Jim Harney was doing research for the Boston Housing Authority in a South End project which was about to be torn down for redevelopment. He was knocking on doors in a three-decker tenement asking where the tenants would go after the demolition of the ramshackle building they called home. He knocked on the door on the first floor. There was no answer. He knocked on the door on the second floor. There was no answer. He knocked on the door on the third floor. The skeletal figure of a little boy about five years old opened it. His haunting eyes set in dark hollow sockets stared at him blankly. The boy was dressed in rags. His grandmother sat on an apple crate in the middle of the living room. There was no other furniture. That day, 45 years ago, was the first time in his life that Jim had looked poverty in the face. "The scene turned around my life forever," he said in an interview with the Forum. He decided then and there that it would be his mission to chronicle the lives of those who lived in poverty and violence and share their stories with those who don't. For the past 45 years, armed with a duffel bag and an old camera, Jim has sought out and chronicled poverty and violence all over the world, in a Milwaukee prison where he was incarcerated for 18 months, in war-ravaged El Salvador, on the destitute back roads of Mexico, in the overnight bankruptcy in Argentina, in the drug-infested streets of Colombia, in the horrific suppression of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, even in the homeless worlds of Boston and Bangor.

With each trip, Jim brought home thousands of photographs and shared them with any group who asked. All these years, he has lived as a pauper. For the first 40 years, he went it alone, but now he's a pauper with a PowerPoint presentation of his travels. Five years ago, Jim lent his camera and storytelling skills to Posibilidad, a non-profit group home based in Maine which believes that knowledge is power and when the haves see the horrific suffering of the have-nots, change will take place. Jim travels all over the country as the face of Posibilidad. Last week, he was on the South Shore sharing his program in homes, churches, high schools, colleges, and on the radio. Jim was born and educated in Cambridge. At an early age, he decided to become a priest. He graduated from St. John's Seminary in the mid-sixties. His first assignment was at St. Jerome's Church in Weymouth. At the time, the country was being ripped apart by the Vietnam War. Protests were rampant across the United States and the cry of "Hell no, we won't go" reverberated from the colleges and universities. Jim was deeply troubled by the bloodletting of thousands of American soldiers a half a world away in a war that he believed was unjust. After just three months, he took a leave of absence from St. Jerome's to join a fellow priest, Fr. Philip Berrigan, and 12 other anti-war activists, who, on Sept. 24, 1968, burned 35,000 draft files in Milwaukee. The group was arrested. They were known as the Milwaukee 14. They were held on a half million dollar bail. Money poured in from across the country to pay the bail. A judge lowered the bail to $100,000 and the activists were free until their trial. Jim returned to St. Jerome's Church. "My belongings were packed and in front of the rectory," he said. He was not reassigned to another church. The Milwaukee 14 were sentenced to 18 months in jail from 1969 to 1971. 

"The inmates gave us a standing ovation when we arrived," he said. Jim could not say Mass because wine was not allowed in the prison. Jim added those in jail to his list of the poor and oppressed whose stories he would tell. After Jim got out of prison, there was no ministry for him in the Catholic Church. He lived with the homeless on the streets of Boston and at the Pine Street Inn. "I just couldn't stand the snoring," he said. For a while, some priests welcomed him into their rectories. In the early 1970s, the Dominican Republic invited a group from Boston to research social issues. Jim was one of them. "I saw people dying by the thousands. I saw intense poverty. The United States was supposed to be helping the Dominican Republic through a program called the Alliance for Progress. People translated it into Alliance that Stops Progress," he said. With his camera and gift for storytelling, Jim chronicled it all.

In 1978, he was in El Salvador in the midst of horrific civil unrest. He met Bishop Oscar Anulfo Romero, the inspiration of his people. "He was murdered celebrating Mass in a tiny chapel in the countryside," Jim said. A funeral was held on March 30, 1980. "One hundred thousand people attended his funeral. The government opened fire on the mourners. It was horrible. Bleeding people were running in the street. Children were trampled. There were pools of blood everywhere. I was lying on my belly taking photographs," Jim said. "I never got over the trauma. Even today, if I hear a jackhammer or fireworks at a July 4 celebration, I relive the horror." At the funeral, Jim saw friends taken by the national guard. He knew they were going to be tortured. He could only take their photos. "The majority of the people are very poor. One percent of the population controls the rest of the people," he said.

From El Salvador, Jim went to Colombia chronicling its poverty, violence, and civil unrest. His next trip was to Argentina, when the country defaulted on loans and went bankrupt overnight. "Middle class people lost everything they owned in one night," he said. "I asked myself what I could learn from Argentine that I could bring back to my own country." Jim has chronicled refugee camps in Guatemala. He has tracked migrant workers in Mexico. He spent 10 days in Iraq, returning Feb. 1, 2003. He photographed the plight of the people of the Saddam Hussein-controlled country. He chronicled the bomb shelters where hundreds of people huddled during the first Iraq war. "One still had the image of two women meshed in the wall. It was like Hiroshima in that bomb shelter. The temperature was 1,000 degrees, " he said. "I knew the people would bear the brunt of the war that was about to start. I wanted to be able to speak on their behalf." 

Fifteen years ago, Jim moved to Bangor, Maine. "I fell in love and married an amazing woman," he said. Jim has worked at a homeless shelter and a shelter for battered woman. Four years ago, Jim found his niche. He offered his services as artist in residence to Posibilidad, a group that believes that the world can change through conversation and action, an organization which believes that when people see the suffering and hurt in the world, they will try to make the planet a better place. It's Jim's job to go to the places off the beaten path where life-death tension churns and tell the story of the people there. 

"I try to use my camera to capture the excluded of the world as subjects of promise and hope," he said. "I believe that when the face of the poor is inserted into the thick of conversation, change stands a chance." Technology has made Jim's job of communication easier. Recently he has gathered his thousands of photographs into a PowerPoint presentation. He travels with a compact projector and a laptop computer. "I go on the premise that when people who are not suffering see the pain on this planet, they change. We are getting more and more removed from the humiliated people of the world," Jim said. "How can we stand tall and take pride as a human being when violence and poverty is taking place in countries where democracy is being created? "I try to speak for those who don't get a chance to speak for themselves. "I ask people to think about it, organize about it, and change it. "I'm willing to look at the worst, confront it, and posit life in the middle of it. "We are all human beings. Our humanity is being incredibly threatened. We have to create ways to link up with the other human beings of the planet." 

Jim brings his message to grammar schools, high schools, churches, universities, and community groups. Some of the responses Jim gets are as powerful as the images he shows, especially from the young. "At a Catholic school after I gave my program, a child came up to me. He told me he had cancer. He said his suffering was nothing compared to the children he saw in my photos," Jim said. "When I went to Brookline High School, after the program the students talked about their feelings. "Why aren't we told about this?' said one boy, who was crying. "A Vietnamese girl said to me, 'This is the first time my peers will have a sense of what I've been through.' "Another kid I met wanted to sell weapons as a job. "There's money in weapons,' he told me. After he saw the program, his voice cracked. He was in tears. He told his peers, 'I can't do it any more. We've got to stop this violence.'" One class of 12-year-olds in Needham wrote a book of poetry after seeing the program. Diego Huezo-Rosales wrote this in response to seeing Jim's picture of the bomb shelter in Iraq:

I AM
I am a 10 pound cemented wall
I am the barrier between life and death
I am the last resort
I am the resistance of friction and air
I am the one protecting people from bombs
I have failed my responsibility
I let 400 people slip through my grasp
I am a bomb shelter.