Barbara Ehrenreich "Raising a Fuss", Newsweek (+interview)

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Ehrenreich’s best-selling “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by In America” (Metropolitan) is a record of her life in several states as she tried to survive on a string of minimum-wage jobs. The book chronicles the myriad hardships and indignities she suffered as a waitress, Wal-Mart clerk, nursing-home aid and cleaning woman in her quest to illuminate the lives of the millions of women who re-entered the workforce after welfare reform. Since the book came out, she has authored a string of columns for several outlets—including a twice-weekly temporary stint at The New York Times—focusing her outrage on the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, human-rights abuses and the Bush administration.
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One thing that stood out in that Nation piece was your claim that “the closest analogy to America’s bureaucratized evangelical movement is Hamas.” Are you equating the Christian right with a terrorist group?
That’s not equating. It’s certainly not saying that they’re terrorists. But it is the same style of using social services of various kinds to draw people into an ideologically based movement.

And your argument is that secular liberals could learn a thing or two from this?
The left really used to be very good at these things. We were the ones that used to have all the free clinics and ghetto storefronts and women’s health centers. Now it seems like the right-leaning evangelical churches are a little more ambitious. I think it’s great that they do social services. What worries me is that they do it in the context of a political outlook which opposes public services.

You write, though, that secular liberals should invoke Jesus.
I will and often do invoke Jesus, because of his social teachings. Kerry was unable to articulate the war or economic issues as moral issues. And he was too compromised on the war; he never came out against it. He hesitated to run with some of the atrocities like Abu Ghraib—I guess for fear of offending somebody. I think a lot of Americans were waiting for somebody to say “this is disgusting.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6533102/site/newsweek/

[opihimoimoi]

1. She speaks with hard earned Wisdom....started from the bottom where most

of the wisdom lies.

[muse]

2. I agree with her comments about Jesus' social teachings and Americans

waiting for someone to say that the things going on in Iraq - such as Abu Ghraib - were disgusting. That really was missing. I noticed it and I wondered about it. I wonder why the Democratic party thinks we have to be so very careful about such things in national elections, while the right goes after us and after hot button issues full on.

[alarimer]

3. I think the Christian right is made up of terrorists

Or at least much of it is. Look at the anti-abortion fanatics that shoot doctors and bomb clinics. Are they not terrorists? Don't they cause terror in order to inflict their political will? Isn't the right-wing militia movement (at least some of which are closely affiliated with various fringe Christian sects) in some sense a terrorist movement?

[ikojo]

4. Eric Rudolph....

Paul Hill....

Tim McVeigh



All right wing Christians....all terrorists charged with killing people in the name of religion.

[Alpharetta]

5. they are terrorists. you could see their glee during Shock and Awe

I read rightwing christian websites and their lack of compassion for Iraqi civilians and children was disgusting.

It was the epitome of terrorism: all-out willful financial and political support for the carnage of civilians.