Rabbi Michael Lerner

I've always loved Thanksgiving for calling us to remember the many blessings in our lives.
And I've been particularly moved by the tens of thousands of people who volunteer at homeless shelters and food programs for the poor on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And this is a moment when we should also challenge the self-satisfied in the world who relish in their own good fortune but ignore the connection between their own well-being and the suffering of others around the world.
The sad fact is that those of us who live in the advanced industrial societies benefit from trade arrangements, sponsored by the neo-liberals like President Clinton and possibly next president Hillary Clinton, by President Obama and by a coalition of "free-trade" Democrats and Republicans, which allows the US to penetrate markets of developing countries, selling our agricultural and other products at lower costs than they can be produced in those countries. The impact over time has been to devastate subsistence farming, pushing the former farmers off of their land and into the huge slums surrounding the big cities of the global south and east, where they scavene for food for their families, not infrequently having to traffic their daughters into prostitution and their sons into exploitative factories where they barely can survive (but at least do not starve to death).  Meanwhile, the U.N. reports that close to 10,000 children under the age of five die every single day, including Thanksgiving, from malnutrition or diseases related to malnutrition. That's about 10-12 million children a year (the equivalent of two Holocausts).  And as the benefits of the New Deal are slowly dismantled in the U.S. , millions of families struggle to survive, a few million homeless, many more barely able to feed their children, as wages decline, the inevitable result of the decline of the labor movement and the unwillingness of the previously liberal forces in the Democratic Party to fight for a LIVING WAGE for the workers in the U.S. whose incomes have steadily declined. 
Think I'm exaggerating? Please take the time to read a wonderfully important new book by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (a professor at Seattle University) called 

Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation

After I read Cynthia Moe-Lobeda's fabulous book, I invited her to become a member of the Editorial Board of Tikkun Magazine and she accepted.
.  You'll see when you read her book that, if anyting, I'm only skimming the surface of the ways that we in the most successful capitalist societies are directly implicated in the suffering and impoverishment of the peoples of the world. When millions of people line up on Black Friday to get the "hot deals" on electronics and clothes produced in part by workers around the world, those deals are available only because workers are wildly underpaid in factories where young women workers are often sexually harrassed and paid wages that barely feed their children. Earlier this week I sent you an email urging you to join the picket lines outside of WalMart on behalf of American workers who are not paid a  living wage in this country, but the level of exploitation in countries where many of the products we consume is considerably greater. Add to that the role of the banks where many of us keep our monies--banks that lent money to dictatorships in Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, and now are demanding repayment at levels that force the current democratically elected governments to either repay those loans (at the cost of imposing severe cutbacks in employment and food subsidies for their own people) or face economic boycotts from the US and other advanced capitalist societies. And I haven't even begun to talk about the way that our consumption patterns are destroying the global environment, enabling US companies to dump waste in poorer countries around the world, and destroying our oceans, air, and land for future generations. 
The solution is not to feel guilty and add a line in your Thanksgiving prayers on behalf of the poor and on behalf of the earth. . Rather it is to embrace real solutions.
So I'm asking you to raise at your Thanksgiving dinner two of the solutions proposed by the NSP--Network of Spiritual Progressives:
1. The Global Marshall Plan.  If you haven't read the full version of it, do that today, please--it can be downloaded (the full version) at www.tikkun.org/GMP. You will see that its call to once and for all END (not merely alleviate) poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care and to repair damage already done to the environment, is BOTH about the US taking the lead with the advanced industrial societies in dedicating 1-2% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year for the next twenty to this goal, but ALSO about changing the treaties and trade deals that have done so much damage to the rest of the world even as they enrich the 1% and our major corporations in the Western world. And you'll see how it insists on this program not making the mistakes of past "aid" programs, resisting the Western arrogance that often accompanies aid, and acknowledging how much the economically impoverished cultures have to teach us on an ethical and spiritual level. As you know, the GMP was introduced into the last session of Congress by Congressman Keith Ellison and co-sponsored by 20 other Congressional reps,and though it has no chance in the current Congress, you could, with neighbors and friends, get it endorsed by your local city council and state legislators and insist that whoever is seeking your vote in 2014 Congressional elections and in the presidential primaries of 2016 endorse this NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan. First step: talk about today at your Thanksgiving dinner, and at subsequent dinners with your family and friends.
2. The ESRA--Environmental and Social Responsbility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is the plan which would  A. Not only overturn Citizens United, but also get MONEY OUT OF POLITICS entirely by requiring public funding of all state and national elections and BAN ALL PRIVATE AND CORPORATE MONIES or any other source of monies in elections while requiring major media to give free and equal time to major candidates  B. Require all corporations with incomes above $50 million a year to get a new corporate charter once every five years that would only be granted to those corporations that can prove a SATISFACTORY HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY to a jury of ordinary citizens, which jury would hear testimony not only from the corporate directors and workers, but also from environmentalists and people who have been impacted by the operations of that corporation all around the world. And it would prohibit reductions in investments or employment or the moving of assets outside the U.S. until those corporations had made adequate arrangements for the workers who gave years of their lives to enable those corporations to flourish.  C. Require environmental sustainability education at every grade level from kindergarten through graduate and professional school levels. That education would not only give every student environmental skills, but also teach nonviolent communication, how to work with others to protect the environment, how to understand the interconnection between all human beings on the planet and how our well being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and of course on the well-being of the planet itself, and how to replace our extreme individualism with a new sense of solidarity with and caring for each other. Please read the full version of the ESRA at www.tikkun.org/ESRA.
These are the programs of the Network of Spiritual Progressives that deserve your attention and support--and though ultimately they need you to be insisting that anyone seeking your support in elections  on city, state and national levels endorse these programs, a first step is to talk about them today at your Thanksgiving dinner and every day thereafter.  A first step: JOIN the Network of Spiritual Progressives atwww.spiritualprogressives.org, AND/OR send Tikkun/NSP a tax-deductible contribution either on line atwww.tikkun.org or by check at Tikkun, 2342 Shattuck Ave, Sutie 1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94704,  And why not also give a subscription to Tikkun (either the hard copy print edition or the online version) as a HOLIDAY GIFT to your friends and loved ones, coworkers or political allies or members of your religious or spiritual community or students or your children or grandchildren or to a neighbor? You can do that online atwww.tikkun.org.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Love and blessings,
Rabbi Michael Lerner    Editor, Tikkun magazine and co-chair with Baptist minister J. Alfred Smith, Sr. of the Network of Spiritual Progressives
 rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com