Benjamin Raber

If your plan is for 1 year, plant rice.
If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees.
If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.
- Ricardo Tavárez #ccda #weareccda

Tax the Rich!

The average US taxpayer spends $36 a year on SNAP

You know what they spend on corporate subsidies? $670

Poor and disabled people who need food are not the problem

If you’re angry about “your money” feeding people but not angry it’s giving tax cuts to the wealthy?

You’re doing their dirty work.

My day yesterday:

10 am: teach election law class about the shameful history of legislative districts drawn to dilute/suppress urban voters

10 pm: see the new proposed Ohio map, and what the Ohio GOP wants to do to Cincinnati

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House.

Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity.

They are not the same.

Jordan: Load management never should happen Michael Jordan didn't hold back on load management in the NBA, saying on NBC: "It shouldn't be needed, first and foremost."

Michael Jordan is criticizing current NBA players for load management. I agree with some of his critiques, but it's a bit ironic given that Jordan took a 17 month break to play baseball (and grieve), had a 1/2 year break due to a lockout, and stepped away from basketball a 2nd time for 32 months.

"Today, the question has simply changed form:
“Are they here legally?” is the new “Who is my neighbor?”"
- Jonathan Haskell, Knoxville,TN #ccda

What is the average length of an empire? #chatgbt

It’s estimated that 8 out of 10 immigrants at risk of deportation in this country are Christians. So why are so many Evangelicals cheering as ICE agents brutally round them up, pull them away from jobs and family, throw them in unmarked vans and send them off to be deported? Jesus wept.

7. The system usually allows the wealthy to decide what to do about the poor. Interestingly enough, the Bible has a few things to say about that, as well.

If you've never been poor, you don't understand just how expensive it is to be poor, especially in America.

P.S. Read "Poverty, By America."

6. Corporations (Walmart, oil companies, defense contractors) get tax subsidies every year. So do certain families. Somehow this gets a pass. Tax subsidies are, in fact, "government handouts."

🚨THOUGHTS on Christians and SNAP🚨:

1. If you want the government to pass "biblical" laws on things like abortion, then why not on feeding the hungry?

2. The Bible is filled with laws about taking care of the poor. (2,000 verses or so.)

A significant component of modern iterations of ableism is a capitalist market logic and neoliberal value system defining the economic productivity of individuals as a moral and social good, and foundational to the social and moral “health” of societies.

They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor... -Tupac Shakur

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. -Dr. King

Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me. -Jesus

DENOMINATIONS BY MEMBERS' INCOME LEVEL
I always thought it was protestant mainline = the richest, holiness pentecostal = lowest income. I was close. From
@ryanburge.bsky.social Check out his page.

They Tell Us To Fear Muslims While The US Empire Terrorizes The World Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

They Tell Us To Fear Muslims While The US Empire Terrorizes The World

The empire we live under is everything we’re trained to fear. Our own rulers are the murderers. Our own rulers are the terrorists. Our own rulers are the tyrants. Our rulers are the problem.
www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-tell-...

Jesus’ strongest words were for those religious leaders who used the words of God to crush and destroy humanity.

The Bonwit Teller Building: How Donald Trump Destroyed an Art Deco Treasure Donald Trump may occupy the White House, but after a weekend of supporting neo-Nazis and white supremacists, he returned to his real seat of power – Trump Tower. Here in his self-made citadel…

Donald is notoriously indifferent to American heritage. One example:

secretsofmanhattan.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/t...

It's not just that the NYT chose to ignore the massive protests -- 300,000 in their city alone! -- but that the piece they *did* run on the front page about Democrats is almost cartoonishly bad in how much it whines that they're just not doing what A.G. Sulzberger LXVII wants them to do.

“We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing…false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again," says Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University.

The largest mass protests by number of participants in US history happened yesterday and the only mention on the front page of the NYT is Jamelle Bouie's opinion column: no diner-diving for sentiments of the unheard masses, no coverage of the Trump video, no sense for what it says about the moment.

Here are the details and our methodology. Judge for yourself: www.propublica.org/article/immi...

This is the beauty of BlueSky. No-one will be force-fed this via algorithm. Trolling draws blocks rather than amplification.

My book American Idolatry uses data and history to tell Christians

1: the best way to love God is to love your neighbor and to define neighbor as broadly as possible

And

2: Christian nationalism keeps you from doing #1 b/c it demands you idolize power, fear, and violence

We must always be aware that both secular and religious systems easily draw us in by the use of words and the glitter of power, calling us to serve the kingdom of man rather than the kingdom of God.

Solid, fascinating lineup right here.

Du Bois basically did a version of this in his bibliography in Black Reconstruction

07734, does he know about writing words upside down yet?