Weekend Video: The Voice of Justice
In anticipation of The Justice Conference later this month in Portland, here's a video produced for last year's conference, portraying the competing voices of justice and injustice.
The Voice of Justice from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.
Repaso: Guatemala’s war years; The MBA Oath; Dakota prison letters; working poor in Latin America; religion vs. science
1. Photos from Guatemala’s war years
Last week I mentioned that in Guatemala, the court would be deciding whether former dictator Rios Montt would be charged with crimes of genocide. Last Thursday he was formally charged, and he’s now under house arrest. Here is a photo essay from the New York Times’ Lens blog with some historical perspective.
2. The MBA Oath
We’ve all heard of the Hippocratic Oath - an ethical pledge for medical professionals “to do no harm.” In December I wrote about a similar oath for those working among the poor. Here now is an oath for business school grads, developed by Max Anderson and his classmates at Harvard Business School. It’s an idea whose time has come.
3. Dakota prisoner letters
Minnesota Public Radio has a segment about letters that have emerged from “concentration camps” in Minnesota where members of the Dakota tribe were held 150 years ago. This is a painful story for everyone to face up to, but for Clifford Canku, a Dakota elder who teaches at North Dakota State, the story needs to be told. (HT Richard Twiss)
4. The working class in Latin America
Sara Miller Llana writes for the Christian Science Monitor about how life is changing for the working class in urban Latin America, the region where the gap between the richest and the poorest is most stark in the whole world. While I don’t think that life for rural indigenous people has improved enough for the issue to be pushed aside, I do appreciate this broadening of the focus:
For two decades, social movements in Latin America have centered on indigenous rights. Today the indigenous have earned new political representation, and open mistreatment will draw complaints. Yet daily life across Latin America is replete with symbols of stubborn class inequality that go unchallenged, such as condominium buildings that have separate elevators for domestic workers.
5. Religion, science and naturalism
NPR’s Weekend Edition interviewed Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga about the common ground between religion and science, saying the real disparity is between religion and naturalism.
Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!
[Photo credit: Jean-Marie Simon via New York Times]
Sustainability in the Valley of the Sun
When Andrew Ross first came to the Phoenix, he was interested in learning what local artists were doing to revitalize downtown, a desert city with an urban core that, to many urbanists, leaves much to be desired. No city exists in a vacuum, however, and Ross soon came to the conclusion that to understand Phoenix he had to understand the story of the other cities and sprawling suburbs throughout the valley. It was through this research that he concluded that the Phoenix metro area — which includes nine cities with populations of 100,000 or more — was, as he puts it in the subtitle, “the world’s least sustainable city.”
Some may take issue with that claim, but Phoenix’s problem is evident: a sprawling population of four million and counting in a sun-scorched desert certainly poses significant sustainability challenges. Further, as Ross argues, a prevailing culture of rugged individualism and a widespread aversion to all forms of regulation have only exacerbated the sustainability challenges.
As a relative newcomer to Phoenix, I was particularly interested to learn what is being done to make Phoenix more sustainable, and what obstacles stand in the way. According to the book, the obstacles have for the most part gotten the upper hand. But with a heightened awareness of the need for more sustainable living across the country and around the world, Ross believes that Phoenix can point the way to the future, for better or worse...
Read my full review of Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City (Oxford University Press) at Englewood Review of Books.
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Recent Posts
- Weekend Video: The Voice of Justice
- Repaso: Guatemala’s war years; The MBA Oath; Dakota prison letters; working poor in Latin America; religion vs. science
- Sustainability in the Valley of the Sun
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- Weekend Video: “Forget Me Not” by The Civil Wars