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Dorothy Day's San Francisco Earthquake

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Dorothy Day had experienced tragedy of San Francisco Earthquake in 1906 and this caused her father to lose his job in the newspaper company. However, with the experience of San Francisco earthquake for the first time in her time, she had thought about individuals’ sufferings and the meanings of community as a complementary relationship in tragedy. Her family moved to Chicago where she spent most of her youth. In her adolescent years, she read Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Russian literature of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. She extended her artistic sensibility and thoughts towards the social problems from reading these literatures.
After all, she engaged herself to start a radical social movement under the influence of the books contained radical social ideas. In New York, she worked on …show more content…

At the same time she was a sincere Catholic who wanted to be used as a God’s servant. However, she was not just Catholic, but Catholic who was in a strong social conscience and identified herself with God’s servant. Her religious and political convictions come always together in her life. We have seen a number of social activists who have fought for social justice and human rights. Their flag to die for comes from seeking meaningful task and purpose in community. Some work for environment, some fight for the marginalized, and some die for their religion.
However, it is not fair to say that Day’s religious faith has led her into social movement. Before she had her eyes opened to the stern reality of political and social absurdity, she encountered with an individual’s sufferings. I would rather like to focus on her love for a human being than her accomplishments in social movement. I will not agree if anyone insists that Dorothy Day threw her life into the social movement to change the world. She would have been willing to sacrifice herself to support others to practice one of many ways of loving

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