Last summer, Peterson Toscano’s Climate Stew podcast included segments imagining major turning points in environmental justice. Each of these segments featured ordinary people moved to act and the determined grassroots activism they developed to mobilize others and create change on energy or climate policy. “On This Day In Climate History” will one day need to include this […]
The story that won’t die
This week on Civic Hall’s Civicist blog: the story that won’t die returns. Andrew Slack uses examples from popular films and franchises to illustrate a subset of “We will win!”, the tale of the orphan who goes up against the evil empire and, after a tense confrontation, is victorious. Star Wars. Superman. The Lion King. Jesus. When […]
Organizing ourselves out of jobs
Faith should open doors, not close them.” –Liz Welch Last fall, I spent a few days in Utah with some of the most engaged social organizers I’ve ever met. As we talked about issues like religious freedom, I couldn’t help but imagine how different the national and international conversation on religious freedom might be if […]
Agitate, agitate, agitate
The first time I tried to hand-wash a load of laundry I was in the cool mountains of Jamaica in a house without a hot water heater. My grandmother hovered nearby, and shook her head at me. “No,” she said, taking a wet t-shirt and the soap from my hands. “You have to do it like this.” I […]
It Will Take All of Us to Build a Just World
When the 2015 Urbana Missions Conference tackled race head-on last December, it seemed that the evangelical Christian community could finally say “Black Lives Matter” without hedging. Some dug through Urbana’s archives to find one of evangelicalism’s best preachers breaking down the American church’s history with systemic injustice and making the case for people of faith […]
The Movement Moment: Change, Denial, and the Fall of Empire
A director at one of the organizations I support recently asked me what I thought “the movement moment” was. What’s the spirit of this time? What’s rising up? The movement, I said, is life. The system demands we assimilate, and teaches us resistance is futile. The movement is not about the right to assimilate. The system calls […]
