All posts tagged justice
I'm not always wearing my full habit...
Is the United States the only country where more men are raped every year than women?
The US justice system is a shameful mockery. May God have mercy on us all.
(Source: oubliettepostcards)
The saddest part of this? That the “read more” link goes to BBC News. Why aren’t we outraged here in the US?
America’s homeless resort to tent cities
Panorama’s Hilary Andersson comes face to face with the reality of poverty in America and finds that, for some, the last resort has become life in a tented encampment.
Just off the side of a motorway on the fringes of the picturesque town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mismatched collection of 30 tents tucked in the woods has become home - home to those who are either unemployed, or whose wages are so low that they can no longer afford to pay rent.
Conditions are unhygienic. There are no toilets and electricity is only available in the one communal tent where the campers huddle around a wood stove for warmth in the heart of winter.
Ice weighs down the roofs of tents, and rain regularly drips onto the sleeping campers’ faces.
Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities - they represent the bleak reality of America’s poverty crisis …
According to census data, 47 million Americans now live below the poverty line - the most in half a century - fuelled by several years of high unemployment.
One of the largest tented camps is in Florida and is now home to around 300 people. Others have sprung up in New Jersey and Portland.
In the Ann Arbor camp, Alana Gehringer, 23, has had a hacking cough for the last four months.
“The black mould - it was on our pillows, it was on our blankets, we were literally rubbing our faces in it sleeping every night,” she said of wintering in a tent …
See Documentary Above / Read More: BBC News
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
I want to be able to get married in my own church.
Spoken at the 120th Annual Council of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, by a leader among our youth, in support of a resolution encouraging our bishop to allow for the trial use of new liturgies for blessing same-sex unions, which are expected to follow from General Convention this year.
To be in the room and witness this young person stand up — while some clergy and lay leaders demeaned and disparaged LGBTQ persons — move to the microphone, and say this with clarity and grace was a privilege and a blessing to me. This simple action was the most courageous thing I have ever seen.
After this young person sat back at their table, I walked over, introduced myself, and told them exactly that: That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.
Stat of the Day: 20 percent of South Carolina Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal. Maybe they should watch this.
Dear everyone in the 20% and the 14%,
Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal souls.
In Christ’s love,
me
When teachers are afraid to stand up for their students, as were Justin’s, and when leaders stand by and allow masses to trample over the vulnerable, what is there left to teach, and who is left to lead?
America, you have a problem. You need to grow up. Life is too short and the world too complicated. You have too much to give to your country and others to be dragged down over gay and straight. So please look up.
When you do, you will see a country of multiple faiths that is learning to live with faith, difference, and dignity. Civility and decency are not virtuous aspirations; they are necessities. Like it or not, to borrow a lesson from one of your favourite books, we are our brother’s keeper.
I know this is none of my business. Yet I couldn’t stay silent any longer. It’s like watching two trains headed towards each other in slow motion.
From time to time it’s necessary that friends speak from the heart. And frankly, you need it now, because from your big neighbor to the north, not only literally, but also figuratively, you’re looking kind of small.
Dear America: You Have a Gay Problem (via kileyrae)
Undercover Nun applauds Mr. Scheinert for his letter.
(via vinylsticker)
I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states.
…Equal protection under the law – for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation – should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day. Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right. I hope our leaders in Trenton will affirm and defend it.
Newark, NJ mayor CORY BOOKER, calling out governor Chris Christie for proposing that marriage equality in the Garden State be decided by referendum instead of by legislation, on Jan. 24.
Worth re-posting.
(Source: inothernews, via hairtrending)
Of brain disorder, assassination, and fear
Here in southeastern Virginia, one local news station has stirring up paranoia and fear. Why? John Hinckley, Jr. is due to be released from the hospital soon. Mr. Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan in 1981. I was home sick from school that day, and I was sitting on my parents’ bed with my mom watching television when this happened. It was a scary thing, seeing this larger-than-life man being shot, and I’m glad this happened before the cable news stations had to try to fill every minute of the day with action. I was too young to really follow the story of the investigation and the trial. I was far too young to understand what insanity meant; it was a scary word, conjuring up images of Arkham Asylum and other dark places.
Undercover Nun is far better acquainted with insanity now. In 1998, I was hospitalized three times with severe depression, the third time following a suicide attempt. I’d heard words like schizophrenic and manic-depressive and multiple personality before, but I hadn’t known what they meant; they were just dark and scary. But during those weeks in the hospital, I encountered other men and women who suffered with depression, with bipolar disorder, with the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia and other psychoses, even one woman who was truly dissociated. It was still pretty scary to see that we truly can “lose” our minds. It was humbling to realize how tenuous our control over our thoughts and feelings truly is. I loved my fellow patients, my heart breaking anew to see the suffering.
While I was in the hospital, I also saw some wonderful things. I saw patients arrive in a complete fog, not responding to anyone around them, so depressed that they were paralyzed. And then I saw the miracle brought about by ECT, that within 2 or 3 days, these catatonic women and men became engaged in the world around them, cheerful and chatty. It was resurrection. I saw hope take fire in that dissociated woman, who had finally found a doctor who had experience helping merge the dissociated pieces. She arrived under a black cloud, afraid to touch or to let anyone touch her; she left beaming, even giving me a hug.
Mr. Hinckley was ruled to be insane, and he has been confined to St. Elizabeths hospital in DC since his trial. He has had increasing freedom to leave the hospital for visits with his mom in Williamsburg. A judge ordered that he get a driver’s license again, and almost a year ago a doctor at the hospital testified that Mr. Hinckley is no longer a danger to himself or to others. He wants to live with his mother, who lives in a posh gated community in Williamsburg, and his siblings are ready to support him. But the residents of this community are afraid of the damage to the reputation of their homes, and have the cash to try to fight this.
This news station has aired “reports” over recent days, stirring up fear that Mr. Hinckley might be sitting in the next booth while you’re out for dinner, or two rows behind you in the movie theater… and you won’t even know it!
Undercover Nun wonders why it would matter one whit whether you knew that a volunteer librarian who is under treatment for an organic brain disorder was sitting in a movie theater with you.
Undercover Nun wonders how these wealthy Kingsmill residents would feel if their sister had been in a mental hospital for three decades and had the opportunity to be released and return home.
Undercover Nun wonders why a person would think that he or she would have the right to decide who can or cannot move into the neighborhood, particularly if this decision would involve blatant discrimination against people with disabilities.
Undercover Nun wonders why gates around neighborhoods would make anyone feel more safe or secure, because gates keep out only those who follow the rules already.
Undercover Nun wonders when professed Christians (not that I know Mr. Camp or Ms. Michael to be such) will truly believe that healing is possible, that reconciliation can happen in this world, that people can be made new and can have second chances, that forgiveness is not only possible but mandatory, and that even the worst sinner will be redeemed.
Undercover Nun wonders when we will let go of our fears, the fears that lurk behind every anger, the fears that separate us from the abundance of life God has given us, the fears that are not just the opposite of faith but the rejection of it.
And Undercover Nun prays for our immortal souls. May God have mercy on us all.
They talk about class warfare - the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It’s a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class in this country.
And the result is you now have in America that most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth, and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?
(via silas216)
Santorum Tells Sick Kid Not To Complain About $1 Million Drug Costs Because People Pay $900 For An IPad | ThinkProgress
While campaigning yesterday in Woodland Park, Colorado, GOP contender Rick Santorum told a sick child and his mother that they shouldn’t complain about the exorbitant cost of his medication because some people spend $900 on iPads. He appeared unmoved by the plight of the family, staunchly defending drug companies’ right to charge whatever they want.
The candidate also said that the parent and childunjustly felt entitled to get life-saving care at an affordable rate:
GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.[…]
“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”
The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.
Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.
Santorum proceeded to lecture the mother and suggest she should be grateful to the drug companies for saving her son’s life. “He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here.” He also claimed it would “freeze innovation” if pharmaceutical companies were required to offer their drugs at a reasonable price.
Dear Mr. Santorum:
Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal soul. God knows, you need it.
In Christ’s love,
Me
(Source: silas216)
The 70,000 women who die annually as a result of unsafe abortion didn’t just die because abortion was illegal in the country they live in. They died because their lives were seen as dispensable by those in charge.
(via bluntlyblue)
