christian leadership conference

Duane Shank 10-06-2011

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a pioneer and giant of the civil rights movement, died Wednesday at 89.

'Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director of the National Catholic Conference for Interrracial Justice, in a crowd.], 08/28/1963' photo (c) 1963, The U.S. National Archives - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/How should music rank among the ever-growing list of time-tested nonviolent methods such as boycotts, marches, strikes, sit-ins, and vigils?

Anthony Shadid of the New York Times reports that a song, "Come on Bashar, Leave," is spreading across Syria, boldly calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down. (Bryan Farrell also wrote about it at the Waging Nonviolence blog.) The article suggests that a young cement layer who chanted it in demonstrations was pulled from the Orontes River this month, his throat having been cut, and, according to residents of the city of Hama, his vocal chords torn out. Hama is where, in 1982, then-president Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president named in the song, gave orders to the army to massacre more than 10,000 in putting down an Islamist upheaval. Today, boys 6-years-old and older vocalize their own rendition of the original warbler's song instead. As the song has sped across Syria, demonstrators have adopted it for themselves.

Jim Wallis 7-21-2011

Today is another intense day of politics at the White House. The debt default deadline is fast approaching. The stakes for the nation are high as politicians can't agree on how to resolve the ideological impasse on how to reduce the deficit before the nation defaults on its financial obligations.

Yesterday, before Congressional leaders were due at the White House for critical negotiations, I, along with 11 other national faith leaders, met with President Obama and senior White House staff for 40 minutes. We were representing the Circle of Protection, which formed in a commitment to defend the poor in the budget debates. Sitting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, we opened in prayer, grasping hands across the table, and read scripture together. We reminded ourselves that people of faith must evaluate big decisions on issues like a budget by how they impact the most vulnerable.

Jim Wallis 4-28-2011

Yesterday, the leaders of more than 50 Christian denominations and organizations drew a line in the sand of the budget debate, and asked our political leaders to do the same.

Rose Marie Berger 3-08-2011

On March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers attempted to walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in support of equal voting rights for blacks and whites.

John Fleming 11-16-2010

[Editors' Note: Former state trooper James Bonard Fowler plead guilty this week to a misdemeanor manslaughter charge in the 1965 shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Alabama.

Maryada Vallet 4-21-2010
From the borderlands perspective, it has been a week of momentous steps both forward and back for immigrants.