Fairness

I think, for much of my adult life, I've had a sense of fairness - what it looks like, and what it's like when it's missing. So much of my current interests and work with CLUE, for example, are all about fairness for people who are otherwise targets of those who would strip away what's fair and replace it with a system that degrades the worker, humiliates them in front of fellow-workers, threatens them with termination, decreases or takes away benefits and job-security, reduces wages, and cuts back on full-time work and substitutes part-time work instead. There's something about all of this that smells to high heaven; it's unfair, and that means it's wrong, contrary to our creation as fellow-creatures, one to the other, and sharing the image of God with one another. And it's all driven by money, the God Mammon, the god of greed. How weird it is that these days the takers are not the poor, but the rich, and the companies they control, and the government agencies they have populated with their own kind, and the rich have convinced millions of Americans to praise greed and condemn the poor. I love America, and we've always loved money, but there was some restraint, even shame. But these days, starting with Mr. Reagan, greed has become good, kindness a waste of time, social justice defined by "I'll keep mine, and you and you can keep yours, and generosity limited to charity, which can mitigate suffering, of course, but does nothing to alter the system that perpetually creates suffering. More than anything, I'm saddened by huge segments of American Christianity that closes its eyes to the growing unfairness of American labor practices and environmental degradation, while singing praise songs and doing Bible study, "to know Jesus all the more." To which Jesus says, "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers" (Matthew 7.23).

Some thoughts after walking a picket line at the LAX Hilton Hotel, February 15, 20123