Beacon Broadside

Susan Katz Miller answers questions for interfaith families

2013-05-22T07:18:37-07:00

Susan Katz Miller is a former Newsweek reporter and former US correspondent for New Scientist. She blogs on interfaith families for the Huffington Post and OnBeingBoth.com. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and two interfaith teenagers. Her book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, will be published by Beacon Press in October. This post originally appeared at her OnBeingBoth blog.

In a regular feature titled “Ask Interfaith Mom,” I plan to tackle your questions about raising interfaith kids. Here’s a great question from a comment on a recent post about interfaith grandparents:

Question: In raising my son both, I realize his grandparents will not always like or support how we are bringing the two traditions together and I am interested in ways to present to them that they should always feel free to opt out of saying anything or doing anything they don’t really believe. Thanks for any guidance you have!

One of the most liberating aspects of choosing both family religions is that you give yourself permission to pass on to your children that which is meaningful to you, rather than a required system of beliefs and practices. And in making your own choices, you set a precedent that your children will have the right to opt into or out of any of these beliefs or practices.

Discussing this freedom with your parents (the grandparents) will help them to feel comfortable making their own choices about whether or not to participate in any ritual or prayer they might encounter when celebrating with your interfaith family. Ideally then, the idea that they have permission to participate, or not, would be integral and natural, and would not need to be announced in a formal manner.

But of course, it may take time for extended family members to reach this state of appreciation. Grandparents who have spent a lifetime in a “monofaith” environment, and who may still feel sadness over the fact that their grandchildren will not be raised exclusively in their own religion, cannot always be expected to jump into interfaith practice with enthusiasm. What I can tell you is that many who have started out reluctant or even upset over the idea of an interfaith upbringing, over time have come to appreciate the way extended interfaith families are able to share spiritual inspiration, religious history, and cultures.

However, everyone in an interfaith family (or for that matter, living in our religiously pluralistic society) is going to have moments, often when visiting a more traditional place of worship, when they may want to opt out of participating in a prayer or ritual. Let’s get to some challenging specifics: for instance, taking communion at church. In some churches, the ritual of taking communion becomes a public declaration around who has the right to participate. In such a setting, it would be important to reassure interfaith family members in advance (whether a grandparent, spouse, or interfaith child) that it is fine to remain seated in the pew, and not go up to take communion. Explain that even some Christians abstain from communion at certain times or in certain places, for their own personal reasons, or because not every Christian denomination invites all Christians from other denominations to participate. While those who choose not to take communion may feel like they are sticking out by staying seated, in theory no one should ask them why they remained in the pew.

When you design an interfaith family celebration, this is your opportunity to make the rituals and prayers as inclusive as possible. Ideally, such a celebration would be so welcoming that no one would feel the need to abstain. Sometimes, this means recasting a prayer or ritual to be more radically inclusive, and explicitly inviting all to participate. Personally, I have seen Jewish people (and even a rabbi) take communion at a super-progressive Christian service in which the communion ritual was presented as a metaphorical table where all share food and drink together, based on the Jewish rituals of blessing over bread and wine, regardless of religious institutional membership or beliefs.

To take another example from the other side of the aisle, the bris, or Jewish ritual circumcision for baby boys, can be difficult for non-Jewish family members. Honestly, it is difficult for many Jewish people too, some of whom now oppose circumcision and have designed baby-welcoming ceremonies that do not involve cutting. It’s important to share all the different viewpoints on this ritual with non-Jewish family. I do understand why some interfaith families choose to have a bris, and the deep meaning it has for some Jewish family members. But I don’t think anyone (Jewish or otherwise) should feel required to attend the ceremony. And it would be important to communicate this permission to participate, or not, to everyone in the extended family as early as possible to avoid misunderstandings. Both the new grandparents and their intermarried children must make an extra effort to empathize with each other at this vulnerable moment around birth: the new parents must try hard to accept and not resent family members who choose not to participate, and family must try hard to accept and not resent the choice of the new parents to honor (or conversely, to move away from) such an ancient ritual.

Sometimes, grandparents may surprise you with their willingness to participate, and cross theological boundaries. For instance, I was worried about how my Jewish father would react to hearing his interfaith grandchildren say a traditional Christian prayer such as the Lord’s Prayer in our interfaith community Gathering. To my surprise, I saw my father reciting the prayer along with his grandchildren, and discovered that he said this prayer in his public school classroom everyday, growing up in the 1930s. Since the prayer does not mention Jesus, my father did not even realize until much later that this is officially a Christian prayer. As an adult interfaith child who was raised Jewish, my own appreciation of the Lord’s Prayer is heightened by the knowledge that many scholars have pointed out the parallels between the language in the Lord’s Prayer and the Kaddish and other central Jewish prayers. So a moment I had anticipated as possibly problematic became an opportunity for interesting theological discussion with my parents.

What experiences have you had in including interfaith grandparents? Or, what is your perspective as an interfaith grandparent? And what questions do you have for “Ask Interfaith Mom”?

Beacon Buzz: How “Snob Zones” keep out affordable housing

2013-05-16T09:14:28-07:00

Notable Mentions

Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate by Lisa Prevost

Lisa Prevost discussed "How Zoning Affects the Wealth Gap" with David Brancaccio on NPR's Marketplace Morning Report.

“For a housing market, it’s always healthy to have a range of housing so that people can move up the ladder,” she says. “I grew up in New Hampshire and I remember when the small towns did have the bank president living the same place where the farm laborers did. We have lost a lot of that through suburbanization and as we see the deepening inequities between incomes, I think that’s reinforced by some of this zoning.” [Listen]

Write up on Connecticut Magazine’s blog

In four of the six New England states (excluding Maine and New Hampshire), the recent national "housing bust" hasn't reduced home prices enough to make the median-priced home affordable for the average household. According to the National Association of Realtors, only 25 percent of Americans want a home on an oversized lot, yet that type of housing accounts for 43 percent of the supply in New England. [Read the rest]

The Point, on Cape Cod’s NPR station, did a segment on narrative non-fiction with their host, a local librarian, and the Cape Cod Times book editor. They mention both Snob Zones and Dirt Work starting around the 24 minute mark. [Listen] Which leads us to...

Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl

National Parks Traveler review:

In her book, Ms. Byl recalls long days of clearing brush, digging ditches, building bridges, cleaning up after forest fires, and blasting snow. She learned how to use such unfamiliar tools as crosscut saws, pulaskis, and chainsaws. She grew accustomed to dealing with the harsh living conditions and injuries that are part of the job.

And, frankly, she learned how to cope in the backcountry, miles from the nearest restroom. Yes, Ms. Byl is not afraid to talk about "dropping her pants in the woods."

Listen to Christine Byl on Alaska Public Radio’s Talk of Alaska talking about her tools, her life in the woods, wildlife, and more. Especially great to hear her reading her meditation on the lynx.

Take a quick look at what Christine carries in her backpack in this YouTube video:

Light Without Fire: The Making of America's First Muslim College by Scott Korb

Reviewed on Caffeinated Muslim

Excerpt on Religion & Politics

Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape by Brad Tyer

Review from the Billings Gazette: “an engaging, almost breathtaking bit of nonfiction.”

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth by Fred Pearce

Fred Pearce was interviewed about The Land Grabbers for New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word Of Mouth

The Most Expensive Game in Town: The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today's Families by Mark Hyman

Dave Zirin heaps praise on Mark Hyman and The Most Expensive Game in Town on his blog for The Nation.

Notable Mentions

Hunting Season: A Story of Home, Immigration, and Murder by Mirta Ojito (November)

"An account that is as unflinching as it is important. Both an incisive reconstruction of a heartbreaking murder and an unsparing diagnosis of a national malady . . . with HUNTING SEASON Ojito has done truth an invaluable service. Extraordinary." —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family by Susan Katz Miller (October)

A moving, personal story that opens new dimensions of life in general and religious life in particular that rise out of an interfaith family. Susan Katz Miller writes with the passion of experience and with the integrity of being authentic. Its insights moved me deeply.”—John Shelby Spong, author of The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

How Gotcha Politics in the Doctor's Office Can Harm Patient Care

2013-05-14T08:22:59-07:00

Today's post is from Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us. Joffe is a professor in the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco (however, the views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Regents of the University of California, UCSF, or the UCSF Medical Center). This post originally appeared at RHRealityCheck.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that in health-care settings a positive relationship between clinician and patient—one comprised of mutual understanding, respect, and trust—is beneficial to both parties. It is only common sense that when such a relationship exists, however brief it may be, the provider develops more sympathy for the needs of the patient, and the latter’s overall well-being can improve if she or he senses personal interest and concern on the part of the former.

Arguably, this point is especially relevant in abortion care because of the extreme politicization and stigma that surrounds the procedure. Some patients, having been exposed to anti-abortion distortions, are terrified of the procedure (one provider told me of a patient who asked, “When are you going to use the steel ball with the knives on it?”) and some do not view abortion doctors as “real” doctors. Some physicians, in turn, depending on the circumstances of their particular facility, have little chance to interact with patients, except when she is on the procedure table, possibly under anesthesia. Therefore, these providers may have an inadequate understanding of the reasons that brought these women to the clinic. Indeed, several research studies of abortion staff done soon after abortion became legal in the United States have shown that those who had opportunities for verbal interaction with patients—for example, social workers and counselors—were more positively inclined toward patients than those whose interactions were confined to just physical care. My own research among abortion providing physicians has revealed that the aspect of this work many find most meaningful is simply talking to patients, and some are wistful that there is not more opportunity for this.

In the period immediately after Roe v. Wade, it was very common in most abortion settings for designated counselors or physicians to have the opportunity for open-ended discussion with a patient. This kind of encounter, which goes beyond offering the patient the requisite informed consent information and ascertaining she has not been coerced into the decision, has been difficult for many facilities to sustain over the years for various reasons, not the least being that in many states patient-doctor time is eaten up by doctors having to impart to patients legislatively mandated scripts about abortion, many of which contain blatant falsehoods. Nevertheless, most abortion facilities with which I am familiar make every effort to offer additional conversational time to patients who seem most in need of it.

What do these efforts to maintain meaningful provider-patient conversations have to do with Live Action, the anti-abortion group notorious for its undercover “investigations” of abortion clinics? For several years, Live Action operatives, pretending to be prospective abortion patients, have gone into clinics, questioning various levels of staff about abortion policies and procedures, and when their hidden cameras manage to catch a staff person making an inopportune comment, the organization triumphantly posts videos (typically highly edited) of these visits.

The latest Live Action “gotcha” moment is in a video of Dr. Leroy Carhart, one of the few providers in the United States who openly provides post-24-week abortions in selected circumstances, and as such is a longstanding target of the anti-abortion movement. In the video, Carhart is repeatedly grilled by a would-be patient, who portrays herself as 26 weeks pregnant, as to the procedure he would use in a pregnancy of that gestation. In response to the woman’s stated concern that a fetus whose demise has been caused by injection “would decay inside of her,” Carhart seeks to reassure her, at one point saying the fetus would soften like “meat in a Crock-Pot.” Predictably, Live Action, and subsequently other anti-abortion groups, have seized upon this statement and used it to further their campaign of what might be called the “Gosnellization” of individuals who provide later abortions—that is, to claim that Carhart and his colleagues are no different than the rogue doctor now on trial in Philadelphia for dangerous and illegal practices.

But Leroy Carhart and Kermit Gosnell could not be more different as abortion providers. As the New York Times pointed out in its coverage of this incident, “[T]he video provides no evidence of illegal action or subpar medical techniques.” Tracy Weitz, my University of California, San Francisco colleague, further pointed out to the paper the evident concern that Carhart exhibited toward the (imposter) patient, and offered this context to his “Crock-Pot” remark: “Doctors struggle to find terminology to help a client understand what’s happening, and while it may seem wrong to us, it may be appropriate for that conversation.” (The recent film After Tiller also amply demonstrates Dr. Carhart’s compassionate relationship with patients.)

What will be the upshot of this latest Live Action incident? Dr. Carhart, who previously provided later abortions in the clinic of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas before Tiller was assassinated, will not be deterred from his “mission” to carry on his friend’s work, as the former military surgeon often puts it. In the years since he decided to devote himself full-time to abortion work, Carhart has had extremists burn down his barn with 17 horses inside, seen the state of Nebraska pass a law deliberately aimed at preventing him from performing abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation, and is subject to constant protestors at his two clinics as well as vilification in anti-abortion media.

But while Dr. Carhart will continue with his work, I do fear that a possible consequence of these well-publicized Live Action videos may be a chilling effect on the free and open conversation between clinic staff and patients that is such an important part of abortion care. Should this occur, I have no doubt the anti-abortion movement will declaim self-righteously about the “coldness” and “impersonality” of abortion facilities.

Moms in Writing: Michael Patrick MacDonald, Amie Klempnauer Miller, and Kate Whouley

2013-05-12T03:32:59-07:00

In honor of Mother's Day and moms everywhere, where sharing a few of our favorite Mom moments in Beacon books. In these passages we've posted on the Beacon Press Scribd page, we have three varied perspectives on motherhood. Michael Patrick MacDonald reflects upon his mother's strength in a passage from All Souls: A Family Story From Southie. Amie Klempnauer Miller recounts the decision-making path she and her partner went down on their way to becoming moms in an excerpt from She Looks Just Like You. And, in Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words, Kate Whouley tells the story of the challenges funnier moments of one Mother's Day with her mom.

All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald by Beacon Press

She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood by Amie Klempnauer Miller by Beacon Press

Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words: Travels with Mom in the Land of Dementia by Kate Whouley by Beacon Press

Moms in Writing: Chris Stedman and Kevin Jennings on their Moms

2013-05-10T10:03:56-07:00

In honor of Mother's Day and moms everywhere, where sharing a few of our favorite Mom moments in Beacon books. Today's passages illustrate two beautiful gifts the authors received from their moms: for Kevin Jennings, a love of books; for Chris Stedman, a sense of gratitude. Please feel free to share your own mom memories in the comments!

Chris Stedman from Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious

My childhood was marked by simplicity and hard work and love—which is to say that it was actually quite carefree. My mother did a good job of instilling in us a deep sense of gratitude for the things we had; I didn’t really notice that we had less than other people until I was older and began to look for differences everywhere. It never seemed odd to me that we wore hand-me-down and home-spun clothing, or that we used homemade remedies like covering our hair with mayonnaise and saran wrap when we got lice from someone at school. When we were young children my mom made sure my siblings and I were well cared for—it was only later in life that I started telling myself that my story was that of “the poor kid.” The life she provided was rich, filled with complex colors of every hue, with trips to the beach in the early hours of the day before the parks became overcrowded with people desperate to escape the summer swelter, with arts and crafts and makeshift blanket forts.

Her inventiveness masked the meagerness we lived with; I never even realized until later in life that during my youngest years she had only owned two pairs of jeans and a few sweatshirts. She had an unparalleled aptitude for spinning straw into gold—our Christmases were full of hand-crafted and recycled gifts, and for birthdays she would set up elaborate party games, hanging pretzels from the ceiling with ribbon, hand-painting a bunny for cotton ball pin-the-tail-on-the-rabbit, and writing up thought-provoking trivia. My earliest years were characterized by imaginative games my siblings and I invented such as “Mean Diseased Cat,” where we manned our alert stations in anticipation of the return of a particularly feral cat that once meandered down our street; by the birthday cakes my mom painstakingly prepared; by the hand-crafted skip-its, teeter-totters, and pajamas that were our most prized possessions; by sitting down together as a family for dinner every single night, even if it was just bottom-shelf macaroni and cheese or saltine crackers topped with melted Kraft Singles, which we ate near the end of particularly tight months. I didn’t realize that you could buy Play-Doh at the store until I was nearly in middle school; we always made ours from scratch. I think we enjoyed it more that way, having concocted it ourselves before using it to build new things. We were deeply invested in everything we did, because most things were an act of creation and an act of love.

Kevin Jennings from Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son: A Memoir of Growing Up, Coming Out, and Changing America's Schools

Above all, she taught me to love books and reading. Mom was a voracious reader, a trait she passed down to me. The highlight of our week would be our Saturday trips to the downtown public library in Winston-Salem—the “big one” and just about the only site that would get Mom regularly to venture out of the safety of Lewisville into “the city.” It was always just me and her, as the only thing that bored Paul more than Civil War battlefields was a library. I loved the downtown library. It was beyond a church—it was a cathedral, filled with holy objects, books, so many that I despaired that I would ever be able to read them all. The librarians were friendly and thought it was great, not weird, that I liked to read so much. I would check out as many books as I could carry, usually a stack so large I couldn’t see over them, and would devour them all during the course of the week, returning the next Saturday, eager for more. Library trips were the best. They even beat new trailer shopping.

At first I would go to the children’s section and Mom to the adult section. By fourth grade or so, I had read all the books that interested me in the children’s section and decided that the rest were too childish for this budding intellectual snob to bother with. I told Mom that I wanted to go where she went, the adult section. This created a crisis for Mom: in the adult section, there was a replica of the Venus de Milo. Mom felt it was inappropriate to have a nude statue in a public place, period, and especially inappropriate for a young boy to see it. (If she only knew...) I begged and pleaded and finally she relented, but only if I first promised not to look at the statue of the “naked lady.” Ignoring the naked lady, I raced in and returned with a forehead-high stack. I was in heaven.

Beacon Books at Audible: Faitheist

2013-05-09T08:57:58-07:00

Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.

Today's post is a cross-post from the Bright List.

Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious, by Chris Stedman

“Who can we be, together? ...The goal should be neither conversion nor the destruction of religion— but rather to make a better world.”

—Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God: A Love Story

If Chris Stedman had stayed in the church, he'd be everyone's favorite closeted youth pastor.

But this Fellow from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University had the bravery to come out as gay and an atheist. He found, as he tried to reach out in the atheist world, that, as organized groups, they were often defined by what they were against, rather than what they were for.

Stedman calls for non-religious people to identify their values and work towards a positive identity. He asks the religious to move beyond their assumptions about who atheists are, and to recognize our common humanity.

Narrated by Corey Snow, who also read Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death.

--Aretha Bright and Willow Pennell

Geoffrey Canada: Our failing schools. Enough is enough!

2013-05-08T10:57:25-07:00

If you take the time to watch one TED Talk this week, make it this one. Geoffrey Canada is an educational innovator, and in this video (part of which appeared on PBS) he makes a powerful argument for changing the way we think about public education.

Canada knows how to help kids achieve great things: as the president of Harlem Children's Zone, he has changed countless lives and transformed a community. While the Harlem Children’s Zone started out focusing on a single block -- West 119th Street -- it has since expanded exponentially. It now encompasses more than 100 square blocks and serves an estimated 10,000 children, providing pre-kindergarten care, after-school programs, health care, college planning and classes for soon-to-be-parents.

Beacon Press is proud to be the publisher of Canada's two books: Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence (which was also adapted into a graphic book) and Reaching Up For Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America.

Watch and Share Geoffrey Canada: Our failing schools. Enough is enough!

Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence

Other formats: Graphic book | Kindle | Nook | Audio

Long before the avalanche of praise for his work—from Oprah Winfrey, from President Bill Clinton, from President Barack Obama—long before he became known for his talk show appearances, Members Project spots, and documentaries like Waiting for Superman, Geoffrey Canada was a small boy growing up scared on the mean streets of the South Bronx. His childhood world was one where "sidewalk boys" learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher. In his candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner.

"I wish every city had a Geoffrey Canada."
—President Bill Clinton

"Geoffrey Canada's realistic yet hopeful voice finds fresh expression through the comic style of Jamar Nicholas. Canada's account of his childhood and the role that violence played in shaping his experiences provides hard-won and crucial lessons."
—Pedro A. Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University

"Jamar Nicholas is a master of his craft—his drawings are full of life and truly stunning."
—Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

"Geoffrey Canada is one of this country's genuine heroes. His personal meditation on America's culture of violence is a beacon of hope for our humanity."
—Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage

"Canada has never lost touch with the child within himself or with the fears of the children around him struggling to reach adulthood in the violent streets of America."
—Marian Wright Edelman, author of The Measure of Our Success

"Canada takes us on a powerful journey. . . . He is a man of hope and a wonderful storyteller."
—Henry Hampton, executive producer, Eyes on the Prize

Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate

2013-05-07T09:05:35-07:00

Towns with strict zoning are the best towns, aren't they? They're all about preserving local "character," protecting the natural environment, and maintaining attractive neighborhoods. Right?

In this bold challenge to conventional wisdom, Lisa Prevost strips away the quaint façades of these desirable towns to reveal the uglier impulses behind their proud allegiance to local control. These eye-opening stories illustrate the outrageous lengths to which town leaders and affluent residents will go to prohibit housing that might attract the "wrong" sort of people. Prevost takes readers to a rural second-home community that is so restrictive that its celebrity residents may soon outnumber its children, to a struggling fishing village as it rises up against farmworker housing open to Latino immigrants, and to a northern lake community that brazenly deems itself out of bounds to apartment dwellers. From the blueberry barrens of Down East to the Gold Coast of Connecticut, these stories show how communities have seemingly cast aside the all-American credo of "opportunity for all" in favor of "I was here first." Snob Zones warns that this pattern of exclusion is unsustainable and raises thought-provoking questions about what it means to be a community in post-recession America.

About the Author

Lisa Prevost is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe Magazine, More, Ladies' Home Journal, and other publications. A native New Englander, she has lived and worked as a reporter in four of the six New England states. She lives in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Read the introduction at Scribd.

"Zoning Kills Affordable Housing," Review at Reason magazine.

"New England: Hotbed for Housing Snobs?" Review at the Boston Globe.

Listen to Lisa Prevost on the Marketplace Morning Report.

Will CT Be the First State to Label GMOs?

2013-05-02T12:21:29-07:00

Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food System from 1979 to 2003. He currently consults and writes on food system issues from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is the author of Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture and Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty.

A version of this essay appeared in the Hartford Courant .

If there’s one thing that stands out for me during my 25 years in Connecticut, it was the quiet but delicious return of good food and local farms.

For readers who are less than 40 years old, please remember, there were no farmers’ markets in the state until 1978. Today, according to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, there are 118. There were also no community supported agriculture farms. Today, according to Connecticut NOFA, there are 70.

Throughout the latter decades of the 20^th century, subdivisions were consuming the state’s farmland faster than you could eat a Glastonbury peach. Today, between the state’s farmland preservation program and the Connecticut Farmland Trust, over 325 farms and 40,000 acres have been permanently protected. Overall, the number of farms is no longer on the decline but actually on the rise. And with equal importance, residents living in lower income neighborhoods are witnessing a return of supermarkets to some of the state’s worst food deserts.

Progress like this cannot be taken for granted, nor can it go unattributed. It was due to the public will, meaning the actions of thousands of informed Connecticut citizens, policymakers, and concerned organizations who thoughtfully reshaped the direction of the state’s then atrophying food system.

I sense such a destiny-making moment is before Connecticut again. The passage of House Bill 6519, “An Act Concerning the Labeling of Genetically Engineered Food,” would not only make Connecticut the first state to require such labeling, it would also give the state’s citizens a chance to chart the direction of their food system. Labeling food products comprised of ingredients grown or raised by genetically modified means will grant every Connecticut consumer the opportunity to make an informed choice, just as they have done for local food, farmland protection, and access to healthy food for all.

The efficacy and safety of genetic modification is still in doubt and will be debated for some time to come. Clearly, the public must engage in this debate and not concede its outcome to a small number of profit-driven biotechnology corporations, scientists, and federal officials. But given the pit-bull determination of the food industry to fight every attempt to rein it in – a fight financed with bottomless coffers – genetically engineered ingredients will remain on grocery store shelves for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean that we have to consume them if we don’t want to. Hence, the need for information, which is why savvy marketers like Whole Foods will soon be labeling GE food.

It is prudent to beware of food and farm corporations bearing gifts. Like a Trojan horse that appears one morning on the town common, genetically engineered food proponents claim that it poses no harm to humans or the environment, and that we need the technology to feed the nine billion people expected by 2050. Consider the claims and the source. Already, genetically engineered crops have been associated with the decline of monarch butterfly populations as well as a greater degree of herbicide tolerance – requiring more herbicides instead of less. Yields from GE seeds have shown mixed results, not always exceeding those of conventional or hybridized seeds. And United Nation’s bodies have not embraced GMOs as a way to feed a hungry world, proposing instead more sustainable agriculture methods and a greater emphasis on small-scale farming and social equity in developing nations.

When entering uncharted territory where risk is prevalent, we should employ the precautionary principle. This means that the introduction of new technologies require a much higher level of certainty and scientific consensus than we currently have with GMOs. As my mother taught me when I first learned to cross busy streets, look both ways, look again and again, and then proceed with caution.

I’ve always been proud of Connecticut’s independent streak. A tenacious refusal to accept pat solutions and the mediocrity of market-driven events has served it well over the years. Information is power because it gives people the power to choose and to act. Labeling genetically engineered food will give the state’s consumers the information they need to make their own choice while allowing its citizens to choose the food system that reflects their needs and values.

Photo by Jessie Bennett.

The Real Problem With the "Real Beauty" Campaign

2013-05-01T08:39:36-07:00

Laurie Essig teaches sociology at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. She has written for a variety of publications, including Legal Affairs, Salon, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She is the author of American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and Our Quest for Perfection.

This post originally appeared on her blog, Love Inc., at Psychology Today.

Dove's "Real Beauty" has another stunning commercial. In this one, "Real Beauty Sketches," a forensic artist sits with his back turned as a woman describes how she sees herself. He draws her image. Then another woman, an acquaintance, is brought in to describe how she sees the first woman. He draws that image. In the denouement, the woman is forced to look at the portrait he made from her own description and compare it to the far more attractive and realistic one described by her acquaintance. In other words, it is a beautiful illustration of something we already know: women have a warped sense of how they look.

But women's hatred of the way they look didn't just appear out of thin air. It was implanted in us in a variety of ways, but primarily through advertising that uses "idealized" images of beauty and asks us to compare ourselves to them.

After all, women and girls didn't think a whole lot about how they looked before capitalism. Historians such as Joan Brumberg have shown that adolescent girls prior to advertising tended to think about their inner make-up-- were they kind and good and devout. But with advertising early on telling women to buy creams, "slim" down, put on a bra and generally engage in what Brumberg calls the "body project," young girls started to worry far more about cellulite on their thighs than goodness in their hearts. Some social psychology studies indicate that even women with high levels of self-esteem will feel worse about themselves after looking at these idealized images found in advertising.

So capitalism created the problem of women being ugly and also created the solution: beauty products. It is an ingenious business plan. Add to this beauty business certain technologies, such as cosmetic surgery and Photoshop, and you have the completely unreal moment in which we now reside where women spend inordinate amounts of money attempting to make themselves look like images of women who don't actually exist. We are caught trying to be a copy of a copy without an original.

This beauty matrix is surely gendered (and raced and classed). Most studies show that women in conditions of hypercapitalism do in fact feel far worse about themselves than men. That's why parodies of the Dove "Real Sketches" have already popped up, with men describing themselves as far more beautiful than others see them. It's funny because it's true. Men aren't as important to the $160 Billion per yearbeauty product industry and continue to make up only about 5% of cosmetic surgery patients.

So women- caught in a web of being sold ugliness and the promise of beauty- can be startled, even moved to tears, watching Dove's "Real Sketches," whereas for many men the body project seems laughable.

But is the solution really loving the way we look? With the aid of products that help us look more "natural" such as those sold by Dove? Or is the solution actually outside the values of the market? "Erotic capital" has always been traded among humans, but the sort of erotic capital that is now demanded from the standards set by advertising is unattainable. Even if we starve ourselves, remain young forever, and get a lot of expensive cosmetic surgery to "perfect" our features, we still exist in a world where blemishes are not touched up, eyes not made brighter, and teeth whiter whenever we look at ourselves. Unless we can figure out a way to Photoshop our real bodies rather than images of them, we are stuck with imperfection.

Rather than telling women that they are in fact beautiful, it might be far more revolutionary to say beauty, real or otherwise, just isn't as valuable as other forms of capital, like educational capital or the sort of "goodness" that was valued by girls before the age of advertising.