Laudato Z’ine & Vati-Cats

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
by Rose Berger

3810_001“Bienvenidos al Laudato Z’ine,” say the Vati-Cats. Welcome!

If you are here, then you are one of a select group to have heard about the Laudato Z’ine project, a kitchen-table experiment to spread the word about Pope Francis’ circular letter to the world (or encyclical) about climate change and integral ecology.

This started as a fun weekend project and has continued to grow.

Here are the pdfs for you to make your own Laudato Z’ine at home (page 1 and page 2 on 11 x 17 inch paper).
LaudatoZine_page 1 and LaudatoZine_page2.

Click here, if you want to read the original and complete Laudato Si’: On Caring for our Common Home.
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Imagine (You Have Healthcare)

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charlie kingBy Charlie King

Original Song © John Lennon, new concept inspired by Will Fudemann

Imagine you have healthcare
It’s easy if you try
Freedom to choose your doctor
Cov’rage money can’t buy
Imagine first class treatment
When you’re unemployed
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Building a Movement of Movements

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John DearFrom John Dear on this week’s marches, demonstrations, rallies and protests marking the International Day of Peace, Yom Kippur and the Pope’s dramatic visit to the U.S.:

Not only is it unusual to see a week of coordinated nationwide actions for peace and justice in the United States, it’s unusual that these events cover the whole gamut of issues involving violence and injustice. Millions of people are fed up with every form of violence, with the entire culture of violence, and want a new culture of nonviolence as Dr. King taught.
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2015 Ohio River Valley Catholic Worker & Christian Intentional Community Gathering

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just PeacemakingLeave a comment
cwBy Ross Martinie Eileer
The children were the best dancers at the 2015 Ohio River Valley Catholic Worker & Christian Intentional Community Gathering, although they faced fierce competition.  Most (but not all) of the dancing occurred Saturday night at the lakeside, where the music was illuminated by moonlight and punctuated by persistent frog harrumphs.
The Gathering was held at the Solsberry Hill retreat center outside of Bloomington Indiana and hosted nearly seventy people (and three wolves) from fourteen communities located in or near the Ohio river valley, particularly Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and the great state of Chicago.

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Learning From Counternarratives

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LearningThe “achievement gap” is often presented as an isolated phenomenon, and it has become a misleading euphemism for the workings and product of historic oppression, structural injustice, and institutional racism.
Sarah Matsui, Learning From Counternarratives in Teach for America: Moving from Idealism Towards Hope (2015)

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes that nourish false charity.
Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972)

When Sarah Matsui graduated from Penn, she was accepted to the competitive Teach For America (TFA) program, a two-year teaching odyssey in urban and rural schools all over North America. More than $300 million strong and heralding education reform through meritocratic slogans like “Work Hard, Get Smart,“ Data-Driven” and “Closing the Achievement Gap,” for the past 25 years TFA has successfully recruited the highest caliber graduates from top U.S. schools to heroically stride into the nation’s most under-resourced classrooms. Continue reading “Learning From Counternarratives” →

Black Churches Burning in the South

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wesleyBy Wesley Morris, Union Theological Seminary and Beloved Community Center

I still think about Charleston, SC and the Mother Emanuel Church. I still think about the dozens of black churches burned in the south during the following days and weeks and the slow movement of the federal government to deem the fires hate crimes.

I love my mother and father and they still go to bible study. The Pastor, other members and visitors join them seeking a good word and study to encourage them through the week. Some travel over thirty miles to make it there at 7:00PM, Raleigh, NC, every Wednesday. That good word over the years has added to the church, our refuge, our peace and those walls.
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War Thug Presidents

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War Thug Presidents

This is a mural on the side of a restaurant formerly known as the Calvert Cafe in D.C. It features U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama with Mama Ayesha, who founded the restaurant that is now named for her: Mama Ayesha’s, just near the Duke Ellington Bridge in Adams Morgan. It was originally labored over by Karlisima Rodas.

The recent transformation involves someone having apparently paintballed all the presidents, shooting them in the privates with red paint…It’s a bit messy, but the intent is fairly clear: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II and Obama. Scrawled on the side is “The War Thugs.”

See here and here for more info.

Campaign Zero

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

Campaign Zero#BlackLivesMatter is homing in on ten specific proposals. Read the entire article here for a helpful update on the movement and a lot of really profound research.

1. End broken windows policing. This refers to a style of policing that goes after minor crimes and activities, based on the notion that letting minor crimes go unaddressed can foster and lead to even worse crimes in a community. In practice, this tactic has disproportionately impacted minority Americans — in New York City, the vast majority of stops in 2012 were of black or Hispanic people.
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We are the ones we’ve been waiting for

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment
Photo by Erinn Fahey
Photo by Erinn Fahey

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.  And there are things to be considered . . .

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.”

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a good time!”

“There is a river flowing now very fast.  It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.  They will try to hold on to the shore.   They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly.
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