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http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1546586420080813
Here is an excellent article about the physical and cultural condition of the city of New Orleans. In May, before my fellowship, I had the opportunity to see first hand how long New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast have to go to get back to pre-Katrina conditions. The chasmic dichotomy of the haves and the have-nots in New Orleans, along with the city's diminished middle-class is a microcosm of the injustice that poverty in this country presents.
Many of you may have heard this summer about Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic republican, and a professor of law at Pepperdine University. For years, Kmiec has been an outspoken voice in the Catholic community advocating for the religious right, specifically on pro-life issues. Recently, however, Kmiec has defected from working on the Romney campaign, to endorsing Sen. Barack Obama. This move has ostracized him within the religious right community, even to the point where he was denied communion. Kmiec gives a good explanation of what the "religious left" offers in this article.
http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=28865
Picture New Leadership on Global Poverty and Debt.
My previous blog entry was concerning a campaign at Jubilee USA entitled “Stop the Vulture Culture!” We are excited to report that Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) will introduce a bill into the House of Representatives outlining regulations and penalties for companies who engage in the profiteering of defaulted sovereign debt. It’s time to start calling your Members of Congress to ask them to co-sponsor this Vulture Funds legislation!
Another campaign at Jubilee is “Picture New Leadership on Global Poverty and Debt.” We’re calling on the next president of the United States to take an affirmative stance on debt cancellation and to provide more and better aid to highly indebted countries. We are also asking the next President to appoint a Secretary of the Treasury who will share these goals.
My sermon from July 20, 2008
Ecclesiastes 10:1 – 11:6
This week's text is filled with practical advice, analogies, consequences, and challenges. Having grown up on a farm, I know the truth of an iron, such as an axe, needing to be whet, or sharpened, so that you don't have to exert as much force. And I know that at some point, if you are splitting logs, you will get hurt by one of them. It isn't about not getting hurt as much as it's about not getting hurt badly.
Verse 11 of chapter 10 talks about not needing a snake charmer if the snake bites you first. The elders in my family had a similar saying, "No point closing the barn door once the horse is out of the barn." That's what they would tell us kids. It is the same as saying, "too little too late." We were being taught to look ahead, make plans and provisions, to think about consequences - stuff like that.
Every time I start talking about Green-Collar Jobs, it doesn’t take long before I start channeling Van Jones, one of the founders of the Ella Baker Center and now executive director of Green for All, the organization that does nationally what the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign does for California. Green-collar jobs is an attempt to view and treat the problems of poverty and the environmental crisis as deeply related issues. This might be a new paradigm for policy work, but it is ancient theology. Jeremiah links exile and environmental collapse as the consequences of idolatry and sin,[See, Northcott, Michael S. A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007)] as does Hosea (Hosea 4:1-3).
» read more | Richard Burden's blog | add new commentSo, here I am. It is my last day at Children’s Defense Fund – California, and I am (needless to say) melancholy to leave. My time with CDF-CA has been truly fruitful and fulfilling, and I plan to share my positive experiences at CDF’s Oakland office, my week at Haley Farm (in Clinton, Tennessee), and the inspiration from Marian Wright Edelman’s Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors with my friends back at Yale Divinity School, my Episcopal church homes (St. Paul’s in Woodside, New York, and St. Thomas’s, in New Haven, Connecticut), and my family in Salt Lake.
I want to thank everyone at CDF (Oakland, Los Angeles, and D.C.) who have inspired me in my fellowship, enlightened me with the intricacies of a child advocacy/non-profit organization, and strengthened my compassion for children/youth and commitment to children’s rights. Especially, I thank these amazing and devoted child advocates and friends: Nina Moreno (my dear supervisor and CDF-mentor), Cathy Maupin, Julene Cirne Lima, Deena Lahn, Cliff Sarkin, Jonah Rabinbach, Jenna Kline, and Tasha Zuzalek. Also, Mickey McKinney, Saudeka Shabazz, Evan Holland, Lindsey Wade, Jose Rodriguez, Derrick Harris, Jennifer Kim, and Elizabeth Delgado. And, last, but definitely not least, the incredible Matt Rosen and Scott Jacobsen, Antonia DeBoer, and the other D.C. and Proctor workers/volunteers, and salt-of-the-earth folks at Haley Farm and St. Francis Episcopal Church.
I’ve just completed my eight week Fellowship at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. It’s an organization I’ve long admired, and serving there this summer has been one of the most profound experiences I’ve had in seminary. But in order to really understand why I say that, it’s important to know a little bit about what the Ella Baker Center (EBC) does and in order to understand that you need to know a little about EBC’s namesake.
I’m well educated, and most of the people I hang with are likewise heavily degreed. But most people have never heard of Ella Baker, or like me simply assumed that she was an important figure in the Civil Rights movement—a name I might have heard in ninth grade civics but promptly forgot. A name like far too many other female names in history that have gone either unrecorded, unnamed (a unnamed companion in the New Testament?—probably a woman), or have been effectively erased by the overabundance of male names. Ella Josephine Baker (1903-1986) was indeed a significant leader of the Civil Rights movement, but that’s a little like saying that yeast is a significant ingredient in bread. Ella worked largely behind the scenes for over 50 years organizing communities and working with and influencing figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and Stokely Carmichael. Her work helped shape and transform the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to name only the most prominent. Under Baker’s leadership the SNCC coordinated the famous “freedom rides” of the early 60s. She remained a forceful activist until her death in 1986. Her nickname was “Fundi” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. I can get behind that kind of “fundi.”
Part of why most of us have never heard of Ella Baker is because she was wary of charismatic leadership and insisted that, “strong people don’t need strong leaders.” She saw her task as “getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use.” She also knew that it was the movement that formed leaders, and not the other way around. Too often we all fall prey to the pernicious idea that if “we” only had a leader, a galvanizing national candidate, a compelling and charismatic spokesperson THEN “we” could really make the world a better place. Ella Baker challenged people of her generation, and continues to challenge us to realize that WE are the leaders “we’ve” been waiting for. Come to think of it, that's awfully like the message of the Beatitudes. Don’t sit around waiting for the “blessed ones” to arrive and show you the way; you have the power, you have what you need, blessed are YOU. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Which reminds me of something else Ella used to say, “Give light and people will find the way.”
I’ve just spent eight weeks working with people who put Ella’s ideas into practice every day. Some of them are Christians; many of them are not, but they all live out a Beatitudes vision of the world by functioning as catalyst and convener. EBC is light, and salt, and yeast to the people they work with. There are those at EBC who work with families whose lives have been ripped apart by violence by engaging them through the Bay Area Police Watch and the Silence the Violence campaigns. There are those who work with families and youths who have been incarcerated in the dreadful California Youth Authority prison system through the Books Not Bars campaign. And there are those, like me, who worked with state legislators, city officials, business and labor leaders, community and environmental activists on EBC’s Green-Collar Jobs campaign. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post. All of these campaigns have a simple but powerful focus, they all seek JUSTICE in the system, OPPORTUNITY in our cities and PEACE in our streets. That sounds like a Beatitudes vision to me.
Here in some of Ella’s own words, interpreted through the artistry of Bernice Johnson Reagon (someone else deeply influenced by “Fundi”) is “Ella’s Song” performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
For more info on Ella Jo, or the EBC check out this link
» Richard Burden's blog | 1 commentSome say that the issue of poverty is the most pressing issue of our time. Everyday millions of people die due to poverty related causes. As people of faith dedicated to the Beatitudes we are called to deal with the issue of poverty in a responsible manner. This summer at Sojourners I worked on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign and The Mobilization to End Poverty. The Vote Out Poverty Campaign is a grassroots campaign that seeks to hold voters and elected officials accountable to cut domestic poverty in half over the next decade, and achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a set of international goals for reducing global poverty. The Vote Out Poverty Campaign will culminate with the Mobilization to End Poverty from April 26-29, 2009 in Washington, DC. Christians from all over the country will come together to hold our elected officials accountable to putting poverty at the top of our nation’s agenda.
Just so we're clear on how dangerous it still is for churches to welcome LGBT believers. . .
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