Tim Flanigan, 61, has never been much of a Beatles fan. But after he saw John Lennon perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, he had to have a guitar of his own.
Flanigan, a Waukesha native, then 13, found a job as a newspaper delivery boy and quit as soon as he had saved enough money to buy one. He learned the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” and, wearing a black velvet cardigan, practiced in front of a full-length mirror, trying to look like a fifth Beatle.
For Sarah Lauer, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, it was John Mayer who first inspired her to start strumming. Lauer watched the musician play “Why Georgia” during a TV concert. She admired his confidence, and the way his fingers glided up the fret so effortlessly. She was 11.
Both Flanigan and Lauer will bring their guitar gusto to Reel Poverty Live, tonight at 8 p.m. in the Alumni Memorial Union’s Brooks Lounge. The fundraiser, which benefits the Reel Poverty Film Festival next April, spotlights the musical enthusiasm and spoken word poetry of Marquette students and community members like Flanigan who want to vocalize and revolutionize homelessness in Milwaukee.
“What’s needed in Milwaukee is a revolution of the mind,” said Flanigan. “Homeless people are sort of invisible. You walk right by them. We need to personify them to give them personhood.”
In its second year, Reel Poverty Live seeks to do just that.
“(Reel Poverty Live) is a fundraiser for a student advocacy initiative that pertains directly to our neighborhood and our community,” said Anne O’Meara, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. O’Meara serves as a co-coordinator of Midnight Run, a student service group organized through Campus Ministry that unites Marquette students to help Milwaukee’s homeless community, and is overseeing Reel Poverty.
“We’re always trying to foster that sense of community here in Milwaukee,” O’Meara said. “We’re always trying to get students to feel a connection to Milwaukee as a whole and not just Marquette.”
Reel Poverty’s purpose is twofold. The grassroots organization works to raise awareness of hunger and homelessness in Milwaukee and to build community within the Marquette neighborhood.
“We want students to feel some sort of call to action with this event because it’s so authentic in those two ways, and because it’s such a simple example of what community means,” O’Meara said.
FILM FESTIVAL
The Reel Poverty Film Festival runs every spring semester as part of Midnight Run’s Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, which will conclude this spring with Hunger Clean-Up on April 21, 2012. Through the lens of a video camera, student filmmakers document the stories of homeless residents in Milwaukee. These students — some highly experienced in video production and others using video equipment for the first time — capture both day-to-day struggles and anecdotes of success.
The festival, which will celebrate its fifth year this April, came to life through the passion and persistence of Marquette alum Mike Ziegler, who graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences with a major in peace studies in 2010.
“(It’s all about using) art as a medium to share stories of our neighbors that would help us as Marquette students to be aware of injustices in our area – in our neighborhood – and to realize the human face behind those injustices,” Ziegler said.
He received a grant from mtvU – a division of MTV Networks available on university and college campuses – to cover the costs of the festival, such as renting the Annex and hiring someone to run the PA system. The $1,000 grant, known as the Youth Venture Grant, is awarded to new student-run organizations or events and helps with start-up expenses.
But at the end of the fiscal year in 2009, when the Reel Poverty team could no longer use what grant money remained, Reel Poverty Live gave members a new outlet to reach out to students. Last year’s Reel Poverty Live fundraising event relied solely on donations collected in a plastic pumpkin trick-or-treat basket. This year, O’Meara and her team hope to raise more money with a $2 cover charge.
The Lens of Homelessness
Flanigan himself advocates for Milwaukee’s homeless through his personal experience with homelessness. Just before graduating from Purdue University in 1975 with a master’s in English, he developed a manic-depressive illness. Flanigan said he hallucinated, went mute for two weeks and was hospitalized. His depressive episodes came in unpredictable and terrorizing cycles.
For several years, he managed his illness, marrying at age 33 and fathering two sons. But in 2007, after divorcing just three years prior, Flanigan’s depression overcame him and he ended up in the hospital once again.
Once released, he continued to struggle with his depression.
“I got a few jobs but couldn’t keep them, because I was so depressed and just wanted to sleep all the time,” Flanigan said.
That’s when he turned to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission – a homeless shelter on 19th and Wells Streets for 400 men, women and children – and two months later to the Guest House, a shelter several blocks north on 13th Street. Flanigan described the shelter as “a place of renewal” that can host approximately 80 homeless men. The Guest House is the largest publicly funded emergency shelter in Milwaukee and works to help the homeless achieve independence and housing.
Through its social service, counseling, health care and education programs, Flanigan was able to move into one of the Guest House’s contracted apartments within five months. He still lives there today and is serving the homeless as resident manager of Autumn West, a transitional housing program in Milwaukee that has 25 units for formerly homeless people to live in as they arrange permanent housing.
Fresh Perspective
During his time of renewal, Flanigan also turned to Marquette’s Noon Run program, a lunch program for the homeless and hungry started on the corner of Wisconsin and 19th Streets in conjunction with Campus Ministry’s Midnight Run. Over soup and sandwiches, he got to know students like Ziegler, who eagerly encouraged him to bring his guitar and show off his sounds once they found out he played. Shortly after, Ziegler began inviting Flanigan to Reel Poverty events on campus.
“Along the way, I connected with these Marquette students, and quite often it was over the subject of poverty,” Flanigan said.
At Reel Poverty’s second annual Film Festival in 2008, Flanigan made his first Marquette appearance with a borrowed guitar and a song written on the spot. When a poet scheduled to speak fell ill last minute, Ziegler approached Flanigan about filling in. That was at 7:45 p.m. By 8, Flanigan was on stage, wowing the crowd with a blues tune about his tribulations as a homeless man in Milwaukee.
“Tim kind of took over and went on the fly,” Ziegler said.
Today, Flanigan remains connected with several Marquette students, often sharing a meal or cup of coffee with them and discussing anything from philosophy to religion and music to art.
“They bring me fresh perspective from their classes and observations, and I bring them knowledge of music, books and art,” he said. “Lots of art, lots and lots of art.”
At tonight’s show, be prepared to sing right along with him.
“He played last year at the Real Poverty Film Fest, and he had everyone clapping and singing along,” O’Meara said. “It was fun.”
The self-taught musician, who can barely read music and plays primarily by ear, writes his own songs but mainly covers artists who continue to influence and inspire him –Elvis Costello, Jeff Buckley, Steve Earle, Ben Folds and Bob Dylan.
Lauer, another play-by-ear performer and Bob Dylan fan, prefers softer sounds. She often covers the Weepies, Sara Bareilles, Nora Jones and Ray Lamontagne. And for Lauer, who volunteers with Midnight Run, combating homelessness starts with simply listening.
“You sit down and have a conversation with another human, and it’s the healthiest thing,” she said. “You realize things are a little bigger than just you.”
It continues with the same kind of persistence that drove Ziegler to pursue Reel Poverty and as Flanigan said, simple respect for people.
“Jesus said there would always be the poor among us,” Flanigan said. “I would just like to make it so that the poor are not among me.”
Or, as his childhood inspiration John Lennon might put it, “Imagine all the people sharing all the world…You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”