8 posts tagged with "social justice"

The op-ed, Is My Marriage Gay? in the New York Times (5/11/09), describes the unusual state of affairs surrounding marriages where one partner has legally changed gender after the marriage was recognized by the state. The country is patchworked with statutes and laws that make such a marriage anywhere from fully recognized to partially tolerated to anathema. And this makes no sense to me, except in recognizing that people are afraid of what they do not know. Well, go hug a transgendered person today (in person or virtually if that's what it takes). Get to know her or him.

If our economy is in need of a financial bailout, then perhaps our society is in need of a nature bailout. I've often felt that lack of spirituality is one of the strongest elements holding society back from a greater advancement of the general weal. New evidence suggests that lack of contact with the natural world stunts individual focus, resolve, and calm — in other words, it interferes with our ability to approach the world constructively. I'm convinced there is a connection between these two notions, though I'm not ready to explore that connection just yet.

A friend of mine, Sarah Talcott, recently wrote the Global Youth Cooperation Circle about an interfaith youth exchange she is planning in Cyprus. In that message she asked,

I would love to get your thoughts and ideas about how you see peacebuilding and sustainability education linked. How do the two influence and / or impact the other? How do you see these links in the work you are doing in the world? It would be nice to be able to integrate the ideas and input from this global network of young people into the exchange, as well as to take the findings and insights of the exchange back to you all.

I happened to be thinking of these very issues as I pulled dandelions up from my front yard this afternoon, so when I came inside and read her message, I felt called to respond by rapidly composing the following, which is thought-through but admittedly makes a few leaps in logic (to do otherwise would require a far larger tome!).

University of Texas professor Robert Jensen offers his analysis of the "white people's burden, saying in part, "That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding." He makes an interesting case, one that is completely lost on most of the commenters at this site. I suspect that many of the people responding so strongly against Jensen haven't had a good heart-to-heart with someone who has experienced racism and prejudice first-hand.

I am sure that I am not alone in having taken a few days to fully grok the long-term affects of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. There were two things yesterday that made it sink in for me: 1) seeing that 25,000 people were heading to the Astrodome in Houston as refugees, expecting to be there for several months, and 2) hearing about displaced Tulane students who are taking classes at the University of Texas (and elsewhere).

The first of these two is of course the most eye-catching (and add another 25,000 heading to San Antonio). How awful, to think of joining thousands of others in sleeping on cots in the Astrodome for months, with nothing to do, no job, no privacy. That is truly horrible.

Change happens. Today is not the same as yesterday, and both are far different from a few decades ago. Nevertheless, most of us look at the troubles of the world and feel more or less hopeless than any social change will ever lessen the suffering and degradation of more than a small handful of any given populace. But change does occur. Legalized slavery was abolished in the United States. Citizens stopped hunting for witches. Democratic movements swept over the Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon. Gandhi and King preached non-violence, and with non-violence achieved at least the first vital steps toward realizing their dreams. How this change comes about is the topic of an excellent essay, albeit one in need of some tightening, called The Six or Seven Axioms of Social Change.

April 7, 2005. San Francisco, USA – The United Religions Initiative Global Council in March voted to endorse the Darfur Unity Statement in recognition of the continuing necessity for international intervention in the Darfur region of Sudan. Originally signed by over 100 non-governmental agencies in July of 2004, the Save Darfur Coalition's Unity Statement remains relevant today with over two million refugees in need of aid and death toll estimates in the region now exceeding 300,000 (the statement can be found at www.savedarfur.org).

When the anti-globalization riots occurred in Seattle in the late 90's, it seemed that none of the major news reports bothered saying just what they were protesting against. Yes, they said "globalization," but nothing about why the protesters saw globalization as a rampant evil. Thankfully I was part of a few networks that touched on this movement and passed its news on, so I knew that it wasn't just creeping materialism they were against, and it wasn't development per se that they hated: rather, it was the wholesale exploitation of third world countries for the continuing benefit of the first world, and, increasingly, specific transnational corporations. Postcards From The Global Food System (#3) (dead link removed; SF 2025) at WorldChanging last week brought this all back, and serves as a terrific introduction to the problems of globalization without regard for local conditions, cultures, and needs.