Poetry Contest Winners!

Our Poetry Contest 2011 for National Poetry Month has ended. We want to thank everyone for their submissions. The judge of the contest and author of Poetry for Beginners, Margaret Chapman, picked the following three winners:

The first place winner is Chaouki  Mkaddem  with her poem “Patriot.” Chaouki will be receiving a copy of Poetry for Beginners as well as a For Beginners book of his choice.

The second and third runners up will also receive a copy of Poetry for Beginners.

Our second place winner is Rene Angulo Trujillo for the poem “SunofMan”

Our third place winner is  Vivekanand Jha for the poem “Hands Heave to Harm and Hamper”

 

Celebrating Søren: Happy Birthday, Kierkegaard!

Welcome back readers! Today, we’re going to jump right in with another personality spotlight – we’re celebrating the birthday of that great modern philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.

A Danish thinker and a religious man, Kierkegaard was a Protestant who lavished criticisms on his nation’s clergy. Kierkegaard placed a huge importance on the role of each person in his or her own faith (as opposed to the importance of an organization, like the Danish National Church). He argued that science and faith were not at odds, but different ways to understand different things.

Science showed facts and truths necessary for practical life; he argued it didn’t (and couldn’t) shine any light on an “objective faith.” For Kierkegaard, faith gave meaning, but that meaning was always “subjective,” or different depending on each person who held it. The later years of his life were characterized not by a struggle between science and faith, but between personal faith and faith-as-explained-by-the-church. He is counted often among the existentialists – part of his argument for embracing faith was his conviction that life was better with than without it.

If you’d like to learn more about his fascinating ideas, laid out in a concise, easy-to-read format, take a look at Kierkegaard For Beginners, one of our many philosophy For Beginners titles. You can even take a primer on philosophy itself, with Philosophy For Beginners – a survey of many great minds through history, and a great way to make starting this difficult subject easier.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Death Penalty Declared Unconstitutional

After 29 long years in jail, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, has had his death sentence overturned in what may become a landmark case, Reuters reports.

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania examined whether Abu-Jamal received a fair sentencing after he was found guilty of murder of Daniel Faulkner, a police officer. Not only did the court find problems in his sentencing, they declared Abu-Jamal’s sentence unconstitutional. The reasoning behind the ruling is based on testimony that revealed an agenda on the part of court staff, and especially the judge. One court stenographer recalled the judge offered to “help fry the….”

Tensions run high as his case has come to represent the debate over the death penalty and the lasting problem of racism in the criminal justice system, and arguments continue that the entire trial may have been illegitimate. Black Issues Magazine highlighted the details of Abu-Jamal’s appeal released via the Associated Press, “showing the appeal contended that the trial judge was racially hostile and that a state Supreme Court justice should not have participated in the case because he was a former prosecutor.” Though the court upheld the earlier verdict, even a transition to a life sentence would mean greater freedom within prison for Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal has been an activist, radio journalist, and supporter of improvements in education and civil liberties even through his decades in prison. He actually reviewed our own Black Holocaust For Beginners, one of our several titles focusing on black history, for the Black Educator. He continues to do radio spots and write, despite efforts by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to limit his communications. The Media Alliance, aggregating news from the Society of Professional Journalists and elsewhere, reported that “courts ruled the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' denial of access unconstitutional on the grounds that Abu-Jamal was being unfairly targeted. Pennsylvania lawmakers responded in 1996 by passing the ‘Mumia Law’--a California-style blanket ban on face-to-face prisoner interviews.” Events like this one fueled outrage among Abu-Jamal’s supporters, and among opponents of the death penalty.

Are mistakes that are not legally recognized for decades proof of inexcusable ethical problems with capital punishment, or do you think that the flaws are an unavoidable part of an otherwise necessary system? Feel free to weigh in in our comments section below.