This week, for some
reason, Illinois has been popping up on the radar. This is interesting, because a number of Just
Third Way projects and initiatives have come out of the Prairie State, such as
the proposal to revive East St. Louis and the Metro East area. Plus, the state covers pretty much the entire
U.S. economy in microcosm, with important urban areas not far from agriculture
and mining. That’s why most of this
week’s news items are Illinois-centric:
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| Just in case you were wondering. |
• Members of the CESJ core group
had an extended telephone conversation with a gentleman in Aurora, Illinois, an
actuary who has been involved in real estate and has been active in working for
political change. An interesting
discussion developed over whether economic democracy or political democracy
should lead. This particular issue was
not resolved, but he did promise to put us in touch with the mayor of Rockford,
a nearby city.
• As hinted above, we have been
reaching out to the mayor of Rockford, Illinois, who has expressed interest in
CESJ’s proposals for economic revival.
He is currently reviewing the CESJ website, and may be in touch as early
as next week.
• A column by George Will, “Illinois
Exemplifies Our Fiscal Foolishness,” painted a bleak picture of the state’s
economic situation, ironically nothing that couldn’t be solved readily with the
Just Third Way. We sent a follow-up
email to Dr. Will, reminding him that he had met once-upon-a-time with Norman
Kurland, president of CESJ, during the 1986 Presidential Task Force for Project
Economic Justice.
• CESJ’s latest book, Easter Witness: From Broken Dream to a New
Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
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| "I AM happy and smiling!" |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• As of this
morning, we have had visitors from 35 different countries and 43 states and
provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two
months. Most visitors are from the United States, Germany, Canada, the United
Kingdom, and Kenya. The most popular postings this past week in descending
order were “G.K. Chesterton v. Modernism and Socialism,” “A Brief Outline of
How to Save the World (and Other Modest Goals),” “News from the Network, Vol.
9, No. 28,” “I’m New to Distributism,” and “Future Schacht, VIII: Infinite
Velocity(a)”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#