Robert Bunch

“I suspect that were kinship our goal—we would no longer be promoting justice—we would be celebrating it.”  --Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

Several years ago, I was walking to an evening service at First Community AME, and I met a man crying and staggering on Sherman Street. I knew him from community meals at First CRC. His name was Robert, and he told me he was hungry. He told me his sister had just died, and he was deep in the throes of grief. Rarely do I know what to do in these situations, but I was going to church, so I invited him to church. He didn’t want to go into the service, a joint service between Methodist Churches and the AME church. We sat in the basement kitchen, while church ladies prepared the after service snacks around us, and he ate a meal we found in the freezer.

Several weeks later, the same thing happened as I walked to First AME on a Sunday morning. He
kept telling me about his sister and how sad he was. He wasn’t thinking straight. But he stumbled along with me to church and sat down next to me. He smelled of alcohol, and enjoyed the service so much that he stood up at the wrong times and shouted out at the wrong times. None of us really knew what to do with him. Afterwards, he kept telling me, “I want to come back. I really liked that.”

Another Sunday morning earlier this year, Rob stumbled into St. Philips late and sat down near the front, weeping and making a scene. He was still mourning the death of his sister. Someone asked me if I knew him, and I said yes. A lady led him to sit down next to me. Before the service was over, he left. If I remember right, he walked out during the Prayers of the People. They can be a little long.

In October, Rob was killed by a car while crossing 28^th Street. His family and friends have no idea why he was down by 28^th Street as he almost never spent time there. Several short MLivearticles documented the event, but it was important to me to hear a bit more of his story and to hear from his family and friends. 

His nephew, Steve, recently reopened his restaurant, Chicago Hoodspot, just down the street from First CRC on the corner of Franklin and Union. Steve shared a bit of Rob’s life story.

Rob had lived in Grand Rapids for 18 years, but he was from Chicago. He told just about everyone he met that he was from Chicago.

He grew up on the South Side, working in a grocery store. He spent a lot of time with his family and especially his nephews and nieces. Steve has good memories of Rob taking 10-12 of them on the bus to see Bruce Lee movies in the theater. They would sit on his lap on the bus and laugh a lot.

Rob taught Steve how to iron clothes so that “the creases could cut butter,” paying him 50 cents to a dollar for every job.  

After working in a grocery store for many years, Rob found a full-time job working in a factory in Grand Rapids and moved away. He got married and started a family. Three years later, he encouraged Steve to join him in what he saw as a safer environment with better opportunities. Rob knew that Steve had a lifelong dream of starting a restaurant, and Grand Rapids was the place to do it. Within three days of the move, Rob got Steve a job in the factory, and they began making plans to start the restaurant. When the dream came true, Steve taught Rob to grill, and they ran it together.

The restaurant has opened and closed several times over the years, but without Rob, we wouldn’t have an excellent hang out spot in the neighborhood.

In the past several years, Rob had several deaths in the family, which have been very hard on him. He found it harder to keep a job and spent a lot of time grieving. Through it all, he stayed a very kind person.

His friends in the neighborhood describe him as a really nice guy. According to Lamont, “He knew basically everybody in the neighborhood.”

Todd would sit with Rob on the porch, and they would spend the afternoons after work joking and ragging on one another. “It was friendly,” Todd said, “I never knew him to get into it with anybody.”

Doug, who met Rob about 10 years ago at a community event, said, “He was a good guy. He’d help people out if he had the money. He was an all around good person.”

We miss him, and the neighborhood is better because he was here.

Houses, Cars, and Power

"Existential powerlessness is a compelling factor of the behavioral environment of the North American metropolis. The flight to the suburbs is a flight to firm ground, to a base where one can re-establish one's efficacy, can impose control over the environment."  
-- David Ley, 1974

"One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk."                        
-- Crazy Horse, late 1800s*

"I never said the land was mine to do with it as I chose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to live on yours."                                                        
-- Chief Joseph of the Nez Piercés, late 1800s

We all want a space of effective control, where we decide what happens and where we freely put our mark. Part of this is the need to express ourselves in style, but it is also a desire to have a place where we are needed or essential. We want a place where we can 'be ourselves.' We play this out with who we choose as friends, what work we choose to do, the homes we buy, and the cars we drive. We want to be around people who like us, people who respect us, and people who know us. Power has something to do with everything humans do, and as we think about places and participating in places where people feel belonging, we must create space for people to wield power in such a way that it serves others.

The private home and fancy cars represent two forms of these spaces of effective control. Large homes in the Heritage Hill neighborhood are public displays of tranquility and order. The large fancy cars with rap blaring communicate power in another way--dominating public spaces with private influence. Such expressions make a space 'our space' or 'my space' as the case may be. Families and groups of friends have a role in shaping the environment they occupy. Making our mark in this way is essential to the feeling of belonging. We all have a role in creating the places that we inhabit, and we believe that we need to take part in creating to belong and even to be human. Without having a role--a space of private efficacy--we feel listless and miserable. We need to allow each other this role--to leave space for self-determined action--in order to respect one another.

Of course, there are other ways to consider power. Some Native American tribes have a different narrative of belonging. Instead of asserting dominance over the landscape with a fancy car or a fine house, the traditional view is to recognize one's self and one's people as a part of the landscape. Chief Joseph said, "The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same." Rather than continually expressing independence to feel more human--an American trope if you will--we can express and enjoy our interdependence. We can play our part fully, in recognition and sensitivity to the many parts played before and around us. I believe such a sensitivity will help us play our part best. We listen to the situation first, and then we can act in harmony with the situation. We do not have to out do one another all the time, but we can contribute to a shared whole.

Ley, D. (1974). The city beyond good and evil: reflections on Christian and Marxist 

            interpretations. Antipode, 6(1), 66-73.

*All First Nations quotes from Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Philippians 2: 1-11:

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 

Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, 
   did not consider equality with
   God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, 
   taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to death--
    even death on a cross! 
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
  and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
  to the glory of God the Father.