The first time I ran into the term "420" as a reference to marijuana smoking was last year when I was writing my magazine piece about pot legalization. Why did it take until I was age 50 to hear about this? Because I'm practically Mormon in my personal habits and for some reason the term has never really gotten a lot of play in mass culture. But just for fun, here's Ryan Grim explaining where it came from:
A group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos — by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school — coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave's older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)
....One day in the Fall of 1971 — harvest time — the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of this free bud.
The Waldos were all athletes and agreed to meet at the statue of Loius Pasteur outside the school at 4:20, after practice, to begin the hunt. "We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis," Waldo Steve tells the Huffington Post.
The first forays out were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Steve. "We never actually found the patch."
But they did find a useful codeword. "I could say to one of my friends, I'd go, 420, and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?' Or, 'Do you have any?' Or, 'Are you stoned right now?' It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it," Steve says. "Our teachers didn't know what we were talking about. Our parents didn't know what we were talking about."
At 4:20 today I'll probably be.....blogging. Or reading a paper on financial reform. Or ingesting another chapter of This Time Is Different. Exciting! For the rest of you who plan to mark April 20 with a little more gusto, happy toking. Maybe soon you'll be able to do it legally.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
24 April 2010
How Health Care Reformed the President Into A President to Be Reckoned With from MOJO 23APR10
Nothing breeds success like success. If there's one thing Barack Obama has learned since he took office, this is it.
Let's recap his first year. After a good start with the passage of an $800 billion stimulus bill shortly after his inauguration, things began to go steadily downhill. Republicans blocked his appointments. Healthcare reform stalled. Months of dithering over Afghanistan made him look weak and indecisive. Copenhagen was a disaster. Scott Brown's election in January eliminated the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. People started talking openly about Congress returning to Republican control in November and Obama being a one-term president.
But what a difference a couple of months makes. Thanks to a still struggling economy Obama's poll numbers remain listless, but virtually everything else has turned around. Why? Because he decided to stick to his guns and stake his presidency on healthcare reform. He refused to be cowed after Brown's victory seemed to have him on the ropes. And he won.
And now look. Financial reform, which looked as good as dead just a month ago, has gotten a second wind. The ban on gays in the military looks destined for the ash heap of history. Immigration and climate change bills are back on the agenda. China, which almost openly snubbed Obama during his visit in November, looks set to cooperate on currency issues. The troop drawdown in Iraq is on schedule, and patient diplomacy has made international sanctions against Iran a likely bet.
It's hardly all sunshine in the White House. There's still that struggling economy, after all, and the Tea Party crowd remains a thorn in Obama's side. But compared to just a couple of months ago, he's got the opposition traumatized, his own supporters newly enthusiastic, and his legislative agenda back on track. And all because one year after he took office he made the decision to stick up for a progressive agenda and bet his presidency on it. When he signed the resulting healthcare bill, he suddenly became a president to be reckoned with.
It was a tough lesson to learn. But one that was well worth it.
Let's recap his first year. After a good start with the passage of an $800 billion stimulus bill shortly after his inauguration, things began to go steadily downhill. Republicans blocked his appointments. Healthcare reform stalled. Months of dithering over Afghanistan made him look weak and indecisive. Copenhagen was a disaster. Scott Brown's election in January eliminated the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. People started talking openly about Congress returning to Republican control in November and Obama being a one-term president.
But what a difference a couple of months makes. Thanks to a still struggling economy Obama's poll numbers remain listless, but virtually everything else has turned around. Why? Because he decided to stick to his guns and stake his presidency on healthcare reform. He refused to be cowed after Brown's victory seemed to have him on the ropes. And he won.
And now look. Financial reform, which looked as good as dead just a month ago, has gotten a second wind. The ban on gays in the military looks destined for the ash heap of history. Immigration and climate change bills are back on the agenda. China, which almost openly snubbed Obama during his visit in November, looks set to cooperate on currency issues. The troop drawdown in Iraq is on schedule, and patient diplomacy has made international sanctions against Iran a likely bet.
It's hardly all sunshine in the White House. There's still that struggling economy, after all, and the Tea Party crowd remains a thorn in Obama's side. But compared to just a couple of months ago, he's got the opposition traumatized, his own supporters newly enthusiastic, and his legislative agenda back on track. And all because one year after he took office he made the decision to stick up for a progressive agenda and bet his presidency on it. When he signed the resulting healthcare bill, he suddenly became a president to be reckoned with.
It was a tough lesson to learn. But one that was well worth it.
NRDC ONLINE NEWSLETTER APR 2010
Click the header to go to the newsletter on line to read the full articles and to participate in NRDC actions.
SHERYL CROW SPEAKS OUT ON THE ENVIRONMENT
At NRDC's Forces For Nature benefit, multi-talented singer, song-writer, advocate and activist Sheryl Crow speaks from the heart about preserving the planet for future generations and the importance of a childhood spent in nature.
Read Frances Beinecke's post on the event and watch Sheryl Crow's speech.
Find out more about Forces of Nature and Sheryl Crow's involvement with NRDC (see the video below).
Simple Steps - green living from NRDC
Energy Smackdown: Lose 10 Tons in 2010 by Commuting SmarterEnergy Smackdown: Lose 10 Tons of CO2 in 2010 by Commuting Smarter
Every year the average commuter emits almost 3.5 tons of heat-trapping pollutants. Follow our step-by-step plan to ease the impact of your commute.
Help NRDC: Cast your vote in eBay's Earth Day Fundraising Tournament!
In honor of Earth Day, eBay is sponsoring a fundraising tournament hosted by Humanity Calls. Please vote for NRDC by clicking on this link. Once you've voted you can earn more votes by referring your friends OR by donating to NRDC or the tournament. Voting is open through June 22.
Take Action Now
Tell the Obama administration to approve America's first offshore wind project.
Growing Green Award Winners
NRDC announces the winners of its second annual Growing Green Awards to honor farmers, business leaders and promoters of sustainable food. Find out who won!
Chemical Reform is Closer Today!
"[On April 15] Senator Lautenberg introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. At the same time, Representatives Rush and Waxman introduced the draft Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010. Both of these bills represent major advances over the status quo. They will give the public much more information about chemicals in the environment and in products, they will require companies to prove that chemicals are safe, and they will authorize EPA to take strong action to address threats to human health and the environment."
NRDC Online is a weekly email newsletter from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation's most effective environmental action organization. To learn more about what we do and how to become a member of NRDC, please visit www.nrdc.org or write to us at nrdcinfo@nrdc.org.
© Copyright 2010 Natural Resources Defense Council
SHERYL CROW SPEAKS OUT ON THE ENVIRONMENT
At NRDC's Forces For Nature benefit, multi-talented singer, song-writer, advocate and activist Sheryl Crow speaks from the heart about preserving the planet for future generations and the importance of a childhood spent in nature.
Read Frances Beinecke's post on the event and watch Sheryl Crow's speech.
Find out more about Forces of Nature and Sheryl Crow's involvement with NRDC (see the video below).
Simple Steps - green living from NRDC
Energy Smackdown: Lose 10 Tons in 2010 by Commuting SmarterEnergy Smackdown: Lose 10 Tons of CO2 in 2010 by Commuting Smarter
Every year the average commuter emits almost 3.5 tons of heat-trapping pollutants. Follow our step-by-step plan to ease the impact of your commute.
Help NRDC: Cast your vote in eBay's Earth Day Fundraising Tournament!
In honor of Earth Day, eBay is sponsoring a fundraising tournament hosted by Humanity Calls. Please vote for NRDC by clicking on this link. Once you've voted you can earn more votes by referring your friends OR by donating to NRDC or the tournament. Voting is open through June 22.
Take Action Now
Tell the Obama administration to approve America's first offshore wind project.
Growing Green Award Winners
NRDC announces the winners of its second annual Growing Green Awards to honor farmers, business leaders and promoters of sustainable food. Find out who won!
Chemical Reform is Closer Today!
"[On April 15] Senator Lautenberg introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. At the same time, Representatives Rush and Waxman introduced the draft Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010. Both of these bills represent major advances over the status quo. They will give the public much more information about chemicals in the environment and in products, they will require companies to prove that chemicals are safe, and they will authorize EPA to take strong action to address threats to human health and the environment."
NRDC Online is a weekly email newsletter from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation's most effective environmental action organization. To learn more about what we do and how to become a member of NRDC, please visit www.nrdc.org or write to us at nrdcinfo@nrdc.org.
© Copyright 2010 Natural Resources Defense Council
Arizona’s Immigration Bill is a Social and Racial Sin, THE CHURCH WILL NOT COMPLY from SOJO 23APR10
A call to action from Sojourners, click on the header to participate. After this was sent out the Gov. of Arizona did sign the bill into law Friday afternoon. I am torn on this issue, I resent illegal immigrants for taking jobs at wages lower that American workers would demand and receive, but I really resent the way corporate America and all levels of government turn a blind eye to the exploitation of immigrants, legal and illegal, and so create the incentive for illegals to come here. There's is a lot of hypocrisy among regular Americans too, even those that rail against illegal immigrants, but will hire them to do housework, yard work or childcare because they are cheaper that their fellow Americans and American companies. And these hypocrites too often will not report companies or their neighbors for hiring illegals. So, I will not condone denying these people the rights they have once in America as guaranteed by our Constitution, and I will not deny them shelter, food, health care and education, as we are told by Christ to welcome the stranger to our land and to share with them, see Matthew 25.
I got up at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, to speak at a press conference and rally at the State Capitol at the invitation of the state’s clergy and other leaders in the immigration reform movement. The harshest enforcement bill in the country against undocumented immigrants just passed the Arizona state House and Senate, and is only awaiting the signature of Governor Janet Brewer to become law.
Senate Bill 1070 would require law enforcement officials in the state of Arizona to investigate someone’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be undocumented. I wonder who that would be, and if anybody who doesn’t have brown skin will be investigated. Those without identification papers, even if they are legal, are subject to arrest; so don’t forget your wallet on your way to work if you are Hispanic in Arizona. You can also be arrested if you are stopped and are simply with people who are undocumented — even if they are your family. Parents or children of “mixed-status families” (made up of legal and undocumented, as many immigrant families are out here) could be arrested if they are found together. You can be arrested if you are “transporting or harboring” undocumented people. Some might consider driving immigrant families to and from church to be Christian ministry — but it will now be illegal in Arizona.
For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.
This proposed law is not only mean-spirited — it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.
Before the rally and press event, I visited some immigrant families who work at Neighborhood Ministries, an impressive community organization affiliated with Sojourners’ friends at the Christian Community Development Association. I met a group of women who were frightened by the raids that have been occurring, in which armed men invade their homes and neighborhoods with guns and helicopters. When the rumors of massive raids spread, many of these people flee both their homes and their workplaces, and head for The Church at The Neighborhood Center as the only place they feel safe and secure. But will police invade the churches if they are suspected of “harboring” undocumented people, because it is the law? Will the nurse practitioner I met at their medical clinic serving only uninsured people be arrested for being “with” the children of families who are here illegally as she treats them?
At the rally, I started with the words of Jesus (which drew cheers from the crowd gathered at the state Capitol), who instructed his disciples to “welcome the stranger,” and said that whatever we do to “the least of these, who are members of my family” we do to him. I think that means that to obey Jesus and his gospel will mean to disobey SB 1070 in Arizona. I looked at the governor’s Executive Tower and promised that many Christians in Arizona won’t comply with this law because the people they will target will be members of our “family” in the body of Christ. And any attack against them is an attack against us, and the One we follow.
Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles just called this Arizona measure “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless immigration law.” On CNN, I defended the Cardinal’s comments, which likened the requirement of people always carrying their “papers” to the most oppressive regimes of Nazism and Communism. I wonder whether the tea party movement that rails against government intrusion will rail against this law, or whether those who resist the forced government registration of their guns will resist the forced government requirement that immigrants must always carry their documentation. Will the true conservatives please stand up here? We are all waiting.
Arizona’s SB 1070 must be named as a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. This is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It’s time to stand up to this new strategy of “deportation by attrition,” which I heard for the first time today in Arizona. It is a policy of deliberate political cruelty, and it should be remembered that “attrition” is a term of war. Arizona is deciding whether to wage war on the body of Christ. We should say that if you come after one part of the body, you come after all of us.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street — A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and is CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com.
I got up at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, to speak at a press conference and rally at the State Capitol at the invitation of the state’s clergy and other leaders in the immigration reform movement. The harshest enforcement bill in the country against undocumented immigrants just passed the Arizona state House and Senate, and is only awaiting the signature of Governor Janet Brewer to become law.
Senate Bill 1070 would require law enforcement officials in the state of Arizona to investigate someone’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be undocumented. I wonder who that would be, and if anybody who doesn’t have brown skin will be investigated. Those without identification papers, even if they are legal, are subject to arrest; so don’t forget your wallet on your way to work if you are Hispanic in Arizona. You can also be arrested if you are stopped and are simply with people who are undocumented — even if they are your family. Parents or children of “mixed-status families” (made up of legal and undocumented, as many immigrant families are out here) could be arrested if they are found together. You can be arrested if you are “transporting or harboring” undocumented people. Some might consider driving immigrant families to and from church to be Christian ministry — but it will now be illegal in Arizona.
For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.
This proposed law is not only mean-spirited — it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.
Before the rally and press event, I visited some immigrant families who work at Neighborhood Ministries, an impressive community organization affiliated with Sojourners’ friends at the Christian Community Development Association. I met a group of women who were frightened by the raids that have been occurring, in which armed men invade their homes and neighborhoods with guns and helicopters. When the rumors of massive raids spread, many of these people flee both their homes and their workplaces, and head for The Church at The Neighborhood Center as the only place they feel safe and secure. But will police invade the churches if they are suspected of “harboring” undocumented people, because it is the law? Will the nurse practitioner I met at their medical clinic serving only uninsured people be arrested for being “with” the children of families who are here illegally as she treats them?
At the rally, I started with the words of Jesus (which drew cheers from the crowd gathered at the state Capitol), who instructed his disciples to “welcome the stranger,” and said that whatever we do to “the least of these, who are members of my family” we do to him. I think that means that to obey Jesus and his gospel will mean to disobey SB 1070 in Arizona. I looked at the governor’s Executive Tower and promised that many Christians in Arizona won’t comply with this law because the people they will target will be members of our “family” in the body of Christ. And any attack against them is an attack against us, and the One we follow.
Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles just called this Arizona measure “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless immigration law.” On CNN, I defended the Cardinal’s comments, which likened the requirement of people always carrying their “papers” to the most oppressive regimes of Nazism and Communism. I wonder whether the tea party movement that rails against government intrusion will rail against this law, or whether those who resist the forced government registration of their guns will resist the forced government requirement that immigrants must always carry their documentation. Will the true conservatives please stand up here? We are all waiting.
Arizona’s SB 1070 must be named as a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. This is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It’s time to stand up to this new strategy of “deportation by attrition,” which I heard for the first time today in Arizona. It is a policy of deliberate political cruelty, and it should be remembered that “attrition” is a term of war. Arizona is deciding whether to wage war on the body of Christ. We should say that if you come after one part of the body, you come after all of us.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street — A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and is CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com.
23 April 2010
DEMAND AN EXIT DATE FROM AFGHANISTAN from CREDO ACTION 23APR10
I am tired of war. I am tired of the thousands killed, the tens of thousands wounded, the destruction of lives and property, the waste of life and hundreds of millions of dollars, the corruption of the Afghan government and the U.S. military-industrial complex. And the perversion of Christianity by the "just war" argument makes me sick, it is as wrong as the perversion of Islam by the fanatics we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have signed the petition demanding a date be set for our exit from Afghanistan, click on the header to sign it too.
We can't let the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan continue with no end in sight. It's time to set a timetable to get out of the quagmire.
Senator Russ Feingold, Representative Jim McGovern, and Representative Walter Jones have introduced a bipartisan bill that would require that the administration present to Congress by January 1, 2011, a plan for the safe withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan. This plan must include a timeline for the completion of the withdrawal, and the president must report his progress on the timeline to Congress every 90 days.
Urge your representative and senators to cosponsor the Afghanistan withdrawal bill. Just click the link below to get started.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/mcgovern_feingold/?r_by=8831-179986-3atj4Mx&rc=paste1
We can't let the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan continue with no end in sight. It's time to set a timetable to get out of the quagmire.
Senator Russ Feingold, Representative Jim McGovern, and Representative Walter Jones have introduced a bipartisan bill that would require that the administration present to Congress by January 1, 2011, a plan for the safe withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan. This plan must include a timeline for the completion of the withdrawal, and the president must report his progress on the timeline to Congress every 90 days.
Urge your representative and senators to cosponsor the Afghanistan withdrawal bill. Just click the link below to get started.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/mcgovern_feingold/?r_by=8831-179986-3atj4Mx&rc=paste1
PINK FLOYD THE WALL LIVE IN BERLIN 1990
Got these off YouTube, part 8 has music but not from Pink Floyd so not from the show, part 9 the music is muted because WMG is anal. Included them in the hope at some point the music will be restored.
On Faith on Glenn Beck, and a Video PSA for Social Justice Christians from SOJO 19APR10
Last week, The Washington Post’s On Faith site devoted their weekly Q&A to the debate over social justice which they titled, “Wallis vs. Beck: The politics of social justice.” Jim offered his thoughts on the question last week, and did a video interview as well, but we thought it would be good to highlight some of the responses from across the spectrum. Here are some samplings.
Stu Burguiere, executive producer of The Glenn Beck Program:
Like everyone else in America, Glenn Beck thinks “social justice” –if it’s defined as charitable outreach to the poor–is a good idea. He supports it, he believes in it, he does it.
So, what’s the problem? I mean, “social justice” seems like such an innocuous phrase, right? It paints a picture of fairness. I guess that’s why Father Charles Coughlin used it when naming his National Union for Social Justice and his publication Social Justice Weekly. Coughlin was an anti-Semitic religious broadcaster in the 1930s, and he used the banner of social justice to attack capitalism, warn of Jewish plots against “Christian civilization”, and to promote his adoration for Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini.
Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Trustee at Payne Theological Seminary:
Wise guys seem to get the most play in print and broadcast media. Wise guys are the ones who sling words around with unbalanced fierceness instead of using reasoned conviction. Wise guys are those who are more interested in the victory of their opinions rather than the victory of truth. …
Wise people tend to blend the right amount of knowledge and experience that appeal to our higher nature. Wise people strive to bring people together rather than drive people apart. They move into the midst of strife bringing peace to disorder. Wise people know the difference between confidence and arrogance while handling the truth as they know and believe it to be, and with humility in what they do not know. Wise people don’t sell as well. Wise people don’t always get print space or air time.
Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:
To assert that a call for social justice is reason for faithful Christians to flee their churches is nonsense, given the Bible’s overwhelming affirmation that justice is one of God’s own foremost concerns.
But, there is more going on here. Glenn Beck’s statements lacked nuance, fair consideration, and context. It was reckless to use a national media platform to rail against social justice in such a manner, leaving Beck with little defense against a tidal wave of biblical mandates.
A closer look at his statements reveals a political context. He made a specific reference to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and to other priests or preachers who would use “social justice” and “economic justice” as “code words.” Is there anything to this?
Of course there is. Regrettably, there is no shortage of preachers who have traded the Gospel for a platform of political and economic change, most often packaged as a call for social justice. …
There is more to that story, however. The church is not to adopt a social reform platform as its message, but the faithful church, wherever it is found, is itself a social reform movement precisely because it is populated by redeemed sinners who are called to faithfulness in following Christ. The Gospel is not a message of social salvation, but it does have social implications.
Faithful Christians can debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets. Bringing all these things into submission to Christ is no easy task, and the Gospel must not be tied to any political system, regime, or platform. Justice is our concern because it is God’s concern, but it is no easy task to know how best to seek justice in this fallen world.
Professor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite of Chicago Theological Seminary:
While I deeply appreciate the reasoned approach of Al Mohler, as opposed to Glenn Beck’s ranting, I have to disagree with Mohler’s separation of the Gospel from the primacy of the care of the poor. Mohler claims “The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ’s command and the example of the apostles.”
According to the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, however, to follow the example of the apostles means everybody pool their money and take care of the poor. And the reason the early church did this, the text gives us to understand, is because it was central to their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It was the way the believers showed the grace given them through their belief. There is no separation in Acts between living in the joy of the resurrection and sharing what you have. It’s the same thing. Now that’s not exactly socialism, but it is exactly the Gospel. What Christians have failed to do is to keep these parts of the Gospel message together. …
Columnist and Fox News commentator Cal Thomas:
Conservatives present a half-empty gospel when they share their faith, but do not perform good works in order to demonstrate their faith is real. Liberals are equally in error when they present a half-empty gospel of calling upon government to do more, but failing to share the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Susan K. Smith of Advent United Church of Christ, Columbus, Ohio:
One of my members said to me one day that God meant for some people to be poor. She had been a member of a church where the prosperity gospel was preached, and truly believed that God sanctioned not only that some people be poor, but that they stay poor.
OK, but even if that was the case (which I don’t believe), would this same God want those who could help the poor to look the other way, to shove mercy offerings at them while allowing corrupt political systems which are designed to keep separation between wealth and poverty …to go unchallenged?
Martin Marty, author and professor emeritus of the University of Chicago:
Would all the Christians and the churches which accept any benefits of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax exemption and other such programs cut them off tomorrow? They all involve the government and all were backed by “social and economics minded” leaders and followers in churches, often against the odds raised and symbolized by the Glenn Becks of their past. …
Biblical verses wisely do remind readers, “Put not your trust in princes.” That usually means governments; “princes” in the media, banking, punditry, universities, and, yes, churches demand scrutiny, and their programs deserve careful evaluation, as well. But those who say that you have taken care of biblical injunctions if you simply keep government out of everything face biblical reminders with which they have to contend: The Hebrew prophets all dealt with “nations,” and the apostle Paul, writing to people suffering under Nero, also said that civil “authority…is God’s servant for your good (Romans 13:4). Paul even goes so far in 13:6 to urge believers to “pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants.” Come on, Paul, don’t press your luck in Beck’s world!
Sharon Brous, founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish Spiritual Community in Los Angeles:
I’d like to start by thanking Glenn Beck for mobilizing the faith-based social justice movement. His incendiary rant, coupled with his cruel personal attacks and threats against Rev. Jim Wallis (”the hammer is coming… and when the hammer comes, it’s gonna be hammering hard …”), has united and galvanized Jews, Christians and Muslims around the country who see justice as an essential element of religious life and are unwilling to passively accept its mockery and denigration. (See www.socialjusticechristian.com and HaikuGlennBeck.com two great examples.)
Stu Burguiere, executive producer of The Glenn Beck Program:
Like everyone else in America, Glenn Beck thinks “social justice” –if it’s defined as charitable outreach to the poor–is a good idea. He supports it, he believes in it, he does it.
So, what’s the problem? I mean, “social justice” seems like such an innocuous phrase, right? It paints a picture of fairness. I guess that’s why Father Charles Coughlin used it when naming his National Union for Social Justice and his publication Social Justice Weekly. Coughlin was an anti-Semitic religious broadcaster in the 1930s, and he used the banner of social justice to attack capitalism, warn of Jewish plots against “Christian civilization”, and to promote his adoration for Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini.
Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Trustee at Payne Theological Seminary:
Wise guys seem to get the most play in print and broadcast media. Wise guys are the ones who sling words around with unbalanced fierceness instead of using reasoned conviction. Wise guys are those who are more interested in the victory of their opinions rather than the victory of truth. …
Wise people tend to blend the right amount of knowledge and experience that appeal to our higher nature. Wise people strive to bring people together rather than drive people apart. They move into the midst of strife bringing peace to disorder. Wise people know the difference between confidence and arrogance while handling the truth as they know and believe it to be, and with humility in what they do not know. Wise people don’t sell as well. Wise people don’t always get print space or air time.
Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:
To assert that a call for social justice is reason for faithful Christians to flee their churches is nonsense, given the Bible’s overwhelming affirmation that justice is one of God’s own foremost concerns.
But, there is more going on here. Glenn Beck’s statements lacked nuance, fair consideration, and context. It was reckless to use a national media platform to rail against social justice in such a manner, leaving Beck with little defense against a tidal wave of biblical mandates.
A closer look at his statements reveals a political context. He made a specific reference to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and to other priests or preachers who would use “social justice” and “economic justice” as “code words.” Is there anything to this?
Of course there is. Regrettably, there is no shortage of preachers who have traded the Gospel for a platform of political and economic change, most often packaged as a call for social justice. …
There is more to that story, however. The church is not to adopt a social reform platform as its message, but the faithful church, wherever it is found, is itself a social reform movement precisely because it is populated by redeemed sinners who are called to faithfulness in following Christ. The Gospel is not a message of social salvation, but it does have social implications.
Faithful Christians can debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets. Bringing all these things into submission to Christ is no easy task, and the Gospel must not be tied to any political system, regime, or platform. Justice is our concern because it is God’s concern, but it is no easy task to know how best to seek justice in this fallen world.
Professor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite of Chicago Theological Seminary:
While I deeply appreciate the reasoned approach of Al Mohler, as opposed to Glenn Beck’s ranting, I have to disagree with Mohler’s separation of the Gospel from the primacy of the care of the poor. Mohler claims “The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ’s command and the example of the apostles.”
According to the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, however, to follow the example of the apostles means everybody pool their money and take care of the poor. And the reason the early church did this, the text gives us to understand, is because it was central to their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It was the way the believers showed the grace given them through their belief. There is no separation in Acts between living in the joy of the resurrection and sharing what you have. It’s the same thing. Now that’s not exactly socialism, but it is exactly the Gospel. What Christians have failed to do is to keep these parts of the Gospel message together. …
Columnist and Fox News commentator Cal Thomas:
Conservatives present a half-empty gospel when they share their faith, but do not perform good works in order to demonstrate their faith is real. Liberals are equally in error when they present a half-empty gospel of calling upon government to do more, but failing to share the gospel of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Susan K. Smith of Advent United Church of Christ, Columbus, Ohio:
One of my members said to me one day that God meant for some people to be poor. She had been a member of a church where the prosperity gospel was preached, and truly believed that God sanctioned not only that some people be poor, but that they stay poor.
OK, but even if that was the case (which I don’t believe), would this same God want those who could help the poor to look the other way, to shove mercy offerings at them while allowing corrupt political systems which are designed to keep separation between wealth and poverty …to go unchallenged?
Martin Marty, author and professor emeritus of the University of Chicago:
Would all the Christians and the churches which accept any benefits of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, tax exemption and other such programs cut them off tomorrow? They all involve the government and all were backed by “social and economics minded” leaders and followers in churches, often against the odds raised and symbolized by the Glenn Becks of their past. …
Biblical verses wisely do remind readers, “Put not your trust in princes.” That usually means governments; “princes” in the media, banking, punditry, universities, and, yes, churches demand scrutiny, and their programs deserve careful evaluation, as well. But those who say that you have taken care of biblical injunctions if you simply keep government out of everything face biblical reminders with which they have to contend: The Hebrew prophets all dealt with “nations,” and the apostle Paul, writing to people suffering under Nero, also said that civil “authority…is God’s servant for your good (Romans 13:4). Paul even goes so far in 13:6 to urge believers to “pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants.” Come on, Paul, don’t press your luck in Beck’s world!
Sharon Brous, founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish Spiritual Community in Los Angeles:
I’d like to start by thanking Glenn Beck for mobilizing the faith-based social justice movement. His incendiary rant, coupled with his cruel personal attacks and threats against Rev. Jim Wallis (”the hammer is coming… and when the hammer comes, it’s gonna be hammering hard …”), has united and galvanized Jews, Christians and Muslims around the country who see justice as an essential element of religious life and are unwilling to passively accept its mockery and denigration. (See www.socialjusticechristian.com and HaikuGlennBeck.com two great examples.)
DOROTHY I HEIGHT
Stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care, and low wages ... We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.
- Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died Tuesday. (Source: The Washington Post)
Dorothy I. Height, founding matriarch of U.S. civil rights movement, dies at 98
By Bart Barnes
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 21, 2010; A01
Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died Tuesday at Howard University Hospital. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Ms. Height was among the coalition of African American leaders who pushed civil rights to the center of the American political stage after World War II, and she was a key figure in the struggles for school desegregation, voting rights, employment opportunities and public accommodations in the 1950s and 1960s.
As president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, Ms. Height was arguably the most influential woman at the top levels of civil rights leadership.
Although she never drew the media attention that conferred celebrity and instant recognition on some of the other civil rights leaders of her time, Ms. Height was often described as the "glue" that held the family of black civil rights leaders together. She did much of her work out of the public spotlight, in quiet meetings and conversations, and she was widely connected at the top levels of power and influence in government and business.
As a civil rights activist, Ms. Height participated in protests in Harlem during the 1930s. In the 1940s, she lobbied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of civil rights causes. And in the 1950s, she prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to move more aggressively on school desegregation issues. In 1994, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
In a statement issued by the White House, President Obama called Ms. Height "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans."
She "devoted her life to those struggling for equality . . . witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said.
In the turmoil of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s, Ms. Height helped orchestrate strategy with movement leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph and John Lewis, who would later serve as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia.
In August 1963, Ms. Height was on the platform with King when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. But she would say later that she was disappointed that no one advocating women's rights spoke that day at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Less than a month later, at King's request, she went to Birmingham, Ala., to minister to the families of four black girls who had died in a church bombing linked to the racial strife that had engulfed the city.
"At every major effort for social progressive change, Dorothy Height has been there," Lewis said in 1997 when Ms. Height announced her retirement as president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Women's rights champion
As a champion of social justice, Ms. Height was best known during the early years of her career for her struggles to overcome racial prejudice.
She was also energetic in her efforts to overcome gender bias, and much of that work predated the women's rights movement. When President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, Ms. Height was among those invited to the White House to witness the ceremony. She returned to the White House in 1998 for a ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of that legislation to hear Clinton urge passage of additional laws aimed at equalizing pay for men and women.
"Dorothy Height deserves credit for helping black women understand that you had to be feminist at the same time you were African . . . that you had to play more than one role in the empowerment of black people," Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) once said.
As president of the National Council of Negro Women, Ms. Height was instrumental in organizing and sponsoring programs that emphasized self-help and self-reliance.
Those included nutrition, child care, housing and career counseling. In response to a public TV program, "The Vanishing Black Family," Ms. Height helped create and organize the Black Family Reunion Celebration, which has been held on the Mall and in cities across the country annually since 1985. The gatherings are intended to honor the traditions, strength and history of African American families while seeking solutions to such social problems as teen pregnancy and drug abuse.
"The reunion is as important today as some of our marches were in the past," Ms. Height said in 1992.
In 1995, Ms. Height was among the few women to speak at the Million Man March on the Mall, which was led by Louis Farrakhan, the chief minister of the Nation of Islam. "I am here because you are here," she declared. Two years later, at 85, she sat at the podium all day, in the whipping wind and rain, at the Million Woman March in Philadelphia.
A constant fight
Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond on March 24, 1912, and she grew up in Rankin, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she attended racially integrated schools. But she felt the lash of racial bigotry early in her life. A music teacher in her mostly white elementary school appointed her student director of the school chorus, but a new principal forbade her to take that position. At the next school assembly, the chorus refused to stand and sing until Ms. Height was reinstated as leader, and the principal relented.
The principal subsequently became one of her staunchest supporters, Ms. Height recalled in her 2003 memoir, "Open Wide the Freedom Gates."
As a high school senior and the valedictorian, she won a national oratorical contest, and with it a $1,000 college scholarship. But the college of her choice, Barnard in New York, had already admitted its quota of black students -- two. When Ms. Height applied, she was informed that she would have to wait at least a semester before she could enroll.
Instead, she went to New York University, where she graduated in three years and received a master's degree in educational psychology in her fourth year.
As a young woman, Ms. Height made money through jobs such as ironing entertainer Eddie Cantor's shirts and proofreading Marcus Garvey's newspaper, the Negro World. She went nightclubbing in Harlem with composer W.C. Handy.
Ms. Height began her professional career as a caseworker for the New York City welfare department. She got her start as a civil rights activist through the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and from the pastor's son, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who later represented Harlem in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ms. Height later said that as an officer of the Harlem Christian Youth Council, "I was one of the multitude whose first experience as a civil rights activist was in walking and talking with merchants on 125th Street."
Seizing an opportunity
After attending an international church youth conference in London in the summer of 1937, Ms. Height returned to New York with the conviction that she needed to operate from a broader base than that of a welfare caseworker. She found her opportunity that November at the Harlem branch of the YWCA during a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Mary McLeod Bethune, president of the Harlem YWCA, was impressed by Ms. Height's poise and style in greeting the president's wife, and she promptly offered her a job.
Quitting her job as a welfare caseworker, Ms. Height joined the staff of the Harlem YWCA. She remained a full-time YWCA staffer until 1975, serving the last 18 years simultaneously as president of the National Council of Negro Women.
As a child, she had once been turned away from the Pittsburgh YWCA swimming pool. As a YWCA staff member, she was instrumental in bringing about an interracial charter for Ys in 1946.
In the 1940s, Ms. Height came to Washington as chief of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA branch. She joined the staff of the national YWCA board in 1944, and, until 1975, she remained on that staff with a variety of responsibilities, including leadership training and interracial and ecumenical education.
In 1965, she organized and became the director of the YWCA's Center for Racial Justice, and she held that position until retiring from the YWCA board in 1975. She was a visiting professor at the Delhi School of Social Work in India, and she directed studies around the world on issues involving human rights.
Ms. Height became national president of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 1947, and she held that position until 1957, when she became the fourth president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Over the next four decades, she established a national reputation as a graceful and insistent voice for civil rights and women's rights. She was tall and stately and spoke in a tone that always commanded attention. She rarely had to raise her voice.
"If the times aren't ripe, you have to ripen the times," she liked to say. It was important, she said, to dress well. "I came up at a time when young women wore hats, and they wore gloves. Too many people in my generation fought for the right for us to be dressed up and not put down."
Ms. Height never married. She is survived by one sister, Anthanette Height Aldridge of New York.
Wide influence
As the women's rights movement gained momentum in the early 1970s, Ms. Height forged alliances with white feminist leaders, while disagreeing periodically on matters of tactics and racial emphasis. "African American women have advanced in every field that women have advanced, but the sad point is that those are the few and not the many," she said.
Under her leadership, the National Council of Negro Women sponsored voter registration drives and organized an education foundation for student activists who interrupted their education to do civil rights work.
Another 1960s program, Wednesdays in Mississippi, was a favorite of Ms. Height's. It consisted of weekly trips to Mississippi by interracial groups of women to assist at Freedom Schools and voter registration campaigns. This was often perilous work, especially during the summers of 1964 and 1965, when the hundreds of young civil rights volunteers who streamed into Mississippi were routinely harassed, sometimes beaten and, in a few cases, killed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the council helped organize and operate development projects in African countries. It ran a "pig bank" project in rural Mississippi in which pigs were given to poor, hungry families so they could raise them, with the understanding that two pigs from subsequent litters would be put back into the bank for another family.
Over the years, there were fundraising drives for a statue of Bethune and acquisition of a large and imposing headquarters building in downtown Washington to house the National Council and the Dorothy I. Height Leadership Institute. The building, with white oak woodwork, a marble staircase and fluted cast-iron columns, stands at 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, the site of what was once a slave market. For years after stepping down as president of the National Council, Ms. Height made daily visits to her office there, using a walker or a wheelchair as she became infirm.
On her 92nd birthday, she received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest decoration Congress can bestow. But Ms. Height often urged her co-workers to "stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly."
Staff writer Hamil R. Harris contributed to this report.
- Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died Tuesday. (Source: The Washington Post)
Dorothy I. Height, founding matriarch of U.S. civil rights movement, dies at 98
By Bart Barnes
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, April 21, 2010; A01
Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died Tuesday at Howard University Hospital. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Ms. Height was among the coalition of African American leaders who pushed civil rights to the center of the American political stage after World War II, and she was a key figure in the struggles for school desegregation, voting rights, employment opportunities and public accommodations in the 1950s and 1960s.
As president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, Ms. Height was arguably the most influential woman at the top levels of civil rights leadership.
Although she never drew the media attention that conferred celebrity and instant recognition on some of the other civil rights leaders of her time, Ms. Height was often described as the "glue" that held the family of black civil rights leaders together. She did much of her work out of the public spotlight, in quiet meetings and conversations, and she was widely connected at the top levels of power and influence in government and business.
As a civil rights activist, Ms. Height participated in protests in Harlem during the 1930s. In the 1940s, she lobbied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of civil rights causes. And in the 1950s, she prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to move more aggressively on school desegregation issues. In 1994, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
In a statement issued by the White House, President Obama called Ms. Height "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans."
She "devoted her life to those struggling for equality . . . witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said.
In the turmoil of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s, Ms. Height helped orchestrate strategy with movement leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph and John Lewis, who would later serve as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia.
In August 1963, Ms. Height was on the platform with King when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. But she would say later that she was disappointed that no one advocating women's rights spoke that day at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Less than a month later, at King's request, she went to Birmingham, Ala., to minister to the families of four black girls who had died in a church bombing linked to the racial strife that had engulfed the city.
"At every major effort for social progressive change, Dorothy Height has been there," Lewis said in 1997 when Ms. Height announced her retirement as president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Women's rights champion
As a champion of social justice, Ms. Height was best known during the early years of her career for her struggles to overcome racial prejudice.
She was also energetic in her efforts to overcome gender bias, and much of that work predated the women's rights movement. When President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, Ms. Height was among those invited to the White House to witness the ceremony. She returned to the White House in 1998 for a ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of that legislation to hear Clinton urge passage of additional laws aimed at equalizing pay for men and women.
"Dorothy Height deserves credit for helping black women understand that you had to be feminist at the same time you were African . . . that you had to play more than one role in the empowerment of black people," Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) once said.
As president of the National Council of Negro Women, Ms. Height was instrumental in organizing and sponsoring programs that emphasized self-help and self-reliance.
Those included nutrition, child care, housing and career counseling. In response to a public TV program, "The Vanishing Black Family," Ms. Height helped create and organize the Black Family Reunion Celebration, which has been held on the Mall and in cities across the country annually since 1985. The gatherings are intended to honor the traditions, strength and history of African American families while seeking solutions to such social problems as teen pregnancy and drug abuse.
"The reunion is as important today as some of our marches were in the past," Ms. Height said in 1992.
In 1995, Ms. Height was among the few women to speak at the Million Man March on the Mall, which was led by Louis Farrakhan, the chief minister of the Nation of Islam. "I am here because you are here," she declared. Two years later, at 85, she sat at the podium all day, in the whipping wind and rain, at the Million Woman March in Philadelphia.
A constant fight
Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond on March 24, 1912, and she grew up in Rankin, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she attended racially integrated schools. But she felt the lash of racial bigotry early in her life. A music teacher in her mostly white elementary school appointed her student director of the school chorus, but a new principal forbade her to take that position. At the next school assembly, the chorus refused to stand and sing until Ms. Height was reinstated as leader, and the principal relented.
The principal subsequently became one of her staunchest supporters, Ms. Height recalled in her 2003 memoir, "Open Wide the Freedom Gates."
As a high school senior and the valedictorian, she won a national oratorical contest, and with it a $1,000 college scholarship. But the college of her choice, Barnard in New York, had already admitted its quota of black students -- two. When Ms. Height applied, she was informed that she would have to wait at least a semester before she could enroll.
Instead, she went to New York University, where she graduated in three years and received a master's degree in educational psychology in her fourth year.
As a young woman, Ms. Height made money through jobs such as ironing entertainer Eddie Cantor's shirts and proofreading Marcus Garvey's newspaper, the Negro World. She went nightclubbing in Harlem with composer W.C. Handy.
Ms. Height began her professional career as a caseworker for the New York City welfare department. She got her start as a civil rights activist through the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and from the pastor's son, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who later represented Harlem in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ms. Height later said that as an officer of the Harlem Christian Youth Council, "I was one of the multitude whose first experience as a civil rights activist was in walking and talking with merchants on 125th Street."
Seizing an opportunity
After attending an international church youth conference in London in the summer of 1937, Ms. Height returned to New York with the conviction that she needed to operate from a broader base than that of a welfare caseworker. She found her opportunity that November at the Harlem branch of the YWCA during a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Mary McLeod Bethune, president of the Harlem YWCA, was impressed by Ms. Height's poise and style in greeting the president's wife, and she promptly offered her a job.
Quitting her job as a welfare caseworker, Ms. Height joined the staff of the Harlem YWCA. She remained a full-time YWCA staffer until 1975, serving the last 18 years simultaneously as president of the National Council of Negro Women.
As a child, she had once been turned away from the Pittsburgh YWCA swimming pool. As a YWCA staff member, she was instrumental in bringing about an interracial charter for Ys in 1946.
In the 1940s, Ms. Height came to Washington as chief of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA branch. She joined the staff of the national YWCA board in 1944, and, until 1975, she remained on that staff with a variety of responsibilities, including leadership training and interracial and ecumenical education.
In 1965, she organized and became the director of the YWCA's Center for Racial Justice, and she held that position until retiring from the YWCA board in 1975. She was a visiting professor at the Delhi School of Social Work in India, and she directed studies around the world on issues involving human rights.
Ms. Height became national president of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 1947, and she held that position until 1957, when she became the fourth president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Over the next four decades, she established a national reputation as a graceful and insistent voice for civil rights and women's rights. She was tall and stately and spoke in a tone that always commanded attention. She rarely had to raise her voice.
"If the times aren't ripe, you have to ripen the times," she liked to say. It was important, she said, to dress well. "I came up at a time when young women wore hats, and they wore gloves. Too many people in my generation fought for the right for us to be dressed up and not put down."
Ms. Height never married. She is survived by one sister, Anthanette Height Aldridge of New York.
Wide influence
As the women's rights movement gained momentum in the early 1970s, Ms. Height forged alliances with white feminist leaders, while disagreeing periodically on matters of tactics and racial emphasis. "African American women have advanced in every field that women have advanced, but the sad point is that those are the few and not the many," she said.
Under her leadership, the National Council of Negro Women sponsored voter registration drives and organized an education foundation for student activists who interrupted their education to do civil rights work.
Another 1960s program, Wednesdays in Mississippi, was a favorite of Ms. Height's. It consisted of weekly trips to Mississippi by interracial groups of women to assist at Freedom Schools and voter registration campaigns. This was often perilous work, especially during the summers of 1964 and 1965, when the hundreds of young civil rights volunteers who streamed into Mississippi were routinely harassed, sometimes beaten and, in a few cases, killed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the council helped organize and operate development projects in African countries. It ran a "pig bank" project in rural Mississippi in which pigs were given to poor, hungry families so they could raise them, with the understanding that two pigs from subsequent litters would be put back into the bank for another family.
Over the years, there were fundraising drives for a statue of Bethune and acquisition of a large and imposing headquarters building in downtown Washington to house the National Council and the Dorothy I. Height Leadership Institute. The building, with white oak woodwork, a marble staircase and fluted cast-iron columns, stands at 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, the site of what was once a slave market. For years after stepping down as president of the National Council, Ms. Height made daily visits to her office there, using a walker or a wheelchair as she became infirm.
On her 92nd birthday, she received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest decoration Congress can bestow. But Ms. Height often urged her co-workers to "stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly."
Staff writer Hamil R. Harris contributed to this report.
Putting ‘Collateral Murder’ in Full Context: Rotten Fruit and the Tree From Which It Fell 19APR10 from SOJO
This is a moving and personal article about the now famous video known worldwide as "COLLATERAL MURDER" showing the wanton carnage and violence of war in Iraq in July 2007. It is an expression of remorse, and questions the Christian church's endorsement of war by a member of the American forces directly involved in this event. Following this article is a letter, 'Letter To Iraq', open to the public to sign (copy and paste the link to go to the letter) from the author of this article and a fellow soldier who was also involved in that days events. Last is the video for those who have not seen it.
by Josh Stieber 04-19-2010
Recently, Wikileaks, an online whistleblower site, released a video which was dubbed “Collateral Murder.” I write as a former member of the Infantry company shown on the ground in this video, but also as a Christian who, following my experiences in Iraq, has left the military as a conscientious objector. More recently, a fellow veteran of the same company and I have written a letter to the people of Iraq that we would be grateful if others would read and sign if they agreed with our words of responsibility and reconciliation. But this is not about washing my hands of the blood that was spilled; this is an opportunity to critically but constructively examine what this video means to us as Christians.
Since the release of “Collateral Murder,” passionate responses of all types have filled newspapers, chat rooms, television programs, and personal conversations. The video graphically shows a combat scene from Iraq where children were injured and adults were killed, accompanied by audio of soldiers on the radio during the event speaking callously about the lives lost on that summer day in 2007.
The callousness toward killing as heard in Collateral Murder, though taken somewhat out of context, vividly shows the strong need for the love of Christ that we are called to embody. However, if we only say that the soldiers shown in this video are morally depraved and shouldn’t joke about killing, then we’re being short-sighted and missing an important opportunity. One of the most telling aspects in the aftermath of this video’s release is that the Secretary of Defense and other top leaders have said that the actions shown were militarily justified. They’ve put their stamp of approval on it. On this point, I actually agree: given the full context which this video fails to show, these soldiers were responding exactly as we all had been trained. The challenge then is not only to see the rotten fruit but also the tree from which it fell.
Not only is the dehumanization that was illustrated in the video systematically instilled throughout military training, but its roots run throughout our society as a whole, the church included. In my history class at a Christian high school, I was taught — as are most students, religious or not — that decisions like the dropping of the atomic bomb weren’t necessarily morally wrong nor did they stand in opposition to Jesus’ priorities. At best, I was told that the bombings were strategically debatable. This is the very same mindset shown in Collateral Murder; it says that sometimes the taking of innocent lives and the hardening of our consciences is needed in the process of achieving our national goals of security. The atomic bomb crew was even blessed by a chaplain who later repented of his choices and became an active peacemaker; so the answer to the troubling problems shown in Collateral Murder run far deeper than saying that the gunner should have prayed as he sprayed instead of laughed.
This is where we need to look at how we may have contributed to the tree that produced this revolting fruit. Going back to my religious upbringing, my pastors diligently taught me that listening to non-Christian music and following the world’s standards on dating would slowly rot my soul. But what about the world’s standards on treating one’s enemies? Clearly much of Christianity understands the connection between day-to-day decisions and the state of our souls when it comes to responding to the popular culture. But there was never any teaching that playing violent video games, shooting guns at church camp, or glorifying military practice in history classes at religious school or even at church — that these things would slowly influence our souls as much as listening to sinful music would. Not only was this concern not raised, but the opposite is taught.
The wife and daughters of the founder of the popular mega-church chain that I grew up attending have a blog, widely read by those seeking to understand God’s design for genders. According to this widely-read blog:
It’s never too early to begin teaching our children about God’s design for men and women. We’re constantly telling Jack, “That’s what boys do!” Boys hold the door for the girls. Boys play with army men. Boys are tough.
Again, if we can understand that listening to secular music may lead a young person down a road of sex, drugs, and alcohol, should there be any surprise that when children are taught to be tough and to simulate war as young as possible that they will grow up embracing the callous mindset which the Wikileaks video only begins to expose? This video no longer lets us use ignorance as an excuse; we need to ask if this video which represents what the military is supposed to look like, which has been justified by prominent government leaders, is the harvest we have sown while claiming to follow God.
I take responsibility for not questioning my religious leader’s strong approval of warfare and for wholeheartedly believing, as did many of my army friends, that as I signed my enlistment papers, I was serving God and country. I was taught this would be an honorable example of laying down my life for my brothers; nobody I knew warned me that I might be asked to fire on children, intentionally or incidentally. Perhaps in my short-sightedness I missed the prevailing mindset that the ends justify the means.
When aspects of military training did trouble me and I felt my conscience hardening, I wrote home to leaders at my church and other Christian friends, asking how I could be following God while I was commanded to repeat war cries like “Kill them all, let God sort them out,” or singing songs with lines like, “When I get to hell, Satan’s gunna say ‘how’d you earn your living boy, how’d you earn your pay?’ And I’ll reply with a boot to his chest, ‘I earned my living laying Hajis down to rest.’” The answer these Christian leaders gave was simply that I needed to practice faith and patience because God is in control even though we can’t see him.
Through all of this, my leaders did show me enough of Jesus’ love that I eventually knew that how I was living and what I was being asked to do and think were poor representations of that divine gift. One night, I was on guard duty with a friend that I had attended church with before we were sent to Iraq. My friend started making threats toward a man we were holding prisoner. At first I told my friend that he was being un-American by not considering this man innocent until proven guilty. Echoing the racism we were trained with, my friend told me that there was no way that this man could be completely innocent: he was Iraqi. Then I asked him about all the things we had learned in church — loving our enemies, returning evil with good, blessed are the peacemakers, turn the other cheek — and my friend looked me in the eyes, saying with the utmost sincerity, “I think Jesus would have turned his cheek once or twice, but he wouldn’t have let anybody punk him around.”
It seemed so obvious to me at that point that Jesus’ mission was never to “not get punked”– in fact he said that if we really followed him then we would get punked (though he used less hip terms). He lived and died and rose with a love that overcomes the worse “punking” that the world can offer. I came to the conclusion that even if I was legitimately threatened, that following Jesus had nothing to do with self-defense and it could no longer be an excuse to stop loving as Jesus loved me. Safety is an understandable priority, but one that Jesus never preached.
With the Wikileaks video now shown worldwide, we have the responsibility to stop twisting things like Paul’s teaching that “we need to submit to the governing authorities.” But by this standard, we have already violated that by removing Saddam Hussein, a governing authority. Paul kept preaching the love of God despite the governing authority’s arrests, eventually leading to his death. Jesus, his apostles, and the early church never taught violent revolution, but lived out the example that we are most importantly citizens of God’s kingdom and that may put us at odds with the kingdoms of this world.
The scene shown in the Collateral Murder video is not out of the ordinary and has been claimed as acceptable by the governing authority. Though the actions that harmed children may be justifiable in military terms, I find nothing in Jesus’ teaching that advocates these policies, even if it means keeping our own children safer. The time has come where we must choose to which kingdom we pledge allegiance. I hope that part of this reexamined identity we seek means reaching out to the soldiers who have been asked to do our dirty work; restoring the love that they were taught to suppress.
As I have chosen to speak publicly and provide context to the video to help others understand my friends in the military, I likewise will not judge those who declare safety as their priority. I simply ask that you not attach the precious name of Jesus to this earthly cause, nor teach children that God blesses this. Please consider the strong warnings of Jesus as you wrestle with how to train the next generation: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6)
If you trust in guns and bombs to protect you — that sometimes hit the enemy and sometimes unarmed civilians — and in the dehumanizing training that prepares soldiers to pull the triggers, please just say so. Our glory is in a man who was punked around and crucified as he showed us the transforming love that marks his kingdom.
Stieber is a veteran of B. Co 2/16 Infantry and co-author of contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
A newly released Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video has made international headlines showing a July 2007 shooting incident outside of Baghdad in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. Two soldiers from Bravo Company 2-16, the company depicted in the video, have written an open letter of apology to the Iraqis who were injured or lost loved ones during the attack that, these former soldiers say, is a regular occurrence in this war.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military
Sign your name to their letter here http://www.lettertoiraq.com
Peace be with you.
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:
We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.
We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.
There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation's leaders, and to extend our hands to you.
With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.
Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army
by Josh Stieber 04-19-2010
Recently, Wikileaks, an online whistleblower site, released a video which was dubbed “Collateral Murder.” I write as a former member of the Infantry company shown on the ground in this video, but also as a Christian who, following my experiences in Iraq, has left the military as a conscientious objector. More recently, a fellow veteran of the same company and I have written a letter to the people of Iraq that we would be grateful if others would read and sign if they agreed with our words of responsibility and reconciliation. But this is not about washing my hands of the blood that was spilled; this is an opportunity to critically but constructively examine what this video means to us as Christians.
Since the release of “Collateral Murder,” passionate responses of all types have filled newspapers, chat rooms, television programs, and personal conversations. The video graphically shows a combat scene from Iraq where children were injured and adults were killed, accompanied by audio of soldiers on the radio during the event speaking callously about the lives lost on that summer day in 2007.
The callousness toward killing as heard in Collateral Murder, though taken somewhat out of context, vividly shows the strong need for the love of Christ that we are called to embody. However, if we only say that the soldiers shown in this video are morally depraved and shouldn’t joke about killing, then we’re being short-sighted and missing an important opportunity. One of the most telling aspects in the aftermath of this video’s release is that the Secretary of Defense and other top leaders have said that the actions shown were militarily justified. They’ve put their stamp of approval on it. On this point, I actually agree: given the full context which this video fails to show, these soldiers were responding exactly as we all had been trained. The challenge then is not only to see the rotten fruit but also the tree from which it fell.
Not only is the dehumanization that was illustrated in the video systematically instilled throughout military training, but its roots run throughout our society as a whole, the church included. In my history class at a Christian high school, I was taught — as are most students, religious or not — that decisions like the dropping of the atomic bomb weren’t necessarily morally wrong nor did they stand in opposition to Jesus’ priorities. At best, I was told that the bombings were strategically debatable. This is the very same mindset shown in Collateral Murder; it says that sometimes the taking of innocent lives and the hardening of our consciences is needed in the process of achieving our national goals of security. The atomic bomb crew was even blessed by a chaplain who later repented of his choices and became an active peacemaker; so the answer to the troubling problems shown in Collateral Murder run far deeper than saying that the gunner should have prayed as he sprayed instead of laughed.
This is where we need to look at how we may have contributed to the tree that produced this revolting fruit. Going back to my religious upbringing, my pastors diligently taught me that listening to non-Christian music and following the world’s standards on dating would slowly rot my soul. But what about the world’s standards on treating one’s enemies? Clearly much of Christianity understands the connection between day-to-day decisions and the state of our souls when it comes to responding to the popular culture. But there was never any teaching that playing violent video games, shooting guns at church camp, or glorifying military practice in history classes at religious school or even at church — that these things would slowly influence our souls as much as listening to sinful music would. Not only was this concern not raised, but the opposite is taught.
The wife and daughters of the founder of the popular mega-church chain that I grew up attending have a blog, widely read by those seeking to understand God’s design for genders. According to this widely-read blog:
It’s never too early to begin teaching our children about God’s design for men and women. We’re constantly telling Jack, “That’s what boys do!” Boys hold the door for the girls. Boys play with army men. Boys are tough.
Again, if we can understand that listening to secular music may lead a young person down a road of sex, drugs, and alcohol, should there be any surprise that when children are taught to be tough and to simulate war as young as possible that they will grow up embracing the callous mindset which the Wikileaks video only begins to expose? This video no longer lets us use ignorance as an excuse; we need to ask if this video which represents what the military is supposed to look like, which has been justified by prominent government leaders, is the harvest we have sown while claiming to follow God.
I take responsibility for not questioning my religious leader’s strong approval of warfare and for wholeheartedly believing, as did many of my army friends, that as I signed my enlistment papers, I was serving God and country. I was taught this would be an honorable example of laying down my life for my brothers; nobody I knew warned me that I might be asked to fire on children, intentionally or incidentally. Perhaps in my short-sightedness I missed the prevailing mindset that the ends justify the means.
When aspects of military training did trouble me and I felt my conscience hardening, I wrote home to leaders at my church and other Christian friends, asking how I could be following God while I was commanded to repeat war cries like “Kill them all, let God sort them out,” or singing songs with lines like, “When I get to hell, Satan’s gunna say ‘how’d you earn your living boy, how’d you earn your pay?’ And I’ll reply with a boot to his chest, ‘I earned my living laying Hajis down to rest.’” The answer these Christian leaders gave was simply that I needed to practice faith and patience because God is in control even though we can’t see him.
Through all of this, my leaders did show me enough of Jesus’ love that I eventually knew that how I was living and what I was being asked to do and think were poor representations of that divine gift. One night, I was on guard duty with a friend that I had attended church with before we were sent to Iraq. My friend started making threats toward a man we were holding prisoner. At first I told my friend that he was being un-American by not considering this man innocent until proven guilty. Echoing the racism we were trained with, my friend told me that there was no way that this man could be completely innocent: he was Iraqi. Then I asked him about all the things we had learned in church — loving our enemies, returning evil with good, blessed are the peacemakers, turn the other cheek — and my friend looked me in the eyes, saying with the utmost sincerity, “I think Jesus would have turned his cheek once or twice, but he wouldn’t have let anybody punk him around.”
It seemed so obvious to me at that point that Jesus’ mission was never to “not get punked”– in fact he said that if we really followed him then we would get punked (though he used less hip terms). He lived and died and rose with a love that overcomes the worse “punking” that the world can offer. I came to the conclusion that even if I was legitimately threatened, that following Jesus had nothing to do with self-defense and it could no longer be an excuse to stop loving as Jesus loved me. Safety is an understandable priority, but one that Jesus never preached.
With the Wikileaks video now shown worldwide, we have the responsibility to stop twisting things like Paul’s teaching that “we need to submit to the governing authorities.” But by this standard, we have already violated that by removing Saddam Hussein, a governing authority. Paul kept preaching the love of God despite the governing authority’s arrests, eventually leading to his death. Jesus, his apostles, and the early church never taught violent revolution, but lived out the example that we are most importantly citizens of God’s kingdom and that may put us at odds with the kingdoms of this world.
The scene shown in the Collateral Murder video is not out of the ordinary and has been claimed as acceptable by the governing authority. Though the actions that harmed children may be justifiable in military terms, I find nothing in Jesus’ teaching that advocates these policies, even if it means keeping our own children safer. The time has come where we must choose to which kingdom we pledge allegiance. I hope that part of this reexamined identity we seek means reaching out to the soldiers who have been asked to do our dirty work; restoring the love that they were taught to suppress.
As I have chosen to speak publicly and provide context to the video to help others understand my friends in the military, I likewise will not judge those who declare safety as their priority. I simply ask that you not attach the precious name of Jesus to this earthly cause, nor teach children that God blesses this. Please consider the strong warnings of Jesus as you wrestle with how to train the next generation: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6)
If you trust in guns and bombs to protect you — that sometimes hit the enemy and sometimes unarmed civilians — and in the dehumanizing training that prepares soldiers to pull the triggers, please just say so. Our glory is in a man who was punked around and crucified as he showed us the transforming love that marks his kingdom.
Stieber is a veteran of B. Co 2/16 Infantry and co-author of contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
A newly released Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” video has made international headlines showing a July 2007 shooting incident outside of Baghdad in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. Two soldiers from Bravo Company 2-16, the company depicted in the video, have written an open letter of apology to the Iraqis who were injured or lost loved ones during the attack that, these former soldiers say, is a regular occurrence in this war.
AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military
Sign your name to their letter here http://www.lettertoiraq.com
Peace be with you.
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:
We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.
We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.
There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.
We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.
We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of "god and country". The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn't have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.
More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.
Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation's leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won't lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation's importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.
We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation's leaders, and to extend our hands to you.
With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.
Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army
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