According to the Kansas City Corporate Challenge Facebook page, there are 30,827 participants signed up for the challenge this year. Several thousand of them flowed into and out of the stadium for the KCCC Kickoff Walk and block party. It was quite a festival atmosphere. Many companies had tents and food available for their people … Continue reading Corporate Challenge Kick Off vs. Park Food
Category: Social Issues
TED Ideas Worth Spreading*
What is the saying? -- The best thing since sliced bread? It could be the skeptic in me, but anytime I hear people talking about something and how great it is, and it seems to have a cultish following, it raises my skepticism. Such is my impression of the movement known as TED. There is a … Continue reading TED Ideas Worth Spreading*
Freedom of choice, freedom of association leads to true love
Indiana's Religious Freedom Law has come under a lot of attacks from various sides for various reasons. The one I want to address is the charge from some well meaning Christians that it is about not showing love to others as Christ would. One writer in particular seems to think that a hypothetical refusal to … Continue reading Freedom of choice, freedom of association leads to true love
Of Witchfinder and the Hugo Witch Hunt
Those of you who follow my blog on a regular basis may recall that back in November 2014 I ran a series of posts on an interview with author Sarah A. Hoyt by the Avondale United Methodist Church book club. The initial reason for the interview was to discuss her book Witchfinder, along with other … Continue reading Of Witchfinder and the Hugo Witch Hunt
Spring Cleaning
Friday -- The First Day of Spring Saturday -- The First Day of Spring Cleaning Spring Cleaning is the time of year when you drag everything out after being cooped up all winter and clean it all out, give everything a clean shake. It probably was a little more obviously necessary before the age of … Continue reading Spring Cleaning
Crossing Class Boundaries
In chapter 13 of Class Matters Hook discusses moving back and forth between classes. She started in a working class family, and moved through college into a middle-class educated environment. Her fear was losing who she was as a daughter of the working class. But she learned through practice that she could maintain who she … Continue reading Crossing Class Boundaries
Class Claims: Real Estate Racism
Chapter 12 of Class Matters is about racism in real estate, and how class is used to reinforce race. She discusses her experiences trying to buy property in California, Florida and New York. NYC, one of the most ethnically diverse city in the world, and yet is still so ethnically and racially segregated. And class … Continue reading Class Claims: Real Estate Racism
Solidarity with the poor
In the opening of Chapter 11 of Class Matters, Hook makes one of those common, but also logically flawed uses of words. Poor and poverty are not the same thing. To go from “the poor will always be with us” as the words of Jesus, to talking about poverty is to cloud an issue that … Continue reading Solidarity with the poor
White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility
“In the southern world of racial apartheid” is how Hook begins chapter 10 of Class Matters. Again she chooses the most charged terms possible to radicalize her conversations. This chapter focuses on poor whites vs. blacks. Poor whites, some of which are known as “white trash,” had an advantage in being able to lord it … Continue reading White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility
Feminism and Class Power
Hooks opens up chapter nine of Class Matters by discussing the two forms of Feminism. The reformist model of liberation demands equal rights for women without changing the current class struggle. Revolutionary feminism seeks fundamental change in the existing structures. And just as the “militant black liberation” struggle lost its appeal to ending classism once … Continue reading Feminism and Class Power
At The Rainbow 