Weekly Wrap 9.29.17: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week | Sojourners

Weekly Wrap 9.29.17: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week

1. God Is a Bot, and Anthony Levandowski Is His Messenger
Levandowski’s religious organization is called “Way of the Future.” Its purpose? To “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.”

2. How to Protect Our Communities from Deportation: Can Matthew 25 SoCal Be a Model for the Country?
Last week, activists and the faith community celebrated the release of Pastor Noe Carias, who had been detained by ICE for more than two months. Here’s the story behind that win.

3. Bullet Holes and Rosé: Exploiting Black Pain for Profit
How one new Crown Heights “boozy sandwich shop” exemplifies the ongoing pain of gentrification: “In the case of Summerhill, not only do residents view the new bar as a sign of a rapidly changing neighborhood; many also view it as a commodification of black stereotypes rooted in a layered and painful history that has long plagued the country.”

4. When Police Officers Don’t Know About the ADA
The recent police shooting death of Magdiel Sanchez, a deaf man who often communicated with a metal pipe, highlights the increasing problem of police interactions — and miscommunication — with the deaf community.

5. Majority of Americans Now Say Climate Change Makes Hurricanes More Intense
That’s according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. It’s now 55 percent of Americans, up from a post-Katrina poll in 2005 in which only 39 percent of Americans felt the same.

6. Unrest in St. Louis? It Was Built to Be This Way
The long-planned protests of the Jason Stockley verdict — which cleared the former police officer in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith — is bringing an ongoing problem to attention once again. “The region is divided by class and race, which degrades disproportionately the lives of black people in equal access to education, employment, housing, health care, and yes, public safety. It has always been thus, and was deliberately built this way.”

7. Deported: A Photo Essay
This series of photos documents the story of Lourdes Salazar Bautista’s deportation from Ann Arbor, Mich., where she has lived for 20 years. She and her two youngest children will live in Toluca, Mexico, while her teenage daughter will stay behind to attend college at Michigan State University.

8. More People Than Ever Are Dying in Prison. Their Caregivers? Other Inmates
“The most difficult part of this work, for many, is watching patients suffer. Some refuse medication for religious reasons, or for fear of reawakening old addictions. ‘Some feel they need to go through that suffering because of the crime they committed,’ James said.”

9. Truth, Lies, and the NFL
“… here’s the truth: Trump’s whole cultural narrative is based on a hostile lie, or what mimetic theory calls a ‘myth.’ His weekend spat with the NFL is just one example of Trump’s mythical narrative.”

10. My God Is …
What would you fill in the blank?