Prayer for Peace

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A Prayer for Peace
Avinu ve’ emoteynu sheh ba shamayim, tzur Yisra’el ve’ go’aloe

Our Father and Mother energies in the cosmos, the rock of Israel and our salvation

Bless all the peoples of the Middle East with peace, security, environment sanity, and a sense of being genuinely cared for by the world and by the God/dess of all flesh, however they conceive of this God or Goddess, whatever names or language they give to the ultimate source of love and meaning in the universe. In this hour of war, violence, and pain, we reaffirm the humanity and decency of all the  people on our planet, and our ability to see the humanity and God-presence in the Palestinian people, the Israeli people,  and all people on the planet.

Editorials & Actions

Refusing Sanctuary to Children in Need

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http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20140629-refusing-sanctuary-to-children-in-need.ece

Refusing sanctuary to children in need
Exactly 75 years and one month ago the St. Louis, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States, forced to return to Europe. U.S. law didn’t allow them sanctuary. Today we are preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe.

Editorials & Actions

Noam Chomsky on America’s Real Foreign Policy

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America’s Real Foreign Policy: Global Corporatization by Force

Whose security is the U.S. military and foreign service protecting? by Noam Chomsky

US soldiers participating in live fire drills during NATO training in Germany. (Photo: flickr / cc / MATEUS_27:24&25)The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs.  In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons.  First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact.  Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it.  Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices.  The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond. There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse.  It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.

2014

What the Left Needs to Be Heard

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To steer our culture aggressively in a different direction, the Left needs what right-wing groups have long used effectively—power, influence, and, perhaps most importantly, money. By utilizing a concentrated and ongoing stream of funding from a diverse group of sources, small voices will again have the chance to speak out and be heard.

Articles

Trusting the Water Again: Understanding the West Virginia Chemical Spill

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On the morning of January 9, 2014, Charleston residents noticed that the air smelled like licorice and that the water tasted like it too. Inspectors soon traced the odor and taste to a chemical storage facility owned by a company called Freedom Industries. There, near the bank of the Elk River, inspectors discovered that a 48,000-gallon tank was leaking an industrial chemical called MCHM (methylcyclohexane methanol) used to cleanse coal.

2014

Let Me Be the Leninist, Please

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Let me offer a simple, alternative definition of what “Lenin” stands for: the view that great social change depends to some significant degree on “leadership.” That is, social change depends on groups of people who have developed effective organizing skills, concrete social connections in milieus engaged in protest, and some shared sense of a future to be won—and thereby can foster and advance momentum toward the desired transformation.

2014
Man yells into megaphone speaker

The Power of a Decentralized Left

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For a new Left to grow strong, we must rid ourselves of the false notion that unilateral solutions proposed by the Right must be met with isometric plans from a monolithic Left—a shift that requires engaging with the tumultuous and complicated relationships we have with one another. However, it is precisely through working out our disagreements that we will arrive at more sustainable, effective, and just decisions.

2014

Liberalism and the Left

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Younger leftists will work to preserve our country’s social welfare architecture — but we’re also setting our sights on revolutionary ends!