We at the Network of Spiritual Progressives are asking you to write to President Obama and Congress on two critical issues:
1. Ask Obama not to appeal U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips’s decision that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is unconstitutional.
Believe it or not, despite the fact that President Obama says he is still committed to ending the military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, his administration has announced that it will appeal Judge Phillips’s decision. Obama should instead embrace the decision and order the military to comply immediately. Of course, many of us wish that he would also downsize the military and use it to advance peace rather than fight wars. We also wish that the military were not one of the only spheres in the economy where people facing financial insecurity could find a job. We have, however, been unsuccessful so far in restricting the military’s spending and wars. Let’s at least succeed in extending equal rights within the military.
2. Ask Obama and Congress to support the call by Senator Harry Reid and other Congressional Democrats for an immediate freeze on home foreclosures.
The banking and investment world has been caught red-handed: it has cheated many people by foreclosing on houses the banks may not have owned in the first place. So tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of those thrown out of their homes may have been thrown out illegally; yet the foreclosures continue. Some centrists and liberals in Congress are calling for an immediate freeze on foreclosures so that no more people get thrown out of their homes. We at Tikkun would prefer that they call for a return of money to all those thrown of their homes in the past unless the banks can prove that they increased interest rates on mortgages out of economic necessity. But that isn’t happening at the moment, so we support the call by Congressional Dems to take this one minimal step: freeze all foreclosures until a thorough investigation of banks’ behaviors has been completed and banks that acted improperly are denied the right to perform any foreclosures for a period of five years.
It’s hard to understand President Obama’s choices in these matters. His own political supporters show a marked amount of frustration regarding how little he has done of the things that were in his power to do. Perhaps like Democrats of the past he reasons: “My base has no place else to go but to support Democrats, so they’ll do that anyway, whereas the banking interests and the homophobes might be further turned off by me using our government to take strong action.” But that underestimates the degree to which his own failure to fight for the things he promised to fight for has weakened the ability of his supporters to feel that they should be reaching out to the not-yet-convinced. Of course, as a nonprofit, we don’t support any political party or candidate, but as analysts of the social-psychological-spiritual dynamics of a society, we can certainly state that President Obama seems to have abandoned his own supporters on the two issues stated above, without succeeding in bringing any new group to his side. It seems as though he has acted not only immorally but self-destructively as well.
Opting not to appeal the federal court decision on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and opting to support a foreclosure freeze –both of which he could do immediately — would strengthen Obama’s support among those who are disillusioned with him.
Please make your voice heard on these two critical issues!
If you would like us to email your letters to your congressional reps and to President Obama, click here. You can change the text of the topic and change the proposed letter to fit your style. It’s one tiny step in the direction of creating a Caring Society. And if you haven’t done so yet, please JOIN the Network of Spiritual Progressives.