Alexandria Addesso Comes Home to Start a New Jersey CW (CCW Ep 24)

In this episode of “Coffee with Catholic Workers,” Theo Kayser and Lydia Wong interview Alexandria Addesso, founder of the Elizabeth, New Jersey, Catholic Worker.

Alex talked about her journey to the Catholic Worker; her time at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker; and coming home to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to found a Catholic Worker there. Along the way, she talks about the intersection of Catholicism and anarchism, mutual aid, the pros and cons of registering a Catholic Worker as a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, and the ups and downs of operating a Catholic Worker largely on her own.

Play the episode or read the transcript below. Please note that the Elizabeth, NJ, Catholic Worker has moved locations since this episode was recorded in January 2024. For current contact details, see their listing here:

Episode transcript

The following episode transcript was autogenerated by AI from the audio transcript and subsequently reviewed and lightly edited ; all the usual caveats apply. Filler words (ah, um, like, etc.) and false starts have been removed to improve readability.

Theo Kayser:
Welcome to Coffee with Catholic Workers, a podcast made by and for Catholic Workers. I’m Theo.

Lydia Wong:
And I’m Lydia. We’ve both been a part of the Catholic Worker for the last decade, and we’re excited to bring to you conversations with different Catholic Workers around the world.

Theo Kayser:
This week, we’re talking to Alex about her journey out to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker before returning to start a Catholic Worker in the hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Lydia Wong:
All right, and now, here’s Alex.

Theo Kayser:
All right, Alex, welcome to Coffee with Catholic Workers. So excited to have you with us. To get the ball rolling, could you tell us, how did you find your way to the Catholic Worker movement, and then eventually to New Jersey to start a Catholic Worker there?

Alexandria Addesso:
Okay, so it all started, I guess I first heard about the Catholic Worker Movement, it was my senior year in college, and I was in like some elective classes, and one of the elective classes I took was Western religions, and my professor, she was a Quaker. So for the little bit that we talked about Catholicism and like Catholicism in America, she had us read a book about Dorothy Day. And at the time, I was in school to be a journalist. I was kind of already on my way of like self-radicalization, like becoming an anarchist, and I was Catholic, and I was kind of trying to get deeper and deeper into my faith. So I remember seeing it and being like, wow, this is really cool. I was looking at different things to do after college. Fast forward a year, I’m working like three jobs, I’m working as a freelance journalist, and I’m going to school at a seminary, I’m at Seton Hall Seminary, just kind of not knowing what I’m doing with myself, right? I’m riding like four buses a day, and I’m like, I’m in New Jersey, and I’m like, yo, I want to get out of here. And then I remember about the Catholic Worker Novement. So I look up different houses, and instead of going to New York, which is like 10 miles away from where I’m at, I’m like, you know, I always wanted to go to Los Angeles. And, you know, I wanted to get out of the cold, the cold was killing me. So I was like, okay, I’m just gonna hit them up and see if I can go. And they eventually got back to me, and some months later, I was at the L.A. house. And then how I got here from there, after living there for about three years, I think I came back to Jersey for a year, so like three, four years later, I was back visiting in New Jersey, and I was kind of confused what I wanted to do. And so I visited the New York house, St. Joe’s in, you know, New York City. And I was just, you know, volunteering with them for a day while I was visiting East Coast for two weeks. And one of the people there, he told me, he knew the city I was from, Elizabeth, and he was like, yo, there’s this lady that’s coming here every day, like every week. And she’s from Elizabeth, she’s trying to start a Catholic Worker in Elizabeth. And I was like, oh my gosh, like somebody’s gonna start a Catholic Worker in my hometown? Mind you, on this visit back home, I didn’t want nothing to do with Elizabeth, New Jersey. I didn’t want, everybody that I knew there, everybody was doing the same things, nothing was happening, it was just, I didn’t want to go back there. I knew if I was gonna leave L.A., I would go to like maybe New York or something. But to hear that they were trying to start me, where I’m from, you know, it was kind of like, wait, how could I not be a part of that? So I had to go back to L.A., and I didn’t get in touch with the woman that he was speaking about until I was back in L.A. When I finally did, I started talking to her. She was Erica, Erica Rodriguez, people in the Catholic Worker movement that may know her. Her and her husband were starting, you know, making the starts to start one in Elizabeth. They were originally from Staten Island. So we spoke for a while, and then before I knew it, with the blessing of the L.A. Catholic Worker, I was back in New Jersey, you know, trying to make this Catholic Worker thing work, you know.

Theo Kayser:
So what did that look like? What did you and Erica start doing?

Alexandria Addesso:
Oh, wow. So, you know, it was very—grass roots is like, that’s not even enough. It’s like dirt and concrete almost, right? So I’m living with, very nearly, with her husband and her two kids in a two-bedroom apartment. And so we just started whatever way we could, right? So we started just making food and popping up in different places in Elizabeth to pass out food on the street. We did weekly go to the ICE detention center in Elizabeth. That was something that we wanted to do every Wednesday, you know. But within that time, so many things happened. Like, we didn’t have a set schedule. Mind you, her and her husband, they’re the parents of two very young children at the time, a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And then also the idea with me, I’m like, we’re going to raise this money, we’re going to get a house. It’s not that easy. It’s very hard, you know, especially because housing and rents and everything has gone up exponentially everywhere, I’m sure, in the country. But in this part of the country, gentrification is happening. In the four or five years I’ve been out here, back home, it’s been wild, the way everything has raised, housing costs, rents, mortgage, everything. So eventually I stayed with them for seven months. We kind of had different visions of the whole thing. So I ended up moving out. I ended up starting to be a bartender. That was not in my plans. My plans was, no, I’m never going to work on the books. It was off the books anyway. But I was never going to work a regular job again. But, you know, her husband had got hurt. She started working. I started working to help him out. And then it just seemed like it made more sense for me to move out. So I moved out. Technically, we were on the town next to Elizabeth. I moved out. I got my little studio apartment in Elizabeth. You can hear their story from them. They eventually started their own Catholic Worker in Pennsylvania. And I think they’re now in Virginia at a Catholic Worker. But me, I had my one friend, Lynn. I think you met her at D.O. A friend of mine I’ve known since I was about 12 years old. She started helping me every week. And we served food for a year on the street, you know, the same day every week. I think it was Sundays originally. And then eventually we got a spot. We got a spot that was on top of the storefronts. It’s a very populated place out here. You know, people live. There’s commercial and residential together. But this is like the most commercial place in the city. Like the main street. And so we had got a spot on top of the storefronts. And we had that for a while. That was like a big deal. Still not the same as having an actual hospitality house. I did move in there at one point. Because it just made more sense. Instead of having two rents. And then COVID happened. So COVID is happening. And I was a little freaked out by it. I’m not going to lie. Because I’m like, yo, all these people live on the street. If I’m having them come upstairs, what if I get sick? What if I give them something? Oh, and by this point I started working at the hospital. I started working on a hospital unit that is behavioral health. I work at a hospital unit that has 15 beds for teenagers with behavioral issues. So it’s a wide range, you know. But I’m with these kids every day. And worked throughout COVID. So it was like, yo, what if I get one of these people sick? At the beginning, I was like, no. At the beginning of COVID, I feel like nobody really knew. So it was like, oh, if you’re six feet from somebody, you’re going to give it to them. There’s nothing you can do. And then you weren’t supposed to have people inside of places. So I was like, I don’t want to get in trouble. Should I keep this spot? Should I not keep this spot? Eventually, we closed it down. So from there, we never stopped serving throughout COVID. But we were back on the street for a year. And then eventually after that, we started renting a storefront spot, which we use now. It’s a shared space that we rent once a week. And their rent is going up. So Tuesday, we’re actually going to look at getting our own spot again. I know that was a lot. But yeah.

Lydia Wong:
So that’s quite the journey. Going from this reading about a theoretical knowledge of Dorothy Day to jumping right into the L.A. Worker which is sort of its whole thing. And then this contrast of doing it kind of not on your own but with a very, very small group of people which is very different from the L.A. Worker. Maybe could you share a little bit about the things that you learned or found meaningful while you were in L.A. and maybe compare that a little bit to the things that you now are learning and finding meaningful in Elizabeth?

Alexandria Addesso:
Yeah. I’m a strong believer that you can’t replicate the same thing everywhere. Different communities have different needs. But I did leave L.A. with the idea that this is how we do it. This is how it’s done. And from the start, it was not like that. The idea that, okay, we need a house. We need a house or at least a rental place to live and shelter people. That was the goal for a while. It’s still the goal, but I had to find out that we don’t have to do it exactly like anybody else. The core things that I took from L.A. is feeding people. Make sure people eat. Make sure that we got the food for people to eat. We do it a little bit different. We clothe people, too. Keeping things nonviolent. Never involving the police in issues. That’s always been a big thing. Making sure that whatever space we use, it’s police-free as much as we could. De-escalation. Trying to be a part of activism as much as we can, but not as much as out there. Things that are different. Oh, another thing from L.A. The structure. I do feel like it is good to have a structure. It’s always been important to, we serve at this time, on this day, even though it’s changed. We went from once a week to twice a week, but to just give people that stability. To know that we’re always going to be here. We serve on Mondays. We served on Christmas last week. We’re serving tomorrow. As long as they’re able to be open, which they are, we’re going to be there. To just have that stability. That’s something that I thought was important. Things that are different, like I said before, almost everything. When I was in L.A., I used to sometimes, and I don’t know if you guys can relate to this, I always was like, if I had my own Catholic Worker, I would do it this way, or I would do it that way. Once I got it, I do have certain things that are important to me. Since I cook almost all the food, I can experiment with food a lot. Even though I try to keep the basics just to make sure everybody can be fed. At the same time, you learn when you are doing it on your own or outside of that group. You understand why people do things a certain way. You could be like, I wouldn’t want to do this if I had my own one. This makes so much sense with why you have to keep certain structures to keep things going. It’s different. It’s real different. It wasn’t my plan to be working, but to stay afloat. We get a good amount of donations. We get enough donations to pay for the food and we get clothes donations and the rent of the place we use. If I was to quit my job, would I be able to keep a roof over my head? Sometimes I do think maybe I should just quit. I’m in the process of becoming a substitute teacher now, so I’m going to work less. If I quit completely and threw myself all the way into Catholic Worker, is that me just being faithful? Believing in God? If this is meant to happen, I’m going to be good. If not, I’m going to be on the street. Am I not having that faith? I don’t know. I just want to be safe. I’ll say it’s two of us that are Catholic Workers and we have a good amount of regular volunteers. We’ve had steady volunteers in different ways throughout this whole thing. We’ve had a couple now for a couple of years that have been working out.

Lydia Wong:
I think that tension between working and not working is always interesting to see how different houses have that play out. Some houses are very strict on how much someone can work or how many hours they can’t. Others swing the other way. My house, currently everybody works well, except for me actually. Everybody else works full-time. That’s often very different from the experience of other houses. I feel like it’s an interesting piece. There’s a conversation happening on the Catholic Worker Facebook page looking at aging in the Catholic Worker. That’s actually an interesting piece to look at as well in thinking about work and providing that stability roof over your head.

Alexandria Addesso:
Like I said, it wasn’t in the cards for me to ever be working a full-time job again, but that’s what happened. I’ve been kind of lucky with the job I’m at now, which I’m looking at going part-time and I’m going to try to start subbing so that’ll give me a lot more free time to do stuff with the Catholic Worker and maybe extend to going back to serving twice a week. But my job, I’ve been kind of lucky because of the work I do. I’ve been able to, a couple of times I’ve had them come volunteer for kids that finished the program, came back and volunteered. It’s not always the easiest thing because then I’ve got to watch the kids, watch everybody else, make sure the kids aren’t doing nothing or fighting, and make sure the people aren’t fighting. But donations, when we go on large clothes donations, I’m able to use the work van and take a couple of kids with me and it looks good for the job because some of these kids have serious charges so it looks good on them that they’re doing some community work and it’s good for me because I can get a whole bunch of stuff at once in a work van. We don’t have a van. I have a small car that’s pretty filled with supplies and donations at any time. So that’s worked out a lot. Or let’s say I’ve got to go get the restaurant supply store to go get more plates or to-go boxes and this and that, I almost exclusively go when I’m on the clock. Oh, and also, in the past year they needed help on overnights and I was like, well, if I could work overnight Sunday night and use your big kitchen to do all the cooking, sign me up. So now every other Sunday I work at the job and I just make basically all the food, bring it home, when I clock off, take a nap, wake back up, finish cooking. So I’ve kind of made it. I’m fortunate enough that I work a job that gives me a little leeway to get things done. I think that’s the only thing that’s a little rough sometimes, just having enough time for getting everything done.

Theo Kayser:
What are you cooking on the clock at your other job? What should I expect if I come to dinner at the Elizabeth New Jersey Catholic Worker? Paint a picture.

Alexandria Addesso:
Okay, so there’s some variations. At this time of the year right now, every other week I’m making soup. So if it’s a Sunday where I’m not working, which is like today, tomorrow, I’m making a soup. Something I took from the L.A. house was always have a salad. We always have salad. People love salad. I use balsamic vinaigrette and bread. I try to do that soup, salad, bread on a day that I’m cooking at my job. It’s not good transporting soup more than you have to. I’ve transported stuff and messed my car up pretty bad a couple times. So I’ll do beans with beef or beans with chicken and rice and a salad, bread. If it’s the summertime, instead of doing soup every other week, I do a pasta salad every other week with chicken in it and then of course with salad on the side and bread because it’s hot. It’s easy to make that. It’s easy to put that up. It’s a cool thing for people to eat. Sometimes during winter too, I’ll make some type of a pasta with either chicken or with beef. I try to always have a meat. Tomorrow is going to be the first day in like, I don’t know, maybe a year or two that I’m not cooking meat. I figure it’s the first of the year we do a lentil soup. But for the most part, I try to have a meat. Rice and beans is always easy because I can easily, even if it’s a night that I work and I sleep during the day, I can wake up and make two trays at least of rice and we’re usually good. So it’s a variation of meat, beans, rice, salad or right now because it’s winter, soup, salad, bread. It’s important to me to be, in my mind, nutritious and delicious. That’s in my mind, yeah.

Lydia Wong:
So I think a lot of people when they think about the Catholic Worker get really intimidated by it because it feels like you have to do all these things like housing people, starting with this full house of hospitality and doing all these aspects of it. What sort of advice would you have for people who want to be involved in the Catholic Worker but don’t know how to get started?

Alexandria Addesso:
I think the easiest thing first off is if you live near a Catholic Worker if you’re in a city that has one, volunteer. I mean, I understand how it could be intimidating to just like go down, you don’t know nobody. I think most Catholic Workers could use a hand in one way or another. Also, if you’re somebody like me that’s taking a plunge to try to start one, I would say the biggest thing that I had to learn was all Catholic Workers don’t have to look alike, almost none do. They can have different missions, they can do different work, not the same mission but carried out in different ways. Like I said, when I started I thought we needed a house and we needed to serve food and I felt like I was failing in the first year or two because I didn’t have these things. But if you look at the whole movement, there’s so many different things. There’s food distros, there’s child care, there’s farms, there’s houses, there’s houses where they rent out houses to people or they’re not even in the house, they’re letting people live in the house. There’s so many different ways that this work is done. I think as long as you understand the truest mission of the movement, helping people, anti-war, anti-nuke, all these things, then as long as that’s your goal in mind, you have to find out what works for your community, what’s the people in your community, what is their need? Because that’s the biggest thing at the end of the day. As a person, as an anarchist, and how I believe in making anarchism work is every community has different needs. What’s going on in Chicago is not the same as what’s happening in New Jersey or Hawaii. What is the needs of your community? What’s going to benefit them the most?

Theo Kayser:
You mentioned anarchism just a second ago there, Alex. One thing I love about you, for full disclosure, we lived together for a little while at the L.A. Worker, is that you are an anarchist, kind of an hardcore person. You’re pretty into the Catholic thing, like you said, that’s what drew you into it in the first place. For folks who are unfamiliar with the intersection of those things, who might be confused about the relationship between holding Catholicism and holding anarchism, can you speak to that and what it means to you?

Alexandria Addesso:
Yeah. I can definitely see how people can see those things as contradictory because of the hierarchy that is within Catholicism. I really just say that my politics influence my religion and my religion, or my faith, influence my politics. I wouldn’t be one without the other. At the end of the day, I feel like living out my morals, my principles, is all I really try to do. For me, I think Catholic social teaching is very important and influential on what I believe when it comes to anarchism. I also believe, if you read the Bible, a lot of it is, we’re told again and again that allegiance to the state is not the best thing. A lot of bad things happen when you have allegiance to the state. That helps you with that. Just about taking care of each other at the end of the day. I live out my anarchist beliefs by helping other people and other people helping me. The fact that we don’t need the state, we don’t need the government. We can do this ourselves if we care about each other. In my mind, to really have anarchism work, you have to be communal. We have to be communal in some way. If we look at places in the world where it is working, like these different Kurdish communities, like Rojova, it’s working because it’s communal. My beliefs, what does Jesus say? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the imprisoned. To me, it makes a lot of sense. I can understand how somebody could say, no, it doesn’t make sense. But to me, in my mind, my faith, what I practice, I feel like I’m practicing my faith, my religion the most when I’m coming in a way that’s anarchistic. On our card that we pass out, that’s how we let people know we don’t really have a new state or anything, it says anarchistic mutual aid. It sparks a lot of conversations, even with people that we’re serving food to sometimes. To me, I feel like if I want to be a good Catholic, I can’t have allegiance to this state, especially where we live, the empire, the United States. I can’t have allegiance to the state that’s killing people. I can’t have allegiance to the state that’s funding genocide. I can’t have allegiance to the state that so many people are starving and homeless here. You know what I’m saying? How can I have allegiance to that? How can I pay taxes to that? How can I in any type of way? If I’m doing that, is that idolatrous? I think in this country, I’m sure nationalism in a lot of countries is idolatrous, but especially here, if I’m saluting a flag, if I’m putting the country as the first thing over my God, then to me, it goes hand in hand. I think in the Catholic Worker Movement, if we look at Dorothy Day, if we look at Peter Maurin, if we look at a lot of different people, I think they share similar beliefs.

Lydia Wong:
You mentioned that brings up a lot of interesting conversations. How has this been received in the community?

Alexandria Addesso:
Like, the community at large? I think we’ve been okay. I think where I am, our city, the city of Elizabeth in New Jersey, there’s not a lot of pushback. You know what I’m saying? We’ve been fortunate. Even when we’re on the street, cops don’t really mess with us too much. One time we were serving on the street and the cops stopped right in front of us. They were like, did you see somebody running? Somebody got stabbed? We were like, we didn’t see anything. They didn’t really care what we were doing besides that. Trying to function with churches helping us out? Not the easiest thing. Not too many, other than once or twice somebody donating some clothes or something. Aside from that, we try to take part in different activist things going on locally. In the past year, our city still has a rent cap, how much you can raise rent. And it used to be no higher than $20 a year, which was great. In the past year, they were trying to end it. We got together with a lot of other groups that were going to these meetings. I spoke a couple of times. I knew a couple of people on the board of the city council. Two of them from school. One was my principal in elementary school. One was a TA in my high school. I called them out. One of them changed their vote. Now it’s 3% of whatever your rent is, which is significantly different than $20. Anyways, just different things. There’s a couple different groups that we mess with a little bit. As far as pushback, we’ve been pretty lucky. There’s not been really no hard pushback. Most people just look at us as they’re just serving food. It’s not really too big of a deal.

Theo Kayser:
You’ve mentioned gentrification a couple of times. Has that been a thing you’ve been able to notice even in just a few years you’ve been there in Elizabeth doing the Catholic Worker?

Alexandria Addesso:
Definitely. It’s crazy because I thought gentrification would never come to Elizabeth or Newark. Newark is the city right next to us. They’re the biggest city in the state. I thought there would never be gentrification here. Who wants to live here? Kind of a mindset. This whole area of New Jersey is being gentrified. I first started seeing it happen in Newark and then Elizabeth. We have so many luxury buildings now. There’s so many people that can’t afford to live here. Everywhere you look, they’re making a luxury building. The hospital I was born in was abandoned for years. It’s a luxury apartment now. Then there’s all these different places that are catering to that idea. What it is, for as most as I can see, is people coming from New York City. New York City is so expensive. We have two train stations. We have multiple buses that go into the city. If you are somebody that is not even maybe from New York, maybe you’re just there for a few years where it’s getting expensive. Oh, let me move to Jersey. It’s slightly cheaper. I can take the bus. I can take the train. It’s very easy. It’s making everything go crazy. As a person that was looking for houses, it’s always been my goal. Save enough money, maybe get a mortgage, maybe get a house. At one point, I was looking by going and seeing houses and stuff like that. The average house from when I first got here for a house that maybe needs some help, maybe $200,000, $300,000 to now, you’re not seeing nothing under $600,000. I’m talking about not a good neighborhood, needs some work. It’s wild. And then rent. Rent has gone up exponentially. It’s happening heavy here. Like I said, I never thought it would. As much as it’s happening in Elizabeth, I think it’s happening worse in Newark. People are getting displaced. People are, for a while, moving to PA because PA is supposed to be cheaper, but now it’s getting expensive there too. There’s people that come and serve food to that I know personally from when I was younger. You get what I’m saying? People my age range. There’s a young man that comes and gets food from us that was in my program that I work at. My main job, he was in the program a couple years before I started. It’s wild. Just seeing people getting displaced. They say that the housing market is going to crash in 2024. I don’t know. I’m hopeful. I don’t want to hurt nobody, but it’d be nice to get it to your house. It’s wild. Like I said, I never thought it would happen. And then even another crazy thing. Where I work, my job is in an area called Midtown. That’s the best area. They made, they manufactured a gated street between these two streets where nothing was there but a lot. These houses are almost a million dollars each. A row of these houses, and they’re all being rented. Nobody’s buying these houses. They’re buying them and renting them, I guess. It’s in an area. It’s between two streets. One of the streets is called South Park Street. It’s a rough street. It’s always been a rough street. And they built a gated community. It’s wild. If I never came back to Jersey when I did, and then let’s say I just came to visit right now, I wouldn’t, I would not recognize any of this. I would not recognize it because it’s wildly different.

Lydia Wong:
So you mentioned the dream. The dream still is maybe one day to have a house. What would your dream Catholic Worker look like in maybe, I don’t know, if we get in contact with you in five or ten years, what would your hopes and dreams be?

Alexandria Addesso:
Yeah, so like the goal has always been to get a house. And it still is. I mean, but I’m not crying at night if I don’t have it. It turns out different if we are able to rent something. But yeah, ideally a house where, man, I know at least five people that are regulars I’ve known for five years I would put in there right now. And then it would be good to have a space where a couple of us could not have to rent no more. For people that work here like me, Theo, I know you know Bryant. It would be cool if we could just have a spot we could live there and maybe a couple other people. Or also offer if somebody wants to come and check out the Elizabeth Catholic Worker for a while, like a lot of houses do. I’ve had multiple people contact me saying, hey, can I come and work with you guys and stay with you guys? And I’m like, I have one bedroom apartment or I have a studio apartment. You want to stay on a couch? “Maybe.” But yeah, so in my mind it would be a place where we could house at least a few people. If we could serve food out of it, that would be awesome too. And looking at different places because then you don’t have to worry about another rent of another place. I mean, so that would be cool. A space where people could organize for things, that would be awesome. I know so many local artists, people that I grew up with. I’ve always had in my mind, we could have a mural to this person or about that person, we could have a mural here. It’s just stuff that’s been in my mind for the longest. So the biggest thing though, of course, is housing people, getting people off the street. Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m inside and somebody else isn’t. So the biggest thing, and I’ve done some work to try to get some people temporary housing. We’ve got a couple people off the street, but it’s not the same. So the biggest thing would be housing people, really. Feeding is awesome. That’s what we do now, feeding and clothes and stuff like that. Toiletry sometimes, but housing people would be the biggest goal. And I miss community too. I do. As nice as it’s gotten, staying by myself—I’m not going to lie, there’s bad parts of living communally—but sometimes I do miss community. There’s been a couple of times where I’m like, maybe I should just stop this and just go join a different Catholic community where it’s not all on my shoulders so much. I mean, it’s not all on my shoulders right now, but to a degree, you know? So it would be nice to be in a whole community again, but maybe one day.

Theo Kayser:
You know, I’m starting a Catholic Worker in St. Louis with some folks, so I’m hoping the real estate market crashes too a little bit. It’s probably not as bad as Jersey, though.

Alexandria Addesso:
It’s wild here. I think this is one of the most expensive places in the country. It’s because, like I said, the proximity to New York City, you know? And our taxes are crazy high here.

Lydia Wong:
One of the only reasons we got our place here in Chicago is because we were coming out of the last market crash. I mean, everything is about three times more expensive than it was. So what else should we know about you, Alex, or the Elizabeth Catholic Worker? Things that we haven’t asked about yet that could be interesting?

Alexandria Addesso:
I don’t know. Something interesting? I think there’s like a cool camaraderie and maybe this is an everywhere thing, but there’s a cool camaraderie about the people we serve and us. It’s because me personally, I’m from the city. So I feel like there’s a deeper connection. Like I said, I see people that I grew up with come by. I see people that when I was bartending come by. So it’s a deep connection. We hang out. We play music sometimes. There’s been a couple of regulars that come to get food from us. Sometimes we go play pool afterwards. Last Monday we played the game. There was a TV set in the place that we rent. So I was like, can we play the game on here? She was like, yeah. There’s kind of a feud between a couple of us with football teams. So sometimes that can get a little intense. But yeah, I guess that’s kind of different. It’s been a little rough. It’s been a little rough. Something that’s been a little rough for me is I’m not the most charismatic person. And so I can fit into a community kind of easily, like doing work or whatever. But being in that person to be like, hey, you know, especially with getting donations and stuff, I think it’s good to have that personality. I think if you guys look at any Catholic Workers you’ve been in, you could say, okay, this person is the kind of charismatic person. This person does this. That person is good to have, all those things. So it’s been a little rough on me to try to wear multiple hats. And then also going from well, I’m the one doing this primarily to I’m not the leader. I don’t want to be a leader. You know what I’m saying? So delegating different things to different people like, hey, do you want to do this? Can you do that? Or even certain things like that’s their side, like clothes. I know for a while Brian liked to do the clothes thing. I said, that’s all you. Whatever your decision about those things is, you do that, you know? So it’s kind of hard when, you know, it’s my baby. I feel like the Catholic Worker here is my baby, but it’s not on me. And that helps. It’s like you get a weight off your shoulder, you know? So I guess that’s, I don’t know how many other Catholic Workers are like this small of a community, you know? So I guess that’s different. And then just, I don’t know. To me, I do really believe like this is mutual aid because personally me, I’ve been down and out. I’ve been no place to stay and I’ve always had somebody look me out, especially in this community. You know what I’m saying? Like I’ve had that. So I feel like this is just, I don’t want to use the word giving back, but it’s kind of like a circular thing, you know? There’s people that come and get food from us that give so much. There’s this one gentleman that has been coming hit me up today. He’s been coming for all five years, right? When we didn’t have a table, we were just serving off the benches outside, he brought me a table. Out of nowhere, he found a whole bunch of nice pots. We use these pots for soup still today. Actually, he’s hitting me up today because he found something else. He’s very resourceful gentleman, you know what I’m saying? Always finding different things. So there’s been multiple different things that have been brought to us just from people that we serve, you know? Or people will come and get food and get clothes and then out of nowhere, they want to help. So now their part, there’s a woman that had started by just coming and getting stuff and now she’s with us almost a year or two. And she’s a feisty Ecuadorian lady, doesn’t speak English but she’s at the front of the food line. She regulates everything like, oh wait, no, don’t do this, don’t do that. She gets a little feisty with people. Some of us call her Abuela. But she’s a huge help. She does so much and she was just a person that was coming by. Incorporating people that were coming maybe just to get food or clothes at that one point and now they’re such a big part of what we do. So I think that’s very important. We all need help. A lot of my clothes, this shirt I’m wearing right now came from a donation. We all take stuff. We all eat. Unless the food runs out, which is probably one of our biggest hurdles sometimes. A lot of times food does run out and try to make enough food. We all eat often.

Lydia Wong:
I think about how much of the things that you just said would sort of be taboo in a non-profit. Or would be even looked down upon. Oh, you’re stealing donations or you’re crossing boundaries by going and playing pool or doing things with clients. And I think that’s what’s special and meaningful about the Catholic Worker, the idea of mutual aid or personalism and the ways that it fits so well together, like mutual aid within the Catholic Worker and this idea that no, we actually all are in this together.

Alexandria Addesso:
Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful thing, but I will also say that there are setbacks. You guys know, I’m sure any Catholic Worker knows that’s listening to this. There’s setbacks to not being a non-profit, right? So donations, some people might not want to donate to you. Recently, we have this huge food bank. It’s like the food bank of New Jersey, not that far from us, like literally the border of Elizabethton Hillside. And I’ve been there before, like, you know, community service stuff back in the day. And I was like, you know what, I’m finally going to contact them and see if we can get some food. If you’re not a 5013C, whatever you do. And then the paperwork you have to fill out, you have to show that you have a food handling certificate and this and that. And then I was like, I’m not even. And so I know that some Catholic Workers do become non-profits, some don’t. I’ve been trying to stick with the tradition of not becoming one. But, you know, now looking at stuff, there are certain things that would make it easier, but of course there’d be things that would make it harder. You know, I think there’s a whole bunch of check and balances. I’m not sure exactly when you do become a non-profit. I mean, it’s nice that we’re not, and we’re surviving that we’re not, but at the same time, I do see why how it could be helpful if we were. I don’t know. I like to think of it as more mutual aid and not charity. Because like I said, we all eat off this, all helping each other. And if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t even be working. When we bring the food in, everything is loaded by the people that are there. People just running out and saying, hey, can I help? Everything gets loaded like that. So a lot of people play a lot of different parts. But that’s building community.

Theo Kayser:
Well, we’re getting close to time. Do you have any final thoughts for us here, Alex?

Alexandria Addesso:
I’m just going to say it’s been a lot of ups and downs. In the past, I guess it’s been five years. It’s 2018 when I came out here. In the past five years of doing this work, there’s been a lot of ups and downs. There’s been a lot of times I was like, I’ll leave it. I’ve done it. I’ll go back to California. I could do that. But I stayed par for course, and it’s worked out. So anybody that’s doing this work, either they’re trying to start one like you are, or somebody that’s been in a community that’s been there 60 years, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard. There’s going to be days that you see very bad things happening to people that you work with and it’s going to hurt. It gets rough. It gets rough, but I think that, kind of like what Dorothy said, community and whatnot, it’s how we combat a lot of loneliness. So you just got to believe in what you’re doing. At the end of the day, like I said, I believe in what I’m doing. I feel like what I’m doing is me living out my faith and me living out my political beliefs. As crazy as the world is getting right now, I feel like even if I can’t make it to every protest, even if I can’t go across the world and be a fighter or something like that, you know what I’m trying to say, or a paramedic or whatever, I feel like me being part of this movement is helping. It is helping. I sometimes say I’m a bad person that does good things. People always go like, I’m sure you guys are like, oh, you’re such a good person, oh my gosh, what’d you do, you’re a saint. I’d be like, no. I’m just a bad person that does good things, trying to make my way to heaven or something like that.

Lydia Wong:
Well, thanks so much, Alex, for being willing to talk to us and share your story. Really appreciate it.

Alexandria Addesso:
Oh, if I could say one last plug. If anybody wants to donate, I can be reached by we’re on Instagram, the Elizabeth NJ Catholic Worker on Facebook, the Elizabeth NJ Catholic Worker. Email njcw@riseup.net. There’s a million ways. We’re on the website for the Catholic Worker. The number’s up there, the PO box to send donations. I just figured I’d throw that in there. So, yeah.

Lydia Wong:
Wonderful.

Alexandria Addesso:
And have a happy and safe year.

Theo Kayser:
Thanks, you too. Thanks for talking to us.

[music]

Theo Kayser:
I was really excited to get to bring Alex onto the podcast here. She is actually the only Catholic Worker when I was doing my virtual Catholic Worker tours earlier this year online that I made sure to feature every time because it gets asked in the online Catholic Worker sphere often, how can I live a Catholic Worker life without moving into a big house in maybe another city and giving up everything or seemingly giving up everything in my personal life and folks really struggle with that because they’re drawn to the beautiful things of the movement but are not ready to take a huge plunge into community life. A lot of folks ask this question and I like that Alex exists because I can kind of point to Alex and I can say, let me tell you about the Elizabeth New Jersey Catholic Worker. Alex works a full-time job. She and just a couple of friends started cooking food and serving it in their spare time and all kinds of people could be doing that if they want to.

Lydia Wong:
I think it is this nice distinction or point that you don’t have to have a house to be doing the works of mercy. There’s a lot more like, yes, community is a huge part of the Catholic Worker. You can build community without living together. That is just one aspect of the Catholic Worker. I think there’s also this very practical piece of especially now a lot of people can’t get a house. It’s just not feasible with the way the market is often right now to be able to purchase a physical building to be able to do some of the more traditional Catholic Worker housing. That’s no reason to be stopped from being a Catholic Worker.

Theo Kayser:
Yeah. That was another interesting piece for me personally having this conversation with Alex because me and some friends are starting a Catholic Worker in St. Louis and we’re going to hear from them on an episode too. Alex was talking about, while I love this example and love to hold it up, she was like, this wasn’t really the plan either. She was like, I did want to buy a house and she still does. It’s just not how it worked out for a variety of reasons but that she was still committed to doing a Catholic Worker project and made it happen and making it happen. It was just like a refreshing reminder to me or something as we are undergoing this new Catholic Worker process that you don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re going to have to roll with what’s going on and maybe you think you’re going to get a house and then you don’t. Maybe you think you’re going to zig but you’ve got to zag. I admire that too of her commitment to it even in changing or not perfect ideal circumstances.

Lydia Wong:
Yeah. I appreciate the flexibility and perhaps the need that we have to widen an understanding of what the Catholic Worker can look like. I think there is this piece where sometimes it’s viewed as a fad or a phase and that it has to look a certain way which oftentimes just is not practical for people on a long-term scale. I think there’s a beauty in living in the traditional format of it and that it’s needed but it doesn’t that’s not always something that works for everybody in every stage of their life.

Theo Kayser:
Yeah, in recent years, I’ve been trying to expand what we talk about as being a Catholic Worker in certain ways. I think when I was new and I was very excited about the movement, not that I’m not still very excited about the movement, but I think I felt like I found something really unique and special. In many ways, I still do feel that. But like, with a little bit of time and maybe just experience and maybe wisdom, nowadays, I’m more apt to talk about living in a house with a bunch of other people. That’s a thing that a lot of people in this world do. Just because we’re middle-class people, many of us coming from a background of that in the movement, like, doing it doesn’t mean it’s so “special” or “cool.” And that extends to work that’s happening, too. Like, the grandma on the block who takes care of the kids so that mom can go to work or whatever, she’s not calling herself a Catholic Worker, but she’s doing that mutual aid kind of support to make survival under capitalism possible for people. And so, we should think of her as doing the Catholic Worker, too. We could name a million examples. Because not everyone can be going and living at an official house of hospitality, I think we need more people calling themselves Catholic Workers and spreading the word and stuff like that on a certain level. So like, yeah, everyone do their little piece and spread the word of the revolution of the heart wherever you are. Let’s be affirming that people who are doing that already because of their circumstances mandated it for them.

Lydia Wong:
Yeah, definitely. I guess in my head, I can hear the argument against that of not that we shouldn’t be encouraging people to do things, but this concern of diluting the movement or diluting some of the values. If we’re not doing it as a whole package, is it really are we really the Catholic Worker if we’re not saying both this mutual aid and pacifism or both this mutual aid and this component of spirituality? I do think there is sometimes a little bit of tension or balance there of what aspects can you pull from it before it’s something else entirely. Not that that’s not necessarily a problem. I think it would be great if everybody were doing more things like personalism even if they didn’t have other components. I can see how there could be a concern that it becomes something watered down and less meaningful.

Theo Kayser:
Yeah, I definitely get that, but I also just want to be affirming of people where they are too and be just more invitational, I think than berating people. I’ll tell people what I think and if they’re interested and how all these things fit together, but if all you can do is show up to the protest at this point, you’re not ready to also spend all your time feeding people or something, it’s like, great, you should show up to that protest or whatever. If all you can do is be growing a good garden and sharing it with your neighbors or whatever, I just want to affirm people where they are. Also, when we look at different Catholic Workers, every Catholic Worker is missing one piece or another it feels like. Over here, they don’t do any of the agronomic university stuff. Over there, they don’t protest enough, according to XYZ. Over here, they don’t pray enough. Once you start getting into all of those games, no one community does every single thing. Where’s the cutoff? Who decides what the cutoff is? That gets tricky.

Lydia Wong:
We’re going to get these emails being like, we’re it. We’re the one. We got it down. Everybody should come visit our community. No, I agree. We all have to start somewhere and it’s always a progression of the clarification of thought and I suppose the clarification of actions. If we didn’t have an on-ramp at some point, then none of us would be here.

Theo Kayser:
Yeah. I think different folks are brought in from different pieces of that. I think it’s both sides of that, both praxis and theory, if we want to call it that. On this podcast, we’ve heard from folks who are like, Julie was like, I never heard of the Catholic Worker. They showed up at Occupy and were feeding people and they said, hey, do you want to come live with us and feed people and protest? Just like we used to do at Occupy. She’s like, cool. Then we get all kinds of people who are like, I had to read Dorothy Day in my class or whatever and I was drawn to her vision. There’s plenty of ways to bring people in. Like I was saying, I think we’ll be better being invitational and affirming people if we’re trying to do that. The one thing we didn’t talk about that I also really love about Alex’s setup, because when I visited the New York Worker, I went out and served their meal with them. One aspect that wasn’t really mentioned is that the space they use is kind of like a small banquet party space, like storefront. It’s kind of fun. There’s a disco ball hanging up in there and a nice little place where you could take photos if you were having your birthday party or something like that. She had been telling me that the way they got it is they got a deal because people don’t want to have parties on Monday evenings. This venue was like, yeah, we’ll give you a good deal. It reminds me of there’s a number of parables in the Bible where the kingdom is like a banquet or a party kind of thing. Here’s Alex actually in a little banquet hall hosting the Catholic Worker. I think that’s another really beautiful thing about her project too.

Lydia Wong:
Oh, fun.

[music]

Lydia Wong:
Well, huge thanks to Alex for joining us and being willing to share the things that are going on in Elizabeth, New Jersey. We will link in the notes ways to get in contact with her if anyone is interested in getting in contact with her either to volunteer or help contribute over to her mission. That wraps up another episode of Coffee with Catholic Workers. If you’d like to reach out to us with comments, suggestions, clarifications of thought, you can email us at coffeewithcatholicworkers at gmail.com. I’m going to say thanks to Chris who helps with our audio editing, David Hayes for our music, and Becky McIntyre for our graphic.

Theo Kayser:
Thanks for joining us again for some Clarification of Thought. We hope today’s conversation and discussion have been enlightening and maybe even that you’re encouraged to go out and help build a world where it’s easier to be good.

[music]

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Coffee with Catholic Workers is a podcast by and about Catholic Workers. Every two weeks, join Lydia Wong and Theo Kayser for a conversation with some of their favorite Catholic Worker folk. Special thanks to sound engineer Chris of Bloomington, IN.