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December 15
Muriel Rukeyser, Chico Mendes, Marta Russell, and Las Posadas
David Barnhart
December 15, 2025
Mother bluebird building a nest, 2022.
Today is the birthday, in 1913, of Muriel Rukeyser, a Jewish feminist, poet, and activist. One of her most famous lines is “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Today is also the birthday, in 1944, of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian activist whose work in labor and environmental organizing in the Amazon led to his assassination.
Today marks the death, in 2013, of American disability activist Marta Russell. She worked to expose the connections of disability and capitalism.
Tomorrow, December 16, begins the tradition of Las Posadas in several Latin American countries. It is a nine-day long public prayer and ritual in which participants dressed as Jesus’s parents, Joseph and Mary, visit various homes and replay searching for a room in Bethlehem. The nine days also symbolize the nine months of Mary’s pregnancy. Modern prayer services often highlight the plight of refugees and migrants around the world.
Reflection:
Chico Mendes said:
“At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
and
“Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”
Marta Russell wrote:
“There is no Death with Dignity when people choose to die because health care economics and the social services system prevent life with dignity.”
Among many other powerful things, Muriel Rukeyser wrote:
“In subjugated peoples, the poet emerges as prophet.”
and
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”
And since we are most of the way through Advent and Las Posadas starts tomorrow, and since our fascist regime is waging war against immigrants, refugees, and the most vulnerable humans in the world, I’d like to share a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote:
“As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us.”
Prayer: God, let our environmentalism be more than gardening, and let our love for human beings be more than sentiment. Amen.