General News

A Better Way than… Fear and Loathing at the TSA

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By Neil Hanson
I got some really excellent comments and feedback on the first article I did here on the stepped-up searches that airline passengers are now going through. To summarize, my premise is that we give up our dignity and right to privacy by submitting to these searches. The natural reaction a person might have to this is: OK, what would you do instead? Well, what’s the real problem we’re trying to solve here? Terrorism is a symptom of something.

General News

National Day of Action Against Wage Theft: Today!

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After receiving visas to work in the United States, a number of immigrant workers found themselves working seventeen-hour days at the New York State Fair for $2 an hour, living in a cramped, bed bug-infested trailer, and lacking access to a sufficient supply of food and water. These workers came to the Workers’ Center of Central New York this fall in a state of malnutrition and dehydration and filed suit against their employer, Pantelis Karageorgis, who allegedly denied his workers thousands of dollars in wages. According to a news piece published last week by In These Times, the U.S. Attorney’s office has dropped the criminal charges and is currently negotiating a “modest settlement” for these workers. While New York state is no stranger to wage theft, this particularly egregious case has emboldened Interfaith Worker Justice’s (IWJ) — and Rebecca Fuentes’ — call to action. Fuentes, Director of the Workers’ Center of Central New York in Syracuse, emphasized the severity of the crimes committed against these workers in a press conference yesterday.

General News

Scanning the Scanners

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One month ago I drank some extremely noxious laxatives, and went into a small room where a man stuck a camera up my rectum and took a series of photos. It was an invasive and unpleasant procedure, one which I repeat every five years, thanks to advice from my doctor and two friends who have survived colon cancer. I’d rather have a colonoscopy than colon cancer. Whether I want to go through a similar procedure every time I take an airplane is a related question, one we may face in our immediate future. The path that leads to that hypothetical question starts with a media scan of the new TSA (Transportation Security Association) scanners and the policy that comes with them..

Buddhism

Religion Can Help Queer Youth (and How Buddhism Helped Me)

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Yesterday an estimated 1 million people wore purple to raise awareness about bullying of LGBTQ youth. In light of the highly publicized series of suicides related to homophobic bullying, many of us are wondering how we can help LGBTQ youth. To answer this question, I’ve been reflecting on what helped me as a queer teenager in an aggressively homophobic community. By the time I was 15, nearly every one of my LGBTQ-identified friends had tried to kill themselves. I was alone in not attempting suicide.

General News

Please Help Us Keep This Unique Blog Going

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What’s unique about Tikkun? Why might you want to give to help this blog survive? The first thing I love about Tikkun is that it celebrates spirituality and nonviolence, but it’s not at all afraid to throw out big challenges and engage in spiritually informed, nonviolent conflicts. Who does it challenge? Above all: the capitalist system and all other systems of domination, with their attendant wars, prisons, poverty, racism, gender oppressions and environmental destruction.

General News

"Beyond Spiritual Activism," ctd.: Responding to the Difficult Questions

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I’ve received many comments and questions regarding my analysis of Off the Mat in the “Beyond Spiritual Activism” article. There is a lively discussion happening for certain. Some of the comments are very thought provoking and tough. I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to respond to individual questions but realize that there are many similar issues being brought up and so I wanted to address them in a post. Also, Off the Mat has responded to my article in the comments section and I responded.

Education

The Challenge of a One Nation Ideal–to the Left as much as the Right

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I hope this is one humongously large rally in Washington today. Nonetheless, and I know this will sound bizarre, I am personally more excited for the future of social change by a small conference call taking place tomorrow morning, to which you are invited, than I am by the One Nation March. Curiously, the left online doesn’t seem very excited about the march either. There’s no mention of it on HuffPost’s front page as I write this morning. It’s not the top story on Alternet, and the headline isn’t “Huge Left Rally in DC” but “Anti-Tea Partiers Descend on Washington to Fight for a Stronger Economy,” which isn’t as anxious as Politico’s “Liberals hope rally rivals Beck’s” but similarly concedes that the Right has the initiative.

General News

Is the "Anti-Immigrant Tide" Reversible?

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Well, it’s only an apparent tide and to the extent to which it seems to have momentum, it is reversible. Those are conclusions of what is, in my opinion, an excellent analysis of the current political state of play on the immigration rights issue, in a just published article, “The Preventable Rise of Arizona’s SB 1070,” by Justin Akers Chacon. Last June the General Assembly of my Unitarian Universalist denomination adopted Immigration Rights as a 4-Year Study-Action Issue, orienting its associated congregations, as much as possible given UU pluralism, toward a single primary topic of shared conversation. Since then I have been looking for a coherent way to understand the causes, the political forces standing in the way of a just resolution, and a sense of how progressives might engage this issue with some chance of a positive outcome. Chacon’s article is the best analysis I have seen so far.