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Readers write: The fight against NGOs, one voter will still turn out

Letters to the editor for the June 13, 2016 weekly magazine.

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John Locher/AP
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Greater St. Paul Church on June 5, 2016, in Oakland, Calif.
  • By Mark Green Monitor reader
  • Ken Brack Monitor reader

The fight against NGOs

I’d like to thank the Monitor for the April 25 online article “Behind global crackdown on NGOs, recognition of their power” (CSMonitor.com). The International Republican Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, increasingly finds itself among those groups targeted by these restrictive regimes. Our work training civil society activists and building responsive, representative political parties is viewed as a threat to those trying to squelch dissent. Egypt started its crackdown on nongovernmental organizations back in 2011 when it abruptly raided several NGO offices, including IRI’s, and convicted our staff on bogus charges of undermining the Egyptian government.

More subtle measures include long bureaucratic delays in processing paperwork, exorbitant registration requests, and extensive censorship of public survey questions. These controls are seen in places like Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.

The current trend away from free and open societies is troubling, but it’s also affirmation that the work we’re doing to empower local citizens is working and is powerful.

Mark Green

President of the International Republican Institute

One voter will still turn out

The May 9 online article “Clinton and Trump both go ‘negative,’ but in different ways” (CSMonitor.com) asks, “[W]ill sulking voters stay home?” Sulking implies a childish response to not getting what you want. I cannot support either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But I am not sulking. And I am not staying home. The government consists of more than one individual. We are not electing a king.

So I am looking forward to Election Day, when I will exercise the right that keeps us all free and for which so many Americans sacrificed so much. I will write in a name for president and vote my conscience on all the other state and federal offices.

Ken Brack

Huntington, Vt.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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