Culture

Upcoming Event: Disarm Now: We Stand with Nuclear Survivors for Global Justice

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August 9th will mark the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nakasaki. Activists and concerned citizens will stand with survivors of nuclear weapons and all those harmed by nuclear technology by gathering at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, in conjunction with Chain Reaction: a global action for nuclear disarmament, a nonviolent global movement encouraging nuclear disarmament actions by governments and the United Nations.

General News

Seeing Donald Trump: How a Sensible Empathic View of Him Can Help Progressives Stop Him

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[Editor’s note: Tikkun does not endorse or reject any candidate for office or any political party (we are prohibited from doing so by our IRS non-profit status). We do publish on Tikkun Daily and on our website articles from selected boggers and sometimes from submissions directly from our subscribers or members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, usually without comment, but hoping our readers understand that articles on our web or Tikkun Daily do NOT necessarily reflect our editorial stance which you can find ONLY in the editiorials I write in the print edition of the magazine. Nevertheless, because many of our readers are spiritual progressives, the articles on the election on our blog or website can sometimes seem to give more positive attention to one candidates and less for another candidate. For that reason, we want to again urge our readers to write to us with your feelings and thoughts about the presidential candidates and political parties least likely to be predictably what you’d find in Tikkun, in the hopes of having a wider range of views and a wider range of supporters of positions that we editorially oppose. Send those to Ari@tikkun.orgor torabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com(along with a one or two sentence bio and your email and snail mail addresses, please.]
If in this article I do a good job of creating a sensible empathic explanation of Trump’s troubling behavior, I’ll evoke what at first to my fellow critics of him must seem impossible, much less undesirable.

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The Need for a More Radical Solidarity in the Work for Justice based on Spirituality, Mindfulness, and Self-Care.

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In Living Peace, I reveal how the life and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi shape my work for justice, teaching me the way of peace, love, humility, and service. Through interaction with other activists, my Franciscan spirituality has also been enriched by that of others, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master, poet, scholar, and human rights activist. As he shares his reflections on various ways spirituality can nourish social activism.

Culture

Stop the Violence!!!!!

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Violence, whether physical or built into the economic and political structures of our society, is usually the product of “othering,” in which we fail to see the humanity of an individual or more frequently of everyone who belongs to a certain group. While the most frequent form of othering in the U.S. is racism toward people of color, sexism, homophobia, classism, Islamophobia and antiSemitism, it also in some liberal and progressive circles manifests in the demeaning of all people who are into religion (I call that religiophobia), all people who are part of the 1% (ignoring the many–though just a small minority–who align themselves with social justice and environmental movements), and the police (many of whom try to do a conscientious job of enforcing the laws of our society without bias, even though the dominant ethos in many police forces does in fact validate violence and many such forces do have a culture of racism, sexism and homophobia–but still that doesn’t justify generalizing to everyone in those police forces much less all police everywhere).

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AC’TIV•IST Soup for the Social Justice Soul

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The webseries is an often snubbed medium. It is written-off as sub-par and too easy: any kid can grab a camcorder and some friends right? Webseries has often been viewed as television’s disowned cousin. The truth is that webseries is the future of entertainment and the most honest medium in existence today; it is also so often, due to low budgets and time constraints, a labor of love.
Still, it takes something special for just any webseries to rise above the din of the rest, because anybody can grab a camera and some friends. The internet is for most, though not all, free and easily accessible. No one makes a webseries for the money, because there isn’t much to be made. Even the most well known and frequently awarded series are constantly grasping for sponsorship.

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Exit Through the Pet Shop: On the Potential Environmental Consequences of Actually Finding Dory

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With her bright blue scales, yellow tail, and sleek build, Dory is one good-looking fish, and Finding Dory, Pixar’s latest moneymaker, serves as a 105-minute animated broadcast of constant cuteness about her, a type of Indo-Pacific surgeonfish that is called a blue tang. It may seem harmless enough, but unfortunately Finding Dory has the potential to cause environmental destruction, all because a large swath of consumers in the United States are often incapable of seeing something they like on screen without wanting to possess it. Some marine biologists warn that if people flock to pet stores after seeing Finding Dory to buy blue tangs it could add significant strain to already over-taxed coral reef ecosystems and could seriously harm the blue tang as a species.

General News

Poem on the Murders

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Phliando Castile was an African-American Nutrition Services Department supervisor at a Montessori School in suburban Minnesota. He was shot dead by police on July 6 after being stopped for a broken tail light. His girlfriend, Diamond Lavish Reynolds, immediately began narrating his murder on her phone (sent out via Facebook) as she sat beside him while he was dying in the car. Her four year old daughter, also in the car, witnessed everything.

Earth-based Religions

Lift It

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If God is all-Powerful
Can he make a rock so large he himself
Cannot lift it
Cannot move it
Made up of the stone shavings of
The names
Carved out of the rock
Huddled in a pile
On the ground
The names so large
He himself cannot lift them
From the hearts
Of the bereaved

Culture

Safety, Unearned

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On Saturday morning, December 13, 2014, racism saved my life. It was maybe 3 am, pitch dark, and I was in Winthrop, WA – a tiny town in the Methow Valley, east of the Snoqualmie National Forest. We had performed there that night – the Kinsey Sicks, that is, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, including me. This was one of my last performances with the group. I was to have an official swansong at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre the next night, and then the denouement of a couple shows in the Midwest over the next week.