Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/154/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
The Tikkun Daily Winter Fundraising Drive is in full swing– and we would like to extend a huge thank you to those who have begun to help us reach our goal! Today we have a testimonial from Miki Kashtan, a dedicated blogger, as to why it is imperative that Tikkun stays afloat.
The “funeralizing” of Nelson Mandela has ended. It was part MLK Day, part rock concert. Pundits, starlets and TV personalities fought for air-time to proclaim their nearness to the departed leader. But, for some of us who marched outside the Chicago consulate of apartheid South Africa in the dead of winter in years gone by, Mandela is more.
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.
Over a year ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a historic, 6,000-page report which contains “startling details” about CIA misdeeds related to its torture program. The report has been set for release since December 13, 2012. However, it has yet to see the light of day.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) met the week of December 3 in Bali, Indonesia, where anti-WTO demonstrators took over the streets. On the first day of the talks, demonstrations were held around the world to mark the Global Day of Action Against Toxic Trade Agreements. A particular focus for protesters here in the United States and in other Pacific Rim nations was the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a so-called “free-trade agreement” that would consolidate corporate power over member nations. The TPP has been called “NAFTA on steroids.” It has also been called “a corporate coup” and a “corporate power tool of the 1%.”
Sunday, December 8, 2013 was a day of reflection upon the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa who died December 5, 2013 at age 95. As I reflect upon the meaning of this extraordinary life, I return again and again to his dignity and to the power this sense of self bestowed upon him, even before the South African people elected him to lead them.
I hereby volunteer to be among the first whose body, after slaughter, is to be chopped up and packaged for dog food provided to the Rich.
We are launching a donation drive to support the future of this collaborative, multimedia, interfaith project. The sustainability of this project is within reach — to move in that direction we need just 200 people to pledge a $10 donation to reach our minimum goal of $2,000 this winter. Help us make it happen!
In this unsettling era of drone strikes, mass shootings, and impending climate disaster, it’s not hard to find information in the progressive mediascape about everything we are doing wrong. What’s harder to find is an analysis that combines an uncompromising commitment to exposing injustice with an insistent faith in our power to create empathy where hatred once festered, to heal from trauma, and to find meaningful ways to resist the crushing transnational economic forces that shape our lives.
I often wonder what life was like in earlier cultures, before the split between the sexual and the spiritual was institutionalized, before the body became the site of sin, before being spiritual became associated with celibacy, asceticism, and withdrawal from the world.