Culture
RIP Vincent Harding: A Light Shines in the Darkness
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Dr. Vincent Harding, great keeper of the Southern Freedom Movement flame, died yesterday, May 19th, 2014. He was 82 years old.
Culture
Botched Oklahoma Execution Reveals Self-Deception
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At 6:23pm yesterday, the state of Oklahoma initiated its effort to kill Clayton D. Lockett. Twenty minutes later, after being declared unconscious by a physician, Lockett cried out, “Oh man,” writhing in pain. Addled by this unexpected display of pain, one of the executioners said, “Something’s wrong.” Soon after, the window to the observation room was covered and media were escorted out of the room.
Christianity
We Can Change the Story
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We desperately need the story of a Jesus who is risen and comes home with us, making a new kind of community possible here and now.
Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
NC Clergy Send Open Letter to State Government Leaders
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As Jews and Christians across North Carolina celebrated Passover and Holy Week, clergy from our Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina sent the following letter to our General Assembly leadership. Last summer, over 100,000 people came to the General Assembly to protest extremism and call for a new moral center to our common life. As we prepare for another legislative session this year, we pray for those in authority, that they might have ears to hear.
Culture
What’s Happening in NC? Faith-Rooted Organizing is Bearing Fruit
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What happened to inspire over a hundred thousand people to rally at the NC Legislature last summer. How in one summer did half as many people (945) get arrested in one state as were arrested nationwide in 1960′s sit-in movement. And how, many have wondered over the past few weeks, did more than 80,000 people march on a state capitol to demand change?
Culture
The Freedom Movement Today
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Remembering our history matters little if it doesn’t reshape how we see the present. While communities across America are telling neat and clean stories about the 1960s, most of the mainstream media is ignoring the biggest broad-based organizing effort in the South since that time.
Culture
Can Young People Change a Nation?
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Can young people change a nation? Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how. But you look back and see that they did. Then you look around and see that they are.
Christianity
Prayer and Action: Finding Our Center of Gravity
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When the spirit of an activist becomes weighed down under the burden of their work, a center needs to be found again. Contemplative, liturgical prayer can be just the thing to maintain balance within a community and within oneself.
Culture
Crying Out for What Our Courts Can’t Give
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I’m not sure we’ll ever know who was crying out on the recording when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. But I am certain that millions of mothers in this country are crying out for something that our current justice system cannot give: the assurance that their black and brown boys will not be suspect before we bother to learn their name or their story.
Christianity
An Easy Essay on Community
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Beloved community is that fellowship in which we know ourselves as we are known in mutual dependence. It is the membership in which we learn to take responsibility for our future in mutual accountability. It is the circle of trust in which we know our flourishing depends upon mutual welcome. Beloved community is not an ideal we achieve but a gift we receive. It is the medium which is the message of God’s love in our world.