Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/171/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
At the age of eighteen years, four months, and six days, I was cast into the SHU where I stayed for two and half years, alone, without a window, a television, or a radio. How can I make anyone understand what it’s like to cling desperately to the hope of someday being heard because that’s the only hope left? That’s one reason why the hunger strike going on across California’s prisons matters.
Many progressive clergy have recently spent our entire discretionary accounts on travel to our state capitals. An experiment is occurring in North Carolina to reunite our spiritual souls with our political bodies. Instead of episodic lobbying, on Moral Mondays, clergy visit with their representatives as chaplains. They change the language from the pragmatics of the political to the hope of our God.
In May, Bishop Katharine—the first presiding woman bishop in the Anglican Community—gave a sermon so provocative that it led critics on the Christian right to charge her with possession by the devil. I think that much of the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to the ordination of women comes from a deep-seated fear of content like Bishop Katharine’s: human life-affirming and focused on the kingdom of God.
Like Trayvon Martin, my son died at 17. From the agony, I learned that οur healing intention must be for others and the world, not just for ourselves, or it can never be deeply resolving. Witness Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton. Fulton has much to teach us all.
We don’t have to wait for some distant future to see our dreams realized. The essence of the nonviolent action that Dr. King preached is to pierce the lies and distortions in the here and now by acting out, with our bodies, the authentic reality we have seen — to persist in what is really real.
The largest mobilization of fast food workers in U.S. history, organized by Fast Food Forward, begins today in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City and Flint, Michigan.
OK, this last email pushed me to my limit. The subject line heading read: “Barack needs you, right now.” You’ve got to me kidding me. Barack needs ME? For what?
According to a new poll published by Pew Research, U.S. citizens are more concerned about the potential violations of their civil liberties from anti-terrorism measures (such as NSA surveillance) than the threats such measures supposedly aim to stop.
Since 2008, the Obama administration had made available the President’s original campaign promises at Change.gov. However, the Obama administration removed access to these promises on June 8, two days after Edward Snowden’s first revelation. The likely reason? One of those promises was to protect whistleblowers.
I suspect that when white people hear “You’re a racist,” what they really hear is the message: “You’re an evil, ignorant, oppressive white supremacist, the sort of person who would re-enslave black people and commit genocide against the remaining Native Americans and Jews if you had the chance.”