A November NY Times had this article on some activist nuns.
“Sister Nora Nash of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia. And the slight, soft-spoken nun had a few not-so-humble suggestions for the world’s most powerful investment bank.
“Way up on the 41st floor, in a conference room overlooking the World Trade Center site, Sister Nora and her team from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility laid out their advice for three Goldman executives. The Wall Street bank, they said, should protect consumers, rein in executive pay, increase its transparency and remember the poor. …
“Long before Occupy Wall Street, the Sisters of St. Francis were quietly staging an occupation of their own. In recent years, this Roman Catholic order of 540 or so nuns has become one of the most surprising groups of corporate activists around.
“The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald’s, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices. They have tried, with mixed success, to exert some moral suasion over Fortune 500 executives, a group not always known for its piety.
” ‘We want social returns, as well as financial ones,’ Sister Nora said, strolling through the garden behind Our Lady of Angels, the convent here where she has worked for more than half a century. She paused in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. ‘When you look at the major financial institutions, you have to realize there is greed involved.’ ”
Sometimes it just takes a few small voices to verbalize what everyone has noticed and get the ball rolling.
I was thinking about that today as I read an essay by a student at my old girls high school. She had interviewed me and another of my classmates for her history (!) class, and she captured the importance I placed on my tiny role in helping my school desegregate. All I did was ask the headmistress why there were no black girls in the school (I think in the 1960s I would have said “Negro”). I believe that it was because of questions like that and her own natural inclinations — not to mention what was going on in the nation — that she took action.
At the time, I thought asking a question was pretty small potatoes, but now I think that if lots of people do a small thing, it can be big.
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