Poverty

Apr
15

Are We Any Closer to Achieving Sanctity of Life?

By James E. Copple Co-Director, ACT NOWFacilitator of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing A year before the murder of George Floyd, I was in Minnesota facilitating a working group on police-involved deadly force encounters convened by Attorney General Keith Ellison and John Harrington, Director of Public Safety. The working group was charged […]

Jan
04

My early morning trip, with lights sparkling on the horizon in the wintry cold of dawn, reminded me that seekers are the torchlight that feeds the flame – illuminating and healing “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” while spreading peace and joy.

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Mar
05

By James E. Copple As Kenya Airways made its descent into Nairobi, the rising sun colored the eastern sky bright orange. Enveloped in morning fog, the beauty of sun-on-clouds painted an endless, boundless horizon — it’s a continent so rich in diversity and history, and I am thankful this place has been part of my […]

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Sep
08

By James E. Copple In a summer of disaster, there’s hope and holy pride in the poignant, modestly magnanimous efforts of African refugee camps to lift our fellow man in need. The summer of 2017 has had more than its share of natural disasters: Hurricanes Harvey and Irma; earthquakes in Mexico; fires in the Western […]

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Sep
14

By James E. Copple As a policy guy working to change environment for the greatest good to the whole, the realities of numbers or data run deep when I see, first-hand, a child playing in the waste of a slum community; parents struggling to educate their child; a family mourning the loss of a child, […]

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Aug
18

By James E. Copple The Church is a relationship to something bigger and greater than an individual and a people, and that’s true across denominations and even for the un-churched. For me, it is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, one that has taken me to the White House and 30 governor’s mansions. It has […]

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Apr
15

By James E. Copple There are at least 2.3 million compelling stories to be told in the self-perpetuating vicious cycle of institutional incarceration, narratives that attempt to answer: “Why? What happened?” But maybe the better question would ask: “What didn’t happen? What’s missing?” John and Cecelia have a story, and it’s one that traces the […]

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Nov
10

By James E. Copple I am taken with the idea of language, especially metaphor. It fascinates me, our dynamic linguistic toolbox and its ability to, at once, simply communicate the complex; create nuanced compositions of description, insight and perspective; illuminate and elevate the basic; to build bridges of understanding. In the world of extreme poverty, […]

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Sep
25

By James E. Copple Efforts to combat the Ebola virus are in full-throttle, with the regrettable but predictable picking-up-the-pieces in a crisis that is preventable but difficult to sell until worst-case scenarios lead the news. The CDC projects nearly 1.4 million people could contract the disease by the first of the year. Ebola, which is […]

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