intersections

[HuffPost] Killing the DREAM Act: Still No Room in the Inn

Today we witnessed another skirmish in the real "War on Christmas". As Christians all over the world celebrate the final weekend of Advent and prepare for Christmas in just one week, the U.S. Senate once more dashed the hopes of almost 2 million children and young adults, many of whom have lived in the United States all their lives. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed to pass a procedural vote today in the Senate. First introduced in Aug. 2001, the DREAM Act would allow the children of undocumented immigrants a path to legal residency by either going to college or enlisting in the military.

 As the media prattles on about the so-called "War on Christmas" -- an ideological battle over terminology, at best -- people's lives hang in the balance. Actions speak louder than words. One way Christians can protect the place of Christmas in our society -- indeed, the credibility of Christianity more generally -- is by acting in harmony with its core principles: grace, welcome and hospitality.

But today there was no hospitality, no grace.

 

Read the rest on Huffington Post, here.

Also, learn more about the DREAM Act from the non-partisan Immigration Policy Center.

Baloney's not the answer

From time to time I write book reviews for Molossus - an online broadside of world literature. I recently reviewed the new book, Tunnel People, by Teun Voeten (PM Press).

Teun Voeten is not the first to document the lives of the people living in the tunnel systems of New York City. His newly updated account, Tunnel People, is unique, however, because of Voeten’s commitment not only to his craft, but also to the people. Articles and books have been written about the tunnel people and Mark Singer’s award winning documentary, Dark Days, introduced the world to this underground society in what Voeten himself calls a “shockingly honest portrayal.” But Voeten went a step further, living in the Amtrak tunnel on Manhattan’s west side for five months over two years, digging beneath the surface of the tunnel people’s lives as well as their complex and diverse social environment. “To add something new to the earlier studies,” Voeten writes in the introduction to his book, “I decided to take the anthropological approach, using its favorite research method of participant observation” (3).

Read the rest here.