Peru today displays all the elements of a historic tragedy
Commentary
Bob Hulteen 8-01-1990
To attack the corporate buyout of Earth Day 1990 is somewhat like shooting at a house with a BB gun. It's an easy target. Many U.S. mega-corporations were none-too-subtle in their attempts to have their names and logos attached to anything that was worn, watched, eaten, or heard by the Americans who went outdoors on April 22 to clean up a little plot of God's creation.
Most people saw the irony in it all. Some corporations spent more money advertising their commitment to the environment than they did on improving the environment. You couldn't find an unopened can of green paint anywhere on Madison Avenue.
Recently at a conference for alternative press people and environmental activists sponsored by The Utne Reader, much of the discussion centered around the effects of corporate involvement with environmental organizations: Who gains? What is lost? One presenter, A.J. Grant, president of Environmental Communications Associates, Inc., convinced Burger King executives, whose annual advertising budget is $215 million, to use $7 million of it to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. In this way they would be encouraging others to be concerned, she thought, while still serving their own needs. But is that the best use of $7 million for the environment?
The American Petroleum Institute spent some of its cash on a half-page ad in The Washington Post explaining why the Clean Air Act's gentle encouragement of ethanol is "An Environmental Frankenstein." The API advertisement begins, "We want cleaner air. So do all Americans." That's as convincing of their environmental sensitivity as the ad in Newsweek by the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness which informed readers that "every day is Earth Day with nuclear energy."
Joyce Hollyday, The Editors 8-01-1990
On June 3, 1990, the church celebrated Pentecost. Sojourners sponsored Peace Pentecost 1990—"Breaking the Silence: A Call to End Violence Against Women." Worship services, vigils, and processions were held throughout the country.
In Washington, DC, we began our service at Luther Place Memorial Church. We followed with a procession to McPherson Square Park. Along the way we stopped four times: at Bethany Women's Shelter, where we focused on domestic violence; at The Washington Post building, where we made a note of the media's silence about incest; at an alley where a homeless woman had been raped; and at a video store which—like most video stores—carries a large selection of pornography. At each stop, we listened to statistics, then offered a litany and a refrain of the song, "O God, Give Us Power."
We concluded our service at the park, where we were moved and empowered by testimonies from survivors of the war against women. A bell was rung every three-and-a-half minutes throughout our service, a powerful reminder that every three-and-a-half minutes a woman is a target of rape or attempted rape in the United States. Below is the reflection offered by Joyce Hollyday at Luther Place Memorial Church.
—The Editors
When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1). So begins the Pentecost passage. In the verses preceding this one, the apostles are named: Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Matthias, whom the others had chosen to replace their fallen brother, Judas. These men have personalities—we know during the ordeal they have just gone through who was courageous, who doubted, who denied.
And after the list of their names, the scripture tells us they were together "with the women" and Mary the mother of Jesus. These other women have no names. Like most of the women in the record of our faith, these remain marginal, unknown, present but unaccounted for.
Marc Mowery 8-01-1990
Indigenous people have lived in the tropical rain forests of South America's Amazon basin region for millennia. And while their way of life has been threatened by outsiders (including Christian missionaries) for centuries, it is only in the last few decades that they have faced the threat of extinction due to development—i. e. gold prospectors, dams, cattle ranchers, oil wells, and lumber companies.
Saving the forests has become a popular cause in recent years, with presidents, kings, religious leaders, corporations, scientists, and environmentalists discussing their fate. But in all of the discussions on topics such as global warming and the genetic diversity of the rain forest, one group has been conspicuously absent: the 1.5 million people who live there.
As part of an effort to place themselves at the bargaining table for their survival, indigenous leaders from Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador—who are part of a coordinating body of indigenous organizations known as COICA—hosted environmentalists in May for what was called the First Iquitos Summit, held in Iquitos, Peru.
The environmental groups participating at the five-day meeting included the National Wildlife Federation, World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Action Network, Conservation International, and Greenpeace. Many other groups, including the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Cultural Survival, and the Washington, D. C. -based Inter-American Foundation, were also present as observers.
Denise O'Brien 5-01-1988
The more than 400 women from 10 states, Canada, and the Netherlands who gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, March 4 and 5 for the third annual "Harvesting Our Potential" rural women's conference provided poignant testimony to the fact that the farm crisis is not over.
Joe Lynch 5-01-1988
The ministry of the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers, later known as the Shiloh Retreat Center, is no more.
Vicki Kemper 5-01-1988
While the Reagan administration and the U.S. Congress were presenting, debating, and voting on additional U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras in March, the contras were continuing to kill, wound, and kidnap Nicaraguan civilians.
Vicki Kemper 1-01-1987
Just two days after the South African government dropped subversion charges against him, anti-apartheid church leader Rev. Allan Boesak was speaking as defiantly as ever.
Ed Griffin-Nolan, Elizabeth Griffin-Nolan 10-01-1985
An interview with Ed and Elizabeth Griffin-Nolan.
An interview with Thomas Gumbleton, Raymond Hunthausen, Leroy Matthiesen and Walter Sullivan