Religion Dispatches
…cial movements organized around resisting racial segregation or the war in Vietnam. One big target does have its advantages. But Gandhi saw his opposition to British rule as merely one part of his larger program of “constructive work.” (Here again Desai errs, claiming that “the more mature” Gandhi shifted his focus from politics to constructive work; in fact the Mahatma never separated the two.) And for most of the constructive program Gandhi had…
Read More…consternation. First, it was Mitt Romney who chose a stereotypical-looking Vietnam veteran to cozy up to at a diner in New Hampshire. Surprise! The vet was a gay man who quizzed Romney on why his spouse should be different from any other when it comes to collecting his military pension. Romney’s collegial tone changed the moment he realized he had encountered “teh gay” and suddenly realized he was late for some other appointment. Rick Perry was ne…
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…ades—Meany’s crowd—raining both bricks and brickbats down on an early anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the streets of New York. A whiff of foreign-ness: From the 1890s onward a huge quantum of trade union energy came from new immigrant groups that brought their social solidarity with them to the new world. Jews and Italians, both already despised and feared, were foremost among these. Think Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Think Sacco and Vanz…
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…end of his life King’s turn toward eradicating poverty and critiquing the Vietnam war were the things that put him at odds not just with the United States government, but with the black community at large. In a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, King commented on the economy and how the poor were viewed: Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrus…
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…e churches on increasing political polarization (beginning with the war in Vietnam, not the Civil Rights Movement), the passions let loose by the sexual revolution, the development of a “global perspective” which brought the non-Western religions to the attention of Americans (oddly, he does not mention the changes in American culture brought on by the immigration act of 1965), the growing wealth of Americans, and the waning of the East Coast WASP…
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…mple, tense but deep discussions with Asian Christians overseas during the Vietnam War helped push the NCC toward more incisive antiwar positions. The same pattern holds true for racial justice, gender issues, and environmental stewardship. Today, it can be argued, a different type of prophetic witness is emerging that is perhaps as radical and countercultural as those of the 1960s, given the current polarized climate. It asks people to consider h…
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…was a Republican that raised the minimum wage, stood up to his own party when it betrayed the African-American community and to the military when he believed it had “brainwashed” him about the Vietnam War. So while I don’t disparage Mitt his good works in the least, I’m not convinced that this campaign narrative can breathe life into a wooden candidate….
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…terans. We have many law firms that provide pro bono legal work as well as promotion and public relations entities. We have offices in all four time zones and thousands of donors across the country. Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We at MRFF are the demanders of the commanders. We are the voice of the members of the military who are not allowed to speak. How did fundamentalist Christianity get such a strong…
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…arrow Mormon girl; the one who drank from the separate punchbowl. Then the Vietnam War swept me up, and I began to question everything. I was hired by Suffolk University and I fell in love with teaching. Suffolk was an iconic working-class university—in the 1960s that meant working-class first-generation-college white immigrant families. I had young men negotiating grades with me because if they didn’t get a C, they’d get drafted. I investigated h…
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…nd September 11th. In 1978, America was still reeling from the loss of the Vietnam War and struggling to regain trust in its government; the culture was transforming from an atmosphere of free love and pacifism into one of Technicolor consumerism. So while the Manson Family murders and the events at Altamont might have been blows to the hippie ethos of the ’60s, it was Jonestown, the utopian dream gone terribly, terribly wrong, that was its death…
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