One Person Can Change Everything for Us
In his presence I felt a new capability and power in myself rather than a consciousness of his power. I felt equal, good for anything— an assurance I had never known before as if some…
Category: People Power
Forget Pessimism
Just this morning I came across the following exchange with Noam Chomsky, which reminded me of what Steve said last night in his talk on Syria… Interviewer: Did you go through a phase of hopelessness,…
Community: The Structure of Belonging
Jean Durel, Jim and J’Ann Allen will share their perspectives and lead a discussion on Peter Block’s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging at the Allens’ home on 4519 Oakland Avenue in the Forest Park…
Julian Assange, Enemy of the State
Listen to Julian Assange speak from the Ecuador’s embassy in London to a side meeting of the UN General Assembly last Wednesday.
Walk Out Walk On
One friend is increasingly bored and dissatisfied with her Christian Sunday church services. Another left her job of teaching 175 high school students a year in the public school system to volunteer for three months…
Rachel
Over the years I’ve bought a few copies of Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie But before I got to cracking it open for myself I would think of a young person…
Nawal El Saadawi: Uncalled-for-boldness
This year I have invited people to participate in an Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle. Last month, several friends and I met to discuss Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi’s 1983 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,…
People Power, Then and Now
1. To advocate human conversation as the means to restore hope to the future is as simple as I can get. But I’ve seen that there is no more powerful way to initiate significant change…
An Exemplar of Gramsci’s “Optimism of the Will”
My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop non-violence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it overwhelms your surroundings…
Refusal (Muhammad Ali)
I came across the following when preparing tonight’s session of our reading circle of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (the chapters on the Black Freedom struggle and the Vietnam War). Why should…