Dear Friends,

My name is David Moulton, and I am a community member at Loaves and Fishes Catholic Worker in Duluth, Minnesota. Loaves and Fishes is part of the international Catholic Worker movement, a decentralized group founded in New York during the Great Depression by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Day was a Catholic convert, anarchist, pacifist, and radical journalist. Maurin was a French peasant and teacher influenced by a school of philosophy known as Personalism. The movement, owing in part to its anarchism, has always been wide-ranging and diverse. Some of the common concerns have been hospitality, by sharing our homes and food with those in need; resistance to violence, through nonviolent action; education, by writing and disseminating literature and holding roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought.

We spend most of our time at Loaves and Fishes practicing hospitality. We currently have two houses from which we offer emergency housing for people who would otherwise be homeless. Olive Branch is our house for women and families. We usually have two guest families staying there. Dorothy Day House (where I live) takes in single men. We usually have between six and eight guests. Community members and interns live with our guests in these houses. We cook and clean and come to know our guests on a human level. We would like to have interns at both houses this summer. We also have a third house, Hannah House, which we offer as transitional housing for one family at a time.

We have other work and projects as well. We are involved in anti-war activism and resistance. We vigil outside the army recruiting center, march for peace, and practice civil disobedience. We also experiment with less traditional forms of activism, such as billboard liberation, critical mass bike parades, and street theater. We have a garden at Loaves and Fishes from which we grow some of our food. During the summer, some of us work on organic farms in the area. We are starting an orchard on a friend’s farm. We have a newsletter which we are committed to putting out three or four times a year. We hold a neighborhood block party every June.

At Loaves and Fishes, an intern will get to know firsthand both the joys of challenges of community living. Loaves and Fishes is non-hierarchically structured. We have no board of directors and no one is “in charge.” Interns are warmly invited to bring their own skills, experiences, and ideas to our community. In the past interns have written articles for our newsletter. They have taken initiative on house projects, such as installing stairs in front of Olive Branch and installing dry wall at Dorothy Day. They have helped organize anti-war events. They have worked in our community garden as well as other organic farms in the area. They have played with children at Olive Branch and swam with us in Lake Superior. We hope to make Loaves and Fishes an opportunity for our interns to pursue an education away from schools. This goes both ways. We always have as much or more to learn as we do to teach.

No special qualifications are necessary to come to Loaves and Fishes, just a willingness to join our work and participate in our community.

In peace,

David

Dorothy Day House, 218-724-2054