March 30, 2008 @ 9:37 pm | Category: gender/feminism, media
I have what I call the gender test for news. Whenever I hear news that spotlights a girl or woman I ask, would this story be the same or even exist if the person in the spotlight was male? This week my local newspaper ran a story about a run away 12 year old girl who danced nude at a “gentleman’s club.” The story is bad enough, but the newspaper has the audacity to grace the girl with the title of “stripper.” If this doesn’t demonstrate the hostile environment that girls and women live under, I don’t know what does. Tragically, this is no big deal to many and mild in the face of the exploitation of girls and women that plagues the world. P.S. The gentlemen got to keep their license and club remains open for business.
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March 22, 2008 @ 2:56 pm | Category: food, global issues, social justice
I’m in shock over the price of food. This week I paid over $7 for a gallon of organic milk. The increase in food prices is a global crisis, which I am afraid will outlast the mortgage crisis. See this article about a recent UN report. High food prices aren’t due to our inability to produce enough food. It’s because good land is being turned from growing wheat, barley, and hay to corn for the production of innocent sounding biofuel. We are burning our land in our cars! Global markets are addicted to fuel and the price is more hunger.This strikes me as a problem of food justice, and I consider it immoral to use good productive land for fuel.
When I was a child, my parents would pray before they went to the grocery store so God would stretch their food dollar to last all week. I was never hungry. Yet, I was left with an awareness when I go to the grocery store that not everybody can afford that $12 roast. Higher food prices mean that for the first time many of us will take the bread multiplication miracles of Jesus seriously. Where might we see the need for such a miracle and what is our part in it?
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