The N.Y. Times launches the 1619 Project, “observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery.”
Late August of 1619 “was when a ship arrived at Point Comfort in the British colony of Virginia, bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans.”
Why it matters: The project “aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
[NYTimes prescription needed to view full article…Dayle’s Community Cafe does not subscribe to for-profit/elitist journalism.]
The reparations plan.
Race Relations, Reconciliation and Reparations
At the time when slaves were first emancipated at the end of the Civil War, there are estimated to have been between 4 to 5 million enslaved persons in the American South. General Tecumseh Sherman promised to every former slave family of four, forty acres and a mule. While this would have provided a way to make a living and feed one’s family, integrating economically into life as a freed citizen, only a few actually received the acreage and among those who received it most had it then taken away.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. would ask a hundred years later, “They were freed, but what were they freed to?” It was a full hundred years after the end of the Civil War before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 to dismantle segregation, and only in 1965 did the Voting Rights Act insure equal access to black people at the polls.
The issue of the economic gap that existed at the end of the Civil War, however, was never addressed beyond Sherman’s promise. And the gap has never been closed.
I have advocated for broad scale reparations for slavery since the 1990’s, and was the first candidate in this presidential primary season to make it a pillar of my campaign.
The issue of reparations is not a fringe notion. Germany has paid over $89 Billion to Jewish organizations since the end of WW2 and, while they do not erase the horror of the Holocaust, reparations have gone far towards establishing reconciliation between Germany and the Jews of Europe. Similarly, in 1988 Ronald Reagan signed the American Civil Liberties Act assigning between $20,000 to $22,000 to surviving prisoners of the Japanese internment camps during WW2. The idea that a people which has wronged another people should then pay economic restitution as payment for that wrong, is a civilized notion long considered reasonable.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country”
– Abe Lincoln, 1862
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
-Toni Morrison, 1975
“Love casts out hate the way light casts out darkness. But love without action is not love. Love without justice is not love. Love without mercy is not love. Love that’s just talk is not love. So how do you do it? The answer isn’t complicated – it’s just confronting. You feed the hungry, help the poor, educate the children, make peace not war. You atone for your mistakes & make amends where you can.”
-Marianne Williamson
From Marianne:
Toni Morrison will be a name and a genius long remembered. May her soul be blessed as it continues on its journey. The world is blessed by what she gave while she was here.
“When I was a child, we saw pictures of military parades in the Soviet Union. I was taught that America doesn’t do that— that we’re proud of the fact that we don’t do it because we don’t wish to be a militarized society. This July 4th however, America’s official celebration will be accompanied by army tanks on the National Mall.
The militarization of July 4th celebrations is repugnant to me. What we celebrate on July 4th is our greatest strength: the Declaration of Independence and the principles that it articulates. That is what we have always done, and that is what we must continue to do.
President Trump will be doing his July 4th event in Washington DC with army tanks on the National Mall; I will be doing mine in Concord, New Hampshire, with a message that I assume will be quite different than his.
Please join me tomorrow at 2pm PT/5pm ET via livestream or live in Concord for a July 4 talk that celebrates our principles, dedicating our hearts to the rights—and the responsibilities—it bequeaths to us. Another generation was given the task of giving birth to the country; the task of our generation is to give it new life.
I look forward to being with you!”
[AXIOS]
One of two Bradley Fighting Vehicles is parked next to the Lincoln Memorial. Photo: Andrew Harnik.
From Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation:
‘While our society places great emphasis on the individual, true prophets are almost always concerned with social, institutional, national, or corporate evil and our participation in it.
That’s because the future is always contingent upon our cooperation, choices, and actions. Therefore, if we live in love and treat the poor with justice, the good will happen.’
From Marianne Williamson:
‘Where racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamaphobia and xenophobia have become collectively politicized, we must collectively politicize decency, dignity, mercy, justice, compassion and love. This isn’t philosophy; it’s strategy.’
‘For those who might think I want fairy dust to replace public policy, here is the Issues page from my campaign site. Please peruse for any signs of extra-terrestrial influence.’
‘She only spoke for five minutes during the debate, but she managed to advocate for reparations; implicitly compare herself to John F. Kennedy; rail on her opponents for focusing too much on policy plans; bring “chemical policies” into the health-care debate; advocate for a spiritual, love-based strategy to beat President Trump; promise to call the prime minister of New Zealand on her first day in office; and beat the other candidates in debate-night Google search interest (although Kamala D. Harris was the top “trending topic” on all of Google). We may never have seen anyone exactly like Williamson on a national debate stage, but she’s channeling a real, and underserved, constituency in American politics.’ [Washington Post]
“If you are curious about Marianne Williamson, stop throwing insults and jokes around. Watch this instead. She is a thoughtful person. -Emmy-Nominated Producer of Documentary Films.
‘Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson called climate change the country’s greatest moral challenge in an interview Thursday, spotlighting an issue at the center of the 2020 primary race.
The author and activist told PBS NewsHour anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff that investing resources to combat climate change now would pay off in the future.
“I’d rather pay with money now than pay with our inability to breath 25 years from now, 50 years from now,” said Williamson, who supports the Green New Deal.
Williamson also said the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion services, needs to be repealed.
The remarks come as several states have pushed controversial bills limiting abortion services. The debate over abortion is playing out in the 2020 primary race as well. Former Vice President Joe Biden made headlines Thursday by reversing his support for the amendment.
Other highlights from the interview:
On military spending: Williamson criticized U.S. military spending as excessive, touching on an argument she makes in her new book, “A Politics of Love.” “Anybody who thinks that our military budget is based only on military considerations is fooling themselves. It is based at least as much on short-term profit maximization for defense contractors,” she said.
On creating a Department of Peace: Williamson reiterated her call for a new agency with the name the “Department of Peace,” which would deal with domestic peace-building efforts, including in neighborhoods grappling with violence. “We do not spend money and put our resources behind the factors that create peace, like expanding education for children and ameliorating unnecessary human suffering,” Williamson said.
’What I saw outside the fence is as important as what I saw when I looked over it: politicians, human rights groups, religious groups, social justice advocates and others, all bearing witness to a tragic situation and refusing to look away. Gandhi’s concept of soul force means bearing witness to the agony of others as a form of political expression. People from across all religious and spiritual and social justice communities are ready to take a stand for love, and turn it into a political force.’
As I prepare for tonight’s debate, I am thinking about why I got into this race. I’m committed to articulating as strongly as I can my beliefs on which this campaign stands.
I believe we won’t be the country that we can be, until we’re the people that we can be. Too many people are held back from being all they can be, due to bad public policy that does more to limit their dreams than to unleash their spirits.
I believe government can and should be a force for good. It should create and secure opportunities for people to embrace the light, thus making it less probable they will fall into darkness.
America has now fallen into a dark night of the American soul. We’re living at a time when some of the worst human impulses have been turned into a political force. And that will be transcended only by the best human impulses turned into a political force.
That is why I take a stand for love.
I take a stand for economic and social justice. I take a stand for America’s children. I take a stand for safety. I take a stand for our planet. I take a stand for racial reconciliation. And I take a stand for peace.
I will continue to do that, tonight in Miami, tomorrow in Homestead, and the day after that in Iowa. I will continue to campaign on the possibility that America can emerge from this time and be better than we have ever been.
75 years ago today, the Greatest Generation proved what they were made of. The invasion of Normandy was literally and figuratively the line in the sand past which the Nazis would not be allowed to go.
160,000 Allied soldiers participated in the D-Day Invasion. It is estimated that 4,413 of them died. One can only imagine the energy, the courage, the fear, and the prayers that were uttered on that night, this night, in l944.
Several years ago I visited the beaches at Normandy, where barges still rest in the water along the coastline. It was one of the most moving, haunting experiences of my life and I will never forget it. On this day, may we all remember.
In honor of those who came before us, let us in our time rise up and do what is ours to do. May those who lost their lives that day, and those who fought with them, be forever blessed.
The Atlantic
David Frum
The French military defeat in 1940 had torn apart social wounds dating back decades and longer. Conservative and Catholic France reinterpreted the battles of 1940 as a debacle only of the liberal and secular France that had held the upper hand since the founding of the Third Republic in 1871 and especially since the Dreyfus affair that began in 1894. When the reactionary French writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration, he supposedly replied, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus.”
[…]
The French military defeat in 1940 had torn apart social wounds dating back decades and longer. Conservative and Catholic France reinterpreted the battles of 1940 as a debacle only of the liberal and secular France that had held the upper hand since the founding of the Third Republic in 1871 and especially since the Dreyfus affair that began in 1894. When the reactionary French writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration, he supposedly replied, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus.”
[…]
But the human impulses on which the fascists and communists of the 1930s battened? Those do remain with us. They have been a powerful resource to extremists of all kind in our unsettled present moment after the Great Recession of 2008–09 and amid the mass developing-world migration flows of the 2010s. Trump is their most conspicuous beneficiary, but not their only beneficiary. They trouble France; they trouble us.
[…]
This time, no D-Day is called for to defeat them—just a renewed commitment to the ideals for which D-Day was launched 75 years ago by soldiers of so many lands, including the France that has taken so long to make its entire peace with this complicated anniversary.
‘Prosecuting Evil’ Docu Producers Secure Rights To Story of Nuremberg Prosecutor Ben Ferencz For Scripted Project
Ben Ferencz, a lifelong advocate of “law not war”, became the lead prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg after witnessing Nazi concentration camps shortly after liberation. In his first trial, at age 27, all 22 Nazi officials who were tried for murdering over a million people, were convicted. Ferencz went on to advocate for restitution for Jewish victims of the Holocaust and later assisted in the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
Avrich directed the documentary, which had its world debut at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival and is now available to screen on Netflix.
Avrich’s Melbar Entertainment Group and Theroux’s Sugar Shack Productions will produce the scripted projects.
“This is an extraordinary honor to tell the story; one of the most iconic and historic figures of our time,” said Avrich. “I feel a real responsibility to continue to bring this important story to as many people as we can, this time through a scripted project.”
“I am thrilled to help bring this prestigious, inspiring and historic story to the big screen,” remarked Theroux. “Ben has led an incredible life and it is a privilege that Barry and I have been allowed to share it with the world in a new capacity.”
Benjamin B. Ferencz was born in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania in 1920. When he was ten months old his family moved to America. His earliest memories are of his small basement apartment in a Manhattan district – appropriately referred to as “Hell’s Kitchen.” Even at an early age, he felt a deep yearning for universal friendship and worldpeace.e
After he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943, he joined an anti-aircraft artillery battalion preparing for the invasion of France. As an enlisted man under General Patton, he fought in every campaign in Europe. As Nazi atrocities were uncovered, he was transferred to a newly created War Crimes Branch of the Army to gather evidence of Nazi brutality and apprehend thecriminals.s
“Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes I witnessed while liberating these centers of death and destruction. Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind’s eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget-the crematoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cordwood waiting to be burned…. I had peered into Hell.” (From Planethood,1988)8
On the day after Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army with the rank of Sergeant of Infantry. He returned to New York and prepared to practice law. Shortly thereafter, he was recruited for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The International Military Tribunal prosecution against German Field Marshal, Herman Goering and other leading Nazis was already in progress under the leadership the American Prosecutor, Robert M. Jackson on leave from the USSupreme Court..
The U.S. had decided to prosecute a broad cross section of Nazi criminals once the trial against Goering and his henchmen was over. General Telford Taylor was assigned as Chief of Counsel for 12 subsequent trials. Ferencz was sent with about fifty researchers to Berlin to scour Nazi offices and archives. In their hands lay overwhelming evidence of Nazi genocide by German doctors, lawyers, judges, generals, industrialists, and others who played leading roles in organizing or perpetrating Nazi brutalities. Without pity or remorse, the SS murder squads killed every Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on. Gypsies, communist functionaries, and Soviet intellectuals suffered the same fate. It was tabulated that over a million persons were deliberately murdered by these special “action groups.
Ferencz became Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case, which the Associated Press called “the biggest murder trial in history.” Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over a million people. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was his first case.
All of the defendants were convicted. Thirteen were sentenced to death. The verdict was hailed as a great success for the prosecution. Ferencz’s primary objective had been to establish a legal precedent that would encourage a more humane and secure world in the future.
In 1988 Ferencz wrote PlanetHood with Ken Keyes, Jr., to offer practical steps for the average citizen to take to help establish international law and urge U.N. reform. Receiving critical acclaim from its readers, with over 450,000 copies printed and served as an inexpensive and easy-to-read “Key To Survival and Prosperity.”
‘Her presence will give Democrats and all others a different view of America’s problems.
As you read through her positions on issues you will be taken how she digs deep to find the roots of the problem.
Marianne Williamson may be a game changer.’
-Dave Bradley, Blog for Idaho
From Marianne:
“We rise, rise, rise.
We’re bursting with press coverage.
There’s a reason for the media we’re getting, and for our rise: you.”
“We were hitting grassroots fundraising benchmarks before some pollsters would even say my name. And for that, I thank you. More people every day get to know this campaign. Our task is to generate a massive wave of energy, fueled and navigated by we the people, so powerful as to override all threats to our democracy.”
Recently, Marianne Williamson joined Pod Save America host Jon Favreau (former Barack Obama speech writer) to discuss her bid for president. The conversation brilliantly synthesizes Marianne’s platform into 47:03 of intelligent, riveting dialogue diving deep into some of her most sacred issues. She and Jon discuss moral outrage v. anger, spirit, getting money out of politics, and why she wants to establish a Dept of Peace.”
Here are some highlights:
[00:01:21] I’ve worked up close and personal with people for over 35 years who are dealing with crises in their lives, seeking to navigate those crises to transform them into opportunity and I have recognized particularly over the last 20 years, how many of those crises are at least indirectly and often directly a result of bad public policy. So not only do I have a real visceral sense of how bad public policy affects people’s lives and which bad public policy affects people’s lives, but also a deep passion for what needs to change. I think that that’s what it’s all about. It’s about human suffering. How to address it and how to ameliorate it, that’s what politics should be. Politics should be a conduit for making people’s lives better. Securing our rights, not thwarting them.
[00:12:36] Well, there are two kinds of Democrats, aren’t there? And that’s being played out in this campaign. There are two categories here. The two categories is the incrementalist who say we can have it both ways. We can take [corporate] money. We can take tens of thousands from some security investment firms. We can take tens of thousand from Big Pharma. We can take tens or even more thousands from oil companies, but we’re going to go and be an instrument of change. Yeah, right. There’s that, and they’re saying well, we’ll make these incremental changes and then there are those of us who say this has got to stop. We need a fundamental pattern disruption of the American political and economic status quo.
“This campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace is the first step in dismantling our systemically entrenched perpetuation of violence. And it is critical.” -Marianne Williamson
‘I’m convinced that beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils—political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another, hating each other based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality—the greatest dis-ease facing humanity right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God, certainly, but also from ourselves (especially our bodies), from each other, and from our world. Our sense of this fourfold isolation is plunging our species into increasingly destructive behavior and much mental illness.
Yet many are discovering that the Infinite Flow of the Trinity—and our practical, felt experience of this gift—offers the utterly grounded reconnectionwith God, with self, with others, and with our world that all spirituality, and arguably, even politics, is aiming for, but which conventional religion and politics fail to access.
Trinity overcomes the foundational philosophical problem of “the One and the Many.” Serious seekers invariably wonder how things can be both deeply connected and yet clearly distinct. In the paradigm of Trinity, we have three autonomous “Persons,” as we call them, who are nevertheless in perfect communion, given and surrendered to each other with an Infinite Love. With the endless diversity in creation, it is clear that God is not at all committed to uniformity but instead desires unity—which is the great work of the Spirit—or diversity overcome by love.
Uniformity is mere conformity and obedience to law and custom; whereas spiritual unity is that very diversity embraced and protected by an infinitely generous love.
This is the problem that our politics and most superficial religion are still unable to resolve.
Trinity is all about relationship and connection. We know the Trinity through experiencing the flow itself, which dissolves our sense of disconnection. The principle of one is lonely; the principle of two is oppositional and moves us toward preference and exclusion; the principle of three is inherently moving, dynamic, and generative. Trinity was made to order to undercut all dualistic thinking. Yet Christianity shelved it for all practical purposes because our dualistic theologies could not process it.
God is not a being among other beings, but rather the Ground ofBeing itselfwhich then flows through all beings. As Paul says to the intellectuals in Athens, this God “is not far from us, but is the one in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28). The God whom Jesus reveals is presented as unhindered dialogue, a positive and inclusive flow, and a waterwheel of outpouring love that never stops! St. Bonaventure called God a “fountain fullness” of love.
Our sense of disconnection is only an illusion. Nothing can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin. God is always winning, and God’s love will finally win in the end. Nothing humans can do can stop the relentless outpouring force that is the divine dance. Love does not lose, nor does God lose. That’s what it means to be God!’
Image credit: (detail), Andrei Rublev, c. 1400-1410, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Trinity: The Trinity depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18: 1-8); the painting is full of symbolism and is interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity. At the time of Rublev, the Holy Trinity was the embodiment of spiritual unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.
Marianne Williamson, Democratic Presidential Candidate who bases her platform on love and connection, needs only 2,400 singular donations [$1-$5], 65,000 total, to be allowed to join the first debates schedule for June in Miami. Please donate at https://www.marianne2020.com
“A nation’s behavior is just like an individual’s – either an expression of our higher nature or our lower nature. In the case of both, cause and effect holds: whatever we do has consequences. Love leads to harmony & lovelessness to chaos.That’s why wisdom is relevant to politics.”
As long as there is a dearth of women in positions of political power, this chronic tilting of American priorities toward short-term economic interests as opposed to humanitarian values is understandable. As long as women are basically invisible, children are invisible as well. -Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson
Supermajority launches today.
“A community for women who want to work together to build economic and political power, organize for gender equity, and transform this country. Sign up to be a founding member and be part of this from the beginning.”
WOMEN ARE ALREADY THE MAJORITY. NOW LET’S BUILD A SUPERMAJORITY.
In the past two years, we’ve seen what happens when women mobilize.
1 in 5 Americans has participated in a march or protest since 2016. The biggest issue driving these actions is support for women’s rights.
Women donated $100 million more to campaigns and causes in 2018 than they did in 2016.
We’ve been the majority of voters in every national election since 1964. In 2018, women helped elect a Congress with a record-breaking 127 women members.
Women are on the cusp of becoming the most powerful force in America. But to fundamentally transform this country, we need to work together. That’s where Supermajority comes in.
AI-Jen Poo, Executive director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Co-director, Caring Across Generations
Alicia Garza, Strategy and partnerships director, National Domestic Workers Alliaince
Co-founder Black Lives Matter Global Network
Principal, Black Futures Lab
Cecile Richards, Former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of American and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
OUR MISSION
Supermajority is a membership-based organization that affirms and builds women’s power and serves as a one-stop shop for advocacy, community building, and electoral participation aimed at transforming our country and building an intergenerational, multiracial movement for women’s equity.
Women are marching, running for office, donating to and advocating for causes and campaigns, and voting in record numbers. We can be the most powerful force in America—if we do the work together.
We’re building a Supermajority of women* who are organizing for gender equity. Sign up to be a founding member and be part of this from the beginning.
*And everyone who shares our values!
“The feminine energy is the energy of creation and of protection of the community. By adopting policies to protect women, society simply protects itself.” -Marianne Williamson
So far, much of the concern about the long-term effects of DT’s presidency has centered on his antidemocratic tendencies. But even if we take those off the table—even if we assume that Trump continues to be hemmed in by other parts of the government and by outside institutions, and that he governs no more effectively than he has until now—the impact of a second term would be more lasting than that of the first.
[…]
Three areas—climate change, the risk of a renewed global arms race, and control of the Supreme Court—illustrate the historic significance of the 2020 election. The first two problems will become much harder to address as time goes on. The third one stands to remake our constitutional democracy and undermine the capacity for future change.
[…]
In short, the biggest difference between electing Trump in 2016 and reelecting DT in 2020 would be irreversibility.
[…]
Democracy is always a gamble, but ordinarily the stakes involve short-term wins and losses. Much more hangs in the balance next year.
[…]
The choice Americans face in 2020 is one we will not get to make again. What remains to be seen is whether voters will grasp the stakes before them. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s emails absorbed more media and public attention than any other issue. In 2018, DT tried to focus attention on a ragtag caravan of a few thousand Central Americans approaching the southern border. That effort failed, but the master of distraction will be back at it next year. If we cannot focus on what matters, we may sleepwalk into a truly perilous future.
“Humanity has come to a fork in the road. There is a way marked Love and there is a way marked Fear, each path leading tumor of the same…in our finest hours, America has stood for what humanity at our best aspires to be. We have sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed, but today, in our time, it is ours to decide our path as we move forward. lady Liberty’s torch is in our hands, but only we can determine whether it burns within our hearts.”
-Marianne Williamson, A Politics of Love
Marianne spoke in Las Vegas last night. I recommend beginning at 50:15 for her introduction video. Forward to 1:20:00 for her Q&A to hear the depth of her issues, wisdom, compassion, and her connection with “We the People.” (1:24:00 is beautiful.)
“A truth teller, a seeker, a mother, and a learned woman in this scary and strange new world, her voice is at once strong medicine for our roundedness, warmth, insistence, good humor, and a little light to see by.”
‘My campaign for the presidency is dedicated to this search, for wisdom of the heart is too often absent from the political sphere.
Together we can reclaim both our democratic principles and the angels of our better selves, expressed not just in our personal lives but on acts of citizenship as well.
Politics should not be a pursuit disconnected from the heart; it should be, as everything should be, an expression of the heart. Where fear has been harnessed for political purposes, let’s now harness the power of love.
It is time to let go of an old and tired political conversation, and forge a new, whole-person, heart-centered political dynamic.’
～
From Marianne on Saturday, April 27th: “We’re under 8,000 left to go! So we’re totally getting there. Please do everything you can to get even the smallest donations to get us onto the DNC debate stage.”
[Only$1-$5 donations needed for a singular/unique donation.]
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
In this stirring call to arms, the activist, spiritual leader, and New York Times bestselling author of the classic Return to Love confronts the cancerous politics of fear and divisiveness threatening the United States today, urging all spiritually aware Americans to return to—and act out of—our deepest value: love.
America’s story is one of great social achievement. From the Abolitionists who fought to outlaw slavery, to the Suffragettes who championed women’s right to vote, to the Civil Rights proponents who battled segregation and institutionalized white supremacy, to the proponents of the women’s movement and gay rights seeking equality for all, citizens for generations have risen up to fulfill the promise of our nation. Over the course of America’s history, these activists have both embodied and enacted the nation’s deepest values.
Today, America once again is in turmoil. A spiritual cancer of fear threatens to undo the progress we have achieved. Discord and hatred are dissolving our communal bonds and undermining the spirit of social responsibility—the duty we feel toward one another. In this powerful spiritual manifesto, Marianne Williamson offers a tonic for this cultural malignancy. She urges us to imitate the heroes of our past and live out our deepest spiritual commitment: where some have sown hatred, let us now sow love.
Williamson argues that we must do more than respond to external political issues. We must address the deeper, internal causes that have led to this current dysfunction. We need a new, whole-person politics of love that stems not just from the head but from the heart, not just from intellectual understanding but from a genuine affection for one another. By committing to love, we will make a meaningful contribution to the joyful, fierce and disruptive energies that are rising at this critical point in time. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “we must think anew, and act anew . . . and then we shall save our country.”
#WethePeople, the sole conscious of our country now. “If you really want to send Trumpism into the history books, the best thing we can do is defeat it, decisively, at the ballot box in 2020.” #PeteButtigieg Let’s contribute to keep #MarrianneWilliamson and her powerful compassionate platform in the debate. She needs about 10,000 more singular donations…$5…to be on the stage in June. [Link pinned below.] “The nexus of faith and politics is undergoing a transformation. That’s why Democratic debates have the potential to become a turning point for our country.” -Dayle
Marianne Williamson Wants to Make Democrats the Party of Faith
For progressive, religious people like me, the 2020 candidate has a powerful message
Issac J. Bailey
“The move by top Democrats to speak more openly about their faith better aligns them with their base, black voters, who are maybe the most religious group in the country. That truth often gets lost in discussions about faith and politics, which most often center on the white Evangelical Christians who power the Republican Party. That’s why this shift on the Democratic side is so important, because it could further solidify the already-strong bond between the party and black people, making it less likely the constant, public declarations of faith by conservative candidates will win those voters over, a long-theorized possibility.
[…]
The candidate best equipped to deal with the changing politics of faith is one of the least talked-about figures in the primary and my inspiration all those years ago: Marianne Williamson. When I spoke with the 66-year-old self-help author and speaker about two weeks ago, she shared that she was only “about halfway” to securing the requisite number of campaign donors to make it onto the Democratic debate stage. She’s polling behind even fellow fringe candidate Andrew Yang—but more people should be paying attention to her.
“I think the Democratic Party must retrieve its soul,” she told me in a Pancake House in Georgetown, South Carolina, a stone’s throw from Horry County, home to tourist mecca Myrtle Beach, which gave Trump 67 percent of its vote in 2016. Serious debates about whether residents can be Democrats and Christian are not infrequently held in the area. “This is a moral emergency,” Williamson said.
In the past, her faith has been described as “new-agey.” But that’s not accurate. It’s not traditional, but is just as deeply held as that of Evangelical Vice President Mike Pence and at least as thoughtful as Buttigieg’s. Williamson is the candidate that most resembles the “nones,” who are a growing part of the Democratic Party. This demographic may believe in God, but doesn’t want to be associated with rigid religious dogmas. They are less likely to believe homosexuality is sinful than their more traditionally religious counterparts, for instance, and more likely to believe abortion should be legal in most cases, even as conservatives call the practice murder and genocide.
But the “nones” may be just as hungry for a message of faith as voters who belong to a formal religion. Williamson could certainly speak to that message: She is a Jew who converted to Christ—but not Christianity—as she once told Beliefnet. Evidence of her faith jumps off her lips no matter the political issue she is discussing.”
The times in which we’re living are dramatic and unstable, yet pregnant with new possibilities for a future released from the shackles of fear.
At a time when fear and hatred have been turned into a political force, is it possible to harness the powers of love and decency for political purposes as well?
Our task is to create a new, whole-person politics, breaking free of a paradigm based on a decidedly outdated view of the world and embracing a more enlightened understanding of our relation to the universe. We need a deeper, multi-dimensional understanding of our national story: where we have been, where we are, and where we need to go now.
As with other extraordinary times in our history — from our Founding to Abolition to Women’s Suffrage to the Civil Rights era — it is time once again to break free of an old way of being and embrace a new story going forward. As in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “… we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
I will be touring the country this year, discussing how a revolution in consciousness paves the way to both personal and national renewal. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” Let’s embrace the possibility of both.
Click here for a list of the cities so far scheduled for THE LOVE AMERICA TOUR and check back often for updates! I hope to see you along the way.
‘Older now, you find holiness in anything that continues.’
-Naomi Shihab Nye
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‘The longer I wake on this Earth, the louder the quiet things speak to me. The more I experience and survive, the more I find truth in the commonalities we all share. The more pain softens me, the deeper my joy and the greater the lessons of those things that live in great stillness.’
-Mark Nepo
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‘As outraged as we might be at the sight of injustice, we must remain equally excited by the possibilities for a better world that lie on the other side of it. The enlightened activist is committed because we know that the other world exists and all of us are here to bring it forth.’
“…ask yourself whether what you do is a conduit for the good, the true or the beautiful. Don’t look for your unique gift; look for your next loving thought.
-Marianne Williamson
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And From Seth Godin:
“An alternative to believing in yourself…
Of course, self-belief is more than just common advice. It’s at the heart of selling, of creating, of shipping, of leadership…
Telling someone, “believe in yourself,” is often worthless, though, because it’s easier said than done.
Perhaps the alternative is: “Do work you can believe in.”
Not trust, verification. Not believing that one day you’ll do worthwhile work. Instead, do worthwhile work, look at it, then believe that you can do it again.
