Arguing for policies that eradicate poverty, confront racism and homophobia, tackle economic and gender inequality and corporate excess, normalize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants and address the ballooning prison-industrial complex is about being progressive, not divisive. It does, however, mean recognizing that divisions exist and that to resolve them we have to take sides and fight for our beliefs. Unity is not forged by fiat but by struggle. Candidates can talk about "transcending" race, gender, region and party all they like. But before we can talk sensibly about transcending difference, we must first transform the conditions that give these differences meaning. To get beyond race, for example, we must first get rid of racism.
--Gary Younge
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
Plastic Bags
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
“When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack.
Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success. The New York City Council, for example, in the face of stiff resistance from business interests, passed a measure requiring only that stores that hand out plastic bags take them back for recycling.
But in the parking lot of a Superquinn Market, Ireland’s largest grocery chain, it is clear that the country is well into the post-plastic-bag era. “I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I’d never ever buy one,” said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. “If I forgot these, I’d just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag.”
Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”
In January almost 42 billion plastic bags were used worldwide, according to reusablebags.com; the figure increases by more than half a million bags every minute. A vast majority are not reused, ending up as waste — in landfills or as litter. Because plastic bags are light and compressible, they constitute only 2 percent of landfill, but since most are not biodegradable, they will remain there.
There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
“When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack.
Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success. The New York City Council, for example, in the face of stiff resistance from business interests, passed a measure requiring only that stores that hand out plastic bags take them back for recycling.
But in the parking lot of a Superquinn Market, Ireland’s largest grocery chain, it is clear that the country is well into the post-plastic-bag era. “I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I’d never ever buy one,” said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. “If I forgot these, I’d just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag.”
Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”
In January almost 42 billion plastic bags were used worldwide, according to reusablebags.com; the figure increases by more than half a million bags every minute. A vast majority are not reused, ending up as waste — in landfills or as litter. Because plastic bags are light and compressible, they constitute only 2 percent of landfill, but since most are not biodegradable, they will remain there.
Monday, January 28, 2008
The Truth About Obama's Faith
by Obery Hendricks
Everyday there seems to be some new outrageous charge leveled at Barack Obama. One of the most pernicious is that he is a Muslim who is dishonestly masquerading as a Christian. This charge is so malicious - and so untrue - that it is time to set the record straight.
Barack Obama has never been a Muslim. He has never attended a Muslim school. From about age eight to age nine Obama lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, with more Muslim schools than one can count, yet his parents chose to enroll him in a secular, non-religious school comprised of teachers and students of all faiths. Nor can it be said that during his brief sojourn in Indonesia that his worldview was tainted by Islamic extremism; when Obama lived there, the practice of Islam in Indonesia was still among the world's most moderate.
Another false charge is that rather than using a Bible to be sworn into his elected office, Senator Obama instead used the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslim faith. That is also a falsehood. The most cursory check of the facts shows that it was not Barack Obama who was sworn in with a Qur'an. It was Keith Ellison, the proudly Muslim congressman from Minnesota.
But by far the ugliest charge is that Barack Obama is lying about his Christian faith. The truth is that for years now, Barack Obama has been a baptized, fully confessed and practicing Christian, not only with his lips inside a church but, more importantly, with his limbs out in the community - striving to help the neediest and the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters of all creeds and colors.
It is correct that Obama was not born into the Christian faith. Rather, Barack Obama made a conscious decision as a mature adult to become part of the body of Christ. One measure of the seriousness of his faith is that he has been an active and faithful churchgoer since he embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ as his own.
Dr. Jeremiah Wright - his pastor - a wise, sensitive Christian freedom-fighter (in the very best sense of the word), and a man deeply committed to his faith in Christ, whole-heartedly attests to this, as does every fellow parishioner who has encountered Obama in his home church - the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (By the way, the United Church of Christ is a predominately white mainstream Christian denomination.)
But what is also troubling about all the false information being spread about Obama is its obsession with doctrines and creeds to the apparent detriment of any sense of the spirituality of service. This tragically flawed understanding of Christian faith is apparently more concerned with the fleeting testimony of one's mouth than with the abiding testimony of one's walk in the world. If this was not so, if what was really the concern of those seeking to discredit Obama was that one be a Christian rather than simply bearing the name, then why do they not attack the people "of faith" who tell every listening ear that they are Christians, yet everyday spit on the very tenets that Jesus taught by making greed, self-aggrandizement and treating poor people as children of a lesser God their de facto religion? Why not equally publicly indict the rapacious "prosperity preachers" and fake healers who appear in pulpits and on television weekly to steal from the poor so they themselves can live in imperial luxury like the Roman Caesar, the same Caesar whose empire tortured Jesus to death? According to the teachings of Jesus, transgressions like these are what believers should be exposing and denouncing. Indeed, in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus makes it clear that betrayal of the poor and the vulnerable is among the worst sins possible. Moreover, there Jesus reveals that if nothing else will get one banished to Hell, hurting - even ignoring - those he calls "the least of these" surely will.
Also in that Matthew 25 passage, Jesus teaches that if we are to judge each other at all, it must be by the standard of whether we are trying to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. That is the gospel's paramount measure of faith, not how much one shouts Jesus' name or how often and how loudly one can recite doctrine and creeds. Jesus taught - and modeled - that what is most important for those who follow him is to spend their time and treasure in this world, engaging in loving, self-sacrificial actions with the express purpose of manifesting God's love and justice on earth as in heaven.
For me, that is the standard by which all those who seek to lead or govern us must be judged.
Everyday there seems to be some new outrageous charge leveled at Barack Obama. One of the most pernicious is that he is a Muslim who is dishonestly masquerading as a Christian. This charge is so malicious - and so untrue - that it is time to set the record straight.
Barack Obama has never been a Muslim. He has never attended a Muslim school. From about age eight to age nine Obama lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, with more Muslim schools than one can count, yet his parents chose to enroll him in a secular, non-religious school comprised of teachers and students of all faiths. Nor can it be said that during his brief sojourn in Indonesia that his worldview was tainted by Islamic extremism; when Obama lived there, the practice of Islam in Indonesia was still among the world's most moderate.
Another false charge is that rather than using a Bible to be sworn into his elected office, Senator Obama instead used the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslim faith. That is also a falsehood. The most cursory check of the facts shows that it was not Barack Obama who was sworn in with a Qur'an. It was Keith Ellison, the proudly Muslim congressman from Minnesota.
But by far the ugliest charge is that Barack Obama is lying about his Christian faith. The truth is that for years now, Barack Obama has been a baptized, fully confessed and practicing Christian, not only with his lips inside a church but, more importantly, with his limbs out in the community - striving to help the neediest and the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters of all creeds and colors.
It is correct that Obama was not born into the Christian faith. Rather, Barack Obama made a conscious decision as a mature adult to become part of the body of Christ. One measure of the seriousness of his faith is that he has been an active and faithful churchgoer since he embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ as his own.
Dr. Jeremiah Wright - his pastor - a wise, sensitive Christian freedom-fighter (in the very best sense of the word), and a man deeply committed to his faith in Christ, whole-heartedly attests to this, as does every fellow parishioner who has encountered Obama in his home church - the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (By the way, the United Church of Christ is a predominately white mainstream Christian denomination.)
But what is also troubling about all the false information being spread about Obama is its obsession with doctrines and creeds to the apparent detriment of any sense of the spirituality of service. This tragically flawed understanding of Christian faith is apparently more concerned with the fleeting testimony of one's mouth than with the abiding testimony of one's walk in the world. If this was not so, if what was really the concern of those seeking to discredit Obama was that one be a Christian rather than simply bearing the name, then why do they not attack the people "of faith" who tell every listening ear that they are Christians, yet everyday spit on the very tenets that Jesus taught by making greed, self-aggrandizement and treating poor people as children of a lesser God their de facto religion? Why not equally publicly indict the rapacious "prosperity preachers" and fake healers who appear in pulpits and on television weekly to steal from the poor so they themselves can live in imperial luxury like the Roman Caesar, the same Caesar whose empire tortured Jesus to death? According to the teachings of Jesus, transgressions like these are what believers should be exposing and denouncing. Indeed, in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus makes it clear that betrayal of the poor and the vulnerable is among the worst sins possible. Moreover, there Jesus reveals that if nothing else will get one banished to Hell, hurting - even ignoring - those he calls "the least of these" surely will.
Also in that Matthew 25 passage, Jesus teaches that if we are to judge each other at all, it must be by the standard of whether we are trying to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. That is the gospel's paramount measure of faith, not how much one shouts Jesus' name or how often and how loudly one can recite doctrine and creeds. Jesus taught - and modeled - that what is most important for those who follow him is to spend their time and treasure in this world, engaging in loving, self-sacrificial actions with the express purpose of manifesting God's love and justice on earth as in heaven.
For me, that is the standard by which all those who seek to lead or govern us must be judged.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Lynching
by Scott Hamilton
“Lynch him in a back alley.”
That retort, intended to be a back-door compliment for Tiger Woods, required about three seconds to tumble from Kelly Tilghman’s mouth during Golf Channel’s Jan. 4 broadcast of the Mercedes-Benz Championship.
Two days passed before she apologized on air for the remark and five days went by before Golf Channel handed down a two-week suspension without pay, and then only – whether related or not – after it had drawn the ire of a well-known civil-rights activist. But as drawn out as the process was, there is little doubt the ramifications of that off-the-cuff comment will linger. Golf rarely contends with controversy, and the few flaps that do occur usually are limited to the insular world of golf.
Tilghman’s remark escaped golf’s biodome and slipped into the mainstream where it is fair game to everyone with a microphone or a computer. Change of some sort – major or minor, right or wrong – was bound to result.
Golf Channel already has revised a scheduled management training session to include sensitivity education on diversity issues in an effort to prevent and react to similar instances. It also is questioning internally why it took so long for a public apology to materialize and the suspension to be doled out.
That investigation could result in punishment for other Golf Channel employees, particularly the on-duty producers of the Mercedes-Benz.
“There were a number of factors that came into play,” Golf Channel president Page Thompson responded via e-mail to Golfweek. Thompson is a former senior vice president and general manager of video services for parent company Comcast who took over as Golf Channel president last spring. “But the bottom line is we need to look at our process and see how we can move more swiftly in the future.”
Thompson said no discussions had been held with regard to firing Tilghman. He would not speculate whether Golf Channel might scale back the number of events Tilghman works as lead anchor upon her return.
As of Jan. 14, Tilghman was slated to resume her duties 10 days later for the first round of the Buick Invitational. However, there had been conjecture by Golf Channel insiders that Comcast will order Tilghman fired before her suspension is up and that fill-in Rich Lerner will take over permanently. Tilghman, 38, who has risen through the ranks in 11-plus years at Golf Channel, also could be assigned to other duties. Before taking on anchor duties for Tour telecasts, Tilghman was a host of Golf Channel’s “Golf Central” nightly news show.
“It was a horrible analogy, and she will be kicking herself for a long, long time to come,” said Michael J. Whelan, a former Golf Channel executive who hired Tilghman. “That’s live television; people do make mistakes. . . . You have to think about what you are about to say and the ramifications of what could be said. What sounds so cute and funny in your mind comes out horrific. That little line in Kelly’s head was a cute little idea. Once she said it, everything stopped.”
Other sportscasters’ careers have been damaged or destroyed by spontaneous on-air comments. But Tilghman’s situation is unique, as she is the first female lead anchor in PGA Tour history and is as much the face of Golf Channel in its landmark 15-year deal with the PGA Tour as is six-time major winner Nick Faldo.
Assigning a man to that position immediately after Tilghman’s gaffe could be seen as a setback for other women looking to move into the 18th tower. On the other hand, reinstating her as if nothing had happened could stain Golf Channel’s – and Comcast’s – image.
“That was a totally unacceptable choice of words. I’m actually surprised that she’s only getting two weeks’ suspension,” said Rosie Jones, a former LPGA player and Golf Channel commentator. “You wouldn’t want someone to lose their job or their career, but I thought two weeks was a short amount of time.”
The incident in question began harmlessly enough.
During their usual post-round banter as they wrapped up Day 2 at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, Tilghman and co-host Faldo discussed young players who might challenge Woods. Faldo jokingly said perhaps the youngsters should “gang up (on Tiger) for a while.”
The pair chuckled before Tilghman responded by saying, “Lynch him in a back alley,” and turned back to the camera smiling broadly. Golf Channel said it received a limited number of complaints regarding the comment. Tilghman explained the incident during the final-round broadcast after having already reached out to Woods herself.
She later sent out another apology in a written statement saying she “used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended.” Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent, called the matter a “complete non-issue” and said he considered the “case closed.”
But the Internet and mainstream media wheels kept turning, resulting in the Rev. Al Sharpton calling for Tilghman to be fired during a Jan. 9 interview on CNN. He said his National Action Network would picket Golf Channel headquarters in Orlando and boycott the station if action were not taken. Golf Channel issued a statement later that evening saying Tilghman had been suspended for two weeks “for offensive language.’’
“While we believe that Kelly's choice of words were inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner,’’ the statement read, “the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate.” One source inside Golf Channel said the decision to suspend Tilghman had been made shortly before Sharpton appeared on CNN. A PGA Tour spokesman said the Tour didn’t weigh in on Tilghman’s fate, describing Golf Channel’s action as “an internal decision.’’ The Tour says it plays no role in choosing or rating the performance of on-air talent.
Regardless of the decision process, some observers argue even suspending Tilghman is overreacting despite the negative connotation of “lynch.” Context and intent, they say, is more important than the words used.
A recent comparison involves radio host Don Imus, who last spring spouted racial and insensitive remarks regarding the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. After one week of a growing outcry from civil-rights groups, including Sharpton’s, Imus was fired from WCBS. He returned to radio late in the year.
“Imus has a long history of making nasty, vicious, bigoted comments usually at poor people or oppressed people, people who can’t fight back,” said civil rights lawyer and radio talk show host Ron Kuby. “Kelly’s comment was about a very powerful person who also happens to be her friend and she was praising him. She was using mind-boggling offensive phrasing, incredibly stupid phrasing, and that’s the way broadcasters get themselves into trouble. . . . (But) the attacks on her are misplaced. ”
While Tilghman’s career hangs in the balance, her Southern roots have become fodder for critics and supporters alike.
Tilghman is a daughter of a prominent family in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., prompting speculation as to why the term “lynch” would pop into her mind ahead of others. Her experience also has been questioned; her promotion to the anchor role 13 months ago marked Tilghman’s first foray into live “play-by-play” announcing.
Tilghman, meanwhile, has remained silent, declining to respond to phone calls or e-mails sent to her by Golfweek. Woods has commented only through his agent. He is sure to be asked about the matter when he makes his first 2008 Tour start Jan. 25 at the Buick Invitational.
“Accept the apology and move on. We all say dumb things,” said Dr. Harry Edwards, a consultant of the San Francisco 49ers and a sociology professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Edwards was a prominent civil rights activist in the 1960s who urged sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos to give the clench-fisted “black power” salute as the “Star Spangled Banner” was being played during their medal presentations at the ’68 Olympics.
“If we stopped the train every time somebody made a dumb remark that is potentially offensive, we’d never progress as a society. We’d be in big trouble.”
“Lynch him in a back alley.”
That retort, intended to be a back-door compliment for Tiger Woods, required about three seconds to tumble from Kelly Tilghman’s mouth during Golf Channel’s Jan. 4 broadcast of the Mercedes-Benz Championship.
Two days passed before she apologized on air for the remark and five days went by before Golf Channel handed down a two-week suspension without pay, and then only – whether related or not – after it had drawn the ire of a well-known civil-rights activist. But as drawn out as the process was, there is little doubt the ramifications of that off-the-cuff comment will linger. Golf rarely contends with controversy, and the few flaps that do occur usually are limited to the insular world of golf.
Tilghman’s remark escaped golf’s biodome and slipped into the mainstream where it is fair game to everyone with a microphone or a computer. Change of some sort – major or minor, right or wrong – was bound to result.
Golf Channel already has revised a scheduled management training session to include sensitivity education on diversity issues in an effort to prevent and react to similar instances. It also is questioning internally why it took so long for a public apology to materialize and the suspension to be doled out.
That investigation could result in punishment for other Golf Channel employees, particularly the on-duty producers of the Mercedes-Benz.
“There were a number of factors that came into play,” Golf Channel president Page Thompson responded via e-mail to Golfweek. Thompson is a former senior vice president and general manager of video services for parent company Comcast who took over as Golf Channel president last spring. “But the bottom line is we need to look at our process and see how we can move more swiftly in the future.”
Thompson said no discussions had been held with regard to firing Tilghman. He would not speculate whether Golf Channel might scale back the number of events Tilghman works as lead anchor upon her return.
As of Jan. 14, Tilghman was slated to resume her duties 10 days later for the first round of the Buick Invitational. However, there had been conjecture by Golf Channel insiders that Comcast will order Tilghman fired before her suspension is up and that fill-in Rich Lerner will take over permanently. Tilghman, 38, who has risen through the ranks in 11-plus years at Golf Channel, also could be assigned to other duties. Before taking on anchor duties for Tour telecasts, Tilghman was a host of Golf Channel’s “Golf Central” nightly news show.
“It was a horrible analogy, and she will be kicking herself for a long, long time to come,” said Michael J. Whelan, a former Golf Channel executive who hired Tilghman. “That’s live television; people do make mistakes. . . . You have to think about what you are about to say and the ramifications of what could be said. What sounds so cute and funny in your mind comes out horrific. That little line in Kelly’s head was a cute little idea. Once she said it, everything stopped.”
Other sportscasters’ careers have been damaged or destroyed by spontaneous on-air comments. But Tilghman’s situation is unique, as she is the first female lead anchor in PGA Tour history and is as much the face of Golf Channel in its landmark 15-year deal with the PGA Tour as is six-time major winner Nick Faldo.
Assigning a man to that position immediately after Tilghman’s gaffe could be seen as a setback for other women looking to move into the 18th tower. On the other hand, reinstating her as if nothing had happened could stain Golf Channel’s – and Comcast’s – image.
“That was a totally unacceptable choice of words. I’m actually surprised that she’s only getting two weeks’ suspension,” said Rosie Jones, a former LPGA player and Golf Channel commentator. “You wouldn’t want someone to lose their job or their career, but I thought two weeks was a short amount of time.”
The incident in question began harmlessly enough.
During their usual post-round banter as they wrapped up Day 2 at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, Tilghman and co-host Faldo discussed young players who might challenge Woods. Faldo jokingly said perhaps the youngsters should “gang up (on Tiger) for a while.”
The pair chuckled before Tilghman responded by saying, “Lynch him in a back alley,” and turned back to the camera smiling broadly. Golf Channel said it received a limited number of complaints regarding the comment. Tilghman explained the incident during the final-round broadcast after having already reached out to Woods herself.
She later sent out another apology in a written statement saying she “used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended.” Mark Steinberg, Woods’ agent, called the matter a “complete non-issue” and said he considered the “case closed.”
But the Internet and mainstream media wheels kept turning, resulting in the Rev. Al Sharpton calling for Tilghman to be fired during a Jan. 9 interview on CNN. He said his National Action Network would picket Golf Channel headquarters in Orlando and boycott the station if action were not taken. Golf Channel issued a statement later that evening saying Tilghman had been suspended for two weeks “for offensive language.’’
“While we believe that Kelly's choice of words were inadvertent and that she did not intend them in an offensive manner,’’ the statement read, “the words were hurtful and grossly inappropriate.” One source inside Golf Channel said the decision to suspend Tilghman had been made shortly before Sharpton appeared on CNN. A PGA Tour spokesman said the Tour didn’t weigh in on Tilghman’s fate, describing Golf Channel’s action as “an internal decision.’’ The Tour says it plays no role in choosing or rating the performance of on-air talent.
Regardless of the decision process, some observers argue even suspending Tilghman is overreacting despite the negative connotation of “lynch.” Context and intent, they say, is more important than the words used.
A recent comparison involves radio host Don Imus, who last spring spouted racial and insensitive remarks regarding the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. After one week of a growing outcry from civil-rights groups, including Sharpton’s, Imus was fired from WCBS. He returned to radio late in the year.
“Imus has a long history of making nasty, vicious, bigoted comments usually at poor people or oppressed people, people who can’t fight back,” said civil rights lawyer and radio talk show host Ron Kuby. “Kelly’s comment was about a very powerful person who also happens to be her friend and she was praising him. She was using mind-boggling offensive phrasing, incredibly stupid phrasing, and that’s the way broadcasters get themselves into trouble. . . . (But) the attacks on her are misplaced. ”
While Tilghman’s career hangs in the balance, her Southern roots have become fodder for critics and supporters alike.
Tilghman is a daughter of a prominent family in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., prompting speculation as to why the term “lynch” would pop into her mind ahead of others. Her experience also has been questioned; her promotion to the anchor role 13 months ago marked Tilghman’s first foray into live “play-by-play” announcing.
Tilghman, meanwhile, has remained silent, declining to respond to phone calls or e-mails sent to her by Golfweek. Woods has commented only through his agent. He is sure to be asked about the matter when he makes his first 2008 Tour start Jan. 25 at the Buick Invitational.
“Accept the apology and move on. We all say dumb things,” said Dr. Harry Edwards, a consultant of the San Francisco 49ers and a sociology professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Edwards was a prominent civil rights activist in the 1960s who urged sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos to give the clench-fisted “black power” salute as the “Star Spangled Banner” was being played during their medal presentations at the ’68 Olympics.
“If we stopped the train every time somebody made a dumb remark that is potentially offensive, we’d never progress as a society. We’d be in big trouble.”
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Don't Think About It
Years from now, when the story of our corporate age is told with the clarity of hindsight, I'm guessing one of the phrases scholars will keep coming back to is "plausible deniability." The tale will capture our era's wide disparities in wealth, and its almost universal indifference to the rampant mistreatment of workers from countries less fortunate than our own.
After all, when we buy a product -- a piece of fruit, a new suit, an iPod -- how many of us really comprehend what was required to bring that product to our tables, our backs, or our pockets? The expanding global economy demands that corporations seek out the cheapest possible labor to maximize profit, and stimulate growth and innovation. With free trade has come an explosion of global inequality that has left more than 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day. We in the wealthy West, living and dining off the fruits of their labor, can honestly say we are unaware of the devil's bargain we bought into. Or that if we do know, the problem is simply too great to comprehend and beyond our means to do anything about, save changing our lifestyles entirely. Best, in other words, not to think about it.
--Josh Rosenblatt
After all, when we buy a product -- a piece of fruit, a new suit, an iPod -- how many of us really comprehend what was required to bring that product to our tables, our backs, or our pockets? The expanding global economy demands that corporations seek out the cheapest possible labor to maximize profit, and stimulate growth and innovation. With free trade has come an explosion of global inequality that has left more than 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day. We in the wealthy West, living and dining off the fruits of their labor, can honestly say we are unaware of the devil's bargain we bought into. Or that if we do know, the problem is simply too great to comprehend and beyond our means to do anything about, save changing our lifestyles entirely. Best, in other words, not to think about it.
--Josh Rosenblatt
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Problem With Christmas
by Bill Mckibben
The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore.
If you poll Americans this time of year, far more of them regard the approaching holidays with dread than anticipation. It has long since become too busy, too expensive, too centered around acquiring that which we do not need. In fact, it's the perfect crystallization of the American economy -- the American consumer experience squeezed into a manic week, a week that people find themselves hoping will soon end so that on Jan. 2 they can return to the mere routine hecticity of their lives.
From that central truth, a few propositions follow:
* Replacing regular stuff with green stuff isn't getting very close to the root of the problem. If for some reason you need to give someone a motorized spice rack, then a motorized spice rack with a more efficient motor is quite clearly better. But it's also quite clearly beside the point.
* Stuff itself is a problem less because of its environmental toll (though that is quite high) than because it's increasingly meaningless. Think of your friends. Are many of them lacking in stuff? Or is the first question that forms in their minds when a new gift arrives from under the tree: "Where am I going to put this?"
* But this pleasure gap allows for a concentrated opportunity to begin rethinking our economic life. If stuff isn't valuable anymore, what is? Time, clearly. A gift of time -- a coupon for a back rub, or a trip to the museum, or a dinner prepared someday in the future -- is a gift whose exchange rate is figured in a stronger currency (if you're an economics major, think euros vs. dollars). Or gifts can come embedded with time already spent: a jar of homemade jam, a stack of firewood in the back yard.
* Gifts can also be reconfigured to remove some of the hyperindividualism that marks our consumer society. Ask yourself what you'd rather receive: another thing, or a homemade card saying that, say, a cow had been purchased in your name and was now providing milk for a Tanzanian family that hadn't had milk before. (Note: this line of reasoning is probably especially strong for those of us who are Christians, and recall that the occasion we're celebrating is the birth of a man who said to give all that we had to the poor.)
* Since Christmas has long been in the business of baptizing consumption, it's a good place to start eroding consumption's allure. Newfound pleasures from a simpler holiday -- some silence, some companionship -- suddenly start to seem attractive. Maybe that attraction will remain with us even unto February.
That would be good, because our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends. And no time more so than at Christmas, when Santa rides in on a Norelco razor. It's a kind of joint conspiracy that few of us dare break out of, even though we all understand at some level that it's not working. What if you don't give your kids a "proper Christmas"?
But the second you do break out of it -- the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter -- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve.
There are, of course, some who will say that a course like the one I'm describing here will damage the economy -- that anyone who proposes a different Yuletide is a "grinch." (This, by the way, is a major literary faux pas. Close reading -- even cursory reading, or even viewing the annual television special, will remind one that it was in fact the grinch himself who believed that Christmas came in a box. He turned out to be wrong, as the Whos of Whoville, those communists, made clear.) You could answer those people by saying, "Well, it won't all happen at once, and the economy will have time to adjust." Or you could answer by saying, "Maybe you're right. And maybe the economy isn't therefore quite as rational and as obvious as we would like to believe, if in fact it depends on a corrupted celebration of Jesus' birth to stagger on for another year."
The second answer appeals to me. We need a kiss to break our enchantment, and a kiss (a coupon for a kiss! Or a dozen!) is a perfectly fine gift to give for Christmas.
The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore.
If you poll Americans this time of year, far more of them regard the approaching holidays with dread than anticipation. It has long since become too busy, too expensive, too centered around acquiring that which we do not need. In fact, it's the perfect crystallization of the American economy -- the American consumer experience squeezed into a manic week, a week that people find themselves hoping will soon end so that on Jan. 2 they can return to the mere routine hecticity of their lives.
From that central truth, a few propositions follow:
* Replacing regular stuff with green stuff isn't getting very close to the root of the problem. If for some reason you need to give someone a motorized spice rack, then a motorized spice rack with a more efficient motor is quite clearly better. But it's also quite clearly beside the point.
* Stuff itself is a problem less because of its environmental toll (though that is quite high) than because it's increasingly meaningless. Think of your friends. Are many of them lacking in stuff? Or is the first question that forms in their minds when a new gift arrives from under the tree: "Where am I going to put this?"
* But this pleasure gap allows for a concentrated opportunity to begin rethinking our economic life. If stuff isn't valuable anymore, what is? Time, clearly. A gift of time -- a coupon for a back rub, or a trip to the museum, or a dinner prepared someday in the future -- is a gift whose exchange rate is figured in a stronger currency (if you're an economics major, think euros vs. dollars). Or gifts can come embedded with time already spent: a jar of homemade jam, a stack of firewood in the back yard.
* Gifts can also be reconfigured to remove some of the hyperindividualism that marks our consumer society. Ask yourself what you'd rather receive: another thing, or a homemade card saying that, say, a cow had been purchased in your name and was now providing milk for a Tanzanian family that hadn't had milk before. (Note: this line of reasoning is probably especially strong for those of us who are Christians, and recall that the occasion we're celebrating is the birth of a man who said to give all that we had to the poor.)
* Since Christmas has long been in the business of baptizing consumption, it's a good place to start eroding consumption's allure. Newfound pleasures from a simpler holiday -- some silence, some companionship -- suddenly start to seem attractive. Maybe that attraction will remain with us even unto February.
That would be good, because our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends. And no time more so than at Christmas, when Santa rides in on a Norelco razor. It's a kind of joint conspiracy that few of us dare break out of, even though we all understand at some level that it's not working. What if you don't give your kids a "proper Christmas"?
But the second you do break out of it -- the second your family becomes one of those that exchanges used books at Christmas, or decides to follow St. Francis' Yule tradition of wandering the park and throwing seed so that the birds too could celebrate, or makes it an annual custom to serve turkey dinner at the homeless shelter -- then you start sharing in the deep human secret that consumer society is set up to obscure: the things that please us most are almost always counterintuitive. We need to be out in the cold air, we need to think about others, we need to serve.
There are, of course, some who will say that a course like the one I'm describing here will damage the economy -- that anyone who proposes a different Yuletide is a "grinch." (This, by the way, is a major literary faux pas. Close reading -- even cursory reading, or even viewing the annual television special, will remind one that it was in fact the grinch himself who believed that Christmas came in a box. He turned out to be wrong, as the Whos of Whoville, those communists, made clear.) You could answer those people by saying, "Well, it won't all happen at once, and the economy will have time to adjust." Or you could answer by saying, "Maybe you're right. And maybe the economy isn't therefore quite as rational and as obvious as we would like to believe, if in fact it depends on a corrupted celebration of Jesus' birth to stagger on for another year."
The second answer appeals to me. We need a kiss to break our enchantment, and a kiss (a coupon for a kiss! Or a dozen!) is a perfectly fine gift to give for Christmas.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Smoke and Mirrors
What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads — for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment — that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals.
According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.
We’re running out of smoke and mirrors. The fundamental problem, the problem that is destroying the dream, is the extreme inequality pounded into the system by the corporate crowd and its handmaidens in government.
--Bob Herbert
According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.
We’re running out of smoke and mirrors. The fundamental problem, the problem that is destroying the dream, is the extreme inequality pounded into the system by the corporate crowd and its handmaidens in government.
--Bob Herbert
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Christmas Rush
It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmastime. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush.
--Fr. Andrew Greeley
--Fr. Andrew Greeley
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Friday, December 07, 2007
Saint Nicholas
Saint Nicholas, the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, is famed as a great saint pleasing unto God. From his childhood, Nicholas thrived on the study of divine scripture; by day he would not leave church, and by night he prayed and read books, making himself a worthy dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.
There was a certain formerly rich inhabitant of Patara, whom St Nicholas saved from great sin. The man had three grown daughters, and in desperation he planned to sell their bodies so they would have money for food. The saint, learning of the man's poverty and of his wicked intention, secretly visited him one night and threw a sack of gold through the window. With the money the man arranged an honorable marriage for his daughter. St Nicholas also provided gold for the other daughters, thereby saving the family from falling into spiritual destruction. In bestowing charity, St Nicholas always strove to do this secretly and to conceal his good deeds.
During his life, the saint worked many miracles. One of the greatest was the deliverance from death of three men unjustly condemned by the governor, who had been bribed. The saint boldly went up to the executioner and took his sword, already suspended over the heads of the condemned. The governor, denounced by St Nicholas for his wrong doing, repented and begged for forgiveness.
There was a certain formerly rich inhabitant of Patara, whom St Nicholas saved from great sin. The man had three grown daughters, and in desperation he planned to sell their bodies so they would have money for food. The saint, learning of the man's poverty and of his wicked intention, secretly visited him one night and threw a sack of gold through the window. With the money the man arranged an honorable marriage for his daughter. St Nicholas also provided gold for the other daughters, thereby saving the family from falling into spiritual destruction. In bestowing charity, St Nicholas always strove to do this secretly and to conceal his good deeds.
During his life, the saint worked many miracles. One of the greatest was the deliverance from death of three men unjustly condemned by the governor, who had been bribed. The saint boldly went up to the executioner and took his sword, already suspended over the heads of the condemned. The governor, denounced by St Nicholas for his wrong doing, repented and begged for forgiveness.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Leave Education to Principals, Teachers, Parents
by Leonard Pitts
As I wandered about looking lost, I chanced upon a teacher who volunteered to lead me where I needed to be. When I told her why I was here -- a series of columns on What Works to change the culture of dysfunction that entraps too many African-American kids -- she told me I had come to the right place: KIPP Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, two charter schools serving 600 kids here in farm country. She said she believes so much in what KIPP schools are doing -- longer school day and year, higher expectations, more teacher freedom -- that she came from Iowa to teach here.
In my last column, I told you about KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), a network of 57 charter schools across the country that are reporting stellar results with their 14,000 mostly black and Hispanic students. Today I want to talk about the role teachers play in that, and all, academic success.
I'm not unmindful -- a handful of readers brought this up -- that parental involvement is also a key ingredient in that success. Some sorry parents never meet a child's teacher until graduation day -- if then. But even the most involved parent is limited in his or her ability to make a difference when teacher quality is, in the words of GCP Principal Caleb Dolan, "a crap shoot.''
''I understand how parents feel,'' he said. ''If my child gets this side of the hall, they're in great shape. If they get that side of the hall . . . '' He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to.
Having spent the last year studying educational success stories, I find myself increasingly convinced that much of what ails American schools can be traced to a bureaucracy that: a) doesn't pay enough; b) does too little to encourage and reward creativity; c) doesn't give principals authority over who works in their schools; d) makes it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers.
As Dolan put it, "I don't think you can pay a good teacher enough, and I don't think you can fire a bad teacher fast enough.''
''Teachers are generally very optimistic,'' said KIPP co-founder Dave Levin. ``Unfortunately what happens is, you don't have a lot of examples in this country of systemic success and success at scale. You might have a good teacher there or a good teacher here, but you don't get enough concentration within a school or a district to have a cycle of success.''
Spend enough time pushing boulders uphill, and it wears you out. Enthusiasm becomes indifference, energy burns out like candles, and success is defined down. Said Levin, "What you see in too many neighborhoods when people talk about schools, they want to talk about these tiny, incremental changes -- which are necessary. But for individual kids, when you gain two or three points on a reading test, it doesn't necessarily change your life options. As their teachers, we can't just go blindly celebrating that without saying that we expect more.''
No one becomes a teacher to get rich. You become a teacher because you want to give back, you want to shape future generations, you want to change the world. But the reality of our educational system and the grimy culture in which it operates is that that prime directive often winds up subordinate to the directives of a creativity-choking bureaucracy that seems less interested in educating disadvantaged kids than in warehousing them.
And then, here comes a program that's educating such kids so effectively a woman moves halfway across the country to be a part. The lesson could not be clearer.
You want to fix American education? Step one: Empower principals to hire good teachers. Step two: Require raised expectations.
Step three? Get out of the way.
As I wandered about looking lost, I chanced upon a teacher who volunteered to lead me where I needed to be. When I told her why I was here -- a series of columns on What Works to change the culture of dysfunction that entraps too many African-American kids -- she told me I had come to the right place: KIPP Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, two charter schools serving 600 kids here in farm country. She said she believes so much in what KIPP schools are doing -- longer school day and year, higher expectations, more teacher freedom -- that she came from Iowa to teach here.
In my last column, I told you about KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), a network of 57 charter schools across the country that are reporting stellar results with their 14,000 mostly black and Hispanic students. Today I want to talk about the role teachers play in that, and all, academic success.
I'm not unmindful -- a handful of readers brought this up -- that parental involvement is also a key ingredient in that success. Some sorry parents never meet a child's teacher until graduation day -- if then. But even the most involved parent is limited in his or her ability to make a difference when teacher quality is, in the words of GCP Principal Caleb Dolan, "a crap shoot.''
''I understand how parents feel,'' he said. ''If my child gets this side of the hall, they're in great shape. If they get that side of the hall . . . '' He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to.
Having spent the last year studying educational success stories, I find myself increasingly convinced that much of what ails American schools can be traced to a bureaucracy that: a) doesn't pay enough; b) does too little to encourage and reward creativity; c) doesn't give principals authority over who works in their schools; d) makes it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers.
As Dolan put it, "I don't think you can pay a good teacher enough, and I don't think you can fire a bad teacher fast enough.''
''Teachers are generally very optimistic,'' said KIPP co-founder Dave Levin. ``Unfortunately what happens is, you don't have a lot of examples in this country of systemic success and success at scale. You might have a good teacher there or a good teacher here, but you don't get enough concentration within a school or a district to have a cycle of success.''
Spend enough time pushing boulders uphill, and it wears you out. Enthusiasm becomes indifference, energy burns out like candles, and success is defined down. Said Levin, "What you see in too many neighborhoods when people talk about schools, they want to talk about these tiny, incremental changes -- which are necessary. But for individual kids, when you gain two or three points on a reading test, it doesn't necessarily change your life options. As their teachers, we can't just go blindly celebrating that without saying that we expect more.''
No one becomes a teacher to get rich. You become a teacher because you want to give back, you want to shape future generations, you want to change the world. But the reality of our educational system and the grimy culture in which it operates is that that prime directive often winds up subordinate to the directives of a creativity-choking bureaucracy that seems less interested in educating disadvantaged kids than in warehousing them.
And then, here comes a program that's educating such kids so effectively a woman moves halfway across the country to be a part. The lesson could not be clearer.
You want to fix American education? Step one: Empower principals to hire good teachers. Step two: Require raised expectations.
Step three? Get out of the way.
Schools Where Students Learn
by Leonard Pitts
"Who you is?''
That's how a student greeted me years ago in a Miami classroom. I waited to see how the teacher would respond to this insult against grammar, but she did the last thing I expected: She answered the question, as if it had been posed in English.
So it makes an impression on me, standing in a classroom here, when a student says ''ain't'' and a teacher promptly and gently corrects him. It is a small difference, but on the basis of many small differences, Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, a middle and high school side by side in a former peanut field, have carved out one big difference: They work.
According to the state, 83.9 percent of GCP students are performing at or above grade level in math, versus a state average of 66.4. In English, the numbers are 87 percent to 72. KIPP Pride posts similarly impressive stats.
This, by the way, is the latest installment in What Works, my series about programs that are tackling the challenges faced by black kids. GCP and KIPP Pride certainly qualify, and Caleb Dolan, principal of GCP, wants you to know it isn't because they use selective admission to cull the cream of the crop. As public charter schools, they take students on a first-come basis. Kids come here reading below grade level. Or not reading at all.
So what makes a difference is, well. . . the differences: a longer school day and year; high expectations as a matter of policy; reintegration of sports, art, band, phys ed and other curricula that have disappeared from other schools; a culture of trust where students store their belongings in open lockers (if you are caught stealing, you must explain yourself to the entire school; Dolan says it's a potent deterrent); higher teacher pay; a lack of red tape.
''I worked for a good principal,'' says Dolan. "Strong disciplinarian, cared about the kids. She couldn't hire who was in her building. That [decision] was made in some central office. She couldn't get rid of the teacher who took naps. Versus, last year I fired my seventh-grade writing teacher because he didn't get it done in the classroom. There's too little time to waste with a bad teacher.''
A few years ago Dolan and Tammi Sutton, principal of KIPP Pride, were teachers dangling ''quite honestly, at the end of our rope,'' frustrated with the failings of ordinary schools. Dolan remembers working hard with one underachieving girl and seeing her blossom into "this dynamic student.''
''Then she's pregnant by ninth grade.'' He takes such failures personally, he says.
So he was primed to listen when he got a call from Mike Feinberg: ''You guys want to start a school?'' Specifically, a KIPP school.
Feinberg and his partner, Dave Levin, had been where Dolan was -- frustrated teachers. Says Levin, ''We kept asking ourselves, what more could we do? And one thing led to another.'' In 1994, it led to KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), now a network of 57 free charter schools serving 14,000 kids across 17 states and Washington, D.C.
None of whom, presumably, could get away with saying ''Who you is?'' in front of a teacher. When that happens, it speaks eloquently to what that teacher sees in, and expects from, that child.
So consider Sherron Lynch, a 7th grader who thought her mother was ''crazy'' when she enrolled her in GCP. ''I thought it was a regular school, just longer time and mean teachers. But it was so different. Some teachers . . . only reason they're teaching is so they can get some money. But at GCP, they care about the student's education, and that really makes a difference.'' Lynch's reading scores have improved by 25 points in the last year.
That speaks eloquently, too.
"Who you is?''
That's how a student greeted me years ago in a Miami classroom. I waited to see how the teacher would respond to this insult against grammar, but she did the last thing I expected: She answered the question, as if it had been posed in English.
So it makes an impression on me, standing in a classroom here, when a student says ''ain't'' and a teacher promptly and gently corrects him. It is a small difference, but on the basis of many small differences, Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, a middle and high school side by side in a former peanut field, have carved out one big difference: They work.
According to the state, 83.9 percent of GCP students are performing at or above grade level in math, versus a state average of 66.4. In English, the numbers are 87 percent to 72. KIPP Pride posts similarly impressive stats.
This, by the way, is the latest installment in What Works, my series about programs that are tackling the challenges faced by black kids. GCP and KIPP Pride certainly qualify, and Caleb Dolan, principal of GCP, wants you to know it isn't because they use selective admission to cull the cream of the crop. As public charter schools, they take students on a first-come basis. Kids come here reading below grade level. Or not reading at all.
So what makes a difference is, well. . . the differences: a longer school day and year; high expectations as a matter of policy; reintegration of sports, art, band, phys ed and other curricula that have disappeared from other schools; a culture of trust where students store their belongings in open lockers (if you are caught stealing, you must explain yourself to the entire school; Dolan says it's a potent deterrent); higher teacher pay; a lack of red tape.
''I worked for a good principal,'' says Dolan. "Strong disciplinarian, cared about the kids. She couldn't hire who was in her building. That [decision] was made in some central office. She couldn't get rid of the teacher who took naps. Versus, last year I fired my seventh-grade writing teacher because he didn't get it done in the classroom. There's too little time to waste with a bad teacher.''
A few years ago Dolan and Tammi Sutton, principal of KIPP Pride, were teachers dangling ''quite honestly, at the end of our rope,'' frustrated with the failings of ordinary schools. Dolan remembers working hard with one underachieving girl and seeing her blossom into "this dynamic student.''
''Then she's pregnant by ninth grade.'' He takes such failures personally, he says.
So he was primed to listen when he got a call from Mike Feinberg: ''You guys want to start a school?'' Specifically, a KIPP school.
Feinberg and his partner, Dave Levin, had been where Dolan was -- frustrated teachers. Says Levin, ''We kept asking ourselves, what more could we do? And one thing led to another.'' In 1994, it led to KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), now a network of 57 free charter schools serving 14,000 kids across 17 states and Washington, D.C.
None of whom, presumably, could get away with saying ''Who you is?'' in front of a teacher. When that happens, it speaks eloquently to what that teacher sees in, and expects from, that child.
So consider Sherron Lynch, a 7th grader who thought her mother was ''crazy'' when she enrolled her in GCP. ''I thought it was a regular school, just longer time and mean teachers. But it was so different. Some teachers . . . only reason they're teaching is so they can get some money. But at GCP, they care about the student's education, and that really makes a difference.'' Lynch's reading scores have improved by 25 points in the last year.
That speaks eloquently, too.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Love
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intake, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
--C.S. Lewis
--C.S. Lewis
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Ownership and Success
The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? Imagine Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson distributing free copies of Virginia Hamilton's collection of folktales ''The People Could Fly'' or Dr. Seuss, and demanding that black parents sign pledges to read to their children. What would it take to make inner-city schools havens of learning?
John Kenneth Galbraith once told me that the first step in reversing the economic inequalities that blacks face is greater voter participation, and I think he was right. Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
If the correlation between land ownership and success of African-Americans argues that the chasm between classes in the black community is partly the result of social forces set in motion by the dismal failure of 40 acres and a mule, then we must act decisively. If we do not, ours will be remembered as the generation that presided over a permanent class divide, a slow but inevitable process that began with the failure to give property to the people who had once been defined as property.
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
John Kenneth Galbraith once told me that the first step in reversing the economic inequalities that blacks face is greater voter participation, and I think he was right. Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
If the correlation between land ownership and success of African-Americans argues that the chasm between classes in the black community is partly the result of social forces set in motion by the dismal failure of 40 acres and a mule, then we must act decisively. If we do not, ours will be remembered as the generation that presided over a permanent class divide, a slow but inevitable process that began with the failure to give property to the people who had once been defined as property.
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Predictable and Predicted
“What were they smoking?” asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.
The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.
In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.
This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.
--Paul Krugman
The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.
In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.
This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.
--Paul Krugman
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thank the Lord and Pass the Patriotism?
by Obery Hendricks
In many pulpits during this Thanksgiving season, love of our country and pride in our citizenship will be pronounced in the same breath--and often with the same intensity--as declarations of love for our God. But we must be careful, for patriotism can be destructive as well as constructive. Worse, it can become idolatrous.
Constructive patriotism, or what James Forbes, pastor emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City calls "prophetic patriotism," is the willingness to strive in word and deed to ensure that this nation is healthy, whole, secure, and conducting its affairs at home and abroad according to the political doctrines we claim to hold dear.
Destructive patriotism, however, is primarily focused on discrediting or destroying those it perceives as opponents of America. The purview of destructive patriotism is "us" against "them"--"them" being not only foreigners, but also any American who openly disagrees with the official actions of the leaders of the United States, no matter if their policies contradict our Constitution, harm the public good, or violate the most basic ethics of the biblical faith they claim to hold dear.
If we who call ourselves patriots are to be true to our faith, our patriotism must ever be constructive, because constructive criticism of governmental policies and practices is squarely in the tradition of the biblical prophets and the gospel of Jesus. It is not only concerned with political affairs--it is also concerned with the spiritual and moral health of America. Constructive prophetic oversight is the highest and healthiest form of patriotism because it seeks to help the nation become its best and most righteous self.
That is why true patriots will welcome prophetic critiques of our government--because they can help America become its most righteous and most just self. Conversely, the true patriot will reject uncritical abdications of our prophetic responsibility to make our nation its best self that are expressed in such slogans as "America--love it or leave it" and "Criticism of our government equals support for our enemies." To the degree that patriotism causes division and enmity between God's children, it is in opposition to the gospel, pure and simple. But when patriotism seeks to silence prophetic criticism, it is more than oppositional; it is idolatrous, because by following its own beliefs, judgments, and interests rather than the prophetic mandate, it makes an idol of them. This blind, idolatrous brand of patriotism is blasphemous because it values the welfare and even the humanity of some of God's children--that is, Americans, and not all of those, either--over the welfare and humanity of all others, particularly those who look, speak, and worship differently. In contrast, a God-centered patriotism will confess, like the apostle Peter, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God" (Acts 10:34-35).
Therefore, if we are to be true patriots and true followers of the biblical imperative of justice on earth as in heaven, then each day before we pledge allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, we must first recommit our allegiance to the gospel of Jesus, the justice of God, and the love of our neighbors it commands. We must never forget that the flag does not supercede the cross.
Thus, if it is the gospel that is truly the object of our faith and our allegiance, this Thanksgiving let us give thanks to God for the faithful voices that, despite the derision and even the personal physical harm they risk and sometimes suffer, nonetheless continue to speak out against every action, policy, and pronouncement of our leaders and our government that distances us from the liberating gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God.
In many pulpits during this Thanksgiving season, love of our country and pride in our citizenship will be pronounced in the same breath--and often with the same intensity--as declarations of love for our God. But we must be careful, for patriotism can be destructive as well as constructive. Worse, it can become idolatrous.
Constructive patriotism, or what James Forbes, pastor emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City calls "prophetic patriotism," is the willingness to strive in word and deed to ensure that this nation is healthy, whole, secure, and conducting its affairs at home and abroad according to the political doctrines we claim to hold dear.
Destructive patriotism, however, is primarily focused on discrediting or destroying those it perceives as opponents of America. The purview of destructive patriotism is "us" against "them"--"them" being not only foreigners, but also any American who openly disagrees with the official actions of the leaders of the United States, no matter if their policies contradict our Constitution, harm the public good, or violate the most basic ethics of the biblical faith they claim to hold dear.
If we who call ourselves patriots are to be true to our faith, our patriotism must ever be constructive, because constructive criticism of governmental policies and practices is squarely in the tradition of the biblical prophets and the gospel of Jesus. It is not only concerned with political affairs--it is also concerned with the spiritual and moral health of America. Constructive prophetic oversight is the highest and healthiest form of patriotism because it seeks to help the nation become its best and most righteous self.
That is why true patriots will welcome prophetic critiques of our government--because they can help America become its most righteous and most just self. Conversely, the true patriot will reject uncritical abdications of our prophetic responsibility to make our nation its best self that are expressed in such slogans as "America--love it or leave it" and "Criticism of our government equals support for our enemies." To the degree that patriotism causes division and enmity between God's children, it is in opposition to the gospel, pure and simple. But when patriotism seeks to silence prophetic criticism, it is more than oppositional; it is idolatrous, because by following its own beliefs, judgments, and interests rather than the prophetic mandate, it makes an idol of them. This blind, idolatrous brand of patriotism is blasphemous because it values the welfare and even the humanity of some of God's children--that is, Americans, and not all of those, either--over the welfare and humanity of all others, particularly those who look, speak, and worship differently. In contrast, a God-centered patriotism will confess, like the apostle Peter, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God" (Acts 10:34-35).
Therefore, if we are to be true patriots and true followers of the biblical imperative of justice on earth as in heaven, then each day before we pledge allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, we must first recommit our allegiance to the gospel of Jesus, the justice of God, and the love of our neighbors it commands. We must never forget that the flag does not supercede the cross.
Thus, if it is the gospel that is truly the object of our faith and our allegiance, this Thanksgiving let us give thanks to God for the faithful voices that, despite the derision and even the personal physical harm they risk and sometimes suffer, nonetheless continue to speak out against every action, policy, and pronouncement of our leaders and our government that distances us from the liberating gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God.
Resistance
Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance... But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.
--Thomas Merton
--Thomas Merton
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Reading Less
Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s book club aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.
That is the message of a new report being released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, based on an analysis of data from about two dozen studies from the federal Education and Labor Departments and the Census Bureau as well as other academic, foundation and business surveys. After its 2004 report, “Reading at Risk,” which found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 read novels, short stories, plays or poetry, the endowment sought to collect more comprehensive data to build a picture of the role of all reading, including nonfiction.
In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.”
Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.
--Matoko Rich
That is the message of a new report being released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, based on an analysis of data from about two dozen studies from the federal Education and Labor Departments and the Census Bureau as well as other academic, foundation and business surveys. After its 2004 report, “Reading at Risk,” which found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 read novels, short stories, plays or poetry, the endowment sought to collect more comprehensive data to build a picture of the role of all reading, including nonfiction.
In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as “simple, consistent and alarming.”
Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.
--Matoko Rich
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Essence of Democracy
The very essence of democracy is peaceful rotations of power, no matter whose party or tribe is in or out. But that ethic does not apply in most of the Arab-Muslim world today, where the political ethos remains “Rule or Die.” Either my group is in power or I’m dead, in prison, in exile or lying very low. But democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can’t take root.
But respect for diversity is something that has to emerge from within a culture. We can hold a free and fair election in Iraq, but we can’t inject a culture of diversity. America and Europe had to go through the most awful civil wars to give birth to their cultures of diversity. The Arab-Muslim world will have to go through the same internal war of ideas.
--Tom Friedman
But respect for diversity is something that has to emerge from within a culture. We can hold a free and fair election in Iraq, but we can’t inject a culture of diversity. America and Europe had to go through the most awful civil wars to give birth to their cultures of diversity. The Arab-Muslim world will have to go through the same internal war of ideas.
--Tom Friedman
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Trouble
The housing meltdown is getting the attention, but there’s so much more. Bankruptcies and homelessness are on the rise. The job market has been weak for years. The auto industry is in trouble. The cost of food, gasoline and home heating oil are soaring at a time when millions of Americans are managing to make it from one month to another solely by the grace of their credit cards.
The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking.
--Bob Herbert
The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking.
--Bob Herbert
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Water Scarcity
As our world heats up, as pollution increases, as population grows and as our globe's resources of fresh water are tapped, we are faced with an environmental and humanitarian problem of mammoth proportions.
Demand for water is doubling every 20 years, outpacing population growth twice as fast. Currently 1.3 billion people don't have access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack proper sewage and sanitation. In less than 20 years, it is estimated that demand for fresh water will exceed the world's supply by over 50 percent.
The biggest drain on our water sources is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the water used worldwide -- much of which is subsidized in the industrial world, providing little incentive for agribusiness to use conservation measures or less water-intensive crops.
This number is also likely to increase as we struggle to feed a growing world. Population is expected to rise from 6 billion to 8 billion by 2050.
Water scarcity is not just an issue of the developing world. "Twenty-one percent of irrigation in the United States is achieved by pumping groundwater at rates that exceed the water's ability to recharge," wrote water experts Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians in their landmark water book 'Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water'.
--Tara Lohan
Demand for water is doubling every 20 years, outpacing population growth twice as fast. Currently 1.3 billion people don't have access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack proper sewage and sanitation. In less than 20 years, it is estimated that demand for fresh water will exceed the world's supply by over 50 percent.
The biggest drain on our water sources is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the water used worldwide -- much of which is subsidized in the industrial world, providing little incentive for agribusiness to use conservation measures or less water-intensive crops.
This number is also likely to increase as we struggle to feed a growing world. Population is expected to rise from 6 billion to 8 billion by 2050.
Water scarcity is not just an issue of the developing world. "Twenty-one percent of irrigation in the United States is achieved by pumping groundwater at rates that exceed the water's ability to recharge," wrote water experts Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians in their landmark water book 'Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water'.
--Tara Lohan
Bottled Water
According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), 96 percent of bottled water is sold in single-size polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles, which, because they are frequently consumed "on the go," end up in city trash cans rather than recycling bins. The national recycling rate for all PET bottles, including soda bottles, is just 23.1 percent, and bottled water is even lower. CRI estimates some 4 billion PET bottles end up in the waste stream, costing cities some $70 million a year in cleanup and landfill costs.
Bottled water "very clearly reflects the wasteful and reckless consumerism in this country," said Salt Lake City's Anderson in a conference call with reporters this month. "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers. These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary products."
--Michael Blanding
Bottled water "very clearly reflects the wasteful and reckless consumerism in this country," said Salt Lake City's Anderson in a conference call with reporters this month. "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers. These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary products."
--Michael Blanding
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Age of Insufficiency
This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids." The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030--barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products--including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances--this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum.
--Michael T. Klare
--Michael T. Klare
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Infastructure Needs
Getting society focused on meeting these new infrastructure needs is huge. Our creaky power grid or leaky water pipes really matter in prolonged, record-shattering droughts like the one Georgia is now experiencing. “Some scientists have suggested giving droughts names, like we do hurricanes,” Ms. Cullen noted. “If we did, this Southeast drought would be called Katrina, and it would be about to hit Atlanta.”
--Thomas Friedman
--Thomas Friedman
Friday, October 26, 2007
Attack Iran?
I am afraid, but not for the reasons our government is telling me to be afraid. I am afraid that I may wake up one morning soon to discover that our government has launched a preemptive attack on Iran. While our government is issuing national orange alerts about "them," I wonder whether we Christians should be issuing global orange alerts about our own government.
I am disgusted, concerned, appalled, and furious about the current saber-rattling of our government--so reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. My feelings intensify in many of our presidential candidates' forums, where each candidate seems to be in a hissing contest, declaring that he or she is the loudest hisser against terrorism--as if the only danger in the world is posed by an evil "them" and not by evil resident within us. Our Congress' bipartisan vote last month, which labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, seems to me to be handing our president a "go to war free" card, another rather frightening development.
Meanwhile, our media are becoming an echo chamber of fear: after all, fear keeps people tuned in, which means better ratings, and thus more advertising income. Fear pays--economically and politically--but sadly, we haven't reached the point yet of fearing fear itself and what it may do if it keeps accelerating.
On top of these fears, I suspect that many of my fellow Christians will, in the name of God and Jesus and Christianity and the Bible, support and justify a preemptive war on Iran before and after it happens--no matter how unprovoked, no matter how brutal, and no matter how foolish and costly, both financially and morally. Forgetting even the traditional Christian criteria for just war, and forgetting the falsified "intelligence" used to justify our last preemptive war, we Christians in the U.S., I fear, will once again be high on credulity and low on scrutiny--all too eager to believe what our government tells us to legitimize a pre-emptive attack and feed our growing fears. We Christians who cannot follow this path into another war must ask ourselves two kinds of questions:
1. What will we do if we wake up and find our government has attacked Iran while we were sleeping? What actions - public and private - would be appropriate?
2. What can we do now to decrease the possibility of that occurring? What will we wish we would have done in the weeks and months before the morning after?
--Brian McLaren
I am disgusted, concerned, appalled, and furious about the current saber-rattling of our government--so reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. My feelings intensify in many of our presidential candidates' forums, where each candidate seems to be in a hissing contest, declaring that he or she is the loudest hisser against terrorism--as if the only danger in the world is posed by an evil "them" and not by evil resident within us. Our Congress' bipartisan vote last month, which labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, seems to me to be handing our president a "go to war free" card, another rather frightening development.
Meanwhile, our media are becoming an echo chamber of fear: after all, fear keeps people tuned in, which means better ratings, and thus more advertising income. Fear pays--economically and politically--but sadly, we haven't reached the point yet of fearing fear itself and what it may do if it keeps accelerating.
On top of these fears, I suspect that many of my fellow Christians will, in the name of God and Jesus and Christianity and the Bible, support and justify a preemptive war on Iran before and after it happens--no matter how unprovoked, no matter how brutal, and no matter how foolish and costly, both financially and morally. Forgetting even the traditional Christian criteria for just war, and forgetting the falsified "intelligence" used to justify our last preemptive war, we Christians in the U.S., I fear, will once again be high on credulity and low on scrutiny--all too eager to believe what our government tells us to legitimize a pre-emptive attack and feed our growing fears. We Christians who cannot follow this path into another war must ask ourselves two kinds of questions:
1. What will we do if we wake up and find our government has attacked Iran while we were sleeping? What actions - public and private - would be appropriate?
2. What can we do now to decrease the possibility of that occurring? What will we wish we would have done in the weeks and months before the morning after?
--Brian McLaren
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Child Care
We live in a country where quality child care is controversial. It was one of the very first issues to be swift-boated by social conservatives. In 1971, Congress actually passed a comprehensive child care bill that was vetoed by Richard Nixon. The next time the bill came up, members were flooded with mail accusing them of being anti-family communists who wanted to let kids sue their parents if they were forced to go to church. It scared the heck out of everybody.
Right now, the only parents who routinely get serious child-care assistance from the government are extremely poor mothers in welfare-to-work programs. Even for them, the waiting lists tend to be ridiculously long. In many states, once the woman actually gets a job, she loses the day care. Middle-class families get zip, even though a decent private child care program costs $12,000 a year in some parts of the country.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, or Naccrra, (this is an area replete with extraordinary people organized into groups with impossible names) says that in some states the average annual price of care was larger than the entire median income of a single parent with two children. For child care workers, the average wage is $8.78 an hour. It’s one of the worst-paying career tracks in the country. A preschool teacher with a postgraduate degree and years of experience can make $30,000 a year. You need certification in this country to be a butcher, a barber or a manicurist, but only 12 states require any training to take care of children. Only three require comprehensive background checks. In Iowa, there are 591 child care programs to every one inspector. California inspects child care centers once every five years.
“You have a work force that makes $8.78 an hour. They have no training. They have not been background checked, and we’ve put them in with children who don’t have the verbal skills to even tell somebody that they’re being treated badly,” said Linda Smith, the executive director of Naccrra. “What is wrong with a country that thinks that’s O.K.?”
--Gail Collins
Right now, the only parents who routinely get serious child-care assistance from the government are extremely poor mothers in welfare-to-work programs. Even for them, the waiting lists tend to be ridiculously long. In many states, once the woman actually gets a job, she loses the day care. Middle-class families get zip, even though a decent private child care program costs $12,000 a year in some parts of the country.
The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, or Naccrra, (this is an area replete with extraordinary people organized into groups with impossible names) says that in some states the average annual price of care was larger than the entire median income of a single parent with two children. For child care workers, the average wage is $8.78 an hour. It’s one of the worst-paying career tracks in the country. A preschool teacher with a postgraduate degree and years of experience can make $30,000 a year. You need certification in this country to be a butcher, a barber or a manicurist, but only 12 states require any training to take care of children. Only three require comprehensive background checks. In Iowa, there are 591 child care programs to every one inspector. California inspects child care centers once every five years.
“You have a work force that makes $8.78 an hour. They have no training. They have not been background checked, and we’ve put them in with children who don’t have the verbal skills to even tell somebody that they’re being treated badly,” said Linda Smith, the executive director of Naccrra. “What is wrong with a country that thinks that’s O.K.?”
--Gail Collins
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Scripture as Story
Teaching scripture as a story allows God's story to become a guiding light for the learner. Resources for faith are provided that can support a person's character development. Images are presented that can nurture a construction of Christian identity that is faithful to the church.... Hearers become inspired and encouraged to identify their story with the scripture. Readers are equipped to relate and broaden their personal experiences in light of their social existence. Learners are empowered to judge and redefine what is meaningful in their lives.
--Joseph V. Crockett
--Joseph V. Crockett
Monday, October 15, 2007
Sustainable Life
by Brian McLaren
According to the World Wildlife Fund, each of us needs about 2.5 acres of arable land to be sustained with needed food. Then we need to add another two acres or so--enough land to sustain the plants and animals that keep our ecosystem balanced and fertile. So, each of the 6.7 billion human beings requires, at minimum, 4.45 acres of fertile land.
But the math stopped working in the latter part of the previous century. The fact is, we're using about 5.44 acres per person on average, which exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet. And these numbers are skewed by our disproportionate ecological footprint as Americans--we require over 23 acres per person to sustain us at the standard of living to which we have become accustomed.
Perhaps we can be forgiven for developing this unsustainable lifestyle because we didn't know what we were doing. But now, as the information becomes available - and increasingly incontrovertible--we have a new responsbility and opportunity. And here is my firm belief: whatever the pleasures that come from living an unsustainable, and therefore unwise, life, the pleasures of living a wise and sustainable life will be far greater.
I was speaking on these topics recently, and a woman told me she wrote a note to her husband during my talk, saying something like, "You got me up at 7 a.m. to hear some guy make me feel guilty for being a successful American? Thanks a lot!" But she told me later, with some emotion, that by the end of the talk, she felt God had spoken to her. "The Holy Spirit washed over me," she said. She was genuinely excited about the chance to learn to live better, and to seek a higher kind of success than we have achieved so far--a wise success, a good success, a sustainable success.
This is true in my own life. When I was researching my most recent book, I kept adding some small choices to my life to adjust my lifestyle to what I was learning. For example, we set a moratorium on incandescent bulbs in our house. Whenever one blows, we're replacing it with a compact flourescent, and it feels fantastic to do so. I took about an hour and built a composting bin in my back yard, and it's really enjoyable to add biodegradable kitchen scraps to it each day. These are small things, but I think if you try them, you'll agree: this isn't drudgery and painful sacrifice.
As the psalmist said, "You show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I think it was Jane Goodall who said something like this: "You thought the age of reason was good? Wait until you see the age of love!" And I would add, "You thought the age of consumption and waste was good? Wait until you experience the joy of the age of sustainability and wise use!"
In Deuteronomy 15, God promised the people that if they lived according to the Lord's ways, there would be enough for everyone and "there will be no one in need among you." This is the dream: that we learn to live "in the ways of the Lord" so that there is enough for everyone and the planet is well-cared for, flourishing and green, full of birdsongs, and teeming with life, to the glory of God.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, each of us needs about 2.5 acres of arable land to be sustained with needed food. Then we need to add another two acres or so--enough land to sustain the plants and animals that keep our ecosystem balanced and fertile. So, each of the 6.7 billion human beings requires, at minimum, 4.45 acres of fertile land.
But the math stopped working in the latter part of the previous century. The fact is, we're using about 5.44 acres per person on average, which exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet. And these numbers are skewed by our disproportionate ecological footprint as Americans--we require over 23 acres per person to sustain us at the standard of living to which we have become accustomed.
Perhaps we can be forgiven for developing this unsustainable lifestyle because we didn't know what we were doing. But now, as the information becomes available - and increasingly incontrovertible--we have a new responsbility and opportunity. And here is my firm belief: whatever the pleasures that come from living an unsustainable, and therefore unwise, life, the pleasures of living a wise and sustainable life will be far greater.
I was speaking on these topics recently, and a woman told me she wrote a note to her husband during my talk, saying something like, "You got me up at 7 a.m. to hear some guy make me feel guilty for being a successful American? Thanks a lot!" But she told me later, with some emotion, that by the end of the talk, she felt God had spoken to her. "The Holy Spirit washed over me," she said. She was genuinely excited about the chance to learn to live better, and to seek a higher kind of success than we have achieved so far--a wise success, a good success, a sustainable success.
This is true in my own life. When I was researching my most recent book, I kept adding some small choices to my life to adjust my lifestyle to what I was learning. For example, we set a moratorium on incandescent bulbs in our house. Whenever one blows, we're replacing it with a compact flourescent, and it feels fantastic to do so. I took about an hour and built a composting bin in my back yard, and it's really enjoyable to add biodegradable kitchen scraps to it each day. These are small things, but I think if you try them, you'll agree: this isn't drudgery and painful sacrifice.
As the psalmist said, "You show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I think it was Jane Goodall who said something like this: "You thought the age of reason was good? Wait until you see the age of love!" And I would add, "You thought the age of consumption and waste was good? Wait until you experience the joy of the age of sustainability and wise use!"
In Deuteronomy 15, God promised the people that if they lived according to the Lord's ways, there would be enough for everyone and "there will be no one in need among you." This is the dream: that we learn to live "in the ways of the Lord" so that there is enough for everyone and the planet is well-cared for, flourishing and green, full of birdsongs, and teeming with life, to the glory of God.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Betrayal of Trust
by Brian McLaren
I remember about eight years ago when then presidential candidate George W. Bush repeatedly claimed that he would restore honor to the presidency, soiled as it had been by our previous president's infamous affair. I remember hoping he would succeed. But a new kind of shame has come to the office and to our nation as reports surface about our government's secret authorization of torture. We all share in this shame.
Conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan expresses what many of us feel. He reminds his readers:
"... my first response to reports of abuse and torture at Gitmo was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception ... It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by the far left or was part of al Qaeda propaganda. After all, they train captives to lie about this stuff. Bottom line: I trusted this president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that we were and are defending."
Sadly, he laments, that trust was betrayed:
"And then I was forced to confront the evidence. He betrayed all of us. He lied. He authorized torture in secret, and then, when busted after Abu Ghraib, blamed it on low-level grunts. This was not a mistake. It was a betrayal."
The word "betrayal," of course, recalls Moveon.org's Sept. 26 ad. Many considered the pun childish at best, politically unsavvy at least, or worse. There was a rush to condemn anyone who failed to condemn the ad. But Sullivan's use of the word strikes me as anything but childish.
Our nation's reputation, not to mention that of the presidency, has been dishonored by this betrayal of trust. Honorable people--conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat--need to follow Andrew Sullivan's example, coming together to express our grief and outrage about the political hypocrisy and betrayal to which we have been subjected by people we elected.
I remember about eight years ago when then presidential candidate George W. Bush repeatedly claimed that he would restore honor to the presidency, soiled as it had been by our previous president's infamous affair. I remember hoping he would succeed. But a new kind of shame has come to the office and to our nation as reports surface about our government's secret authorization of torture. We all share in this shame.
Conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan expresses what many of us feel. He reminds his readers:
"... my first response to reports of abuse and torture at Gitmo was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception ... It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by the far left or was part of al Qaeda propaganda. After all, they train captives to lie about this stuff. Bottom line: I trusted this president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that we were and are defending."
Sadly, he laments, that trust was betrayed:
"And then I was forced to confront the evidence. He betrayed all of us. He lied. He authorized torture in secret, and then, when busted after Abu Ghraib, blamed it on low-level grunts. This was not a mistake. It was a betrayal."
The word "betrayal," of course, recalls Moveon.org's Sept. 26 ad. Many considered the pun childish at best, politically unsavvy at least, or worse. There was a rush to condemn anyone who failed to condemn the ad. But Sullivan's use of the word strikes me as anything but childish.
Our nation's reputation, not to mention that of the presidency, has been dishonored by this betrayal of trust. Honorable people--conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat--need to follow Andrew Sullivan's example, coming together to express our grief and outrage about the political hypocrisy and betrayal to which we have been subjected by people we elected.
Christian Responsibility
It was hard to watch the shocking footage of Japanese photojournalist Kenji Nagai, 50, being shot dead by the Burmese military last week. Mr. Nagai was an innocent bystander in the way of a military government that has been bulldozing the human dignity of the thousands of Shan and Karen ethnic people it has displaced, raped, tortured, and killed, as well as the thousands of human rights and democracy activists the regime has also imprisoned and killed.
This is clearly not the kind of governing authority the apostle Paul had in mind as he told the Roman Christians to submit to the authorities. Romans 13 has often been (mistakenly) used to legitimize oppressive government. But Paul’s description of the kind of authority to which Christians must submit is one that “protects the good and punishes evil.” Later, Augustine peeled back the veneer of legitimacy that we mistakenly give to oppressive government when he rhetorically asked, “Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?” True government authority is just, and justice surely requires much more respect of the human dignity with which each Burmese is endowed by his or her Creator.
So, what is our Christian responsibility as we watch in horror as the Burma military junta digs in its heels? Perhaps we honor the dignity of the oppressed when we pray for their protection and liberation from oppression. Even more, we join God as co-creators of justice on earth (as it is in heaven) when we actively engage the principalities and powers who are generally satisfied by our complacence. Let us thank our government for what it has done and ask it to do more to empower those on the ground in Burma seeking to breathe free.
--Bret Kincaid
This is clearly not the kind of governing authority the apostle Paul had in mind as he told the Roman Christians to submit to the authorities. Romans 13 has often been (mistakenly) used to legitimize oppressive government. But Paul’s description of the kind of authority to which Christians must submit is one that “protects the good and punishes evil.” Later, Augustine peeled back the veneer of legitimacy that we mistakenly give to oppressive government when he rhetorically asked, “Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?” True government authority is just, and justice surely requires much more respect of the human dignity with which each Burmese is endowed by his or her Creator.
So, what is our Christian responsibility as we watch in horror as the Burma military junta digs in its heels? Perhaps we honor the dignity of the oppressed when we pray for their protection and liberation from oppression. Even more, we join God as co-creators of justice on earth (as it is in heaven) when we actively engage the principalities and powers who are generally satisfied by our complacence. Let us thank our government for what it has done and ask it to do more to empower those on the ground in Burma seeking to breathe free.
--Bret Kincaid
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Multiply Sense of Betrayal by 388 Years
by Leonard Pitts
Please indulge me as I answer an e-mail I received last week in response to a recent column decrying unequal justice as represented by the controversy in Jena, La. A fellow named John wrote:
Your columns usually merit reading. But this time, You sound like the typical Black guy crying ''victim.'' Leonard, you list instances of Black injustice and I'm sure there are many. However have you forgot about O.J.? He got away with murder Leonard. He killed his white wife! Or how about Sharpton and the Brawley case? Or the Duke case? I could go on and on. You want more respect for you and your race? Stop sounding like a nigger and start sounding and acting like a Black man. You'll get respect and justice. Try being a Black man all the time, not just when it fits your agenda.
John, thank you for writing. Here are a few words in response.
That column you disliked argued that Jena, where six black kids were initially charged with attempted murder after they gave a white kid a black eye and knocked him out, is part of a long pattern of the justice system being used to keep African Americans in line. Indeed, black students at Jena High report that even before the fight, the DA warned them in an assembly that he could make their lives go away "with the stroke of a pen.''
The students say he was looking directly at them when he said it. The DA has denied this, but I find the denial less than credible given the unfathomable charges he sought to file against the black kids while a white kid who attacked a black one got off with a comparative slap on the wrist.
Anyway, you were one of a number of readers who wrote to remind me of Simpson. If the point of your reference to him, Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse case was that the justice system has repeatedly and historically mistreated whites, too, on the basis of race, I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Not that those cases were not travesties. They were. And if those travesties leave you outraged, well, I share that feeling.
But, here's what I want you to do. Take that sense of outrage, that sense of betrayal, of having been cheated by a system you once thought you could trust, and multiply it. Multiply it by Valdosta and Waco and Birmingham and Fort Lauderdale and Money and Marion and Omaha and thousands of other cities and towns where black men and women were lynched, burned, bombed, shot, with impunity. Multiply it by the thousands of cops and courts that refused to arrest or punish even when they held photographs of the perpetrators taken in the act. Multiply it by a million lesser outrages. Multiply it by L.A. cops planting evidence. Multiply it by the black drug defendant who is 48 times more likely to go to jail than the white one who commits the same crime and has the same record. Multiply it by Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo. Multiply it by 388 years.
And then come talk to me about O.J. Simpson.
You may call all that ''playing victim.'' I call it providing context. Jena did not happen in a vacuum. It did not spring from nowhere. So this false equivalence, this pretense that the justice system as experienced by white people and black ones is in any way similar, is ignorant and obnoxious.
Much like your turning to a racial slur to describe how you think I ''sound.'' I found that word interesting coming near the end of an e-mail whose tone, while critical, had, until that point, been reasonable. I suppose you just couldn't help yourself.
It says something about the intransigence, self-justification and retarded self-awareness of American racism that a man who uses the language you do would, in the same breath, offer advice to black folks seeking ''respect and justice.'' Appreciate the effort, John, but I'm afraid you can't solve the problem.
See, you are the problem.
Please indulge me as I answer an e-mail I received last week in response to a recent column decrying unequal justice as represented by the controversy in Jena, La. A fellow named John wrote:
Your columns usually merit reading. But this time, You sound like the typical Black guy crying ''victim.'' Leonard, you list instances of Black injustice and I'm sure there are many. However have you forgot about O.J.? He got away with murder Leonard. He killed his white wife! Or how about Sharpton and the Brawley case? Or the Duke case? I could go on and on. You want more respect for you and your race? Stop sounding like a nigger and start sounding and acting like a Black man. You'll get respect and justice. Try being a Black man all the time, not just when it fits your agenda.
John, thank you for writing. Here are a few words in response.
That column you disliked argued that Jena, where six black kids were initially charged with attempted murder after they gave a white kid a black eye and knocked him out, is part of a long pattern of the justice system being used to keep African Americans in line. Indeed, black students at Jena High report that even before the fight, the DA warned them in an assembly that he could make their lives go away "with the stroke of a pen.''
The students say he was looking directly at them when he said it. The DA has denied this, but I find the denial less than credible given the unfathomable charges he sought to file against the black kids while a white kid who attacked a black one got off with a comparative slap on the wrist.
Anyway, you were one of a number of readers who wrote to remind me of Simpson. If the point of your reference to him, Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse case was that the justice system has repeatedly and historically mistreated whites, too, on the basis of race, I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Not that those cases were not travesties. They were. And if those travesties leave you outraged, well, I share that feeling.
But, here's what I want you to do. Take that sense of outrage, that sense of betrayal, of having been cheated by a system you once thought you could trust, and multiply it. Multiply it by Valdosta and Waco and Birmingham and Fort Lauderdale and Money and Marion and Omaha and thousands of other cities and towns where black men and women were lynched, burned, bombed, shot, with impunity. Multiply it by the thousands of cops and courts that refused to arrest or punish even when they held photographs of the perpetrators taken in the act. Multiply it by a million lesser outrages. Multiply it by L.A. cops planting evidence. Multiply it by the black drug defendant who is 48 times more likely to go to jail than the white one who commits the same crime and has the same record. Multiply it by Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo. Multiply it by 388 years.
And then come talk to me about O.J. Simpson.
You may call all that ''playing victim.'' I call it providing context. Jena did not happen in a vacuum. It did not spring from nowhere. So this false equivalence, this pretense that the justice system as experienced by white people and black ones is in any way similar, is ignorant and obnoxious.
Much like your turning to a racial slur to describe how you think I ''sound.'' I found that word interesting coming near the end of an e-mail whose tone, while critical, had, until that point, been reasonable. I suppose you just couldn't help yourself.
It says something about the intransigence, self-justification and retarded self-awareness of American racism that a man who uses the language you do would, in the same breath, offer advice to black folks seeking ''respect and justice.'' Appreciate the effort, John, but I'm afraid you can't solve the problem.
See, you are the problem.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Masochistic Exercise
For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.
--Joseph Berger
--Joseph Berger
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Christian Democrats?
by Diana Butler Bass
With James Dobson and major conservative evangelical leaders threatening to bolt the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is nominated for president, conventional wisdom about God and politics has been turned on its head. For the last 25 years, conservative evangelicals could reliably count on the Republicans to choose a candidate acceptable to their version of Christian politics. This year, however, the leading Republican candidates seem unable to articulate any convincing religious message, much less a strongly biblical perspective on issues. All the while, the three leading Democratic candidates can testify to personal faith, possess robust theological views, and ground many policies in broadly biblical principles.
In recent weeks, Rudy Giuliani has awkwardly quoted scripture ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone") to defend his personal record with adultery, multiple divorces, and family dissension. John McCain, an Episcopalian, said he was really a member of a Baptist church in Phoenix for the last 20 years—only to later confess that he had not been baptized in that tradition, thus excluding him from membership in the congregation. Fred Thompson rarely attends church. And, of course, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, appears to be serious and faithful about his religion—a religion long categorized as a "cult" by many evangelicals. While Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee hold pristine evangelical credentials, neither appears able to move into the top tier of Republican candidates. Republicans are all over the theological map, with no clear direction.
Meanwhile, over in the Democratic camp, Hillary Clinton appears increasingly comfortable speaking of her faith, prayer life, and the Christian bases of policies such as health care, poverty, and the environment. A new book, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, written by Paul Kengor (although his conservative bias colors the analysis, he attempts to be fair) depicts Senator Clinton as a classical Methodist who takes the social vision of John Wesley seriously, and as a baby-boomer seeker whose life can be seen as a search for a meaning, wisdom, and social transformation. In 2005, Matt Bai of Time magazine suggested that Mrs. Clinton could lead an ethical revolution toward a "new Democratic moralism."
Senator Clinton is not alone among Democratic candidates. Barack Obama is an adult convert to the Christian faith with a sophisticated grasp of neo-orthodox theology and a commitment to African-American Christianity. John Edwards consistently bases his primary issues—poverty and peacemaking—in the biblical values from his Baptist faith. All three appear to be renewing the Christian tradition of the Social Gospel, developing new ways of interweaving vital faith with the need for political change. They are reminding a new generation of American voters that, in the words of theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, "God is the substance of all revolutions."
In this election, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are more conversant with scripture, Christian theology, and biblical ethics than the Republican candidates. (I, for one, would like to see a Bible drill between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani!) The Democratic candidates' interpretation of faith points them toward different policies than the conservative evangelical politicians of decades past, but theirs are Christian perspectives and passions nonetheless.
Of course, evangelicals like James Dobson will never support Clinton, Obama, or Edwards no matter how richly theological their vision. But while religion should never be a test for political office, people of any faith should cheer that the Democratic Party now appears to understand that American pluralism and politics benefit from open, theologically serious, and spiritually grounded leadership. And we all benefit when more than one party contributes to the conversation between faith and public life.
With James Dobson and major conservative evangelical leaders threatening to bolt the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is nominated for president, conventional wisdom about God and politics has been turned on its head. For the last 25 years, conservative evangelicals could reliably count on the Republicans to choose a candidate acceptable to their version of Christian politics. This year, however, the leading Republican candidates seem unable to articulate any convincing religious message, much less a strongly biblical perspective on issues. All the while, the three leading Democratic candidates can testify to personal faith, possess robust theological views, and ground many policies in broadly biblical principles.
In recent weeks, Rudy Giuliani has awkwardly quoted scripture ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone") to defend his personal record with adultery, multiple divorces, and family dissension. John McCain, an Episcopalian, said he was really a member of a Baptist church in Phoenix for the last 20 years—only to later confess that he had not been baptized in that tradition, thus excluding him from membership in the congregation. Fred Thompson rarely attends church. And, of course, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, appears to be serious and faithful about his religion—a religion long categorized as a "cult" by many evangelicals. While Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee hold pristine evangelical credentials, neither appears able to move into the top tier of Republican candidates. Republicans are all over the theological map, with no clear direction.
Meanwhile, over in the Democratic camp, Hillary Clinton appears increasingly comfortable speaking of her faith, prayer life, and the Christian bases of policies such as health care, poverty, and the environment. A new book, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, written by Paul Kengor (although his conservative bias colors the analysis, he attempts to be fair) depicts Senator Clinton as a classical Methodist who takes the social vision of John Wesley seriously, and as a baby-boomer seeker whose life can be seen as a search for a meaning, wisdom, and social transformation. In 2005, Matt Bai of Time magazine suggested that Mrs. Clinton could lead an ethical revolution toward a "new Democratic moralism."
Senator Clinton is not alone among Democratic candidates. Barack Obama is an adult convert to the Christian faith with a sophisticated grasp of neo-orthodox theology and a commitment to African-American Christianity. John Edwards consistently bases his primary issues—poverty and peacemaking—in the biblical values from his Baptist faith. All three appear to be renewing the Christian tradition of the Social Gospel, developing new ways of interweaving vital faith with the need for political change. They are reminding a new generation of American voters that, in the words of theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, "God is the substance of all revolutions."
In this election, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are more conversant with scripture, Christian theology, and biblical ethics than the Republican candidates. (I, for one, would like to see a Bible drill between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani!) The Democratic candidates' interpretation of faith points them toward different policies than the conservative evangelical politicians of decades past, but theirs are Christian perspectives and passions nonetheless.
Of course, evangelicals like James Dobson will never support Clinton, Obama, or Edwards no matter how richly theological their vision. But while religion should never be a test for political office, people of any faith should cheer that the Democratic Party now appears to understand that American pluralism and politics benefit from open, theologically serious, and spiritually grounded leadership. And we all benefit when more than one party contributes to the conversation between faith and public life.
Monday, October 01, 2007
The Effect on Black Communities
What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.
America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?
Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.
But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.
--Orlando Patterson
America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?
Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.
But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.
--Orlando Patterson
Friday, September 28, 2007
Bush
Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.
--Paul Krugman
--Paul Krugman
Monday, September 24, 2007
Love our Enemy?
How do we learn to love our enemy? By seeing him as a brother who is tempted as we are, and attacked by the same real enemy which is the spirit of hatred and of "Antichrist." This same enemy seeks to destroy us both by pitting us against one another.
--Thomas Merton
--Thomas Merton
Friday, September 21, 2007
Subtle Racism?
I’m always fascinated by frequent comments that racism is now much more subtle in America today. Well, one place racism is definitely not subtle is in the criminal justice system. Overt and very stark racial disparities are a matter of daily occurrence when it comes to law enforcement, the judicial process, and the prison system. And almost anyone who actually works with those systems is acutely aware of that fact.
--Jim Wallis
--Jim Wallis
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Race in America
Rich with symbolism and iconic images, the case of the Jena Six certainly makes for a compelling parable of racial injustice in America. And as more and more people identify with the story, its meaning becomes more and more personal. Given the number of Americans who feel they have a stake in this case, it's no wonder that presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have issued statements expressing their concern.
The story, rehearsed by now in newspapers around the globe, begins at an assembly last fall, when a black freshman asked if he was allowed to sit under a large tree on school grounds that he had heard was "whites-only." He was given permission, but the next day three nooses were found swinging from its branches. The principal tracked down the offenders, three boys from the rodeo team, and recommended expulsion. But superintendent Roy Breithaupt opted for a three-day in-school suspension. "Adolescents play pranks," he told the Chicago Tribune. "I don't think it was a threat against anybody."
Racial tensions continued to escalate throughout the fall. A group of black students organized a sit-in under the tree to protest the white students' light punishment. Fights broke out in school and at parties; a white man waved his gun in a confrontation with black students at a convenience store; and on November 30 one of the school buildings was suspiciously set ablaze. Then, on December 4, Bell slugged Justin Barker, a white student who had been taunting him with racial slurs and defending the noose-hangers, and the other members of the Jena Six joined in. During the skirmish, Barker smacked his head on the pavement and suffered a concussion. He was treated at the local hospital and released a few hours later, and was in good enough shape to head out and socialize that evening.
District Attorney Walters, who had earlier that fall threatened black students at school that he could "take away your lives with a stroke of my pen," pushed for maximum charges. The Jena Six were expelled, arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy--their shoes were described as potentially lethal weapons. Bell, the first to face trial, saw his murder charges reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. No attempt was made by his public defender to contest the racial makeup of the jury pool, nor did he call any witnesses during the trial. Bell was convicted by an all-white jury in June.
"There are several issues in this case," says Bob Noel, one of five attorneys who signed on as Bell's new counsel after the trial. "One of the biggest is disproportionate treatment. People may think of a similarly situated kid, maybe middle-class, maybe white, and they think, Oh, let's give him another chance. When he's poor and black, it's not necessarily the case. Another is funding for indigent defense: If there's no money to adequately pay lawyers, to have support staff for them and resources they can use, they're always at a major disadvantage. And the other is the issue of race in America."
--Mark Sorkin
The story, rehearsed by now in newspapers around the globe, begins at an assembly last fall, when a black freshman asked if he was allowed to sit under a large tree on school grounds that he had heard was "whites-only." He was given permission, but the next day three nooses were found swinging from its branches. The principal tracked down the offenders, three boys from the rodeo team, and recommended expulsion. But superintendent Roy Breithaupt opted for a three-day in-school suspension. "Adolescents play pranks," he told the Chicago Tribune. "I don't think it was a threat against anybody."
Racial tensions continued to escalate throughout the fall. A group of black students organized a sit-in under the tree to protest the white students' light punishment. Fights broke out in school and at parties; a white man waved his gun in a confrontation with black students at a convenience store; and on November 30 one of the school buildings was suspiciously set ablaze. Then, on December 4, Bell slugged Justin Barker, a white student who had been taunting him with racial slurs and defending the noose-hangers, and the other members of the Jena Six joined in. During the skirmish, Barker smacked his head on the pavement and suffered a concussion. He was treated at the local hospital and released a few hours later, and was in good enough shape to head out and socialize that evening.
District Attorney Walters, who had earlier that fall threatened black students at school that he could "take away your lives with a stroke of my pen," pushed for maximum charges. The Jena Six were expelled, arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy--their shoes were described as potentially lethal weapons. Bell, the first to face trial, saw his murder charges reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. No attempt was made by his public defender to contest the racial makeup of the jury pool, nor did he call any witnesses during the trial. Bell was convicted by an all-white jury in June.
"There are several issues in this case," says Bob Noel, one of five attorneys who signed on as Bell's new counsel after the trial. "One of the biggest is disproportionate treatment. People may think of a similarly situated kid, maybe middle-class, maybe white, and they think, Oh, let's give him another chance. When he's poor and black, it's not necessarily the case. Another is funding for indigent defense: If there's no money to adequately pay lawyers, to have support staff for them and resources they can use, they're always at a major disadvantage. And the other is the issue of race in America."
--Mark Sorkin
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Nonviolence
Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance... But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.
--Thomas Merton
--Thomas Merton
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Barometer for Us
It is perfectly appropriate to love Jews in the same manner as God wants us to support women's equal rights, fight poverty, and love the poor. But it is very difficult to look at the Bible on such a pick-and-choose basis. You can't look at the verses about the Jews, women, or the poor without also looking at the verse that says in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, no man or woman, no lord or slave (Galatians 3:28). If we don't look holistically at the general ethos of the Bible we miss out on what is of extreme importance in our Christian life. Prophetic interpretation cannot, and should not, be done in such a manner. As Christians, we must defend life that is created in the image of God. We also must look for justice and fight against cruelty and injustice. That, rather than today's headlines, or the warped interpretation of the Bible based on a particular theological point of view, should be the barometer for us.
--Daoud Kuttab
--Daoud Kuttab
Wal-mart's Conversion
Wal-mart’s recent “green” conversions appears to be much more than skin deep. This week came news that the stores would stop carrying cypress mulch harvested or manufactured in Louisiana, helping to slow a poor forestry practice that threatens many of the state’s beautiful cypress swamps. In ignorance, gardeners throughout the U.S. were inadvertently causing Louisiana’s natural storm protection to be ground into mulch. Wal-mart has stepped into the information gap to be a responsible retailer.
--Rusty Pritchard
--Rusty Pritchard
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Give Birth to the New World
As I was writing my original little ditty, "Reflections of an Ex-patriot," from my room here in north Philly, a fight broke out among some of the kids on our block. Then their parents came out and the fight grew louder and louder, until our whole block was a chaotic brawl. It's actually been a while since we've had a fight like this one. It just kept building and building, consuming our neighborhood, reminding me of the inferno a few weeks back. Ugliness. Ugliness I can hear out my window and see in Iraq.
I thought of how quickly revenge escalates from a couple of kids to a block filled with rage. I thought of Sept. 11, of Iraq. Obviously, I couldn't just keep writing about peace while a war raged on my street. So, out I went (hence the tardiness and change of the title on this piece).
I remember hearing a definition of idolatry as "something you would sacrifice your children for." There is nothing we fight more passionately for than flag and countries, biology, and nation. And so the fire rages on. But I am thankful for days where we pause to mourn, to honor life, and to cry together. I cried with a few neighbors yesterday about how people hurt each other, and I cried with a church last night over a world that can't stop hitting back. Before the showing of The Camden 28, we celebrated Mass in Camden. We prayed that God would heal the brokenness of our world, our cities, and our hearts. The scripture for Mass was Romans 8, which describes all of creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Today is a day for groaning. And yet we were reminded that these are the pains of birth -- not death -- but birth. There is still hope, even on a day marked by death, and death after death. In the end the world is pregnant with hope, the hope of a kingdom other than Rome or America. And we were reminded that we are the midwives of that kingdom. We are to help give birth to the new world.
--Shane Claiborne
I thought of how quickly revenge escalates from a couple of kids to a block filled with rage. I thought of Sept. 11, of Iraq. Obviously, I couldn't just keep writing about peace while a war raged on my street. So, out I went (hence the tardiness and change of the title on this piece).
I remember hearing a definition of idolatry as "something you would sacrifice your children for." There is nothing we fight more passionately for than flag and countries, biology, and nation. And so the fire rages on. But I am thankful for days where we pause to mourn, to honor life, and to cry together. I cried with a few neighbors yesterday about how people hurt each other, and I cried with a church last night over a world that can't stop hitting back. Before the showing of The Camden 28, we celebrated Mass in Camden. We prayed that God would heal the brokenness of our world, our cities, and our hearts. The scripture for Mass was Romans 8, which describes all of creation as groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Today is a day for groaning. And yet we were reminded that these are the pains of birth -- not death -- but birth. There is still hope, even on a day marked by death, and death after death. In the end the world is pregnant with hope, the hope of a kingdom other than Rome or America. And we were reminded that we are the midwives of that kingdom. We are to help give birth to the new world.
--Shane Claiborne
The Iraq Debacle
The Iraq debacle reveals military solutions to be among the least effective in the battle against terrorism.
--Jim Wallis
--Jim Wallis
Friday, September 07, 2007
Handouts
I'm very grateful to all these organizations in the United States, especially the private and religious organizations. I appreciate the food and clothing they send. I thank them sincerely for their willingness to help, and I know they do it with great love. But I'd also like to say that this realationship–where we're dependent on the goodwill of outsiders–isn't the kind of relationship we'd like to have.... We're not going to solve our problem through handouts. Because our problem is a social one. And until we change this system, all the charity in the world won't take us out of poverty.
--Elvia Alvarado
--Elvia Alvarado
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Globalization
Today, globalization seems to have an inevitable logic, but no comparable ethic.
--Jim Wallis
--Jim Wallis
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
One Brick at a Time
People say, "What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.
--Dorothy Day
--Dorothy Day
Monday, September 03, 2007
Is Religion Man-Made?
by Stanley Fish
Sure it is. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think that this fact about religion is enough to invalidate its claims.
“[R]eligion and the churches,” declares Hitchens “are manufactured, and this salient fact is too obvious to ignore.” True to his faith, Dawkins finds that the manufacturing and growth of religion is best described in evolutionary terms: “[R]eligions, like languages, evolve with sufficient randomness, from beginnings that are sufficiently arbitrary, to generate the bewildering – and sometimes dangerous – richness of diversity.” Harris finds a historical origin for religion and religious traditions, and it is not flattering: “The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology.”
And, they continue, it wasn’t even the work of sand-strewn men who labored in the same place at the same time. Rather, it was pieced together from fragments and contradictory sources and then had claimed for it a spurious unity: “Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world” (Dawkins).
Hitchens adds that “the sciences of textual criticism, archaeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made.” And yet, wonders Harris, “nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity.”
So there’s the triple-pronged case. Religions are humanly constructed traditions and at their center are corrupted texts that were cobbled together by provincial, ignorant men who knew less about the world than any high-school teenager alive today. Sounds devastating, but when you get right down to it, all it amounts to is the assertion that God didn’t write the books or establish the terms of worship, men did, and that the results are (to put it charitably) less than perfect.
But that is exactly what you would expect. It is God (if there is one) who is perfect and infinite; men are finite and confined within historical perspectives. And any effort to apprehend him – including the efforts of the compilers of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran – will necessarily fall short of a transparency that will be achieved (if it is achieved) only at a future moment of beatific vision. Now – any now, whether it be 2007 or 6,000 years ago – we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians, 13:12); one day, it is hoped, we shall see face to face.
In short, it is the unfathomable and unbridgeable distance between deity and creature that assures the failure of the latter to comprehend or prove (in the sense of validating) the former.
O.L. (in a comment on June 11), identifies the “religion is man-made claim” as the “strongest foundation of atheism” because “it undermines the divinity of god.” No, it undermines the divinity of man, which is, after all, the entire point of religion: man is not divine, but mortal (capable of death), and he is dependent upon a creator who by definition cannot be contained within human categories of perception and description. “How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor” (Romans, 11:33-34). It is no wonder, then, that the attempts to contain him – in scriptures, in ceremonies, in prayer – are flawed, incomplete and forever inadequate. Rather than telling against divinity, the radical imperfection, even corruption, of religious texts and traditions can be read as a proof of divinity, or at least of the extent to which divinity exceeds human measure.
If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.
Proving the existence of God would be possible only if God were an item in his own field; that is, if he were the kind of object that could be brought into view by a very large telescope or an incredibly powerful microscope. God, however – again if there is a God – is not in the world; the world is in him; and therefore there is no perspective, however technologically sophisticated, from which he could be spied. As that which encompasses everything, he cannot be discerned by anything or anyone because there is no possibility of achieving the requisite distance from his presence that discerning him would require.
The criticism made by atheists that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision.
This does not mean that my arguments constitute a proof of the truth of religion; for if I were to claim that I would be making the atheists’ mistake from the other direction. Nor are they arguments in which I have a personal investment. Their purpose and function is simply to show how the atheists’ arguments miss their mark and, indeed, could not possibly hit it.
At various points Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens all testify to their admiration for Shakespeare, who, they seem to think, is more godly than God. They would do well to remember one of the bard’s most famous lines, uttered by Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Sure it is. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think that this fact about religion is enough to invalidate its claims.
“[R]eligion and the churches,” declares Hitchens “are manufactured, and this salient fact is too obvious to ignore.” True to his faith, Dawkins finds that the manufacturing and growth of religion is best described in evolutionary terms: “[R]eligions, like languages, evolve with sufficient randomness, from beginnings that are sufficiently arbitrary, to generate the bewildering – and sometimes dangerous – richness of diversity.” Harris finds a historical origin for religion and religious traditions, and it is not flattering: “The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology.”
And, they continue, it wasn’t even the work of sand-strewn men who labored in the same place at the same time. Rather, it was pieced together from fragments and contradictory sources and then had claimed for it a spurious unity: “Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world” (Dawkins).
Hitchens adds that “the sciences of textual criticism, archaeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made.” And yet, wonders Harris, “nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity.”
So there’s the triple-pronged case. Religions are humanly constructed traditions and at their center are corrupted texts that were cobbled together by provincial, ignorant men who knew less about the world than any high-school teenager alive today. Sounds devastating, but when you get right down to it, all it amounts to is the assertion that God didn’t write the books or establish the terms of worship, men did, and that the results are (to put it charitably) less than perfect.
But that is exactly what you would expect. It is God (if there is one) who is perfect and infinite; men are finite and confined within historical perspectives. And any effort to apprehend him – including the efforts of the compilers of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran – will necessarily fall short of a transparency that will be achieved (if it is achieved) only at a future moment of beatific vision. Now – any now, whether it be 2007 or 6,000 years ago – we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians, 13:12); one day, it is hoped, we shall see face to face.
In short, it is the unfathomable and unbridgeable distance between deity and creature that assures the failure of the latter to comprehend or prove (in the sense of validating) the former.
O.L. (in a comment on June 11), identifies the “religion is man-made claim” as the “strongest foundation of atheism” because “it undermines the divinity of god.” No, it undermines the divinity of man, which is, after all, the entire point of religion: man is not divine, but mortal (capable of death), and he is dependent upon a creator who by definition cannot be contained within human categories of perception and description. “How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor” (Romans, 11:33-34). It is no wonder, then, that the attempts to contain him – in scriptures, in ceremonies, in prayer – are flawed, incomplete and forever inadequate. Rather than telling against divinity, the radical imperfection, even corruption, of religious texts and traditions can be read as a proof of divinity, or at least of the extent to which divinity exceeds human measure.
If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.
Proving the existence of God would be possible only if God were an item in his own field; that is, if he were the kind of object that could be brought into view by a very large telescope or an incredibly powerful microscope. God, however – again if there is a God – is not in the world; the world is in him; and therefore there is no perspective, however technologically sophisticated, from which he could be spied. As that which encompasses everything, he cannot be discerned by anything or anyone because there is no possibility of achieving the requisite distance from his presence that discerning him would require.
The criticism made by atheists that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision.
This does not mean that my arguments constitute a proof of the truth of religion; for if I were to claim that I would be making the atheists’ mistake from the other direction. Nor are they arguments in which I have a personal investment. Their purpose and function is simply to show how the atheists’ arguments miss their mark and, indeed, could not possibly hit it.
At various points Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens all testify to their admiration for Shakespeare, who, they seem to think, is more godly than God. They would do well to remember one of the bard’s most famous lines, uttered by Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The Meaning of Blackness
Man, I wouldn't walk in Barack Obama's shoes for a million dollars. Oh, he seems like a swell guy. But it must get real old real fast being America's tabula rasa, its blank slate upon which it projects unresolved racial aspirations and fears. If it has been painful watching some conservative white Americans project upon him the latter (Is he too black? Is he Muslim? What about that weird name?), it has been just as painful if not more so watching many black Americans grappling with the former.
Here's Obama's problem: By the simple fact of his existence, he changes the conversation. Last week, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson aired a segment pondering what it means when Obama is asked whether he's black enough. He and two other white pundits pontificated, without apparent irony, upon the meaning of blackness. No blacks joined them. If there's been a plainer, though less intentional, argument for greater media diversity in recent days, I haven't seen it.
--Leonard Pitts
Here's Obama's problem: By the simple fact of his existence, he changes the conversation. Last week, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson aired a segment pondering what it means when Obama is asked whether he's black enough. He and two other white pundits pontificated, without apparent irony, upon the meaning of blackness. No blacks joined them. If there's been a plainer, though less intentional, argument for greater media diversity in recent days, I haven't seen it.
--Leonard Pitts
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Michael Vick, Dogfighting, and Animal Mistreatment
by Gregg Easterbrook
The disgusting thing about dogfighting isn't that animals battle and die -- after all, animals fight to the death in nature, tearing each other's flesh with heartless violence. The disgusting thing about dogfighting is that supposedly intelligent members of Homo sapiens add sadism to the natural equation by starving dogs to make them extra aggressive, filing their incisors to make the fights bloodier, and engaging in other acts unbecoming any man or woman of ethics. What Michael Vick confessed to Monday ought to disgust you, regardless of whether you are a dog lover. Include me. The Official Dog of TMQ -- a Chesapeake retriever, noble state dog of Maryland -- slumbers happily near my feet as I write this.
But the punishment expected to be imposed on Vick -- one to two years in federal prison, and perhaps never playing in the NFL again -- seems out of proportion to his actions and his status as a first-time offender. The situation is confusing because the federal crimes to which Vick pleaded guilty turn as much on gambling and racketeering as dogfighting; gambling and racketeering concern federal prosecutors because of their relationship to organized crime. Racketeering can lead to jail terms even for nonviolent first-time offenders not involved with drug sales, such as Vick. The NFL, for its part, has very strong reasons to detest gambling, and elaborately warns players they will be harshly penalized for associating with gamblers. Yet I can't help feeling there is overkill in the social, media and legal reactions to Vick, and that the overkill originates in hypocrisy about animals.
Thousands of animals are mistreated or killed in the United States every day without the killers so much as being criticized, let alone imprisoned. Ranchers and farmers kill stock animals or horses that are sick or injured. Some ranchers kill stock animals as gently as possible, others callously; in either case, prosecution is nearly unheard of. As Derek Jackson pointed out last week in the Boston Globe, greyhound tracks routinely race dogs to exhaustion and injury, then kill the losers, or simply eliminate less-strong pups: "184,604 greyhound puppies judged to be inferior for racing" were killed, legally, in the past 20 years.
Hunters shoot animals for sport. They do so lawfully, while the manner in which Vick harmed his dogs was unlawful. But from the perspective of the animal, there seems little difference between a hunter with a state game license zipped in his vest pocket shooting a deer as part of something the hunter views as really fun sport, and Vick shooting a dog as part of something Vick views as really fun sport. In both cases, animals suffer for human entertainment. The animal-ethics distinction between Vick's actions and lawful game hunting are murky at best. A first-time offender should go to prison over a murky distinction?
Much more troubling is that the overwhelming majority of Americans who eat meat and poultry -- I'm enthusiastically among them -- are complicit in the systematic cruel treatment of huge numbers of animals. Snickering about this, or saying you're tired of hearing about it, doesn't make it go away. Most animals used for meat experience miserable lives under cruel conditions, including confinement for extended periods in pits of excrement. (Michael Pollan, who enthusiastically consumes meat and fowl, describes the mistreatment in his important new book The Omnivore's Dilemma.) Meat animals don't magically stop living when it's time to become a product; they suffer as they die. One of Vick's dogs was shot, another electrocuted. Gunshots and electrocution are federally approved methods of livestock slaughter, sanctioned by the Department of Agriculture for the killing of cows and pigs. Regulations under the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 give federal sanction to shooting cows or pigs, or running electrical current through their bodies. Shooting and electrocution are viewed by federal law as humane ways to kill animals that will be consumed. Federal rules also allow slaughterhouses to hit cows in the head with a fast-moving piston that stuns them into semiconsciousness before they are sliced up. Being hit in the head with a powerful piston -- does that sound a bit painful, a bit cruel? It's done to tens of thousands of steers per year, lawfully.
Don't say "eew, gross" about how meat animals are butchered, then return to denouncing Vick. If you're eating a cheeseburger or BLT or steak or pot roast today, there's a good chance you are dining on an animal that was shot or electrocuted. You are complicit. You freely bought the meat, you did not demand Congress strengthen the Humane Slaughter Act. Livestock can be calmed and drugged before being slain. A few slaughterhouses do this, but most don't because it raises costs, and you, the consumer, demand the lowest possible price for your meal. Now about your turkey sub or coq au vin. Federal slaughter regulations apply mainly to large animals, leaving considerable freedom in the killing of fowl. Many poultry slaughterhouses kill chickens by slashing their throats rather than snapping their necks. Snapping the neck kills the bird quickly, ending suffering, but then the heart dies quickly, too. Slashing the throat causes the bird to live in agony for several minutes, heart still beating and pumping blood out of the slash -- and consumers prefer bloodless chicken meat.
Further, the Humane Slaughter Act exempts kosher and halal slaughter. In both traditions, the cow or lamb must be conscious when killed by having its carotid artery, or esophagus and trachea, slashed. The animal bleeds to death, convulsing in agony, as its heart pumps blood, which is viewed as unclean, out of the slashed openings. The delicious pastrami we consumed at a kosher deli, or the wonderfully good beef we could buy at a halal butcher, comes from an animal that suffered as it died.
Yes, Vick broke the law; yes, he arrogantly lied and refused to apologize when first caught; and yes, his actions before and after the dog killings indicate he is one stupid, stupid man. But Vick's lawbreaking was relatively minor compared to animal mistreatment that happens continuously, within the law, at nearly all levels of the meat production industry, and with which all but vegetarians are complicit. There is some kind of mass neurosis at work in the rush to denounce Vick, wag fingers and say he deserved even worse. Society wants to scapegoat Vick to avoid contemplating its own routine, systematic killing of animals. We couldn't all become vegetarians tomorrow: that is not practical. But American society is not even attempting to make the handling of meat animals less brutal, let alone working to transition away from a food-production order in which huge numbers of animals are systematically mistreated, then killed in ways that inflict terror and pain. We won't lift a finger to change the way animals die for us. But we will demand Michael Vick serve prison time to atone for our sins.
The disgusting thing about dogfighting isn't that animals battle and die -- after all, animals fight to the death in nature, tearing each other's flesh with heartless violence. The disgusting thing about dogfighting is that supposedly intelligent members of Homo sapiens add sadism to the natural equation by starving dogs to make them extra aggressive, filing their incisors to make the fights bloodier, and engaging in other acts unbecoming any man or woman of ethics. What Michael Vick confessed to Monday ought to disgust you, regardless of whether you are a dog lover. Include me. The Official Dog of TMQ -- a Chesapeake retriever, noble state dog of Maryland -- slumbers happily near my feet as I write this.
But the punishment expected to be imposed on Vick -- one to two years in federal prison, and perhaps never playing in the NFL again -- seems out of proportion to his actions and his status as a first-time offender. The situation is confusing because the federal crimes to which Vick pleaded guilty turn as much on gambling and racketeering as dogfighting; gambling and racketeering concern federal prosecutors because of their relationship to organized crime. Racketeering can lead to jail terms even for nonviolent first-time offenders not involved with drug sales, such as Vick. The NFL, for its part, has very strong reasons to detest gambling, and elaborately warns players they will be harshly penalized for associating with gamblers. Yet I can't help feeling there is overkill in the social, media and legal reactions to Vick, and that the overkill originates in hypocrisy about animals.
Thousands of animals are mistreated or killed in the United States every day without the killers so much as being criticized, let alone imprisoned. Ranchers and farmers kill stock animals or horses that are sick or injured. Some ranchers kill stock animals as gently as possible, others callously; in either case, prosecution is nearly unheard of. As Derek Jackson pointed out last week in the Boston Globe, greyhound tracks routinely race dogs to exhaustion and injury, then kill the losers, or simply eliminate less-strong pups: "184,604 greyhound puppies judged to be inferior for racing" were killed, legally, in the past 20 years.
Hunters shoot animals for sport. They do so lawfully, while the manner in which Vick harmed his dogs was unlawful. But from the perspective of the animal, there seems little difference between a hunter with a state game license zipped in his vest pocket shooting a deer as part of something the hunter views as really fun sport, and Vick shooting a dog as part of something Vick views as really fun sport. In both cases, animals suffer for human entertainment. The animal-ethics distinction between Vick's actions and lawful game hunting are murky at best. A first-time offender should go to prison over a murky distinction?
Much more troubling is that the overwhelming majority of Americans who eat meat and poultry -- I'm enthusiastically among them -- are complicit in the systematic cruel treatment of huge numbers of animals. Snickering about this, or saying you're tired of hearing about it, doesn't make it go away. Most animals used for meat experience miserable lives under cruel conditions, including confinement for extended periods in pits of excrement. (Michael Pollan, who enthusiastically consumes meat and fowl, describes the mistreatment in his important new book The Omnivore's Dilemma.) Meat animals don't magically stop living when it's time to become a product; they suffer as they die. One of Vick's dogs was shot, another electrocuted. Gunshots and electrocution are federally approved methods of livestock slaughter, sanctioned by the Department of Agriculture for the killing of cows and pigs. Regulations under the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 give federal sanction to shooting cows or pigs, or running electrical current through their bodies. Shooting and electrocution are viewed by federal law as humane ways to kill animals that will be consumed. Federal rules also allow slaughterhouses to hit cows in the head with a fast-moving piston that stuns them into semiconsciousness before they are sliced up. Being hit in the head with a powerful piston -- does that sound a bit painful, a bit cruel? It's done to tens of thousands of steers per year, lawfully.
Don't say "eew, gross" about how meat animals are butchered, then return to denouncing Vick. If you're eating a cheeseburger or BLT or steak or pot roast today, there's a good chance you are dining on an animal that was shot or electrocuted. You are complicit. You freely bought the meat, you did not demand Congress strengthen the Humane Slaughter Act. Livestock can be calmed and drugged before being slain. A few slaughterhouses do this, but most don't because it raises costs, and you, the consumer, demand the lowest possible price for your meal. Now about your turkey sub or coq au vin. Federal slaughter regulations apply mainly to large animals, leaving considerable freedom in the killing of fowl. Many poultry slaughterhouses kill chickens by slashing their throats rather than snapping their necks. Snapping the neck kills the bird quickly, ending suffering, but then the heart dies quickly, too. Slashing the throat causes the bird to live in agony for several minutes, heart still beating and pumping blood out of the slash -- and consumers prefer bloodless chicken meat.
Further, the Humane Slaughter Act exempts kosher and halal slaughter. In both traditions, the cow or lamb must be conscious when killed by having its carotid artery, or esophagus and trachea, slashed. The animal bleeds to death, convulsing in agony, as its heart pumps blood, which is viewed as unclean, out of the slashed openings. The delicious pastrami we consumed at a kosher deli, or the wonderfully good beef we could buy at a halal butcher, comes from an animal that suffered as it died.
Yes, Vick broke the law; yes, he arrogantly lied and refused to apologize when first caught; and yes, his actions before and after the dog killings indicate he is one stupid, stupid man. But Vick's lawbreaking was relatively minor compared to animal mistreatment that happens continuously, within the law, at nearly all levels of the meat production industry, and with which all but vegetarians are complicit. There is some kind of mass neurosis at work in the rush to denounce Vick, wag fingers and say he deserved even worse. Society wants to scapegoat Vick to avoid contemplating its own routine, systematic killing of animals. We couldn't all become vegetarians tomorrow: that is not practical. But American society is not even attempting to make the handling of meat animals less brutal, let alone working to transition away from a food-production order in which huge numbers of animals are systematically mistreated, then killed in ways that inflict terror and pain. We won't lift a finger to change the way animals die for us. But we will demand Michael Vick serve prison time to atone for our sins.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Art
Art addresses us in the fullness of our being--simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories or songs or images.
--Dana Gioia
--Dana Gioia
Arts Education
What would happen if theologically conservative Christians were noted for their commitment to improving arts education in public schools more than for their opposition to the teaching of evolution? Is it possible that a commitment to a well-trained imagination is a necessary asset in properly apprehending the kind of thing Creation is?
--Ken Myers
--Ken Myers
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Infastructure
Everywhere one looks, the results of decades of public neglect and underinvestment are clear: not only collapsing bridges and exploding steam pipes but traffic-choked streets, clogged ports, corroded drinking-water systems and power brownouts. From 1950 to 1970 the government spent more than 3 percent of GDP on infrastructure. After 1980, that figure dropped by more than a third.
Two years ago, following the catastrophic collapse of the levees in New Orleans, which cost more than 1,000 lives, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a report cataloguing the myriad deficiencies in our nation's infrastructure. That report was followed by a number of other worrying findings. The Transportation Department, for example, estimated that freight bottlenecks were costing the economy $200 billion a year. The Environmental Protection Agency warned of antiquated drinking-water and waste-water systems that would require more than $541 billion a year to rebuild over the next twenty years. And the Federal Highway Administration has calculated that some $141 billion will be needed every year for the next twenty years to repair deficient roads and bridges. All told, the ASCE estimated, the government would need to spend $1.6 trillion over the next five years to repair infrastructure. And that estimate did not address our lagging deployment of high-speed broadband or the major expenditures needed to reduce carbon emissions to stave off climate change.
--Editors of The Nation
Two years ago, following the catastrophic collapse of the levees in New Orleans, which cost more than 1,000 lives, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a report cataloguing the myriad deficiencies in our nation's infrastructure. That report was followed by a number of other worrying findings. The Transportation Department, for example, estimated that freight bottlenecks were costing the economy $200 billion a year. The Environmental Protection Agency warned of antiquated drinking-water and waste-water systems that would require more than $541 billion a year to rebuild over the next twenty years. And the Federal Highway Administration has calculated that some $141 billion will be needed every year for the next twenty years to repair deficient roads and bridges. All told, the ASCE estimated, the government would need to spend $1.6 trillion over the next five years to repair infrastructure. And that estimate did not address our lagging deployment of high-speed broadband or the major expenditures needed to reduce carbon emissions to stave off climate change.
--Editors of The Nation
Farm Bill
The 2007 farm bill, as approved by the House on the eve of the August recess, is as shambolic a piece of legislation as will ever be OK'd by a chamber that frequently endorses the incomprehensible and the indefensible. But what is truly frustrating about the House's version of the five-year, $286 billion blueprint for everything from agriculture and food policy to trade and energy development is that this complicated mess of a measure cannot be easily hailed or condemned. On the plus side, it makes significant new commitments to encourage sustainable farming practices, fund the conversion to organic farming, strengthen food-safety protections and expand nutrition initiatives that are the essential food-policy components of this omnibus legislation. On the negative side, the House bill proposes to open gaping loopholes that would allow environmentally destructive factory farms to qualify for funding intended to help family farmers conserve the land; maintains corrupt practices that stifle competition in the livestock industry; and fails to endorse basic health-and-safety moves like banning the practice of blasting spoiled beef with carbon monoxide to make it appear wholesome.
Hovering above all the good bits and nasty pieces of the measure is that it would do little to change our corrupt system of paying subsidies to some of the wealthiest nonfarmers in the world. Nor does the House address the fact that the bulk of the money intended to maintain diverse and competitive family farms would go to a handful of Southern states that overproduce crops like rice and cotton.
The best that can be hoped for now is intervention by the Senate, where Agriculture Committee chair Tom Harkin says, "We can't afford to settle for an extension of the status quo--not in terms of budget, and not in terms of policy." But for that to happen, we need to broaden the public discussion at a time when, as Representative Rosa DeLauro says, "too many Americans know too little about the farm bill and its impact on our lives."
--John Nichols
Hovering above all the good bits and nasty pieces of the measure is that it would do little to change our corrupt system of paying subsidies to some of the wealthiest nonfarmers in the world. Nor does the House address the fact that the bulk of the money intended to maintain diverse and competitive family farms would go to a handful of Southern states that overproduce crops like rice and cotton.
The best that can be hoped for now is intervention by the Senate, where Agriculture Committee chair Tom Harkin says, "We can't afford to settle for an extension of the status quo--not in terms of budget, and not in terms of policy." But for that to happen, we need to broaden the public discussion at a time when, as Representative Rosa DeLauro says, "too many Americans know too little about the farm bill and its impact on our lives."
--John Nichols
Cockburn on Obama
Just as the Democrats work tirelessly to demonstrate to the voters that it makes zero difference which party controls Congress, the political establishment forces all candidates for the presidential nomination to sever any compromising ties to sanity and common sense.
Right now they're hosing down Barack Obama because he said in the YouTube debate in South Carolina that he would be prepared to meet with Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro to hash over problems face to face. The pundits whacked him for demonstrating "inexperience." Experienced leaders order the CIA to murder such men.
Then Obama drew even fiercer fire by saying he would take nukes off the table in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama told the AP on August 2, adding, after a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly said, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."
I'm beginning to respect this man. He displays sagacity well beyond the norm for candidates seeking the Oval Office. He comprehends, if only in mid-sentence, that when you drop a nuclear bomb, it will kill civilians. He also realizes that strafing Waziristan with thermonuclear devices in the hopes of nailing Osama bin Laden is a foolish way to proceed.
--Alexander Cockburn
Right now they're hosing down Barack Obama because he said in the YouTube debate in South Carolina that he would be prepared to meet with Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro to hash over problems face to face. The pundits whacked him for demonstrating "inexperience." Experienced leaders order the CIA to murder such men.
Then Obama drew even fiercer fire by saying he would take nukes off the table in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama told the AP on August 2, adding, after a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly said, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."
I'm beginning to respect this man. He displays sagacity well beyond the norm for candidates seeking the Oval Office. He comprehends, if only in mid-sentence, that when you drop a nuclear bomb, it will kill civilians. He also realizes that strafing Waziristan with thermonuclear devices in the hopes of nailing Osama bin Laden is a foolish way to proceed.
--Alexander Cockburn
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