Social Justice Magazine
hey were both born during the waning decades of the Russian Empire, one in St. Petersburg, the other in Kaunus (present day Lithuania). Though 36 years spanned their births, similarities abound, one being that they were both from Jewish families in a terribly anti Semitic era. Their childhoods were likely spent encompassed in something of a siege mentality, always being viewed as an “other” by … [Read more...]
uring the late 70s, when I moved to Brooklyn, the Park Slope neighborhood I settled in was a tough place, very different from the gentrified community it is now. There was a long row of abandoned buildings along 7th Avenue south of 9th Street. There were abandoned buildings on Garfield Place between 7th and 6th Avenue. And 2nd Street between 4th and 5th Avenue looked like a block in East New York … [Read more...]
efore Rick Santorum was introduced at a revivalist-type church service in Baton Rouge last week, Baptist pastor Dennis Terry revived the timeworn trope, "America: Love It or Leave It." He said that those who don't believe that America "was founded as a Christian nation" ought to "get out!" In case it wasn't clear precisely who should be sent packing, he added, "We don't worship Buddha, we don't … [Read more...]
If you haven’t been called to participate in a survey this week, you’ll probably be asked next week. Voters are increasingly accosted by exit pollers wanting to know who they are and how they voted. Fake commercial surveys to get you to buy products and fake political surveys which insist that you share their opinion compete with real surveys, all trying to find out what we collectively do and … [Read more...]
I've been thinking about politics lately, well, more like politics has been beating me over the head as of late. And, since I'm involved with the Occupy Los Angeles Movement, I've been wondering about some of the stuff the Republican Presidential candidates have been saying during the thousand and one nights of Republican President Debates.Some of the things I hear from the Republican Party … [Read more...]
In two previous essays on "Political Wisdom" I dealt with the topic generally. The first was much longer, amply footnoted, and considered how it applied to both elected officials and the electorate. The second and shorter essay summarized many of the findings of the first and dealt primarily with the virtues and values required of a politically wise president. The present essay also … [Read more...]
We want our leaders to exercise political wisdom. At least, we do if we think about it. Does anybody really desire unwise leaders? But what do we mean by political wisdom? What virtues and values does a wise leader possess? The present essay, condensed from a much longer footnoted essay, attempts to answer these questions. It does so partly by looking at what past thinkers, starting with … [Read more...]
The Occupy movement's national day of action — "Shut Down the Corporations" — is a difficult action to assess. Was the action a success or a failure? The first question that needs to be answered is, what were the action's goals?Many of the activists who performed civil disobedience during the day likely acted with educational motives, as many of the actions were preformed to either expose … [Read more...]
While waiting to see if my area of Illinois actually will skip the winter season, I basked in the warmth triggered by two new books about revolutions.Are the events in Wisconsin and elsewhere merely a last flicker of protest or the beginning of a new revolution for social justice?John Nichols, in Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, from … [Read more...]
Identity is the lifeblood of politics. It's what really matters, and in too many cases, it's the only thing that matters.Identity is experienced as truth—truth so sacred it trumps every possible counterargument. To say we are emotional because of our identity would be an oversimplification, but our identity is the well from which our emotions spring forth.That's why facts don't matter in … [Read more...]
For any who don't know, the 99% Declaration Working Group, a group that has emerged from and within the Occupy Movement, has undertaken an ambitious project to organize a national election for the purpose of electing delegates to a National General Assembly. This NGA is proposed to convene on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia, and is proposed to be tasked with drafting a list of grievances that will … [Read more...]
In 1963 I was 21 years old and the only white woman in the NAACP in Morgantown, West Virginia. Did I know Morgantown was a hotbed of KKK activity? Did I even know what the KKK was? No. But there I was marching in civil rights marches through town because I learned in Sunday School that we were to love our neighbor as ourselves and in Girl Scouts that we were all brothers and sisters.I … [Read more...]
The guy with the skinhead haircut was wearing a biker-style blue jean vest emblazoned on the back with a big Rebel flag patch and another patch that said “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” Latin for “Thus Always to Tyrants.”“Sic Semper Tyrannis” is the motto of Virginia, where Richmond doubled as the capital of the Old Dominion and the new Confederacy during the Civil War. “Sic Semper … [Read more...]
This campaign season can be summed up by one interview on conservative talk radio last August. It was with Iowa Straw Poll-sweeper Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, in which she proclaimed: “What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going … [Read more...]
Nothing.My home state does not suffer from a fundamental political or societal flaw. There are a number of things that I do not like about Arizona, namely S.B. 1070, tent-city Joe Arpaio, and finger-wagging Jan Brewer. But to understand Arizona and that nothing’s the matter with it you have to understand its Western personality, one that is volatile and quirky. It is a personality that … [Read more...]
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