• First Congregational Church, Long Beach
• Saint Basil’s Catholic Church, Los Angeles
• Central Christian Church of the East Valley
• Historic First Presbyterian Church of Phoenix
• the chapel at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport
• La Placita Church at the Mission of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels
• Pasadena Presbyterian Church
• the chapel at London Heathrow airport

I took Communion and participated in the imposition of ashes at First Congregational; Communion and witnessed a baptism at CCCEV; participated in an elder/deacon ordination at Historic First; caught the last of the Mass at La Placita.

First Congregational is a self-described liberal church. Seldom have I visited a church which is more liberal than I. Here, people do not say “Lord” except when singing in Latin; there has been some trouble decades ago about the divinity of Jesus not preached from the pulpit. “Blessed be”, an imperative without a noun, seemed to be enough for this congregation. There was a banner in the front of the sanctuary with a quote by Martin Luther King Junior: “The principal objective of all nations must be the total abolition of war.” I was generally pleased, but I did wonder what they have to say ultimately, when all has been stripped away like this?

On the other end of the “spectrum” is CCCEV. It felt like a theatre with no natural light, but dry-ice smoke-throwers and air-conditioning. The sermon – or shall I call it the one-man theatrical monologue? – delivered from a swivel-chair, was full of popular-culture references (even a sitcom clip on the projection screen!), complete with fill-in-the-blank sermon sheets. The preacher dissed Kanye West, ignoring that he is one of the most influential Christian artist these days, who is biasedly-committed to the Poor, and can get his Jesus Walks played on the radio. Who are you to diss Kanye, man? The whole thing fit snugly in a critical analysis of the Spectacle in the Situationist school. The bookstore had about a hundred copies of the Bible, but only in three versions: dominantly NIV, NLT, and The Message. Suitably, we went to Wal-Mart later that evening.

I note curiously that neither of these two churches actually let the Holy Communion work itself out well enough, sad to say.

Hosts: me, Janine Duffy, Jim Henderson.

Recording with TalkShoe continues to be fun and challenging. My controls died about halfway through this episode, and there’s a long silence at the end when I restarted the controls so I could click “Terminate episode.”

[Download the mp3]

T&G: Appeal stalls planned Wal-Mart: Quinsigamond Village abutters fault officials:

A group of abutters has temporarily put the brakes on the planned Wal-Mart Supercenter in Quinsigamond Village.

Three abutters to the “Worcester Crossing” shopping center development, to be built on 44 acres along the Blackstone River, have filed an administrative appeal with the Zoning Board of Appeals, claiming the Planning Board did not adhere to the city’s site plan review standards when it approved the first phase of the project in March.

Maybe this will buy some time. That’s just what the opposition needs. The fact that any effort has “put the brakes” on this thing at this point is a big surprise.

Video: Shannon Senior and John Harvey talk Wal-Mart.

Click To Play

For those who are interested, you can read the planning proposal.

Telegram & Gazette:

A 209,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter is part of a shopping center planned on 44 acres in Quinsigamond Village where U.S. Steel once operated foundries along the Blackstone River.

Buck Paxton:

I consider myself to be the single biggest proponent of hard core, blood thirsty capitalism this side of Iowa, but Wal-Mart still manages to make me ill.

I’ll be blogging this issue over at Worcester Activist.

New Left Review 42 (November/December 2006) is out. Au Loong-Yu of Globalization Monitor said therein: “Chinese peasants can endure a tremendous amount. If they do become violent and burn your property, it is nearly always your fault.”; “Filipinos and Indonesians working in Hong Kong can mobilize in far greater numbers than local Chinese, which is rather shameful.”; and

In my view, supposed gains such as in the case of Wal-Mart are largely meaningless. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions pockets union dues without providing the workforce with any bargaining power. It presents a very convincing façade to organizations such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, but does not permit workers to speak freely to foreign delegates. The official unions are not run for the benefit of the workers. Their Western counterparts should really oppose recognition of the ACFTU, and refuse to talk to them unless they allow people independent trade union rights.

JoAnn Wypijewski’s review on Louis Uchitelle’s book Disposable Americans is one of the many articles worth reading, as readers can expect from any issue of NLR.

All this (and today’s committee meeting of the local of my trade union, the University and College Union) reminded me: Our esteemed regular contributor, Adam Neil Maximilian Villani, was in a band that wrote the hymn “God Bless the Labor Movement”. I wonder if I should get permission to reprint it here. I am not praying for the Movement nearly enough!

It only applies to employers with over $1 billion in annual sales and stores of 90,000 square feet or more. It’s aimed at Wal-Mart, but I’m not sure who else would fall into that category; the article doesn’t say if it actually applies to any existing businesses in the city.

The wage under this ordinance is $10.00, plus $3.00 in fringe benefits. Much better than minimum wage, but still under the $15.00 (under the table, presumably) that day-laborers in Agoura Hills, California are getting.

Also, of course, it only applies within the city limits; the article notes that Wal-Mart recently opened a store just outside the boundary of the city.

Incidentally, I had no idea Chicago had 50 people on its City Council. Wow!