#OWS

  • How Failures Win: In Movements and In Life

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    Failing is good. Every day I remind myself. We call ourselves perfectionists because we’re in pain. We use perfectionism as a kind of diagnosis which makes us feel better about playing it safe or feeling hurt. The kind of imperfection that can become a badge of honor – the strength we pass off as a weakness…

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  • Why we aren’t massacred

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    On the auspicious 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in 2014 Beijing was silent. I was in elementary school at the time and entirely unaware of what was happening. My moral compass was guided by a narrative of “us” and “them”. Of a United States that loves freedom and a China that so clearly hates…

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  • More Christian Than Christians

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    A year ago when the Occupy Wall Street movement developed, it was easy to recognize a correlation between the church’s mission and #OWS’s. It’s participants were attempting to forge a different way of gathering that was egalitarian and grass roots. It’s decision making was communal and encouraged a type of shared leadership most churches can…

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  • Occupy Government

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    First Amendment to the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” With such a…

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  • The excuse of fear: “nonlethal” force and the powerful

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    In the week between when the world discovered Sgt. Shamar Thomas, some dudes went crazy. The viral video of an Iraqi veteran chastising the New York police department for arming up against their own civilians as if it were a war zone was a wake-up call to the sleeping public.  These public protesters aren’t impudent…

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  • The Gilded Age of Media

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    When faced with something they find confusing, most journalists give up.  They don’t do the real legwork of engaging the story.  They write the “process story” instead.  You’ve read the kind in which the author doesn’t actually write the story about the intended subject’s work, but how confusing that work is.  They trot out tired…

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