All I want for Christmas…

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Jake Olzen

Jake Olzen is an activist/organizer, farmer, and graduate student at Loyola University Chicago. He is part of the White Rose Catholic Worker community.
Number of posts: 1
Email address: email
Twitter: Twitter

Posts by Jake Olzen:

'tis the Season

All I want for Christmas…

by Jake Olzen | 1, Add your Comment | Dec 21, 2011

Most Christians—and all who celebrate the shop-til-you-drop version of Christmas—are in the final week of hubbub and to-do lists before the big day where Santa drops through the chimney with a bag full of plastic toys made of toxic petro-chemicals that were imported from China. Is that a tad too cynical? As the holiday season is upon us and folks celebrate (which I, too, enjoy) by generously giving to their favorite charities, baking homemade treats for neighbors, sipping eggnog with family, making foolish decisions at the work holiday party, my thoughts—as a Catholic Worker—inevitably turn to peace.

“What do you want for Christmas?” asks my mother. “World Peace.”

Read on →

Big government, little town

If you're a head of household in little Nelson, Georgia, you're about to be required to have a gun and ammo. If you want to, and if you can afford it. But not if you're a convicted felon or have certain physical or mental disabilities. The law is just a stupid as the reasons for it. The police chief, also the town's only police officer, said he hoped the law would make Nelson safer. But he didn't have any stats on just how unsafe Nelson is now, before the law. "Very minimal," he told ABC. "I couldn't even give you a percentage." Read on →

The Swimming Pool Qs

Anything characterized by high energy, originality, humor and intelligence is bound to get my attention. I was at an annual fund-raising party for an alternative art center called Nexus in about 1986. Touring the studios I kept being distracted from the visual art by some very interesting Rock 'n Roll. I wasn't the only one. A large segment of the crowd was gathered around the Swimming Pool Qs in the courtyard. Once in their vicinity I was there for as long as they would play. In any field of endeavor certain efforts stand out and the Qs were (are) definitely one Read on →

Heritage Inaction

For some reason, a letter from the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation was characterized as having been received by NBC News, as if it were some sort of privileged communication. In fact, the thing was a press release and rather obviously designed to change the conversation about the Heritage Foundation from trying to defend the indefensible "study" of Hispanic intellectual insufficiency to food stamps, a real two-fer issue. Two-fer in the sense of being offensive on two fronts since the dollars doled out represent a subsidy to industrial agriculture, even as they serve to remind the indigent that, if they're Read on →

Music Legend’s Scott Joplin’s Fight Against Racial Discrimination

When music publisher John Stark first heard Scott Joplin play his piano, he knew that ragtime was the music of hope for a new America. But Joplin would never be content with popularity and fame. Joplin committed himself to racial justice in the early 1900’s. He was inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan defeat in West Africa. But due to this earnest pursuit, he was ignored by the masses for writing the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to listen. King of Rags, by Professor Eric Bronson, is a historical fiction account of the quest for r Read on →

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Jake Olzen

Posts by Jake Olzen:

'tis the Season

All I want for Christmas…

Worthy of Comment

Also on the Dew

Big government, little town

The Swimming Pool Qs

Heritage Inaction

Music Legend’s Scott Joplin’s Fight Against Racial Discrimination