The travails of deportation will cease only with its abolition. From Dayton, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., activists are joining forces with targeted communities in the burgeoning movement to end this unjust system.
2013
A New Social Contract: Social Welfare in an Era of Transnational Migration
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In the twenty-first century, more and more people will live their lives across borders and belong to several communities at the same time. Just as money follows opportunity, so labor also moves toward brighter horizons. Today’s migrants are moving in a world of economic crisis, neoliberal restructuring, precarious jobs, and major cutbacks in social welfare.
Activism
Old Roots, New Branches: Jewish Spiritual Communities and the Rise of Alt-Labor
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In both the independent Jewish communities and the alt-labor groups, newcomers are more comfortable with the languages of faith and justice than their predecessors.
Editorials & Actions
Drones Over there, total surveillance over here–by Saskia Sassen
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Drones Over there, total surveillance over here
by Saskia Sassen
19 Feb 2013 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013210114231346318.html
The massive surveillance system built up over the last 10 years is the domestic companion of overseas drone killings. There are at least 10,000 buildings across the US, with a massive concentration in Washington, DC, engaged in ongoing surveillance of all residing in the territory of the US [AP]
The big story buried in all the commentary about the US government’s drone policy is that the old algorithm of the liberal state no longer works. Focusing on drones is almost a distraction, if it weren’t for the number of men, women and children they have killed in only a few years. What we should focus on is the deeper condition that enables the drone policy, and so much more, and that is the sharp increase in unaccountable executive power, no matter what party is in power. The 1960s and the 1970s saw the making of laws that called for the executive branch of government to be more responsive to basic principles of a division of power and accountability to citizens.
2013
What’s Next in Faith-Based Community Organizing: A Rolling Jubilee
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Does life in our debt-driven political economy make your faith feel fraudulent? Debt cancellation is the biblical norm. We need a jubilee to release us from our shame.
2013
How Ancient Religions Can Help Us Transcend the Civilization of Greedy Money
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We are facing a global crisis created by capitalism. The world’s religions–having emerged in response to the growing power of money in the Axial Age–can help us face it.
2013
The Mondragón Cooperatives: An Inspiring Economic Hybrid
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Sixty years ago, the Basque region was the poorest area of Spain. Today, thanks to local cooperatives, it is the richest–and the wealth is shared.
Articles
For your Passover Seders or Easter Gatherings
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Both Passover and Easter have a message of liberation and hope for the downtrodden of the earth. Yet too often we fail to see the continuities between the original liberatory messages of these holidays and the contemporary need for liberation and resurrection of the dead parts of our consciousness. This is our first attempt to craft a Seder addressing the needs of the 99 percent.
Articles
The Religious Roots of the Minimum Wage
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Will raising the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of America’s working poor? Or will it have the opposite effect, throwing more poor people out of work? That’s the question we ask whenever anyone proposes a hike in the minimum wage, as President Obama did in his State of the Union Address. But it’s also the wrong question, diverting us from the biggest one of all: what are the rights that we share as human beings?
2013
How Do We Get Money Out of Politics?
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Michael Lerner’s editorial is too critical of the Move to Amend Movement, when what is needed is strong support for it, while recognizing its limitations. In some circumstances a reform effort can be very close to a full embracing of the ideals.
2013
Get Money Out of Politics
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Why should we be surprised if tens of millions of potential voters do not show up at polls? They’ve already seen that it is not they but the rich who will shape the ideas of candidates in both major political parties. It’s not that donors get absolute power to shape the votes and policies of each elected official, but that together as a group those donors shape a universe of discourse about what is plausible in politics and what is “realistic”; within that framework, politicians make choices that may at times offend one section of their donor base in order to please another section.
2012
Trickle-Up Democracy
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I know we’re not supposed to say such things, but I have lost faith in national politics. Yes, I’ll vote in the coming elections and do my part to get the less sold-out, less anti-communitarian candidate in office. But I no longer look to the top tier of centralized government to solve our problems or help us grope toward conclusions together.
For me, big government has become as abstract as the corporations that made it possible. The more I study the emergence of corporate capitalism, the more I see central government as the other side of the same coin: a booming peer-to-peer society was intentionally dismantled during the Renaissance in order to reassert the authority of the aristocracy.
2012
Democratizing the Economy for a New Progressive Era
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Truth be told, we live in an era of deepening stagnation and political stalemate. With the labor movement—the traditional countervailing power that drives progressive politics—at its historic nadir, we cannot expect the kind of systemic transformation we need to come from Washington.
2012
The Need for Progressive Realism
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Yes, Obama was moderate, and still the lofty sounding rhetoric made us feel that change really was possible. Hope was in the air. With time, we didn’t so much argue about the policies of his administration, many of which seemed fair and forward-looking. Rather, we took issue with the unwillingness to fight, the folding of the hand before the cards were played, the untoward interest in compromise with those who sought his political demise, and the combination of heady discourse with reliance on advisers peddling conventional economic wisdom geared toward the rich.
2012
Four Books on Money in Politics
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by Michael J. Sandel; Thomas Frank; Christopher Hayes; and Chuck Collins