Winter solstice is time of greatest darkness, which of course is why so many cultures have festivals of lights at this time. But in our culture the lights have gotten over the top, with thousands of lights blazing as you walk down the road, and when you get to the mall at the end of the road (all our roads may not lead to Rome, but most lead to a mall) the lights have become so bright there are no longer any shadows. That’s a profound loss. In the shadows lie our deep fears, and this time of the year traditionally allowed us to look at those fears, to name those shadows, and to learn how they connect to us. If we don’t connect to our shadows, we never grow up, and (like my namesake) we can only live in never never land.
The latest news is that the Iranian police have arrested students for supposedly burning pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini in recent protests at Tehran University. Whether they actually burned these images or not seems to be in dispute. The NY Times reported Sunday that
For all the charges and counter-charges that have been raised during the crisis – including vote rigging, the rape of jailed protesters and the plotting of a velvet revolution – each side seemed to agree that burning an image of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the state who is revered as divine, was going too far. Given that widely shared perception it would clearly be bad tactics for the students to burn the pictures, whether in their hearts they revere Khomeini or not. These students are going for the very biggest stakes: to change their country.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) led over 500 farm workers and their allies to Lakeland, Fl. yesterday to protest Publix Super Market’s tomato purchasing policies. In recent years the CIW has through boycott and protest managed to bring Taco Bell, Yum Brands, McDonalds, Burger King, Whole Foods and Subway to the bargaining table. Not surprisingly Publix is adopting the same strategy as many of these previous corporations and denying responsibility. I have followed this story closely for years and it is my opinion that it is only a matter of time before Publix gives in.
I spent way too long blogging about Jared Diamond this morning and don’t have time to say much about our guest on tomorrow night’s Phone Forum, Riane Eisler, except that she has been at the megahistory business much longer than Diamond, and she is equally at ease with the corporate elite as he is, but she tells them in no uncertain terms that Capitalism isn’t going to cut it. Left audiences like to hear her say that. But what she tells them is this: Socialism also won’t cut it. Both are subject to the same kind of economism that fails to see that “the real wealth of nations–and the world–consists of the contributions of people and nature.” Both neglect the non-monetary segments of the economy: the contributions of natural systems and of unpaid work, most of it by women.
During the health care debates many religious organizations chose to speak out not by endorsing any specific piece of legislation, but by endorsing some basic ethical principles that should be addressed by any legislation up for consideration. Typically, such principles included the goal of making affordable health care available to everyone, and making sure that such health care was not denied because of previously existing medical conditions. I think this was a very good and effective approach. We have not yet had a similar major debate about economic reform in our country despite the recent economic crisis. Many people are starting to suspect that it won’t happen unless there is a grass roots movement to push for it.
To all American readers: I trust you had a fine Thanksgiving. Our son was home and we did the nuclear family thing and went to two fun movies that we all three enjoyed a bunch: “Pirate Radio,” about the radio station I used to listen to at high school in England, and “2012,” which you wouldn’t think would be fun as it involves the death of almost all life on earth, but it’s so fantastic and unrealistic while being brilliantly presented and curiously full of humanity (though unforgivably as much a male-run world as that of Pirate Radio without any historical excuse for it), that we just sat back and lived through the roller coaster ride. Back in reality, if I was blogging today, which I’m not, being about to go off with the family to do a token soup kitchen stint and then put the lad on his plane back to college in LA, I might have mentioned this beautifully written article about the poverty-stricken state of education in California, by a woman who teaches in a rich school and a poor school simultaneously, or this about the cost of pre-school ($12,000 to $20,000) in San Francisco or this about a school for dropouts that works, run by a convicted bank robber and a former methamphetamine user. The wider story to the recent student sit ins at Cal State schools protesting firings of low income workers and huge increases in student fees is that California, which once had the best financed education in the country now has almost the worst. It all goes back to a citizen revolt against property taxes, Prop 13, passed in 1978, and it’s taken this long for it to bankrupt the state and there are many more bills to pay arising from the high cost of inadequate educations for low income Californians.
Commensalsim is a relationship where living things live in close association. They benefit from each other without causing parasitical harm. The concept is kin to the idea of communion. It is mutual participation. It is Eucharist. It is a reciprocal indwelling of the divine in the human. It is gratitude. It is grace.
You may have seen the UNICEF report that came out this week. What did you notice most about it? My wife read out bits of it from the newspaper at breakfast and she was just delighted. Can you believe this! she said:
the number of deaths of children under 5 decreased from around 12.5 million in 1990 to an estimated 8.8 million in 2008 – a 28 percent decline.
The current debate over the age at which women should begin taking mammograms is a good example of the kind of pseudoscience that may be introduced once costs becomes a guiding consideration in health care decisions. As I have argued previously, health care is the one thing we should not economize about. Of course, there may be health care necessities that we cannot afford, in which case we should try to figure out how to afford them, for example, through taxation. But the first thing we should do is to be clear as to what the desirable health care options are. Most current versions of the health care plan avoid all the real ways to preserve best procedures while lowering costs.
A press release from Danny Postel at Interfaith Worker Justice. This is a really important issue and these people have been doing great work on it, including Kim Bobo’s substantial book on the criminality of stealing people’s wages (see below). National Legislation and New Initiatives to be Unveiled Thursday on Capitol Hill
On Thursday, November 19, people in more than 40 cities around the country will take action to stop wage theft, a national crime wave that every year robs millions of workers out of billions of dollars they’ve worked for but never seen. The national network Interfaith Worker Justice declared November 19 a National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft to call attention to this “crime wave no one talks about” and to mobilize support for the network’s campaign to end this pernicious practice. “Thou shalt not steal — it’s a pretty straightforward message,” says Interfaith Worker Justice Executive Director Kim Bobo, whose 2008 book Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It exposed the national crisis and has become a rallying cry for the campaign to end it.