as the First “Compassionate” State in the Nation!
The Cities of Fremont and San Francisco, and Santa Clara County, and others have broken ground, with still more in the works.
Our mission is to join Cities
and Counties of Compassion (we’ve got to
work on that one!) of the greater Bay Area, to
envision our communities as we would have them be, and
work together to create a Compassionate Bay Area.
(BTW, the nine official
counties of the Bay Area consist of Alameda, Contra
Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa
Clara, Solano and Sonoma. Among these nine counties
are 101 cities, an estimated 7.756 million people and
about 7,000 square miles.)
Join us for our virtual Compassionate Bay
Area CyberCafé via Zoom, Second Monday mornings at
10:30. If you wish to join us, please email us at
CompassionateBayArea@PeaceHost.net
and we will send you the link.
Also, zoomeeting every 2nd Tuesday
morning at 10:00 is Compassionate California
(CC)
For information and Zoom link, you may email Jo Ann
Gaines at: jogaines1@hotmail.com
I challenge you to affirm that this is a Beloved Community in which we live by starting a campaign to make your town or city a Compassionate City.
- Contact the grassroots organization that created the Compassionate City campaign in Fremont and pick their brains. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. They did the heavy lifting; exploit them!
- Create a petition for folks in your town or city to sign, urging your city council or other governing entity (in Bay Point it is the Municipal Advisory Committee, or MAC) to adopt a Compassionate City campaign.
- Do not just enlist individuals. Go to businesses. Design and print a flier describing how a Compassionate City is a Prosperous City. It is a more livable city, a more pleasant city — good for business!
- Send letters to every church or religious or faith group (this includes indigenous peoples and ethical humanist groups) in your community, ask them to join the campaign. If they are a Christian church, they are commanded to preach and to live compassion. It is a charge of their faith tradition. Jews are commanded in both Isaiah and Micah says that the Lord commands us to “… live justly, love mercy and walk humbly with [our] God.” Muslims are commanded to defend “people of the Book,” meaning Christians and Jews. Contemporary Muslim theologians suggest that all who practice the virtues of Islam — charity, mercy and compassion — and acknowledge the one-ness of God, Allah or however one expresses or regards the Divine is a person of the Book. Any faith tradition that teaches what we know as the Golden Rule is a compassionate tradition.
- Ask any peace or social, economic or environmental justice group you know or are connected with to join in a coalition to make this so.
The above are simple, modest
points of action. Here are two links to the Charter For Compassion folks:
The Compassionate Community: https://charterforcompassion.org/communitiesWe do not intend to re-invent the wheel. Here are several websites of folks already doing the heavy lifting:
Charter Toolbox: https://charterforcompassion.org/charter-tool-box-a-framework-for-getting-started
More to come. For instance, I’d like to post minutes of our Monday meetings. We’ll see how that goes.First, Compassionate City | City of Fremont. What’s been done already.
Next, United Against Hate.
My own community, the City of Vallejo, has formally condemned anti-AAPI hate crimes. It's just a declaration, but it's a start.Have you heard of Not In Our Town? Among other things, one may have a public screening of films they offer.
Peace with
justice,
Shakurallah Daniel Zwickel ben Avrám MacJean
(son of Jean, son of Abraham
and grateful for the many blessings of Allah)
Daniel@PeaceHost.net
