Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/76/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Is the Oakland Police Department decision to limit protest activity backfiring? As the NLG and ACLU meet with City officials to try and come to an agreement over nighttime protesting policies, Rachel Lederman argues that the proposed policies will ultimately fail to address the concerns about protests leading to property damage.
In this article, Antoine Pécoud argues that it’s time to start recognizing the “normality and legitimacy of human mobility” by entertaining the prospect of opening borders. Considering the inevitability of human migration and accompanying problems, aiming efforts at stopping migration both reinforces the arbitrary social imbalances associated with one’s place of birth and is relying on increasingly disturbing methods of border control.
Blumenfeld argues that the Catholic church’s reaction to Caitlyn Jenner and other trans individuals follows their pattern of using means of attempted body control (whether that’s reproductive, sex, or otherwise) to control minds. “when patriarchal social and family structures converge with patriarchal religious systems, which reinforce strictly defined gender hierarchies of male domination, women and girl’s oppression and oppression of those who transgress sexual-, sexuality-, and gender binaries and boundaries became inevitable.”
Popes Francis’ upcoming encyclical (an authoritative form of papal discourse) is an opportunity for the Catholic Church to further develop a relationship between humanity and the environment in a way that gives both parties agency. William Bole uses the moments before the encyclical’s posting on June 18th to look at how this relationship has already begun to develop within the tradition and questions how Pope Francis can add something of substance to this development.
Only recently, in a sort of “the emperor has no clothes” moment, I realized that if my lab coat is white there surely must be a more accurate word to describe the color of my skin. I realized that, in fact, I’d never actually seen a white person. Upon further reflection, I also realized that I’d seen people in varying shades of brown but had never actually seen a black person.
We are, it seems, enmeshed in a new hybrid system, which fits the Constitution, the classic tripartite separation of powers, and the idea of democracy increasingly poorly. We have neither an adequate name for it, nor an adequate language to describe it. I’m talking here about the “real world” in which, at least in the old-fashioned American sense, you will no longer be a citizen of a functioning democracy.
I want to criticise Israel not to do down the tribe but to stay loyal to it. I want to uphold the values and teaching that I think of as mine by birth and by upbringing. I’m not boycotting Jews or Judaism when I make the case for a radical change in our attitude to the Palestinian people. Rather I am upholding all I see as worthwhile, eternal and universal from my Jewish heritage and history.
What moments might we miss that seem obvious to our future historian? Will she write about some unpredicted future Great Awakening of global, evangelical fervor? Need this Great Awakening be reactionary, or could it be progressive?
Can the youth of today do things differently in the future? At Kids4Peace, an interfaith community of Israeli, Palestinian, and North American youth and educators, the next generation of peacemakers is learning how nonviolent communication facilitates listening and understanding rather than judgement.
This challenge is certainly not reserved for the Catholic Church. Many — perhaps most — organized religions and denominations struggle with LGBTQ rights. How is anyone who feels drawn to a place of worship to resolve this disconnect? How can a message of love be heard when it is delivered in an envelope of “not for all”?