I encourage everyone to consider where you stand on the following issues. But before you go through the list, remember that we can’t be neutral on any of these issues. We can be analytical, rational — and we can attempt to be objective (emphasis on attempt), but we can’t be neutral.
In a moment where facts have lost their impact on decision-making, we have to decide where we sit/stand/lie down on these issues. Silence is consent. Apathy is consent.
*religious freedom
*immigration
*shaming poor and working classes
*affordable healthcare
*drug treatment
*military spending
*access to guns
*education spending
*gender equality
*reproductive rights
*militarization of the police
*climate change
*materialistic consumption
*blaming any segment of society in a general sense
and the list could go on…
We have no common social fabric as a society if we don’t take a stand on these issues. We are simply left with a collection of isolated individuals, or isolated groups, who are concerned with the well being of themselves and their families.
Reading List:
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
Kiese Laymon, Long Division
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Brady Udall, Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Other authors:
Jelani Cobb, New Yorker
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic
James Fallows, The Atlantic
Dominique Matti, Medium
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
Charles Blow, New York Times
Amanda Hess, New York Times
David Roth, SB Nation
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Originally Published on Medium
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