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The major civil rights issue of the day involves marriage equality for same sex partners. Two cases have been heard by the U.S. Supreme Court recently. The cases involve constitutional challenges to California’s Proposition 8 and to the Defense of Marriage Act. While the arguments were being made inside the court, many people assembled outside in the cold to lend support or opposition to the participants inside. Whether for or against marriage equality, the observers turned out in large numbers because they believed the proceedings were highly significant. However, the court may have shown its reluctance to make a sweeping ruling, and the decision will likely leave much to be discussed and debated in the future.

California’s proposition 8 governs whether gay and lesbian couples may marry. Most observers believe the court will avoid a ruling altogether and that would mean gay and lesbian couples may start marrying again. This would be a narrow ruling and only apply to California.

The Defense of Marriage Act prevents the federal government from giving legally married gay and lesbian couples federal benefits. Congress has not given a reasonable justification for treating legally married same-sex couples differently than legally married opposite-sex couples. For this reason, the Defense of Marriage Act should be declared unconstitutional.

These cases will be decided this summer after the members of the court think and research their opinions. More issues about the rights of gays and lesbians will have to be resolved later after more citizens think about the American promise of equal justice for all.

-AW

Over the past four years as a student at Vanderbilt and resident of Nashville, I have been privileged to work with many people who are working toward a more just community for all of us.

One of these groups of people is Nashville Fair Food, a diverse group of Nashvillians including people of faith, students, and community members.  Growing up hearing stories from my parents and grandparents about their family farm, I had ideas about farm work and food that were nostalgic and positive.  I had no idea what kind of food might, in the twentieth or twenty-first century, be “picked by the hand of a slave.”

Nashville Fair Food works to support the Campaign for Fair Food, started by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which seeks to bring together consumers and farmworkers to bring major food corporations to change their supply chain practices and support the CIW’s Fair Food Program, the most credible and comprehensive social responsibility program in U.S. agriculture today. In an industry where beatings of workers used to be commonplace, the Fair Food Program has brought a new day to Florida’s tomato fields, where 90% of fresh tomatoes eaten in the U.S. during the non-summer months are grown.

Now, workers in these fields have guaranteed shade and water, a right to minimum wage, a right to a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked, a right to a work environment free from sexual harassment, a right to be free from slavery and forced labor, and on-the-job worker-to-worker training on these rights.

There is still work to be done so that this progress in the agricultural industry continues and that these new rights of workers are protected and expanded.

Publix Supermarkets has refused to join the Fair Food Program, saying that “if there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business,” presumably referring to the seven federal slavery prosecutions in Florida agriculture involving over 1,200 workers over the past decade.

Publix’s refusal to join, as one of the largest buyers of tomatoes, threatens to block the progress in human rights that has been made by the CIW and their allies over the past decade of the Campaign for Fair Food.  But as Nashville residents and students and consumers of tomatoes, we have the power to change this, especially since Publix is expanding in the Nashville and Middle Tennessee area and they are very attentive to how their potential customers view their practices.

I joined many of these workers in their 200-mile march on foot from Immokalee, where they live and work, to Lakeland, Florida, where Publix Supermarkets is headquartered.  Nashville Fair Food needs your support to expand and continue its work  with the Campaign for Fair Food and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.   Please contribute generously toward this cause that is dear to my  heart.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” -MLK

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-BW

“It’s not enough to have power, it’s how you use power that defines your character and legacy,” said the farmer’s wife. “If we don’t cooperate and solve our problems, our children and their children will suffer. They may survive but what kind of world will they inherit? They’ll be safe in a cold, gray bunker living out their days alone, without community, without knowing what it means to contribute to something greater than themselves.”

The farmer knew his wife to be compassionate and wise. And yes, he was scared of things he didn’t understand. He had grown up with very little: hungry and dirty, no running water, no heat or light.  Together he and his wife had built a house and made it a home. He was scared to lose his independence; he didn’t want to depend on others because he was stubborn and admittedly selfish – he wanted what he wanted, and he wanted it when he wanted it. Now he was being asked to be part of a “power cooperative” that would include people from the next hollow over, and across the river, and farther out than that. He liked the idea of having electricity to run his sawmill, and heat his house in winter and cool it in summer, and give his wife the stove she could use without chopping wood. But he hated to compromise and he was stubborn, “They might disagree with what I want to do!”

“Since when have you always gotten your way?” insisted the farmer’s wife. “You can be so pig-headed sometimes!” She reminded him how they had run the county farm for the poor for a while, and how she had taught the children in the one room school house to get it started. “And when the flood wiped out our barn, the neighbors came over to help us rebuild.”

“But why do we need to depend on others more than we already do?” he asked. “Families keep food in cellars and after dark we have kerosene lamps to read the Bible. What else is there?”

“There is a time for everything,” the farmer’s wife reminded him. “There are places that don’t have cellars, and they could use machines to store food and keep it from spoiling. And electric lights give off better light than our lamps.”

The farmer and his wife talked out this dilemma and reached a decision, just like hundreds and thousands of others did in the 1930’s, and somehow they came to the conclusion that change was coming and they would embrace it and be a part of it.

The farmers who organized the coop voted to develop guidelines to keep the coops focused. The farmer told his wife about the seven guiding principles called Cooperative or Rochdale Principles. He said, “They are voluntary with open membership, democratic member control, economic participation of the capital, autonomy, education and training of members, cooperation with other cooperatives, and sustainable development of communities.” The farmer and his wife noticed drastic changes after becoming part of the coop. During their lifetime, they saw the growth of transportation, communication and industry. The farmer’s wife is proud to own a television and computer and call her grandchildren on her cell phone.

At family gatherings, the farmer and his wife like to tell their grandchildren about the history of electrification in America. “In the 1930’s, rural America was agriculture based,” he said. “During the depression, FDR signed the TVA act which gave light and much more to the entire region, not just Tennessee. Then, in 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration offered funding to rural areas to develop electric service and it was the local farmer and his neighbors who organized to form nonprofit electric cooperatives. From then, until 1948, Tennessee formed 23 coops which still exist today. In the post war boom, TVA became the largest energy supplier in the country. Today, there are over 1000 coops in the country, including the 23 in Tennessee, which make energy for over 30 million people across the nation. The coops use hydroelectric dams, nuclear plants, coal-fired plants and “green” energy sources like wind, solar and methane gas.”

The farmer’s grandson piped up, “You sure know a lot about electric coops!”

His grandfather replied, “I was one of the founding members of the local cooperative. Today, the electrical cooperative continues to benefit its members with geothermal energy, automated meter reading, compact fluorescent lamps, electric heat pumps, and electric car charging. Coops also offer loans to upgrade homes and schools. In fact, coops offer many programs to encourage and enable members to save energy and money, and also give directly to their communities with time, donations, education, counseling and safety demonstrations. The coop’s own Tennessee Magazine is one of the best sources of information and entertainment for the thousands of coop members in Tennessee, and it stands as an enduring legacy of how to use power.”

The farmer’s wife stood up and shouted, “I think we’ve heard enough on this topic. You must think you’re a teacher instead of a farmer. Give someone else a chance to talk. We are all hungry, so just hush and eat.” Grace was said and everybody chowed down on grandma’s home cooking.

-AW

The wealthy have an ethical obligation to share more of their wealth with the government and poor. There is no magical formula to acquire wealth. It comes about from factors which may be benign or malicious. Benign factors include hard work, sacrifice and learning. Malicious factors include windfalls, lotteries, inheritances and luck. Just as the tides rise and fall, wealth comes and goes. It is accumulated from others and it is natural to share wealth as a way to achieve balance. It is part of the natural ebb and flow of wealth that it should be shared by the wealthy with the government and the poor.

First, it must be acknowledged that there is not a divine right to be wealthy. The wealthy are no more deserving of wealth than anyone else. While someone may be born into a wealthy family or society, no one is really born with a “silver spoon in the mouth.” Also, there is no known alchemy to turn someone into a person of wealth. It has to do with many factors including luck.

Next, the factors which produce wealth may be benign or malicious. If wealth results from years of hard work and sacrifice, the person who gets wealthy may deserve it, although it must be conceded that others who work hard and sacrifice may have missed out on growing wealthy because of other factors. If wealth results from being at the right place at the right time, the wealthy person will likely be viewed as undeserving and ill feelings will arise surrounding this wealthy person. Regardless of the emergence of wealth, the person who lives an excessive or showy lifestyle damages society by creating ill will. With this harm comes the unlikely continuation of wealth to the same person because those from whom wealth has been gotten will choose to contribute their resources to another person, if available.

Finally, wealth is presently a fact of life in the same way that poverty is a fact of life. Until we can eliminate these things, it benefits us to redistribute wealth to some degree. Governments are perhaps the greatest force for doing this by their decisions to tax and spend. Also, nongovernmental or nonprofit organizations have expanded across the world to provide services to the poor by collecting money from those who have money and using it for the poor.

If people viewed wealth and poverty as a natural part of society, we could begin to address it in a more natural way. Tides rise and fall near the ocean waters. When the tide is in, fishing may be easier. When the tides fall, beachcombing is possible. The wealthy have the ability to give more money than others, and should do so as naturally as the rising tides.

-AW

Many coaches have tried to motivate their teams to win using simple phrases. One such phrase is: Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. These coaches believed that it was essential to instill the value of winning above all else. I disagree, and do not believe that winning is everything nor is it the only thing. There are many examples that demonstrate that winning is not the most important value. For example, it is valuable to play fairly by following the rules, to learn from mistakes, and to experiment by trial and error to reach a goal.

First, it is how we play that is most important. When an athlete does not follow the rules, he may lose everything he has tried to win. Consider the situation of champion cyclist Lance Armstrong. He won 7 Tour de France cycling races, but was stripped of his victories and banned for life from participating in the sport due to his unfair use of performance enhancing drugs and illegal doping. He did everything to win, and now he is banned from participating in a sport he loved. He will be known as someone who played unfairly.

Next, it is essential to learn from mistakes. For example, where would we be if Thomas Edison gave up after failing in his early attempts to make the electric light bulb? Literally, we would still be in the dark. Edison once said that he had not failed 10,000 times before making the electric light bulb, but that he had succeeded in learning 10,000 ways not to make an electric light! He learned to create success from each mistake on his way to achieving his goal.

Finally, trial and error is significant to success. For example, the Wright Brothers did not give up when their early models of the airplane crashed. It took the Wright Brothers years of experimentation to get their plane to fly. They studied and made many changes to their original design before making flight possible. Along the way they learned a great deal and did not give up. Accepting the process of trial and error was a difficult but essential lesson.

The examples of Armstrong, Edison, and the Wright brothers demonstrate that winning is not the only thing, and that success does not come easily. People learn from the process and move on toward their goal. Without room for making mistakes, people might never make progress. As these examples show, winning isn’t everything and most definitely it is not the only thing.

-AW

Environ

Environmental Health

mental Health

Visit the Ingmar Bergman Foundation to see more about his works:

…Besides, behind-the-scenes footage relating to eighteen of his films have been donated to the archive, including The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Scenes from a Marriage.

One lux is equal to one lumen per square metre:
1 lx = 1 lm/m2 = 1 cd•sr•m–2.

Illuminance Example

Get ready to have some fun, count some birds and make a difference, because the 14th annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) takes place February 18 through February 21.
Anyone can participate. Simply watch and count birds in your yard, a nearby park, or maybe at a school. Then report what you saw by entering your bird list online at GBBC