Author-Actor-Educator Paul McComas performs Bruce Springsteen’s stirring “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” inspired by “The Grapes of Wrath.” To his right is a photo of John Steinbeck. (Photo by Jennifer Reinke) Last year marked the 75 anniversary of John Steinbeck’s classic “Of Mice and Men,” and it’s been more than 50 years since the author passed through Wisconsin on the road trip he chronicled in “Travels with Charley: In Search of America.” Nonetheless, author-actor-educator Paul McComas believes that the relevance of Steinbeck’s message to local social justice issues is as timely as ever. McComas, a Whitefish Bay native who now lives in Evanston, Ill., highlighted the author’s advocacy and empathy for “the least of these” at the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking in his literary presentation, “Scribe of a Social Conscience: Steinbeck plus 75.” Through dramatic readings from the aforementioned works, as well as from “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Cannery Row” and “East of Eden,” McComas provided an overview of Steinbeck’s career, which was bookended by two periods of social unrest: the Great Depression and the civil rights movement. McComas also performed Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” inspired by “The Grapes of Wrath.” The center invited McComas to perform because he engages and challenges audiences to think about themes central to peacemaking through the humanities, said Associate Director Patrick Kennelly. Do you have feedback on Milwaukee NNS's reporting? Take our survey to let us know how we're doing! “Peacemaking is transforming structures and relationships to provide for everyone’s well-being,” he said. “Through this presentation Paul engages the audience to think about how Steinbeck responded to social indignity and along the way invites us to reflect on how we respond to (it).” Margaret Swedish, director of the Spirituality and Ecological Hope project of the Center for New Creation, reflected on the relevance of Steinbeck’s social message to her career in social activism. (Photo by Jennifer Reinke) Steinbeck did just that for Margaret Swedish when she was a middle school student, she said. Now director of the Spirituality and Ecological Hopeproject of the Center for New Creation, Swedish recalled early encounters with Steinbeck’s “haunting” vision of poor and working-class characters such as the Joad family in “The Grapes of Wrath” and the workers of Cannery Row. “It was very vivid and it was a world that, growing up in the suburbs of Wauwatosa, I didn’t know and had no way to see,” Swedish said. “I think we still live in a culture where affluent people have no idea what’s going on in the lives of poor, struggling people. The importance of Steinbeck is to give us a vivid, compelling portrait of the lives of those people – to humanize them for us,” she said. Swedish, who lives in Bay View, is a social and environmental activist, writer and speaker. She was particularly moved by Steinbeck’s model of solidarity with poor and oppressed peoples by “witnessing to the truth of their situation, and seeing it through the lens of social justice and human dignity…making the poverty and suffering visible in a way that sears the conscience.” This approach, she said, “was the heart of (the) Central America solidarity work” she did for a quarter century. And, for “poor, struggling people,” Swedish said, “Steinbeck gives them an incredibly dignified image of themselves.” This is how Billy Malloy, a Marquette University alum and registered nurse at the Wheaton Franciscan St. Joseph Campus, related to Steinbeck. As a student, Malloy volunteered and lived at the Casa Maria Hospitality House, part of the Catholic Worker Movement which aims to realize Christian gospel values through political activism and service to those on the margins of society. Malloy said the Avenues West neighborhood in which Casa Maria is located often received a bad rap from his peers for being unsafe and impoverished. He found, however, “It’s not always true, and even in some of those less developed neighborhoods there’s community.” Of Avenues West, he said, “The whole neighborhood is a wonderful community and it’s unexpected.” Added Malloy, “Steinbeck was good at finding those communities in places people didn’t look.” The communities help people to define and place themselves, he said. “So even in places that are relatively disadvantaged, people by working together can make them beautiful and nice to live in – good neighborhoods.” Rose Herriges stands in front of a wall hanging that McComas pointed out during his presentation.