Priest Runs New York City Marathon to Honor Killed Construction Workers

[AlphaCentauri]

When the Rev. Brain Jordan leaves the starting line at today’s New York City Marathon, he won’t be running for a personal best time over the 26.2 mile course. The Catholic priest who serves as the chaplin for the New York City Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC) will be pounding the pavement through the city’s five boroughs to honor construction workers killed and seriously injured on the job this year.

So far this year in New York City, 19 construction workers have been killed on the job and hundreds more injured, including six workers killed in a March crane collapse and two others killed in a second crane collapse in May.

Jordan, who has long history of working with immigrant workers, says that injury and death rates are higher for nonunion construction workers who do not receive sufficient training and safety equipment from the employers. One in five Latino construction workers are injured or killed on the job every year, he says, and the majority of those are immigrant workers employed by nonunion companies.

Jordan, whose run will honor union and nonunion workers alike says:

God loves us equally during life and death. But your chances for survival are far greater if you join the construction workers unions and receive proper safety training.

He will conduct a pre-race Mass near the marathon’s starting line on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

In addition, the BCTC is establishing a Construction Workers Relief Fund to assist families of workers injured in the future and Jordan is urging the public to generously donate. Checks can be made payable to Construction Workers Relief Fund and sent to the New York City Building and Constriction Trades Council, 71 W. 23 St., Suite 501, New York, New York 10010.

Jordan serves as an immigration counselor at St. Francis of Assisi in New York City. He comes from a union family—his father was a shop steward for the a food workers’ union that has since become part of the Food and Commercial Workers and his brother is a member of the Teamsters. He began his current involvement with New York unions construction workers when he was the chaplin at Ground Zero, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001.

Jordan has run in more than 50 marathons. In 2006, he ran the Boston Marathon for a fellow marathoner—a New York City Fire Fighters member who had been severely injured and whose days as a competitive athlete were over. At the time, he told the New York Daily News:

Firefighters like Matthew Long give their blood, sweat and tears every day on the job. This time, I will give a pint of blood, the sweat from the marathon and my tears of joy when I give the medal to Matthew.

Why does the activist padre run so many marathons? As he told the paper:

In the Roman Catholic Church, priests aren’t allowed to marry. So we run marathons, we take cold showers and we say 10 Hail Marys.

BTW, Jordan says his personal best time was 3 hours and 29 minutes, a pace he says won’t see Sunday or ever again because

that was 25 years and 25 pounds ago.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/11/02/priest-runs-new-york-city-marathon-to-honor-killed-construction-workers