Politics & Society

Department of Justice Again Allows Megabanks to Continue Business as Usual

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Five global banks agreed to pay more than $5 billion in combined penalties and plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve a long-running U.S. investigation into whether traders colluded to move foreign-currency rates for their own financial benefit. Not only are most of these fines tax-deductible, and many of them amount to less than the profits made from their law-breaking behavior, but the revolving door between executives and the Federal Government continues to spin.

Inter-Culturalism

Re-making the Jericho Road: Martin Luther King and Economic Justice

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Are not the opponents of living wages, paid sick leave, are not the antagonists of giving working folk a decision-making power over the means of production and distribution frequently the antagonists of folk of color — and we might add of women, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, and others? At this hour, Dr. King’s legacy still speaks to us, in particular concerning leveling inequality and creating an alternative economics.

Environment

Markets of the Mind

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Debt and guilt are powerful tools. In the case of debt-fueled growth, damage to the environment, to the vulnerable, to self-realisation, we find the real reason to resist the marketising of the mind and the guilt-priming of the economy.

Culture

Educated Hope and the Promise of Democracy

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Professor Henry A. Giroux’s commencement speech to the class of 2015 at Chapman University: “Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice? Or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? “

Buddhism

I Arrived At The White House… And Didn’t Go Inside.

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As a U.S. citizen, I am to some degree complicit in U.S. systemic violence, and who gives two hoots about whether or not I enter the White House. This is not about being pure; the historical trauma and injustices we face are not new. My hope is in the refuge of awareness and awakeness.

Christianity

Turning Again: Been Down in the South

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The Christian response to nonviolent direct action in 1963 sounded similar to many critiques of Baltimore’s uprising today: yes, injustice is wrong. But we must be patient. Don’t stir up trouble. But when you come to a dead end, nonviolence teaches you to look for a resurrection.

Environment

The Hypocrisy of “Pro-Life” and the GOP

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The GOP’s philosophy of an unrestricted free market system increases the size and magnitude of mega global corporations that gobble up small and emerging entrepreneurs. It attempts to deny basic human and civil rights to LGBT people, rights that are routinely accorded to heterosexual people. How is this a “pro-life” party?