Empathy

Starting the Future Today

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Creating meaningful relationships with the actual people that interact with me I learn that my sphere of influence is almost always larger than I take note of even if it’s smaller than my wishes. If I bring to bear, with support and community from others, my vision and its application to the specific moment in which I find myself, then I continually take steps towards this vision. A different future is then born, again and again, in each of my small and meaningful acts.

art

The Never Ending Tale: Images of Despair and Hope from the Great Depression to the Great Recession

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HOBOS TO STREET PEOPLE: ARTIST’S RESPONSES TO HOMELESSNESS FROM THE NEW DEAL TO THE PRESENT
by Art Hazelwood
Freedom Voices, 2011
In 1939, the iconic American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) took and disseminated a photograph of a mother and her two children on the road in Siskiyou County, California (Figure 1). Like all of Lange’s Depression era images, this work reveals the powerful human pathos of poverty and homelessness. Viewers cannot fail to feel the agony and despair of a mother trying desperately to maintain her family in the midst of overwhelming economic catastrophe. Like hundreds of her photographs, this effort represents the essence of socially committed art, the result of a visual artist who used her creativity to call attention to the human face of social disruption and human suffering. Art historians universally accept Lange as one of the masters of American photography, both for her outstanding artistic skills and for her profound empathy for the most marginalized members of society during the Great Depression.

Empathy

Occupy the Tax Code

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Tax policy may seem far from the passion of Occupy, but it is essential to this moral movement. Reforming taxes on capital gains, the profits from sales of stocks and other financial assets, will target the wealthiest without hurting the economy.

Christianity

The Occupy Movement and Sacred Space

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If the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and its home at “Liberty Square” is to survive and have impact, occupiers need a larger understanding of what sacred space is and what it isn’t. Sacred space can be anywhere, any time. It is by definition beyond time and place.

art

“The Promise”: Considering Israel and Its Myth of Origins

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There is a shrinking minority of Israelis who share Erin’s consternation and are willing to question whether the end (Israel) justifies the means (Israel’s “original sins”). This group’s dwindling influence, due in part to the relentless attacks from the hawkish and nationalistic coalition that emerged from the last election, is palpable

art

Personal and Political Chains: Transformative Sculptures by Lorraine Bonner

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Amidst the contrasting tones and strikingly honest symbols in Bonner’s sculpture series called Exploring the Perpetrator, Bonner confronts the powerful forces that have threatened her spirit and health. By exploring domination, as she calls it, Bonner has been able to find ways to survive her abusive past. She has found profound intersections between her own exploitation and that of our society. Like many before her, she has connected the personal with the political. Bonner invites us to not only recognize the perpetrator that controls our own well being, but also those forces that control our system.

Buddhism

How Mindfulness Can Overcome the Greed of the 1 Percent

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I have led mindfulness and loving-kindness meditations at Occupy Boston. Meditation is, of course, valuable as a refuge from stress. Participating in an occupation, which may involve living outdoors under threat of possible arrest and police brutality, can certainly be stressful (I myself am only a day visitor to the Occupy Boston encampment). But I believe mindfulness can actually address the core problem that the Occupy movement confronts, i.e. the greed of the wealthiest 1 percent. The thesis of my eBook, Occupy the Moment, is that greed is literally an addiction, a distortion of the brain systems that govern habits and rewards.