October 2011

Confessing Pacifism, Repenting in Love

by Nichola Torbett 28 October 2011

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this website that called for a confessing movement. Consider this my first confession, inspired largely by my participation in Occupy Oakland.
Until recently, I have been what one of friends calls a “nonviolence fundamentalist.” Inspired by the movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., among [...]

134 comments Read the full article →

The Power of Corporations is the Power of the People

by Paul Munn 27 October 2011

“I learned, at that time, a very important lesson,
that one should never underestimate the power of the people.”
(from The Corporation)
In the news recently there have been images of large crowds of people, shouting at the financial towers that line Wall Street. The people, “the 99%,” have showed up to demand an end of the overwhelming [...]

24 comments Read the full article →

#OccupyWallStreet: We Make the Road by Walking

by Jake Olzen 25 October 2011

Editor’s Note: This is the third of a series. You’re encouraged to read parts one and two before continuing.
The liberation theologians, and the base communities that influenced them, often repeated the mantra “we make the road by walking” to reflect a liberation praxis of social analysis, theological reflection, and community action. The same could be true [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

#OccupyWallStreet: Confronting Empire

by Jake Olzen 20 October 2011

In #OccupyWallStreet: A Radical Perspective, I suggested that this movement is really a protest against empire and global capitalism. Eschewing the reform-oriented characterizations of the movement by the mainstream liberal Left, the heart of these protests is aimed at ushering in a paradigm shift from, again echoing the words of Dr. King, “a thing oriented [...]

9 comments Read the full article →

What did Bonhoeffer See?

by Ric Hudgens 20 October 2011

In January, 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother Karl-Friedrick “The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I [...]

16 comments Read the full article →

Overcoming Alienation: A Beginners Story

by T. Brandon Lane 18 October 2011

Rivers
We walked along a wandering river’s bed;
jumped from stone to wobbling stone.
All along, I wondered what you’d say
if you could speak to me, just now.
There’s a distance further than miles,
calling us broken bodies back again.
There’s a color in your eyes, lonely,
filled with all our ever-gentle cries.
My thoughts splashed through rocks
and over falls. A old idea, [...]

13 comments Read the full article →

#OccupyWallStreet: A Radical Perspective

by Jake Olzen 17 October 2011

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important [...]

15 comments Read the full article →

We Need a Confessing Movement

by Nichola Torbett 7 October 2011

This morning I saw a Photoshopped image on Facebook that caught my attention. The photograph captured protesters at Occupy Wall Street, but superimposed over parts of the photo were captions like “Video camera by Panasonic,” “Camera by Sony,” “Black marker by Sharpie,” and “Posterboard by Weyerhauser.” Underneath the photo was a longer caption that ended [...]

65 comments Read the full article →

Occupied Movements, Colonized Minds

by Eda Uca-Dorn 5 October 2011

Some of us who watch in awe and delight at the incredible well of energy, perseverance, and hope of the Occupy Wall Street movement are getting word of anti-racist critiques of the language and organizing strategies, particularly around declarative statements released on the Occupy Wall Street website and dispersed to media outlets. It is important [...]

48 comments Read the full article →

Leave No Trace

by Ric Hudgens 2 October 2011

For the past month the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northeastern Minnesota has been on fire. A lightning strike started the blaze on August 18th. The Forest Service was anticipating a small, controllable, environmentally beneficial burnoff that wouldn’t pose much threat to either BWCA campers or nearby residents. On September 12th high winds, high [...]

80 comments Read the full article →