Christian kosher laws?
Christians might consider adopting contemporary forms of kosher laws, Garret Keizer suggests in The Christian Century (4/19-26/00).

"We live in a time when Christians of the industrialized world sense that they are implicated in any number of crimes against nature and neighbor but feel powerless to extricate themselves from their own culpability," Keizer writes. "We live in a time when many Christians feel a crisis of identity within an alien culture that not so long ago described itself (albeit incredibly) as 'Christian.'

"This is not unlike the historical situation in which a group of Israelites found themselves in the sixth century before the Common Era. They were exiles in Babylon, a conquered people without country or shrine. They needed ways in which to preserve their identity and counteract their powerlessness. They also needed a way in which households could effectively replace the temple they had last seen in flames.

"Their answer to these needs was profoundly simple. They codified the way they ate. They took the preparation and eating of food that is to say, they took the basic stuff of biological, domestic and economic life and put it at the center of their religious life.

"They were, of course, a fragile minority. In contrast, there are at present more than 250 million Christians in North America. What if even half of them refused to purchase factory-produced chicken because that kind of food production is unjust to family farmers, unhealthy for poultry workers and certainly unpleasant for chickens? In other words, because it was 'against their religion.'"

Macabre vegetables
A Boston demonstration against biotechnology in March drew some 2,500 protesters, The Boston Globe reported (3/27/00).

"Protesters dressed as mutant creatures and macabre vegetables marched along five blocks of Boylston Street. The demonstration capped three days of a counter-conference staged in the shadow of Bio2000, a biotechnology convention at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center.

"Organizers of 'Biodevastation 2000' yesterday said the march, and the three-hour rally in Copley Square that preceded it, offered proof that the fledgling movement is catching up with those in Europe, where protesters have forced governments to rethink the sale of genetically modified foods."

Looking back on Seattle

The media's "obsessive focus on property destruction" by some WTO protesters in Seattle led to under-reporting of significant exchanges made possible by the nonviolent blockade, writes Chris Nye in Fellowship (3-4/00). "Many reporters unfairly depicted protesters as ignorant or vague on the issues," Nye says. "Not one reported the exchange I heard between a young man and a delegate from the European Union, one of hundreds that took place that day.

"The protester asked the delegate about a controversial WTO ruling striking down local laws that required shrimp trawlers to use equipment to protect dolphins from their nets.

"'Perhaps it's a burden to industry,' hazarded the delegate.

"'Do you know how much those devices cost?' the protester inquired.

"'No I don't,' the delegate replied.

"'Fifty dollars,' came the answer from the protester. 'What shrimp trawler can't afford 50 dollars for a low-end dolphin protector? And if they can't afford it, why shouldn't governments help them acquire it?'

"During a 30-minute conversation, the protester offered well-reasoned arguments supported by statistics and analysis. Similar scenes were repeated throughout the day as delegates, prevented from entering the convention hall by the protesters' blockades or the police, were deluged with questions and comments. The kind of access that corporations pay thousands of dollars for was afforded free by the protesters' nonviolent blockade."

Guerrilla curriculum
Convinced that TV-dependence was depriving his students of critical life experience, New York teacher John Taylor Gatto sent them on solitary pilgrimages through the streets of the city.

"Always acting in conspiracy with the kids' parents (who were as desperate as I was), I sent my 13-year-old students out to journey alone on foot through the five boroughs of New York City," Gatto writes in The Sun (4/00). "Some walked the circumference of Manhattan, a distance of about 28 miles. Others walked through different neighborhoods, comparing and contrasting them and constructing profiles of the people who lived in each from clues of dress, speech and architecture, coupled with interviews and library research. Some mapped Central Park, great university campuses, churches, businesses or museums. A few invaded such government departments as the board of education or the courts, describing and analyzing what they saw there.

"I didn't force my students to do this, but I made a standing offer that any of them could get a day or two or 10 away from school to explore part of the city -- as long as she or he was willing to walk alone."

Commenting on the recognition he received from school authorities, Gatto says, "The irony is that my guerrilla curriculum was designed to sabotage exactly the kind of passive attitudes that government schooling, like television, depends on."

Gardening for bio-diversity
"Some scientists suggest that the preservation of bio-diversity in many places may depend on gardeners," Lucinda Keils writes in Groundwork for a Just World (3/13/00). "If you garden or live in a place that has gardens, you can do something. Even planting a small number of native wildflowers and grasses will help preserve species. Learn which native trees, shrubs and plants feed native birds, animals and insects. Plant and preserve these natives. Ask nurseries to stock native plants and to stop stocking invasive exotic species. ... Because they are already genetically adapted to local conditions, native species require less or no fertilizer, and no pesticides. Once established they generally require no additional watering. They belong here."

Police license to kill
"The construction of a vast prison-industrial complex and the enlargement of private security forces throughout the U.S. have created the preconditions for a politically active, ideologically motivated national police apparatus," Columbia University's Manning Marable writes in Along the Color Line (3/00). "Thousands of cops no longer believe they can leave 'justice' to the courts. Many thousands more doubt the capacity or will of most elected officials to curb street crimes.

"It is instructive, and disturbing, that widespread examples of police deadly force and the disregard for citizens' Constitutional rights is not opposed by a significant number of white Americans. For example, in the wake of Patrick Dorismund's killing, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made callous remarks about the dead black man. Giuliani illegally disclosed Dorismond's sealed juvenile records, and refused to extend condolences to the deceased's family. All blacks, Latinos and even most whites living in New York City were appalled by Giuliani's racist behavior. Yet according to polls, only 28 percent of upstate New Yorkers and 34 percent of suburban voters disagreed with Giuliani's handling of this situation. Two-thirds of upstate New Yorkers even said that Giuliani should not have to express remorse to Dorismond's family.

"In effect, millions of white middle- and upper-class people have made the cold calculation that a certain level of unjustified killings of blacks, Latinos and poor people is necessary to maintain public order. Yet inevitably they will discover, much to their regret, that when the police and security forces are given a license to kill, that they will not stop at the boundaries of the black community."