It's time to admit that we, the people of this planet, have lost faith in conventional tactics for maintaining order in the world. The time-tattered trio-violence, war, and self-serving politicians-have only made things worse. More importantly, we've lost faith in ourselves and the essential goodness of human nature. This Mere Existence: Motivation and Strategies for Restoring Human Rights seeks to reaffirm our evolutionary inclination to empathy and reciprocal altruism, strives to motivate people for the fight by documenting the myriad ways immoral, powerful people have suppressed and denied human rights to this very day, and introduces strategies for engaging the powers that be in a nonviolent struggle to reclaim and restore the rights and freedoms we inherit at birth but have seldom been able to enjoy. This book is a celebration of the human potential to turn things around. If we reclaim our connection to each other, we can reclaim the rights we've been denied for so very long.
Author Biography:
Mark Kelley is a veteran of 25 years in the broadcast news business, working as a reporter, writer, producer, and until 2000, main anchor for WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN. He's written three novels: Berman's Lament (2000), The Manhattan Project (unpublished), and Rain of Ruin (CreateSpace, 2011). Berman's Lament chronicles the disappointment with the broadcast news business that led him to abandon professional journalism work for the academy. The Manhattan Project is essentially his ideological memoir, disguised as the writings of reporter Jed Berman, the "hero" of Berman's Lament. He and Berman share the same burning question: Why do human beings treat each other so atrociously and can we do anything about it? This Mere Existence, addresses that painful reality in nonfiction form. Rain of Ruin is an anti-all-things-nuclear story based on my mother's real-life experience working for the Manhattan Project in Washington, DC during World War II. Thumbnail sketch: A bright, young country girl signs on with the atom bomb project as a clerk, is terrified by what she learns about the bomb's potential for destruction, is exposed to radiation from Trinitite (slag brought to her office after the first A-bomb test), and dies thirty years later of the same type of cancer that claimed lives in Japan after the US dropped nuclear bombs there. Engaging News Media: A Practical Guide for People of Faith (Cowley Publications, 2006), written for the Anglican publishing house in Cambridge, MA, utilizes his professional experience in journalism and knowledge gained from completing an MS and a Ph.D. at Syracuse University's Newhouse School, to enhance readers' ability to find truth in today's news content. Since he left the news business, the author has taught journalism at Syracuse University, the University of Maine, Millersville University (PA), and served as Director of Journalism at the New England School of Communications in Bangor, ME. Mark Kelley is married to his high school sweetheart, and they have two adult children and four grandchildren (so far). His extracurricular interests include reading, writing, walking, woodworking, and playing baritone horn. (He and his wife still fantasize about taking a Walk for Peace on U.S. 1, from Fort Kent, ME (its northernmost point) to Key West, FL, its southernmost point).
