These are Urgent Times. The times are urgent with the Iraqi War-with the enormous suffering it bestows upon the Iraqi population and the poor of the American population, whose children, bearing the marks of “otherness,” have been taken to fight this War. These are Urgent Times with the ever-expanding prison-industrial complex and the acute distress it causes our communities according to Human Rights Watch, if present trends of imprisonment continue uninterrupted, one person in every twenty of our generation will serve time in prison. These are Urgent Times with global warming, the melting of the polar ice-cap, the resulting shortage of fresh water, and the inevitable suffering of Water Wars and poverty. These times are urgent with the plundering of the federal budget, and with the hardships an ever increasing and escalating budget deficit causes through its effects upon social welfare programs, education, health care, and jobs. These are Urgent Times for the Nation and for the World; but also it is the Urgent Time of our generation. These are the struggles that will define our generation, whether we address them as a group or not. Whether we accept it as our mission or not, these times are ours in which to live.