Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/2013/28-3-summer/)
Alabama’s HB 56 criminalizes the ability of faithful people to provide sanctuary, transportation to needed services, and the basic care that the despicable Samaritan offered to one injured by society. This law needs to be repealed (not sections reinstated), so people of faith can bring everyone out of the shadows and truly be whole and upright living in the noonday light of love.
What distinguishes a No Borders politics from other immigrant-rights approaches is their refusal to settle for “fairer” immigration laws (higher numbers, access to legal statuses, and so on). Within a No Borders politics, it is understood that the border-control practices of national states not only reflect people’s unequal rights (e.g., whose movements are deemed to be legitimate and whose are not) but also produce this inequality. Thus, their signal demand is for every person to have the freedom to move and, in this era of massive dispossession and displacement, the concomitant freedom to not be moved (i.e., to stay).
The movement of people in and out of national spaces should challenge societies to think continually about how these spaces are organized. One idea is to establish an international regime for multiple citizenship. Another is to allow migrants to pass through national borders anonymously.
Comprehensive immigration reform is about the right thing to do. To really see how the Bible looks at the issue of immigration, and how we should deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants that reside in our country, one must continue reading Romans 13, which states, “ … owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
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By Anne Norton and edited by Amel Boubekeur and Olivier Roy
by Walter Johnson
The Democratic Party is constantly compromising to placate the Right but almost never seeks to placate the Left. To break free of this cycle, liberals need to question a capitalist assumption that too often finds support in the liberal world: that material well-being is the primary key to happiness.
The rabbinic arm of the Reform movement has emphasized the importance of collective bargaining for decades. So why have so many recent Reform conferences taken place at union-boycotted hotels?
What defines a prophet? Is it a moral compulsion to speak the truth, no matter the consequences? A look back across history uncovers misguided prophets, prophets of evil, and some true prophetic personalities.
If “sabbath, sunshine, and sexual intercourse” offer a foretaste of the world-that-is-coming, as the Talmud suggests, then could the Burning Man festival be understood as a taste of this messianic future?
National reforms are not enough. To end the fear and heartbreak of the current system will require the implementation of a Global Marshall Plan and a basic challenge to our notions of land ownership and the nation-state.
During economic booms, migrants are recruited as much-needed workers. During downturns, they are demonized and deported. It’s a tumultuous affair wrought with hypocrisy, injustice, and cruelty.