Class struggle in the temple

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just heard a Professor Rev. Dr. Gloria Albrecht crush Bob Duco on his
rightwing Christian callin radio show "Fearlessly defending the faith". She
talked over him with statistics. Said job security, layoffs, etc. must be
discussed first because of their major impact on family values. She had an
answer for every right wing angle Duco came with. When he tried to say that
some people are basically freeloaders, she came back with the main free
loaders are the top 20% in income. Duco had this ridiculous refrain that if
an employer doesn't pay enough or whatever, one should just quit. This was
his major offered program for workers to defend their family $$$$$ values.
She calmly said that is not an option and described why not in many ways,
backed with facts.

When he said government shouldn't regulate economics, she replied that
corporations have overarching power over politics and politicians, vs
workers' power.

Class struggle in the temple.



CB

^^^^^

http://www.religiousconsultation.org/hitting_home.htm
<http://www.religiousconsultation.org/hitting_home.htm>

Hitting Home: Feminist Ethics, Women's Work, and the Betrayal of Family
Values by Gloria H. Albrecht

Editorial Reviews

Daniel C. Maguire, President, Religious Consultation on Population,
Reproductive Health and Ethics "Gloria Albrecht has written a
masterpiece...and she has done so with clarity, passion, and wit."

Beverley Wildung Harrison, Union Theological Seminary "must read for
those...who believe that ethics must have a place in politics. Religious
Social Ethics at its best!"

John Raines, Center for Comparative Religious Studies "For anyone concerned
with the well being of women and children this book is a must."

Book Description

At the very time when most women's lives are defined by a lack of income,
time, and energy, and when being stressed-out is for them more common than
the common cold, politicians and other professed guardians of public virtue
are stridently lamenting the loss of what they define as "family values."
Even as women enter the workforce to provide essential income for their
families while attending to children, spouse, and the endless round of
domestic chores, every sort of social ill from drug addiction to unwed
mothering is laid at their door. As Gloria H. Albrecht shows, this dismal
situation is not merely a cultural irony; it is a potential social tragedy.

In a book that combines learning, eloquence, and wit, she explains how this
paradox symbolizes the new face of family life in America's post-industrial
economy.

"Hitting Home" carefully documents the growing abandonment by business and
government of their social responsibility to sustain the well-being of
families. She exposes "family-friendly" policies as being in fact policies
that are friendly primarily to the profit-oriented goals of the corporate
world. Business strategies, touted as the new methods of efficiency, reveal
the fundamentally anti-family nature of an economy designed from its origins
to exclude those authentic values that arise from caring relationships.

Albrecht amasses compelling data which are illuminated by portraits and
stories of the real people whose daily lives are the grist of economics. She
emphasizes how sermonizing family values advocates ignore the connection
between their ideal family and its exploitation of underpaid "help," whether
actual servants, or cooks, or nursery attendants, or child-care provides,
etc.--none of whom can themselves afford to support staff necessary to
attain the status of being an acknowledged nurturer of those mythic family
values.

Throughout her book, Albrecht maintains that authentic family values require
an equal social commitment to two connected goals: women's equality and the
well-being of families.



^^^^^^



The Rev. Dr. Gloria H. Albrecht served as a consultant in the preparation of
the "Changing Family" report. She is Professor of Religious Studies and
Women's Studies at University of Detroit Mercy, and earned a PhD in
Christian Ethics from Temple University. Her latest book is entitled Hitting
Home: Feminist Ethics, Women's Work, and the Betrayal of 'Family Values'
(Continuum, 2002).