Posts with the tag "activism"

This page shows posts in my weblog that are tagged with the keyword(s) above. This is one of the ways you can browse all of the different topics I write about.


Flash Mobs


Flash mobs are large groups of people who assemble suddenly in a public place to perform an unexpected action, and then quickly disperse. For example, here's a mob hitting New York City:

Flash mobs are interesting to me for a few reasons:

Arresting journalists, preventing protest


Journalist Amy Goodman, along with two other members of her crew, were roughed up and arrested at the Republican National Convention despite clearly displaying their press credentials.  Other journalists hoping to provide media coverage of the convention and the protests around it were pre-emptively arrested before it even began.  And of course, many other people [...]

Making fun of Community Organizers


Like many people of diverse political affiliations, I bristled during the Republican National Convention when various speakers including VP candidate Sarah Palin made fun of "community organizer" as a worthwhile way of spending time.
It wasn't problematic for me because the attack was being used against candidate Barack Obama, although I [...]

Darfur Genocide, On Our Watch


Until I watched the PBS Frontline documentary On Our Watch, I had only a very general awareness of what people meant when they talked about the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. It is sobering and sad to know that that even with all of the news and pseudo-news I follow and the [...]

Dave Pollard: Need Less


I thoroughly enjoyed this post by Dave Pollard: Need Less.
The essence of radical simplicity, of the gift/generosity economy, of natural community, and of natural entrepreneurship, I think, is needing less. Needing less makes us, as individuals, members of enterprises, communities and societies, more self-sufficient, and more resilient, and allows us to give more with [...]

On being outraged and paying attention


These numbers came into my inbox today:

Number of US citizens (non-military) killed by terrorists in 2005: 56
Amount spent by US government on War on Terror in 2005: $136 billion
Number of people worldwide who died of hunger in 2005: 8,000,000
Amount spent by US government on aid to world's poor in 2005: $4.9 billion

(Sources: US Dept. of [...]

On volunteering


It's a privilege to volunteer in one's community. In one sense it's literally a privilege of having the time and means to say "I'm doing okay enough in my own life that I want to share some of my energy in service to the lives of others." In another sense, it's a privilege [...]

The Ambassador


Wednesday night I attended a screening of The Ambassador, a documentary about John Dimitri Negroponte, currently the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and formerly U.S. ambassador to Honduras, the United Nations and Iraq. Negroponte has been a controversial figure due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and human rights violations in Honduras, and [...]

Pal-Item Misunderstands Nature of Protest


The Richmond Palladium-Item newspaper seems to have multiple personalities when it comes to characterizing the nature of civil protest. In Friday's editorial, they so nobly say "It's our right to stand up for our beliefs, tell our elected officials we disagree, share our viewpoints with neighbors, family and friends, strive for the betterment of [...]

The Suffering Servant


The assignment given for my New Testament course was to "write a biblical parable."
What I came up with is obviously not a parable in the traditional sense, but I like to think of it as the parable of parables; it is the story of a common theme that runs throughout the literature of the biblical [...]

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