The July Just Posts

Welcome to the latest Just Posts, a monthly roundtable of posts on topics of social justice and activism from around the blogosphere. Holly (of Cold Spaghetti) and I are pleased to present an excellent round-up of posts that explore a range of topics that affect our world and our worldview: race and gender, health and wellness, lifestyle and socioeconomic disparities, to name a few.

Each month that I’ve been hosting the Just Posts, I’ve been highlighting a song that speaks to some of the issues that get discussed in the posts of the roundtable. This time I’ll put it at the end so we can get right to the all-important lists.

The July Just Posts:

• anvilcloud of Raindrops in the Desert with Dedicated…
• Barbara Drake of An American in Lima with Peru’s Politicians Lock Horns with Scientists, Deny Crisis as Water Shortage Looms,
  250 Children Dead of Cold in Andes: Death Toll Keeps Climbing and Cemetery Dog, Buried City of Yungay, Peru
• Emily at Wheels on the Bus with Race Matters; or, the Judge, the Professor, and the Doctor and The one in which Emily admits to making a mistake
• Hispanic Fanatic with the great american melting pot (?)
• Holly of Cold Spaghetti with What’s that Smell? and Of Two Minds
• jen at one plus two with American Me
• Jennifer of Conversion Diary with One couple’s journey to adopting HIV-positive children part 1, part 2 and part 3
• Jingle of Just Jingle with On Twitter, Blogger, Weight Watchers and Self Esteem
• Kimberly of The Gav Menagerie with When is zero not really zero? When it describes your food.
• laloca of baggage carousel 4 with stockholm syndrome
• Lawyer Mama with Pat Buchanan: You Are a Hateful Disgrace
• Leigh at Liprap’s Lament with At an antiwar march, circa late ’60’s-early ’70’s
• Rebecca of Flying Tomato Farms with Good on ya, Greenpeace!, You Think E Coli Spinach is Scary? and Lack of Information and Support has a Chilling Effect on Farmers Markets in South Dakota
• Sasha at Sasha Dichter’s Blog with Real giving conversations
• Scarlett Lion at Scarlett Lion: Liberia with Context Africa: Senegalese wrestlers captured in monochrome
• Slouching Mom of Slouching Past 40 with Anatomy of a Diseased Brain
• wrekehavoc with peace train and american girl
• XUP with The Freegans
• Zack Ford of Zack Ford Blogs with Faculty Responsible for Campus Climate, Too! (NYU School of Law), Pat Buchanon: The Epitome of Racism in Our Country and Academic Freedom: Anti-gay Opinions vs. Anti-gay Untruths

The posts of this month’s roundtable were nominated by:

Lucy
Mary
Tina
alejna
Holly

And now for something completely different. Or for the song. This month, I’ve been drawn to a somewhat odd choice: Chumbawamba’s “Pass it Along.”

(Forgive the bizarre video. It’s a zombie montage. It’s what’s available.)

It’s got nice harmonies and a good beat, and it’s catchy. This catchiness landed the song a role in a car commercial for GM in 2002. Amusingly, after the band accepted the $100,000 from GM, they handed the money over to “the anti-corporate activist groups Indymedia and CorpWatch who used the money to launch an information and environmental campaign against GM.” (From the Chumbawamba wiki page. You can read the full scoop on Salon.)

This song popped up on my iPod, while I was driving around a few days ago, and simple as it is, it’s one of those songs that has made me think.

Pass it along by word of mouse
Save the world, don’t leave the house

With my insatiable appetite for puns, the “word of mouse” phrase really caught my attention. The Just Posts are all about transmitting ideas by “word of mouse.” And, well, we want to save the world.

It’s easy to wonder how much we can do to save the world without leaving the house. I still haven’t forgotten the call to action from jen and Mad, illustrious co-founders of the Just Posts, to get up off our sofas and volunteer. To put our hands to work in ways that impact the world more directly than typing on our laptops.

But I’m sorry to say that I still haven’t acted, even on my idea to volunteer with Phoebe and Theo. I don’t want to make excuses, but lately there hasn’t been enough of me to go around without committing hours and energy to volunteer work. I’ll get there one of these days.

Enough about me. Back to the song.

Because a virtual office in a virtual home
Means you never have to drive through the wrong part of town

Hey! Are you guys dissing telecommuting? Because at least working from home can save gas.

I know, I know. It’s not just about telecommuting. The lyrics speak to the tendency of the better-off to hole up in safety, and avoid looking at, and interacting with, the problems that threaten our world. It’s a protest against closed gates, closed minds, and corporate greed. (It’s no coincidence that a line from the refrain of the song, “Where do you want to go today,” was also a slogan used by Microsoft.)

So here’s your final resting place
Your heaven is protected by security gates
Shut out the world, it’s getting worse
Save yourself, don’t leave the house
Because a happy future is a thing of the past

I take your point, Chumbwamba. But hopefully we can still work towards that happy future.

————–

Thank you for visiting this month’s Just Posts. Please drop by Holly’s to see what she has to say this month.

If you have a post in the list above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Cold Spaghetti. If you are unfamiliar with the Just Posts, please visit the information page.