Conscience Thunders
for Matt Miller Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 Simon and Schuster, 2006 The following are passages from this third volume of a gripping, recent history of the US….
Category: Activists
The Urgent Necessities When You’re Stuck in One Place
I understand that I can have visitors twice a month—the second and fourth Sunday. However, I understand that everybody—white and colored—can have visitors this coming Sunday. I hope you can find some way to come…
The Imperative To Remember
Anyone who does not actively, constantly engage in remembering and in making others remember is an accomplice of the enemy. Conversely, whoever opposes the enemy must take the side of his victims and communicate…
Hope’s Beautiful Daughters: A Spring & Summer Class
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. — Saint Augustine Why…
Beautiful Anarchists
Howard Zinn, Emma: A Play in Two Acts About Emma Goldman, American Anarchist Those photos of Dorothy Day— Like the one you saw in the office at the Catholic Woker Where you were first scouted…
Making the Best of Tough Situations
Three summers ago, some friends came to our Chouteau home for two months of Wednesday evenings to reflect on Thich Nhat Hanh’s autobiography, At Home in the World. Just today a chapter from that book…
The Path of Sympathy in a Time of Plague
Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping he terrace lightly with his heel, as he concluded. After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea…
Women in Black by Hedy Epstein
Every second Tuesday of the month, we hold a vigil of Women in Black in University City. Usually, these are uneventful. People may support us, some take our flyers and say thank you, others refuse…
“You Are That Person”
A student asked Soen Nakagawa During a meditation retreat: “I am very discouraged. What should I do?” Soen replied, “Encourage others.” At the beginning of this year, I read Kazuaki Tanahashi’s autobiography, Painting Peace: Art…
There and Then, Here and Now
A lady: Yes, that’s just like what goes on nowadays, and it’s because anyone that is struggling for the liberation of the oppressed, he himself is a Christ, and then here’s a Herod, and what…