I cut my political teeth on United Farm Worker grape boycotts in California's San Joaquin Valley.
Columns
Carey Burkett 3-01-1995
It takes love to bake a cake. Cakes cannot be baked indifferently or in a hurry.
Ed Spivey Jr. 3-01-1995
Recently, some spots on my face were diagnosed not as the distinctive markings of a rare intellect-which I had assumed them to be-but as a precancerous skin malady.
Carey Burkett 12-01-1994
It is fitting that this morning, after paying bills and moaning about another increase in our health insurance premium, I came across a Russian proverb in a nutrition magazine
Ed Spivey Jr. 12-01-1994
A new day has dawned in our country. Unfortunately, that day is some time in the 1950s.
Marybeth Shea 12-01-1994
I guess I am doin' all right. I'm studyin', and like the teacher says, it pays off.
Jim Wallis 12-01-1994
This fall's elections were indeed a political turning point. The Democrats who say their debacle was only a rejection of politics in general and whoever was in power are just wrong.
Carey Burkett 11-01-1994
Someday I would like to see a cranberry harvest: crimson fruit floating on flooded coastal fields, skimmed off like a school of tropical fish.
Jim Wallis 11-01-1994
What if, in front of the whole world, the U.S. pledged unequivocal U.S. support for the restoration of democracy in Haiti?
Ed Spivey Jr. 11-01-1994
It started with the kind of silence that makes a parent sit bolt upright in his bed; an unnatural awakening, a feeling of something wrong.
Carey Burkett 9-01-1994
It’s hot. The yard needs mowing—the grass is so tall I have to wear rubber boots in the morning dew.
Ed Spivey Jr. 9-01-1994
People don’t always say what they mean (I meant to say that). And this past summer brought several examples of the daily "little white lies" we tell each other.
Jonathan R. Anderson 9-01-1994
As I yelled at Melissa and Gabriel for disobeying, a terrible contradiction flashed before me, but I beat it down, intent on winning this battle of wits.
Rufina Amaya 9-01-1994
Rufina Amaya is one of the few survivors of the 1981 massacre in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote.
Joyce Hollyday 9-01-1994
I’m not sure why I turned on the television that Friday night. Mountains stand between me and most airwaves, and my old TV set tunes into only two channels.
Jim Wallis 8-01-1994
The transformation of South Africa is one of the most significant events of our time. It therefore deserves serious reflection. The miraculous victory of South Africa's long freedom struggle was not inevitable and must not be treated as such. Things could have gone very differently; indeed, conventional wisdom expected a quite different outcome. The unraveling of that beautiful nation into a downward spiral of violence, hatred, chaos, and endless racial and civil war was a logical expectation. We have recently seen such horrendous social disintegration in too many other places.
How do we explain the triumph of both justice and forgiveness in South Africa? What are the lessons we can learn? What insights can be applied to our own struggles for social change?
Books could and should be written on this subject, but let me offer some initial reflections based upon a long-term involvement with the South African struggle and its people.
First, there was the power of persistence. The phrase one always heard in South Africa was "stay in the struggle." I have never seen a situation where there were more reasons to give up. But people never did. The sheer determination of South Africa's black majority and their few white allies was finally rewarded with victory. They always believed that, one day, they would be free. During so many periods of persecution, suffering, and despair, they were about the only ones who did believe. It was always easier for others to give up on South Africa.