Envy Is the Illusion

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary     January 24, 2012 By Perry Redd     Have you heard the latest buzzword?  It’s more akin to an allegation.  As we bear witness to the Republicans vying for the opportunity to face incumbent Barack Obama for the presidency, “The Politics of Envy” has become [...]

King Is Not Complicated

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary               By Perry Redd The man himself was controversial, notes LaSalle University sociology professor Charles Gallagher in a CNN article. King— bound up with issues of racial and economic inequality that spotlight America’s worst sins—is a “Rorschach test,” Gallagher says, that people see in King what [...]

Words Matter for Our Progress

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary December 13, 2011 By Perry Redd   So the story goes: “we’ve made great strides in American race relations.  We’re in a post-racial society.”  I, of course, don’t go for that one.  As a matter of fact, I believe we’re rapidly digressing from the progress [...]

Making Policy On the Fly

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary December 6, 2011 By Perry Redd   You wanna talk about improbable?  I was going back over my commentary from May of this year.  I am not going to eat my words, but they are a bit haunting right about now.  Do you remember what [...]

The New Kent State

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary November 22, 2011 By Perry Redd   You might find this extreme. You may strongly disagree with this statement, but you’ll eventually agree that suppression of free speech is a common theme in the police reactions to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests nationwide and those [...]

De-Mythicizing Occupation

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary October 11, 2011 By Perry Redd Enough of the lies—by both the American mainstream media and the conservative Republican Right!  There is nothing right in their attempts to equate the current groundswell of the Occupy Wall Street movement with the Tea Party movement of the [...]

Depiction of Contradiction

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary October 4, 2011 By Perry Redd This past week, the news cycle has been fast and furious.  If you’ve blinked, then you’ve missed something.  Not necessarily the stories, but the truth.  The actors have said one thing, then have done another.  They’ve stood on principle—or [...]

Not So Sleight of Hand

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary September 27, 2011 By Perry Redd My concern for the people of Palestine goes back to my discipleship and pastoral training in the mid-90’s.  I grew to question the contemporary mainstream American Christian teaching of the history of the region currently know as Israel.  I [...]

Taking the Wrong Class

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary September 20, 2011 By Perry Redd   You should be as sick of it as I am…Republicans twisting an issue of national importance into an impossible proposition.  This time, it’s taxes.  After the debt ceiling was raised last month, the issue was certain to re-surface [...]

Illusion of Democracy

The Other Side of the Tracks: A Socially Speaking commentary September 13, 2011 By Perry Redd   This is all about the illusion. An illusion is a distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. While illusions distort reality, they are generally shared by most  people. An example is: “America [...]