By Nic Laccetti It is commonly believed that there has been a contemporary revival of interest in occult and alternative religious ideas, especially among young people, over the last few decades. Apart from the handringing think pieces on this trend that tend to pop up monthly in the mainstream media (“What does it mean that millennials read their horoscopes??”), the statistics seem to bear this out. Interest in spirituality is booming, but adherence to traditional religions is declining, especially among millennials. According to Gallup, about 1 in 5 adults (21%) don’t have a formal religious identity; this number is even
By Brad Stevens
As a contribution to our ability to study the rapidly-developing economic, social, and political dimensions of this crisis, we're gathering the best analysis we can find from around the web to make available to our network.
We are not of those who shrink back. Take a big, deep breath. Let your mind be aware and let your heart be filled -- with your own power, our collective power, and the mysterious power of God. We Rise Together. For such a time as this we have been called.
We are not in any position to stick our heads in the sand and wait for this storm to pass. For many of us that’s a practical impossibility as well as a moral and political one. But it would be just as irresponsible to lose focus and let ourselves be led along by events instead of using this moment to lead and forge new leaders.
Luis J. Rodriguez What stories, thinking, and organizational forms are needed for the chaotic political times we are in? There are thousands of ideas flaunted everywhere, especially on the internet, with or without any basis in truth or facts, ideas from the most reactionary to the most visionary. Which of these will take hold among the most exploited and oppressed of this country—and the world—as they move to break the chains on labor, creativity, minds, and hearts? We are in “pregnant” times—something vital, encompassing, and whole is trying to be born, even as the old capitalist relations and structures are
Noam Sandweiss-Back During the 1970s and 1980s, a wide and diverse socialist movement emerged across the United States. Known as the New Communist Movement, it encompassed tens of thousands of revolutionary organizers who were inspired by popular revolutions across the globe and committed to building working-class power at home. One of the many groups involved was the Worker’s Viewpoint Organization, later renamed the Communist Worker’s Party (CWP). The CWP organized across racial lines and among the working class in communities and industrial settings throughout the country. They were also the target of a brutal and infamous massacre that left five
By The Rev. Sarah Monroe, Chaplains on the Harbor Gustavo Gutierrez, famed as the founder of liberation theology, believed that all theology must begin with praxis.[1] That is, theology should only be done from the ground up, starting from the experience of the poor. We cannot talk about God, truly, unless we listen to the voices of the poor and we cannot do theology except from the context of their experience. I work in a specific context. I work in the rural United States, in Grays Harbor County in Washington State, where deindustrialization has fueled the rise of incarceration and
The economic crisis throughout the world, including the US, continues to unfold, and the outline of a political crisis in the US is beginning to emerge. It is becoming urgent for those of us who see the necessity of fundamental societal change to deepen our understanding of how and why societies change. This demands we turn to the study and the further development of Marxist thought.It is impossible to have an in-depth understanding of the world we live in today without developing an understanding of, at least, the basics of Marxist philosophy. As Harry Selsam and Harry Martel put it in Reader in Marxist Philosophy, Marx and Engels believed “philosophy, in the old sense of the term, had come to an end, and that the solutions offered by conventional philosophy, brilliant as many of them were, were nevertheless infected with an alienation from reality. The time had come, they maintained, for the emergence of a new type of philosopher, one whose feet were on the ground, and who regarded the social practice of mankind as both the source of philosophical concepts and the criterion of their truth.” These “new philosophers” were not inventing or discovering anything, but rather only giving expression to the actual realities of the world as it existed.
The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.Rev. Dr. King wrote these words for a series of lectures he gave in December of 1967. The passage is one of the clearest statements of how he saw America’s political and economic situation at that time; as well as the vision and strategy behind his call for a Poor People’s Campaign. Looking closely at it can help us understand that vision and strategy, especially the idea that the poor — as a united social force — can and must lead the rest of our society.That idea is more true today than ever. The current technological revolution is transforming every part of the economy all over the world. Because of our “cruelly unjust” class-based society, this revolution is bringing more poverty and violence instead of shared wealth. The poor are feeling the effects first: they’re becoming totally unnecessary, from the perspective of those who own and control the economy. This puts them in position to lead the “middle class” to political independence and clarity, as they face the trauma and fear of downward mobility.
