The Wild Reed

Monday, March 23, 2026

Jim Palmer on the 10 Things About Christianity That Jesus Would “Vehemently Dispute”

Jim Palmer is an author, spiritual director, and the founder of the Center for Non Religious Spirituality. He recently shared the following on social media which caught my attention.

As someone who is less and less involved in organized religion and yet drawn to the life and message of Jesus, I find much meaning and insight in this particular piece. Perhaps you will too.

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What follows is a refusal to keep pretending that the system built in Jesus’ name still resembles the life he lived or the vision he proclaimed.

If Jesus walked back into the room today, he wouldn’t recognize much of what claims his authority, and he wouldn’t be polite about it.

What follows are the assumptions that would likely provoke his sharpest rebuke.

1. That a vision meant to upend the social order was converted into an afterlife distraction

What began, in Jesus’ own language of the “kingdom of God,” as a concrete, this‑world confrontation with injustice, exploitation, and dehumanization was slowly evacuated into metaphysics. Liberation was postponed. Accountability was deferred. The future became a convenient place to store promises Jesus clearly expected to be enacted in the present.

2. That a movement of practice became a religion of admiration

Jesus did not call people to admire him, invoke him, or build systems around his name. He called them to follow. Yet a way of life was replaced by loyalty to a symbol. The question shifted from How shall we live? to What must we affirm? and belief became a substitute for transformation. Devotion replaced courage. Orthodoxy replaced responsibility.

3. That the core message centered on repairing a separation rather than exposing it as a fiction

Jesus lived and spoke from an unbroken sense of intimacy with God, inviting others into the same awareness. Instead, an entire narrative was built around distance, estrangement, and reunion. Alienation was treated as metaphysical fact rather than psychological and social condition, and then monetized with solutions Jesus never proposed.

4. That abstract theories overshadowed embodied truth

Jesus taught with his body as much as with words – through meals, touch, conflict, and solidarity. Yet second‑hand explanations gained authority over lived demonstration. System builders inherited the microphone, and the life Jesus actually lived was reduced to footnotes. Consistency of doctrine mattered more than coherence of character.

5. That one life was elevated beyond imitation instead of offered as a model of possibility

Jesus’ life could have functioned as an invitation into shared capacity – what a fully human life animated by love, courage, and justice looks like. Instead, it was reframed as ontological exception. The gap between “us” and “the ideal” was widened, not bridged, safeguarding reverence at the cost of empowerment.

6. That access to truth was narrowed rather than expanded

Jesus consistently pointed beyond himself to lived experience, moral imagination, and transformed relationships. But wisdom that once opened outward was domesticated into a closed epistemological system. Mystery was replaced with certainty. Inquiry with answers. Dialogue with defense, all in the name of protecting what Jesus never tried to possess.

7. That humanity was defined primarily by guilt and condemnation

Jesus’ posture toward people affirmed dignity before repentance and belonging before correction. Yet a fear‑based anthropology replaced one rooted in dignity. Wrath became foundational. Punishment became redemptive. Moral development was subordinated to appeasement, and people were trained to see themselves as problems Jesus supposedly came to manage.

8. That responsibility for healing the world was outsourced to future intervention

Jesus sent people out – to heal, to feed, to reconcile, to confront injustice. Instead, people were taught to wait – for rescue, for resolution, for Jesus to return and do what they were unwilling to do themselves. Passivity was baptized as faithfulness.

9. That words were mistaken for power

Jesus consistently exposed the emptiness of religious language divorced from action. Yet names, phrases, and verbal rituals were treated as if they could do the work that embodiment, risk, and love require. Meanwhile, the unsettling truth Jesus trusted – that humans already possess the capacity to effect change – was quietly ignored.

10. That the original vision became associated with institutions, influence, and control

Jesus aligned himself with the vulnerable and confronted systems of domination. Yet what once stood for courage, justice, beauty, and love became entangled with hierarchy, ideology, and power. The symbols survived. The substance was neutralized.

If this feels uncomfortable, good. These aren’t minor missteps, they’re fundamental reversals of what Jesus actually called people to live. If his life still matters, then so does the responsibility it demands. Everything else is just avoidance dressed up as faith.

– Jim Palmer
via social media
March 23, 2026

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Marianne Williamson on Staying Grounded Amidst the Chaos

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Photo of the Day

Friday, March 20, 2026

A Sacred Moment

The Astrological New Year begins on the Equinox, a sacred moment when light and darkness come into perfect balance across the Earth, marking a quiet but powerful turning point that guides us into renewal, rebirth, and new beginnings.

At this threshold, you are invited to release what has run its course and to begin again, not from force, but from a deeper trust in yourself. As a new cycle unfolds, you are called to consciously choose what you are ready to grow and to plant the seeds for the future you feel stirring within you.

This is not about waiting for the right time, but about recognizing that the moment is here. The life you are meant to step into begins with what you are willing to claim now.

– Wild Woman Sisterhood
March 20, 2026

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Earlier this evening I had the honor of delivering the “Jubilarian Reflection” at the St. Joseph Day celebration at Carondelet Village in St. Paul, Minnesota. This year marks my 20th anniversary of being a consociate member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet – St. Paul Province.

Right: With fellow CSJ Consociates Kathleen Olsen and Rita Quigley – March 18, 2026.

Left: Making my Consociate commitment on May 16, 2008. With me are the two inspiring women who served as my companions during my two-year consociate candidancy (one that started in 2006) – Rita McDonald, CSJ and Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ.

Consociates are men and women of diverse ages, faith traditions, and backgrounds. What we all have in common is an expressed desire to live the charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph (CSJ). A charism is a spiritual gift from God for the good of the church and the world. The charism of the CSJs is the “love of God and the dear neighbor without distinction.” In short, consociates live this special calling and gift of the Sisters of Joseph within the context of their own lives.

My reflection was preceded by the reading of an excerpt from Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, in which she writes about the “revolution of the heart.”

______________

Good evening. My name is Michael Bayly and I’m happy to say that I’ve been a consociate member of this wonderful community for 20 years. I’m honored to have been invited to share some thoughts with you during on this special day for us.

When I was first told of the title of this evening’s event, my first thought was, Oh, how poetic! – “God relied on Joseph to do the really tough things, to which he quietly replied, ‘Yes.’”

As I pondered these words I realized that, like all true poetic words, there’s a timelessness to them. This is because they reflect the eternal spirit of hope and trust in the midst of the many uncertainties and upheavals of life.

I see this spirit of hope and trust in the life of Joseph of Nazareth, and in the spiritual community that bears his name. I’ve witnessed countless example of Sisters and Consociates choosing, like Joseph, to be fully present in the moment when faced with uncertainties and challenges; choosing to wait trustingly for God’s guidance; and choosing to respond with a “Yes” born of compassion, courage, and trust.

Throughout our history as a spiritual community, we have done, and continue to do, some truly remarkable and inspiring things as a result of our saying, time after time, “Yes!”

Left: With Marilaurice Hemlock and Char Madigan, CSJ – March 18, 2026. Char is the founder of Hope Community in Minneapolis.

We have established and maintained ministries and programs, projects and collaborations that have changed lives; that have challenged systems of oppression and inequality; and that have embodied the “Good News” of justice, community, and liberation that Jesus lived and taught.

We have, like leaven in bread, infused the world with our presence and made a profound difference; we’ve lifted people and causes, we’ve taken risks, learned hard lessons, recalibrated and changed course when necessary, and kept going because we keep listening, trusting, and saying “Yes!”

Right: With Mary Ellen Foster, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

I’m sure that each one of us acknowledges that doing all of these things was and remains tough. But faithful doing is always predicated on faithful being – being still, being centered, being open to the flow of the Divine in and through both our individual and our communal lives. Being is just as tough as doing. Sometimes I think it’s actually more tough. There are just so many distractions, so many voices demanding busyness and productivity and results that to take time out, to cultivate quietude and wait upon the still small voice within, just seems crazy; a waste of valuable time.

But then I remember Jesus wandering off into the wild places to be alone. I remember Joseph holding back from acting rashly upon hearing the news that his betrothed was mysteriously with child. I remember Mary making sacred time and space to ponder all the uncertainties swirling around her and then choosing to trust the God of her Magnificat, her revolutionary canticle of praise to Divine transformation and a world liberated from hierarchy, injustice, poverty and shame.

The Magnificat’s revolution is an outer revolution, one that begins, however, as Dorothy Day reminds us, within each one of us as a “revolution of the heart.” Dorothy’s words remind me of a statement attributed to political and feminist activist Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

In our community’s embodiment of the “revolution of love,” we definitely allow for dancing. I sense we intrinsically know that, in the words of Gabrielle Roth, “We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things.” Some of my most memorable experiences in our community have involved movement and dance.

Some examples . . .

• Being uplifted by Florence Steichen (above), Rita Quigley, and so many other Sisters and Consociates as they danced the history of the CSJs at the River Center during our 150th anniversary celebration;

• Watching Susan Hames joyfully dancing with her young nephew at this same event (left);

• Being inspired by the mindful and graceful moves of Rita Foster, Susan Oeffling, and Cathy Steffens as they practiced and taught tai chi;

• Marveling at the skill and stamina of each and every one of Brigid McDonald’s Irish jigs (right, in 2016);

• Being mesmerized by the beauty of Ansgar Homberg’s creations of oil and brush and the slow, graceful dance of her hand;

• Feeling valued and accepted in watching the rainbow-inspired gestures of welcome from Linda Taylor, Mary Ellen Foster, Ruth Brooker, and so many other Sisters and Consociates as, year after year, they moved with joy and grace in the Twin Cities LGBTQI Pride parade (left, in 2010);

• Dancing to the ABBA classic “Dancin’ Queen” with Kathleen Olsen and the McDonald Sisters at the Ministries Foundation Gala (below, in 2014);

• And, of course, there’s dear Rose Tillemans’ memoir, I’m Still Dancing.

So, yes, there’s dancing of all kinds in our revolution of love – physical dancing. But there’s also always been a deeper type of movement, a symbolic dance; one that we can all partake, even if we can’t physically move and dance to the extent that we’d like.

This is Dorothy Day’s “revolution of the heart.” And I’ve come to understand it as beginning with an internal movement involving four steps:

1) The decision to cultivate stillness. Now this might sound odd, given that we’re talking about dance. But as Henry Miller reminds us: “To relax is the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is the first thing any one of us has to learn in order to fully live.” But it’s tough, because it means surrender.

2) An “active waiting” in the words of Henri Nouwen, for the voice, the flow, the rhythm of the sacred;

3) The saying of “Yes!” to what we hear and feel, be it in the form of guidance, clarity, or the call for further stillness and listening;

4) The realization that intrinsic to this process is a growing capacity to “recognize what is true, aligned, and life-giving, and to distinguish it from what is imagined, projected, or misaligned.” Shamanic teacher Mary Newstrom reminds us that throughout cultures and spiritual traditions, this capacity is called discernment. It is through our active cultivation of this capacity that we begin what’s been called the “great awakening within,” or as Dorothy Day names it, the “revolution of love.”

It’s a beginning that invites us to go beyond the inner realm in which our dance of revolution is born.

The next steps of this dance, and they can be tough ones, involve connecting with others, sharing what we’ve discerned, seeking counsel and community so as to realize and express ever more fully the “true love” that imbues and empowers the dance.

It’s a love that gifts us with vision to see things as they really are, and this might seem like new vision if we’ve become accustomed to seeing things with the ego and its obsession with falsities of separateness, brokenness and lovelessness. That’s not the vision of God. And we know this in our heart of hearts.

Left: With Jane McDonald, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

We know it too from our experiences – especially our experiences of community. It’s community that protects us from slipping back into old habits of ego thinking and seeing; it’s community that keeps the music and rhythm of the dance in our ears and in our hearts.

Our dance as Sisters and Consociates of St. Joseph of Carondelet has a very unique and beautiful rhythm, one which makes us move and flow in very unique and beautiful ways. One way of identifying this rhythm is by recognizing that it is what we refer to as our charism: To love God and the dear neighbor without distinction.

That’s how we move in the world. That’s our dance, our expression of love.

For twenty years I’ve been honored to share in this dance, to embody it with you and with many who are no longer with us as they have danced their way into the sweet unknown. Yet their essence continues to be felt, continues to inspire in and through the rhythm of our shared dance.

Long may the dance of our “revolution of love” continue. And when our feet tire from the dance, which can and does happen; and when we struggle to hear the rhythm of our dance above the world’s noise and chaos, may we again say “Yes!” to the tough thing of both being and doing what it takes to reinvigorate and continue our shared dance of revolutionary love. Amen.

– Michael Bayly
March 18, 2026

Above: With Cathy Steffens, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

Above: Part of the beautiful mural at Corondelet Village that honors the history of the Sisters and Consociates of St. Joseph of Carondelot – St. Paul Province. Featured in this part of mural is Rose Tillemans (top right), founder of Peace House in Minneapolis. Also featured are two of the four McDonald Sisters (Kate and Brigid), Marguerite Corcoran, CSJ and Rita Steinhagen, CSJ (foreground). All for four Sisters are pictured protesting the School of the Americas at Fort Benning Georgia in 1998. Rita Steinhagen was a founder (along with Marlene Barghini, CSJ) of The Bridge for Youth in Minneapolis.

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

“A Step in the Right Direction”

Given my long-standing interest in, and respect for the late Patrice Lumumba (right), I find today’s news that a court in Belgium has ordered ex-diplomat Étienne Davignon to stand trial for his 1961 murder to be both significant and well-overdue. It’s a development that Lumumba’s granddaughter calls “a step in the right direction.”

Following is the Reuters news agency’s reporting on this story.

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Belgium Orders Ex-Diplomat to Stand Trial
for 1961 Murder of Congo’s Lumumba

By Inti Landauro

Reuters
March 17, 2026

A Brussels court on Tuesday ordered a former high-profile Belgian diplomat to stand trial over the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, ‌the first prime minister of Congo, in a final attempt to shed light on the still murky circumstances surrounding his murder.

Lumumba, who became prime minister of the country now called the Democratic Republic of Congo upon its independence from Belgium in 1960, was ousted from power just months later and killed by Belgian-backed secessionist rebels on January 16, 1961.

A Belgian parliamentary investigation into Lumumba’s killing concluded in 2002 that Belgium was “morally responsible” for his death. But the trial ⁠of 93-year-old Count Étienne Davignon [left], a former EU Commissioner who was a junior diplomat at the time, constitutes the first prosecution related to the murder.

Prosecutors say Davignon, who is accused of war crimes, participated in the unlawful detention or transfer of Lumumba and deprived him of his right to an impartial trial. They say he subjected Lumumba to “humiliating and degrading treatment.”

He is also accused of involvement in the murders of two of Lumumba’s political allies, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito. All the other suspects in the case have died. Davignon was not present in the courtroom on Tuesday, and his lawyer declined to comment.

Though his government lasted just three months, Lumumba became an anti-colonial icon as African nations pushed for independence ‌from their ⁠European masters in the 1960s. He remains a folk hero even today.

His murder marked a dark turn for Congo, which boasts vast mineral resources including copper, cobalt, gold and uranium but whose people have lived under dictatorship and the menace of deadly armed conflict for most of its post-independence history.

Though he publicly professed his neutrality, Lumumba’s overtures to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War ⁠alarmed governments in the West, and some historians have accused Washington’s Central Intelligence Agency of involvement in his death.

Lumumba’s surviving family members initially brought the case, which has since been taken up by Belgian federal prosecutors.

“It is a step in the right direction,” Lumumba’s granddaughter Yema Lumumba ⁠told Reuters after the ruling. “What we want is to search for truth and establish different responsibilities.”

Following his Congo assignment, Davignon, who was born into the Belgian nobility, went on to become a well-known diplomat as the first head of the International ⁠Energy Agency and a European Commissioner between 1977 and 1985.

He later served as chairman of the Belgian holding company Société Générale de Belgique and sat on the boards of many listed companies.

Davignon was elevated to the rank of a count by Belgium’s King Philippe in 2018.

– Inti Landauro
Reuters
March 17, 2026

Following is coverage of this story by The World Is One News (WION).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Remembering Patrice Lumumba
• Raoul Peck on Patrice Lumumba and the Making of a Martyr
• Bringing Lumumba Home
• In Congo, the Only Known Remains of Patrice Lumumba Are Finally Laid to Rest
• University of Antwerp Honors Patrice Lumumba
• Ludo de Witte on the Need for Truth and Justice in the Assassination of Patrice Lumumba
• Remembering Lumumba
• Remembering the Visionary Leadership of Patrice Lumumba

Related Off-site Links:
Belgian Court Orders Trial of Ex-diplomat for Congo Independence Icon Patrice Lumumba’s Killing – Associated Press (March 17, 2026).
Belgian Court Sends Ex-diplomat, 93, to Trial Over 1961 Murder of Congo Leader – Jennifer Rankin (The Guardian, March 17, 2026).
Belgian Aristocrat to Face Charges Over Murder of Congo’s First Premier – Laura Dubois (Financial Times, March 17, 2026).
Brussels Marks 100 Years Since Birth of Patrice Lumumba, DR Congo’s Independence Leader – Belga News Agency (July 2, 2025).
Patrice Lumumba’s Life Defended in Oscar Nominated Documentary, Soundtrack to a Coup d’État – Chicago Crusader (February 28, 2025).
Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) – Sean Jacobs (Jacobin, January 17, 2017).
In Search of Lumumba – Christian Parenti (In These Times, January 30, 2008).
Patrice Lumumba: The Most Important Assassination of the 20th Century – Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (The Guardian, January 17, 2011).
Death of Lumumba – A History of Foreign Involvement – S.A. Randhawa (I/R/M, December 13, 2019).
Both Belgium and the United States Should Be Called to Account for the Death of Patrice Lumumba – Tim Butcher (The Spectator, March 7, 2015).
Congo’s Patrice Lumumba: The Winds of Reaction in Africa – Kenneth Good (CounterPunch, August 23, 2019).
The Tragedy of Lumumba: An Exchange – Ludo De Witte Colin Legum and Brian Urquhart (The New York Review, December 20, 2001).
Martyr by Choice – Catherine Hoskyns (The New York Review, April 5, 1973).
An Exchange on the Death of Lumumba – A.C. Gilpin and Catherine Hoskyns (The New York Review, April 22, 1971).
Who Killed Lumumba? – Catherine Hoskyns (The New York Review, December 17, 1970).
Belgium Faces Up to Post-war “Apartheid” in Congolese Colony – Jennifer Rankin (The Guardian, December 9, 2018).
Brussels Sets Straight Historical Wrong Over Patrice Lumumba Killing – Patrick Smyth (The Irish Times, July 5, 2018).
Belgian Princess Condemns Her Family’s Brutal Colonial History in Congo and Calls for Reparations – Democracy Now! (July 9, 2020).
“Deepest Regrets,” But No Apology: King Philippe Acknowledges Colonial Cruelties – Maïthé Chini (The Brussels Times, June 8, 2022).
Belgium Finally Returns Tooth of Assassinated Leader Lumumba to DRC – Maïthé Chini (The Brussels Times, June 20, 2022).
Congo Buries Remains of Independence Martyr Patrice Lumumba – teleSUR (June 30, 2022).
Reparations? No Consensus On How Belgium Should Apologise for Colonial Past – Maïthé Chini (The Brussels Times, November 28, 2022).
Maurice Carney on Patrice Lumumba – CounterSpin (January 20, 2023).
“‘The Cry Is ‘Lumumba Lives’ – His Ideas, His Principles”: An Interview With Maurice Carney on Patrice Lumumba – CounterSpin (January 20, 2023).

Monday, March 16, 2026

Marx and Class Struggle – Then and Now

The following was published this past Saturday by the satirical Montana Department of Propaganda Facebook group, the place “where trolls go to die.”

As you’ll see, though, there’s nothing satirical about this particular post, one that marks the 143rd anniversary of the death of German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.

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Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883.

And if you strip away all the Cold War propaganda and the cartoon versions people argue about online, what Marx actually did was pretty simple. He looked at capitalism and asked a question that polite society tries very hard not to ask.

Who is doing the work . . . and who is taking the money?

Marx spent years studying factories, wages, production, and economic crises. What he noticed was something workers had already felt in their bones for generations. The people producing the wealth were not the people controlling it.

Workers built the railroads. Workers mined the coal. Workers ran the machines. Workers produced the goods.

But the profits accumulated somewhere else.

Marx called this exploitation, not as an insult, but as a mechanical description of how the system worked. If a worker produces $200 worth of value in a day but is paid $80 in wages, the remaining value does not disappear. It flows upward to owners, investors, and shareholders. That difference is what Marx called surplus value.

And once you see that dynamic, you start noticing something else Marx talked about constantly: class struggle. Not the cartoon version where people run around waving red flags. The real one. The quiet daily struggle over wages, rent, healthcare, working hours, unions, and who gets to control the wealth society produces.

You can see it today just as clearly as Marx saw it in the 1800s.

Workers told there is no money for healthcare, but there is always money for war. Teachers told budgets are tight while corporations receive tax breaks. Communities told to tighten their belts while billionaires accumulate more wealth than entire countries.

And if you want to see how this plays out in real life, you do not even have to leave Montana.

In the early 1900s, copper miners in Butte, Montana were working some of the most dangerous industrial jobs in America. The mines were controlled by the powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company, part of the copper trust that dominated Montana’s economy and politics. Miners worked brutal hours underground surrounded by toxic dust, cave-ins, and explosions while enormous fortunes were being built above ground.

Then came the catastrophe that ignited outrage across the state. In 1917, the Speculator Mine disaster killed 168 miners, making it one of the deadliest mining disasters in American history. Workers had been demanding better safety conditions for years. The disaster triggered massive labor unrest and strengthened organizing by groups like the Industrial Workers of the World. Workers were not asking for luxury. They were asking not to die underground for someone else’s profit.

The response from the powerful was swift. Labor organizers were harassed, jailed, and sometimes murdered. One of the most infamous cases was the lynching of union organizer Frank Little in Butte in 1917 after he criticized the mining companies and war profiteering.

And the fight between workers and power wasn’t only happening in the mines. It was happening in the streets too.

In the early 1900s, members of the Industrial Workers of the World fought a series of free speech battles in Missoula, Montana. At the time, local authorities and business interests were trying to shut down labor organizing by banning public speaking on street corners. Workers responded by deliberately violating the bans. One by one they stood on soapboxes and spoke about wages, exploitation, and labor rights.

Police arrested them by the dozens.

When the jails filled up, more workers arrived.

Some were beaten. Some were thrown in overcrowded cells. But the arrests only drew more attention to the cause, and eventually the city backed down. The workers won the right to speak publicly again.

It was one of the earliest free speech fights in the American West, and it came directly out of the labor movement.

That was class struggle playing out in Montana.

For decades the Anaconda Copper Mining Company had so much control over Montana’s politics that people joked the company owned “everything but the cemeteries.” Newspapers, legislators, and policy often moved in directions that protected corporate power while workers fought for unions, wages, and safer conditions.

Fast forward to today and the pattern still looks familiar. You see it in housing struggles in places like Missoula, Montana where working people face rising rents while housing increasingly becomes an investment vehicle for distant investors. You see it in fights over wages, healthcare, and public services. You see it when politicians promise tax cuts for the wealthy while teachers, nurses, and working families are told there just is not enough money for the things communities need.

Different century. Same conflict.

Marx did not invent those contradictions. He simply pointed at them.

And that is why more than a century after his death people still argue about him. Because Marx taught ordinary people to ask a dangerous question.

Who actually benefits from the way society is organized?

Once people start asking that question, the conversation changes. And that question has been haunting the powerful ever since.

– Source

Related Off-site Links:
Was Marx Right? It’s Not Too Late to Ask – Terry Eagleton (Commonweal, March 28, 2011).
For Karl Marx, Human Flourishing Is Inherently Social – Jan Kandiyali (Jacobin, October 12, 2025).
How Karl Marx Went From Student to Revolutionary – Encyclopædia Britannica. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism Wins the 2018 Deutscher Prize – Climate and Capitalism (November 25, 2018).
Reading Marx in the Corpse of Neoliberalism – Jason Koslowski (Left Voice, July 25, 2025).
Marx and Internationalism – John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review, July-August 2000).
Love in the Time of Capital: A Review of Mary Gabriel’s Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution – Timothy Shenk (Dissent, Summer 2012).
To Struggle!: A Review of Marcello Musto’s The Last Years of Karl Marx – Mauricio Betancourt (Monthly Review, February 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Terry Eagleton: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2011
• The Biblical Roots of “From Each According to Ability; To Each According to Need”
• A Socialist Response to the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• Capitalism on Trial

Sunday, March 15, 2026

The “Power, Peril and Importance” of What's Happening in Minnesota

In Minnesota, I heard a talk by Ian Bassin, a founder and the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that works to ensure election integrity. In a follow-up conversation, he told me a story that perfectly captured the power, peril and importance of what happened here.

“A lifelong Minnesotan shared with me two lessons she’d learned watching the recent federal assault on her hometown,” said Bassin. “The first was her jarring realization that ‘there is no net below us.’ She had spent her life assuming that somewhere beneath the visible architecture of laws and institutions there existed a backstop – guardrails that would prevent a fall into the unthinkable. Watching masked federal agents abduct her neighbors and shoot them with impunity forced her to reckon with the reality that no such net exists.”

But the other lesson she drew from Minnesota, said Bassin, was that in the absence of solid safeguards, “watching ordinary citizens show up for one another – offering shelter, standing watch, car-pooling an endangered family’s kids to school – gave her a different kind of confidence. Not that formal checks will save us, but that solidarity remains a renewable resource – that we are and can be our own net.”

– Thomas L. Friedman
Excerpted from "Why Minnesota Matters More
Than Iran for America’s Future
The New York Times
March 15, 2026

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Greg Ketter: A Valiant Minnesotan

Every six months or so I dutifully make my way to Dreamhaven Books in south Minneapolis to buy the latest volume of Fantagraphics’ ambitious reprinting of the revered adventure strip, Prince Valiant. Founded in 1977, Dreamhaven is the oldest continuously operating comic shop in Minneapolis, and among the oldest in the United States.

As I’ve noted previously, I’ve collected Prince Valiant in one form or another since I was a teenager in Australia in the late 1970s. I was inspired by my dad, who collected it when he was a teenager in the mid 1950s. The strip itself has been around since 1937, when it was first created by Hal Foster. Other artists and writers have followed in Foster’s footsteps and kept the strip alive for 89 years. You can read about all of these artists and writers (and see their work) at my blog, A Prince Named Valiant.

Above and below: Two panels from the latest volume of Prince Valiant reprints by Fantagraphics Books. (Art by John Cullen Murphy and text by Cullen Murphy.)

My most recent visit to Dreamhaven wasn’t just about obtaining the latest volume of Prince Valiant (which, by the way is Volume 30, 1995-1996). I also was hoping to encounter and personally thank Dreamhaven owner Greg Ketter for his vocal and iconic stance against ICE and CPB, the most visible and terrorizing manifestations of the Trump regime’s fascist occupation of Minnesota.

As you can see from this post’s opening image, my hope was realized! It was an honor to meet Greg and thank him for his very public speaking out against, as he says, “the U.S. government attacking its own people.” I have no doubt that Greg’s, well, valiant stance is ongoing, but its most well-known expression took place at the end of January, shortly after the murder by CPB agents of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti. It was an impassioned expression of righteous anger, and one that was widely covered by local media, including WCCO News . . .

Related Off-site Links:
A Conversation With Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven Books – Zach Rabiroff (The Comics Journal, January 30, 2026).
When a Bookshop Owner Turns Anger Into Resistance – MS NOW (January 31, 2026).
Minneapolis Bookstore Owner Goes Viral for Lashing Out at ICE – USA Today, January 28, 2026).
Sales Surge at Minneapolis Bookstore After Resonating Photo of Owner at Protest – Nick Lunemann and Erin Hassanzadeh (CBS News, January 26, 2026).
Greg Ketter Responds to Trump's State of the Union Speech: “I Am Still Angry” – MS NOW (February 25, 2026).
The People of Minneapolis Will Simply Not Let the ICE Thugs Prevail – Dan Simmons (The New Republic, February 5, 2026).
We’re All Minnesotans Now – William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift (The Bulwark, February 18, 2026).
What We Can Learn From Minneapolis’ Model of Resistance – Gabriel Furshong (Common Dreams, February 13, 2026).
The Rise of the Rebel Loon Logos – The Nerd of The Rings (February 13, 2026).
Anti-ICE Organizing Is Creating Counter-Institutions Based on Care – Rashida James-Saadiya (Truthout, February 4, 2026).
The Minneapolis Resistance Will Do Your Laundry – Deborah Copperud (Current Affairs, February 19, 2026).
“Backing Down Isn’t an Option”: Minnesota ICE Shootings Mobilize Americans to Join ICE Observer Groups – Lex McMenamin (The Guardian, January 31, 2026).
Letter From Minnesota: Details From an Occupation – Angela Pelster (Literary Hub, January 29, 2026).
Meet the Minneapolis Parents Patrolling Their Schools Amid ICE Operations – Elizabeth Shockman (MPR News, January 16, 2026).
The Women Holding Minneapolis Together – Anna Moeslein Glamor, January 7, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts on the resistance to the Trump regime’s fascist occupation of Minnesota:
• Omar Fateh: Quote of the Day – December 4, 2025
• Photo of the Day – December 5, 2025
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Great Event, Great Sign, Great Nails
• Christmas Eve Musings
• May We Do Likewise
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like” – January 7, 2026
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• A Good Faith Appeal and a Grim Response
• Why Minnesota?
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Knowing Our Rights
• Mike Figueredo on Why Trump Might Be Pushing the U.S. to the Brink of Collapse
• A “Red Alert Moment for American Democracy”
• Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Marianne Williamson on How to Psychologically Endure This Moment
• What Moral Clarity Looks Like in Minnesota This MLK Day
• Nemik’s Eulogy for Renée Nicole Good
• “It Was Never About Keeping America Safe”
• “ICE Out!”: The Minnesota General Strike – 1/23/26
• “This Was a Flat Out Execution”
• “Organized Sustained Systemic Resistance and Self-Defense Are Our Only Options”
• Honoring Alex Pretti
• George Conway: The Trump Administration Is a “Criminal Organization”
• In the Face of Fascist Lies, MN Governor Tim Walz Sets the Record Straight
• Adam Serwer on How “Every Social Theory Undergirding Trumpism Has Been Broken on the Steel of Minnesotan Resolve”
• “Trump Is Scared Shitless”
• “They Were Alive. Then They Were Not”
• Bruce Springsteen and the Streets of Minneapolis in the Winter of ’26
• Craig Mokhiber on the “Imperial Boomerang”: How U.S. War Tactics Abroad Are Now Used at Home
• January Vignettes (2026)
• Honoring Renée Good and the “Astonishing Surge of Courage” of Minneapolis
• A Luminous Celebration of Light, Love and Community
• More Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Memes of the Times – February 2026
• Only the Beginning
• The North Remembers
• “It’s All Lies and Propaganda”
• What This Moment Feels Like in Minnesota
• Quote of the Day – February 23, 2026
• For Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Silence Is Never an Option
• February Vignettes (2026)

See also:
• A Valiant First Effort, Wouldn’t You Say?
• Journeying Into the Truth . . . Valiantly, of Course!
• Waking Dagobert
• “Like Persephone of Myth”
• Into the Fray
• Something to Think About – November 11, 2014

Above: The Prince of Thule as depicted by Thomas Yeates
(from page 4503, May 28, 2023).

For more on Prince Valiant, see the following at A Prince Named Valiant:
• How It All Began
• Commemorating Hal Foster and Prince Valiant
• Mark Schultz on the Art of Hal Foster: “Uniquely Appealing, Innovative and Influential”
• “He Wasn’t a Superhero But He Was a Hero”
• A Valiant First Effort, Wouldn’t You Say?
• John Cullen Murphy on Prince Valiant: “It’s My Duty. I’m Responsible For It”
• Former Prince Valiant Writer Cullen Murphy Interviewed by Terry Gross
• Mark Schultz on Prince Valiant as an American Invention
• Gary Gianni’s Prince Valiant: Looking Good
Celebrating 85 Years of Prince Valiant
• Comics’ Sweeping Graphic Novel, Prince Valiant, Turns 80
• Prince Valiant Celebrates 75th Anniversary
• Something Very Special
• Remembering Episode 3000, 8/7/94
• Thomas Yeates: “My Biggest Thrill is Seeing the Prince Valiant Logo on My Drawings”
• Mark Schultz on Continuing the Legacy of Prince Valiant
• A First for Prince Valiant
• Prince Arn, Son of Valiant and Regent of Camelot
• “We Are the Daughters of the Queen of the Misty Isles and the Prince of Thule”
• The Return of Karen and Valeta
• Galan to the Rescue
• Nathan

The Wild Reed

Monday, March 23, 2026

Jim Palmer on the 10 Things About Christianity That Jesus Would “Vehemently Dispute”

Sunday, March 22, 2026

Marianne Williamson on Staying Grounded Amidst the Chaos

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Photo of the Day

Friday, March 20, 2026

A Sacred Moment

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

“A Step in the Right Direction”

Monday, March 16, 2026

Marx and Class Struggle – Then and Now

Sunday, March 15, 2026

The “Power, Peril and Importance” of What's Happening in Minnesota

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Greg Ketter: A Valiant Minnesotan

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