Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/169/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Last week, my phone vibrated loudly, dancing upon the dining room table and startling me while writing. On the line was a producer for CBS Sunday Morning, who had called upon learning about my forthcoming book, What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?
Taien Ng-Chan is a writer and multidisciplinary artist living in Montréal, Québec. Her work as an artist and scholar has taken her into territory that challenges how governments, institutions and societies ought to be.
At a time when too many people are out of work and too many others are holding down two or three jobs just to survive, it might seem a bit frivolous to lament the lost art of leisure. But leisure – restorative time – is a basic human need. And fewer people are getting the benefit of it, apparently even when they’re on paid vacations. A new Harris survey finds that more than half of all U.S. employees planned to work during their summer vacations this year – up six percent from the previous year. (Email is a prime suspect in this crime against leisure.) Soon enough, all of us will be taking presidential-style vacations like the one starting tomorrow.
The documentary “Commie Camp” about Camp Kinderland, the summer camp that the right wing loves to hate, has its West Coast premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this Sunday in Oakland! Its director Katie Halper—a standup comedian, filmmaker, and blogger—spoke with Tikkun’s editor-in-chief and founder, Michael Lerner. The two debated whether a secular Jewish culture really exists, disagreed over which Jews were more active in social justice, agreed about the indoctrination of children, and discussed walking like a duck.
The word martyr is used too loosely these days. Manning is a martyr, one who heroically revealed crimes of the American military without trying to use that information for personal gain or fame. Now, Manning will pay for this act of conscience with years of life in prison.
The hunger strike/work stoppage across California prisons, now in its 31st day, is a call to action that crosses racial and geographical lines. I support the hunger strike because in my time in Pelican Bay, I saw the violent, racist, divisive, and torturous practices of the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR)
In this three-part video, Rabbi Lerner decries the Zimmerman verdict, while Senior Pastor J. Alfred Smith, Jr. speaks out about up-and-coming filmmaker Ryan Coogler (of Fruitvale Station fame). Pastor Emeritus J. Alfred Smith Sr. outlines a seven-step program to combat racism, and the Allen Temple choir performs a beautiful, gut-wrenching rendition of “We Shall Overcome.”
Yesterday Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) released the letter he sent to President Obama urging more sanctions on the Iranian people to prevent a nuclear Iran and, failing that, to get ready for war. It’s the same old, same old with the added element that AIPAC/Israel/Congress is doing this to deter any diplomacy that might resolve the issue now that Iran has a more moderate new president.
Have you ever felt that the social justice work you’re involved in is merely addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause of what ails us? At its core, the problem we face is values-based. I’d like to make the case for embracing a very different set of values I call “decency” and practicing them “radically”–at all times and in every area of living. Radical Decency could be an approach to living that speaks with special force to the central challenge we face as we seek to create better lives and a better world.
While Congress has haggled over border militarization, Tikkun’s been pursuing stories of immigration activism and analyses based in radical love. The result: our summer print issue, “Away with All Borders: Embracing Immigration and Ending Deportation.” Meanwhile, Tikkun contributing editor Josh Healey has been hard at work on a powerful project of his own—a comedic call to action for humane immigration reform.