Christianity

On the difference between conflict resolution and nonviolent conflict

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I have to say that I love the comments going on on my last post, about conflict resolution and how to do conflict. The question I would like to ask is this: Were Gandhi and MLK in the conflict resolution business? Yes they were, in the long term. India and Britain, American blacks and whites, could only resolve their conflicts by the establishment of justice. But to get that justice (and the struggle is ongoing), their movements had to bring the conflict, that was being absorbed in pain by the oppressed, to the doors of the oppressors, into their media and their faces.

Politics & Society

Strategy Conference of Liberals and Progressives

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The theme of our conferences on Monday in San Francisco and in DC in June is to support Obama while pushing him to live up to his progressive campaign promises. This is a balancing act that not everyone appreciates. Maybe I can explain a little from my point of view in this post. Yesterday a woman whom I have only met a couple of times, but who would seem to me a natural for this kind of message, gave us a good tongue lashing for our approach. From her point of view it’s divisive, it’s the same as the Nader campaign that lost Gore the 2000 election; it’s another example of the Left criticizing its own so that, unlike the Republicans, we never stand together and never get anything done.

Politics & Society

Come hear Riane Eisler if you can, Feb 15, or listen online now

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We are counting down to our conference this coming Monday in San Francisco. Any conference Michael Lerner puts on gets rave reviews from just about everyone who manages to get there, so if you are anywhere in the vicinity, come on down. One of the presenters on Monday will be Riane Eisler, whose work we have featured in Tikkun many times. The latest was the cover article for our Nov/Dec 2009 issue, “Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism.” Almost every Monday night we interview a Tikkun author and I talked with Riane last December.

Politics & Society

Hope From Haiti

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Tikkun Daily reader Jan Garrett wrote to us with a link to a piece of upbeat news. It’s not often that so-called ordinary “first-world” folk (of progressive inclination) are able to strike an effective blow for justice in the relationships between major international financial institutions and the people of the third world. So this article by Johann Hari about the IMF’s backing off its plans to impose “shock doctrine” on Haiti is worth taking note of. The article is called “There’s Real Hope From Haiti and It’s Not What You Expect.” Thank you, Jan!

Politics & Society

Torture Continues: the case of Fahad Hashmi

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Read Lynn Feinerman’s new piece for Tikkun, “Torture Continues And Comes Home To Roost.” Contrary to the claims of President Obama in his recent state of the union address, news reports assert that the US is still torturing. Anand Gopal’s recent article in the Nation magazine reveals the existence of many secret field sites in Afghanistan where torture is continuing apace, while the US maintains a somewhat cleaner game in Bagram Air Base. And while the US courts have blocked torture survivors like Maher Arar in their efforts to sue the US government for damages, and the Obama justice department has swept all the crimes against humanity of the Bush years under the rug, a sinister blowback of this “war on terror” is creeping into the US itself. One of the worst cases is that of Fahad Hashmi, suspected of al Qaeda involvement.

Environment

A living biologist more important than Darwin?

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You might think, on this site, that I would be talking up a sacred biologist, someone who combines a spiritual worldview with strong scientific credibility, but I don’t know too many of those (Francis Collins is one). I look forward to seeing more come out of the woodwork as this century progresses. This purely scientific story, though, does have spiritual implications for us. It tells us that the whole biosphere is much more interconnected at the DNA level than biologists including Darwin previously thought. I’m throwing in a related story about our human DNA, which it turns out isn’t so simply human after.

Politics & Society

Why America Is Depressed, and What To Do About It

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Welcome to AlterNet readers! We love the new AlterNet site [where Harriet Fraad’s Tikkun article was cross-posted] and we hope you will love this blog, which aims to refresh the souls of weary leftists. We challenge the religiophobic parts of the Left to engage in better strategies that connect with the American people, who find the crises of modernity to be spiritual as well as economic (but often it is only the Religious Right that speaks to the spiritual crisis). Atheists are as welcome here as believers: for us spirituality is more about how we act than what theological beliefs we hold. We have ideas for Obama, of course, but he’s not listening to us.