Health

Yes, We Must!

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Last week I received one of those annoying phone calls, the kind I figure comes from some mega-complex of phone banks, probably from the plains of Nebraska. Because the caller ID showed an area code with which I was unfamiliar, I hesitantly picked up the phone and heard that split second of dead space, letting me know I was going to be solicited for money. I mentally kicked myself for this moment of trust. Imagine my relief when I found myself talking to a woman calling on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), an organization to which I had actually donated money. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to tell her about my frustration with a do-nothing Democratic White House and congress regarding financial industry regulation and true health care reform.

Politics & Society

Hope From Haiti

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Tikkun Daily reader Jan Garrett wrote to us with a link to a piece of upbeat news. It’s not often that so-called ordinary “first-world” folk (of progressive inclination) are able to strike an effective blow for justice in the relationships between major international financial institutions and the people of the third world. So this article by Johann Hari about the IMF’s backing off its plans to impose “shock doctrine” on Haiti is worth taking note of. The article is called “There’s Real Hope From Haiti and It’s Not What You Expect.” Thank you, Jan!

Christianity

Good Deeds on a Small Scale #3

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I’m fascinated by the germination of good deeds. Where do they begin? How do they grow from a mere idea to an actuality? On the 26th of January, I caught up by phone with José Chavez, a custodian in the San Jose, California, Unified School District who’s been instrumental in creating a library for the village school in Limón, Michoacán, Mexico, where he grew up. (I learned of his project through a librarian friend who was soliciting books in Spanish.) Not only did he lead the library project, but he helped (physically) build a concrete plaza and paved areas in the village.

Politics & Society

Why America Is Depressed, and What To Do About It

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Welcome to AlterNet readers! We love the new AlterNet site [where Harriet Fraad’s Tikkun article was cross-posted] and we hope you will love this blog, which aims to refresh the souls of weary leftists. We challenge the religiophobic parts of the Left to engage in better strategies that connect with the American people, who find the crises of modernity to be spiritual as well as economic (but often it is only the Religious Right that speaks to the spiritual crisis). Atheists are as welcome here as believers: for us spirituality is more about how we act than what theological beliefs we hold. We have ideas for Obama, of course, but he’s not listening to us.

Health

Obama’s Bridge to Nowhere

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Every President has to balance two imperatives: defeating his political opponents, and dealing with the problems that the country faces, but only a few Presidents get the opportunity to do both at once. Barack Obama was one of the few, and all of the media attempts to explain why 2008 was not 1932 or 1936 or 1964 or whatever cannot obscure the fact that he failed to rise to the occasion. Without grasping that failure, the significance of his State of the Union Address cannot be understood. When we do grasp it, we see that Obama’s Presidency rests on a carefully drawn contrast in appearance with ill-informed opponents, and on a careful convergence with their actual politics, and not on a program to lead the country in a new direction. This was especially clear in the central theme of his speech last night, deficit reduction.

Politics & Society

Proto-Fascist Elements in America Today

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If I were Barack Obama, I would be frightened right now, not so much because of the likelihood that there would be serious Democratic losses in the 2010 election, or even a strong challenge to my re-election in 2012. No, I would be frightened because I would feel that I was in danger of losing control of my party, of my authority in government generally, and of the respect I had among the American people. I would feel — if I had my pulse on the nation — that the country was in an unstable and volatile situation and that things could go pretty haywire pretty fast, and I wouldn’t be sure if I could control them. I would be frightened that I had taken on a job that was beyond my capacities, if I were Barack Obama. The fact is that there are proto-fascist elements in America today, and I don’t mean the Tea-Party group or any easy, rightwing target per se.

Christianity

The New Evangelical Partnership: Cancel Haiti's Debt

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This is great and hugely promising. There’s a whole generation of young evangelicals out there who are different in certain ways from their parents. Gary Dorrien was talking about this on Monday night on the Tikkun Phone Forum (and I hope we can get the recording up soon). Young evangelicals are more accepting of gay relationships for example. They are also more focused on world poverty.

Health

Dumping the Pandercrats

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After spending most of my day wondering how the Democratic Party managed to pull off the stunning achievement of losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a far right wing former centerfold model, I am feeling reassured. The dust is settling and the panorama does not look so bad. In fact, the future looks far brighter to me than it has for weeks. Obama has acknowledged that White House bears more than a little responsibility for the loss. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that he has scheduled a press conference tomorrow to announce his adoption of Paul Volcker’s strategy to break up and regulate “too big to fail banks.”

Earth-based Religions

Voodoo's view of the quake in Haiti

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In response to one of the comments on my humorous post “Satan Responds to Pat Robertson on Haiti,” I found this article on the Voodoo view of the quake. Vodou is the earth-based religion of Haiti, so it makes sense that a Vodou priest would view his country as a manifestation of Mother Earth. From the Washington Post:

Voodoo’s view of the quake in Haiti
By Elizabeth McAlister
Associate Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University
Vodouists in the Haitian diaspora are praying on their knees today, just as Catholics and Protestants are. Why did this devastating earthquake have to happen in Haiti, a country already so vulnerable that people live on a dollar a day, where on a good day, the government cannot employ or educate or provide health care for the majority? In Port-au-Prince, they are coping by searching and rescuing, sharing resources, crying, and praying.

Christianity

Resources for the Radical Dr. King

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The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. – Dr. King

If Americans permit thought-control, business control, and freedom control to continue, we shall surely move within the shadows of fascism. – Dr. King
Video interview with Dr. King (apologies for the 30 second ad at the start, it’s worth waiting it out):

We don’t talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. enough.