As 2006 draws to a close, there’s plenty of good news from the progressive front, including a groundswell of progressive activism around the world as well as at home that made significant inroads towards creating a more understanding, culturally and globally aware and involved society. Sounds like a utopian dream, but it’s nothing of the sort-people around the globe are beginning to realize that people in power can hardly be trusted with their well being, and they’re taking the matter into their own hands, either to steer the direction of their governments, or to carve out a better future for themselves:

On December 31, 2005, Black Mesa Coal shut down its mine on indigenous land in Arizona because that mine fed all its coal — as water-depleting slurry pumped 300 miles across the desert — to the Mojave Power Station that cranked out obscene quantities of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and all manner of other nasty things during the decades of its operation. The mainstream media played it as a jobs story; the alternative media mostly missed what had a decade earlier been a big environmental cause.

In February indigenous leaders, forest activists and logging companies reached a historic deal that protected five million acres outright and limited logging on another 10 million acres of the Great Bear Wilderness in north-coast British Columbia. That’s an area more than twice the size of Yellowstone National Park wholly preserved with another four or so Yellowstones protected — and not just set aside as national parks are, but put under the joint jurisdiction of the First Nations people from the region and of the provincial government.

it doesn’t end there, though. From the election of Evo Morales-Bolivia’s first indigenous President, Nigerian courts demanding their people’s due from Shell’s exploitation of their land, and the banding together of several central asian (former Soviet) nations forswearing nuclear weapons altogether, there were additional victories to be proud of, from immigrants’ rights (truly, human rights) to domestic wins for a cause dear to my heart, Net Neutrality:

There were domestic victories on other fronts. One major U.S. citizen achievement was the October defeat of attempts to privatize and jack up usage fees on the Internet, despite $200 million in corporate spending on the issue. A new grassroots movement defeated the telecom industry’s attempt to take over this major new zone of global communication for its own profit. A minor but sweet victory for independent thinking and bold opposition was Stephen Colbert’s April dressing down of the Bush Administration, to the president’s face, at the White House Press Corps dinner. The mainstream media, also excoriated by the bold Colbert, ignored the spectacular verbal attack until the alternative media made the story impossible to ignore. Such trajectories — major stories investigated, exposed and explained by the alternative media until the mainstream can no longer ignore the news — are one of the reasons why net neutrality matters.

We’ve accomplished a lot, with our support, our momentum, our blogging, our financial contributions, our awareness, and of course, our vote. Now we have to keep up the pressure, pushing for the positive social change, protection of our planet and the environment for the sake of ourselves and our children, and creating a more safe and stable society both at home and abroad. The work will continue next year, but for a change, we can look back on some of our accomplishments and be happy about them.

[ The 2006 You Didn't Hear About ]
Source: AlterNet

William Fisher’s last piece for TruthOut was incredibly evocative, and I wasn’t the only one with whom it resonated deeply. I worry for the future of the church, and for Christianity in general, if the conservative evangelicals-frequently known to forsake the tenets of Christianity in order to impose morality or control lives-are allowed to continue to be the mouthpieces of the entire religion. William Fisher asked, when it came to racism and hatred, bigotry and ignorance, “Where are the Christians?”

And he recieved several incredibly thoughtful responses that I’d like to highlight as well as Fisher did, because his article resonated with me so much. The responses he recieved are enlightening and very heartening:

Reverend Joy A. Bergfalk, of Life Listening Resources at Labyrinth House in Rochester, N.Y., wrote, “We progressives … do not have the finances of the Religious Right. We do not have Big Business and Sun Myung Moon to back us, and the oil industry is certainly not with us. That kind of money goes to those who will let the corporate world take over America. Plus, we tend to try to use our finances to change the world by helping it.”

In answer to my “Where Are the Christians?” question, Rev. Bergfalk wrote, “We are almost all of the places where peacemaking is going on. We are at marches and rallies. We are at our computers writing responses, letters to Congress and whomever we can. I have written a response to Goode’s statements. There was no way to email it to him from outside of Virginia, so I have prepared a letter to be sent to each of his five offices.”

She added, “And we are speaking out in churches and from the pulpits. I think my parishioners now realize that Muslims and Christians worship the same God by different names.”

And she closed with, “We may not be as obnoxious and flamboyant as the Religious Right, but we are here and active. Maybe if people would quit leaving the church in reaction to right wingers, the church would be a stronger force for change in our world.”

More readers responded:

One reader wrote, “The attempt to conflate Islamophobia with immigration reform is laughable, except I can only imagine that we’ll only see more of it from the Right. Once they come up with an intellectually unfounded conflation of issues, they tend to use it relentlessly until it takes hold in the minds of enough people for it to enter the cultural discourse (see their attempts to claim that all gays are pedophiles).”

Another wrote, “No matter what nonsense Congressman Virgil Goode spouts, he’ll continue to be reelected by his constituency of good-ole-boys from Franklin County, Virginia. I live in a Congressional district adjacent to Goode’s so I know whereof I speak. Please, please let’s all allow good ole Virge to keep on writing and speaking as he pleases. The more Rep. Goode writes and says to expose his own narrow-minded ignorance, the more progressives will feel emboldened to vote against his willful stupidity.”

And yet another said, “It is truly sad that the people of Goode’s district and believe me, there are many, many good people in that district, aren’t standing up and demanding either a retraction of his remarks or his removal from office … The former bastion of the Confederacy lingers with those like Goode who have no respect or tolerance for anyone different from them.”

I can’t begin to explain how much hope this gives me for the church. If more people like this stood up in this fashion, I think the church could well again be a unifying force for measured and moral progress and understanding, as opposed to the divisive and intolerant behavior we’ve seen in recent times. Fisher states that at this point these voices, while admirable, are voices in the wilderness, but I disagree. I hope that these voices are actually a silent majority, ill and tired of voices like Falwell and Dobson leading their congregations and demanding everyone conform to their personal interpretations of the faith and their own belief systems.

I can only hope that one day that silent majority becomes the vocal one it deserves to be.

[ Here Are The Christians! ]
Source: TruthOut