When John Pavlovitz's new book Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage & Compassion When Cruelty is Trending, landed on my desk I was intrigued by the title. Given that trolling on socials, nastiness on the news, and day-to-day unkindness to one another seem to be the norm, there isn't any way to argue that cruelty is not the currency of the day. So a book on reconnecting to compassion felt like a gift to my soul.

John and I spoke about what we, as a society, need to do and our concerns about the repercussions of not healing the divides that we currently face. John gives us simple actions that we can take to bridge those divides and expand our own capacity for kindness and compassion.

In a time when there is heartbreaking news every day it is deeply inspiring and nourishing to reconnect with the compassion that is our greatest human strength.

For a written transcript of this conversation click here.

About John:

John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor activist and storyteller from Wake Forest, North Carolina. Over the past decade, his thought provoking blog Stuff That Needs To Be Said, has reached a diverse worldwide audience with over 100 million views. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, Pavlovitz is committed to equality, diversity and justice, both inside and outside faith communities. John's books include A Bigger Table, and If God is Love, Don't Be a Jerk. His new book, Worth Fighting For: Finding Courage and Compassion When Cruelty is Trending arrived on April 2. He currently directs Empathetic People Network, a vibrant online community that connects people from all over the world who want to create a more compassionate planet.

John's Action Steps:

1) Identify and lean into the burden.

2) Find a partner or collaborator

3) Take one measurable step with them, then another and keep going.

Connect with John:

Substack Website Instagram Threads Facebook

Credits:

Harmonica music courtesy of a friend

All too often we think about, or more accurately don't think about, the ripple effects of low-wage work on families beyond the thought that things must be tight. In this conversation, based on their important book, Getting Me Cheap: How Low Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty, Lisa Dodson, Amanda Freeman, and I discuss the implications not just in the present but in the future for those trapped in this deeply unjust cycle.

When we think about who is providing the childcare, the elder care, the cleaning services and more that we rely on to keep life functioning in the ways we are accustomed to, it is often women being paid unlivable wages. But many of these women themselves have families and if they aren't there to fulfill the adult role because they are, often, working multiple jobs to make ends meet, the brunt of filling that gap falls to their children, usually the girls.

Dodson and Freeman explore the stories of the women they met, their realities, struggles, and aspirations, as they challenge us to confront and change what is a deeply unjust and flawed system in order to break the generational cycle of poverty and of parents who, as Dodson and Freeman describe, can't afford to buy their children a childhood.

This conversation made me think in deeper and different ways about the impact of societal inequities and, once again, made me question whether these are bugs or features.

It's an important book that leads us into an important conversation, one that challenges us to live into our oft-stated values around cherishing our children, not just some of them, all of them.

About Amanda Freeman and Lisa Dodson:

Amanda Freeman is a sociologist with research interests in poverty, social policy, gender, family and education. Her current work explores work family conflict for low income mothers. At the University of Hartford, Professor Freeman teaches a variety of courses including Social Welfare.

Lisa Dodson is Research Professor Emeritus at Boston College. She's the author of the books, The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy, and Don't Call Us Out of Name. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

For a written transcript of this conversation click here.

Action Items:

From Amanda: 1) If you have people working in your home become aware of their lives, their struggles, and just engaging with them as fellow human beings. 2) Join organizations that advocate for domestic workers. 3) Challenge inequitable policies in your workplace that treat salaried and hourly workers differently when it comes to issues such as parental leave.

From Lisa:

1) Have conversations about how these workers are compensated and treated in the workplace. 2) Listen to what these women have to say about their lives and the challenges they are facing and then do what we can to address the inequities that they are facing.

Credits:

Harmonica music courtesy of a friend.

When I first heard about Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life, Asad L. Asad's brilliant exploration of how undocumented people navigate living in the U.S. I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of the situation. I did not.

The experience of living undocumented in the U.S., particularly in southern border states, is a unique dance of engagement and evasion as Asad lays out. In reading his book, and in this conversation, I found myself both frustrated at the ever-changing (but never resolved) immigration system and with a whole new level of respect for people who, for myriad reasons, come here at great risk to themselves and then find a place that is nowhere near as welcoming as it should be.

As the battle rages in Congress about what to do about the southern border this conversation could not be more timely.

About Asad L. Asad

Asad L. Asad is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Asad's research considers how institutional categories in particular citizenship and legal status matter for multiple forms of inequality. His book, Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life examines how, and why, undocumented immigrants who are worried about deportation, navigate the delicate dance of engaging with certain government institutions while avoiding others. Using stories from undocumented immigrants themselves Asad brings nuance to the perspective of the undocumented and shines a light on some of the contradictions between what the government says they want, and the economic and personal realities of the immigration system as it applies to Latinos.

For a written transcript of this conversation click here.

Action Items:

1) Volunteer with Freedom For Immigrants, which helps people who are currently in immigration detention, to make phone calls to people outside of the walls of the detention facility. And that is just so important to just give people who are detained the opportunity to just be a regular person to some degree, to interact with people who are not detained, who are outside, who can communicate messages, who can field complaints, and so on, and so forth.

2) V I S T A. It stands for the Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies training for Advocates. It's an online program that trains students to become immigrant advocates,

3) I always suggest that people, if they have the opportunity and means, donate to a bond fund. And so there are local bond funds that I always I always tried to promote in the Bay Area, we have the Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund, which helps people who have been granted bond in immigration court, but who can't afford the $5 to $10,000 bond, because that's an unreal amount of money. And so contributions monthly, yearly would go a long way. And you can also find one, listeners, wherever you are, in your local community, again, with our dear friend, Google, just type in, you know, Milwaukee immigration bond fund, and it would pop up.

Credits:

Harmonica music courtesy of a friend.