Untold Stories at the Periphery: Reflections on the Financial Crisis of 2008
Image courtesy of PingNews.com (CC 2.0) Throughout the media, I have been reading retrospectives on the "Financial Crisis of 2008," occasioned by the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It strikes me as odd that the touchstone event is so removed from those most adversely affected by the calamity. While I did not know it at the time, the seeds were sown many years prior. The first harvest of destruction was felt by America's vulnerable communities long before the earthquake on Wall Street. Beginning in 2001, I was an associate pastor at St. Stephen Parish in South Bend, IN. Fr. David Porterfield, C.S.C. and I had great hopes for how we could serve South Bend's west side. Gregorio Chavez approached me about opportunities to acquire abandoned properties adjacent to the parish through the county tax sale. Properties that had fallen behind on taxes were available through auction. Year by year, the lists became longer, growing as a many-paged su...