activism

Religious groups concerned about the environment

Catholic Conservation Center http://conservation.catholic.org/

A Rocha http://www.arocha.org/int-en/index.html

Earth Ministry http://earthministry.org/

The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences http://www.ctns.org/about.html

Web of Creation http://www.webofcreation.org/

Target Earth http://www.targetearth.org/

The health care reform bill just passed last week and it's a good time to reflect on the struggles of the past few months. It was a long and drawn out process, with a lot of compromises and points where it seemed like the bill wouldn't be passed.

In the Long Beach area, a grassroots and coalition campaign is taking place to clean up the air pollution and poverty in the local seaports. The air around the seaports is dirty because port truck drivers earn too little to buy trucks that would belch out fewer diesel particulates, tiny particles that contribute to cancer and asthma.

One of my favorite magazines to read is Z Magazine. It is a leftist magazine of essays, accounts of activists and great cartoons that offers a point of view that I don't see in any other magazine. In my latest issue that I got in the mail, they are going to push in these next few months to fundraise and get more subscribers. I like Z Magazine because it covers the work of activists from around the world who are trying to protect the environment, work for human rights, aid in peace effors, help the poor, and expose the wrongdoings of corporations and of government. As a website of progressive Christians who have many of the same concerns and interests, I thought many of you in Crossleft might be interested in giving Z Magazine a try.

I did a cartoon recently for Everyday Citizen on a day with my cat Jasper. You could look at it here .

One of the things I look forward to at the beginning of each month is to receive in the mail the latest issues of the Catholic Worker and Z Magazine. When I read both periodicals, I get information on activists and read about information in the grassroots that I don't find in any other periodicals. Though I don't always agree with every opinion that I read, I've learned a lot about different perspectives on the effects of globalization on the poor and marginalized in this world. Especially nowadays, as our country and the world struggles through hard economic times, it is easy to turn inwards to our national problems and forget the problems in the rest of the world. In my cartoon, I based some of the dialogue of the Facebook friends on articles that I've read in the latest issues of the Catholic Worker and Z Magazine.

"This is a time when there seems to be a particular need for men of philosophical persuasion—that is to say, friends of wisdom and truth—to join together…We Jews should be, and remain, the carriers and patrons of spiritual values. But we should also always be aware of the fact that these spiritual values are and always have been the common goal of mankind."-Einstein

Thanks to Omar Barghouti for emailing:

According to the almost official results of the Israeli elections, reproduced below, the fanatic-to-fascist right was the biggest winner in Israel. A proper death certificate for the Israeli Zionist "left" should finally be issued -- 61 years late!

I've been a member of Crossleft for over a year now. In that span of time I've learned a lot about an alternative more progressive view of Christianity from reading the posts of the regular bloggers. During this past year, Crossleft has had insightful and sometimes heated discussions on the election season, the religious right, cultural issues, poverty issues, and the responsibility of christians to take on the social issues of this country. Every morning after preparing some oatmeal and feeding the cats, I turn on the computer and one of the first sites I start reading is Crossleft. My wife thinks I'm addicted.

Yesterday I read in the papers that Studs Terkel, oral historian and radio disc jockey, died last Friday. He was 96 years old. When I read about it, I had a sad feeling. I first started reading his books when I was in college and these books helped me to learn about the way Americans thought about race, class, and the way they thought about the times they were living. I enjoyed reading the stories of individual Americans, their experiences and insights and their resilience in the face of hard times.

First, some facts. Louis “Studs” Terkel was born May 16, 1912 in New York City. His family moved to Chicago while he was young and he met the workers and activists who shaped his world view. He got the nickname “Studs” from the character Studs Lonigan in the James T. Farrells trilogy of books about an Irish American man in Chicago’s South Side. Terkel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932, studying law and philosophy. He worked briefly as a federal statistician and found employment in radio through the WPA Writers Project acting in soap operas. In the 1940s, he worked fulltime in radio as a disc jockey and hosted an early t.v. show “Studs Place” set in a fictional bar in Chicago.

My wife has given me many things that I’m grateful for since she came into my life. One of the nicest things she’s given me is a whole new range of music that I never listened to before. When we first dated, one of the first places she took me to was an Indigo Girls concert in Berkeley. I had heard the name of Indigo Girls, but I never really listened to their music before. Ever since that concert, I really started listening to them, and found out they are deeply involved in progressive activism and promoting issues of peace and sexual equality.