Empathy

How We Discuss Religion on Tikkun Daily

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It’s quite an experience to read all the comments on Amanda Quraishi’s post “I Can’t Make It Any Clearer.” They provide more of a snapshot of the comments widely seen on the web than we often get at Tikkun Daily: some are characterized by one of the commenters as “vitriolic.” If I try to practice the art of empathy for all the commenters — which is by no means the same as agreeing with them, but involves trying to imagine myself in their shoes — I can make guesses that may or may not hold some truth for the commenters involved. I find it easy to empathize with Amanda Quraishi and other practicing Muslims when faced with Rob Fox’s comments about that he calls “the psychopathology of Islam,” because I was raised myself in a religious movement that was very heavily attacked, in the press and in books available in the library, in terms that dismissed the entire thing as, essentially, evil. I found these attacks extremely hurtful, because I knew that my family and the people in our movement were very decent people.

General News

Why This Is The Most Interesting Time In American History!

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I have been editing and posting transcripts of speeches from the June Network of Spiritual Progressives conference to our website and I am blown away by how good some of them are. Like this:
In theory, if you want the outcomes – equality, environmental change, community stability – you can rig the incentives and the regulatory structure to get the corporations to do that for you. The problem in actual practice is they’re too powerful. We know that. “Well,” he said, “well if you can’t get that, then how are you going to get what you’re talking about?”

General News

Homo Empathicus: Jeremy Rifkin on the Science of Empathy

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A veteran of struggles for nonviolent social change was quoted to me this year to the effect that for all his long life “the science has been against us, but now suddenly it’s for us.” He was referring to the recent scientific work that has been done on empathy and cooperation. Edwin Rutsch has a very useful collection of this work at his empathy website. His list of experts, with links to articles, books and video, includes people I do know of, like Frans de Waal and Antonio Damasio, and many more I don’t. If I had a month off I would love to soak myself in these new understandings of our cooperative and empathic nature.

The Economy--Wealth & Poverty

Grève Générale. Bring Down the House of Cards!

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Harriet Fraad sent us this French video with a comment from her husband, econ prof Richard Wolff:
The General Strike in France rallied, according to the CGT (France’s largest of the 6 national trade union federations who united to produce this strike), over 2.7 million demonstrators marching against raising the retirement age and against austerity around the slogan, “do not permit governments to make the mass of people pay for the failures of capitalism.” Not the least of the mechanisms helping to generate this support were video clips like this one:
Note: It does help to know that Greve means strike, and Lutte means struggle. Grève générale le 7 septembre
Uploaded by Solidairesnational. – News videos from around the world. So do I put this up because I want to see the kind of revolution where the house of cards collapses, leaving a vacuum that is all too likely to get filled with the moralistic Robespierres or Khomeinis or Cromwells (whether religious or secular in their moralism) of the French, Iranian or English revolutions, or with the true believers in some “scientific” advance of the working class led by its vanguard intellectuals, like Lenin?

General News

Jesus in Love to Anne Rice: You can be pro-gay AND Christian

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Of course anyone who reads this blog or Tikkun magazine, especially our current issue at right, knows that. But it seems best-selling author Anne Rice, who followed up her vampire novels with novels about Jesus, isn’t so sure. It all hinges on the definition of “Christian:”
“I remain committed to Christ as always,” she explained further on Facebook, “but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried.

Politics & Society

Faith Leaders Protest Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law

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A judge agrees! “Judge Blocks Key Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona.” Judge Susan Bolton said:
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”
Also nice to get this email today:

On Eve of Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law Taking Effect, U.S. Faith Leaders Descend on State
Launch Coordinated Weekend of Protest
TODAY at 2 p.m. EDT, religious leaders from across the country, all of whom are in Arizona to protest SB-1070– the anti-immigrant law there, will hold a telephone press conference to denounce the law, which is scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, and unveil their weekend of coordinated action to stand against punitive laws that divide families and communities. These faith leaders will stand alongside hundreds of other people of faith who are leading events in several cities as part of the National Weekend of Prayer and Action for Immigrant Justice, coordinated by Interfaith Worker Justice July 29- August 1.

Empathy

Americans Shouting At and Talking With Each Other

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This remarkable video captures the scene at an unusual demonstration: one where the police make no attempt to separate the two sides. Those defending a convicted policeman’s reputation and those attacking the system as racist are vehemently opposed to each other. Without police lines between them, people engage at close quarters, shout insults and even talk and answer each other’s points, nose to nose. It looks like the police should stand back at more demos, and let this happen. People want to speak at and to each other and some even listen.

Culture

Six items of clothing for a month…

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When have I ever linked to a fashion article? But this is I like: Shoppers on a ‘Diet’ Tame the Urge to Buy. Sally Bjornsen, the founder of the Great American Apparel Diet, said she was prompted to stop buying clothes for a simple reason: “I was sick and tired of consumerism,” she said. Last summer, Ms. Bjornsen, 47, said she was thinking about how years of easy credit had led to overspending on cars, homes and luxury goods. Then, looking in her own closet, she realized that she was part of the problem, she said.

Politics & Society

Could Oakland Become a Restorative Justice City?

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Is it possible for one city to become a model for restorative justice? Can you imagine a ten year plan to make it happen? I don’t know what that might look like but I really want to hear from people who have ideas about it. Here’s an article Edwin Rutsch sent me describing the work of a number of people in Santa Cruz, California, who have that dream for their city. They say that the cities of Hull, England and Rochester, New York have already become “Restorative Cities.”

Culture

Nonviolent Conflict and Comunication — at Street Level

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Edwin Rutsch is videotaping all kinds of people in political hotspots and asking them for their views about and experience of empathy. Today he is at a pro-Johannes Mehserle demonstration in Walnut Creek, an outlying Bay Area suburb. Mehserle is the San Francisco Bay Area transit policeman who killed an innocent, unarmed traveler in full view of dozens of people last year, and who was just convicted of involuntary manslaughter. After the verdict was announced on July 8 a great deal of anger was expressed on the streets of Oakland at the insufficiency of the verdict, and Edwin was there taping as well (he recommends #s 27, 29 and 34 to our readers): here is # 27, his brief interview with our own Nichola Torbett:

In this video Niochola deftly brings together two strands of nonviolent work that can seem to be working at odds with each other. Here she is talking about empathy for the police, while linking arms with fellow protesters against efforts by the police to minimize and disperse their collective energy.