Tag: Good News

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “We are braver than we thought we were” Edition

“This is a massive awakening. We’ve already seen an awakening taking place in the last few years. It will intensify. We’ve seen marvelous demonstrations in a variety of different cities… I think that we have to have a real sense of commitment to being a hope in such a bleak moment. And we can turn things around.” (Dr. Cornel West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Harvard University)

Good News in Civil Rights – Updates on Charlottesville and more.

If you missed our last “Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News – “Look for the Helpers” Edition on Charlottesville, click here. It includes maps of where the vigils  for Solidarity-with-Charlottesville took place, as well as some local pics of our own event. There were nearly 700 events across this country. Amazing!

The best of America is still alive and kicking. Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “We are braver than we thought we were” Edition” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “Look for the Helpers” Edition

Despite having never having watched Mr. Rogers as a child, a video of him speaking about how his mother taught him to deal with bad things has stuck with me.

And now, I too, look for the helpers when something terrible happens. And there they are. In Charlottesville. The heroes who jumped in to help in the face of imminent danger, the police who came from far away to keep people safe, including the state troopers who died, and the people who work, tirelessly, year-round, to make Virginia an good and more equitable place to live. And the brave resisters, of all types, who stood up for our morals and our values…

…from the woman who died…

Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “Look for the Helpers” Edition” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “And the 4th graders shall lead us” Edition

Yesterday’s post in our “This Week in Resistance” blog included an article stating that with every horrible action Trump has taken, there’s been an equal and opposite action from the resistance and others. The author called it the “Boomerang Effect”.

So now, despite our 1.5 million pleas to the contrary, the president has gone ahead and put our national monuments on the auction block for oil, uranium and timber extraction. And amongst the usual resistance groups who started speaking out against the destruction of our heritage, up pops this 9 year old kid, Robbie Bond.

“When a 9-year old says something like ‘our national parks and monuments are under attack,’ you sit up and listen. Standing up for our natural treasures is honorable for anyone, but for a young person like Robbie to take a stand like this — it shows courage at a time when our Island Earth needs us most. I support Robbie and Kids Speak for Parks — their voices need to be heard.” -Nainoa Thompson, Polynesian Voyaging Society. Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – “And the 4th graders shall lead us” Edition” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News!

Watch the celebrations outside the Senate when word of the failure came back! (There’s a bunch of happy videos here)

I hear over and over…”Don’t talk to me about politics. It’s too overwhelming. It stresses me out.”

I’m going to make a different plea. Come join in! Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News!” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Five Smooth Stones” Edition

(excerpt from Randi Weingarten’s speech  for the American Federation of Teachers)
“When leaders controlling the federal government are hell-bent on taking away health care from 32 million people in order to give a tax cut to the ultra-wealthy, we are David to their Goliath. When officials far from the classroom care a whole lot about testing and test scores, but don’t give a damn about what our students really need, we are David to their Goliath. When hedge funders, billionaires and anti-labor ideologues band together in an axis of inequality, further rigging our political and economic system against working folks, we are David to their Goliath. When a presidential administration takes actions that make immigrant students afraid to dream, that favor fraudulent for-profit colleges over students seeking an education, that put an entire religion in its crosshairs, we are David to their Goliath. When governors in state after state go after labor rights and voting rights, and they find an ally in the newest Supreme Court justice who will hear the Janus case, we must be David to their Goliath.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Valley of Elah, where the standoff between David and Goliath took place. And if you remember Sunday school, you’ll recall: That wasn’t a fair fight, either. Goliath was big; David was a little guy. Goliath had an army. And David? David had a sling — with five smooth stones. But David had a plan. Goliath no doubt assumed his greater strength was enough, but we all know how that ended up.” Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Five Smooth Stones” Edition” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Holding Hands” Edition

As soon as I read this story…I knew that I wasn’t alone in thinking how inspirational this was. Alison & Stephanie connected it to this amazing essay from Rebecca Solnit comparing the conservative ideology of isolation to the reality of our communion with each other and the world:
“The modern right may wish that every man were an island, entire of himself, but no one is wholly independent. You can’t survive without taking air into your lungs, you didn’t give birth to or raise yourself, you won’t bury yourself, and in between you won’t produce most of the goods and services you depend on to live. Your gut is full of microorganisms, without which you could not digest all the plants and animals, likely grown by other people, on which you rely to survive. We are nodes on intricate systems, synapses snapping on a great collective brain; we are in it together, for better or worse.” 

So in honor of these awesome people who held hands to help strangers, let’s start with news from states where aid and respect was extended to others… Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Holding Hands” Edition” →

Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! Get out a #2 pencil…there’s a quiz.

(Huffpost) “Every year, the U.S. holds special citizenship-induction ceremonies on or around the Fourth of July. This year, nearly 15,000 people were being sworn in as U.S. citizens at more than 65 such gatherings across the country, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

At one of those ceremonies, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) ― the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica ― took not-so-veiled jabs at President Donald Trump, who has called for limits on legal immigration along with his effort to ramp up deportation of undocumented immigrants.

“Whenever you feel that future is threatened, whenever those values of liberty and justice for all that drew us here seem under assault, you need to speak up and speak out,” Harris said at a ceremony on the battleship Iowa in the Port of Los Angeles on Monday, according to prepared remarks. “That’s the whole point of the freedoms we cherish.” Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! Get out a #2 pencil…there’s a quiz.” →