Democracy Now!
About a month ago I did a training which was basically an introduction to social action. As part of this training I wrote up a scenario about alien invasion which I gave out to prompt discussion about social action strategy, tactics, and the process of organizing. I was very happy with how this worked, and 
I believe there is a very old and shared dream of liberation, a vision for a world which we can imagine but find difficult to create. To me this vision is defined by the good things which already exist in life, and the possibility that this good can grow. My own experience of goodness is 
Over the holidays I went to the movies and saw Les Miserables. It was an emotional experience which got me in the reflective mood. As I watched the revolutionaries struggle and die I felt a strange sensation, a growing internal conviction that I no longer wish to think of myself as better or worse than 
Last week the vice president of the NRA, Wayne Lapierre, gave a speech designed to elicit a state of perpetual militaristic panic against violent people with mental illness. He stated; “our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters–people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no 
So I know the semi-eviction of Occupy DC happened many months ago, but I want to give my account of it and explore some of the lessons I learned. On February 4th in McPherson Square, at Occupy DC, it was a day filled with brutality. There had been a lot of talk that the eviction 
This is a transcript of a speech I recently gave at the Washingtion Ethical Society (WES). WES is a part of Ethical Culture which is basically a religious humanist community. This means that people are humanist -their worldview is generally nontheistic; focused on human experience and human relationships and not so much on god. But 
Life has been very busy recently and I haven’t posted in a while. One of the things I have been busy with involves lending support and encouragement to the students at Northwestern High School in Prince George’s County Maryland (usually called “PG County”). PG County has a very large immigrant population. The schools are majority 
Those of us who have been part of the Occupy Movement are familiar with the common critique, “what exactly do you want anyways?” Generally answers like, “justice for the 99%” do not seem to satisfy. Of course we do not need to satisfy a hostile audience, and the meme of “they don’t stand for anything” 
Last Monday I listened to prayers for jobs in DC. Members of the Washington Interfaith Network had gathered together, two thousand strong, as a coalition looking to influence city officials. I was there as part of my own faith community, the Washington Ethical Society -a nontheistic, humanist-leaning, religion. Reflecting on the fact that I was 
Yesterday was a rainy day along K street, famous for its lobbyists who make a living promoting corporate interests. For the beautiful, loving, rabble-rousers, it was a day of action. Thousands were gathered in protest of the lobbyists’ work. Around three o’clock, about twenty lay down in the street. They were covered in plastic and 
