SELMA. A few days ago, an estimated 40,000 people descended on Selma, Alabama, for the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and recently portrayed in Ava DuVernay’s film) and of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil rights legislation passed in its …
Let us forge a state of union A place where every child is A child Where you see me and I see you I mean really see each other as extensions one of one another From People’s State of the Union commentary by Makani Themba, Minister of Revolutionary Imagination, U.S. Department of Arts and Culture …
It’s easy to think of spiritual practice as something separate from ordinary life: the time one spends on a meditation cushion or chanting prayers or sending praisesongs into the world. But for me these days, the most powerful spiritual practices are things I seldom put in that category. Is facilitating a discussion a spiritual practice? …
The demonstrators who are stopping traffic, occupying public spaces, and marching through busy shopping streets want to disrupt business-as-usual in the hope of awakening conscience and action. The tags on every demonstration notice at Ferguson Response tell the story: #WeCantBreathe, #ThisStopsToday, #JusticeforEricGarner, #JusticeforMikeBrown. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area—specifically in Berkeley and Oakland, two …
I forgot to notice that this past May was the 10th anniversary of my blog, which I started in 2004 to coincide with the publication of my novel Clarity. (It has a small but devoted following. If you’re interested, you can buy it used for a song. I still think it would make a good …
This past weekend, activists streamed into Ferguson, Missouri, for Ferguson October, a “weekend of resistance” comprising actions and events organized by Hands Up United, Organization for Black Struggle, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, and other partners “to build momentum for a nationwide movement against police violence.” Protestors marched and staged civil disobedience, shut down …
Facebook has been a forest of assertions and denunciations this week. Maybe it’s the company I keep, but almost everyone is posting links at an accelerated rate, and the subject of this battle of citations is Israel-Palestine. I spent a remarkable amount of time reading blogs and essays, but still, I was able to consume …
Have you been reading lately about “trigger warnings?” These are alerts to those who find themselves in a college classroom or other public setting, warning them that some of the material they are about to experience may upset them. The idea is that those who have had traumatic episodes—assault, for instance—might experience symptoms of post-traumatic …
Have you noticed? Money changes everything. Almost daily, I get into conversations about compensation and fairness. Sometimes I even start them. But whoever starts them, by the time they get going, there’s always so much gray area that I have trouble finding my way to daylight. I’m interested to know what you think. Let me …
Before dinner last night, my husband thought the asparagus I was preparing to grill were too wet, that the baste wouldn’t stick. I doubted it, but I dried them off. He then proceeded to add explanations and persuasions to his case for dryness. “Sometimes I think you’re a sore winner,” I told him. “It’s not …