Our many inventions and devices are not only altering the face of the planet, but also radically changing our connection to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. These are profound changes worthy of our most serious attention.
Poetry
A Different Kind of Person
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I encounter a woman from a long way off / Almost every morning when I walk my dog / In a certain park between certain hours / That have not changed the whole season long. A poem by Stuart Dischell.
2013
Gay Men in the Locker Room of the World – Big Whoop
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NBA player Jason Collins is the first active player in the four major U.S. sports to declare himself gay since Glenn Burke in the 1970s. For a nation that remains contemptuous of nonconforming notions of masculinity, the Collins event is not a question of tolerance for gays, but of masculine identity itself: can a man who falls in love with other men be integrated into the American ideal of manhood?
2013
Sikh Ethics and Political Engagement
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Built into Sikh tradition is a firm ethic of adhering to a truthful and just process—the idea that the ends do not justify the means. As a result, simply stating that attacks upon Sikhs in a post-9/11 context are “mistaken” or “misdirected” because they should be directed toward another group, Muslims, is an untenable deflection. Instead, American Sikhs walk a thin rhetorical line between declaring what we are—a group that aims to elevate the consciousness of all people to appreciate our common divinity—and declaring what we are not in order to avoid the short-term consequences of popular confusion.
2013
Shifting U.S. Demographics Demand New Cross-Racial Coalitions
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Obama won by appealing to a broad swath of voters—the young, ethnically diverse, and non-affluent—who typically aren’t a part of the traditional political calculus. But he failed to garner much support among older, whiter Americans. If our political fights pit one group, one generation, or one race against all the multicultural “others,” then we all will surely lose.
2013
Race, Class, and the Neoliberal Scourge
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Neoliberalism, the broad set of ideas positing the market and market-centered values as the ultimate “civilizing” agent at home and abroad, has now structured our society for forty years. Ever since it began its gradual ascendance in 1973, we have experienced a marked increase in income inequality, witnessed the slow death of the labor union movement, and keenly felt a growing sense of anxiety. The task of the American Left has never been simpler and clearer—it’s to reconstitute the very idea of the public, in the hope that this reconstitution will generate a large-scale movement against neoliberalism.
Christianity
Should I Return to the Catholic Church?
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What actions can the pope take that might bring me back to the church? He could start by removing every bishop and cardinal tarnished by the sex abuse scandal and showing mercy, caring, and generosity toward every child abused by clergy—even if such a policy impoverishes the church. He could focus on cultivating the moral conscience that good citizenship requires without making common cause with a strident, social conservatism that rejects reason and reconciliation. He could reinvigorate concern for the poor, the sick, and the elderly, provide education to those left out of secular systems, cultivate local communities, and ordain women. He could make the church a moral exemplar.
Books
A Historical Haiku on Human Conflict
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Kirk J. Schneider has written a synopsis of human history that he calls a “historical haiku.” He explains how polarized thinking, rather than observing each other and our world in all its complexities through a lens of mystery and awe, is the root cause of why human beings continue to kill each other. He offers us examples of how fear and the absence of curiosity and awe have made us unable to rise above hatred.
Economy/Poverty/Wealth
Fear, Safety, Control, and Resistance: Shifting the Dialogue on Policing
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Recent events have stirred up new conversations about policing, crime, and violence among white people not targeted by policing. I hope that we can use this moment to examine our beliefs and negotiate how we can participate in eliminating police harassment and violence to begin building safer communities. To facilitate this, I have listed five common remarks that I have heard from other white people, followed by a response.
Books
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?
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When Mohammad Odeh, the terrorist who tried to kill David Harris-Gershon wife, said he was sorry, Harris-Gershon decided to travel to Israel/Palestine to see if Odeh was speaking the truth.
Books
Immigration Stories That Will Belong to America
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The thirteen stories in Lam’s most recent collection, Birds of Paradise Lost, are populated by refugees of the Vietnam War who came to the Bay Area, as well as their children and friends—but each story is a world unto itself. Lam’s characters are haunted by what they have lost, transfixed by embers that still cloud the air with smoke. What Lam explores is the question of whether they can conquer the ghosts, or at least learn to live with them peacefully.
Culture
To Have and Have Not: The Latest from Edeet Ravel and Jim Harrison
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The book’s certainly as nostalgic as Tennyson’s Memoriam, and no less melancholic, but unlike legions of other books written on loss, a sweet irony pervades it and makes the work fittingly beautiful, if not hapless to explain the grief that Elise endures.
2013
Why Alabama’s Immigration Law is an Assault on Religious Values
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Alabama’s HB 56 criminalizes the ability of faithful people to provide sanctuary, transportation to needed services, and the basic care that the despicable Samaritan offered to one injured by society. This law needs to be repealed (not sections reinstated), so people of faith can bring everyone out of the shadows and truly be whole and upright living in the noonday light of love.
2013
No Borders: Struggling for a Global Commons
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What distinguishes a No Borders politics from other immigrant-rights approaches is their refusal to settle for “fairer” immigration laws (higher numbers, access to legal statuses, and so on). Within a No Borders politics, it is understood that the border-control practices of national states not only reflect people’s unequal rights (e.g., whose movements are deemed to be legitimate and whose are not) but also produce this inequality. Thus, their signal demand is for every person to have the freedom to move and, in this era of massive dispossession and displacement, the concomitant freedom to not be moved (i.e., to stay).