The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

I've been asked to explain why I recommend voting AGAINST Issue 2.  Matt Campbell wrote a solid article about the pros and cons of Issue 2 that ran in the September 30 issue of the Arkansas Times Blog. I am posting a link to the article, but also will paste the entire article so you can read it without being blocked by the paywall. Here's the link: https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2024/09/30/confused-by-those-casino-tv-ads-heres-what-a-vote-for-issue-2-would-really-mean. Here's the entire article. Odds are you’ve seen or heard an advertisement in recent weeks about Issue 2, which goes by the rather unwieldy short title of “Countywide Voter Approval for New Casino Licenses and Repeal Casino Licenses in Pope County Initiative.” It’s one of three ballot measure that Arkansas voters will vote on in the November election. Honestly, you might have tuned out those ads, considering how often casino-related fights have been on the ballot in the last dozen years or more. Even if yo

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   Early voting begins across Arkansas on Monday, October 21. I urge you to cast your vote as follows in the interest of advancing fair and more effective government.   U.S. President                                                      KAMALA HARRIS U.S. Vice President                                             TIM WALZ U.S. Congress 1 ST Congressional District                       RODNEY GOVENS 2 nd Congressional District                       MARCUS JONES 3 rd Congressional District                        CAITLIN DRAPER 4 th Congressional District                        RISIE HOWARD State Treasurer                                                    JOHN PAGAN    Chief Justice, Arkansas Supreme Court       JUSTICE KAREN BAKER Arkansas Court of Appeals (District 6)          MOLLY MCNULTY Arkansas House of Representatives           District 69                                                    KWAMI ABDUL-BEY           Distric

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   It is only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s hateful fascist rhetoric incites some of his followers to engage in violence against immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, members of the news media, election officials, and others who Trump thinks are standing in his way to get elected President again. Trump will use that violence to spark January 6 kind of attacks in states he is likely to lose, as well as in the battleground states. He is holding rallies in states he is likely to lose as a way of pushing his base supporters to treat the election process as a threat. By doing so, Trump and his handlers hope to suppress voter turnout among Democratic and independent voters. His staff has requested that Trump be given increased military protection and Secret Service personnel between now and Election Day. Trump wants to use the military as a personal security force that will obey his authoritarian orders and threaten anyone who he conside

  ©Wendell Griffen 2024   Voters in the United States have already begun casting ballots for the November 2024 general election. Our ballots will contain different candidates and issues depending on where we live. But each ballot will contain the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, along with other lesser known and financed candidates, as candidates for President of the United States. I hope we choose Harris as the next President.  As Vice President since 2021, Kamala Harris is experienced, and competent, about top-level policy issues that affect the nation and the world. Her service as Vice President, United States Senator from California, Attorney General of California, and District Attorney for San Francisco, California, demonstrates that Harris is steady, serious, honest, and considerate of diverse points of view.  Vice President Harris's public service record is longer and better than any of the other candidates who will be on our

  © Wendell Griffen, 2024 Imagine that you serve on the hiring committee for an enterprise that does business throughout the world. Your job is to select the next chief executive officer (CEO) from a pool of several candidates. Here are facts about the two most prominent candidates in the hiring pool.. One candidate served four years as CEO of the enterprise. During that four-year tenure, he took the following actions. ·         He bad mouthed the enterprise the day he entered office. ·         He insulted the workers. ·         He tried to ban people from nations that have large Muslim populations from entering the business. ·         He called people who shouted racist and antisemitic slogans and insults “very fine people.” ·         He lied in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal that the world was threatened by the worst airborne virus in a century. ·         He was impeached for trying to force another enterprise to do a sham investigation on his chief competitor