grassroots movement

Nate Bacon 4-25-2018
Tatjana Splichal / Shutterstock.com

Tatjana Splichal / Shutterstock.com

FOR THE PAST three years, Pope Francis has convened leaders of grassroots movements from around the world to extend the church’s solidarity with the poor and vulnerable on three critical themes: land, work, and housing.

This winter, a regional gathering of the World Meeting of Popular Movements met in the United States for the first time. Seven hundred grassroots leaders, accompanied by 25 U.S. Catholic bishops, several international representatives, and a delegation from the Vatican, led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, met in Modesto, Calif., with the cardinal bearing a letter of support, invitation, and challenge from Pope Francis.

To the regular themes, U.S. leaders added racism and migration. Participants addressed the pain of exclusion from the perspective of undocumented domestic workers, residents of Flint whose water was contaminated, Standing Rock water protectors, and the unhoused, while also raising the hope of united, faith-rooted, nonviolent resistance.

Racial justice, in the U.S. and abroad, was a central theme. “Why is blackness a threat in America?” asked Rev. Traci Blackmon. “And how are we, as people of color, ever to be perceived as unarmed, and therefore nonthreatening, if our blackness is the weapon that you fear?” Blackmon said that oppression, dehumanization, and racism are rooted in the original sin of desiring to be God and seeking to create God in our own image. John A. Powell, director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, added, “When you ‘other’ someone in an extreme way, then you treat them as a non-human.”

Bill McKibben 2-20-2018

IF YOU'RE LOOKING for the climate movement this year, you’ll find it at city councils arguing for 100 percent renewable energy, at pension boards demanding fossil fuel divestment, and in farm fields trying to block pipelines. But you’ll also need to track down a few ramshackle houses in swing states across the country.

Those houses will hold hundreds of young people—at least it will hold them late at night, once they’re done with the long work of knocking on doors, handing out voter guides, and going to rallies. These “movement houses” are the most visible face of the Sunrise Movement, one of those reminders that even the poisonous politics of our moment holds real possibilities.

The young people who founded Sunrise weren’t actually anticipating a Trump victory. “We had had a plan to focus on building popular support for climate change, anticipating that a Democratic president would be pushed to take action on climate if a majority of Americans wanted it and made enough noise,” Varshini Prakash, the group’s engaging spokeswoman who cut her teeth as a highly successful divestment activist at UMass Amherst, said in an interview last summer. But then came that fateful November day, and “our world turned upside-down.” Now it wasn’t about pushing Clinton harder—it was about pushing back against the desperate threat that Trump represented: to the Constitution, to vulnerable people, and to the climate, which can’t wait a decade or two for sanity to return to our national life. “When the dust settled we came to an important realization: We have to figure out how to win elections.”

Chuck Collins 7-15-2011

Bahamasphoto © 2010 John Hilliard | more info (via: Wylio)
As Christians concerned about poverty, it is time to turn our full attention to the injustices of an "offshore tax system" that enables corporations and the wealthy to dodge taxes and impoverish countries around the world.

As members of Congress in the United States debate deep and painful budget cuts, people of faith should raise our voices against an unfair system that enables profitable U.S. corporations to dodge taxes, depleting an estimated $100 billion from the U.S. Treasury each year. Instead of cutting $1 trillion over the next decade from programs that assist the poor and ensure greater opportunity, we should eliminate these destructive tax gimmicks.

Recent reports show that aggressive tax dodgers such as General Electric, Boeing, and Pfizer, avoid billions in taxes a year. They use accounting gymnastics to pretend they are making profits in offshore subsidiaries incorporated in low- or no-tax countries like the Cayman Islands, thereby reducing their tax obligations in the United States. This system is unfair to domestic businesses that have to compete on an un-level playing field.

Eugene Cho 5-18-2011

I love what I do, but it's amazing how even that which you do and that which you feel "called" to do can grow in an unhealthy way to become idolatrous or simply draining.

Eugene Cho 5-12-2011
Like all of you, I was stunned some days ago as I started soaking in the breaking news of Osama bin Laden's capture and death via U.S. military operations.

Eugene Cho 4-19-2011

I'm very fond of this season in the Christian calendar because I can mention the word "ass" during my blog post and sermon and still keep all the fundamentalists off my back.

Chuck Collins 3-28-2011

Across the United States, there is a new movement emerging to dramatize the immorality of corporate tax dodging in the face of drastic budget cuts.

 

Eugene Cho 3-03-2011
Over the course of this past weekend and my recent post about hell, universalism, exclusivism, and other eliti
Eugene Cho 1-21-2011
It's amazing what one article can do, but one thing that's clear is Amy Chua is going to sell some books. Cha-ching.

Eugene Cho 12-29-2010

In light of an unsuccessful campaign to become the president of my middle school as an eighth grader, I have no plans on entering politics and running for political office.

Jennifer Kottler 12-08-2010
We've been asked by more than one of our readers and supporters about how we can support the DREAM Act and hold that in tension wit
Eugene Cho 12-01-2010

You need to watch this. In fact, you must watch this. Please watch this.

Eugene Cho 10-01-2010

I received a letter this week from the White House. A big fat packet. Ain't I special?

Lynne Hybels 8-30-2010
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a beautiful, lush country, with fertile soil and rich minerals.
Eugene Cho 8-20-2010
I'm thankful that God rarely answers our constant requests wanting to know the future.

Why?

Eugene Cho 6-04-2010

One of my readers sent me a video a couple months ago because, well, I somehow mysteriously got on this video.

Eugene Cho 5-20-2010

I know that there are many of you that are engaging, debating, learning, and wrestling with the issue known to most as immigration reform or known to others as, "What the Arizona?" And these debates and discussion will continue with more and more incidents like

Randall Amster 1-29-2010
A number of commentators have questioned the accepted logic that disasters bring out the worst in people, directly challenging the pervasive "looters run amok" imagery often perpetuated by the medi
Eugene Cho 10-21-2009

We are excited to announce the launch of One Day's Wages -- an international grassroots movement dedicated to ending extreme global poverty. We are certainly not the first and thankfully, not the last.