2003.12.27 - saturday, written next day

two messages on economic justice

catching up a day late in writing this entry. i received a couple of email messages that played a significant role in my day.

the first - an article from the christian science monitor titled "inequity: is it a sin?" - www.csmonitor.com/2003/1224/p14s03-lire.html - had been forwarded to me by christine, from the portside email list - see www.portside.org - to which we both subscribe. the article focuses on the emerging challenge to the "christian right" in response to their failure to heed biblical teachings on concern and care for the poor and dispossessed - the same concerns that had given rise to the plans for the faith-based people's people's agenda for economic justice in columbia, south carolina - www.economic-justice.us

after reading it, i felt there were a lot of people who might be interested in the article, and also that it offered a great lead into the plans for a people's agenda for economic justice, and decided to send it out to a good number of the electronic mailing lists that i either manage or subscribe to

so far, i have sent it to: [unitedreligions] - the united religions initiative (uri); [uri-contacts] - for uri cooperation circles; [toeslist] - the other economic summit (u.s.); [cccun] - the communications coordination committee for the united nations; [ffdngocaucus] - the ngo caucus for the financing for development conference and its followup; [socdev] - the ngo committee on social development; [partners] - the habitat partners network; and [mai] - the ad hoc working group on the mai

email lists have played a major role in information habitat's development - to a large extent in the follow-up to the 1996 habitat ii conference in istanbul under what became known as [wepip] - whole earth partnership, informatics and participation - see habitat.igc.org/projects/wepip.htm - and i have been long convinced that they are the most simple, valuable and effective vehicles for exchange of information, news and dialogue for virtually any committee, task force, or network.

for several years, leading into and beyond habitat ii, the management of email lists - and the cross-posting of messages between lists - had become a primary focus of information habitat's - and my own - activity, however, in recent years i have mostly been much less active in this area, however, from time to time i become involved in a surge of activity involving messages on email lists

meanwhile, back to the day of the diary. for some reason, a message titled "two notes of possible interest" caught my attention - i should mention that with the several hundred email messages that i receive each day, i only actually read a relatively small proportion. when i opened the message, i found two articles from the zenit news agency - www.xenit.org - "the world seen from rome", the first of which grabbed my attention - titled "law of the market is not enough, insists pope" - www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=46240

i didn't recognize the name of the person who had sent the message - maxim faust of ottawa, canada - and when i checked to see what list it had come through, i discovered in was that of "business ethics teaching space" - [email protected] - a list that i had not been aware that i was subscribed to.

i sent "law of the market is not enough" to most - perhaps all - of the lists to which i had sent "inequity: is it a sin?" - and also sent the latter to the business ethics list - and have since sent both articles to other people, including henrietta wise and carol wolman who both send frequent email messages widely, as well as to a couple of people who have just registered for the gandhi-king season

well, i am going to end this message as it is after 10 pm and we have to get up around 4:30 am to get to work - doing inventories at a couple of supermarkets in the bronx; this morning we had an even earlier start, 3:15 am for a 5 am ride from 14th street and 7th avenue

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