Shaking The Gates of Hell: Faith Led Resisitance to Corporate Globalization

Sharon Delgado will do a book reading/signing at the Capitola Book Café on Wednesday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Capitola Book Café and the Resource Center for Nonviolence. Shaking the Gates of Hell has been called “a handbook for a new generation of activists” and has been endorsed by Bill McKibbon, Ched Meyers, James Douglass, and many others.

Delgado, an ordained United Methodist minister who lived in Santa Cruz until recently, served as pastor of First United Methodist Church on California Street in the 1990s. During that time she founded Earth Justice Ministries with her husband, Guarionex, and she continues on as its Executive Director today. From 2001 to 2004 she served on the staff of the Resource Center for Nonviolence, where her primary focus was on peacemaking, coalition-building, and grassroots organizing. She facilitated study groups, led nonviolence trainings, organized public events, and spoke at many events. Rev. Delgado organized delegations to Seattle (in late 1999) and to Cancun (in 2003), where Santa Cruz residents joined people from around the world to witness and to protest the workings of the WTO.

This book begins with Seattle and ends with Cancun. It presents an overview of the system of “corporate globalization,” including transnational corporations, rule-making bureaucracies such as the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, and enforcement establishments such as the US military/industrial complex. It points toward an alternative future that includes spiritual awakening, reverence for the earth, faith-led resistance, hope for the future, and personal and social transformation. It suggests ways that people of faith can join with others to “shake the gates of hell,” resisting the horror of a barren, violent, and poisoned future, while developing viable alternatives to help build a peaceful, just, and sustainable world. See http://www.shakingthegatesofhell.com.