Category: Activists

The Meaning of Vietnam

This year there has been a lot of reflection and retrospection, 40 years after the pivotal 1968, which included the Tet Offensive, assassinations (King and Kennedy), student uprisings, and protest and police violence outside the…

The Work Goes on

Recently I learned that Norman Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel and banned from coming there for ten years.   Reading about this, I thought of  Antonio Gramsci, a leader of the Italian Communist Party…

The Prophetic Voice (Accompaniment)

A Reflection on Rosalie G. Riegle, Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her Convert to Catholicism, unapologetic pacifist, denizen of the Lower East Side, comforter of the poor, journalist by trade, and nay-sayer to secular…

The Power of Example

for Michelle Conley For years in my Social Justice course at Saint Louis University, I assigned the 1993 paperback by Cao Ngoc Phuong entitled, Learning True Love: How I Learned & Practiced Social Change in Vietnam….

Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie

I am thinking of Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie, and how they are quite similar. Not on the surface, for who could more dissimilar: A young college student and an august former statesman. But I can…

Reputation

On Shirin Ebadi, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope (With Azadeh Moaven) But a personal story is more powerful than any dry summary of why a given law should be changed. To attract people’s…

The Only Statement That Counts

for Yoshifugi In 1974 at an amazing conference was held at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York. Christians and Jews gathered to confront the question, “Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?”  Catholic theologians…

Dangerous Solidarity

This week, March 24, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of when El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass.  A month before, he had sent a letter to then-president Jimmy Carter, imploring him to…