Education

Ten Things I Learned from Hugo Chávez

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Chávez was a democratically elected president, elected by a wide margin after running as an outsider in Venezuela’s fixed two-party system. His first acts as president were to wipe out illiteracy, establish healthcare clinics in the poorest barrios, and create a brand new constitution based on citizen input and participatory democracy. I wish our democratically elected presidents and governors would build our hopes up by empowering us with better education, healthcare for all, and new rules to improve rather than degrade our democracy.

Christianity

The Emerging Truth about Junipero Serra and the California Missions

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In this book Father Junipero Serra, called by some the “Father of California,” is exposed in damning detail as the father of a system, the mission system, that systematically destroyed the culture of the indigenous peoples of California, who had lived at peace with the earth and more or less at peace with themselves over millennia until the Spanish arrived.There are those who say, “Don’t judge an eighteenth-century person by twenty-first century standards.” Well, when that person is being proposed by the pope himself as a saint and therefore a model for twenty-first century people to emulate, why wouldn’t we have the right and indeed responsibility to judge?

Culture

A Krisis With a Creative Solution

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Technology has become a cipher for the collective anxieties of a society in the throes of florid death denial. Even though we think we “cheat death” and “steal time,” the piper always demands his due, and the price is the return of the repressed. Technology isn’t the death of Spirit; it is its efflorescence. The choice is ours, to embrace or deny. And we already know the price of denial.

Culture

Before the Dawn

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On this fast day, I remember that many U.S. people worry, like anyone anywhere, about the hardships a new day may bring, in a dangerous and uncertain time that seems to be dawning on every nation and the species as a whole. In the U.S., we carry the added knowledge that most of the world lives much more poorly – in a material sense, at least – than we do, and that were the sun to truly rise upon the U.S., with familiar words of equality and justice truly realized, we would have to share much of our wealth with a suffering world.

Culture

Weeding Roses in Kabul

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The APVs and their students face numerous challenges to their future security and survival. Yet bleak conditions don’t deter their resolve to move forward. I myself felt quite hopeful, especially while sitting in on a class about nonviolence.

Culture

What Kids4Peace Can Teach Us About Peace

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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.

Culture

Educated Hope and the Promise of Democracy

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Professor Henry A. Giroux’s commencement speech to the class of 2015 at Chapman University: “Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice? Or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? “

Education

Integrating Spirituality and Activism – How to Change the World

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If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?- Rabbi Hillel, Pirke Avot 1:14
Our world is riddled with tragedies: the epidemic of killings by police in the U.S. of African Americans, boats capsizing with hundreds of people fleeing war-torn countries in search of security, safety and well-being, children dying from illnesses stemming from malnutrition at alarming rates, women and girls being raped as victims of wars, and the list goes on. As spiritual seekers we desperately yearn for a day when peace and nonviolence, love and care, kindness and generosity as well as a deep connection with the sacred in one another and with the creative force of the universe reign. Many of us, in our despair, turn to spiritual guidance and practices to soothe our pain and find solace.

Education

Little Hope in Baltimore for the “2s,” “3s,” and “4s”

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Without condoning the clashes with police, rock throwing, looting, and arson against local businesses, when a society generally and police forces more specifically consistently treat its citizens like “2s,” “3s,” or “4s,” when people see no hope for a better future, when parents fear for their children’s very lives, the inevitable eruptions in Baltimore should can come as no surprise.