William Burnett (Interview 1)

Lewis: [00:00:01] Let's do a little sound check William.

Burnett: OK, I'm here.

Lewis: Say something—say something brilliant.

Burnett: Something brilliant.

Lewis: [Laughs]

Burnett: [00:00:10] Oh! I have to remind you... I don't know if you heard but, I got a Facebook update from the United Nations yesterday.

Lewis: Oh!

Burnett: Today is World Philosophy Day. [Smiling]

Lewis: How did we not know this! [Smiling]

Burnett: So, we gotta celebrate World Philosophy Day.

Lewis: Alright, we'll celebrate World Philosophy Day by kicking off a—the first of a series of brilliant interviews.

Burnett: Oh, I think you already did the brilliant interviews. [Smiling, then laughing]

Lewis: No!

Burnett: [Laughing] You're gonna have to.

Lewis: This brilliant interview hasn't been done yet. [Smiling]

Burnett: [Coughs] Sorry. [Smiling]

Lewis: [00:00:43] Alright… So let's—let’s get on that! So, today is November 16th, and we're in East Harlem, in my apartment, and I'm Lynn Lewis, and you are?

Burnett: William Burnett.

Lewis: [00:00:58] And… William Burnett, could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Burnett: [00:01:08] [Pauses] Well, I'm forty-seven years old, [laughs] which is something that I don't tell people very often. I make people guess. [Laughs] But, I was born in Anderson, Indiana and grew up in Huntington—spent a little bit of time in Alexandria, both in my—in the first couple of years of my life, and some later years I spent in Alexandria. But most of my life I lived in Huntington, Indiana, except for the time we lived in Warren, on a farm. So for a few years I grew up on a farm. I was never a farmer, but I was on a farm. [Smiles]

Burnett: [00:01:45] I went to Catholic school, which used to make me very arrogant, because I always thought Catholic schools were better than public schools. That was before public schools came under attack, and so now I'm overly protective of the public schools system these days, but… In fact, just a side note, a while back a friend of mine had suggested I might be a hypocrite because of my opposition to charter schools. He said, "How can you defend Catholic schools and then oppose charter schools?” I said, “Well Catholic schools and charter schools exist for two, very different reasons, and Catholic schools don't draw from the public school system, charter schools do.” That's just a side note.

Lewis: Do you feel like you got a good education when you were growing up?

Burnett: [00:02:36] Yeah, I think I had an excellent education. We had to study things that they didn't study in public school. But you’ve got to remember, with Catholic schools its mission isn't just academic, it's forming the human person. So you got the academic, the spiritual, the relational and the physical. So, they try to form the whole person and not just the academic person. So that's the advantage, and so if I had kids I would send them to Catholic school, just for the holistic development standpoint. I think that's the only—the real thing, that's missing from public schools, that—because you have to separate church and religion you know, digging into spiritual development, things like that, is a challenge for public schools because you… They risk, interfering with parents rights, and things like that.

Lewis: Hmmmm. Were you a good student?

Burnett: [00:03:29] Oh, I was a horrible student.

Lewis: Tell me.

Burnett: [Laughing] But I still got a good education.

Lewis: [00:03:33] Tell me a story about William the horrible student. That's almost hard for me to imagine.

Burnett: Oh no, even in college, you know, obviously, you know, I went to a seminary college. And even in college they thought I was a horrible student—even though my grades were good. And I remember being called into the President's office, President of the college, and he was telling me about everyone's frustration with me… He said—because when they meet to evaluate, all of the professors agreed that I had an innate intelligence, that I can just pick things up without having to study. But they said they were really frustrated with that because they wanted me to academically perform at what I was capable of doing instead of just floating by, and... That's neither here nor there. [Laughs]

Burnett: [00:04:28] And I had a roommate that used to get upset with me, because my roommate was also a classmate and he and I would be in some of the same classes, and he would be, you know—in the weeks leading up to the final exams, he would be studying hard and I would be across the street at the bar, and then wondering why I outperformed him on the final exam. [Laughing] So, that used to be a source of conflict but, if I had it to do over again, I would have performed a lot better.

Burnett: [00:04:57] And when I was in high school the frustration with the teachers was that I never did any of the homework, so I performed badly on that, but then when the final exams came, I like aced the final exams, so that was how I was a horrible student even in high school—and I got feedback in high school about that as well. It’s one thing to say you can perform at this level without studying but imagine how you could perform when you do study. So, I was a horrible student.

Lewis: And you have brothers and sisters?

Burnett: [00:05:30] I have two brothers and one sister.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: The one sister that I have, I didn't, I haven't seen since I was fifteen, because she was the product of a second marriage, and the second marriage ended in divorce and eventually, her father got custody of her, and then kind of spoiled the relationship between her and the rest of the family so... And there's a lot of history behind what went on, that I don't even know about, so… In fact, I've inquired about it… My mother keeps it a secret. What exactly the destruction and the history was…

Burnett: [00:06:09] I remember a number of years ago, probably a little more than five, maybe about seven years ago, I found her online, and I called her, and she reacted like I was a salesperson. So I thought, “Well, maybe she doesn't realize who I am.” So I called back, and her husband answered, and so I was explaining to him who I am, and he told me, “She knows, and she doesn't want to talk.” So, I don't know the history behind that, that's… You know, what happens sometimes in angry divorces and bitterness lasts for a while, after—even after years, and parents like to poison their children against each other. That's all that I can imagine.

Lewis: [00:06:55] Yeah, those things are difficult. And your two brothers—I know when I was with you the other day, one of them called.

Burnett: Yeah.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: I'm trying to remember which one called when you were with me. Oh! Michael called. Because he was drunk off his ass, wasn't he. [Laughs] That wasn’t—no, Richard called, and he was drunk off his ass. [Laughs] Remember, I had to explain because it sounded like a weird conversation where I had to, like—assert things to him, because he wasn't getting it? And so, he was really drunk. [Laughs] But that's okay.

Lewis: And where—where… Where did all this growing up happen? We've talked about your school experiences and stuff, but where did you grow up?

Burnett: [00:07:42] Well, I grew up in a town called Huntington, it’s a little distance outside of the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Lewis: What was it like?

Burnett: [00:07:56] I got into a lot of trouble. Not police trouble. I was too sneaky for that. [Laughs] No, I didn't get into serious trouble, but I like to… Something about me, I just like to be a bad person. In fact, we had this game we played in high school, that kids in New York never could have gotten away with—where we would all, a group of us, high school students, we would stand in a circle on the corner, acting like we're just talking to each other, and we'd have one person positioned as a look out… And then as a police car was approaching the intersection, we would point at the police car and we would all run off in different directions, as if we were up to something... He's supposed to chase us to find out what we're up to. Until one day, they did that, and it looked like they had the entire police department after us...

Burnett: [00:08:49] So, by the time [laughs] we got to our meet-up point, several police cars met up with us, [laughs] there at the moment, and so they wanted to know our names, and of course we didn't have ID on us, so they couldn't check our ID's, so they had to take our word for it. We all made up names. They just said that they were going to be watching us.

Burnett: [00:09:11] We thought it was fun, play hide and go seek with the police. I imagine that would end in a different way in New York, especially in today's day and age... [Laughs] But, at the time it was fun.

Lewis: Yeah, or many other places, it would end up differently right?

Burnett: Very differently.

Burnett: [00:09:30] But—I think that part of the deal with growing up in a smaller town is police tend to be from the same town they're policing in. So they have to live in the community. So they have to police very differently, because when they take that badge off and put on their civilian clothes, they’re still having to interact with the people who live in that town! So, I think it forces them to be a very different type of police, than what we see here in New York.

Lewis: When you were growing up, did you live in a house, or an apartment? I know you mentioned a farm at one point.

Burnett: [00:10:06] I lived in mostly houses. In fact—no, I never lived in an apartment growing up, so... I live in a small apartment now, it's very different. I can't imagine [pauses] how that would have felt growing up.

Lewis: How old were you when you left Indiana?

Burnett: [00:10:25] I was, well I originally… I left Indiana twice—first time was when I went to France, I was seventeen. The second time was when I was twenty-two. I went—I was in the National Guard prior, but when I was twenty-two I transferred from the National Guard to the active army and was stationed at Fort Drum, in upstate New York—or North Country, New York.

Burnett: [00:10:53] And then, when I got out of the army I stayed in the North Country, and that's where I went to Seminary College.

Lewis: And so, tell me about France… Tell me—describe what you were doing there, why you went… what it was like.

Burnett: [00:11:06] Well

Lewis: What it was like…

Burnett: Yeah, I was strange kid. I went from wild, to feeling very spiritual. Remember, I grew up in Catholic schools. So when I went to France, I went to explore the possibility of being a monk.

Lewis: Mm-Hmmmmm.

Burnett: A Benedictine monk, so I was staying in a Benedictine monastery—Saint Joseph de Clairval in Flavigny, which was about seven-hundred kilometers southeast of Paris, in the Provence du Dijon.

Lewis: What was that like?

Burnett: [00:11:45] Well. it was very quiet, very different. In fact, one of the reasons why it didn't last was that I decided that I liked to interact with people. I'm an introvert, but I still like to talk to people once in a while. [Laughs] And so, I couldn't imagine spending a life in solitude—quiet, not twenty-four hours, around the clock. But it was very peaceful, and even though I was the one who made the decision that it wasn't for me, it was actually still very painful to leave.

Burnett: [00:12:16] You know, it's like anytime you're around people for a while and you get to know them, and you feel kind of like a community. They're you're brothers, after all, they are… Monks are called “brother so and so”… So, they’re your brothers, and... So, it did feel like I was leaving close friends behind.

Burnett: [00:12:38] But it was a strange experience because—you know, I'm a product of Vatican II Catholicism. So even though I had to study Latin, I wasn't accustomed to a lot of Latin in our liturgy. And when I was at the Benedictine monastery, they did all their liturgies in Latin, so, I had to adjust to that—where I'm used to doing it in English, now I'm doing it in Latin.

Burnett: [00:13:02] But, the main church had very good acoustics. So remember these are monks, so all their mass, and their liturgy of the hours and everything, are all chanted in Gregorian chant. So, to hear Gregorian chants in a very acoustic church building was a sort of—really touching experience. Especially during the night prayer, or Compline. Because after night prayer, even in English, after the night prayer you do what's called the Hymn to the Blessed Virgin. And… So, all the church—lights in the church get turned off. And so, you've got to remember this is night prayer, so the sun is down, and the lights in the church are turned off, except for two spotlights coming from either side of the sanctuary, pointing at the statue of the Blessed Mother in the front of the sanctuary. And then everybody's chanting the Salve Regina, and it… That always made night prayer my favorite, because I, for some reason I just lo—even today I love that experience of watching all the lights go off, except for the spotlights on the Blessed Virgin and folks singing _Salve Regina. _

Lewis: That must have been really beautiful.

Burnett: Oh, it was very beautiful.

Lewis: And you… All the monks ate, shared a meal together?

Burnett: [00:14:19] Oh, we did everything together!

Lewis: What was a typical, if there's such a thing, a typical day like, in the monastery?

Burnett: [00:14:26] Well, actually the days are very typical in a monastery, because it's a rigid life. And remember, their entire vocation is centered on the liturgy of the hours so it's like devoting the entire day, each hour to God. So, everything is pretty routine. And so, you would get up early in the morning, and you would meditate. Which to me, when I was there, involved me falling asleep in a chair. [Smiles]

Lewis: [Laughs]

Burnett: And missing morning prayer. [Laughs]

Lewis: And you were seventeen. [Smiles]

Burnett: [00:14:56] Yeah. And so they would—after morning prayer one of the monks would come to my room to check on me—find out why I didn’t make morning prayer, and they would find me asleep in the chair. [Smiles] But they were good about it, because they were telling me—they were reminding me of Saint Therese Lisieux who—who had written a diary. She was a Carmelite nun, and in her diary she used to complain that she kept falling asleep in the morning, during her early morning meditation, so they reminded me that even a Saint did that, so… They said, “We'll get through it.” [Laughs]

Lewis: There's still hope for you. [Smiles]

Burnett: [00:15:29] There was still hope. [Smiles]. But anyways, you meditate and then you went to the early morning prayer, and then you went to breakfast, and you went back… For me, I had to… After breakfast, I met with a tutor, who was tutoring me in French. Obviously, the monastery was in France, so I had to be tutored in French. And you had to get so proficient in French before you can get a permanent residency, so I had to learn the French.

Burnett: [00:16:02] And, I remember at one point, the Abbot—or he wasn't the Abbot at the time, because now it's the abbey—Saint Joseph de Clairval, but at the time it was Monastaire… The Pryor decided that I was taking too long to pick French up, so he put out an order forbidding any of the monks to speak to me in English—to force me to speak French. So it went on like that for a while.

Burnett: [00:16:34] But anyways, so you—I did tutoring basically, and then you went and did some work, and the work involved one of two things. One, they had a garden, and two… Their source of income was—they ran a leather hand binding shop.

Lewis: Oh wow.

Burnett: [00:16:52] Where they bound books by hand. And so they had actually assigned me to work in the leather bookbinding shops. And I remember we had these old manuscripts—portfolios, we called them. Because if you ever see the old sheets in the books, it's actually the big thing that’s folded up once, and folded up again and they make up the pages… But then they had to be sewn together. And these were old sixteenth century portfolios that were never sewn together.

Burnett: [00:17:22] And so, they had me sewing these—I felt really extremely nervous because it's one thing if you're hand binding something new that can just—if you screw it up, maybe they'll reprint it. But to know that these old portfolios were from the sixteenth century and then… First of all, wondering where the monastery got ahold of them in the first place, but then realizing these are like old historical manuscripts that could never be replaced, and I couldn't believe that they were trusting me to sew these pages together. So, I felt really good about that. So, I was sewing the pages together, and once they got sewn together, then of course, they would be bound in leather, and so we would do that.

Burnett: [00:17:59] And then we would come together for mid-day prayer, and then we’d go back out… I don’t remember what else we would do after that… And then you had mid-day—mid-day prayer, that was—before that was the mid, mid-day prayer—it was like in between morning and mid-day prayer, so then we would come together for mid-day prayer, and then we'd go to lunch. And then after lunch we met together in a rec room, where we all eat chocolate and talk to each other.

Lewis: In French.

Burnett: [00:18:33] In French, [laughs] eventually in French. I can't remember all the details, but then you had the mid-afternoon prayer, then evening prayer, then night prayer. After evening prayer of course was dinner, and then… At different points in the day there's also the personal meditation time and spiritual reading, and then eventually you did night prayer, after which you did the Hymn to the Blessed Mother, then we went to bed.

Burnett: [00:19:03] Now, after night prayer the rule is—in any monastery, after night prayers is what's called “the grand silence”, which means you don't talk.** **It’s like, the worst rule you can break in any monastery is to talk during the grand silence. And if you're a Cistercian, you take a vow of silence—you don't talk at all! But at other monasteries during the grand silence you don't talk.

Burnett: [00:19:28] But I remember the first time I went… Because, I arrived at the monastery on Ash Wednesday, of that year. And so, the first time I went to breakfast—and my French was… I mean, I took French in high school, but I didn't pay attention so—you know, taking a French class in high school and being proficient enough to have a conversation in French—to a French person, aren't the same thing. [Laughs] So, I remember when I went to breakfast—before I went, my spiritual director who came to get me—to lead me to breakfast, wanted to warn me that… He gave me an apology, he said, “Because this is Lent, they're making their coffee a little weaker.”

Burnett: [00:20:12] And so, I got there—and I didn't know what to expect, but I got there, and they were drinking their coffee out of a bowl. And I didn't know that. So—you know, each day, monks take turns serving the other monks. So I remember this monk coming up to me and he's pouring boiling milk into my bowl. And the reason they do that is because the milk they use at the monastery were donated from—by the local farmers, and so it wasn't pasteurized. So, they had to boil the milk, and so they brought the boiled milk and poured it into a bowl, and I’m thinking, “Well he's pouring milk into a bowl, I guess the oatmeal is coming next.”

Burnett: [00:20:52] And so, the monk was speaking to me and I… It really wasn't phasing me from what he said, and so finally, the guy the was sitting to my right leaned over into my ear and he said, “He wants to know if you'd like some coffee with your milk.” [Laughs] Like… And then I realized no, I didn't need the milk because I don't drink milk in my coffee. And I remember, having the first taste of coffee and thinking this is weak?! Because French coffee is always stronger than American coffee. So even their weak coffee is stronger. [Smiles] So, I did tell the spiritual director he didn't have to apologize for the coffee being weak. [Smiles]

Burnett: [00:21:29] But I will tell you one thing. I do miss... One of the things that I'd like to do is to go back to a retreat, in a monastery. Sometimes it’s—I mean, you know, I don't want to be a monk, but sometimes when life gets really stressful, I like the idea of being able to step away and spending some of that regimented prayer time in a retreat, to kind of rejuvenate myself spiritually. And I don't always have the luxury of doing… In fact, I never had the luxury of doing that, but...

Lewis: [00:21:59] So, when you were seventeen you went on this very deep, kind of spiritual journey, and a geographic journey. Was it the first time that you had travelled outside of where you grew up?

Burnett: No, but it was the first time that I travelled outside of the United States.
Lewis: And how did your… Was your mom supportive of you…

Burnett: Oh yeah.

Lewis: Going to a monastery?

Burnett: Well, my mother always had the idea that I was going to be a priest anyway. So, once I decided I wanted to enter a monastery she was supportive.

Lewis: Even when you were doing “bad things” [smiles] as you say?
Burnett: She doesn't know all the bad things that I was doing. [Laughs]

Lewis: Okay.

Burnett: That's what I said, I was sneaky enough—I didn’t get caught.

Lewis: And so, from there you went into the military?

Burnett: [00:22:50] Oh no, you just reminded me of something. That was one advantage I had in my family. For some reason I was the good kid.

Lewis: Okay.

Burnett: I mean, I had a brother who a drug addict. I had another one who was very angry all the time. Then somehow I was the nice kid. And like I said, my mother had it in her mind that I was going to be a priest. And so, because my parents both saw me as the good kid, I was able to go behind and do these sneaky things and they weren't even trying to figure it out. [Smiles then laughs]

Lewis: [00:23:22] So, you there—you were in France for nine months did you say?

Burnett: Something like that.

Lewis: Seven months? And then you came back home?

Burnett: [00:23:31] Yeah! And it was actually my first time spending any time in the City, and the first time ever actually meeting a homeless person.

Lewis: In this City?

Burnett: In this City.

Lewis: In New York City, when you came back from France?

Burnett: Right, when I came back from France. Because, what happened was, when I came back from France, they bought—the monastery bought me a plane ticket from Paris back to New York. But they gave me money that I supposed to use to get a ticket from New York back to Indiana. But they miscalculated the cost, so I didn't have enough money to get on a plane from New York to Indiana. [Laughs]

Lewis: Oh!

Burnett: [00:24:08] And so, I was in Kennedy airport I think. I'm not positive. It was either LaGuardia or Kennedy, but I think I was in Kennedy airport and… I had to call home, to have money sent to me. So money was Western Unioned, but the airport Western Union—because it was a Friday evening, a late Friday evening—the Western Union office closed down and I couldn't get access to the Western Union office to pull the money out, until Monday. So I spent the weekend sleeping in a chair, or a seat, in the airport.

Burnett: [00:24:48] And I guess DHS wasn’t so put together yet… At the time—this was in the late eighties, and so a popular place for the homeless to hang out in was in the airports. And I remember having a lot of conversations with these homeless people in, what I think was Kennedy airport. It was my first-time having conversations with homeless people and I remember they kept… I was pretty naïve because they would come, and they would say how hungry they are… And remember, I had money I just didn't have enough to buy a plane ticket. And so, I'd give somebody money, and they'd come back later and ask for more, and I'm like… [Laughs] And one of the folks who worked at the airport was watching this happen, and they came to me and said, “If I keep giving, he's going to keep coming back.” And so, I stopped giving because I couldn’t afford to give him everything I had.

Burnett: [00:25:46] And then… Oh, that was a strange experience too, considering what I was coming back from... It was the first-time having sex with somebody I didn't know.

Lewis: In the airport?

Burnett: Uh-huh… It was a young guy from Canada, I think. He was about my age, so it wasn't like an old pervert [laughs] or—somebody about my age, from Canada, and I don't know how… Oh, I remember getting up to go to the restroom and he ended up following me into the restroom, and he initiated it, but [laughs], it just went from there. And it was an odd experience because [pause] I hadn't had much sexual experience prior to that and so, and to be in New York and somebody coming onto you, and… So, I didn't really know his story. He said he's visiting New York and I'm guessing that's true. [Laughs] But, I don't know what it was about me that he thought he wanted to hook up with me in an airport bathroom. So, even after that spiritual journey [laughs] I was still ready to get into trouble.

Lewis: But did you get into trouble for that?

Burnett: No

Lewis: Well!

Burnett: We just went back to our seats and

Lewis: There you go!

Burnett: continued talking.

Burnett: [00:27:02] And then one time I remember—oh, I remember at the time, even before calling home to have money Western Unioned, I thought maybe I'll just find a truck stop somewhere and hitch a ride home.

Lewis: Uh-huh.

Burnett: And so, I remember approaching an NYPD officer and asking him if he knew where the truck stops were. [Laughing] And you know how NYPD officers are with seventeen-year old’s—in the airport. You know, his suspicions were coming up and he started asking questions and I had figured out quickly by the nature of the questions and the tone of his voice that his suspicions were aroused. And I thought I would be in trouble just for asking, so I eventually, you know—I shut down, didn't answer any more questions.

Burnett: [00:27:52] And then later, I met somebody else that I was talking to… One of the homeless people said the officer had approached him and asked him what my story was. And so, they told the officers the story and the officers left me alone. But what they really thought was I was like a young runaway teenager or something that they needed to do something about, but that wasn't the case. I just needed to get some money to get home. [Laughs]

Lewis: So those homeless folks had your back

Burnett: They did!

Lewis: in the airport?

Burnett: They did.

Lewis: [00:28:18] Hmmmm, and then you went back to Indiana?

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And you stayed there for how long and then you went into the military?

Burnett: [00:28:27] Well, I went into the military [pause] about a year after I went to Indiana. And then—that's the National Guard. I know a lot of active military folks refuse to accept them, but they are military, especially when they deploy. I don’t think we would have any less respect for National Guard than we would for active army, at deployment.

Burnett: [00:28:54] But… So I was National Guard, and I was in Ivy Tech College at the time, where I got an associate degree in Computer Information Systems. And then after I got the degree, I went active into the military, into the active army. And that was about four years later, I went active army.

Lewis: [00:29:17] And, for you, was there any… Did you have any kind of a philosophical or spiritual process between—you know, being in a monetary and then not long after, joining the military? Did you think through that, or…

Burnett: [00:29:38] Well I don't think anything spiritual was involved in me joining the military—that was my poverty, the consent to go active army. Because in Indiana at the time, even with a CIS degree, what are you going to do with it? I mean, computer information systems degrees back then, are very different than information systems degrees today. You were trained in very different things. Because remember the PC was fairly new, at the time and so a lot of the applications we work with today weren't yet developed, and so you weren't trained to work with those applications—you were trained to program.

Burnett: [00:30:21] Well, what does a young person trained to program do in Indiana? Especially in a small town—it's not like all these businesses are rushing around to hire programmers, for their business. So, I had really had nothing that I could do there, at the time, with the degree.

Burnett: [00:30:36] So, I always had to go away one way or another. So I went active army and while I was National Guard, I did two different AIT's, that's advanced training. I was supposed to go… When I signed up for the National Guard, I signed up to be a Behavioral Science specialist, and when I got my orders to go to my initial advanced training, I realized they were sending me to medic school. And when I approached the office, in my battalion—to remind them that I had signed up to be behavioral science, not medic—and so, what the commander—the battalion commander, convinced me to do, was to go ahead and go to medic school and then when I come back, they'll cut new orders to send me to behavioral science school. So I ended up going to both.

Burnett: [00:31:30] So when I went to active army… When you go from either the National Guard or reserves to active army, you don't get to pick an MOS, because you already have one. The army's not going to spend money to train you when they've already trained you. But you get your pick of forts. And so, I picked Fort Drum, and I did that for a reason. And I should have sought some advice before I did that because my reason ended up being a mistake. I picked it because a lot of the forts—most forts, have—or most divisions have, assigned missions. So you have a Division assigned to Germany for example. Or you have a Division assigned to Korea, wherever… These different divisions are assigned different theatres.

Burnett: [00:32:17] My fort, and the reason I picked it was—it had no assigned theater. I’m thinking, “Well, if no assigned theatre—if a war breaks out, they're going to send the person with the assigned theatre over there first. [Smiling] And… Which was a mistake, because what that meant was, my fort was not—didn't have… My division didn't have an assigned theatre, so it was what we called a rapid deployment unit.

Lewis: Oof! So was it the opposite of what you intended?

Burnett: [00:32:40] It was the exact opposite of what I intended! When a war broke out we were like the first ones there. Rapid deployment are supposed to be on the ground within seventy-two hours. And since I joined, the first place we were deployed was Florida, for Hurricane Andrew relief. And I got a thousand stories to tell you about that! Then, while I was there, we deployed to Somalia and we deployed to what used to be called Yugoslavia, now Bosnia-Herzegovina, so there were all three of those deployments [laughs] while I was in the division. And my division, which was the Tenth Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, was like among the first to go.

Lewis: And how long were you in that Division?

Burnett: [00:33:20] The whole time I was active army I was in that Division!

Lewis: Two years? How many?

Burnett: Two years, yeah.

Lewis: So in two years you went to Florida, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia.

Burnett: I didn't, my unit did.

Lewis: Oh, okay and...

Burnett: [00:33:33] When we went to Somalia, I was originally excited about going. Then I was thinking about it. I was focused at the time… Because there was some spirituality creeping back in. And you had these apparitions, which I don't accept anymore, but at the time I was really into this supposed apparition in Medjugorje, which was a village in what used to be called Yugoslavia.

Burnett: [00:34:00] According to the allegations, Mary was appearing to some young people in Medjugorje—as we were speaking, and so, I was following the messages that Mary was sharing in Medjugorje, and it was focusing… Her title in Medjugorje was Queen of Peace and so I was really getting focused on this—the peace notion, and the peace portion of our faith, and looking at the concept of our just war theory.

Burnett: [00:34:31] And I was… You know that as a Catholic doctrine, just war theory. And so I was exploring the just war theory, even further at the time. And I was looking at, you know as we were pre—our unit was preparing to deploy to Somalia, we were getting the intelligence briefings. And I can't tell you everything I heard in the intelligence briefings, but I heard enough to say—to begin to ask, “Is our involvement in Somalia consistent with just war?” And I couldn't, in my mind, accept that it was so I actually filed for conscientious objector status, and I did get it.

Burnett: [00:35:08] But while the—my conscientious objector status was pending, I was transferred from my unit to… I wasn't transferred, I was—there's another word because I wasn't assigned out, I was… I can't remember what the word is but it's effectively it’s, one unit is loaning you to another unit. So, I was loaned out to the divisions medical operations center where I had the opportunity to interact some more with army intelligence. [Laughs]

Burnett: [Coughs] Excuse me.

Burnett: [00:35:41] Because what I was doing at the time is, every day I would have to go to military intelligence division headquarters—which was in the division headquarters and get daily updates in projected battles. And then we would bring those back to division medical operations center and run them through an algorithm to decide what kind of injuries were anticipated and then to assess the medical personnel and medical supplies on the ground, to determine whether they had sufficient to meet those injuries. And then we would draw up orders either activating reserve personnel, or reserve units—or we would order supplies to make sure that they were on the ground in anticipation of a projected battle.

Burnett: [00:36:32] And then, as part of getting those briefings, I also got the updates... I was like the first person stateside to get the updates on the casualties, and so I very often had to field phone calls from the media [pauses] trying to get from me what the casualty rates were for the day. Obviously I couldn't share that with the media. I’d have to direct them to the public affairs office.

Lewis: How old were you then?

Burnett: [00:37:05] Twenty-two, twenty-three... So, I would have to direct them to public affairs office. Well, I was the source—I was where the public affairs office got it [laughs] but they would try to get from me before they… Because everybody—you know how media are, they want a scoop. And so, they knew that I was the first one to get it, so they were always trying to get it from me so that they would have one up on other media. But no, they all had to go to the public affairs office. [Laughs]

Lewis: Were you ever tempted to share information?

Burnett: No, I wasn't.

Lewis: [00:37:34] Did you get any preparation from the military to be in that position?

Burnett: [00:37:40] I sort of did when we were deployed in Florida. This is a story. I was actually working out of our battalion office the whole time I was there. Because remember, prior to going I was—I got my degree in Computer Information Systems, and what happened was… Remember at the time the PC was fairly new, and so, prior to that they were using an older system, but they were starting to move over into the PC's and so the Battalion had gotten this whole new supply of PC's, but nobody knew in the Battalion how to use them.

Burnett: [00:38:13] So, they pulled me into the—to work into the Battalion office and I got to oversee setting up the computers and making sure that folks knew how to use them correctly, so I was doing training and everything, on top of all the medical stuff that I was doing. And I ended up also, because also at one point our personnel sergeant went AWOL, so the Battalion commander had me taking over the personnel stuff, which I was never trained to do.

Burnett: [00:38:43] And, I remember when we finally did get a person… I had created my own system using the PC… I—remember I was Computer Information Systems trained, and I was trained to write programs, so I actually wrote a database to keep track of all these personnel actions that I was doing. And I remember about two weeks after our new personnel sergeant came on board, she came to me, and she said, “You know what? There's absolutely nothing you did here that was to army regulation” she said, “but everything you did was very organized, and it was very easy for me to figure it out.” So she had to redo things according to regulation. [Laughs]

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: [00:39:24] But I also… That was my first experience networking because I didn't know what I was doing. So, I was forming all these connections all over the base, with the people I knew who did know what they were doing, so I would get feedback. So I learned to network pretty quickly in that position. But what ended up happening was, we were deployed and because I was working in the battalion office, the battalion commander together with other commanders and other officers in the battalion office, decided that I was going to be the battalion’s public affairs person.

Burnett: [00:39:57] So that while we were in Florida for the Hurricane Andrew relief, anytime media had questions, they were—I was the person they were routed to, so I got the public affairs experience there.

Lewis: That's amazing.

Burnett: [00:40:08] And then they issued me a camera, so as we were going around in our Humvee to the different sites and things, I was taking pictures of everybody. I remember I had all these pictures, of all these people, who were victims of Hurricane Andrew.

Burnett: [00:40:22] A lot of them were like, Latinos, Mexicans and Cubans and things, and that was the other thing I remember since I was a medic there. We had a lot of folks in Florida in that area, that would never have been able to… Because they couldn't get insurance—a lot of them were not legal residents so they never would have gotten medical care, or the medical care they needed from civilian sources, they couldn't afford it.

Burnett: [00:40:49] But because we were there for Hurricane Andrew relief, the United States army doesn't ask, “Are you an immigrant, or what are you.” You come to us with a medical need, we provide urgent medical care. And so, that was one thing that I enjoyed about my role in Florida was being able to provide medical care to folks who otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it. So yeah, I had the public affairs experience prior to doing it out of division medical operations center.

Burnett: [00:41:17] But that whole experience of exploring our just war theory, and what I felt about Somalia, and is this the right thing to do? Was what eventually got—was triggering me to begin—become more spiritual again.

Burnett: [00:41:44] And I remember—and this is while I was still in the army, an older soldier that I had friended and I—and his wife, decided to go on a trip into Canada. So as we were driving up—and so we were approaching the bridge into Canada, we passed this seminary. And I said, “Seminary College”… And I said, “Well, let's stop and have a look.” And I stopped and had a conversation—eventually that led me going to college there, to Seminary College to explore being a priest.

Lewis: And how long were you there?

Burnett: [00:42:12] Well, I got my degree in Philosophy.

Lewis: At the Sem—you graduated from the Seminary college?

Burnett: [00:42:16] Mm-hmmm. And then I went on to… Instead of staying—because that was in the Diocese of Augsburg, so instead of staying there I switched over to the Franciscans here in New York City.

Lewis: And moved here?

Burnett: Yes, I lived in—on Soundview Avenue in the Bronx, at the Friary associated with Holy Cross Church. Now, that's no longer a Franciscan parish, the Franciscans gave it up to the Diocese, so they have a Diocesan priest there. But when I was there it was a Franciscan parish and that's where the postulants lived.

Lewis: So that's what brought you to New York.

Burnett: New York City originally, yes.

Lewis: Okay.

Burnett: [00:42:51] But, the second time—remember the first time I came through the airport and spent the weekend [laughs] in Kennedy airport. The second time I came to New York City was while I was at Seminary, and we came to New York because that was Pope John Paul II's last trip to New York.

Lewis: What year was that?

Burnett: I don't remember, ninety, I don't know, ninety-something,

Lewis: Okay.

Burnett: Ninety-six maybe?

Lewis: Alright.

Burnett: [00:43:13] Ninety-five or ninety-six. That was his last trip to New York, and you remember, they had the—he had the mass in Central Park. But the night before, they had the seminarians from all over the State of New York meet at Saint Joseph's seminary in Yonkers, for evening prayer. So the Pope led evening prayer for all the Seminarians, so I got to meet with him there.

Burnett: [00:43:36] And then—then the next day, I went to mass in New York, and I kept thinking… And I had a different view of people in New York at the time. I'm thinking, you know—New York seems to have a lot of stress—I thought maybe I need to come bring Jesus to them [laughing] and I'll transform their lives so that they're not stressful.

Lewis: [00:43:54] What was it—if I could ask what it was like to participate in the mass with the Pope, in Yonkers—the night prayers.

Burnett: Well, the night prayer was more meaningful to me, because it was a little more intimate than the mass. Because remember, there were hundreds of thousands of people at the mass. Now as one of the seminarians, remember the priests and the seminarians were all up closer. And I remember some folks were mad at us because they were behind the line, and we were in front of that line, and I was like five rows back… But that really didn’t—I mean, the mass was exciting, but the evening prayer the night before was more meaningful.

Burnett: [00:44:35] I do remember, during the mass, everybody thought it was going to rain and so they were holding up—they delayed the mass starting because they were trying to figure out what it—whether it was going to rain or not. And finally the Pope comes out onto the make shift sanctuary—the stage, stands up to the microphone and he looks up in the sky and says, “No sun, no rain, we pray.” [Laughs] And I remember even after we came back, one of our philosophy professors says, “See how he can say the simplest thing and you say it just the right way, it sounds really profound.” [Laughs.] Yeah, that sounded kind of profound, and it was just because of who said it, and the way he said it, but all he's saying is, “There's no sun and there's no rain, now we're going to pray!”

Lewis: I wonder if there's anything that the Pope could have said that would not sound profound.

Burnett: [00:45:25] Well, I will tell you what was profound… During—it wasn't at that mass, he did a mass in New Jersey. And I think this was before, the day before the evening prayer, and that's where he was talking about the Statue of Liberty, and that plaque on the Statue of Liberty about, “Bring us your poor, and your tired and those yearning to be free.” He said, “America has to decide what kind of country you're going to be. Are you going to be the ones to welcome the poor into your midst, or are you going to be the ones to deny them?” It’s something like that, now I’m paraphrasing. If you want in the future, I can go back and find the exact quote but that was basically what he was saying and I think that was more profound than anything else he said on that trip, and I think it's more relevant today.

Lewis: [00:46:11] Did it have an impact on you at the time?

Burnett: It did at the time.

Lewis: Tell me about that.

Burnett: Saying, “We have to decide who we're going to be.” And, well—it goes back a lot to—even as a Catholic, we have to decide.

Burnett: [00:46:24] And that was—when I first met Picture the Homeless, remember—if you remember, when I first started coming to Picture the Homeless, it was not as a member but as someone who was one of the editors of the Catholics for Democracy blog.

Lewis: Yeah.

Burnett: And when I first met Tyletha, and who else did I meet? I think it was Tyletha and Rogers, and Nikita...

Lewis: Nikita maybe?

Burnett: No, I think that Nikita was after me.

Lewis: Okay.

Burnett: I came to Picture the Homeless before Nikita. I think it was Rogers and Leroy and Tyletha, and so Tyletha gave me her card.

Burnett: [00:46:59] But I was coming because I was intrigued but remember what I was fighting with at the time. That was during the 2004 presidential race, and you had a lot of these conservative Catholics trying to paint this image of Catholicism and I remember thinking that Picture the Homeless is a better image. And so, I was studying Picture the Homeless, so I could blog about Picture the Homeless on the Catholics for Democracy, and saying, “These are the issues that real Catholics think about.” But, some of that did come back—was inspired by Pope John Paul II, saying that Americans have to decide what kind of country we're going to be.

Lewis: [00:47:38] And that led you partially to decide what kind of Catholic you wanted to be? Or you already knew.

Burnett: [00:47:44] Well, no—I was struggling with it because remember, I came from a very conservative background. And I’ve always… You know, I grew up in Franciscan community, so there was always that identifying with the poor element, but because I came from a conservative part of the country, you know—from a red state, born and raised… So, I was from a conservative part of the country and I—even though I was a teenager I was intimately exposed to the debate over pre-Vatican II, post Vatican II Catholicism, and which was more authentic, and do we do things in Latin, do we do them in English?

Burnett: [00:48:21] What do you need—what do you need to be more devout, and all those kinds of arguments… And at some point—and a lot of this had to do with my Seminary training, and a lot of it had to do with listening to Pope John Paul II, which remember on many issues himself was conservative… But in the sense of justice—remember he wrote—he contributed several encyclicals to our social doctrine so, he wasn't very conservative when it came to social doctrine, so... You know, I've read those, and then, again back at his speech about Americans have to define what kind of Americans we’re going to be. Those kinds of questions did lead me to—did lead to an internal… I don't want to call it a conflict, but certainly question…

Lewis: Dialogue?

Burnett: [00:49:09] Dialogue! About what it means to be an authentic Catholic—because is the prayer life alone, and your relationship with God alone, makes you an authentic Catholic? Or is your relationship with God and your prayer life supposed to influence your relationship with other people? And I decided it was the latter. If—and obviously the scripture gives… It gives testimony to that.

Burnett: [00:49:38] Remember the Apostle Paul said, “How can you say you love God, whom you do not see, when you do not love your neighbor, who you do see.” So, Paul said that. This is still kind of relevant! And so, when we're asking, “Which is the more authentic Catholic?” I think if my relationship with others in the world is not impacted by my prayer life, then my prayer life is empty, and meaningless.

Lewis: [00:50:05] So, is it—is my memory serving us correctly, that you met Tyletha, Leroy, and Rogers on the train?

Burnett: I did meet them on the train! And it was af—we were both coming back from different actions.

Lewis: Could you tell that story?

Burnett: Yeah, at the time, I was coming back from an action where I was canvassing for Howard Dean and that was the source for the Catholics for Democracy blog I told you about. Originally, it was Catholics for Dean, and we were giving a Catholic argument, a progressive Catholic argument for supporting Howard Dean's presidential aspirations—and our aspirations that he would become president. [Smiles]

Burnett: [00:50:34] It eventually became Catholics for Democracy. But I was coming back from a canvassing action promoting Howard Dean's candidacy and Picture the Homeless was coming back from a Mayoral Press Conference—where it was Bloomberg I think, who was touting his Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, and Picture the Homeless I believe, was challenging how effective that was going to be.

Burnett: [00:51:12] And so, I had noticed them with all this Picture the Homeless paraphernalia—their buttons on, and their signs, and everything—so I asked them what it was about and of course obviously I still actively canvassing for Howard Dean.

Burnett: [00:15:25] So, I was promoting Howard Dean, but I was hearing from Tyletha and Rogers and Leroy about Picture the Homeless and that was intriguing—and again, I was blogging, so… You know I—it was either Rogers or Leroy who was offering me contact information, but Tyletha stepped in and said, “You know, I'm a staff member, so it's probably… I'm here more, or I'm guaranteed to be more here, so let me give you my contact information.” And so, I contacted Tyletha, and I came in, and I sat in on some meetings, had a chat with folks… Again I was trying to work up—I was trying… I was being more of a journalist than a member. I wasn't a member yet.

Burnett: [00:52:03] And then eventually I became homeless myself and had a reason to move from journalist mode to member mode. [Laughs]

Lewis: [00:52:10] When you were in journalist mode, what are some of the things that—that you learned about Picture the Homeless.

Burnett: [00:52:19] Well one of the things that I dealt with—that I learned, was how homeless people related to each other. I had already seen it in the sense of—usually when, not even homeless but just poor, and you have nowhere to turn and you really need some help, it's usually another poor person who'll be the one to respond.

Burnett: [00:52:41] And so, there was that sense of empathy—but there was also this sense of resourcefulness among the members, so that if one person didn't have a resource, another person did, and so it really gave a strong sense of a—of an authentic community. You know, where other folks talk about community, here I was watching people live it out—in a space, New York City, where you didn't expect people to have that sense of community spirit. Here the poorest of the poor were exhibiting that community spirit and that’s what I wanted to bring into my blog as I was watching that unfold. It was really touching to watch. And again, I wasn't a part of it yet, I was just observing it.

Lewis: Could you tell me an example of when you saw that in action?

Burnett: Maybe we can do that in the future, as I reflect on it?

Lewis: Okay, that would be great.

Burnett: My memory’s a little vague at the moment, so... I wasn't expecting that question so…

Lewis: That would be lovely.

Burnett: I wasn't prepared to answer it.

Lewis: [00:53:42] And so, I guess the experience—the journalist getting to know Picture the Homeless experience I guess was positive enough, that when you became homeless yourself you reached back out, and what was that like?

Burnett: [00:53:58] Well it was almost [pause] fluid because I just slid into it. And as you recall, I was part of the housing committee because that was the real issue that I was concerned with. Because, I was working at the time and so there was no reason for me to be homeless other than the fact that I didn't have enough money [laughs] to pay rent. And so, I was really upset about the fact that we've allowed the city to become so expensive and not recognize that people working for lower incomes still need a place to live and so my big issue was wanting—wanting to find a way to change housing policy in New York so that housing is available to everyone.

Burnett: [00:54:40] And it really took me a while… I know Picture the Homeless’s thing is we need housing for the poorest of the poor, and I agree with that. That wasn't my position when I first started with Picture the Homeless because I'm thinking, “I'm working, why can't I afford housing?” And so, it's true on one hand, that people do work but can't afford housing, but on the other hand there are people who have impediments to work that still, as human people, deserve to have a place to live.

Lewis: [00:55:07] When you first got back—when you first came to Picture the Homeless as someone who was homeless, did you call? Did you walk in the door? What was the experience like?

Burnett: [00:55:19] I walked in the door, because I already knew where Picture the Homeless was, and when I became homeless I was assigned to the shelter on Wards Island, so it was like—if I had to I could have walked from the shelter to the office, so...

Lewis: Did you ever?

Burnett: Yes.

Lewis: [00:55:35] And so… You became homeless and you went… Did you go through Bellevue to get to Wards Island?

Burnett: Oh yeah, everybody has to go through Bellevue.

Lewis: So, what was that like? Was that your first time ever entering the shelter system?

Burnett: [00:55:51] Nooo! The first time I entered the shelter system was in 1998. And there is a whole other story to that. Obviously I'm gay. So, after I left the Franciscans, I went back to Indiana and ended up getting a job as a house supervisor at a house for mentally disabled, and I was renting from this landlord, and this was before email because really popular. I mean email existed but, it wasn't that ubiquitous, yet. So we were still doing things by snail mail.

Burnett: [00:56:38] And I remember my landlord—landlady, thought that she had a right to go through my mail, and she did. And in the process of going through my mail, she realized I was gay and so she kicked me out of my apartment, and... Remember this was not New York City, it’s a smaller town, so she spread it through the town that I was gay, and she told my employers that I was gay. My employer fired me, and the argument the employer gave for firing me was… Because the prior year, they had another person—in fact the person I replaced, was also a youth minister at this Protestant church in the town and it turned out that he was drugging some of the teenage boys in that church and having sex with them.

Lewis: Oh God.

Burnett: [00:57:29] And so, he was arrested and went to jail, but he was—he held—he had the position that I was holding and so they put the argument that, “Listen, gay people are predators and now we have to do an investigation to find out whether you were a predator with any of our clients.” And so they fired me. By the way, I'm not a predator, I…

Burnett: [00:57:48] You know, remember this is a very conservative state where they have backward ideas, so they assumed you're a predator if you're gay. So I lost the job, I lost my apartment, the whole town knows I'm gay and I thought, “Well, if I end up on the street that’s going to be very embarrassing in this town. So let me go back to New York, at least I can hide.” [Laughs]

Burnett: [00:58:07] And I remember—so, I spent one night on the street. And my first instinct was, “Okay, all I need to do is get a job and then I can get some money and go get an apartment.” So, after spending the night on the street, I went into a public bathroom and shaved, and went to the employment office. Of course, I'm too young at this point [laughs] and inexperienced. It didn’t occur to me that if I’m on the street I really couldn’t work, and the employment office worker—it occurred to him that I probably couldn't work if I was on the street, so he routed me to Bellevue which routed me to Wards Island. Then I eventually did get work again and get my own place, but I had to be in a shelter first, I couldn’t do it sleeping on a sidewalk.

Burnett: [00:58:56] But I remember my instincts sleeping on the sidewalk... So, I did have money, and once again, you know—I'm meeting other homeless people on the street and they're needing things and so I’m sharing with them, and I’m giving them things, and… Hey, well listen, we're both homeless, I have, he doesn't, so [laughs] let me share, eventually somebody is…” And you think that karma is going to come back, and somebody’s going to do something for you too. But, I did that on the street—for that one night… After I went to the employment office, I was referred to Bellevue who referred to Wards Island and spent my first time as a homeless person in ninety-eight at Wards Island.

Lewis: [00:59:34] How long were you on Wards Island?

Burnett: Um, [long pause] a couple of years.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: And I saw a lot back then. That was the first time I ever saw rocks. Somebody offered to sell me rocks and I said, “Why the hell somebody would want to buy a rock!” [Laughter] It took me awhile to figure out what a rock was! And so, they were selling rock and heroin and everything and then you had three different gangs competing for hegemony on the island. It's not that way now, but it used to be.

Burnett: [01:00:05] You had three shelters that were really one shelter compound. That was what we called the Clark Thomas Building, the Keener Building and the Schwartz. And so, there was nothing separating except all this grass that you walk back and forth between buildings. So there were trees and fences, a lot of places to hide, so…

Burnett: [01:00:23] And you had three different gangs—the Bloods, the Latin Kings, and the Crips, all competing for hegemony in the office, so you go through these periods where they’re having their gang battles—and you see people sliced, cut, stabbed, shot and I think it was a pretty… It was like a war zone at times on that island.

Burnett: [01:00:43] And then I saw somebody overdose. I actually stepped in then, because the staff were just watching this person overdose. I said, “You don't see this?!” He's got a needle stuck out of his arm. He's not responding, anyway... So, I'm engaging medical care, and I actually had a phone on me at the time, so I called 911 since staff wasn't paying any attention. And I don't know what happened to him—you know, obviously the ambulance came and took off with him and whatever happened after that I don't know.

Burnett: [01:01:08] It’s amazing how little people care, [laughs] people who work in that industry don't care as much as… I mean there are people who do care, don’t get me… I'm not going to say that but, you get the sense that some people who work in that industry work there because they have nowhere else they can work, and they probably don't want to be there themselves. [Laughs]

Lewis: [01:01:27] And so, that’s… You got back on your feet in terms of getting housing again?

Burnett: Well, I got work first and [then] I got housing, and at the time I had moved into a… I wasn't renting an apartment. I didn't make enough money to rent an apartment. I rented a room, in Ozone Park, Jamaica Queens.

Lewis: And you were working where?

Burnett: I was working at Opinion Access Corporation. First, as an interviewer, and then as a supervisor.

Lewis: [01:02:00] And then—continued your political, your Catholic activism?

Burnett: I wasn't so political yet!

Lewis: No?

Burnett: No, I wasn't politically active yet. I was bar hopping a lot.

Lewis: Okay!

Burnett: I was going to bars.

Lewis: [01:02:13] And then, what led you to political activism?

Burnett: You know initially—you know, because I was watching what Bush was doing, and remember, first of all I'm a veteran of the United States Army, but I'm also a veteran of the United States Army who filed for conscientious objector status because I was… I had actively reflected on whether or not just war theory justified the war that we were involved in—this was under Clinton, and I'm watching George W. Bush in action.

Burnett: [01:02:50] And, you know we went to war against Afghanistan, but I understood why, because it was 9/11… They knocked down the World Trade Center, the Afghanis—government, were harboring the person who orchestrated that attack and I said, “Absolutely, go after them.” But I was watching Bush lie us into another war, and I said, “There's no reason to go into that war!” And we’re going and everything… So I was just angry, furious at George W. Bush.

Burnett: [01:03:16] I was looking for anything to get rid of this guy and Howard Dean was the first candidate to publicly voice what I was thinking about George W. Bush. And so, he was—being the first, he grabbed my attention, so I got really politically active with him. And you know, being Catholic, eventually I came across another Catholic, who I still interact with today, through Facebook—who himself was—he had started the Catholics for Dean blog.

Burnett: [01:03:43] And I remember I actually had to come and have his back because he was in college at the time and the trolls would come in... He would make these arguments and these trolls would come in and talk about how young he is, and he would shut up and listen to the older people talk. And you know, “If you listen to older people you’ll change your mind and everything…” Really putting him down about his age, and justifying—or just trying to argue that he's wrong, not on a substantive matter, but because of his age. And so, I would have to step in and crack down choooo! [Makes a whip cracking sound] “Well, I'm not his age, now here's what I think.”

Burnett: [01:04:12] So, eventually, I became an editor of the blog, and when we moved over, I was one of the—one of the two, eventually one of the two… I guess proprietors of the job… What do you call board members—they’re the…?

Lewis: Trustee? A director?

Burnett: [01:04:35] Well, were called directors, but... Principle! So, I was one of the two principles of the blog. And eventually, when Howard Dean stepped down out of his candidacy, we transferred—we didn't want to end the blog, so we transferred, it changed it from Catholics for Dean to Catholics for Democracy. But it was consistent with what Dean did. Remember, he had—Dean for America became Democracy for America, so we changed over right along with them.

Burnett: [01:05:03] But before I did that, I was actually… I wrote the first—created the first, NYC for Dean website, and then somebody else with better skills than I had, rewrote the site. But that's fine. They wrote it under Drupal, but I originally created it because I was at the—in one of the early organizing meetings and I guess that was my first step into political activism. That was one of my first steps into political activism was working with the Howard Dean campaign.

Lewis: So electoral, so to speak.

Lewis: [01:05:41] And then you come in contact with Picture the Homeless.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: Which is a different kind of political activism.

Burnett: Oh very different.

Lewis: And you're in the housing campaign.

Burnett: Mmm.

Lewis: [01:05:57] And… I remember you at that time being shocked that we didn't have a website. [Smiles] That Picture the Homeless didn’t have a website.

Burnett: [01:06:08] Well I remember, we had someone who was going to write it, but then I also remember that it was taking months and months and months for it to get written, and I remember you telling me that that person who was going to create it was dealing with some health care issues. But I'm like, “How the hell long does it take to write a website!” [Laughs]

Lewis: [01:06:28] And so, when you were describing your experience in the military, as being somebody in a group that had computer experience that most folks around you didn't have and that you had to set up systems and train people, it was also making me think that, that was also your role at Picture the Homeless.

Burnett: Early on.

Lewis: For many years. [Smiles]

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: [01:06:56] It was actually you, and another homeless member, Mike, who had the most computer experience [smiles] and set up the website and the database. And so, could you talk a little bit about your experience coming into the organization—where on the one hand you were in a similar situation in terms of not having housing, but you actually had a lot of technical skills that most of the members and staff did not have—and how you created a space?

Burnett: [01:07:38] Well, I don't think I created the space. I think the space manifested itself.

Lewis: So tell—talk about that.

Burnett: Because there was the need and there was the question of how long does it take to create a website. [Laughs] But I think there was a decision that… I mean the guy’s health care wasn’t—didn't seem to be getting any better. And so there was a decision that maybe we needed to just get started on this internally and move it forward.

Burnett: [01:08:06] And, I remember we had… We connected with Mark Leger, from the One Club. Who obviously, for the obvious reasons had some marketing background, so we brought him in, so that we could collectively have a conversation about what our website would look like, and how it would effectively market itself. And so we had that conversation and we decided what we wanted on it.

Burnett: [01:08:33] And then we were collecting—there were some things—because it was a teamwork project, because there was more than just the technical part of setting up the website, but then there's the discussion about the content. Both the written content and you know, obviously we had archival photos that were going to make their presence on the website site and things and so… Those were all a teamwork conversation. So we had that, and so folks were writing the content, and then I converted that content into a way that could be presented on a website.

Lewis: [01:09:08] Who was writing the content?

Burnett: Well staff, and committee members. And so, we had four active committees at the time.

Lewis: What were they? [Smiles]

Burnett: [01:09:22] They were the civil rights committee, the housing committee, the canners committee, and Potters Field. So, those were the four active committees. And so each of those committees had those conversations internally and drafted up the content that they wanted based on the committees history, what the successes were, what their goals were—things like that, and so that made it on. Then we had to decide what pictures were going to go with each of those—and of course we also had to have the section… We had the general history of Picture the Homeless, so that folks could get to know us a little better.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: It turned out really nice.

Lewis It did.

Burnett: [01:09:56] Now, a side note was—that was under Drupal. The website that Picture the Homeless has now, was written under WordPress. I remember how that ended up happening was that—eventually we got hacked. And the hacker did some serious damage to the website.

Burnett: [01:10:18] But then I had to go into the hospital, so I was unavailable to rewrite the website, and so Sam, who was a staff member, he was at the time the housing coordinator, or housing organizer, he had a contact that was able to rewrite the website under the WordPress platform. It was fine.

Lewis: [01:10:35] I can't hear the word Drupal without thinking of you. [Smiles] And I was in the Columbia University library last week and there was a book about Drupal, [laughs] and I remember your attempts to train the staff and members who were involved in the website so we would understand, not just produce content, but how the whole thing worked on the backend, which theoretically is really in alignment with the mission of Picture the Homeless, that we don't have this kind of division of, but…

Burnett: [01:11:11] Yeah, well that's one of the advantages of WordPress is that WordPress itself has a lower learning curve.

Lewis: Yeah.

Burnett: On the other hand, Drupal is a lot more robust in its capabilities. But, which do you want, the low learning curve or the robust capability? I mean, personally, I go for the robust capability, but I know the back end. [Laughs]

Lewis: [01:11:33] And what were some other things that were going on at the time that you joined Picture the Homeless? Do you recall? The RNC? Was…

Burnett: Well that was shortly after.

Lewis: At Madison Square Garden, there were large protests.

Burnett: [01:11:48] Well, because remember—when I came I was working on a presidential campaign. And so that naturally led… You weren't going to keep me out of the RNC protests! [Laughing]. I do remember at one point—the one memory I have from the protests was, that I— we were penned off, in pens, they were “free speech zone pens”. And they penned it off so that the protestors and activists were separated from each other, by these barriers, these metal barriers.

Burnett: [01:12:22] But I remember at one point, being involved in the middle of a conflict where one police officer was instructing me to move from one pen to another. Then another police office coming up after wanting to arrest me for crossing pens. And I had—trying to convince the one police officer, that the other police officer was instructing me... I think that they were setting it up, which gives you a sense of the tactics.

Burnett: [01:12:45] You know, like I was some radical, left-wing activist—whatever, that needed to be arrested because I was a radical. I wasn't yet fully radicalized, you know. I was still coming out of the electoral activism mode, to the political or, social activist mode. I wasn't yet that radical, so why NYPD thought I would be the one to set up for that… But again, I don't think NYPD cares how radical you are, they're going to frame you as being radical anyway.

Lewis: [01:13:20] Was that your first public protest of that sort?

Burnett: It was. I mean it’s not the first activity I was involved in, but again, I was moving away from—or moving out of electoral activity into social activism.

Lewis: [01:13:37] So, those times at Picture the Homeless, the office was located on 116?

Burnett: They were.

Lewis: Could you describe what the office was like, either through some scene or story that you remember?

Burnett: [Laughs] Okay!

Lewis: What the vibe was. [Smiles]

Burnett: [01:13:52] Well the vibe was very energetic. The ambiance of the office was—I think, more so than our office now even, you had the feel that you were in a social activist office. I mean, it was in an old apartment, wider than yours but kind of like yours. It was just… You had your office in the back. There was an office to the side, but mostly it was just this long office, separated by a wall, so that you had your conference room in the front, and you had the desks... And it was just all raw and… But yet, put together.

Burnett: [01:14:26] So, you had pictures and everything—usually reflecting different things that activists—that you'd want activists to see. But it was just like… One of those spaces where—you needed a space, so it was there. And I miss that space actually but, I also miss the neighborhood.

Burnett: [01:14:50] But here's the deal. One the one hand, there was a lot of activism, and you know, people were bringing a lot of things to the table because there was a lot of need. And remember at the time—that was while Picture the Homeless was still sorting out what all its goals were. So we had these campaigns, but we hadn't figured out the goals yet. And so that was the other side of the story. So we—I got to watch and participate, probably at the ground level, of trying to figure out really who our identity was. I mean we had a mission statement, but until you figure out what your goals are and how you were going to pursue them, your identity is still in flux, I think a little bit. So we were doing that.

Lewis: [01:15:31] How did we do that? How did we figure those things out?

Burnett: Well that happened [pauses] obviously as a collective process within the committees. I mean people were, within the respective meetings… Figure out, “Alright, so here's the campaign—but what do we want to achieve in the campaign?”

Burnett: [00:15:51] So the civil rights—and I wasn't part of the civil rights… But people were—who were facing civil rights issues were talking about their experience with police, particularly with the police targeting homeless persons using enforcement of the quality-of-life laws, and so we were calling that selective enforcement of the quality-of-life laws. I think that's a Picture the Homeless coined term. I think that you should be proud of that, because I hear it used elsewhere now—and eventually then also a discussion of police brutality… And these arose from folks experiences.

Burnett: [01:16:32] And then the housing campaign—there originally wasn't the housing campaign. Because, remember, in the beginning they were trying to sort out, “Well here's our experiences in the shelter system… What can we do to improve the shelters?” And again, it was a collective process… But we're like, eventually we were to the point, “Listen, we can spend our time trying to improve the shelters, but how many people in this room really want to live in a shelter?”

Lewis: A better shelter. [Smiles]

Burnett: And so—a better shelter! [Laughs]_ We want our own housing. So, we could spend our time demanding improvement of the shelters, or we can spend our time fighting for housing _and we chose to fight for housing. And so, I got to be on the ground floor of that decision and drafting—participating in the drafting of the original Housing and Jobs Platform.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: [01:17:19] But all this happened collectively, and there's this word that I've been thinking about during this entire conversation, I don't know why it's not popping out… I'm going to say fluidly, but it's—organically is the word! You know, there’s a few times during this interview I've been wanting to say that word. It all happened organically from the experiences of homeless folks. So, there was no top-down policy analyst telling us what we need.

Burnett: [01:17:45] And then again, also we had the development of the Potters Field campaign. And I was shamed, or guilt tripped into that one. Because, remember one of our co-founders had recently passed away, and we found his body… We knew he was on Potters field but couldn't get onto it and everything. And so, a couple—a few of the folks who were at Picture the Homeless before I was, and they were coming out of the civil rights campaign who knew our co-founder more personally. I had met him but hadn't had an opportunity to really get to know him. These others have.

Burnett: [01:18:23] They were trying to pressure me into being part of that campaign, and one of their arguments for pressuring me is, “This is a religious argument. You're Catholic, you should be part of this.” The other guy was Muslim, you had—I don't know what the third guy was, but they were making a religious argument. I was making a religious argument… But—and I’m like, “I'm busy fighting for living people. The dead people are, whatever their disposition, that's their disposition.” But—eventually I was guilt tripped.

Burnett: [01:18:51] Because, what ended up happening and what moved me to be part of the Potters Field campaign is… Again having studied for the priesthood and everything—I was looking at some raw, authentic expressions of emotion coming from these people and the fact that they didn't have closure in the loss of our co-founder Lewis Haggins.

Burnett: [01:19:13] While I myself didn't really feel that because I didn't really get an  opportunity to know Lewis, other than having met him once—I saw it in them and I thought it would be wrong for me not to—not to get involved in that campaign. So, I really wasn't so much an activist, as kind of giving a pastoral response in getting involved—in the beginning.

Burnett: [01:19:38] And so—in fact, in the campaign, I remember the first meeting that I had attended, and we were all talking about what our goals were and how we were going to achieve them. I remember saying in the first meeting that I attended, I said, “Well we know this is a pastoral question—how the deceased are interred and whether folks have closure. These are all pastoral questions.” And everybody agreed… I said, “So where in the fuck are the pastors?” And you remember the history—we went looking for them.

Lewis: [01:20:07] What amazed me about that time is that—you know, there were a couple of things going on and I too… The passion of members who felt so loyal to Lewis...

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And some of them didn’t—had never met him, and I of course, I knew Lewis and… But I didn't have that same level of passion about needing to reclaim his—claim his body. And you were using terms like "dignity of the human person” and similar to you—for me, that was really about the dignity of people who were alive. I was the civil rights organizer, so I was dealing with stories about people who were abused by the police constantly. And so, what was so moving was the feeling of members—that not only was this an injustice, and an ultimate indignity, of—your whole life as a homeless person is a string of indignities...

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: [01:21:24] Being put upon you.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: [01:21:27] I mean, there are other stories in terms of your own resourcefulness and strength but—that the last act of the state was to dump you in mass grave.

Burnett: On an island in the middle of nowhere, under the control of the Department of Corrections.

Lewis: The prison of the dead, you know...

Burnett: And that's Charley's [smiles] phrase, yeah.

Lewis: [01:21:49] The ways that members talked about it… And I remember at some moment thinking that, “There's no way we can't. If this is homeless led, we have to do this!”

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And then trying to figure out how could we do it, and… You know, we weren't going to have another staff person. And I knew, you know—it kind of didn't make sense in the way that a lot of groups may work, that “Well, we'll raise some money and then we'll hire someone…” You know, it wasn't about that. It was, “This needs to be done!” And I remember saying to members in a civil rights meeting, “I don't mind keeping the office open another night, but you guys have to do this work.”

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And you did!

Lewis: [01:22:42] And one thing that you brought that—again, talking about individual members bringing skills, that other people didn't have including staff—you knew the decision-making structure of these different denominations.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: That—I for one, had no clue about, so there's the Lutheran Synod… [Smiles]

Burnett: [Laughs]

Lewis: And there's this and that… And the Greek Orthodox and…

Burnett: and the Presbyterian… [Smiles]

Lewis: And who makes decisions? What's the decision-making process in these denominations. They all have a bureaucracy… That is one of the things that really helped move that forward.

Burnett: Hmmmm…

Lewis: And…

Burnett: Well, knowing who you have to reach out to.

Lewis: [01:23:28] Well yeah! And—so that—having that like, power analysis [smiles] of different faith communities was very impressive. And I think… I was interviewing another member—well she's a leader, and I said, “You know, you’re a leader.” Before the interview and she got all embarrassed. But I think one of the things at Picture the Homeless that characterizes leadership, is that—which you did at that time—was you brought something to the table.

Burnett: [01:23:59] Yeah, but you’re reminding me too… You know Jean Rice had asked me, and this was when we were in the Bronx, he and I were out on the porch one day and, I can’t remember—I think… Well actually, he was still orienting… What's his name—I brought him onto the board.

Lewis: Marcus?

Burnett: [01:24:17] Marcus, thank you. He was still orienting Marcus, and he was talking about my work on the Potter's Field campaign. And so, Jean Rice told me that, one of the things that amazes me, is that, “I sound very strongly Catholic and yet at the same time, I was able to bring all these people from these different faith communities together and have them talking in unison and there didn't seem to be like—any conflict.” And he said that he was, “always amazed that I was fluid enough to do that.”

Burnett: [01:24:44] And I told him, I said—and I was honest with him, I said, “It wasn't because I was fluid enough.” I said, “One of the things you have to—you have to bring to the table, especially when you're dealing with interfaith conversations, is knowing who you are, being convicted of who you are and not being dishonest about who you are, while at the same time, respecting who other people are.” I said, “That's how I did it.” And that's not me being fluid. That's me being able to embrace myself honestly, communicate myself honestly, and still listen to others.

Lewis: [01:25:25] Well, at a subsequent session I want to really dig deep into the Potters Field campaign, you know—in terms of how we organized that campaign because unlike other campaigns we didn't have to have a demonstration... We didn't have to sleep in the street. We leveraged power in a different way.

Burnett: Yeah.

Lewis: But… So I’m going to set that to the side a little bit.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: So we can really delve into that at a later time.

Lewis: [01:25:58] As a member of the housing campaign—at that time we were doing… We were counting vacant buildings and lots…

Burnett: Not yet! We had to build up to that.

Lewis: We had to build up to that... We had done one in East Harlem.

Burnett: Still, had to build up to that.

Lewis: Before we had a housing campaign, we did one just in East Harlem.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And then we made the case to hire an organizer.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: [01:26:28] And then we started doing a series of sleep outs…

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: And you participated in those?

Burnett: [01:26:34] And it's always raining when we do those. [Smiles] I don't know why.

Lewis: Always raining… [Laughs] Do you—could you describe what that was like when you first started doing that? That type of direct, street action?

Burnett: [01:26:50] It was wet... [Laughs] No, but you—you know, obviously there were actions where we needed something—we needed to communicate, and we needed to communicate in a very powerful way. And you know, I remember we did sleep out in sleeping bags in the rain [smiles], did our march in the rain—it wasn't always raining, but usually, in the rain. I think we planned that out, and actually it works visually, I… People see homeless people sleeping in the rain… It's a good I guess, marketing device. [Laughs] But no, we didn't do that on purpose. It just always amazing me that it was [laughs] always raining when we were sleeping out! [Laughs]

Burnett: [01:27:27] But there was a sense—I mean, it was like an opportunity… You know, in the military, they say that you're strongest friends are the ones that you're in the foxhole with.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: And I think that happened at Picture the Homeless too. And when we're out in these actions, and we're spending the night, especially in the rain! And we're interacting with each other and we're not just protesting, but we're talking to each other… Sometimes there's the camp out part where we sit down, and we have—we pull out the canteen of cocoa and we're talking to each other and we're getting to know each other—so there was some personal bonding going on… You know, there's always that human interaction that I like to bring out.

Burnett: [01:28:04] Because I think that was—it was one of the most important elements of Picture the Homeless’s organizing is that we did bond tightly. And I don't think every organization has that level of bonding that we had, and I think that's important. That experience was important because that bonding makes us stronger.

Burnett: [01:28:25] You know, I've heard of organizations where they do the community organizing and eventually get to the point—when toxic elements come in, they tear the organization apart because people don't trust each other. And I think with us, you know, as with any organization, toxic elements want to step in and raise their ugly heads, but because we bonded the way we did, we were able to stand firm—not against the person but against the toxicity that was being introduced into the organization. And I feel like I sidetracked our conversation with that, but I feel that part was important.

Lewis: [01:29:03] Yeah, no… I think so too. Did you, yourself, have to go through personal reflection to decide to do a sleep out, or did it just—did it just happen?

Burnett: No, it happened! If other people are going to do it, why am I going to sit back? [Smiles] And, you know—our goals, I was firmly behind our goals, so...

Lewis: [01:29:25] What were the discussions in the housing campaign like, before we actually went and slept out on the street? Do you recall any of those conversations?

Burnett: [Long pause] Not in detail... But I think for the most part, the campaigns were supportive of... Remember that folks—especially the street homeless folks, but also folks in shelter—they’re miserable. And the city keeps promising that they got solutions, and they're going to do something about this... Like Bloomberg's Ten-Year Plan—listen, folks don't want to wait ten years for housing! Folks wanted it now!

Burnett: [01:30:05] So, there was this sense in—in the campaign, for the folks who were involved with the housing campaign that we don't want to wait. I think there were folks, if I recall correctly from our conversations in the housing committee, there were folks who felt those sleep outs weren’t enough! You know, like I said, I was still being radicalized but we had some pretty radical folks in there—and so there were folks who thought the sleep outs weren't enough, and maybe not.

Burnett: [01:30:36] But I think we communicated our message, and we did it without causing a riot. And there were also some folks who were hesitant to participate, especially folks who were in shelters, because they didn't want to lose their bed by sleeping out—and so we had to be honest about accepting that.

Burnett: [01:30:55] And you just reminded me—who was this guy that we meet from time to time at different conferences, like the Left Forum, who was working with Dorothy Day?

Lewis: Michael Leonard?

Burnett: Is that him? Old guy obviously?

Lewis: Oh, he's not old.

Burnett: No, this guy worked with, specifically with, Dorothy Day.

Lewis: Oh with Dorothy Day, I don't know! I can't think of his name.

Burnett: [01:31:18] You know who I'm talking about? I gotta look him up. Obviously he should be easy to find if he has history with Dorothy Day—direct history. But I remember him sharing his experience when he was working with Dorothy Day, where some folks were the heroes that were willing to do the civil disobedience and all that stuff. And then there's other folks who couldn't do that, or who didn't have the courage to do that, but still played a role. And he said that, “Those who wanted to be the heroes have to accept that those who can't be heroes still have a role to play and we need them.” And I'm paraphrasing, but that was pretty much what's at stake.

Burnett: [01:31:55] So, not everyone can be a hero. And he said, “If you look at it from the Catholic side, you know, God gifts us with the talent that he needs us to have.” And leaving religion out of the question since Picture the Homeless isn't specifically a religious question, I think folks at Picture the Homeless bring to Picture the Homeless what we need.

Lewis: Mm-hmmm.

Burnett: And so, some of our folks are heroes, others of us aren't. But the ones who aren't the heroes still bring something to the table that we need, as a contribution to the heroic acts that others make.

Lewis: [01:32:28] And I think it—you know, the ones that are easily identified as heroes would not be able to do those things if the other people weren't doing those—didn't hold that other work down.

Burnett: Correct.

Lewis: And that, so—to me in that sense, everybody is a hero. Because the action is heroic, and so within that, everyone that plays a role is a hero.

Burnett: And they play a role that we need them to play.

Lewis: Yes!

Lewis: [01:32:58] Now those sleep outs—those series of sleep outs I recall, were led in many ways by street homeless—

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: folks—some of whom knew how to do certain things related to sleeping out.

Burnett: [Laughs]

Lewis: Like getting restaurants to donate food that was cooked or knowing where to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Burnett: Or hooking up to Starbucks to make sure that they're going to let us in to use the bathroom.

Lewis: [Laughs] So those, that time…

Burnett: [01:33:29] In fact, I remember one sleep out, it was specifically arranged so that at the end of the day, instead of throwing their food out that Starbucks shared their food with us during our sleep out. But it was somebody who had the experience of interacting with them, who pulled that off.

Lewis: [01:33:44] So, you've referenced a couple of times, this process of radicalization. And so, what are some of the things that you would say contributed to your radicalization—and what is that radicalization, what does that mean?

Burnett: Can we save that for a whole separate interview?

Lewis: Yes.

Burnett: Because number one, I'd like to think on that question, and number two, I think that conversation could be an interview by itself.

Lewis: [01:34:14] Yeah, and I think it's a crucial one because on the one hand, if the organization which is comprised of campaigns—comprised of members—is kind of developing organically, the radicalization—where does it come from? Does it come from the actions? The interactions? It's not imposed, right?

Burnett: No, it's not.

Lewis: And so, what are some of the things… I think it could be very helpful to try to identify

Burnett: Right, but…

Lewis: what are some of those things—yeah.

Burnett: and that’s I'm thinking would be a whole conversation by itself…

Lewis: Yeah.

Burnett: So we should save that—table that and make a note we're going to talk about that.

Lewis: Alright, I think that would be beautiful.

Lewis: [01:34:58] Are there things for this session that you would like to either go back to, or explore a little bit before we wrap up?

Burnett: [01:35:10] I don't think so. I think there are a lot of thoughts… Remember, I'm an introvert. And so, there’s—even though I'm talking now, there's a lot of things happening inside, so I need an opportunity to digest, and I'll send you an email or we can—I can share with you some thoughts that I think would be worth exploring some more.

Lewis: [01:35:29] Lovely. Well one of the things that is so helpful with this process is that, you know—we have the recording, and we’ll have a written transcript so the places where we said we wanted to follow up we'll have that recorded so that we can use it as an opportunity to think through.

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: [01:35:49] And so, do you… I just have one final question. In terms of the Picture the Homeless Oral History project, do you have specific hopes for what this project might be able to do for Picture the Homeless, or homeless folks in general?

Burnett: [01:36:08] Well I—of course you've been with me for a while, so you know one of my biggest things is—you referenced earlier in our conversation, is honoring the dignity of the human person. And one of the challenges that we have in society is getting folks to recognize homeless persons as persons, sharing their same dignity—because folks have an image of who homeless are and why they're homeless and things like that… So, it's important for me to see homeless persons as not so different from the person who's not homeless, or who’s never experienced that. And of course to expand on this notion of organic community, which expresses itself, I think profoundly through Picture the Homeless.

Burnett: [01:36:56] And then I think there's the question of what does it mean to be an activist? Because, first in the activist community, we have different senses—some more programmatic, some more—I think, organic… Things like that. So that's worth exploring from that standpoint. Then from the standpoint of those who look down on activists, like, [imitates voice] "The professional activists, and everything…” Letting them have a sense of what really is an activist. So, again, we’re—you and I are going to explore this, I'll call it organic radicalization. That's very different from what somebody from a—as somebody on the right would see as "the professional organizer, the professional activist" just taking a stand on whatever issue you want to take a stand on.

Lewis: [01:37:46] Um-hum, or even getting a script from someone, which is how some of the right does function. They give you a script and they say, “This is our position, this is what to say.”

Burnett: [01:37:56] But that’s how they demean the left! They say we're all professional activists and… You would think everybody who wants to be an activist is getting a salary—or something.

Lewis: [01:38:07] The whole—the whole question of community I think, in our conversations— one of the things that makes your experience very meaningful in this question is that you have been a member of intentional communities. The monastery…

Burnett: The Seminary, the Franciscans…

Lewis: And so—and from a spiritual perspective, so… People can join intentional communities for a lot of different reasons, and so Picture the Homeless as a community

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: You know, your reflections on that and... Something that also happens, I don't know how frequently, but it feels fairly common to me—is this notion of street families

Burnett: Mm-hmmm.

Lewis: and how often within Picture the Homeless people call each other by familiar terms, like uncle or sister or brother—and how that intersects with community.

Burnett: [01:39:13] And remember my first exposure to homeless people in New York when I was seventeen, and they knew that I wasn't homeless, but they also knew that I was out of my element, and they had my back.

Lewis: Yeah, they took care of you.

Burnett: So…

Lewis: They kept the police away from you.

Burnett: They did more than that.

Lewis: And maybe some other things! [Laughing]

Burnett: They did more than… I know there was... You know, at one point when I fell asleep someone came to rob me, and the other homeless people who were in the seats around me blocked him from robbing me.

Lewis: Yeah.

Burnett: So, Yeah.

Lewis: [01:39:44] So we'll wrap up for today, and we have a lot to think about for the next time.

Burnett: Sure.

Lewis: Thank you.

Burnett: Thank you.