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Denver’s Sun Valley Neighborhood is Poor in Income and Rich in Character. The Denver Post reported today on Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood, occupying a stretch just east of Federal Blvd., between 6th Ave. and Invesco Field, which will have a FasTracks Light Rail stop on the line from Union Station to the Golden County Government Building (http://www.denverpost.com/sun_valley/ci_16780609). The description of a mostly forgotten and isolated neighborhood characterized by deep poverty, widespread housing assistance, and tremendous ethnic diversity, in which the relatively small population sports some locally famous characters and exists with a high degree of intimacy, isn’t what most people think of as “idyllic,” but it has some qualities that many of our more affluent communities, especially in the impersonal suburbs, would do well to emulate.

When a Social Institution Unleashes Violence, It is Responsible for the Violence It Has Unleashed. The Denver Post reported on the soldier facing a hearing in Military Court to determine if a Court Marshall proceeding is appropriate for his murder of a shackled Taliban commander (http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_16782041). The ideology of extreme individualism (i.e., the “Tea Party”) would generally say that only the individual, not the institution, bears any blame for the individual’s actions, but when we throw people into the midst of violence, under-attend to both their psychological propensities and to the stresses their psyches are subjected to, stoking the fires of violence within and without, we as a society bear responsibility for all of the violence we’ve unleashed, not just for those threads of it which were explicitly “ordered.” And we are responsible not only to the victims of the violence, but to the perpetrators of it as well, for we are the ones who have committed the act of violence against them. It may be the case that national militaries are indispensable, and that even some uses that result in innocent deaths are something that can’t be avoided, but that does not absolve us of any of the responsibility of the consequences of such uses, for all involved.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush Opposes Arizona-Style Racially Discriminatory Anti-Immigrant Laws. At a convention of city officials from across the county held at the Denver Convention Center, Jeb Bush and Harvard professor Robert Putnam, the former married to a woman of Mexican heritage, and the latter the father-in-law of a Hispanic son-in-law (and grandfather of half-hispanic grandchildren) both voiced their concerns about state anti-immigration laws which invite racial profiling, and turn our own Hispanic citizens into a suspect class. If the ugliness of such laws, which many of the angry voices on the belligerent right so strongly defend, is clear to anyone with Hispanics in their family, then it should also be clear to anyone capable of empathy or blessed withenough imagination to recognize the injustice of being suspected of a crime simply for being Hispanic. In my own on-going debates with members of this horrifying social movement one thing continues to amaze me: How resilient and well-fortified the ideology of hatred and ignorance is, that, despite the repeated lessons of the past and from around the world, we still have millions living in relative comfort eager to embrace it and defend it yet again, adamant that their own reincarnation of such bigotries is the only noble position, and that those who oppose it are despicable for doing so.

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