Robyn Short's Blog, page 2

Umiganura: A Day of Sharing

Murabeho (Saying goodbye!)

August 5 is a day of celebration and sharing in Rwanda. It is the day Umiganura, or Harvest Day, is celebrated. The holiday is a time of unification with family, village and country. Historically, Umiganura was a day in which all people — rich, poor and from all social classes — came together to share with one another as a form of promoting Rwandan cultural values. Twenty-two years after the 1994 genocide that devastated Rwanda, Umiganura has evolved to become a day...

Why Third-party Candidates Are Not a Throwaway Vote

July 25, 2016

by Robyn Short

America exists today because a handful of enlightened, passionate, committed and headstrong individuals believed they held the power within themselves to start a revolution … a revolution to free themselves from the governmental oversight of a more than 600-year-old British monarchy. And so began this great American experiment, born out of a courageous revolution and an intense commitment to be the authors of the American destiny. Authoring one’s destiny is inhere...

Another Mass Murder in America

Another mass murder has occurred in America, and, once again, outraged Americans have taken to social media to make their perspectives known. This is an online dialogue far too many people have grown tired of — and by “tired” I don’t mean “bored of” but rather tired from the depths of our souls.

Collectively, we are all outraged — even if we don’t agree on what we are outraged about. And so, we attempt to exorcise our pain by pointing fingers and placing blame. Some people blame Muslims; some...

Violence in Texas Prisons: An Enduring Conflict

When we think of violence, we often think of a brute force action imposed on another human being, which is one accurate understanding of the word. Violence is also defined as an unlawful exercise of physical force. In the Texas prison system, brute force imposed on an incarcerated individual by another incarcerated person is strictly forbidden and punishable via the criminal justice system; yet violence imposed by a correctional officer onto an incarcerated person is not considered a crimina...

Faith & Foolishness

“Every decision you make stems from who you think you are and represents the value you put on yourself.” —A Course in Miracles

We are immensely powerful. We have the ability to affect create change in this world. Our power is limited only by our belief in it. Understanding and accepting our power requires faith … a belief in the yet unseen.

In his beautiful speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its cre...

Creating Freedom, Equality and Peace for All Americans

“You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” ~ Albert Einstein

To atone is to repair a wrongdoing or an injury to another person. When we atone, we restore the wronged party back to his or her natural state of innocence. Atonement is, by its very a nature, a spiritual concept and a spiritual process. To understand that we are all innocent is to restore our perceptions so that we perceive the the oneness in all of humanity. Ato...

Bernie Sanders for President

Let us wage a moral and political war against war itself, so that we can cut military spending and use that money for human needs. — Senator Bernie Sanders

Today the 2016 presidential election got very exciting. Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont, announced his candidacy for president. Currently serving his second term in the Senate, Sanders served the previous 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in U.S. History.

A strong...

We Are the Possible

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms …

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate …

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil …

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

— Maya Angelou, “A...

Building a More Perfect Union

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”—Abraham Lincoln

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 presidential primaries last week. Rather than feeling energized and excited about the promise of a woman candidate, and quite possibly even the first woman president, I felt a sense of dread — dread of the mudslinging, the reputation bashing, the posturing and, at times, the outright lying that h...

Refuse to Be Silent

Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Missouri chapter said in a statement of condolence to Michael Brown’s family, “Unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate. This pattern must stop.”

Yes. It must stop, and yet the pattern of police officers shooting unarmed African-American men is not slowing down.

Just how often police officers shoot unarmed individuals is difficult to quantify because the reporting of use of force...