Environment

U.S. Congregations Take Action on Climate Change

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The rooms in the Eco Center are named for their floors. The Rubber Room’s floor is made from salvaged conveyor belts from the Arkansas Kraft paper mill and Granite Mountain Quarry. The Beer Bottle Bottom room is named for the several thousand beer bottles in the floor. And the Rock Around the Clock room gave new life to the thick rocks that maintained the terrace around Ferncliff’s old pool. These whimsical rooms prove that waste is never necessary.

Culture

The Grandmothers

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Awareness of the Armenian genocide is growing not only in the countries of the diaspora, but also in Turkey. A complex reality of pain and sorrow, anxiety, and also sometimes liberation as they try to square state school textbooks that vilify the Armenians and blame them for their fate is felt especially by Armenians living and writing in Turkey.

General News

Don’t Say We Did Not Know: One Man’s Struggle to Bring the Truth to Light

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The human rights movement takes the place “where morality and ethics are failing,” says Israeli author activist Amos Gvirtz. “This is the unknown success of the human rights movement.” He fears the time is running out for Israel to convince the world that their methods for dealing with Palestinians are justified in violating international human rights law.

General News

Alternatives to Violence Days

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We will be lobbying Progressive House of Representatives offices on April 22-24 to encourage people of compassion and sanity to support the Global Marshall Plan Resolution. Even if you cannot be in Washington, D.C. we can still use your help!

Culture

Tribute to Karen McCarthy Brown: Author of Mama LoLa or the Book that Kept Me in Grad School

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Well, there was this book, Mama Lola, about a Vodou priestess in Brooklyn. Did I know the author? No I did not. The subject was close to home. We had inherited responsibilities that have been overstretched by migration. It’s not something that we talk about. Maybe after your dissertation on Jamaica, you’ll write another book on your family’s story. In the meantime was there enough interest in this work to bring her to campus? Mere thoughts of that someday became inspiration enough to help me keep my eyes on the prize.

Culture

“Islam in America": A Conversation with Jonathan Curiel

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Jonathan Curiel’s new book is a readable and reliable history of the Muslim experience in America. The first waves of Muslim immigrants in the United States were very insular, Curiel writes, but interfaith efforts are one of the new hallmarks of American Islam — and a hallmark that separates American Muslims from Muslim communities in other countries.