Deena Guzder,  DIVINE REBELS: The Radical Religious

Literary Nonfiction; Chicago Review Press (US & Canada); Tentative Publication Date: May 2011

(NOTE: The publishing house agreed to print the book on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper with soy-based ink and chlorine-free processing. A percentage of  royalties will go to the Fellowship of Reconciliation). See: IPG Spring 2011 Catalog (p. 33) or scroll to bottom for PDF.

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In January 1917, Alice Stokes Paul led mass demonstrations outside of the White House demanding women’s suffrage—she was imprisoned thrice in the U.S. and thrice in England, to which she responded by waging hunger strikes that were severe enough to require hospitalization. On May 4, 1961, James Zwerg participated in Freedom Rides to the segregated South and was greeted with chants of “Kill the nigger-loving son of a bitch!” as a mob of 3,000 used bats and pipes to beat the young white man nearly to death. On January 21, 1998, Roy Bourgeois was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $3,000 for illegally entering, disrupting and trying to close down the Fort Benning U.S. Army base that trained Latin American dictators such as Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer and Panama’s Manuel Noriega.

The common thread connecting Paul, Zwerg, and Bourgeois is not leftist politics or anarchist leanings, but religious convictions. Paul, a Quaker, believed that all people are created with an indistinguishable “Inner Light” regardless of their gender.  Zwerg, a minister in the United Church of Christ, regards his contribution to the civil rights movement as “an incredible religious experience” because he believed he was doing “God’s work” when protesting segregation. Bourgeois, an ordained Catholic Priest, denounced America’s support for dictatorships in Latin America and founded School of the Americas Watch, which seeks to shut down Fort Benning, in an effort to “live according to the justice and charity of Christ.”

Divine Rebels chronicles the extraordinary efforts of our nation’s radical souls, renegade angels, and divine rebels who agitate for a world free of racism, patriarchy, bigotry, retribution, ecocide, torture, poverty, and militarism.  These social justice activists view their faith as a personal commitment with public implications; they straddle the seemingly insurmountable divide between religious zealots striving for a Christian state and secular humanists prematurely bidding good riddance to God.  Their “third-way” is a religiously pluralistic modern world in which people of faith play a unique role in protecting the weak and safeguarding the sacred.  While pundits speak of the “Religious Right,” this is the underreported story of American Christians who are progressive because they are religious.  They don’t see themselves simply performing good work, but Godly work. These rabble-rousers are small in number and their efficacy is best measured on the margins, but they are part and parcel of an underreported American tradition that began with the nation’s earliest Quaker abolitionists. The activists profiled in this book believe in a community based on ethics, a world with infinite potential for improvement, and an inclusive God of love. They do not pursue political power or public approval, but the integrity of their own souls.  Fearing moral suicide over physical death, these activists regard moral autonomy as more liberating than physical freedom.  They sacrifice not only their own safety, but also their religious organizations’ approval.  By profiling social justice activists on the frontlines of the “Christian Left” since the 1950s, Divine Rebels articulates a forward-thinking alternative to both the Tea Party drone warping Christianity as well as the political left’s alienating cynicism towards all religion.

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View a PDF of the book preview in the IPG Spring 2011 Catalog (p. 33)

Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class

For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of this class—the press, the universities, trade unions, the Democrats, and the liberal church—have collapsed as effective counterweights to the corporate state. In its absence the needs of the poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a champion. The death of the liberal class has permitted the rise of a new and terrifying political configuration. In his devastating new book, Chris Hedges chronicles the gradual corruption and decline of the liberal class, which no longer provides an institutional check to mitigate corporate control of politics, education, labor, the arts, religious institutions, or financial systems. Without any impediments, the corporate state is dismantling the last vestiges of protection for ordinary citizens once put into place by the liberal class.

A lucid and disturbing look inside America’s fallen liberal institutions, Hedges tells of his own experiences, especially of his role as a journalist for the New York Times. Although the liberal class was always compromised by its embrace of the power elite, as well as its deep hostility to American radicals who questioned the assumptions and the structures of the elite, it nevertheless provided a mechanism that made incremental reform possible. But with the rise of the corporate state, the liberal class has been forced to distort its basic belief systems to support unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization, and staggering income inequalities. It relinquished it moral authority to become courtier and apologist for a system of power that despises liberal values.

The anger among the working and the middle class is, without a functioning liberal class, being expressed in ideologies that detest democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. The death of the liberal class is creating a power vacuum that speculators, war profiteers, and gangsters, often led by charismatic demagogues, are beginning to fill. Totalitarian and proto-fascists, from militias to Tea Party movements, ridicule and taunt the liberal class and its democratic values. The promises of these movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in a disturbing truth. History has shown time and again that when the liberal class ceases to function, as happened in Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany, and the former Yugoslavia, it always opens a Pandora’s Box of evils that infect the remnants of civil society.

LIVING FULLY: Finding Joy in Every Breath

Literary Nonfiction; Rinpoche is represented by Russell & Volkening (NYC); Tentative Publication Date: 2011

Living Fully is the inspiring compilation of the oral teachings of a renowned Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, His Eminence Shyalpa Rinpoche.  Conveying the human hunger for enlightenment, this book contends that Buddhism has continuously inspired emancipation from world-weariness and cyclical suffering.   Living Fully is a partial but representative sample of Rinpoche’s myriad spontaneous teachings imparted to his students across the world over the last two decades.

Mercy Centre (a shelter for street kids) and Goodwill Group Foundation (an organization to empower disadvantaged women) speak about sex tourism in Thailand.

Giorgio Berardi, Programme Officer of Combating Child-Sex Tourism (CST), speaks about the efforts of ECPAT International to protect children in Thailand.

BANGKOK, Thailand — Human trafficking is a worldwide tragedy impacting an estimated 1.2 million child victims. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) recently asserted that 79% of all global trafficking is for sexual exploitation, which is one of the fastest growing criminal activities in the world.

Click here to listen to Guzder’s radio interview on  ”Bread and Roses”, KBOO 90.7 FM Community Radio, about her reporting in Thailand: “Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation“

Also, listen to Guzder’s radio interview on  ”Bread and Roses”, KBOO 90.7 FM Community Radio, about her reporting in Thailand: “Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation“

September 15, 2009

Thailand is often called the “Land of Smiles” and considered a tropical paradise full of friendly, spiritual locals eager to share their unique cuisine and pristine beaches. However, Thailand’s elaborate culinary feats and sun-washed beachfronts are not the only reason why the country has become the playground of the rich and elite of the world. Conservative estimates suggest that 10% of tourist dollars are spent on the sex trade.

Behind the brothels posing as massage parlors is a painful story involving women trafficked from Burma, children exploited by pimps, and global economic disparities that allow rich tourists to make unchecked demands on impoverished locals’ bodies. Recent political turmoil coupled with the global economic downturn has made the Ministry of Tourism reluctant to reinvigorate efforts and give the outside world any impression
that Thailand is anything but the “Land of Smiles.”

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PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE A MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION OF IRAN

(documentaries, interactive map, travelogue, photos, and more)

In 2007, Guzder received a grant from the Carnegie and Knight Foundations to travel to Iran as News 21’s foreign correspondent. Guzder reported from Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan, Yazd, and Persepolis.

Mark Glaser of PBS commented on her reporting: Guzder’s search for her Zoroastrian roots in Iran was first person and conversational . . . If we could only hear these voices more often, and have constant cross-cultural communication, maybe we would have less war mongering and more peacemaking. Maybe, with deliberation and tough debate, we would discover our differences and similarities.

Guzder runs a fledgling nonprofit organization: Students Together in Tackling Child Hunger (S.T.I.T.C.H). The organization buys hand-embroidered, georgette shirts wholesale from local retailers in India, who uphold ethical labor practices, and sells them for quadruple the price. All profit goes to UNICEF so children, instead of corporations, benefit from inequality. The one-size-fits-all tunics make wonderful gifts.

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The S.T.I.T.C.H project is in the process of gaining the IRS classification of 501(c)(3), a “charitable nonprofit.”

Contribute to STITCH and support UNICEF:

Donate by PayPal (below) or via snail-mail by sending a letter with: (1) your name, address, preferred tunic color; (2) a +$15 USD check to UNICEF; and, (3)$5 USD in cash for shipping & handling.  For snail-mail address, please email dg2190@columbia.edu.

We will mail you your tunic within a week and redirect your donation to UNICEF. To ensure you know your money goes to a good cause, we only accept checks made out to UNICEF (no cash). The reason you can’t send your check directly to UNICEF is because we need to verify you are making a donation. Malnutrition is a silent emergency that causes the deaths of over 6 million children in developing countries each year-a tragedy that can and must be prevented.

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