{"id":188,"date":"2006-05-19T23:08:46","date_gmt":"2006-05-19T21:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/?p=188"},"modified":"2007-01-19T03:23:28","modified_gmt":"2007-01-19T01:23:28","slug":"spiritual-activism-day-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/spiritual-activism-day-three\/","title":{"rendered":"spiritual activism (day three)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When i drop into the morning session, Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner are having an interesting discussion. I missed Wallis’ speech, but one can’t miss in the discussion that he comes on strong on poverty and its structural dynamics. We then go back into the “spiritual convenant” groups of yesterday to hear and discuss how the meetings with the political representatives went. (Before the session begins a woman besides me starts talking and asking about me, where i’m from and what i’m doing here. At the end we exchange names. She’s surprised: “Oh, but that is an American name.” well, actually it is a Hebrew name. “Oh…”, she smiles, “isn’t is embarassing how in this country we forget about the rest of the world.”) <\/em> In great detail: from every visit to a political representative in which any of the international relations theme was addressed (a global marshall plan for a global redistribution of resources, war on iraq, war on terrorism), there is a narrative report. This part is fascinating to me: to hear how people presented their cause, the vast range of responses (that do not neatly collide with partisan lines), from polite and superficial acknowledgement of the visit, to what seems real engagement (For a moment i thought, ah, i should have joined then and played the concerned citizen for some hours yesterday morning….)<\/em>. The representative who seems to have given them most attention, who gets most attention and praise during the reporting back and whom Lerner intends to have a seperate meeting with: Barack Obama. A political allience in the making, to be further checked out.<\/p>\n

Later on i go to the workshop on fair trade, together with Jayne. I’m happy to be doing this with her, have been enjoying our late evening conversations a lot, about the conference, american politics, her work on rural communities and policies, growing up in in the midwest and going to school in Boston, her years in Kyrgyzstan and her life in Washington. The fair trade groups leading the workshop (from Oxfam, Sojourner and Lutheran World Relief) are people Jayne knows from her work.<\/p>\n

When jayne has to run after the end of the workshop, i don’t feel like sticking around conference people anymore. I do my best to find a place to eat alone (not an easy task with more than thousand participants that not only need to eat at the same time, but also have been instructed to be social and eat with others…). I manage. (oh god, i these days remind me of how much solitude i actually need and how i usually manage to make it flow in my quotidian life – reading! writing! – the absence of these spaces in a situation like this drives me crazy.)<\/p>\n

In the early evening i go back, and i go to the shabbat service led by Lerner and his wife. It is a beautiful service, with much singing and dancing and going out to see the sunlight retire for the day. When i get back to Santa Cruz, i think, i would like to go to more Beyt Tikkun services. After the service, and filled with a different kind of energy, i have no patience whatsoever to stay and listen to more speeches, that will go on till after 10pm no doubt. I escape once more, only to be found by Irene on the streets. She insists – i should join them to a party organized by the Code Pink women, with Amy Goodman and other beaumonde of the leftie scene. I hesitate, but recline.<\/p>\n

A good thing, cause when i get home, there’s jayne and we’re both in the mood to talk more – about “middle america”. I tell her Lerner’s story about how people become “realistic” on other’s behalf. When he talks about his visions in San Francisco and California, people tell him that it’s not realistic. They relate to it, they say, and people around them might do so as well, but what about middle america… Similar story when he talks on the East Coast. In New York you might get away with this, they say, but what about “middle america”… Then he presents his audience with the story of an early talk in Kansas, to a group of 400 methodists. They full heartedly agreed with the vision he unfolded, but expressed their concern: “Rabbi, here in Kansas people might feel this way, but things are so different in the rest of the country…”<\/p>\n

Jayne wholeheartedly underscores the point. She’s from Texas. And while she couldn’t stay there, and can’t go back to live there, she does find that people are more active and engaged, and much less blas\u00c3\u00a9. As if in the small scale of the town they live in they see more of a difference one can make. She also finds them more knowledgeable, somehow knowing that they are from a small place and need to know something about other places. I also see the point, although i’m left wondering about the integrity she attributes to Middle America in combination with the passionate feeling that she can’t go back.<\/p>\n

She gives me a book to read, which i spend half of the night reading: “What’s the matter with Kansas?” by Thomas Frank. It starts from the negative reference to Middle America that is so easily made. The author, from Kansas, recalls stories from his grandfather and how that generation was in fact very much focused and organised around workers rights, and voted democrat. Only in the last decades did the shift from blue to red take place (hm, to avoid confustion for european frames of reference: from Democrats to Republican). The book gives an interesting taste of (some of) the reasons why, not in the least the way in which the Democrats don’t engage anymore on social struggles and worker’s rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When i drop into the morning session, Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner are having an interesting discussion. I missed Wallis’ speech, but one can’t miss in the discussion that he comes on strong on poverty and its structural dynamics. We then go back into the “spiritual convenant” groups of yesterday to hear and discuss how … Continue reading “spiritual activism (day three)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}