just selfie pictures, and they would rotate through. And the question on the bottom was, is it human or is it AI? And you can’t always tell when a picture is- [laughs] I mean, sometimes it has six fingers or sometimes there’s, like, a little, like, blip where you can tell, but not always. Right? And so it was super fun. Like, there was a group of 7th graders who came, and we were like, how do you know, what’s the difference between humans and robots? And the kids were like, well, I have blood. And we were like, well, yeah, but doesn’t, like, a car would have gas or, you know, a robot could have fluids, maybe, right? And they’re like, oh, like, well, I have to sleep. I’m like, well, yeah, but you have to plug in your phone. So it was like, [laughs] it was a cool conversation because they were, like, really thinking about it. They were like, I don’t know. It was kind of, like, not so clear.
Bali White [00:37:19] So, looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Kristina Walter [00:37:26] In relation to?
Bali White [00:37:28] Like, Catholic Worker and just your involvement in other things?
Kristina Walter [00:37:35] Um, I think- I wouldn’t say there’s anything I would change. When I started at the Catholic Worker, I was also taking classes at CSU for Spanish, so I completed my master’s in Spanish there in 2019. But I quickly realized that that was insane. Like, it was way too much. I was working full-time. I was taking two classes, and I was trying to participate in the Catholic Worker Community, and that didn’t make any sense at all. And so I took two classes in 2012, I think. But then I quit for two or three years and just focused fully on anything, like, outside of my full-time job. My free time was mostly spent at the Catholic Worker. And I think that was a good insight. And maybe I wish I would have thought about that sooner just to not even start the degree until later, because I think it was- It might have been hard on the community, too, for me to, like, be there, but not really be there as much as I probably should have been. So that might be one thing, but I’m glad I realized it. And then, you know, I did what I could to fix it.
Bali White [00:39:08] So you mentioned you speak Hungarian, English, obviously, and Spanish. Are those the three languages, or do you have any more?
Kristina Walter [00:39:19] Nope, that’s it. [laughs]
Bali White [00:39:21] You were grew up bilingual and then later- Okay.
Kristina Walter [00:39:26] That’s right. Yeah, I grew up bilingual. My grandmother, my grandmother and grandfather met after the Second World War in Germany, and my first, my older aunt and my mom were born in Germany, and then they immigrated to the US in 1951. And my younger two aunts were born here in Cleveland, so my grandmother was a big part of my childhood. She’s really important to me as a kid, and she’s one of the main reasons I learned Hungarian. And then in college, I was really interested in Spanish because of the Mexico mission trips. And so I started taking Spanish in college, and that’s how I learned Spanish. I would say Spanish is my weakest, but I can do okay, you know, if people are patient and talk slow, I make it work. Yeah.
Bali White [00:40:32] I mean, I took three years in high school, and it’s one of those things that just- It doesn’t stick necessarily unless you fully go on into it. Yeah, but I could definitely. I could read it. Just can’t speak it. [laughs]
Kristina Walter [00:40:42] Well, and I think that says something about, honestly, the American language education system, too, because I think we don’t- In foreign language education, we don’t push kids to speak as much as we might want.
Bali White [00:41:00] Yeah, no, I definitely agree. If they would have started us younger, I probably would have been speaking two languages by now. [laughs]
Kristina Walter [00:41:08] Yeah.
Bali White [00:41:09] But anyways, so moving forward, what changes would you like to see happen in Cleveland or for Cleveland?
Kristina Walter [00:41:17] Hmm. I guess the main changes I would love to see in Cleveland would be a more just economic structure I would like to see specifically- So I live in Cleveland Heights, right? And Cleveland Heights kind of has its own set of issues. But for the city proper, I would love to see them invest less in the vigilant technologies, like the shot cameras and the police budget. I believe it’s something like 60% of the city budget goes to police right now. And I would love to see them invest more in jobs for communities and education and healthcare, because, personally, I think that those are- You know, it’s like, I feel like there’s kind of some sort of stereotype about, like, people who are more on the left, that they don’t think that safety is as important, but I just don’t think that that’s how we get there. I guess. I think safety is really important. And I’m not saying- I guess I’m- I’m not in the completely abolish the police camp, but I just don’t think that’s how we get there. I think people have safer communities when there are jobs that pay enough for people to live on, when there’s adequate housing, and, you know, when we invest in people’s communities and don’t disinvest in those communities. So I guess, yeah, that’s what I’d like to see, really, is just more money shifted towards jobs and things that are productive for people’s lives, not things that are- Because, like, the police come after the fact, you know, the crime has already been committed. It’s over. So, yeah, as much as they may be well intentioned or maybe, you know, helpful or trying to be helpful, the thing, the deed is already done. So I’m kind of like, well, how can we get ahead of the deeds? How can we kind of build up communities so that we don’t have to call the police in the first place?
Bali White [00:44:04] Well, I guess we can kind of end this interview. Do you have any last thoughts or questions perhaps?
Kristina Walter [00:44:14] Mmm. I- Yeah, I don’t know. I guess maybe just one last thought is that I— I feel like the Catholic Worker has- I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the Catholic Worker, and I would just encourage anyone who is interested to participate because there’s really just been nonstop riches that I’ve received, I feel like, from it. So, yeah, I guess just that.
Bali White [00:45:07] Thank you. So I am Bali White here with Kristina Walter on July 11, 2024. Thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it.
Kristina Walter [00:45:19] Yeah. Thank you so much.
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