Religion Dispatches
…ow what happened to Walter Scott is because a bystander filmed it with his phone. In making his plea, Pinckney invoked the biblical story of Doubting Thomas, the one of Jesus’s disciples who would not believe Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw him with his own eyes and touched his wounds with his own hands. “It was only when he was able to do that, he said, ‘I believe,’” Pinckney said of Thomas. Some people, said Pinckney, are like Thomas…
Read More
…ide. Others emerging from the Starbucks across the street, talking on cell phones or carrying laptops. Conversations on the park’s benches. For a city accustomed to itinerant protesters, a population glued to mobile devices, as well as the homeless sleeping in the shadows of the halls of power, it quite possibly looked like any other day in the heart of the nation’s capital. That passersby appeared to ignore the protesters was appropriate: Occupy…
Read More
…Montreal in August. A new international coalition, the Global LGBTQI Francophone Initiative” is in the process of coming together and working together “to end governmental and societal repression of sexual and gender minorities.” A U.S. vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the death penalty for “same-sex relations” and other acts provoked widespread outrage, leading U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley to tweet, “Fact: There was…
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…
Read More
…obody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowerment…
Read More…t of Martin Luther King’s assassination fielded celebratory calls as a telephone operator in Memphis, Tennessee, telephoned us to awake my four-year-old twins from their sleep. Through her sniffles and giggles, this loving grandmother and now proud American citizen, kept repeating, “you tell those babies Obama did it! Obama did it! Wake them up and let them know that “O’RockoBama” [my son’s pronunciation] really did win tonight!” And I also receiv…
Read More…especially, race. This matrix of associations is evident in the example of phone psychics like “Miss Cleo,” who uses an affected Caribbean accent. We also saw it in Pat Robertson’s gaffe following the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, when he claimed that the nation of Haiti had made a pact with the Devil. Glassman conforms to no stereotypes about Vodou. Born in Maine, her parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage but were not religious. S…
Read More
…(correctly) at the uncertainty consuming me. Similar messages poured in by phone, email and social media throughout the day. It was as if someone in my family had died and people felt compelled to offer me condolences. The reality of living in a country in which the most blatant expressions of Islamophobia and other forms of hate are normalized does worry me. Even as Trump flip-flops on his promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims ente…
Read MoreI just got off the phone with Nancy Ratzen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, who said the group would be issuing an endorsement of Elana Kagan later today. Ratzen, who said the NCJW has, since 2001, “engaged consistently on reviewing and taking positions and educating and mobilizing progressive Jewish community” on judicial nominations, said that the group would be working hard to see Kagan confirmed. “We think she has an except…
Read More…were terrified of him. The brothers never speak anymore; they talk on the phone at least once a day. It’s all there and it’s all unclear. All we know for a fact is that it all came apart very suddenly. On December 9, 2008, Bernie Madoff told his son, Mark, that he intended to pay out $173 million in holiday bonuses two months early. Deeply concerned, Mark revealed this to Andrew, who concluded that Madoff Securities should probably be re-named. T…
Read More