What’s next, and how do we make it happen? This special section explores all sorts of topics that spring from the Occupy Movement.
27.2 Spring
A Conversation with Jeremy Rifkin on His New Book The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
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The sun shines everywhere on the world, every day. The wind blows around the planet every day. Everywhere we check there is a geothermal core of energy, heat energy underneath the ground. And in the rural areas, we have agricultural foraging waste that can be converted to energy. On the coastal areas, the ocean tides and waves come in every day for energy. Wherever we have garbage, it can be bioconverted back to energy. So these are energies that are found literally in every square inch of the world in some frequency or proportion, enough to provide us till kingdom come.
27.2 Spring
Moving Beyond Occupation into Presence: Decolonizing Our Minds, Hearts, and Spirits
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We aren’t merely calling for a paradigm shift—we’re calling for an unsettling of the constant haze of distraction, dissatisfaction, and depression in our hearts and minds that denigrates our relationships with one another, the earth, and our most authentic selves.
27.2 Spring
Nonviolence vs. “Diversity of Tactics” in the Occupy Movement
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The question of whether Occupy should adopt a code of nonviolence has stirred contentious debates among activists since the movement began.
2012
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
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by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson
Articles
Random Violence and Our Single Garment of Destiny
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Diffuse cultural values shape our choices in layered, contingent ways. This is especially true in the context of shocking human behavior, like we saw in Tucson. Attempts to account for specific human actions via sociology are, by definition, “half-baked,” but the patterns are not random.
2012
The Walls of the Reform Movement’s “Big Tent”
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Why would the Union for Reform Judaism give a right-wing Jewish leader a prominent platform from which to make hurtful, dehumanizing, and simplistic comments about Palestinian “culture”? Does inviting such a speaker honor the Reform movement’s history of moral certitude against injustice and discrimination?
2012
Obama, Palestine, and the United Nations
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For those of us who hoped that President Barack Obama would usher in a new era supporting international law, the United Nations, and Israeli-Palestinian peace, 2011 proved to be a profoundly disappointing year. In order for his policies to change, he needs to be pressured.
Editorials & Actions
Afghanistan, Military Budget, Iran and Israel: Update
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The NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives–is part of a national coalition called Win Without War. Our members, together with members of dozens of other organizations, have been working against militarism in all its different dimensions. Below, I’m attaching two communications which have useful information for you as you plan your own activities for peace. Of course, a first step would be for you to help start (or revitalize if there once was one but now doesn’t exist or has “tired blood”) a chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives in your community. To join or renew membership, click here.
Articles
A Hope for Empathy
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On 9/11 we had the brief fortifying message from folk around the planet, “We are all Americans now.” Not blessed with a president who knew how wisely to respond to that world outpouring of empathy, we catapulted into a “war” against terror from which we have scarcely recovered.
2012
Controversies Around Restorative Justice
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Most articles in this issue come from progressive and radical activists, scholars, lawyers, and teachers who are writing wholly from within the restorative justice movement. So with one foot planted inside the restorative justice movement as a student and the other in more journalistic territory, I am hoping to offer a different perspective: a beginner’s birds-eye glance at some of the controversial issues both outside and within the movement, and at factors that may be enabling it to gather traction.
2012
Restorative Justice: Some Facts and History
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The overuse of prison and extended probation casts a long shadow that devastates families and communities throughout the country. Restorative justice is a fast-growing state, national, and international social movement and set of practices that aim to redirect society’s retributive response to crime. It attends to the broken relationships between three players: the offender, the victim, and the community.
Editorials & Actions
No Joy in Mudville–Iran & Romney; Obama abandons Habeas Corpus; Israel
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Mitt Romney Embraces The Neocons by MJ Rosenberg
The top three vote-getters in the Iowa caucuses — Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — responded to success in very different ways. Santorum, best known for his antediluvian views on gay rights and choice, emphasized the economy and job creation. Paul, keeping with the themes he has focused on his entire career, talked about personal freedom, the need to restrict “big government,” and preventing a new war in the Middle East. And Romney, who is at this point the frontrunner for the nomination, started his speech by discussing the purported failure of Barack Obama to confront Iran. With the economy still in the doldrums, Romney sees Iran as the most serious problem facing Americans.
Articles
A Populist Assault on Judicial Independence: Newt Gingrich, Recep Tayyip Edrogan, and Benjamin Netanyahu
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It is not unusual to see politicians in the U.S. chastising courts for rulings that contravene their party’s interests or ideology, but the recent proposals from Republican candidates would undermine the critical and constitutional independence of the courts. Similar assaults on the courts being carried out by conservative governments in Turkey and Israel are important as cases of these Republican policies being executed.