As the oceans rise to earth-destroying levels, the agricultural heartlands turn to desert, and the rate of skin cancer grows to match the rate of the common cold… now is the time to talk honestly with the American public about dramatically reducing consumption, combating the immense power of the 1 percent, and preparing ourselves to counter the mainstream media’s obfuscations of the urgency of the coming crisis.
2013
Our Issues Entwine: LGBTQ Aging and Economic Justice
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The aging and LGBTQ advocacy fields often propose policy solutions that are too narrow to address the complexity of how all marginalized people—including heterosexual people of color such as my parents, members of the LGBTQ community, and more—experience the process of aging. We need social transformations that address the intersecting forms of oppression that older people face.
2013
Taking Back the Bible
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Same-sex relationships. Abortion. Contraception. All three are under attack by religious conservatives who say biblical teachings are on their side. The Bible says little, if anything, about the politically charged issues…and what it does say runs counter to their right-wing assumptions.
2013
Identity Politics is Not Enough: Why the Left Needs Universalism to Survive
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We need identity politics: we need voices that speak for the pain of particular experiences and situations, and for the absences in pretended universals. But let us not mistake those voices for the kind of comprehensive understanding that alone can contest the illegitimate and often destructive power that rules this country and much of the globe.
2013
In Defense of Identity Politics
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The great promise of identity politics is its ability to raise powerful consciousness among oppressed groups of people and also build bridges among those groups. When that occurs, the results have the power to create more permanent alliances that challenge the egregious injustices that still pervade American society and politics.
2013
Democratizing Wealth, Democratizing Power
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Thad Williamson reviews What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution by Gar Alperovitz.
Articles
Toward a Non-Binary Discussion of Race: Thoughts on Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
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The killing of Trayvon Martin moved me, like so many other Black people, to my core. Americans talk a lot about “race” but are bound up in a highly specious construction of it. We need to have real discussion about our changing ethnoracial order, including religious division, color, class, and imperialism, if we are to survive as a society.
Articles
Responses to the Prosecution of Whistle Blowers
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NPR, mistakenly still identified as a liberal news source when in fact for the past decade at least it has been so worried about losing its funding that it has bent over backwards to accommodate governmental and corporate spins on the news, did a focus on Manning that sought to reduce his courageous acts to personal psychopathology. This is typical of the way the lamestream media–in bed with the military, the homeland security and spying teams, the government, and the corporate elite–either ignores or demeans acts of resistance to the American economic, political and cultural empire. That way of dealing with the opposition to the path of the elites has been very effective, though it is also immoral, intellectually dishonest, and pathetic. Tikkun and the NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives’ response was to buy an ad in the New York Times to allow ordinary citizens to call upon President Obama to stop prosecuting whistle blowers. It’s not too late to sign and donate so we can buy space in other media to let our fellow countrymen know that there is a way to stand up publicly against all this.
2013
Migration and Institutional Innovation at the Edge of the State
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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.
2013
Immigration Reform and Faith Values: The Agenda of the Lamb
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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.”
2013
Pragmatic Compromises Will Never Yield the World We Seek
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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.
2013
Away With All Borders: The Immigration Mess
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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.
2013
Immigration: A Difficult Love Story
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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.
2013
Healing the Wound: Immigration, Activism, and Policies
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To build a world free of borders and border violence—a world where no one yells, “go back to where you came from”—we need to address the fear motivating those who would shut the door.
2013
An Evangelical Perspective on Immigration
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Inspired by Scripture and struggling to serve immigrant worshippers, the evangelical community is calling for reforms to keep families together and establish a path toward citizenship for people without papers.