Tag: radical

Technology Inspires Radical Change Thanks To Visionary Social Entrepreneurs
RECOMMENDATIONS

Technology Inspires Radical Change Thanks To Visionary Social Entrepreneurs

(BPT) - Wireless is at the heart of modern life, and 5G — the fifth generation of wireless — has the potential to transform how people connect and inspire change in their communities. Social entrepreneurs are recognizing the opportunity to influence the greater good through these new 5G networks, tapping into mobile technologies to help address some of the country’s biggest challenges. Consider mRelief, which uses text messages, voice and web to create access to nutritious food for American families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP provides around 40 million people with access to nutritious food each year. During the pandemic, that number increased dramatically — some states received between 100-400% more SNAP applications than usual. mRelief is helping ...
Don’t Listen To The Sanitized Version Of History – Jackie Robinson Was A Radical
Journalism

Don’t Listen To The Sanitized Version Of History – Jackie Robinson Was A Radical

In our new book, “Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America,” Rob Elias and I profile the many iconoclasts, dissenters and mavericks who defied baseball’s and society’s establishment. But none took as many risks – and had as big an impact – as Jackie Robinson. Though Robinson was a fierce competitor, an outstanding athlete and a deeply religious man, the aspect of his legacy that often gets glossed over is that he was also a radical. The sanitized version of the Jackie Robinson story goes something like this: He was a remarkable athlete who, with his unusual level of self-control, was the perfect person to break baseball’s color line. In the face of jeers and taunts, he was able to put his head down and let his play do the talki...
MLK Jr. Had A More Radical Message Than A Dream Of Racial Brotherhood
Religion

MLK Jr. Had A More Radical Message Than A Dream Of Racial Brotherhood

Martin Luther King Jr. has come to be revered as a hero who led a nonviolent struggle to reform and redeem the United States. His birthday is celebrated as a national holiday. Tributes are paid to him on his death anniversary each April, and his legacy is honored in multiple ways. But from my perspective as a historian of religion and civil rights, the true radicalism of his thought remains underappreciated. The “civil saint” portrayed nowadays was, by the end of his life, a social and economic radical, who argued forcefully for the necessity of economic justice in the pursuit of racial equality. Three particular works from 1957 to 1967 illustrate how King’s political thought evolved from a hopeful reformer to a radical critic. King’s support for white moderates For much of the 1950s, Ki...
Coronavirus closures could lead to a radical revolution in conservation
COVID-19, SCIENCE

Coronavirus closures could lead to a radical revolution in conservation

In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, social media was flooded with reports of animals reclaiming abandoned environments. According to one widely shared post, dolphins had returned to the canals of Venice. While many of those stories have since been debunked, conservationists are providing legitimate reports of cleaner air and water, and wildlife reclaiming contested habitats. With widespread closures of parks and conservation areas around the world, could this be an opportunity to transform the way we manage and use these protected environments? The ecological benefits of park closures In Canada, wildlife sightings are on the rise. Cole Burton, a conservation biologist at the University of British Columbia, says that the pandemic has provided an opportunity to study how animals r...
Black Funerals Are a Radical Testament to Blackness
Journalism

Black Funerals Are a Radical Testament to Blackness

For African Americans, homegoings are the ultimate form of liberation. The funerals—or homegoing celebrations, as they’re called in many Black communities—of Aretha Franklin and hip-hop artist Nipsey Hussle garnered millions of views from people across the globe on live television and viral online videos. They gave the world a glimpse of a tradition and ritual that until recently has mostly been witnessed from within African American communities. Whether held at a small storefront church or one that seats thousands, as in Franklin’s, or at a stadium, as in Hussle’s, some things are constant: On display are flower-filled altars as the backdrop of the neatly casketed loved one, tear-jerking slideshows, the belting of Negro spirituals, odes to ancestors, sometimes West Africa...
Journalism

A Radical Vision for Food: Everyone Growing It for Each Other

I grow a half-dozen fruit trees along my 40-foot stretch of sidewalk. The generous fig tree just finished, two young apple trees and a pomegranate are full of bounty, and the kumquat and persimmon are ripening. As much as I love the simple act of orcharding, I’m also sharing a radical vision for food and economy in my suburban Los Angeles community of Altadena. What if all my neighbors grew food in their yards, too? What if we shared the bounty with each other? What if you could eat a delicious, varied, and healthy meal from the abundance provided by your neighborhood trees? Forty percent of the food produced in the part of the planet we call the U.S. is wasted. Much of this waste ends up in landfills, where it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The food–climate nexus is a wind...
The Radical Possibility of the Women’s March
SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Radical Possibility of the Women’s March

On Saturday, a constellation of woman-centered, anti-Trump protest lit up across all seven continents. (A group on an expedition ship in Antarctica adopted the unofficial slogan “Penguins for Peace.”) At the center of the action was the Women’s March on Washington, which drew an estimated half a million participants. There were men and women of all origins and orientations, a teeming parade of pink hats and protest signs that brightened against a pale silver fog blanketing the sky. There were sensible moms and crust punks, bros in Patagonia and toddlers on shoulders. A group of Gen Xers from Pittsburgh kept yelling, “Go Steelers!” A great-grandmother leaned on a walker, ambling gamely down the National Mall with clouds of cotton in her ears. Source: The Radical Possibility of the Women’s M...