#623 - Peace & Life: RIP Ron Sider, Tom Cornell / KS & PACT - August 5, 2022
Ron Sider, Rest in Peace
Our member group Christians for Social Action has announced the death of its founder and our endorser, Ron Sider, from heart trouble, on July 27. He also founded a consistent life ethic PAC called JustLife; it didn't last long due to the paucity of CLE candidates.
Ron Sider with Nikki Toyama-Szeto,
current executive director of Christians for Social Action
Tom Cornell, Rest in Peace
Tom Cornell was a co-founder of Pax Christi (one of our member groups) among many other accomplishments. He was a signer, along with Dorothy Day and other notables, of the 1974 Catholic Peace Fellowship Statement on Abortion.
Bad News on Referendums
Kansas voters, with high turnout and much publicity, voted down a No Right to Abortion amendment to their state constitution on August 2. We have lessons to learn from this, and we’ll be sharing them on our web page on such amendments on our Peace and Life Referendums website. Any thoughts you have, or links to worthwhile thoughts others have had, please send to clneditors@googlegroups.org.
Kentucky will have a similar amendment on the ballot in November, so we’ll need to see how that one goes. You can see all referendums we’re tracking on the home page.
Good News for Victims of War
We celebrate that the U.S. Senate has passed the PACT Act, which will provide health care for military veterans exposed to toxins without them having the burden of proving that their health conditions were caused by exposure while in the military.
We would of course prefer that the military not put human beings into contact with toxic materials in the first place, but now it will be held accountable to the veterans who have been harmed by these practices.
New Chapter of a Member Group:
The newest chapter of Rehumanize International is hosting a kickoff social event at Cody's Public House in Chicago, 5:30 PM, to watch the livestream event in which Aimee Murphy launches her new book and talks to actor and consistent life ethic activist Martin Sheen. RSVP on Facebook for the event, and for more consistent life ethic news and events in the Chicago metropolitan area, like Rehumanize Chicago on Facebook, follow Rehumanize Chicago on Twitter, and subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of the Rehumanize Chicago website.
Reminder: For those not in Chicago, here’s the direct link for the Zoom Book Launch Event on August 9, 2022. To order the book: Rehumanize: A Vision to Secure Human Rights for All, by Aimee Murphy.
Our Latest Blog Post
The anniversaries of the two deliberate uses of nuclear weapons against human populations are coming up – Hiroshima on August 6, Nagasaki on August 9. John Whitehead offers The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer.
Quotation of the Week
Maurice Chammah America’s ‘Machinery of Death’ Is Slowly Grinding to a Halt
The New York Times, June 29, 2022
When capital punishment finally disappears – and it is on its way out, even if that will be a very slow process – it will be because opponents succeeded in making their case, not to nine justices, but to millions of voters and jurors.