Empathy

Arresting Volunteers for Sharing Food with the Hungry is Criminal

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by Keith McHenry The City of Orlando has made over 20 arrests for sharing meals with the hungry at Lake Eola Park. The city limits the group to sharing twice a year per park. Food Not Bombs has been sharing free vegetarian meals and literature in public for over 30 years. While many believe that hunger and poverty is the result of personal failing and the solution can be found by getting closer to God, Food Not Bombs thought the solution could be found in changing public policy, economics and society. With fifty cents of every federal tax dollar going towards the military, no one in the world’s wealthiest country should have to stand in line to eat at a soup kitchen.

Empathy

Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives supports solidarity with Food Not Bombs

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The corporate machine’s drive for profit has resulted in a race to the bottom. The bottom line is profit at the expense of people, social justice, and the environment. In the United States, wages are stagnant, unemployment and homelessness grow, and more families are finding themselves unable to afford food. Food Not Bombs is doing something about hunger. A worldwide all-volunteer organization that has existed for 30 years, Food Not Bombs feeds people vegetarian meals and protests war and poverty.

General News

Consciousness-Raising, Faith Communities and Mass Incarceration, the "Moral Equivalent to Jim Crow"

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On Friday, May 28, I attended a lecture at St. Paul AME Church in Berkeley, California by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It was an interesting chance that Alexander’s lecture coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the mandate for California to reduce its prison overcrowding by at least 30,000 prisoners. While I have been aware of systemic racism within the prison industrial complex thanks in part to the community education efforts of organizations in the S.F. Bay Area and my seminary education at Starr King School for the Ministry, I was alarmed by the facts she offered as well as the links between Jim Crow laws enacted before 1965 institutionalizing social, economic and other disadvantages based on race and today’s mass incarceration. By the end of the lecture, I became acutely aware of what people of faith can gain from understanding racism and mass incarceration as well as sharing with others their reflective milestones.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Obama, Finkelstein & Ben-Ami Debate Israel's Borders

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Pres. Obama’s much publicized speech on the Middle East at the State Department on May 19th caused a stir by advocating an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based upon the pre-June 1967 borders (the so-called Green Line), with modifications in the form of “land swaps” negotiated between the parties. This has been the general framework that moderate and pro-peace Israelis and Palestinians have promoted since at least 1995, when it was realized that most West Bank settlers live in thickly-populated “settlement blocs” contiguous with the Green Line. Unfortunately, too many people (most importantly, Prime Minister Netanyahu) seized upon Obama’s statement about the pre-June ’67 lines, disregarding his call for trading territory. That Netanyahu and so many others found this controversial, illustrates how far we’ve come from a peace agreement almost arrived at in 2008. It also indicates that the US needs to be more assertive in helping the parties finally achieve peace.

Politics & Society

Torture is Still Wrong. Period.

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I hate to keep repeating myself, but the issue won’t go away. Torture is morally wrong, and it is clearly prohibited by international and American law. Thus, I find it shocking that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld openly admit to authorizing torture, and that they do so with impunity. And if Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi — who allegedly provided information that helped us locate Osama bin Laden — were prisoners of war, then their torturers committed war crimes. Now, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, right-wing ideologues are once again defending the use of torture.

Christianity

Coming Together to End Prisoner Abuse

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I attended my elderly aunt’s funeral in the Deep South last week and met some of my cousins’ children for the first time, which was great. Over dinner one of them, a young man in his 20’s, starting sharing with me about his “walk with Christ.” At first, I was worried, being a progressive Jew by choice and all, which none of them knew. Well they knew about my politics, just not my religious affiliation. It turned out to be a good conversation, and I did end up sharing with him that I am Jewish.

Education

April 4th and 5th: Catch the Wisconsin Fire

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The fires of democracy continue to burn brightly in Wisconsin. Recall campaigns are racing along, and a recent community meeting in Milwaukee, usually a sleepy, ill-attended affair, boasted several hundred attendants. When their representative, Chris Larson, one of the “Wisconsin 14” showed up, they jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Neighborhood listservs are boiling with activity. On Facebook and in a thousand union and church meetings, people solidify their connections with each other and their commitment to recover and strengthen our precious democracy.

Politics & Society

The Torture of Bradley Manning

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“This weekend many actions are planned nationwide in solidarity with PFC Manning, and in protest of the US descent into the criminal insanity of torture,” writes Lynn Feinerman. Torturing The Truth-Tellers, Silencing The Soothsayers
by Lynn Feinermann

Such distinguished heads as P.J. Crowley’s (the former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs) are falling over the issue of the imprisonment without trial of Private First Class Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old U.S. Army soldier accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. And it has become quite clear that the conditions of PFC Manning’s detention in US military custody constitute torture – legally, morally and physically. Private Manning is one of over 50,000 prisoners in the United States who are presently kept in cruel and inhumane solitary confinement. No other nation in the world comes close to isolating that many prisoners.

Environment

Sad Day in Wisconsin, Sad Day in US

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It’s a sad day in Wisconsin. Yesterday afternoon in less than two hours, our Republican Senators — after insisting for a month that their union-busting law was needed because the state was broke — separated the collective bargaining sections of the bill from the financial parts and then passed it. They no longer needed a Democratic Senator for a quorum, since the bill was no longer ostensibly about finances! They unmasked themselves with this political maneuver. Now everyone can see that it never was about the money.

Politics & Society

A Chaotic Journey

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“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be….” Ophelia (Scene 5, Act 4Hamlet) I was sitting a few feet behind a friend last Friday, as the man at the other end of the room sentenced him to life plus five years. I can’t say it came as a surprise, though the whole story still seemed unbelievable to me. His Honour had just told us the whole story, justifying the sentence he was pronouncing, and he clearly found it believable. He might not have been willing to bet his own life on it, but he was evidently willing to bet Shareef’s life on it.