ESRA

The Message and Strategy That Is Needed by Occupy Wall Street

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This past weekend, Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were held in over 951 cities in 82 countries as people around the globe joined in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%.
The media, trying to discredit all the demonstrators, say we don’t know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound bite for “what we are for.”

Education

Attend a Free Peace Conference in New Jersey: Move the Money – Turn Swords into Plowshares!

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At a time when people are suffering from the economic downturn, political battles are still raging over how to cut the budget and the nation is still involved in several wars, we believe our nation’s priorities need to change. FY 2011’s military budget is the largest since the end of World War II, even though the Cold War is over and there is no longer the threat of aggression from a major power. The purpose of the “Move the Money” conference is to help change our nation’s priorities by promoting the reduction of military spending by at least 25% and “Moving the Money” from nuclear weapons, their support systems and unnecessary defense items to humanitarian, social and environmental needs. Ultimately all nations will need to greatly reduce their military spending and eliminate nuclear weapons in order to address human needs and make the world safe for our children. Here’s the info:
MOVE THE MONEY: TURN SWORDS INTO
PLOWSHARES

Saturday, June 4, 2011
From 9:30 am to 4:00 pm
Hosted by:
The Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center in Boonton
110 Harrison Street
Boonton, N.J. 07005
To help achieve these goals, at the conference we will also promote the advancement of the Global Marshall Plan, a key element to a sustainable just world based on our shared human values of compassion and justice, which our keynote speaker, Jonathan Granoff, will talk about.

Empathy

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden: A Spiritual Response

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The struggle against terrorism will not be won through killing, no matter how many people we assassinate. You don’t fight malaria by seeking to kill every mosquito on the planet, but rather by draining the swamps. Similarly, you can’t eliminate terrorism by seeking to kill every terrorist (and in the process killing a lot of innocent others as well), but only by draining the swamps of hatred that have been built up as a response to the suffering generated by global inequities and injustices.

ESRA

Have You Heard About the "Manhattan Declaration?"

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Rabbi Lerner, in his recent post, alerted readers of Tikkun Daily to two pieces of policy legislation introduced in Congress this week: the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment and the Global Marshall Plan. Both aim at creating a more caring society. In direct contrast to the humanitarian agenda of the interfaith Religious Left articulated in those initiatives stands the exclusionary and divisive agenda of the specifically Christian Right, as exemplified by the Manhattan Declaration (2009). The authors of the Declaration describe themselves as a coalition of “Christian leaders known for their public witness on behalf of justice, human rights, and the common good,” yet they are motivated by what they see as “growing efforts to marginalize the Christian voice in the public square, to redefine marriage, and to move away from the biblical view of the sanctity of life.” While the “sanctity of human life,” “marriage,” and “religious liberty” are ideals that most people support, an exclusionary and anti-democratic political agenda clearly underlies the Manhattan Declaration.

Empathy

When Generosity, Love, and Kindness are Public Policy, the Violence We Saw in Arizona will Dramatically Diminish

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The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of so many others in Arizona has elicited a number of policy suggestions, from gun control to private protection for elected officials, to banning incitement to violence on websites either directly or more subtly (e.g., Sarah Palin’s putting a bull’s-eye target on Giffords’ congressional district to indicate how important it would be to remove her from the Congress). On the other hand, we hear endless pleas to recognize that the assassin was a lonely and disturbed person whose choice of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books reflects his own troubled soul, not his affinity to the “hatred of the Other” that has manifested in anti-immigrant movements that have spread from Arizona to many other states and in the United States and has taken the form of anti-Islam, discrimination against Latinos, and the more extreme right-wing groups that preach hatred toward Jews. The problem with this debate is that the explanatory frame is too superficial and seeks to discredit rather than to analyze. I fell into this myself in the immediate aftermath of the murders and attempted assassination. I wrote an op-ed pointing to the right wing’s tendency to use violent language and demean liberals and progressives, and its historical tie to anti-Semitism and anti-feminism.

ESRA

10 Commandments to Revive Progressives After the November Defeat

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1. Don’t let the media frame this as a defeat of progressives. Had Obama embraced and fought for a progressive agenda, even if he had passed none of it, he would have entered the 2010 elections as the champion of the huge idealism of the American people that was elicited in 2008 and which would have led the Democrats to an electoral sweep in 2010. Being seen as fighting for the needs of ordinary people — never letting anyone forget for a moment that he had inherited the mess that Republican and pro-corporate Democrats had created, positioning himself as the champion of those who resented the Wall Street and corporate interests — his popularity would have grown; he could have won a much bigger victory for the Democrats in 2010, and that would have allowed him to actually legislate the policies of a progressive vision. Had Obama refused to give more money to the banks and Wall Street unless equal or greater amounts were allocated for a visionary New Deal-style program for jobs and a freeze on mortgage foreclosures; had the Democrats refused to fund the escalation of war in Afghanistan; had they advocated for “Medicare for Everyone” instead of passing a plan that forced 30 million people to buy health care, but puts no serious restraints on the costs that insurance companies or pharmaceutical can charge; had Obama fought courageously for a carbon tax and ended the bargain taxes for the wealthy; had the Democrats insisted on stopping the harassment of immigrants; had the Obama Administration called for a national effort to overturn Citizens United, such as the ESRA (the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution); had Obama set up public forums at which his supporters could give him public feedback and used the web creatively to allow his supporters to weigh in; and had Obama consistently spoken honestly to Americans about the constraints he was facing and who was putting pressure on him to do what…

GMP

Why and What We Are Endorsing in the One Nation March on Saturday, October 2

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A large number of organizations are sponsoring a One Nation March on Washington tomorrow. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives have been distressed at the absence of any understanding of how a spiritual transformation of values in America must be central to the struggles that the One Nation March articulates. We are unhappy at the lack of any coherent thinking that links the actual demands of this march to some larger coherent worldview. As a result it provides very little in the way of an alternative to the Right. The NSP has nevertheless joined in support of the March, with the hope that at some point its rather sketchy demands could be contextualized within a deeper understanding of what is needed to turn America from the center of globalized capitalism, with its ethos of selfishness and materialism, to the center of a global movement for The Caring Society (see, for example, our Global Marshall Plan and our Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, neither of which are likely to even get a mention at this March).

GMP

America Needs Repentance: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Atonement Are Not Just for Jews

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Now that the Iraq war is supposedly winding down, America needs a period of reflection, repentance and atonement before rushing into more of the same mistakes we’ve been making globally and domestically. So I’d like to invite my non-Jewish neighbors and friends and allies in the struggle to heal and transform America to join with Jews to use the ten days of repentance from Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 9) through Yom Kippur (Sept. 18) for that purpose-to create an All-American version of the Jewish High Holidays! What makes the Jewish tradition useful in this regard is that it focuses not only on our own individual lives, but on taking collective responsibility for our larger world.