8 posts tagged “social justice”

I just learned about Kiva.org.  Kiva is an organization that connects people with small businesses in developing countries that need loans.  By sponsoring a small loan, it's possible to make a huge difference in someone's life.  Kiva makes sure the funds are sent to the local microfinance partners who distribute the money and, during the course of the loan, the lender receives email updates from the business.

I think it's a great way to empower people and to bring users of kiva.org a little closer to other parts of the world.  I ended up loaning small amounts to two businesses.  It was hard to choose but I am a proud investor in these busineses:

Garcia Pastries

Leonid Thylkey, an autorepairman

I was going to come here and complain but I think I've been doing that too much lately (if not here than definitely in my head and to Matt).  So, I thought I'd follow the example of Patty and be grateful for what I have instead of boring you with a rant. 

1.  I'm grateful that I was able to make time to ride the spin bike hard for almost and hour and watch the tennis match I have tivo'd.
2. I'm glad that I self-aware enough to realize it's not always what the other person is doing but also how I act and choose to react and I know I can change and control that part.
3. Although most of my irritation is benefit related, I am really happy that the work I am doing is to assist a great organization, Careers Through Culinary Arts.
4.

PANDA BABIES

Here's a link to Doug Cassell, Worldview Human Rights commentator responding to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Cully Stimson's mouthdropping threats to corporate lawyers who defend Guantanamo prisoners. After reading the list of the firms, Stimson declared that "CEO's seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists". 

Worldview

On this holiday, here are some excerpts of my favorite essays by Martin Luther King.  They may not be as "big" as the quotes that are typically associated with him, but I feel they give us a glimpse into what it means to be human, to challenge oneself and to rise to challenges that present themselves in our lives.

When most people think of MLK, they tend to think of him as a person who fought for the rights of non-whites.  In reality, he was a true fighter of injustice in our country.  I think the following paragraphs are important as they show us a man who provides a beautiful example of someone open enough to challenge his assumptions about race and injustice. 

"Often the question has arisen concerning my own intellectual pilgrimage to nonviolence.  In order to get at this question, it is necessary to go back to my teens in Atlanta.  I had grown up abhoring not only segregation, but also the oppressive and barbaous acts that grew out of it... All of these things had done something to my growing personality.  I had come perilously close to resenting all white people."

"I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.  Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me.  During my late teens I worked two summers, against my fathers wishes--he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions--in a plant that hired by Negroes and whites.  Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro.  Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieities of injustice in our society." 

-My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr.

And, later on, in the same essay,  King talks about becoming aware of the teachings of Gandhi and nonviolent resistence.  I find it meaningful  that he thought he was just studying a philosophy and would never have chance to practice it.

"In 1954 I ended my formal training with all of these relatively divergent intellectual forces converging into a positive social philosophy. One of the main tenets of this philosophy was the conviction that nonviolent resistance was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their quest for social justice. At this time, however, I had merely an intellectual understanding and appreciation of the position, with no firm determination to organize it in a socially effective situation."

"When I went to Montgomery as a pastor, I had not the slightest idea that I would later become involved in a crisis in which nonviolent resistance would be applicable. I neither started the protest nor suggested it. I simply responded to the call of the people for a spokesman. When the protest began, my mind, consciously or unconsciously, was driven back to the Sermon on the Mount, with its sublime teachings on love, and the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance. As the days unfolded, I came to see the power of nonviolence more and more. Living through the actual experience of the protest, nonviolence became more than a method to which I gave intellectual assent; it became a commitment to a way of life. Many of the things that I had not cleared up intellectually concerning nonviolence were now solved in the sphere of practical action."

-My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr.

And, from his most famous speech, "Facing the Challenge of a New Age".

"First we are challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. The new world is a world of geographical togetherness. This means that no individual or nation can live alone. We must all learn to live together, or we will be forced to die together. This new world of geographical togetherness has been brought about, to a great extent, by man's scientific and technological genius. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains; he has been able to carve highways through the stratosphere.  Through our scientific genius we have made of the world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual genius we must make of it a brotherhood. We are all involved in the single process. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are all links in the great chain of humanity."

Today is not only a day of respect, but a day of service.  If you have the opportunity to help another, please take it.  It is the best way to honor this great man. 

We got all the shopping for family members done in one swift blow today.  We usually give people gifts of food from Zingerman's or something like that but I just feel that another cake or something is wasteful.  So we went to Mercy Corps and donated Family Garden Kits in everyone's names.  Their agricultural programs help families start up and maintain gardens in impoverished villages.  Next year maybe we'll do one of their bigger programs. 

If you have the time, I highly recommended listening to last week's This American Life piece, Heretics. You can download it there free of charge. It is an hour-long piece about Rev. Carlton Pearson an evangelical pastor deemed a heretic for ceasing to believe in hell and beginning to preach a gospel of love and inclusion.   To change one's life beliefs so deeply and to not be afraid to tell them despite losing money, prestige, parishioners and friends takes a lot of guts. 

It's compelling as hell.  Ooops.  Sorry.  Couldn't help myself there.

A couple weeks ago at the gym, I watched MTV's True Life: I'm a Civilian Again.  I am well aware of the statistics about people who are serving in our armed forces but never really took enough time to consider how hard it is for them to adjust to life back home and how they have little to no training in basic things like resume writing and interview skills.

My heart goes out to these people and I know that many have lasting effects from their deployment and the transition to being a civilian.  Unemployment and the depression from not finding decent work can only make things worse.  Our country is to quick too afix yellow magnets to cars to announce support and denounce those of us who don't believe in the war but what are most of those people doing for those vets who are now back?  Because of this, I am now looking into volunteering my time with local vets to help them write resumes, look for jobs and to help them with the whole interviewing process. If no such service exists, then I'll do it on my own.  I have a background in human resources that largely goes unused (until friends start looking for jobs).   I may not support the war in Iraq but I do support helping people who have served and need to become part of civilian life. 

P.S.-Yo, yo Democrats in the House!  Whoo!