Wednesday Potpourri

These articles and posts have caught my attention this week:

• FBI recovers 48 juveniles in prostitution raid (23 Feb '09, CNN.com)
• Stimulus: Can it feed the hungry? (24 Feb '09, CNNMoney.com)
• Guantanamo detainees treated humanely, Pentagon report says (24 Feb '09, CNN.com)
• Eating Alongside the Poor for Lent (16 Feb '09, Urbana.org, Least of These blog)
• Good News and Bad News (27 Jan '09, Urbana.org, WhirledView blog)
• Your Body as a Billboard (20 Feb '09, Skyejethani.com)
  
• Japan’s Hidden Christians (24 Feb '09, Skyejethani.com)

The End of Poverty (Jeffrey Sachs)

I cannot encourage you enough to read The End of Poverty. Just do it. Promise yourself that you’ll find a way.

The first few chapters relate Sachs’s own evolution as a development economist and advocate—a process that leads him from Harvard University to countries around the world and eventually to Columbia University where he helped found The Earth Institute. We follow him along the journey of gaining insights into the roles that geography, population growth, and disease play in the poverty trap.

The subsequent chapters describe the needs of the poor, the misconceptions most of us have regarding what is being done and what the real problems are, and finally the way forward.

Sachs quantifies, maps, deconstructs, and personalizes the problems. Thankfully, he does not end there. He also quantifies the needed response, demonstrates the possibilities we have over the next couple of decades, and offers policy advice on increasing capacity and accountability.

For less technical, but more spiritual analyses of the same topics, see Walking with the Poor (Bryant Myers), Red Letters (Tom Davis) and Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Ron Sider).

ISSUE: Food

This edition of Sojourners is focusing on food. Here are four of the main articles:

All We Hunger For by Julie Polter. Good food is much more than a matter of taste.

Grub for Body and Soul by Molly Marsh. An interview with food activists Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry.

Shopping for Justice by Bethany Spicher Schonberg. My journey with Super Giant.

'Give Us This Day' by Cathy C. Campbell. Simple - and radical - wisdom from the Lord's Prayer.