Lara Blackwood Pickrel

Minister/writer/editor, wife/mom, anti-racist feminist Jesus-follower, religion & sci fi geek. I knit for sanity’s sake. Tweets don’t represent my congregation.

[Lara Blackwood Pickrel @joyousjava]

We are witnesses to the new thing God is doing. We need use no more energy nourishing nostalgia. -Brueggemann #Homiletics2017 #boom

[Lara Blackwood Pickrel @joyousjava]

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[Jason Kander @JasonKander]

Biden was a senior in high school when his opponent was a freshman.

They’re the same damn age.

If the media doesn’t stop playing with fire by trying to both sides this election, Biden’s age is going to be the Hillary’s emails of 2024.

[Aaron Arguijo @AaronArguijo]

There are farmers who contract immigrants from Mexico and pay for their housing all over Texas. One in particular does it at the Plainview Labor Camp who puts at least four people in each apartment and contracts from Mexico every single year, transporting them to here.

Those people travel sometimes more than 22 hours on a bus to come and work the fields in West Texas, a place that no one wants to work anymore because the wages are too low to support an American family, above the poverty line.

These heroes for our agricultural economy show up with a gym bag of clothes.

That's it. And that’s all they use through the summer. They work 16 hour days, rushing off the bus that shuffles them back and forth to the laundry just to try to secure a washing machine, to ensure they can wash the clothes to hang dry them on the clothes line while they have supper.

The maintenance men in these camps inform us that they just put three twin mattresses on the floor, taking shifts to sleep. Sometimes, they'd get lucky and have a bed frame.

Migrant farmers are humans. They are the backbone of our entire agricultural economy. To vilify people for helping us is a different kind of hate.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

If your job requires a college degree, you should be able to write-off your student loan payments as a business expense the way CEOs write off their private jets and yachts for their jobs which require neither.

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

The five signs of fascism:

1) Rejecting of democracy in favor of a strongman
2) Stoking rage against cultural elites
3) Nationalism based on “superior” race
4) Extolling brute strength & heroic warriors
5) Disdain of women and LGBTQ+ people

Sound familiar?

[Lara Blackwood Pickrel @joyousjava]

@BrandonGilvin I look forward to hearing it! Having a discussion about pronouns at an upcoming O&A educational event and thinking about some of these same questions.

[Patrick S. Tomlinson @stealthygeek]

Whenever I see someone wearing a mask in public now, I have three thoughts:

1. They're sick and protecting me.
2. They're sick and protecting themselves.
3. They're perfectly healthy but protecting someone they love who is sick.

And in none of those scenarios is it my business.

[Ari Drennen @AriDrennen]

303 Creative LLC vs Elenis, explained:

[Adam @adamgreattweet]

Orcas have done more for social justice than the Supreme Court has this year

[Mikel Jollett @Mikel_Jollett]

So we’re clear:

The Supreme Court ended affirmative action yesterday by saying you CAN’T discriminate by helping a minority group, then turned around today and said you CAN discriminate by hurting them.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Maybe we shouldn’t be super literal about a nearly 240-year-old document that defined Black people as 3/5 of a person?

[Annie Wu (all socials: @annie_wu_22) @Annie_Wu_22]

remember last year at this exact time when Dobbs dropped and we were like “lgbtq+ rights will be next” and people said we were “being dramatic”

[amanda silberling @asilbwrites]

hey everybody, i know these scotus rulings are really brutal but let’s all just take a moment, go outside, take a deep breath and —

[Jesse Case @jessecase]

The news is always like: "America has banned wheelchair ramps because they weren't in the Bible. Finland has made ice cream free."

[The New Evangelicals @newvangelicals]

Still waiting for a Adam/Eve literalist to explain how monogamous marriage worked with their kids and why incest wasn't sinful "then" but it is now yet God's moral law is objectively true throughout time.

[Lara Blackwood Pickrel @joyousjava]

@elizabethlgr 🙌🏼💜

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

The man who leads the Senate in prayer is fed up with thoughts and prayers.

Today, Senate Chaplain Barry Black's gave an honest and bold rebuke of the common empty sentiment in his opening prayer:

"Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. Remind our lawmakers of the words of ... Edmund Burke: 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.'"

Chaplain Black’s words were so necessary.

We need action. Thank you Chaplain Black for having the courage to speak out. 💙

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

It’s not just eggs. Since 2020:

The price of bread is up 22%

Flour up 21%

Butter is up 31%

Meanwhile, food giant Cargill saw its profit double to a record $6.7B.

Follow the money, and the story is clear: Food corporations are using inflation as cover to jack up prices.

[Jack Hopkins @thejackhopkins]

Mass shooters don’t choose the AR-15 because it looks “cool.” They choose it, because they can kill upwards of 30 people before needing to reload.

On Sept 28th, 1982, 12 year old Mary Kellerman was hospitalized after being poisoned by a killer who laced a bottle of Tylenol that was on a store shelf, with cyanide. She died the next morning. A day later, six more would die from poisoned Tylenol.

By October 5th, Johnson & Johnson had issued a nationwide recall of 31 million bottles of Tylenol, and launched a massive advertising campaign to get people not to consume any of their products that contained acetaminophen (Tylenol)

The 1982 event inspired a rapid and radical shift in how certain products were sent out, quickly prompting manufacturers to start using tamperproof packaging. Untold lives have been saved in the years since.

The crisis management response by Johnson & Johnson is taught today as a model of corporate public relations and public safety.

These fucking shootings should be SIMPLE to fix. We KNOW how to rapidly bring about a massive reduction in school shootings and the senseless deaths of children and staff. We KNOW how.

It’s not happening, because organizations like the NRA spend millions upon millions of dollars to make sure GOP politicians do NOT allow those solutions to be implemented.

The NRA rewards the GOP for allowing our children to continue being slaughtered.

It’s NOT that we don’t know how to crush this. That, has never been the problem.