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I remember May 16, the day the CA Supreme Court ruling upholding Same Sex Marriage was passed, I was doing laps up at UCSD. As I mulled over the news suddenly I had to stop in the middle of the pool I was so taken aback. I felt like the world had shifted. I remember feeling that suddenly the world really had said, to me, “you are valid; you are worthwhile; you can love who you feel called to love.” A couple of nights before I’d had a difficult conversation with my sister who is getting married this summer. I was being irrational and unfair with a stressed out bride to be, venting my frustration at watching so many friends get married, and complaining that I couldn’t have that experience. So as I swam I felt both silly for making such a fuss with my sister, and joyous that suddenly the impossible wasn’t. That day it seemed a hole had broken through the wall between us and the Kingdom of God and the light was shining through.
We’ve heard a great deal about hope this election. Many of us have been inspired by what has been called, “nothing short of a peaceful, orderly and constitutional overthrow of a tyrannical, violent and unjust government.“ In so many ways this election became a reason to hope, and the results were a realization of that hope. 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” the United States of America has elected its first African American president. Dr. King knew that Christian hope is located in the Kingdom of God, what Desmond Tutu calls “God’s dream.” Dr. King’s dream was God’s dream. He said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’” This is the dream, this is the kingdom, a place where justice reigns and love is the only law.
This Kingdom of God is both our hoped for destination, and at moments it breaks through into the present. It broke through when the US Court ruled that segregation was not equal protection under the law. It broke through when women’s right to vote was acknowledged. It broke through when Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop. It broke through as Barack Obama spoke Wednesday night as the newly elected president.
That May afternoon in San Diego I could feel the light shining through a fresh hole in the wall that separates us from the Kingdom of God.
Then someone decided to throw a patch up over that hole.
As Senator Obama spoke, the votes were being tallied in California that would take away the newly recognized right to marriage for Same Sex attracted people. Proposition 8 passed by a tiny majority.
I have been amazed by the responses from so many of my friends, especially my straight friends. Allies across the state sent messages of sympathy and anger at the results. They couldn’t believe that Prop 8 had passed. I was blown away that people had made contributions in my name to the No on 8 campaign and were so concerned about my rights.
While I think justice fell short a few days ago, I know that it is a simple patch in the wall that is coming down. Christians believe that we will get to that hoped for Kingdom. Dr. King knew setbacks. Still he said:
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
So do not despair. Continue to tell your story, or the story of the ones you love who love people of the same gender. Let’s bring more than 51% of people with us to the Kingdom.
Since the beginning of the current economic crisis, no one has done a better job explaining exactly what has gone on than This American life. If you’re still lost, I highly recommend the following two shows
Another Extremely Frightening Show About the Economy
They lay out in comprehendible ways exactly what has happened in the economic world.
Here’s what it seems to boil down to: People want to make money. More than any stock, they are invested in economic growth. Growth is the biggest commodity in the market. Any stock that grows sells. Some very bright people found a way to create a product that grew like crazy. By creating an industry of selling mortgages and then bundling stakes in those mortgages as stock options, investors could ride the wave in appreciating home value. Money grew like crazy. BUT because growth was more important than anything else no one hesitated to wonder whether home prices were being inflated, whether it was a good idea to lend money to people who had no income and no assets, whether this all would come crashing down like a house of cards.
Our economic system values growth above all else.
In the story of the Exodus, as the Hebrew people come out of Egypt, God consistently provides for their needs. Each morning the Israelites collect bread from heaven. There is plenty for everyone. Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread and feeds thousands from five loaves and two fish. The underlying economics of the Bible is abundance.
If we operated from an economics of abundance rather than an economics of growth how different could our behavior be? Rather than worrying about how to tap into the fastest growing vein in the economy and suck as much out as we can so that we are taken care of, we could trust that their will be enough and look for those who are not doing so well. We could spread out wealth, resources, technology. We could look for quality of product rather than quantity.
As we look at economic plans that seek to patch the hole in our economic growth machine, we have to wonder if it isn’t time to reassess the ways in which do business. Whether through regulation, or a change in spending habits can we prioritize and invest in companies that look to a bigger picture than growth, that look toward quality? Maybe even looking toward the health and well being of our planet and fellow human beings?
Can this economic crisis be a turning point in the way we treat one another and this planet?
The Belltower
Well I’m here. Two and a half weeks ago I began my sojourn at The Virginia Theological Seminary. It was quite the ride to get here. My brother Sam and I travelled for a month together, first 3 weeks in Africa (see below) then a three day trip cross country to arrive in DC.
So far VTS has been much like camp, but with intensive Hebrew classes in between camp activities. We’ve played a great deal of ultimate frisbee. Much to my delight, I have discovered that I DO have athletic prowess. I simply have not been among the community of people with whom I was born to compete: namely Episcopalian Seminarians! (I was definitely LEAST valuable player in college on the Intramural squad.) I figure as long as people don’t realize that frisbee is my strongest team sport, and I NEVER come near a basketball, the charade will last. We spend our nights watching baseball games, DNC speeches, belting musicals and hymns with the concert pianists or me trying to keep up with the southern boys as they have guitar and banjo jam sessions ala Woody Guthrie.
It is amazing to be in the capital. I regularly ride by the Jefferson Monument on the Metro, or drive by in my car. We played frisbee on the National Mall Saturday night before going to see Batman at one of the Smithsonian’s IMAX theaters, and it was amazing to be surrounded by the monuments and museums and realize that the city isn’t just for tourists and lobbyists. People actually live here.
Frisbee on the Mall at sunset.
In other exciting news, I have been hired by St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church to coordinate their Sunday evening Spanish Language Community’s Sunday School program. I think this will involve a lot of telling stories, playing guitar, coloring, and other excitement with small groups of kids. I’m excited to work with The Rev. Sarabeth Goodwin in this growing community and to contribute what I can. It is also exciting to have a reason to go into the city and be in the same neigborhood that a number of good friends from college live in (Columbia Heights.) Having a reason to utterly escape “the hill” weekly is welcome.
Seminary is proving to be an adventure. It was nice today to hear other seminarians reflect on “being true to yourself in the midst of a consuming community.” Living in Community can be very defining and confining. Being true to the person you are called to be seems to be a bit of a challenge, but an important one. One of my biggest hesitations about Virginia Seminary was that it seems to be a “priest factory,” spitting out cookie cutter pastors. I am excited that many of my classmates are consistently pursuing differentiation and challenge, and are excited about seeing change in the Church. Remembering to be attentive to the unique character of our call in the midst of a society that seeks to define our identity.
Well, my mom just sent me a link to The Lion King in Hebrew…so I’ll end with that. Blessings of Peace to all!
July 15-6
We began the trip with an 18 hour plane ride and arrived in Johannesburg pretty jet-lagged. We started our adventure with a trip to the mall to pick up necessities like power converters and a cell phone sim card. It was amazing to both Sam and I the impressive amount of globalization in Johannesburg. Joburg is an incredibly metropolitan city, with some of the biggest security fences I’ve seen in my entire life. The population lives divided one from another by huge walls. Some have access to the mall which has everything from Prada to the Apple Store, but 80% of the population lives in the Townships and is fenced out. We stayed with a good friend from USD, the incomparable Ms. Juana Purchase. She was an incredible hostess and it was wonderful to reconnect and see her life in South Africa.
July 17-19 Safari Time!
We went with a small company to the Kruger National Park on Safari for 3 days. We had a blast and saw too many animals to count.
The highlights were definitely the elephant and lions. Our guide William was entertaining. Afrikaaner to the core, he listened to Rugby on the radio and told us stories of when he was a riot police officer in the Soweto Township during the Apartheid era. The physical beauty of South Africa was an important part of our trip, and the Kruger and surrounding area were a good introduction to this.
July 20-21 Joburg part 2
We had another two days in Johannesburg. We spent the first touring Pretoria and the capital, seeing the beautiful government buildings. We also visited a neighborhood that looked like it dropped right out of Ranch Santa Fe in San Diego, golf resort style with incredible houses. The division between haves and have nots is more extreme than anywhere I’ve ever seen. The next day we headed to the “Cradle of Humanity” where we saw the fossilized remains of ancient humans, some impressive caves, and an even more impressive Small World-style water ride through the elements of creation.
June 22-24 Cape Town Part 1
Next we headed to Cape Town to meet up with Ryan DeCook, a friend from USD who was one of my residents when I was an RA. Ryan is working with Africa Jam, and evangelical group that runs camps and afterschool programs for youth in the Townships. Ryan is particularly working in the township of Kayelitsha, and we spent a couple of afternoons in “the mansion” where they hold their meetings listening to the incredible choir (video to come later) and helping to teach some guitar lessons. Sadly Ryan was pretty sick while we were in CapeTown, so we spent a lot of the time lazing around and hoping he would feel well enough to accompany us to Grahamstown as planned, but his flu just got worse.June 25-26 Grahamstown
We drove what we thought was a seven hour drive to Grahamstown through the Garden Route, an incredibly beautiful collection of villages and cliffs on the sea. The trip ended up taking 10 hours, and we spent most
The Grahamstown Monks, order of The Holy Cross
of it reading “The Horizontal World: Growing Up in the Middle of Nowhere,” a book Sam was required to read so he can discuss it with the incoming freshmen at his college. The book was a disaster of a thing, but we barreled through and finished before we arrived at the monastery late that night. We spent the next day touring the Cathedral and town of Grahamstown with Cortney Dale, a new YASC volunteer in Grahamstown. It was fun to compare notes based on my YASC year in Honduras. We had a good time with the monks and even got to meet some of my new seminary classmates who were in town for a contextual theology class at the College of the Transformation, South Africa’s only residential seminary.
June 27-28 Queenstown
One drive over the mountains, a loss of several degrees Celsius in temperature, and one spare tire later we arrived in Bolotwa to stay with Monica a
nd Heidi to Episcopalian/Roman Catholic missionary members of the association of Charles DeFoucalt. I went through the Christian Vacation edition of missionary training with Monica and Heidi several years ago and it was fun to reconnect and see the work they are doing which can be described as nothing short of miraculous. In three short years they have established parks and programs in three communities which have been devastated by AIDS. They employ an army of women who go to surrounding houses in the early morning to care for orphans and aging parents and generally build community. We were greeted with song in Ilinge, invited into several homes, and generally loved on by hundreds of people in the two townships we visited. It was amazing to see such incredible Kingdom-Community being generated.
nd Heidi to Episcopalian/Roman Catholic missionary members of the association of Charles DeFoucalt. I went through the Christian Vacation edition of missionary training with Monica and Heidi several years ago and it was fun to reconnect and see the work they are doing which can be described as nothing short of miraculous. In three short years they have established parks and programs in three communities which have been devastated by AIDS. They employ an army of women who go to surrounding houses in the early morning to care for orphans and aging parents and generally build community. We were greeted with song in Ilinge, invited into several homes, and generally loved on by hundreds of people in the two townships we visited. It was amazing to see such incredible Kingdom-Community being generated.July 29-30 Itipini, Mthatha
We drove on to Mthatha, the former capital of the Black Homeland. During Apartheid the White Government thought they might try and get 80% of the nations people to live in 14% of the land if they promised them self government. Mthatha grew exponentially as a city as a result and has a dramatically different feel than any other metropolitan area we visited. Basically, it feels more African. You hardly see a non-Black person, the roads in town are dangerously full of pedestrians, everything possible is for sale. We visited the poorest
Jesse just after playing for the kids
of the poor communities where Jesse Zink, another YASC volunteer has been serving at the Itipini clinic. Itipini is Xhosa for “on the garbage dump,” and this is very descriptive. The people live in, under, on and around trash. For 20+ years Episcopalian missionaries have provided medical care to this community. It was impressive to see the infrastructure they have built with no water, no power, and surrounded by a dump. Every morning people receive food, children go to pre-school, people receive TB drugs and are treated for injuries. In the afternoon teens lift weights, sing in a choir, receive tutoring, and generally are kept occupied. Watching Jesse play “Johnny be good” while a room full of 3 year old danced around was a definite highlight. Jesse has a phenomenal blog here.
July 31-Aug 1 The Garden Route revisited
Rocks near the Knysna Heads
We began our slow trip back to Cape Town and stayed with the Monks in Grahamstown again. Monica and Heidi were there. It was a nice relaxing day before driving back down the garden route. We stopped in Knysna and saw the incredible coastline. The town is stunning, situated on a beautful bay, and we stayed in a hip little hostel. Unfortunately that night I had some bad seafood (never eat at the Greek Restaurant in Knysna). Sam was amazing and drove the rest of the way back to Cape Town the next day and then holed up with me and watched movies on TV as I groaned.
Aug 2-3 Cape Town part 2
I began to feel better Saturday morning and we were able to finish our time in Africa in style. We visited Desmond Tutu’s former cathedral in the morning and shopped for souvenirs. I got a sweet Djimbe and Sam a saxaphone made out of coke bottles. Then we headed to Robben Island to see where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his life in prison. The museum is run by former political prisoners. It was incredible to see the tiny facility and to hear first hand
St. George's Cathedral, Capetown
what was endured by so many for the hope of freedom. The next morning we met up with two of my former residents, Ryan again and his freshmen roommate Anderson who happened to be visiting at the same time. We finished our time in South Africa with Eucharist at the Cathedral in Capetown before getting back on the plane to head home to Colorado.
Spoiler alert: I’m preaching on May 18, Trinity Sunday, at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church. and this post is a preview of my sermon-in formation.
A couple of weeks ago The Rev. Chris Chase preached about Ascension and referenced a commercial for iPods. It features dancing figures with the iconic white headphone cord and a song by the Ting Tings “Shut up and let me go.”
Far be it for a visiting preacher to critique the rector’s sermon…but I do have some serious qualms with this ad. (In Chris’ defense, he was referencing the images of dancing, rather than the lyric.) This sentiment, “Shut up and let me go,” repeated over and over again in the ad, is becoming a central sentiment of our culture. “Shut up and let me go.” The message is conveyed on campus every day by those white iPod headphones worn as students walk around in public spaces. They say, “I am busy and I can’t hear you: Don’t Bother me.” Those white cords function as a wall.
I confess, I LOVE my iPod, and I have used the headphones on bad days to quiet the noise of people I don’t want to hear, my parents or siblings on long trips. My most frequent use of headphones happens on airplanes where I resonate with Anne Lammott when she says, ” My idea of everything running smoothly on an airplane is that A) I not die in a slow motion fiery crash, and that B) none of the other passengers try to talk to me. I use my white iPod headphones to shut people out: “Shut up and let me go.” This is something we say over and over again in our culture, with gated communities and a wall between San Diego and Tijuana. “Shut up and let me go.”
This however is completely antithetical to what we learn about God as Trinity. The Orthodox Christians talk about God’s inter-penetration, God’s three-in-one-ness, as a dance. The one-ness of God is the dancing, the RELATIONSHIP. In the Gospel for Trinity Sunday, Jesus uses the standard formulation of the Trinity “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Another rendering of Trinity that goes all the way back to Augustine, speaks of the Trinity as “Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself.” God bridges the gap of difference: God’s very one-ness is a RELATIONSHIP.
Here is the scary part. In the face of that world that says, “shut up and let me go” God is inviting us, God is inviting you, here, this morning, into relationship. You see the relationship of the Trinity wasn’t enough for God. It isn’t by coincidence that we also hear the creation story this morning. From the beginning, God has desired relationship. We are created out of God’s desire for relationship. The dance of the Trinity, the community of the Lover, the Beloved, and Love itself results in SO MUCH LOVE, that it cannot be contained and spills out into humanity, into creation. God creates our world, God comes among us in Jesus, and God comes as Holy Spirit to never be apart from us. The God who is Relationship, reaches out, bridges out, for relationship with us.
And it doesn’t stop there. 1 John 4:11 “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” God calls us into relationship with one another. Again in the Gospel, Jesus calls his followers into relationship with “all nations.” God calls us to build bridges.
And yet we throw up walls. The same society that teaches us to put on our iPod headphones, builds fences to exclude our neighbor, causes us to fear others and shut them out because of differences of race, of gender, of political party, of religion, of orientation. We live in a world that excludes and builds walls. We have a God builds bridges.
This Church is working with God to build bridges. By inviting a group of students from UCSD into this space to worship, by naming campus as a mission priority for this parish, you are bridging a barrier that has separated you from your neighbors. By inviting Roman Catholics to share your space, you are bridging religious divides.
And you helped to send a group of students to El Salvador crossing barriers of class, race, and nationality. There they built a bridge. Literally, they built a bridge. There is now a bridge to a community called “El Carmen,” a community which during the rainy season was often cut off by flood waters from food and health care. Children often missed school. Now there is a bridge. You can see a picture of it.
God wants us to build bridges. Over Spring Break, with your help, we got to take God literally. Where in your life is God calling you to build bridges?
Our God reaches out beyond the self. Our God demands that we take off our headphones, we cross over the walls that our world creates to separate us from one another. We need one another. If we are to be whole people, we cannot go it alone. That is the take home of this sermon friends. We live in a deeply troubled world. The economy, the price of oil, the price of food, terrorism, war, racism, sexism, poverty, depression, anxiety, none of these things can be solved by saying, “Shut up and let me go.” We need each other. We need God, and God needs us to build bridges.
I spent the morning reading the blog of Jesse Zink in South Africa. I highly recommend it:
I’ve been thinking for awhile now about place. I came to San Diego seven years ago after having spent all my previous years in Denver, Colorado.
I’ve lived since then in Mexico, England, and Honduras. I’m still recovering from a couple of weeks of heavy travel, a blessed trip to El Salvador and an engaging adventure in the Northeast. Now I face my last two months in San Diego before the next big move. This thing is, I really like it here. I love my life and what I get to do in San Diego.
I stood on my roof last night as the sun set. Looking over the city, reflecting on the day. Yesterday I took a group of moms and kids down to Dorcas House. Stephanie, one of the moms really impressed me. She makes a point of exposing her kids to things like Dorcas House and Halibut with Meyer lemon salsa. I got to thinking that what I have been doing taking people to El Salvador and Tijuana IS evangelism. Church for me has happened most palpably in service trips to Latin America. Both in El Salvador, building a bridge with the people of El Carmen and in Tijuana I’ve had moments thinking “This is Church.” This is what Church means, a community of people working together to lift up their neighbors, to better their collective situation, to overcome that which divides us. Evangelism often boils down to inviting someone to church, and that’s what my whole job has been the past few years: inviting people to Church, “The Church of Building Bridges.” Up on the roof, that all came together for me. The challenging realization that whatever my call may be, it involves helping people cross boundaries and borders to be and work with one another in the crazy community of church.
Life at the age of 26 can be hard. Yes, there is a great deal of very romantic travel. I have been incredibly lucky to have opportunities to jaunt around the world, but the lack of permanence, of place, can be maddening. I wish I could commit another 5 years to better knowing the community of people at UCSD and in San Diego, to building bridges over the wall to Tijuana. I wish I could stay put. I wish I could spend time investing in relationships more deeply, working long term on social and political issues, spend time working to build and invite people to Church. Relationships and bridges take time to build. Time seems to be a fleeting resource in the peripatetic life of someone in their mid-twenties.
But I have to go off to seminary, to learn more about Church and bridge-building. I have an adventure ahead of me. I know it will be at least as challenging and exciting as the adventures I leave behind. I hope I can find community, find a sense of place, even if I have to leave it again.
We are all pilgrims, wanderers, immigrants on our way to the Kingdom of God.
(A post from last year, but i had a hard time putting it better this year, and it is a great preview for our week ahead in El Salvador)
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?This question sits heavy on our chests over the days of Holy Week. Today is Good Friday, and today the tomb is full. Jesus has died a miserable and tortured death.I just spent a week with students in El Salvador and every day we asked, “What was hard for you today?” There were a lot of answers to this question: watching our cook Mercedes cry as she explained that she hadn’t seen her daughter for three years because she had crossed illegally into the United States to try to better the family’s situation back home; listening to young people who were afraid to play in church soccer tournament lest they be caught up in gang violence; seeing depictions of bodies tortured and murdered during the war; the sights of the ongoing poverty throughout El Salvador.
David Moseley, a theologian who teaches at the Bishop’s School, has been giving a course on Jurgen Moltmann’s book “The Crucified God” during lent. Last night he preached for the Good Friday service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. His theme was theodicy the question: “where is God when people suffer?” Often we think about Jesus of Nazareth’s death on the cross as the “sacrifice to cover our sins” as if what was needed was a perfect man to die. Moltmann reminds us that in Jesus, God Himself suffers on the cross. God does not exact revenge on an innocent human, but comes to earth and reveals his love by suffering WITH us. It is God who is crucified, God who cries out in agony and feeling abandoned, God who dies. God enters into the absolute messiness of humanity and experiences excruciating loss out of a desire for relationship.
I was struck by one of the relics on display at the Centro de Mgr. Romero. It was here where in 1989 six Jesuit priests were martyred because they dared to write that God was on the side of the poor. On the night that the Salvadoran ejercito entered the theology center and executed the priests, one of them was reading “The Crucified God.” The book soaked up so much blood from the priest that it appears waterlogged. Now it is displayed in a glass case like the relics of more ancient saints, reminding us of God’s work through people who choose to follow.
The German Lutheran Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died in a Nazi Concentration camp wrote that grace is costly. 70 years ago Bonhoeffer wrote against a Spirituality that provided what he saw as “cheap grace,” salvation without struggle, supposed appeasement of the need to feel redeemed. This grace is not the salvation of Jesus, who calls on us to follow him in the way of the cross. Discipleship leads to suffering because the world still perpetuates the anti-Christian systems of oppression which diminish the humanity of the ones God created and loves. Those who follow Jesus are called to throw themselves into the gear-work of the world’s machine of oppression.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? The disciples must have asked this question of God. Seeing him beaten, thrashed, bloodied, hanging by nails through his flesh. Jesus himself asks, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Where is God when those we love suffer? Our faith in the incarnation causes us to answer that it is God himself who asks that question, God himself who today suffers with us unto death.
God then is with the suffering of the world. The Crucified God died with the Jesuits in the UCA, He cries with the hungry children out in the campo, and is there when a teenager is murdered in the name of gang war.
Were you there? Will you be?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble…
Water rushes down hillsides, sometimes carrying with it whole villages. The refuse washing into the rivers contaminates them and the water tables they feed giving the people in Bajo Lempa an unimaginably high incidence of kidney disease. Often the rain falls so hard that it washes over damns and floods entire villages. The rain’s moisture brings with it mosquitoes and a current triple epidemic of dengue fever, malaria, and pneumonia. Swelling rivers, sweating faces, rain drops large enough to fill a coffee mug, this much moisture astounds and devastates. In El Salvador the rain can be as violent as the recent history of this smallest of Central American countries.
The rain would be more welcome but that this is the second most deforested country in the Western Hemisphere. The lack of trees to hold soil with their roots, to nourish the air with fresh oxygen means that the water carries away more than it hydrates. Rich soil is skimmed off the rocky surface of a volcanic country. A similar process happens with the countries wealth.
Reagan spoke about “trickle down” economics; Salvadorans talk about a circle of wealth. US companies and their Salvadoran agents employ people in maquilas (assembly factories with commonly horrendous working conditions) and pay them near poverty level salaries. Salvadorans then purchase US company produced goods or US farm produce. This circle continually benefits the rich of the U.S. and El Salvador and prevents the everyday worker from access to an improving way of life. The economic power washes over the everyday Salvadoran, eroding their spirit and bodies.
I am currently reading “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater” Vonnegut’s classic satire of American wealth. Written reflecting on the McCarthy era, one of the characters when asked if he is now or ever has been a Communist says that he supposes has “communistic thoughts” every once in awhile, but it is hard to work with the poor without “tripping over Karl Marx, or the Bible every once in awhile.”
I wrote the words at the top of this blog entry in El Salvador. I’m writing these words in a Cafe in Point Loma, CA…home of San Diego’s fleet of private yachts. I listed to the most sane words about immigration I’ve heard in a long time come out of Dennis Kucinich’s mouth the other day (I do not intend to endorse him by saying this, I just think his ideas about immigration are insightful.) He talked about the first step needing to occur being repealing NAFTA…allowing people to have dignified work with a living wage within their own country. I think that is true. Until we pay attention to the level of abuse that we participate in economically around the world, El Salvador will continue to be deforested. Until we work to repare the damage we have done, people in Latin America will suffer so that executives can ride their yachts in San Diego.
