Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/justice-for-all/activism/page/15/)
Today, conditions are as dire as those we faced in the 1960s, but we are not coming together with sufficient urgency to confront them. Climate change threatens the very existence of a habitable planet, but here in the United States, the business of burning fossil fuels continues as usual.
This is why I devote my time to working for a health system in the United States that meets the human rights principles of universality, equity, and accountability: a single-payer national health insurance. Anything less will prolong suffering and unnecessary death. Every person in this country must have access to the same high-quality standard of health care.
In celebration of our anniversary, we asked some of the authors we’ve published over the last quarter-century to share a short piece (either prose or poetry) about the aspect of their thinking, writing, spiritual practice, work, or social activism that they believe to be most relevant to Tikkun’s goal of helping heal, repair, and transform the world.
These are lean times for utopian thinking. We know too much about its dangers and failures. What within previous utopian experiments, from communism to kibbutzim to ’70s communes, undermined them? Human nature? Our particular cultures?
I think that if you’re looking at the world today and you’re not heartbroken and you’re not grieving, you’re not conscious. The question is, if we know that things can be done, what are we called upon to do?
“Awakening Joy: Ten Steps that Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness” by James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander: Review by Margie Jacobs
We have been discussing how we can get members of Congress involved in an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the Constitution (ESRA). And so what I did over the past few months was to look at the principles and to draft a resolution. The idea is this: we take the principles in the ESRA, and we put them in a congressional resolution asking members of Congress to support the principles, and from there we can work to draft specific legislation for a constitutional amendment.
This Q&A explains why we chose the approach we did in the details of this amendment (including why it is so long and so technical).
We invite you to read our Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment (ESRA) and to review the accompanying Q&A to understand why we have gone further than other amendments proposed to deal with the core problems of corporate power and the need for environmental responsibility.
The story of Lt. Dan Choi’s protest action is a useful entry point into a discussion of the current trajectory of gay and lesbian organizing because it emblematizes one major reality of the activist moment: the widespread sense of urgency in pursuit of the assimilationist (rather than radically transformative) goals.
Has the Obama presidency failed? No, resistance to social and political change
is not a sign of failure—it’s inevitable, and can be overcome.