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Trayvon Martin and the Value of a Human Life

7/23/2013

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PictureImage: Pixabay, Creative Commons CC0
John Diaz explains in the San Francisco Chronicle how human lives are not considered equal in our society: "'All life is precious' goes the oft-repeated saying. But let's be honest with ourselves: In this society the value of a human life in the eyes of others is multiplied or discounted in many ways. One of them, obviously, is class. Another, undeniably, is race. And then there is the other, harder to measure variable that sometimes incorporates, but often transcends, race and class: Our ability to empathize with another human being, and measure his or her worth in ways that have nothing to do with earning potential, number of Facebook friends or volunteer hours at the local food bank."

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Bountiful Churchyards

7/23/2013

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PictureImage: Pixabay, Creative Commons, CC0
BountifulChurchyards.org is kicking off an effort to utilize church property to produce food for those without enough.

"The primary Mission of BountifulChurchyards.org, currently in the incorporation and pre-launch phase (formal launch date 01/15/2014), will be to increase access for those facing food insecurity to lands not otherwise available to them, such as churchyards and similar spaces, to raise or glean their own food. A secondary Mission of BountifulChurchYards.org will be to provide employment opportunities for at-risk youth, immigrants, seniors or under-resourced populations."

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Homeboy Industries: Putting Ex-Cons To Work

7/3/2013

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​G-Dog ("Nothing stops a bullet like a job"), a movie about Fr. Greg Boyle, S.J. and Homeboy Industries is now available on DVD.

You can also read an excellent in-depth article about Boyle from the May 2012 issue of Fast Company.

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Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus

6/14/2013

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Mark Sandlin offers two lists on Sojourners: "Lots of people claim to be 'following Jesus' and then they do stuff like this. Sure, people who follow Jesus do these things all the time, but you can't say you are doing them because you are trying to follow Jesus' example."

The first is simply 10 Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus, while the follow-up is 10 POLITICAL Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus.

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On Wasting Food

6/9/2013

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Image: StockUnlimited (1682709)
Pope Francis recently highlighted our "throwaway culture" where "food that is thrown away might as well have been stolen from the table of the poor, the hungry."

WRIInsights gives a number of statistics on how bad the waste actually is:
The world produces about 4 billion tons of food per year, or about 6 quadrillion calories. That’s a large amount, but what’s really shocking is that nearly one-quarter of these calories go uneaten.
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Pope Francis: Cult of Money Hurts the Common Good, Poor

5/19/2013

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PicturePhoto: Pixabay, Creative Commons CC0
Pope Francis forcefully denounced an idolatrous culture based on money, highlighting consumption, a "culture of disposal," the rich-poor gap, and lack of financial ethics.  The Catholic News Service reports:

Pope Francis called for global financial reform that respects human dignity, helps the poor, promotes the common good and allows states to regulate markets.

"Money has to serve, not to rule," he said in his strongest remarks yet as pope concerning the world's economic and financial crises.

A major reason behind the increase in social and economic woes worldwide "is in our relationship with money and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society," he told a group of diplomats May 16.

"We have created new idols" where the "golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal."

...
In his 10-minute scripted speech to new ambassadors, the pope highlighted the root causes of today's economic and social troubles, pointing to policies and actions that stem from a "gravely deficient human perspective, which reduces man to one of his needs alone, namely, consumption."

"We have begun this culture of disposal," he said, where "human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods which can be used and thrown away."

The wealth of a minority "is increasing exponentially," while the income of the majority "is crumbling," he said.

This economic inequality is caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to states, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good."

The lack of adequate economic regulation or oversight means "a new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules," he said.

Ethical principles and policies of solidarity are "often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and economy," he said.

"Ethics, like solidarity, is a nuisance" and so they are rejected along with God, he added.

"These financiers, economists and politicians consider God to be unmanageable, even dangerous, because he calls man to his full realization and to independence from any kind of slavery."

Pope Francis called on the world's political and financial leaders to consider the words of St. John Chrysostom: "Not to share one's goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs."

The pope said he "loves everyone, rich and poor alike," but that as pope he "has the duty, in Christ's name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them."

He called for ethical financial reform that would "benefit everyone" and for the world of finance and economics to make people a priority and take into account the importance of ethics and solidarity.

Why shouldn't world leaders "turn to God to draw inspiration," the pope asked.

Looking to God and "his designs" would help create "a new political and economic mindset" that would bring economics and social concerns back together in a healthy and harmonious relationship, he said.
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Barber Give Haircuts To Homeless for Hugs

5/19/2013

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A retired 82-year-old barber has been offering free haircuts to the homeless at a Connecticut park for the past 25 years.  All he asks for is a hug in return.  He was originally motivated to start by a church sermon.

The Huffington Post reports:

His clients line up on park benches, some of them also turning out for free meals provided on Wednesdays by a local church. One by one they take a seat in a folding lawn chair above a car battery Cymerys uses to power his clippers.

As he finished a trim on one customer recently, a loud squeal came from the battery. He gathered the mobile shop, connected the clippers to his car and picked up where he left off.

"It really is love. I love these guys," Cymerys said. He paused and turned to his client in the chair, "You know I love you, right?"

"That's what it's all about," Cymerys said.
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American Girl Dolls: From Transformative Justice To Comfy Charity

5/14/2013

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BoingBoing.net passes on an article: "Writing in The Atlantic, Amy Schiller documents how Mattel has spent the past 15 years transforming the expensive, highly detailed American Girl dolls from a source of radical inspiration that signposted moments in the history of the struggles for justice and equality in the US, into posh upper-middle-class girls who raise money for bake sales. As Lenore Skenazy points out, the original American Girls were children who had wild adventures without adult oversight; the new crop are helicopter-parented and sheltered, and their idea of high adventure is a closely supervised day in the snow."

... the original dolls confronted some of the most heated issues of their respective times. In the book A Lesson for Samantha, she wins an essay contest at her elite academy with a pro-manufacturing message, but after conversations with Nellie, her best friend from a destitute background who has younger siblings working in brutal factory jobs, Samantha reverses course and ends us giving a speech against child labor in factories at the award ceremony. Given the class divide, Samantha's speech presumably takes place in front of the very industrial barons responsible for those factory conditions. The book is a bravura effort at teaching young girls about class privilege, speaking truth to power, and engaging with controversial social policy, all based on empathetic encounters with people whose life experiences differ from her own.
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Bono: The good news on poverty (Yes, there's good news)

3/26/2013

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In this TED talk, Bono outlines the substantial progress that has been made toward reducing poverty and how trends point toward eradicate poverty in our lifetime, if we remain committed to that goal.
Human beings have been campaigning against inequality and poverty for 3,000 years. But this journey is accelerating. Bono "embraces his inner nerd" and shares inspiring data that shows the end of poverty is in sight … if we can harness the momentum.

Bono, the lead singer of U2, uses his celebrity to fight for social justice worldwide: to end hunger, poverty and disease, especially in Africa. His nonprofit ONE raises awareness via media, policy and calls to action.
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Addressing "Compassion Collapse"

1/22/2013

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The Greater Good Science Center at U.C. Berkeley reports on the phenomenon of "compassion collapse" (why we feel more compassion for one suffering person  than for many), and how we can increase our compassion:
We find that when there are more suffering victims, people think they will feel more compassion. Given this expectation, people may become concerned about the financial and emotional costs of intense compassion. Compassion for many victims can be seen as an expensive proposition—one that will not make much of a difference. People may also become worried about being overwhelmed or burned out by compassion for many sufferers.

For these reasons, people may actively and strategically turn off their compassion. According to our theory, compassion collapse is not due to a limitation on how much compassion we can feel. Instead, it’s the end result of people actively controlling their emotions.
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