PHOTO/ANDY WILLIS
CHICAGO, IL — Ernesto Garcia was beaten to death, by two men while he tried to sleep in an alley. Ernesto Garcia was homeless. That was the only reason he was beaten to death.
Mr. Garcia came from Guatemala to Chicago searching for a better life. He was beaten to death in the street. He was a few days shy of his 60th birthday. People who knew him in the Logan Square neighborhood liked him. They were planning his birthday party. They said he was a gentle person.
Fifty people led by the Logan Square Ecumenical Alliance came to the neighborhood square to grieve. They mourned Ernesto Garcia and they mourned what is happening to our community—to our country. As people struggled to keep their candles lit against the wind, the symbolism of those tiny fragile lights was understood by all.
These Logan Square churches participate in food banks and meals for the growing number of homeless among us. Yet no one could quite visualize Ernesto Garcia. Some one must have liked him, to plan a celebration of his birth. There was no photograph. No one knew of a family. Ernesto Garcia had left nothing when he left the world, but his life and death meant enough to bring 50 people together for contemplation and prayer over his fate and ours.
The economic system we live under has less and less need for the Ernesto Garcia’s of this world. Billions of paupers roam the earth who are now redundant in a economy driven by market manipulation and robotic production. The wealth belongs to a tiny few and they are not “sharing” no matter what their religious traditions tell them.
A homeless prophet once instructed that humans could only know God in how they treated the least of these. By that measure we have the right to worry. Our sacred duty is to build a new society to share the abundance that technology makes possible. Deciding to make sure no one dies like Ernesto Garcia will involve changing the fundamental laws and rules of society. It will involve a revolution. The memorial program for Ernesto had three specific sections: mourning, solidarity and revolution. To this disappeared one we make our pledge—not one more!
