Tag: powers
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#AmericanAutumn
Over at Waging Nonviolence, I’ve been doing a bunch of coverage of some of the big protest actions being planned this fall, efforts to turn people’s attention away from the nonsense straw polls and candidate posturing and onto masses of people in the streets. I’ve been going to planning meetings for both those intending to…
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The Rich Are Organized—Why Aren’t You?
At a time when, in the United States, majority opinions—like the need for tax increases, military-spending cuts, clean energy, and campaign finance reform—don’t seem to even be on the table in Washington, when?whole neighborhoods and cities seem to have fallen off the political map, one might find oneself wondering:?Where did our democracy go? Today at…
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Judith Butler on the Blurry Line of Violence
A year since my first interview with her appeared in Guernica, The Immanent Frame asked me to have another exchange with the feminist philosopher Judith Butler. Once again, we talked about violence, nonviolent resistance, power, and the problem of Israel-Palestine. This time, though, the backdrop was different: the Arab Spring, or the Middle East uprisings,…
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Gene Sharp and the Science of People Power
It’s a happy day when good ideas—and the people who create them—get their due. Today was one of those days. Thanks in large part to The New York Times’s feature on the backdrop of the revolution in Egypt, and then a profile devoted to him (which as I write is still #1 on the most-emailed…
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Papal Peacemaking
When I spoke with the theologian Harvey Cox a few months ago, he told me enthusiastically about his experiences with Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic organization that he sees as representing the future of the Church and, in turn, of religion in what he calls the coming “age of spirit”: I was over there in Rome…
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The Shooting Gallery
Once again in the New York Times Happy Days blog, I’m testing myself. Last time, I was testing my faith. This time, it’s my trigger finger: I’ve always really liked guns. Growing up, I fantasized about them endlessly, though my parents discouraged it every way they could. I came to agree with them in principle…
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Erik Prince and the Spell of Freedom
Fueled by Jeremy Scahill’s recent revelations about Blackwater and its founder Erik Prince in The Nation, I’ve got a new essay at Religion Dispatches exploring the concept of freedom in relationship to the business of free-market warfare. Erik Prince discovered a passion for freedom long before founding Blackwater. Freedom is a mighty thing. Its exercise…
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Events Today in Costa Rica
My present travels in Costa Rica with the photographer Lucas Foglia, through a sequence of chance connections and exaggerated truths, landed us the opportunity to be in the press section at today’s meeting between (Nobel laureate) President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and the two contenders for the presidency of neighboring Honduras. We understand our…
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Nonviolence from the Unlikeliest of Places
What does it take to imagine that nonviolent approaches to conflict might be possible? Millennia-old religious traditions? A prophet? Common sense? Certainly the last place one would expect to find it: a race of hardened warriors in a hardened land, where a gun is part of the common attire and tribal feuds last for generations.…