Religion Dispatches
…will balk at naming terrorism or racism. They will be reluctant to talk about South Carolina’s abiding affection for the Confederacy, not just on Dylann Roof’s Facebook page but at the state capital, where the Confederate flag still flies, and in museums where secession is treated as an essential part of the state’s history, and sanitized as disassociated from anything having to do with race or slavery. In his floor speech, Pinckney referred to th…
Read More…ere in Ohio. And eavesdropped on an Obama canvasser. I mean, I spent 45 minutes phone-banking the parking garage of a lowly San Diego field office with four children under nine years old hopped up on Doritos and doing laps around my folding chair, and even under those suboptimal circumstances I could tell right away that Obama’s data was even better than it was in 2008 and that there was hardcore focus on the 18- to 29-year-old set. And, mind you,…
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…, hallways have to be a certain width. “They’re passing it off as being about safety, but it’s a blatant attempt to get rid of legal abortion in the state,” he said. Dr. Yeomans’ criticisms are shared by other advocates for safe, legal, and accessible abortion. Sometimes referred to as “TRAP laws” (which stands for “targeted regulation of abortion providers”), these types of regulations require abortion providers to meet specific licensure require…
Read More…’ offices pretty much go directly in the trash. They pay more attention to phone calls and letters, but street protests don’t bother them at all, unless they’re on cable news, which they almost never are. Hashtags? Changing your Twitter avatar? Forget about it. Popular protest does play a supporting role in getting us to a point where something like the Congressional sit-in works. So do the organizations—including the religious groups—who sponsor…
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…e election of their activists to local school boards. This is bad enough. But where books, authors, teachers and librarians are deemed demonic, and part of an ultimate war between good and evil, the stakes could get much higher. German playwright Heinrich Heine famously observed in his 1821 play Almansor, “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” The play is set during the time of the Spanish Inquisition when Muslim…
Read More…nderful is it that kids today still use the term “mix tape”?) While she’s out and completely unreachable by phone, her dad, Ken, goes into the hospital with breathing difficulties and is admitted to intensive care. Taylor finally gets the message, is stricken with remorse and concern, prays for her dad’s healing, and resolves to be more responsible. My Dinner with Frankie: Mark and Cheryl Perry invited their teenage daughter Olivia’s friend Franki…
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…It showed her what she already knew—that she lived in the evacuation zone—but offered no easy solution. * Almost a week after Hurricane Sandy I know the neighborhood much better than before. Sheens remained open throughout four days of no power and sold us batteries and cigarettes; they were expensive, but they were there. The owner of the Italian restaurant downstairs who lost five large freezers full of food when rising ground water swamped his…
Read More…ers and therapists as well as sources of supernatural guidance and power. But Glassman has endeavored to create a more institutional form of support. With her husband, a real estate developer, she created a community center after the destruction of Katrina. The “healing center” now houses a fitness center and a performing arts space as well as Glassman’s voodoo shop. The Anba Dlo festival is also intended as a philanthropy project that calls atten…
Read More…ed. “I get phone calls and text messages saying things like: ‘we’re gonna cut out your tongue and shove it up your ass’ and ‘you are ruining this country,” said Nika. “The new law encouraged everyone to go after us, without fear of being punished.” The police are often accused of being at the forefront, with many LGBTQ individuals detailing instances of officers threatening to expose their sexual identity unless they pay bribes. North writes that…
Read More…t what happened. Later that night, in the Mayan village, the men gathered outside our hut, talking about it in hushed voices. Lacking any better answers, my husband offered the theory that perhaps it was from aliens. We learned the source of the explosion the next morning. At 8:59, the space shuttle, taking a detour due to bad weather, passed over Belize on the way to Kennedy Space Center. By the time the sonic boom reached our ears four minutes l…
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