Catholic activist and journalist Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was born within the same decade as others who would help direct the world's gaze of the working poor. But while George Orwell's medium was diaries, and John Steinbeck pushed his philosophical phalanx theories in novels, Day long continued pursuit of workers rights in the form of journalism and unrelenting, peaceful activism.

Born in New York in 1897, the third of four children. Day's family was nominally Protestant but she grew up without strong faith. Nevertheless she admitted "Very early we had a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. My conscience was very active."

Day had a quite extraordinary awareness of self coupled with an awareness of the others as they related to that self. She loved her baby brother like a parent, she was distant from her mother and she learned, as she put it,

I was in love now with the masses. I do not remember that I was articulate or reasoned about this love, but it warmed and filled my heart. The poor and oppressed were going to rise up, they were collectively the new Messiah, and they would release the captives. Already they had been persecuted, they had been scourged, they had been thrown into prison and put to death, not only in other parts of the world, but right around me in the United States.

Day's father was rarely home owing to his work as a sports editor for a San Francisco newspaper. And it was journalism that later allowed Day to amplify her voice.

In 1906 the Day family survived the San Francisco earthquake and remembered what Rebecca Solnit would later categorize an uprising of new and equalized social networks. When Dorothy's father lost his job at the San Francisco paper due to the damage, the Days moved to Chicago where Dorothy attended began to study religion more seriously as well as attack its contradictions more rigorously.

There was a real conflict going on in me at the time to overcome my religious sense. As a matter of fact, I started to swear, quite consciously began to take God's name in vain, in order to shock my friend who were churchgoers. I shocked myself as I did it, but I felt that it was a strong gesture I was making to push religion from me. It certainly was a most conscious gesture. Because I was unhappy and rejoiced in my unhappiness, I felt harsh. Because I was hurt at being torn from my child, my baby brother, I had to turn away from home and faith and all the gentle things of life and seek the hard. In spite of my studies and my work, I had time to read, and the ugliness of life in a world which professed itself to be Christian appalled me.

Nevertheless, religion and belief were central to her intrinsic desire to not only help the poor and alleviate their needs, but to understand them deeply at a fundamental human level.

There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place? There were day nurseries for children, for instance, but why didn't fathers get money enough to take care of their families so that mothers would not have to go out to work? There were hospitals to take care of the sick and infirm, and of course doctors were doing much to prevent sickness, but what of occupational diseases, and the diseases which came from not enough food for the mother and children? What of the disabled workers who received no compensation but only charity for the remainder of their lives?

In 1916 the Day family moved to New York which changed Day's life.

The poverty of New York was appallingly different from that of Chicago. The very odors were different. The sight of homeless and workless men lounging on street corners or sleeping in doorways in broad sunlight appalled me. The sight of cheap lodging houses, dingy restaurants, the noise of subways and elevated railways, the clanging of streetcars jarred my senses. Above all the smell from the tenements, coming up from basements and areaways, from dank halls, horrified me. It is a smell like no other in the world and one never can become accustomed to it. I have lived with these smells now for many years, but they will always and ever affront me. I shall never cease to be indignant over the conditions which give rise to them. There is a smell in the walls of such tenements, a damp ooze coming from them in the halls. One's very clothes smell of it. It is not the smell of life, but the smell of the grave.

Day realize the systematic, even codified reasons that the poor remained poor. It was here that activism took shape as the central focus of her life.

And yet, as I walked these streets back in 1917 I wanted to go and live among these surroundings; in some mysterious way I felt that I would never be freed from this burden of loneliness and sorrow unless I did.

Day knew the direction but not details of her life. She took on nursing during the WWI and the Influenza epidemic (//Christie Watson), felt a calling. Coalesced in a conversion that would set the course for the remainder of her life. Faith was beginning to

There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place? There were day nurseries for children, for instance, but why didn't fathers get money enough to take care of their families so that mothers would not have to go out to work? There were hospitals to take care of the sick and infirm, and of course doctors were doing much to prevent sickness, but what of occupational diseases, and the diseases which came from not enough food for the mother and children? What of the disabled workers who received no compensation but only charity for the remainder of their lives?

Day had equal parts convention and radicalism and while she looked to faith to unbind and order these complexities, it often fell short, be meek and yet help the poor. So while the Bible physically and emotionally supported her in the most deeply isolating periods of her life (pg 81), its teachings did not ease her soul's need to live among and elevate the poor."



- Deep, deep conflict of faith and that those who feel it are not resolved, whole, or even clarity. Moments of bright clarity, moments of grace.

If we had faith in what we were doing, making our protest against brutality and injustice, then we were indeed casting our seeds, and there was the promise of the harvest to come. I clung to the words of comfort in the Bible and as long as the light held out, I read and pondered. Yet all the while I read, my pride was fighting on. I did not want to go to God in defeat and sorrow. I did not want to depend on Him. I was like the child that wants to walk by itself, I kept brushing away the hand that held me up. I tried to persuade myself that I was reading for literary enjoyment. But the words kept echoing in my heart. I prayed and did not know that I prayed.

The weight of this soul, embodied in Day, is so heavy, so absorbent both in its self-awareness and self-reproach, I find it difficult to believe that she never collapsed in on herself. Maya Angelou who couldn't speak, literally shut down. Simone Weil died from hunger complications... Physical manifestations of pain.