Not for children, not for sleeping: Goodnight Bush

July 21, 2008

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd is one of my favorite books of all time. I first read it when I was in college, but it was a toddler favorite of both of our sons, and it rapidly became one of mine, too. Reading it to them at bedtime helped calm them down and put them to sleep. There is from the book a feeling of safety, of warmth, coziness, and love. I may have liked reading it to them more than they liked being read to.

With our youngest off to college this fall, I wish there were some book to give them that would reproduce those good feelings of nearly 20 years ago.

::sigh::

Here’s what we have instead. Goodnight Bush.

This image is scary enough (see the bugging microphone? the burning ballot box? the tilted scales of justice? the polluting smokestacks?).

Cover of Goodnight Bush

Cover of Goodnight Bush

This is the one that makes the more serious statement:

Goodnight human rights, everywhere

Goodnight human rights, everywhere

A story on this book at NPR was the “most e-mailed” last week.

Images by Gan Golen and Erich Origen, Goodnight Bush, copyright © 2008, Little, Brown and Co.

4 Comments | Books, Elections, History, Human Rights, Political cartoons, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

New book: Sex Trafficking by Siddarth Kara

July 18, 2008

1.  Siddarth Kara has written an important new book on trafficking in sex:

2.  Columbia University Press’s move into internet, viral videos to sell books is a good idea with decent execution, so far.

Leave a Comment » | Books, Economics, Globalization, History, Human Rights, Justice, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Trafficking workers’ bodies for profit

May 27, 2008

If a guy beats someone to death, it’s murder, right?  And so the nation’s labor laws hold an employer liable for the death of a worker when unsafe working conditions caused the death.

But what if the worker doesn’t die?  What if the worker only loses his arms, or legs, or arms and legs?

No death, no crime, U.S. law says. 

What if the employer poisons the worker with cyanide that eats away the worker’s brain? 

No death, no crime, U.S. law says.

My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Employers who maim their workers face, at worst, a maximum civil penalty of $70,000 for each violation.

Read a plea to change the law, in the New York Times, from David H. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan.

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Free market economics, Freedom - Economic, Government, Gross Injustice, Health care, Human Rights, Labor and unions, OSHA, Politics, Public health | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Jihad for Love – in New York City this week (take 2)

May 23, 2008

How very, very odd. I had a post up, and it disappeared.

This is a recreation, as much as I can.

If you’re in New York City this week, go see this movie. It’s got a great producer, a fellow I know only through the Louis August Jonas Foundation. It has a good director, and a few very good reviews. And it covers a topic of surpassing importance.

Below, the press release from the producer, Sandi DuBowski, and other resources.

A Jihad For Love Launches U.S. Theatrical Release at IFC Center in New York from May 21st – June 4th – Two Weeks Only!

Buy your ticket online at http://www.ifccenter.com/film?filmid=38472.
Box Office: 212.924.7771 323 Sixth Avenue (at W. 3rd St. )

“CRITIC’S PICK! BRAVE…EYE-OPENING!”
– New York Magazine

“REVEALING AND MOVING…A GIFTED FILMMAKER!”
–Wall Street Journal

“COURAGEOUS!”
-The Guardian

“LIFTS THE VEIL OF SECRECY…FRANKLY BRAVE!”
-NPR Talk of the Nation

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam today is the world’s second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith, discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Produced by Sharma and Sandi DuBowski (director of the award-winning Trembling Before G-d), A Jihad for Love was filmed over 5 years in 12 countries and 9 languages and comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, it reclaims the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, whose true meaning is akin to ‘an inner struggle’ or ‘to strive in the path of God.’ In doing so the film and its remarkable subjects move beyond the narrow concept of ‘Jihad‘ as holy war.

www.ajihadforlove.com

After Premieres in 15 countries, being banned in Singapore , selling out everywhere including India and Turkey and five international awards, the film comes to the U.S. and NYC.

We need people to show up during our NYC theatrical run in very large numbers. Bookers across the country will be looking at the success of the film at the NYC Box Office to determine its life everywhere else in the country. If you come the first five days, you can significantly impact the film’s theatrical life in the U.S. and other countries.

Joining director/producer Parvez Sharma and producer Sandi DuBowski in the theater are Imam Muhsin Hendricks, the first openly gay imam from Cape Town , South Africa and Mazen from Egypt/France, featured stars of the film and Faisal Alam, the founder of Al-Fatiha.

We will turn the cinema into a town hall – for debate, change and transformation. Visit http://www.ajihadforlove.com/screenings_D.html for our dazzling line-up of Q & A’s and forums on Islam, Human Rights, South Asian Sexualities, Interfaith such as

Thursday, May 22nd, 7 PM & 9.30 PM
Evening with Sholay and A Jihad for Love Team

Friday, May 23rd, 7pm
Dialogue with Progressive Muslims Meet Up Group

Saturday, May 24th, 5:05pm, 7pm, 9:30pm
Human Rights Watch and Scott Long present in association with A Jihad for Love: Before the Crusade Passes By: Trapped in the middle of a “clash of civilizations.”

Sunday, May 25th, 7 PM and 9.30 PM
Films for Change

… Looking forward to seeing you there!

May 21st – May 29th Show Times: 11:20am, 1:15pm, 3:10pm, 5:05pm, 7:00pm and 9:30pm

Q & A’s and forums with Parvez, Sandi, Muhsin, Mazen, Faisal, and others after 7pm & 9:30pm shows

Get Involved! Here are some ways you can support this film:

Right Now:

* Purchase tickets online for The IFC Center
* Post a link to www.ajihadforlove.com and www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com on your blog

Support The Cause:

* Donate to our International Muslim Dialogue Project at http://www.ajihadforlove.com/donate.html

Watch A Jihad for Love trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78jUBRio3So

Listen to Parvez Sharma on NPR‘s The Takeaway at http://www.thetakeaway.org/archives/2008/05/19/3

Best,

Sandi DuBowski
Producer, A Jihad for Love
Director/Producer, Trembling Before G-d

Parvez Sharma
Director/Producer, A Jihad for Love

Other resources:

1 Comment | Civil Rights, Human Rights, Movies | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Marriage rights and civil rights giant, Mildred Loving, 68

May 5, 2008

We learned today that Mildred Loving died Friday in Milford, Virginia.  She was 68.

2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia. In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws.  They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary,

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary, “The Loving Story.”

See the post from last year on the anniversary of the decision. The Associated Press wrote today:

Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”

Richard died in 1975.

History loses another hero.

Update: Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County:  “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”

I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.

4 Comments | Bill of Rights, Biography, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Current History, Desegregation, Family, Famous trials, Freedom - Political, Good Deeds, History, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Politics, Racism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oklahoma parents speak out against Sally Kern’s unholy bias

April 29, 2008

From a paid advertisement in The Daily Oklahoman:

Bob Lemon's ad

Full text below the fold, should you find it difficult to read this ad on your browser.

Other resources:

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Civil Rights, Eagle Scout, Ethics, History, Human Rights, Parents, Patriotism, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Shame on you, Tony Campolo: Darwin was not racist

January 21, 2008

Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).

Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Stephen Sizer's site.

Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.

Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).

Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.

His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.

Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.

Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.

Shame on you, Tony Campolo.

Read the rest of this entry »

18 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Human Rights, Junk science, Racism, Religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Howard Zinn’s blog

December 20, 2007

Did you know infamous historian with a view to the left, Howard Zinn, has a blog?

Howard Zinn, photo: City Lights Books

And you didn’t tell me?

Actually, it’s more of a website. Many teachers use some of Zinn’s writings, and your library really should include a copy of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Note the on-line collection of essays from The Progressive and ZNet. Links go to audio and video of Zinn lectures and debates, and this series of dramatic readings from A People’s History featuring James Earl Jones, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei and other stars. Students will find his site entertaining.

And notice, revealed in the note about a movie coming from the book, there is a connection between Zinn and Matt Damon. Any mnemonic device will do in a rising tide . . .

4 Comments | Books, Education, History, History audio sources, History video sources, Human Rights, Politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Celebrate the Ides of December!*

December 10, 2007

December 15th is Bill of Rights Day, a tradition since Franklin Roosevelt first declared it in 1941.

The Bill of Rights, National Archive

It falls on Saturday this year — which means teachers can choose whether to commemorate it Friday, or next Monday, or on both days. It marks the date of the approval of the Bill of Rights, in 1790.

Texas requires social studies teachers to spend a day on the Constitution. The law isn’t well enforced, but Bill of Rights Day might be a good time to fill the legal duty in your classrooms.

The Bill of Rights Institute offers lesson plans and supporting materials (see “Instructional Materials” in the left column). Below the fold I copy a list from the Institute’s webpage on Bill of Rights Day.

More material here, and the National Archives material can be reached here.
_____________
* The ides is merely the middle of the month. Of course you thought of Shakespeare’s witch warning Julius Caesar to “beware the ides of March.” In this case, we can celebrate the ides of December — Hanukkah mostly gone, Christmas, Eid and KWANZAA on the way.
Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Historic documents, Human Rights, Lesson plans, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Which cartoons won the 2007 Lurie Awards?

December 9, 2007

The United Nations Correspondents Association was scheduled to announce awards, including the Ranan Lurie Cartoon Awards for 2007, at a dinner on December 7.

I find nothing about the awards anywhere — does somebody have, or has somebody found, a list of the 2007 winners, preferably with a gallery of the cartoons?

(C’mon, New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC — where is the news on this? Cagle?)

2 Comments | Cartoons, Human Rights, Peace, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bill of Rights Day, December 15

December 4, 2007

We get e-mail, sometimes good stuff — this piece from the Bill of Rights Institute. [I copied it, art, links and all — please pass it on.]

Are you ready for Bill of Rights Day, December 15? The Bill of Rights Institute has resources for teachers:

Celebrate Bill of Rights Day with the Bill of Rights Institute!

The Bill of Rights Institute invites you to celebrate Bill of Rights Day on December 15, 2007 by taking advantage of the resources on the Constitution and Bill of Rights we are offering educatorsFREE of charge. These activities will engage your students and demonstrate the importance of the Bill of Rights in their lives. Utilize the lessons on December 14th as part of a Bill of Rights Day celebration for your students or save the lessons for use throughout the school year.

Access our website and find:

  • Founders Online includes audio clips, biographical essays, classroom activities
    videos on our nation’s Founding Fathers
  • Readings for your students on the Bill of Rights
  • Free, complete lesson plans for middle and high school students
  • Background information from Princeton University professor Dr. Ken Kerch
    on First Amendment freedoms
  • Links to other Bill of Rights Day resources

Check out the Bill of Rights Institute’s Bill of Rights Day site today!

Leave a Comment » | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Law, Lesson plans, Patriotism, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks sits down for freedom

December 1, 2007

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, Library of Congress

Rosa Parks: “Why do you push us around?”

Officer: “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”

From Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), page 23.

Photo: Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress

Today in History at the Library of Congress states the simple facts:

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.

Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she remained seated. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Civil Rights, Dissent, Famous quotes, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Whiskey and cigar day: Twain and Churchill

November 30, 2007

Mark Twain, afloat

November 30 is the birthday of Mark Twain (1835), and Winston Churchill (1874).

Twain had a comment on recent actions at the Texas Education Agency:

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.

– Following the Equator; Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar

The Nobel literature committees were slow; Twain did not win a Nobel in Literature; he died in 1910. Churchill did win, in 1953.

Both men were aficianadoes of good whiskey and good cigars. Both men suffered from depression in old age.

Both men made a living writing, early in their careers as newspaper correspondents. One waged wars of a kind the other campaigned against. Both were sustained by their hope for the human race, against overwhelming evidence that such hope was sadly misplaced.

churchill-time-cover-man-of-the-year-1941.jpg

Both endured fantastic failures that would have killed other people, and both rebounded.

Both men are worth study.

Twain, on prisons versus education: “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Speech, November 23, 1900

Churchill on the evil men and nations do:

“No One Would Do Such Things”

“So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.”

—1923, recalling the possibility of war between France and Germany after the Agadir Crisis of 1911, in The World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 48-49.

Image of Twain aboard ship – origin unknown. Image of Winston S. Churchill, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1941, copyright 1941 by Time Magazine.

More on Mark Twain

More on Winston Churchill

Orson Welles, with Dick Cavett, on Churchill, his wit, humor and grace (tip of the old scrub brush to the Churchill Centre):

3 Comments | Books, Famous quotes, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Humor, Quotes, Winston Churchill, World War I, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

When do we reach the “never” in “Never again?”

November 4, 2007

You won’t find this in your world history text.

Events in Congo trouble at so many levels. Reports in The New York Times and other places document unspeakable violence: 27,000 sexual assaults in South Kivu Province in 2006, just a fraction of the total number across the nation of 66 million people. The assaults are brutal. Women assaulted are often left so badly injured internally, they may never heal.

  • Map of Congo, showing area of high violence in east, from New York Times Map of Congo, highlighting province of Bukavu where violence against women is epidemic, from New York Times

Genocide you say? Many assaults appear to be spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in next-door Rwanda. But assaults by husbands on wives also are epidemic. Result of civil war? Then how to explain the “Rasta” gang, dreadlocked fugitives who live in the forest, wear tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys, and who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children? What nation are they from, and against whom do they fight, if anyone — and for what?

The facts cry out for action:

  • Nightly rapes of women and girls. The violence appears to be a problem across the nation.
  • Huge chunks of Congo have no effective government to even contend against the violence.
  • Killers with experience in genocide in their native Rwanda moved into Congo; they live by kidnapping women for ransom. The women are assaulted while held captive. Sometimes husbands do not take back their wives.
  • The oldest rape victim recorded by one Congo physician is 75; the youngest, 3.

Surely intervention by an international group would help, no? However

  • Congo hosts the largest single peacekeeping mission of the United Nations right now, with 17,000 troops. Congo is a big nation, bordered by nine other nations. How many troops would it take to secure the entire nation, or the entire border? No one knows.
  • 2006 saw an election that was supposed to remake history, end the violence and start Congo on the road to recovery; but was the $500 million it cost enough to change Congo’s history of a string of bad governments?
  • International attention focuses on other crises: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Darfur, Iran, Korea, Chechnya, Turkey and the Kurds, Palestine and Israel. Congo, constantly roiling since the 1960s, is way down the list of world concerns, no matter how bad the violence.

Americans looking for a quick resolution to the situation in Iraq might do well to study Congo. At Congo’s independence in the 1960s, there was hope of prosperity and greater peace. Foreign intervention, including meddling from the U.S., regional civil wars, bad government and long international neglect, ate up the hope. Achieving what a nation could be is difficult, when so many forces align to prevent it from being anything other than a violent backwater. Pandora’s box resists attempts to shut it. Quick resolution is unlikely.

So the violence in Congo continues. In this world, when is the “never” in “never again?”

How many other such cases fall outside our textbooks, and off the state tests?

Resources:

2 Comments | Africa, Disasters, Economics, Genocide, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Former Arkansas teacher remembers, long before 1957

September 27, 2007

Poignant story from the Associated Press, via Teacher magazine, about the Emancipation Proclamation, picking cotton, Brown v. Board of Education, and education.

1 Comment | 1957, Bill of Rights, Brown v. Board, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Desegregation, Education, Education success, History, Human Rights | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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