Darwin Day is a holiday that celebrates science and reason, logic and nature and human beings.  The Darwin Day website Darwin Day tells us: "Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin -- the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity."

ESWoW will be recognizing Darwin Day this year on our Community Call on Feb. 19, 2012.  We'll be joined by Dr. Anne Klaeysen, Leader of the NY Society for Ethical Culture.  Anne presented the Platform Address at the NY Society on 2/12/12 on "Inherit the Wind" Revisited: An Update on the Evolution Wars.   Read more »

It will be two years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.  I started to write that it is the second anniversary of this decision, but that sounds too celebratory to me.

I realized that while I understood the key concept of this decision, I wasn't clear on the details. Reading a summary from Cornell Law School reminded me that Citizens United was a non-profit group wanting to use funds from its general treasury to cablecast a movie about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries. 

Other reading I did identified Citizens United, not surprisingly, as a conservative group.  What a reminder that how we name organizations and concepts is so important, because on first glance, who would think that Citizens United would be more supportive of corporations than actual citizens. 

The most illuminating source I checked was the website of the Citizens United organization.  This organization has a video posted on its website one year after the decision.  The focus is on free speech, promoting how the CU vs. FEC decision promotes unlimited free speech.  I highly recommend that you watch this video that includes clips from Newt Gingrich and decide what you think about it. 

Given that I don't think corporations should have all the rights that human beings do, I'm more inclined to agree with the viewpoints expressed by organizations that oppose the Citizens United decision and are working to change it. Read more »

January 12, 2012 was the 100th Anniversary of the strike in Lawrence, MA known as the Bread and Roses strike.

Why is this strike important to us today?  Why is it important to make note of this particular labor action?  In learning more about this strike I was struck by several aspects that made this action unique and more importantly, might offer lessons for labor and other organizing now.

This strike against the textile industry  "...started as a wage protest [and] quickly became a fight for better conditions both on and off the job. The strikers angrily complained about mistreatment by overseers and a job pace that made them work "like horses." They also objected to a premium system that held part of their expected earnings hostage to month-long production and attendance standards."

This was one of the first "modern" strikes.  It was the first time there was a strike against an entire industry, rather than just workers in one craft going on strike.  Also notable in this strike was how the International Workers of the World (the Wobblies) were able to incorporate, and give equal voice to workers of more than a dozen different ethnicities, very important in a city of immigrants.

Workers from each ethnic group were represented when it came to making decisions regarding the strike. How could we manage to do something like this today?  Can this concept be incorporated into the Occupy Movement?  (I saw a small example of it at the Occupy Boston Summit meeting last year, held near the Chinatown area, with translation services which allowed full participation to those for whom English is not their first language.) Read more »

What would it be like to have an intentional focus to live more ethically for a year? How can we pay more attention to our actions - and reactions, being more reflective in the choices we make when we interact with people, the choices we make in our daily lives, the choices we make as we try to make the world a better place?  Could we do this for a year?  What would we do?

This was the challenge I put to members and friends of the Ethical Society Without Walls (ESWoW) at the beginning of 2011 year, and one I share with you.

Some members of ESWoW have been taking action to live more ethically in 2011.  But just as with any habit, or lifestyle change, living ethically isn't something that you do for a year and then stop.  So we'll be doing another year of living ethically and hope that more people will join us and share their ideas, challenges, and of course, successes.

I gave a Platform Address (rather than a sermon) on this topic at several Ethical Societies which meet in person over the last year, and share the latest version, given in November 2011 at the Essex County Society for Ethical Culture in NJ.  Please click on the link for the attachment to read the full Platform. Read more »

This year is almost at an end and the new year is almost upon us. This time of year is often used for reflection and preparation.  Read more »

As I prepare to speak at the Baltimore Ethical Society on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I struggle to make sense of the tragedy.  I offer these thoughts to ESWoW visitors in the hope that they may allow more meaning and ethical commitment to grow from this wound in America’s psyche.  The image of a wound came to me again this past July when staying in my cousin’s Battery Park apartment before speaking at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.  As I headed uptown toward the Society that Sunday morning, I passed “ground zero”  - the site where once stood the twin towers.  Although most of the refuse and jagged metal had been removed or buried, the site struck me as a giant aching wound in the cityscape.  Today, September 11, a public memorial site opens there with two huge sunken reflection pools marking the footprint of the disappeared buildings in which so many died.  The pools are cut into the ground, and water pours like the tears of family members and friends of the deceased. 

As I drove by, I was reminded of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., which knifes into a soft grassy knoll next to the Lincoln Memorial.  I recall her saying that she wanted to cut the earth, revealing a wound that slowly heals but never fully disappears.  Like Vietnam, the 9/11 horror of ten years ago will never go away.  Like ground zero in lower Manhattan, it will always ache with deep and powerful suffering.  Read more »

This is an article originally published in the newsletter of the Baltimore Ethical Society. It is based on a Platform address given by Hugh as Leader of the Baltimore Ethical Society on May 1, 2011.  (SR)

The theme of my May 1 Platform on "leadership" was that we all have the potential - in our own unique way - to be leaders.  I then asked, "How does a community where everyone is a leader keep chaos at bay?"  I mean if a parade was made up of nothing more than drum majors, wouldn't it just degenerate into a crowd of people each marching in different directions to the beat of their own drummer?

Well, in part, what holds us together are our wonderful shared collection of beliefs, ways of living, ethical relationships, and caring communities.  We are also held together by our common history from Felix Adler to today.  For me, however, what really holds us together are the values we share.  While they have evolved through our history, they maintain a consistency and heart.

I concluded my talk by sharing the three values I tend to promote in my "elevator speech" - that two-minute explanation of Ethical Culture you offer to an inquirer in the time that you are riding in an elevator together.  A member of the Baltimore Society suggested I share these values again in this newsletter, and so I do.  I ask you to consider them over the summer.

The three values I find that best reflect what Ethical Culture means to me are as follows:

            1) respect and celebration of the inherent worth of every person;

            2)  the importance of creating flourishing ethical relationships; and Read more »

Opening Words - There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.  - Meg Wheatley Read more »

On Friday, June 17, 2011, Rose Walker died.  She had just had her 101th birthday less than two weeks before. Rose had been ill for some time.  She died at a hospital in Florida with family and loved ones around her.  This news was shared with me just prior to the Platform at the AEU Assembly, and we were able to include a short memorial tribute to her as part of the Platform.  Rose was a member of ESWoW.

Other pieces are being written about Rose, particularly those who knew her as the driving force of the National Ethical Service.  I will share links to them when I get them.  I will also share more information about the memorial service for Rose as I get it, and we might even do a memorial call to honor her memory.

I knew who Rose Walker was since I was three and my parents first took me to the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture.  Who was Rose Walker?  Why she was the lady with the hats, of course.  And then, as I got older, she was one of the ladies sitting in the garden after a Sunday Platform meeting - still with her hat on - talking about important things.  I had no idea what the important things were then.  Now I know that those were meetings of the local group of the Women's Conference - now the National Ethical Service and I have a better understanding of why United Nations Day was always observed at the Brooklyn Society and why the Children's Sunday Assembly students always went trick or treating for UNICEF, and knew what the acronym stood for and understood a fair amount about UNICEF programs. Read more »