Category: Subverting Empire

Wes Howard-Brook on How Empire “Handles” Violence

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Today, we share a Facebook Post (and highlights of an ongoing strand from Friday, Sept 12) from Dr. Wes Howard-Brook, former attorney and, currently, a professor of Theology & Scripture at Seattle University. Social media has all sorts of issues, but sometimes it can serve as a really helpful forum for “overhearing” conversations about vital issues. This strand focuses on the issue of ongoing violence in the Middle East, ISIS (and other “terrorist” groups) and, specifically, the role of the American Empire in the whole affair. Continue reading “Wes Howard-Brook on How Empire “Handles” Violence” →

Are We Activists or Inactivists?

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From Jeffrey Stout, Princeton Professor of Political Science in Blessed Are The Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (2010)

To maintain a position of dominance, even the most powerful people in the world rely on the inaction of others and the resignation that lies beneath it. The powerful became powerful by organizing others to work for them and creating incentives for profitably cooperative activity. It appears to be against the interests of the rich and the lucky for everyone else to be similarly well organized. The rich and the lucky benefit from making large-scale democratic reform appear hopeless. Paradoxically, they also benefit from making large-scale change seem easily achievable, for example, by casting a vote every four years for a candidate who promises something called “change.”

Beyond a White Privilege Model

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We live in a society that has been oppressively controlled and dominated by white people for about 400 years. To put it bluntly and succinctly, a society dominated by white control can’t be fixed by white people taking control of the situation. The failure in the white privilege stewardship model, is that it inherently affirms and utilizes the very thing that it is called to resist and counter. If the answer to our racial problems is that white people must run things, call the shots, and be the saviors to the world, then we have missed the mark.
Drew Hart, “Beyond A White Privilege Model” (The Christian Century, September 9, 2014)

We end this week with a cross-post from The Christian Century, where Drew Hart tackles the issue of white privilege. Continue reading “Beyond a White Privilege Model” →

Let It Roll Down

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By Tom Airey, Editor, RadicalDiscipleship.Net

The 1st of a two-day report from Detroit.
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Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
Wendell Berry

A couple of weeks ago, less than 48 hours from the time we moved in to Southwest Detroit, my wife and I visited the water payment station on the west side. When we arrived, about a hundred people (every single one of them African-American!) were lined up to make payments or inquire about a payment plan. Continue reading “Let It Roll Down” →

A Hunger For Home

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Eduard Nuessner Loring is a Partner at the Open Door Community in Atlanta (right), seeking to dismantle racism, sexism and heterosexism, abolish the death penalty, and proclaim the Beloved Community through loving relationships with some of the most neglected and outcast of God’s children: the homeless and our sisters and brothers who are in prison. Below are some highlights from a talk he gave at a worship service at Central State Prison in Macon, Georgia on October 28, 2013. Approximately 200 prisoners attended, and one has since come to live at the Open Door Community. Access the entire text in the July-August 2014 Hospitality newsletter. Continue reading “A Hunger For Home” →

Grace Lee Boggs Keeps On Organizing

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We join all other activists & artists of faith & conscience in praying for the ailing Grace Lee Boggs, 99 years into a Life of visionary organizing: May she experience clarity, compassion & comfort in the days ahead:

The next American Revolution, at this stage in our history, is not principally about jobs or health insurance or making it possible for more people to realize the American Dream of upward mobility. It is about acknowledging that we Americans have enjoyed middle-class comforts at the expense of other peoples all over the world. It is about living the kind of lives that will not only slow own global warming but also end the galloping inequality both inside this country and between the Global North and the Global South. It is about creating a new American Dream whose goal is a higher Humanity instead of the higher standard of living dependent on Empire. It is about practicing a new, more active, global, and participatory concept of citizenship. It is about becoming the change we wish to see in the world. (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism For The 21st Century, 2012)

School For Revolution: Exploring Ways To Ruin More People

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We sat down for a little email interview with Mark Van Steenwyk of the Mennonite Worker (right) in Minneapolis a few days ago. He is spearheading a new “School For Revolution” debuting October 23rd to 25th this year:

**This post was edited on September 13, 2014 at 8amEST.
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RD: What led to the start of this new “school?”

MVS: Dorothy Day referred to Catholic Worker communities as “schools for revolution.” I resonate with that idea. Our goal at the Mennonite Worker is to ruin people for productive life in the empire; we want all of our residents to be captivated by Jesus’ kingdom vision. Continue reading “School For Revolution: Exploring Ways To Ruin More People” →

RadicalDiscipleship Launching September 3

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I don’t have a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice the rest of my life.
Mamie Carthan (the mother of Emmett Till)

Tomorrow, on the anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ escape to freedom, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries and Word & World will be officially launching a daily-updated blog to highlight the unique strand of North American “movement” Christianity. We are committed to being collective (welcoming a multiplicity & diversity of voices), convictional (unapologetically theological), constructive (creating a new world out of the shell of the old) and concrete (covering a range of personal to political practices, from reformist to revolutionary). Continue reading “RadicalDiscipleship Launching September 3” →