The loudest calls for cutting, and ultimately, gutting Social Security are coming from two lobby groups led by CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security. The retirement accounts of these Business Roundtable CEOs average $14.5 million, more than 1,200 times larger than typical U.S. workers.

The homeless situation in Nashville is far worse than city leaders pretend. Music City’s lack of affordable housing, and constant police harassment of homeless people, is a disgrace. There is literally nowhere for homeless people to sit, walk or go to the bathroom without fear of being arrested for trespassing.

An estimated 140,000 households will lose housing vouchers because of sequestration. The budget cuts also will shred Meals on Wheels for senior citizens, homelessness programs, public housing, and AIDS and HIV services. Thousands of low-income renters now are threatened with higher rent increases, or the possible loss of their vouchers.

News that someone was getting a ticket for sitting on a chair playing the fiddle traveled fast up and down Telegraph. A reporter snapped pictures for the paper. A Channel Two news crew began filming. Officer Cole kept insisting that other people had no right to be on the sidewalk, either.

What all the vigilers shared was a love of peace and a distrust of war. In lieu of violent intervention, the vigilers would like to see the United States rely more on diplomacy, sanctions, and peaceful aid to achieve its international aims. Many of them have spent their lives working towards this goal.

This disease is a killer. And now it was coming after the ones closest to me. So many great people have been lost. Most never even knew they had the disease. But now, at last, it looks like they have this monster on the ropes and there is tremendous reason for celebration.

“As people who have suffered under such a brutal, diabolical system, we realize that it is our responsibility to help change the course of violent prison systems that have made their way to our communities... We called for an end to hostilities to eliminate giving prison guards an excuse to kill prisoners.”

This peaceful protest was a tremendously courageous effort to overcome the injustice of solitary confinement. The hunger strike is historic on many levels: the number of prisoners who went without food; the international media attention; and the impressive mobilization of groups on the outside who organized demonstrations, and promoted the prisoners' demands.

Community gardens provide an alternative to large agricultural areas. Community gardens also foster greater participation that results in improved energy efficiencies. There is less reliance on fuel-consuming machinery to sow, maintain and harvest. Growing food becomes sustainable in community gardens because there is less need for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Nonviolent campaigns were effective against dictatorships; against highly repressive regimes that use violent and brutal repression; and also in places where people would expect a nonviolent campaign to be impossible to even emerge in the first place — such as very closed societies with no civil society organization to speak of.