Category Archives: Ecology, religion, justice

Online peace witness?

Will Shetterly is talking about creating a peace group online. Will just floated this idea today, so it’s still a pretty malleable project. Read his blog post, and if you want you can sign on in comments.

This crazy war in Iraq and Afghanistan has begun to really gnaw at me, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to take action. I’m planning to go down to Washington to participate in the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq’s worship and witness event April 29-30. I’ve been considering heading down to the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership’s Washington celebration of MLK on January 19 (hey, E, can I stay at your place if I come down?)

But I’m not sure worship and witness is enough. So I told Will I’d help him out with his online peace project.

What about you? What do you think might be an effective way to bring pressure to bear on Washington to end the Iraq/Afghanistan war — and go beyond that to truly promote peace in the world? Street demonstrations seem outdated, but will Web 2.0 movements be enough? What do you think?

Boston DOMA protest

Two of us from First Unitarian in New Bedford drove up to Boston today to attend the demonstration opposing the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” or DOMA (info about the demonstration here). It was cold — I saw one thermometer over a bank that read sixteen degrees. The cold kept a lot of people away — I would estimate that less than a thousand people showed up for this demonstration.

There may only have been a thousand of us, but we were enthusiastic, not least because you stay wormer when you’re enthusiastic. Just a few politicians braved the cold: Barney Frank, congressman from our district; Tom Menino, mayor of Boston; Denise Simmons, mayor of Cambridge. After Barney Frank spoke, the two of us from New Bedford made sure to say hello to him, and tell him we voted for him. He even posed for a picture:

Jean Kellaway and Barney Frank at the DOMA protest

That’s Jean K. posing with Barney Frank. Frank and several of the other speakers reminded us that now is a good time to start writing to your representatives and senators, telling them that we want DOMA repealed (heck, even the conservative legislator who wrote DOMA now wants it repealed). With a new president and a new congress, we have a much better chance of getting equal marriage rights over the next two years, but they do need to hear from you, their constituents.

Here’s one more photo, showing us walking through downtown Boston past King’s Chapel, one of the Unitarian Universalist churches in Boston:

Boston DOMA protest walking by King's Chapel

Finally, I note the following: I didn’t see any other Unitarian Universalist ministers or laypeople at this demonstration, but there was someone from the Boston Metropolitan Community Church handing out refrigerator magnets advertising their church.

Join the Impact

This Saturday, January 10, I’ll be headed up to Boston to attend a demonstration against the federal “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). It’s one of dozens of demonstrations that will take place across the country, to tell president-elect Barack Obama that he must keep his campaign promises on LGBTQ rights.

“Join the Impact,” the organizers of the demonstration this Saturday, organized a similar protest on November 15, part of a nation-wide series of protests against the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Half a dozen members of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation attended the November 15 demonstration in Boston, which tells me that they are paying attention to how much public support there is for same-sex marriage rights.

Speaking of the demonstration this Saturday, the organizers write: “This demonstration will ONLY be successful if it rivals the scope and scale of the one in November. We must show lawmakers that November 15th was not a one-time-only event.”

I think that statement is correct. I don’t know what’s going on in your state, but the Massachusetts Congressional delegation is clearly paying attention. There were over 5,000 people in Boston’s City Hall plaza on November 15 — it would be good if we could double that.

For more information, check the national Join the Impact Web site and click on the link for January 10th DOMA protest to find links to what’s happening in your state on Saturday. If you’re in Massachusetts, go to the Mass. Join the Impact Web site, and click through to their Facebook page for the most up-to-date info.

The year in review

There was good news and bad news in 2008.

First, lots of bad news:

The economy: From my perspective, it was already going downhill last January. I knew something was up when the minister’s discretionary fund at church was out of money, more people were asking me for money, and no one could afford to donate any more money. In September, Wall Street and the media finally woke up to the fact that our economy has been driven by predatory lending and Ponzi schemes for the past decade, and suddenly we were in a “global financial crisis.” The Dow Jones industrial average fell 34% in 2008, the biggest one-year drop since 1931.

War: The war in Iraq went nowhere. The much-vaunted surge didn’t seem to change anything except that the federal government was spending even more money over there, and the few people who were willing to be soldiers were going over for their fourth or fifth deployment. No improvement, just a slow ongoing decline. Blessed would the peacemakers be, if we had any peacemakers.

Climate: Summer was hot, hotter than ever. Yeah, I know that global warming is “just a theory” and “not really based on facts.” Even if it is true (and it is indeed a well-proven theory), we’re supposed to be calling it global climate change. Well, the result of global climate change here in New England is that it was hot last summer, and it is freakishly warm this winter.

But also quite a bit of good news:

Green technology: “On October 3, President Bush signed into law the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that included the hoped-for 8-year extention of the solar investment tax credit. The act also lifted the $2,000 cap on the tax credit for residential systems, granting both commercial and residential systems eligibility for a 30% tax credit…. The law will encourage rapid growth for the solar industry….” (Distributed Energy: The Journal of Energy Efficiency and Reliability, November/December, 2008, p. 50.) The lousy economy is driving us to become more energy-efficient, and to develop renewable energy sources.

Green religion: One of the more interesting things to come out of the presidential campaign was that about half the Christian evangelicals are now promoting what they call “Creation care.” It’s a little weird that they can’t bring themselves to say “ecotheology” or “environmentalism,” but at least they’re headed in the right direction, and are starting to catch up with liberal and moderate religious groups.

Personal: This marked year 19 with Carol, which is better than I can express. I have wonderful extended family, great friends, and a job that I love. I know 2008 was a tough year for many people, but from my selfish point of view it was a great year.

The president: Obama is no saint, by world standards he is pretty conservative, he has far too many ties to the corporate puppet-masters, but — he is Not-George-Bush. And as for George Bush, the shoe incident sums it up for me:

Yup. At great personal cost, Muntadar al-Zaidi became an instant folk-hero by summing up what many people around the world think about George Bush. (Image courtesy Dependable Renegade.)

New book on religious naturalism

Jerry Stone, adjunct faculty at Meadville Lombard Theological School, and retired professor of philosophy at William Rainey Harper College in Chicago, sent this email message today:

“Friends — I have just found out that my new book, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative is now available from SUNY Press for orders placed in December for a 20% discount plus free shipping (WOW!). I apologize for the late notice. Orders can be placed at sunypress.edu.”

“Discounted price” means it’s US$60 instead of US$75. Big bucks for a book, but those who are interested in process theology (Bernard Loomer apparently looms large in this book), or contemporary humanism, or connections between religion and environmentalism, might want this book. I know my local library isn’t going to get it, so I just ordered my copy. (It’s also available in a downloadable version for US$20.)

If you want to know more about Jerry’s work in this area, try this article from Process Studies, or this article on the Meadville Lombard Web site, or my report on a 2006 lecture by Jerry. For those who might be interested, I’m placing Jerry’s abstract of the book below. Continue reading →

More on shoes

Update on yesterday’s post:

Today the BBC reports: “An Iraqi official was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the journalist was being interrogated to determine whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at President Bush.” Given the stated policies of the current U.S. administration, the word “interrogated” could mean what the rest of the world would call torture.

The BBC also reports that the man’s name is Muntadar al-Zaidi, and they give an English translation of what he shouted at Bush: “This is a farewell kiss, you dog… This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Special take-home quiz: Who is on the moral high ground here, George Bush or Muntadar al-Zaidi, and why? Ten bonus points for citing verses from both the Koran and the New Testament.

Update: Leona’s selling T-shirts (see comments).

Another take on Harvey Milk

Blogger Tallturtle was living in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco when Harvey Milk was assassinated thirty years ago, and he’s written a short memoir of his impressions of the incident, from his perspective as an ordinary San Franciscan of that day.

Tallturtle has a couple of observations that I hadn’t heard before:– First, that Dan White, the guy who murdered Milk and George Moscone, was fairly clueless when it came to politics, and possibly even too honest in a peculiar sense of the word:

This next part is merely my speculation. White was a political amateur. He didn’t understand how politics was played in San Francisco. He didn’t realize that as a conservative Supervisor, he was valuable to the commercial and financial elites of the city. He didn’t know there were many perfectly legal ways that rich people could reward their friends. Heck, he may not have known that these people considered him his friend….

And second, that San Franscisco of that day was not a coherent city, but rather a collection of many smaller communities that didn’t really communicate with one another. This last point leads to the moral of the story for Tallturtle — but rather than spoil the moral for you here, you should just go and read the post yourself.

“Str8 against H8”

Leona, Amy, and I went up to Boston’s City Hall today so we could join in the “Join the Impact” demonstration against California’s Proposition 8. There were dark clouds, and it looked like rain. As we walked from the Park Street subway station over to city hall, we wondered aloud about how many people might be there. “They’ve got 3,000 on their Facebook page who’ve signed up to be there today,” said Leona. “Yeah, but with the rain I’ll bet it’s half that,” I said, “although there will be people there who forget to sign up, so what, maybe 2,000?” Leona still thought it would be more.

There were a lot of people at City Hall Plaza, more than I expected; and more streaming in every few minutes. Early on, one of the speakers said there were 5,000 people there — but I suspect there were more than that at the peak of attendance. We wound up standing up at the top of the amphitheatre, pretty far from the stage.

Miraculously, the rain held off. Down on the stage, a woman shouted, “Who’s here from Boston?” and all the Bostonians shouted back. She listed off various regions of Massachusetts, and the people who were from those regions shouted back at her. But of course she didn’t mention the south coast (people in Boston don’t even know that we exist), so when she was done and there was a little lull, I shouted, “We’re from New Bedford!” and since I have a really big voice a bunch of people laughed, including the woman on the stage.

About two minutes later, someone touches my arm, and I turn around, and there’s Donald, an old friend. “I thought that loudmouth who shouted had to be you,” he said, grinning. I haven’t seen Donald for years, so we chatted a little bit. He pointed out some of the home-made signs people were holding up: “Don’t Forget Us, Obama!” and “Mormon Families Support Gay Families” and “Str8 against H8” and some others. We both noticed the sign that read, “Hey California, WTF!?”

They had a lot of speakers. Some of them were pretty good. State representative Byron Rushing quoted Frederick Douglass to great effect. Niki Tsongas, congresswoman representing Lawrence and Lowell, was short and to the point. Congressman Ed Markey got the crowd all revved up. The speakers went on for over two hours — maybe a couple too many speakers, and a little bit of live music would have been nice.

But it felt like time well spent. There were events like ours in every state. 5,000 of us turned out in Boston to demonstrate our dismay that California would take away rights that used to be granted under their state constitution. Maybe 6,000 people turned out in Seattle, more than 10,000 turned out in San Diego (those are the only cities the news outlets are reporting right now). With only six days’ notice, thousands of people showed up in front of City Halls nationwide — let’s hope that makes the politicians sit up and take notice.

Rally

About sixty workers and their supporters turned out this evening to attend the meeting of the New Bedford city council. The city councillors were planning to vote on a resolution urging the Eagle manufacturing plant to keep jobs in New Bedford, for as the New Bedford Standard-Times reported yesterday, “The labor union organizing a union drive at Eagle Industries says it has changed tactics and is now trying to keep the South End military apparel plant from potentially leaving New Bedford and taking with it 330 jobs.” Eagle is the company that took over for Michael Bianco, which was the company that hired illegal immigrants to work in sweatshop conditions, and that was shut down by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March, 2007, in a raid that made national headlines.

Anyway, there we all were tonight, standing around in the chilly dampness in front of City Hall. Zach Lutz, the UNITE HERE! union organizer said a few words, Cynthia Rodrigues from the Central Labor Council named all the unions that were represented — UNITE HERE, Carpenters, SEIU Local 1199, AFT, UWUA, etc. — and I gave the invocation. But the important speakers, the ones we came to hear, were some of the people who work at Eagle Industries. One woman gave specifics of which parts of the factory have been shut down. Another woman told how she had been fired because she was considered disruptive, because she was helping organize the workers. A couple of them spoke in Spanish, while one of their co-workers translated into English. Everyone cheered them after they spoke, and you could see them stand up a little straighter at that — although I suspect those momentary cheers will be small comfort tomorrow when they’re back at work.

The mayor of New Bedford came out of City Hall, and told the crowd that he has contacted both U.S. senators from our state, and our U.S. representative, and they are all committed to making sure all 330 jobs at the Eagle plant stay in the city; then he left quickly for another event. Suddenly someone noticed that one of the supervisors from Eagle, a woman named Dana, was sitting in a parked car watching the rally, keeping an eye on which workers were in attendance. Someone from one of the other local unions (I think he was from the Carpenter’s Union) started chanting, Shame on Dana! and everyone took up the chant for a moment. A guy beside me muttered disgustedly, That’s where our tax dollars go — what he meant was: The only work that the plant gets is from the Department of Defense and they’re using tax dollars from government defense contracts to pay their managers to spy on their workers.

By then it was time to troop upstairs to the Council Chambers. Those who could squeezed in on the main floor, and the rest of us milled around outside the door or slipped upstairs to the balcony. I had to leave early for an event at the church — when I left, everyone was sitting there waiting for the Council meeting to begin, waiting for the city council to resolve to keep jobs in New Bedford, hoping that our city wouldn’t lose another 330 jobs just because the absentee owners of Eagle Industries decide they can get cheaper, more compliant workers at their plant in Puerto Rico.