Friday, July 26, 2019

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 30


Usually when the temperature goes way up, activity goes way down, but the advancement of the Just Third Way seems to be heating up along with the temperature (although we hope there is no correlation, or we’d know what to do about global warming!).  So while we’re waiting for things to cool down and get even hotter (in a good way), here’s what’s been happening in the Just Third Way network:

• Book Reading.  A book reading by CESJ’s Director of Research is being planned for sometime in August, details to be announced.  If all goes according to plan, it will be at the Knights of Columbus hall in Arlington, Virginia.  The reading will be sponsored by the Colonel John Fitzgerald Division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, and prospective members will be especially encouraged to come, although all are welcome.  The reading will be a short passage from Easter Witness: From Broken Dream to a New Vision for Ireland (2016), a book on the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland, by Michael D. Greaney.  A question and answer period will follow, then a social hour.
• Power With Justice.  Work continues on a short book intended to explain the principles of economic personalism.  Although written at special request for Catholic clergy, the book is from an interfaith, natural law perspective and is accessible — and useful — for people of all faiths and philosophies.  Suggested questions for discussion in the back of the book make it particularly useful as additional reading for classroom situations as well as continuing education.
• Alberto Martén.  CESJ has reached out to a university in Costa Rica which reportedly has the papers of Alberto Martén de Chavararría, founder of Solidarismo Costarricense, and a strong advocate for widespread capital ownership especially as found in the work of Louis Kelso.  Our goal is to do a “Just Third Way biography” of this important figure in the recent history of Central America, who is virtually unknown in the United States.
• International Outreach.  Contacts are being explored and some discussions resulting from outreach to people in Ukraine, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Australia, Slovakia, France, Hong Kong, China, and Japan.  Elections in some of these countries have raised the question as to whether current economic policy is adequate or even wise given the wealth and income gap, mounting government debt, and a number of other factors.
• CESJ Marketing Team.  If you have any ideas about how to advance understanding of the Just Third Way that can be done easily (and, of course, inexpensively), let us know.  We’re putting together an informal team to brainstorm about ways everyone can contribute to and participate in our “revolution,” even if it’s only in a small way or once a week for a few minutes.
Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making your purchases through the Amazon Smile program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/.  Next, sign in to your Amazon 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.
Blog Readership.  We have had visitors from 24 different countries and 36 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Spain, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom.  The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Introduction to Subsidiarity,” “News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 29,” “Something Completely Different?” “Why Did Nixon Take the Dollar Off the Gold Standard?” and “Old Things But In a New Way.”
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.”  Due to imprudent language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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