AUTHOR
John Evans
John Evans has written for theater and the big screen. His essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in several publications on the East and West Coasts.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
The lesson of Yom Kippur is that all of us—no exceptions, no excuses—can change for the better.
MEDIA & ETHICS
One’s choice to be religious is not a character flaw, nor is one’s religious choice itself. Remove religion and any awareness of spirit from the equation of humanity and you are left with zero humanity. Decency, kindness, accountability, help—these all go out with Monday’s trash.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
A one-of-a-kind study encompassing the increasing numbers of Jews of color—African Americans, Asians, mixed races and others of non-white descent—has turned conventional wisdom as to the definition of a Jew on its head, and has revived echoes of the age-old legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Vicha’s murder was recorded on video surveillance cameras around the neighborhood. His assailant simply walked up, assaulted him, beat him to death and then walked away—no evidence of intent to steal, just simply hate.
MEDIA & ETHICS
In a review of a cover song by two pop icons, Far Out music critic Tyler Golsen applauds their efforts, quotes the pair’s mutual admiration as musicians and as individuals, then offers his own expert advice on the religion one of them was raised in—my religion, Scientology—in the form of a snide comment.
TOLERANCE
130 years ago this month, a slave rebellion of unparalleled persistence began which resulted in the creation of the only nation ever to be founded and governed by former slaves and captives. That new nation, Haiti, was spawned in the blood of slaves, brought on by the cruelty and torture of their masters and by the unrelenting defiance of the subjugated population of the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola after over a century and a half of callous oppression to the point of sadism.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It’s a familiar story the world over. To bigots, opportunists and fools, to be indigenous is a badge of inferiority. Over the centuries, indigenous people, be they the 40,000-year-old Hadzabe of Tanzania or the Yakye Axa of Paraguay or the Okieks of Kenya or the Nimiipuu of Idaho (known more familiarly as the Nez Perce), have seen their sacred lands desecrated, their people decimated, their territorial rights, culture, and language ignored and above all, the rights to their own identity threatened.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
What do you call someone who follows the white supremacist playbook, condemning good people whose only sin is their very existence?
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
To say that a person’s faith is very personal and important is to state the obvious. To observe, however, that what a person believes is part of that person, and as often as not defines that person, takes empathy and a wish to understand people as individuals, rather than as a demographic mass.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
An elderly Asian-American woman runs and stumbles as two youths, in pursuit, easily catch her, beat her, and set her clothes on fire.
