#1 NORML Sues to Halt Government’s Prosecution of Medical Cannabis Providers
In October, the United States Deputy Attorney General, along with the four US Attorneys from California, announced their intentions to escalate federal efforts targeting the state’s medical cannabis dispensaries and providers. In response, members of the NORML Legal Committee filed suit in November against the federal government arguing that its actions were in violation of the Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution. Plaintiffs further argued, using the theory of judicial estoppel, that the Justice Department had previously affirmed in federal court that it would no longer use federal resources to prosecute cannabis patients or providers who are compliant with state law. NORML’s lawsuit remains pending. Read the full story here.
#2 Members of Congress Introduce First Bill Since 1937 to Legalize Cannabis
House lawmakers introduced legislation in Congress in June to end the federal criminalization of the personal use of marijuana. The bipartisan measure – HR 2306, the ‘Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011′ – prohibits the federal government from prosecuting adults who use or possess cannabis by removing the plant and its primary psychoactive constituent, THC, from the five schedules of the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The bill awaits Congressional action. Read the full story here.
#3 Gallup: Majority of Americans Support Legalizing Cannabis
A record 50 percent of Americans now believe that marijuana ought to be legalized for adult use, according to a nationwide Gallup poll of 1,005 adults published in October. The 2011 survey results mark the first time ever that Gallup has reported that more Americans support legalizing cannabis (50 percent) than oppose it (46 percent). Read the full story here.
#4 Over One Million Americans Now Use Cannabis Legally Under State Law
Between one million to one-and-a-half million US citizens are legally authorized by the laws of their state to use marijuana, according to data compiled in May by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates. Read the full story here.
#5 Marijuana Prosecutions For 2010 Near Record High
Police made 853,838 arrests in 2010 for marijuana-related offenses according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report, released in September. The annual arrest total is among the highest ever reported by the agency. Marijuana arrests now comprise more than one-half (52 percent) of all drug arrests in the United States. Read the full story here.
#6 Largest State Doctors Association Calls For Legalizing Cannabis
The California Medical Association in October called for the “legalization and regulation” of cannabis for adults. The association, which represents some 35,000 physicians, recommends that cannabis be taxed and regulated “in a manner similar to alcohol.” Read the full story here.
#7 Connecticut Decriminalizes Cannabis Possession Offenses
Statewide legislation took effect in July reducing the penalties for the adult possession of up to one-half ounce of marijuana from a criminal misdemeanor (formerly punishable by one year in jail and a $1,000 fine) to a non-criminal infraction, punishable by a $150 fine, no arrest or jail time, and no criminal record. Read the full story here.
#8 Vaporized Cannabis Augments Analgesic Effect of Opiates in Humans
Vaporized cannabis significantly augments the analgesic effects of opiates in patients with chronic pain, according to clinical trial data published online in the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics in November. Investigators surmised that cannabis-specific interventions “may allow for opioid treatment at lower doses with fewer [patient] side effects.” Read the full story here.
#9 State Governors Call on Obama Administration to Reclassify Cannabis
In December, governors from Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington formally requested the Obama administration to reclassify cannabis under federal law in a manner that would allow states to regulate its therapeutic use without federal interference. The administration in July had previously rejected a nine-year-old petition calling on the agency to initiate hearings to reassess the present classification of marijuana as a schedule I controlled substance without any ‘accepted medical use in treatment.’ Read the full story here.
#10 Delaware Becomes 16th State to Legalize Limited Medical Use of Marijuana
State lawmakers in May approved legislation to allow patients with a qualifying illness may legally possess up to six ounces of cannabis, provided the cannabis is obtained from a state-licensed, not-for-profit ‘compassion center.’ The law is anticipated to be implemented in 2012. Read the full story here.
Pima College freshman Mayra Feliciano probably didn’t even have time to dwell on the latest episode in the Ethnic Studies witch hunt this week. Working her way through college, the Ethnic Studies alumni anticipated state administrative Judge Lewis Kowal’s ruling to uphold Arizona’s bizarre ban against Tucson’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.
“I took the Mexican American Studies course and my life turned around for the better,” Feliciano wrote in an email. “I was struggling to graduate, and I didn’t care because I knew people were expecting me to fail. I also felt like I wouldn’t achieve because I wasn’t born in the United States. But, this class taught me that we all live in a society where we all struggle and that knowledge and facts are what help get you through. On the correct side of history.”
On track for her dream to become a civil rights attorney, Feliciano, like thousands of other young Tucsonans who graduated in the beleaguered state’s upper tier as part of the nationally celebrated Mexican American Studies program, is on the correct side of history in Arizona.
Arizona, 2012: The dogs bark but the great Ethnic Studies caravan moves on, as the ancient proverb goes.
And as the witch hunt barking by a small gaggle of extremist politicians in Arizona finally fades in federal court in 2012, Feliciano and her fellow alumni will continue to flourish and enrich their beloved state as innovators and leaders.
“The immediate future of Mexican American Studies will be decided by a federal judge, a circumstance that has existed many times before,” said Tucson attorney Richard Martinez, who represents the Mexican American Studies teachers and students. “The fight to achieve constitutional equality is never easy, predictable or direct, but like every other group one we must travel and ultimately be successful in.”
Noting that Kowal “dodged the constitutional questions” in the state’s radical move to single out and outlaw the teaching of Mexican American history and heritage in a historic district that serves a Mexican American majority, Martinez appeared in federal court earlier this week to seek a preliminary injunction to halt the state’s punitive and blatantly unconstitutional actions. On behalf of 11 teachers, 2 students and parents, Martinez’s motion charges that the “vagueness and overbreadth” of the Ethnic Studies ban and “its enforcement by Superintendents (John) Huppenthal and (Tom) Horne violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights,” and adds that “statute and its application violate the plaintiffs’ rights to Equal Protection, Free Speech and Substantive Due Process.”
While the antics of a small group of racist throwbacks who thrive on 1950s race-baiting politics continue to steal the national news headlines–like state Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, a Tea Party extremist who has become a national embarrassment; disgraced Tucson Unified School District board members Michael Hicks and Mark Stegeman, who referred to Mexican Americans Studies as a cult; and Attorney General Tom Horne, whose obsession and relentless misrepresentation of the Mexican American Studies program has reached pathological heights–the truth is that the racist witch hunt is quickly losing steam as a new generation of Arizona leadership emerges.
More than a half century ago, legendary author William Faulkner confronted his fellow Southerners who quietly allowed the South to “wreck and ruin itself in less than a hundred years.” He warned his fellow Southerners to “speak now against the day, when our Southern people who will resist to the last these inevitable changes in social relations, will, when they have been forced to accept what they at one time might have accepted with dignity and goodwill, will say: ‘Why didn’t someone tell us this before? Tell us this in time?’”
Ethnic Studies alumni and current University of Arizona student and author Andrés Domínguez understands Faulkner’s admonition.
“Taking the Mexican American Studies (MAS) classes made me more confident in my decision to pursue a career in journalism,” Domínguez wrote me this week. “Two standards that are often applied to journalism are to seek the truth as well as to be critical, which is what the MAS classes also taught. I find myself looking at politics and news from more than two sides–be it politics, war, or the economy–because there is often something missing, and that is the humanitarian perspective.”
Domínguez added:
“Were Tucson’s MAS program to be dismantled, there would be a great loss in the community, especially by those who need it most–the youth. Young people today are often disenchanted with their role in society, because there is often this sentiment that one person can’t make a difference. These classes present an opportunity for optimism and positivity, and through that viewpoint students have broken that barrier of “I can’t make a difference.” Without this program, many students will again be apathetic to a system that does not recognize their value to society, and does not give them the right to the education that they desire.”
As we celebrate the 2012 New Year, let us now continue to praise Arizona’s great profiles in courage and those who speak against the day. Here’s a brief interview with Ethnic Studies alumni and Tucson hero Selina Rodriguez, who is currently Program Director for the Pico Youth & Family Center in Santa Monica, California.
photo courtesy of Selina Rodriguez
Jeff Biggers: Where did you study in the MAS program, and how do you feel it made an impact on your college options?
Selina Rodriguez: When I was a Junior at Cholla High School (year, 2002), I was fortunate to have taken a course not to many people deemed a rigorous class. This class was titled ‘Hispanic Studies’ and my teacher was Augustine Romero. Prior to entering this class, I had little notion of my history and cultural significance. Being a third generation Tucsonan, I often felt like I did not belong anywhere. I was not fully accepted as an ‘American’ or ‘Mexicana.’ However, after taking Hispanic Studies, I left my school walls felling empowered and proud to have deep roots; and most importantly- I finally found my acceptance.
Looking back, after receiving my Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and minor in Mexican American Studies from the University of Arizona and Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from UCLA, the curriculum I received from my ‘Hispanic Studies’ class paved my higher education journey. It provided a strong foundation for who I am today. The teachings I learned set the tone of what I expected. It provided me with a critical lens. My eyes saw other classes through the eyes of a student who did not hear everything to be factual, but to question and analyze the world. Also, rather than feeling like a victim in society where I will always be the minority, it taught me to reach out to my community. Yet, not just my fellow Chicano peers, but other ethnicities. I learned to emphasize with others, rather than assume and judge. The Raza Studies teachers taught me to always get to the core, or root of an issue. This pedagogy stuck with me throughout my life.
When I was ready to apply for college, Mr. Romero (along with the rest of the Raza Studies team) helped me with my forms. I also received a scholarship from the MAS program. Romero was also the first teacher to take me to the University of Arizona campus. When I was ready to graduate from my undergraduate, it was again Dr. Romero helping me with my grad school applications. I was also grateful to have worked as a Community and Academic Specialist for the department throughout my undergraduate years. This working environment gave me the much needed support to succeed in the university.
While in college, my mindset was (still is) revolved around social justice issues and working with the community, specifically the ‘disadvantaged’ population. After taking Raza Studies in high school, I felt like it was my obligation to make sure to stay connected with the community and search for solutions in improving our local environment. This is why I studied topics such as: sociology, ethnic studies and urban planning. While at UCLA, my focus was community development. I know for certain, it was my MAS lessons that I kept in mind while I experienced my graduate school journey. My professors and peers where impressed with my critical thinking and expertise in working with minority/chican@ populations. In Los Angeles, they were the ones who were envious of the MAS program I took in high school.
JB: Describe your work in Santa Monica and how you feel MAS helped to shape your career choices and decision.
SR: Today I am Program Director for the Pico Youth & Family Center (PYFC), a non-profit organization in the City of Santa Monica. The PYFC is committed to preventing youth violence through various services, such as case management, counseling, tutoring, job readiness training, leadership development, music, art and computer training. The PYFC is a positive alternative to the streets for hundreds of youth, ages 16-24 that are most ‘at risk’ and seek guidance, support and service. The work I do here, parallels the work I was exposed to with MAS back home; to have our youth graduate from high school, go on to college, get an education that they are passionate about and return to their community. Our current PYFC campaign is implementing an Ethnic Studies Department or Courses within the Santa Monica/Malibu School District. It is the Tucson MAS model we strive for.
While in college, my career aspirations and intentions never was to see how much money I will make, but rather how I would be able to work with and not for the community. The Raze Studies teachers are the ideal exemplifiers of this. I witnessed these teachers go out into the world, receive an education, and return to their community. Never did I hear them complain about the work they did. And I always kept this in mind when I sort out job opportunities. I told myself that the work I do must uplift others, while at the same time growing as a human being. The program also allowed me to be confident and open to working with diverse populations. The MAS teachings I learned could not be read solely in a book, but something I had to be taught with the setting I was in and the several experiences I witnessed.
JB: What will Tucson lose if the MAS program is abolished?
SR: If the Mexican American Studies Department is abolished, the effects will result in national consequences. By looking at the demographics, Arizona ranks second in the U.S. for highest high school push out/dropout rates (Mississippi ranks first). By looking at this alarming fact, one would praise a program like the MAS Department- a program that graduates 99% of its students. I truly believe that less and less of us (especially coming from low performing schools) will not attend college. And those who do get accepted will not finish because of the lack of pride we will no longer carry without the MAS program. The MAS program goes well beyond the classroom walls. The teachers and students are our support system. They are our community that pushes us to move forward.
The state of Arizona is already looked upon as being anti-Latino. The sad reality is our language, traditions and knowledge is being abolished. Many of us, who continue to contribute to the state, are getting frustrated. If the state wants to regain trust and community support, it must save this crucial program. The MAS program saved me. It saved my life mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally. Please do not abolish MAS.
Newt Gingrich has repeatedly shown that he is an existentially ugly person. Therefore, his repeated comments about the black poor, and “inner city” communities, where people “don’t have a work ethic” are not at all a surprise. Time has demonstrated that “compassionate conservatism,” an oxymoron if there ever was one, is not particularly kind, just, or humane.
As demonstrated by his Wednesday editorial on the website Human Events, Newt Gingrich is apparently wedded to the idea that young black and brown kids should have the “privilege” of becoming janitors in their schools in order to learn about the value of “hard work.”
There are any number of problems with this argument. Primarily, Gingrich is recycling the ugly and deeply racist belief that black people are inherently lazy: poor children who don’t see people around them working apparently grow up to be lazy adults, who are on welfare, dependent on the state, and have no understanding of how to put in an honest day’s work. He gives no consideration to the stigma that child janitors would experience, and the taunting and bullying that would inevitably result from being one of the students who carries a pail, mop, or broom around their school.
Newt Gingrich is also blindly ignorant of the issues surrounding structural unemployment in poor inner city communities, and where it is not a deficit of work ethic or drive, but a lack of desperately wanted job opportunities—especially for young people—that drives urban poverty. Given the Right-wing’s assault on unions, and the social safety net, more broadly, Gingrich’s smearing of school janitors as an enriched and craven class of greedy public employees is just more red meat for an agenda that wants to destroy the American middle and working classes.
In all, Newt Gingrich is offering up a Dickensonian fantasy of workhouses in which African American wastrels and street urchins learn the value of hard work from benevolent white folks like him.
Of course, Newt Gingrich’s children, and those of the moneyed classes who he represents, would never be asked to pick up a mop and broom at their schools—as their kids’ responsibility is first and foremost to prepare and study for college, and the bright future which awaits them.
And I must wonder, what lessons have the children of the financier class, the trust fund baby and inherited money types who brought about the Great Recession, been taught about the value of hard work from observing the destructive behavior of their parents during this time of economic calamity?
Over the years, I have developed a pretty thick skin regarding these matters. However, there is something particular offensive about Newt Gingrich’s repeated insistence that poor black kids become janitors in order to learn about the merits of “hard work” that demands engagement. It would seem to his eyes that janitors are disposable people with easy jobs. Moreover, to him, a janitor’s job is so simple that anyone, even an elementary or middle school student, could do it well.
As the refrain goes, the personal is political. I am the son of a janitor. I try not to break kayfabe, or to drop the mask too often. Nevertheless, sometimes it is necessary to speak up for yourself, as well as for the many other people who may not have either the privilege, or opportunity, to speak truth to power.
In that spirit, please take this as an open letter of sorts to Newt Gingrich (and the particular brand of compassionate conservatism which he represents).
****
My father was a hardworking man. He was not perfect. He took his job seriously and worked for many years as a janitor. He did this with pride, integrity, and self-respect. My father rarely took a sick day, and worked in this job for several decades, retiring only in his late 70s. Work meant a great deal to him, and he would eventually pass away about a year later. I warned my father that without a sense of purpose, and isolated from the many people he befriended at his job over the years, that he would not last long. I was (sadly) proven correct.
These are not details designed to elicit a tear; they are details of a full life, the human experience that stands behind words such as “janitor,” “teacher,” “unions,” and “working class.” These are perennially good titles, now transformed into slurs, by people like Newt Gingrich and his conservative brethren.
My father was a boss, a confidante to his coworkers, and advisor to the men and women he affectionately called his “crew.” His work was at times dangerous, involved long hours, and a good amount of responsibility.
No elementary, middle, or high school student could do my father’s job.
Growing up, I was embarrassed that my father was a “lowly” janitor. His job title was technically “senior maintenance supervisor.” I used that whenever I had the chance. When one’s friends are the children of doctors, lawyers, and white collar professionals, you learn to improvise.
There would be many awkward moments, when my father, the janitor, would have one of his three or so pagers go off in the company of my friends. We could be at a bowling tournament, a movie, or a birthday party, and inevitably one of those beepers would ring.
Those who did not know the facts of the situation would ask if “he was a doctor.” I would answer “no, my father just has an emergency that he has to take care of.”
Unlike in Newt Gingrich’s twisted dream, janitors and their families are not rich. My family had good Christmases, an occasional vacation, and nice Sunday meals. My father’s pay kept me in nice clothes, indulged my hobbies, and helped me (with some hefty student loans and grants) to go to college. My father’s work, in combination with my mother’s, kept us comfortable. We were not middle class, or even solidly working class by most measures. Somehow, we were okay.
A janitor’s job is also about personal relationships. I will not pretend that my father’s position as a janitor at a large Ivy League university was typical. He made sure that I met interesting people; I could take the day off of school, follow him around, and go to the library. He would leave me with different professors or graduate students so that I could talk to them about politics, history, or philosophy. Because my father worked there for many decades, he was part of the university community. My father took that role seriously.
For example, there were many occasions when he made sure that international students had a place to eat and go for the holidays (at times, this welcoming space was our home). My father, the janitor, was a union man and took great pride in how he always fought for the rights of the part-time staff—a group that he felt was always “getting a bum deal.”
When people needed jobs, oftentimes young men who were recently released from jail, or career ex-cons, they could come to my father. He would size them up. If they passed his personal test of being honest and direct about their situation(s), my father would go with them to human resources, vouch for their reliability, and put them on his “crew” so that they would learn how to do “right.”
My father also had some fun times at his job. He loved to talk about how, on one afternoon, he had to show a student from rural China how to use an American style toilet. My father joked that “the young man made it this far, I didn’t think using one of our toilets would be so complicated.”
There were sad times too.
On more than one occasion my father, a janitor, had to take up a collection for a student to send home to their family, to help them buy a ticket if there was an emergency, or to subsidize the funeral expenses for one of his crew, or the part-timers, who didn’t have his years of seniority, and pay.
No child could do that job.
My father only wanted me to get a job where my hands would be clean, and I would not have to pick up other people’s messes. I have, fingers crossed, more or less gotten that far. It has taken some years, and a bit of growth. But now, I am finally proud to be the child of a janitor. Those millions of us who were taken care of, provided for, and raised by working class folks such as maids, home health care workers, and janitors, have much to hold our heads high about.
These people are the real “job creators” in this country: they pay bills, provide for their families, and donate to churches, mosques, synagogues, and charitable organizations.
Working class people like my father help to sustain communities and neighborhoods.
Whenever Newt Gingrich and his brand of 1% percent plutocrat conservatives besmirch the working people of this country, people like us and our kin, we need to speak up. There is no shame in our lineage. And all of us need to say thanks, to acknowledge those janitors, maintenance people, and the like who work in our schools, office buildings, apartment complexes, and take care of our aged and sick parents and relatives. They deserve our respect; unfortunately, they rarely receive it from the American people.
Once more, I am proud to be a child of the working class. Are you?
Over the past few months, I’ve been faced with the utter irony of splitting my time between dealing with the steady stream of lies about my boss and the organization I work for being part of the so-called war on Christmas, and having numerous conversations with that same boss about helping to send toys to kids for Christmas. One minute I’d be writing about the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) spreading lies about our organization, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), trying to stop Air Force Academy cadets from participating in Franklin Graham’s Operation Christmas Child, which, as I wrote in a previous post, isn’t exactly what happened, and the next minute I’d be on the phone coordinating MRFF’s participation in a Christmas toy drive run by a student group I work with here in New Jersey.
For the second year, MRFF has partnered with the students of Kean University’s Be the Change to send toys to kids in the Gulf whose families have not yet recovered from the BP oil spill, with the students collecting the toys (828 of them this year) and MRFF handling the shipping.
MRFF’s involvement with Be the Change’s Toys for the Gulf project began last year, when I happened to be on the phone with my boss, Mikey Weinstein, just as I was trying to figure out a way to pay for getting the hundreds of toys collected by the students from New Jersey to Mississippi in time for Christmas. Mikey’s immediate response to me explaining our shipping dilemma was that the toys had to get there, whatever it took, and that MRFF would make it happen.
This year, it was Mikey who asked me if we were doing it again, telling me he wanted to help if we were. And so, once again, MRFF, while being relentlessly bashed by the likes of the ACLJ and FOX News as a bunch of Christmas-hating atheists, helped send toys to hundreds of kids whose families couldn’t afford much for Christmas. Yes, folks, Mikey Weinstein is a traitor in the war on Christmas!
In reality, of course, MRFF is not an atheist organization. We are a religious freedom organization, with clients, staff, and volunteers of all religions as well as no religion, with the overwhelming majority being Christian, both Protestant and Catholic. So, while we pushed for the religious holiday displays at Travis Air Force Base to be moved two blocks from a main intersection to the chapel grounds, and, when that didn’t happen, supported the base’s atheist community being able to put up a display alongside the religious displays, we equally supported a Christmas toy project benefiting a community where there are many struggling veterans, as well as some of MRFF’s Christian clients. To us at MRFF, that’s what religious freedom is all about.
Fast forward to Christmas Eve. The Toys for the Gulf project had been a huge success once again, with the big event having taken place in Gulfport the night before, and I was hanging out with my mom and getting things ready for Christmas Day. I was occasionally checking my email, just in case anything important came in, and, although it’s pretty hard to shock me after everything I’ve seen in my four years of working for MRFF, I couldn’t even fathom what I was seeing that night — hate mail on Christmas Eve! Yes, as I, like millions of other people around the country, was enjoying the holiday, there were so-called Christians out there who are so full of hate that they were actually gathered around their computers instead of their Christmas trees, writing emails like the following.
From: E-Mail Address Withheld
Date: December 24, 2011 3:31:10 PM MST
To: ——-@militaryreligiousfreedom.org
Subject: Church Xmas Msg. to Mickey’s family & MRFFOur church leaders and congregation have been watching Mickey Weinstien and the MRFF for some time now. We read and watch everything in the news about Mickey and his family and MFRR. We started praying years ago for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to open his blinded eyes to the Good News so that Mickey will stop his wicked war on our brethren Christians in the military. But it has not happened. Our church knows why. Our Bible knows why too. Mickey is gone and lost to satan forever and we no longer waste our time praying to the Savior to stop his evil ways. 2 Corinthians 6:14. To Mickey’s wife Bonny we say harken unto the Lord Jesus or face hellfire. To his sons Casey and Curtis we say harken unto the Lord Jesus or face hellfire. To his daughter Amada and his son Caesy’s wife Amber we say harken unto the Lord Jesus or face hellfire. To the MRFF people of Patricia, Becky, Chris and Haley and Linda and Leah, Joan and Elisabeth and Philip and Richard and FJ Taylor and Andy and David Akeva and the Ambassador Wilson we say harken unto the Lord Jesus or face hellfire. Your leader Mickey is all possesed of Satan. Can you not see the obvius? If you ask him he will denie this of course which is always the top sign that he is possesed and in league with the dark one. This Christmas it is still not too late for all of you to break away from Mickey and save your souls. By doing this you will finally understand the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ born on Christmas day. If you do not free yourselves of satan’s barking dog Mickey this Christmas then you will all find out the Bad News of burning forever in hell soon enough. John 3:36 You will not respond to this message as we know how rude and ruthluss MFRR people always are in replying to polite peaceful and loving Christians trying to stop Mickey.
But what was it that Mikey Weinstein wanted to know from me in the midst of receiving emails like this? That everything with the Toys for the Gulf event had gone smoothly and that the kids had gotten their toys!
I want to end this post with three things.
First, I want to say what amazing people the students of Kean University’s Be the Change and their professor, Dr. Norma Bowe, are. Not only do they do special projects like Toys for the Gulf, they work tirelessly all year round feeding the homeless here in New Jersey, working with a teen homeless shelter (with several of the former residents of the shelter having gone on to become Kean students), and doing many other incredible service projects both locally and around the country.
Second, don’t believe the BP produced commercials currently airing on TV that claim that everything is back to normal in the Gulf. It’s not.
And, finally, THERE IS NO FREAKIN’ WAR ON CHRISTMAS!
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
Thousands take part in a rally against gender segregation and violence against women in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem.
For years, secular citizens and municipal authorities alike have turned a blind eye as ultra-Orthodox extremists – mirroring the Taliban – have imposed strict gender segregation and modesty rules in public spaces in Israel, forcing women off of sidewalks, banishing them to the back of buses and assaulting those who dare show tiny amounts of skin.
However, after a recent Channel 2 news report on 8-year-old Na’ama Margolis and her heartbreaking story of trauma – a story of the gauntlet of abuse she suffers at the hands of ultra-Orthodox men on her walk to school every morning – few in Israel are turning a blind eye anymore. Indeed, it’s all the country has been able to talk about in recent days.
The news report, which aired on Friday and shows Na’ama crying as her American-born mother shields her while walking to school, immediately galvanized the anger of a nation that for too long has been quiet on the issue of gender segregation and rising religious coercion.
By Tuesday evening, that galvanized anger had suddenly and unexpectedly translated into a massive rally near Na’ama’s school in Beit Shemesh (near Jerusalem), where nearly 10,000 citizens from across the country chanted against religious extremism and offered support to those who, like Na’ama, were suffering at the hands of a tiny, yet powerful religious minority.
With settler violence on the rise – violence that has led to attacks against both Palestinians and Israeli police, violence that has led to the burning of mosques and vandalism on IDF bases – the issue of religious extremism was already one that had taken center stage in the public discourse.
Now, after the airing of Na’ama’s story and Tuesday’s massive rally, Israel’s very soul – its nature and future as a State – is an issue that not only hangs in the balance, but now hangs on the tongues of citizens everywhere.
What Israel will look like in twenty years remains uncertain. However, what is certain today is this: Tuesday’s rally brought tears of joy to Na’ama’s mother and a smile to Na’ama’s face, for they know that they are not alone in what is becoming a national struggle against religious extremism.
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Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG.
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Ron Reagan did well with the evangelicals—will Ron Paul?It’s the oldest trick in the book. Profess religiosity, get a ton of votes.
Has anyone become president in years without proving his religious bent? Jimmy Carter was the first “born again” president—and his profession of faith certainly helped him win in 1976, though it did not rally enough troops for him in 1980. He lost to Ronald Reagan, who made a big deal out of his own supposed (but dubious) religious devotion, which got him the backing of the then-powerful Moral Majority. And then, of course, there was the “born again” George W. Bush. Others, including Clinton and Obama, have done what they had to do in that regard.
Now we get to Ron Paul. A lot of people like him because he talks straight on a number of issues others won’t touch. But is he a man who shuns opportunity? Consider this: one of Paul’s senior advisers is faith outreach specialist Doug Wead.
Readers of my history of the Bush dynasty, Family of Secrets, know that I interviewed Wead extensively and devoted an entire chapter to him. Wead, a former Pentecostal minister, has been advising politicians for years on what they must do to appeal to self-identified Christian voters. He advised George H.W. Bush, but couldn’t get the Sunday churchgoer to remake himself in a way that would suffice for evangelicals. According to Wead, though, a very young George W. Bush saw the embrace of fervent religiosity as his professional salvation. As I wrote in Family of Secrets:
Inge Honneus, the woman Bush pursued when he was in the National Guard, recalled how W. felt free to discuss all manner of topics with her since she was so far out of his normal circle. “We talked about religion,” she said, and “he thought it was a joke. And when he started going and running for president, and trying to get the religious votes, I’m thinking, ‘What a hypocrite.’ I don’t know if he all of a sudden turned religious. But the core of him was not a very nice man.” Nice man or not, one thing is certain: with his entry into Bible study, Bush was reinventing himself.
It was a politically savvy idea, but, in truth, it was not his own. It appears that it was neither W.’s Midland friends nor the Reverend Billy Graham who helped him see the light. It was Doug Wead, marketing man. …
Family of Secrets goes on to document how Wead coached the Bushes on ways to connect with the huge fundamentalist voting bloc, and how, while this made the elder George Bush squirm, the younger namesake became an enthusiastic student. Wead told me about this response from the mid-eighties, around the time that George W. Bush supposedly suddenly saw the light:
I hadn’t met W. yet, but he knew me because he was getting all these memos, and he was basically saying, ‘Dad, this is right. This is what people in Midland think. My born-again friends say this. He’s right.’ “When I finally met W., [he said] ‘I’ve read all of your stuff—it’s great stuff.’ He said, ‘We’re going to get this thing going.’ ”
Now, it is Ron Paul’s turn. Frederick Clarkson, writing on the website Talk To Action, analyzes Paul’s challenge in reconciling his dominant Libertarian support base with fundamentalist voters, who play a crucial role in early GOP electoral battlegrounds like Iowa.
…Ron Paul seeks to reinvent his public persona to better or at least differently reflect how his religious views relate to his politics. Indeed, he seems to be making it a central part of his effort to break out beyond his famous hard core of supporters that number under ten percent in most polls.
And Yahoo News notes:
Paul explained how his beliefs in limited government and even his opposition to the Federal Reserve had their foundations in scripture, combined with his study of the Constitution. Before he left to take the stage that night in November, Paul smiled and said to Wead, who told this story to Yahoo News, “You know, the libertarians are just baffled by me. They didn’t think it was possible for someone to come this direction. A person of faith.”
In stark contrast to how he campaigned four years ago, Paul has made a concerted push during this presidential campaign to emphasize how religion has shaped his policy ideas. Through public addresses, campaign advertisements and conversations with voters, Paul has engaged in an intentional effort to articulate the biblical roots of his philosophy. These efforts are most on display here in Iowa, where most Republican caucusgoers align themselves with socially conservative views, and where Paul is building what has become a robust organizational machine to connect with them. Paul has surged into second place in Iowa, according to several recent polls. The Real Clear Politics polling average for the state has Paul tied with Mitt Romney at 17 percent, behind Newt Gingrich’s 30 percent.
Of interest is this, from a Washington Post article in October:
…the libertarian-minded lawmaker is actually very religious. He’s not a member, but officials at First Baptist Church of Lake Jackson, Texas say Paul attends services whenever he’s in town. He left the Episcopalian church in which he was raised in part over its stance on abortion rights.
That’s an interesting stand for a Libertarian—leaving his church because it supported a woman’s right to choose.
Actually, Paul, whose supporters love the fact that he doesn’t pull his punches, was considerably more sly on this matter. Here’s an excerpt from a lengthy interview with Christianity Today:
All of our children were raised in the Episcopal Church. Some [places] were fairly conservative but my wife and I thought the Episcopal Church advocated a position that we didn’t endorse, so we left. And our children did not stay in the Episcopal Church either.
Related to specific issues?
I think it was the abortion issue. I imagine they had some other issues. But I think the abortion issue was the real big thing. And I think also some of the money was going to some of the international organizations that were more political—they weren’t missionaries. So it was an objection over the way some of the money was being spent.
In that interview, Paul managed to avoid stating explicitly why he, as opposed to family members, left the Episcopal Church. And the interviewer failed to do her job by nailing him down on it.
***
Religion is one of those areas that are considered beyond question in the political realm: a candidate’s claims about his faith are taken at face value. But make no mistake: there’s a great advantage to be gained in painting oneself as “holier than” one’s opponents.
Makes you wonder what happened to America that it is no longer possible to elect politicians like Lincoln, who is reported to have said:
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.
GRAPHIC: http://reason.com/assets/mc/ngillespie/2011_12/ron-paul-ronald-reagan.jpg
WhoWhatWhy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news site founded by Russ Baker. Follow it on Facebook and Twitter or visit WhoWhatWhy.com
In the iconic Christmas film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an angel offers the beleaguered main character, George Bailey, the stark choice between a hometown named for a cruel banker or one created by and for the middle class.
The banker’s town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair. The people’s town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.
The film’s happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion. They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his “every man for himself” philosophy to triumph. In the spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.
A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.
Bailey urges the townspeople who had crowded into the building and loan office to withdraw only what they need, not empty their accounts. “We have got to stick together,” he tells them, “We have to do this together.” A building and loan doesn’t function without trust and cooperation.
It works well for Bedford Falls. The mortgages it provides help working people move out of the Potters Field slums and into Bailey Park, where homes well kept by their owners increase in value. Despite the success, Potter condemned this practice, saying it was based on “high ideals without common sense.” He criticized the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan for granting a taxi driver a mortgage after Potter’s bank had rejected his application. Potter scoffed at such practices, asking if the building and loan was a “business or a charity ward.”
This is exactly what Republicans do. They describe beloved American programs like Medicare and Social Security as charities – using the euphemism “entitlements.” Like mortgages from the Bailey Building & Loan, Medicare and Social Security are not charities. They’re the American people depositing and pooling their money for the benefit of the American community.
The GOP tries to destroy programs like these that aid the middle class, the vast majority of Americans – the 99 percent – while Republicans protect tax breaks and special perks for the rich – the one percent, the Henry Potters.
This time last year, Republicans demanded extension of tax breaks for the 1 percent, contending tax breaks stimulate the economy.
For the past three months, however, Republicans have fought extension of payroll tax cuts, contending a break benefiting 160 million middle class Americans did not stimulate the economy.
All year, Republicans have demanded an end to programs the middle class created to aid the majority, the 99 percent. The GOP wants to reverse the new banking regulations that were passed in an attempt to prevent another economic collapse caused by risky Wall Street practices. The GOP tried to to rescind the healthcare reform law that prevents insurance companies from terminating coverage when beneficiaries get sick and prohibits the practice of refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Influential Republicans this year have called for repealing laws forbidding child labor, laws guaranteeing minimum wage and laws protecting the environment. They’ve demanded elimination of federal funding for organizations like the Public Broadcasting System that educates preschoolers, Head Start, which provides opportunity to poor children, and Planned Parenthood, which uses 97 percent of its funds to provide general, obstetrical and gynecological medical care to women, many of whom are rural and poor.
Republicans have decided to be the party of Henry Potter, the “meanest man in the county,” a man about whom George Bailey’s father said: “he’s a sick man, frustrated. Sick in his mind, sick in his soul, if he has one.”
Like Potter, Republicans deride compassion and community as character defects.
In the Republican world, where greed is good, it was appropriate for Henry Potter to keep the $8,000 in Bailey Building & Loan money that George Bailey’s uncle, Billy Bailey, accidently handed him.
Republicans are attempting to impose that selfish belief system on the selfless American people, people like the citizens of Bedford Falls who rush to the rescue of neighbors.
It won’t work, just like it didn’t in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Republicans will fail in their attempt to make America Pottersville because the 99 percent believe avarice is a sin, not a value. The GOP will fail because greed is not the American way.
Chicago, IL
Like Hollywood, set to ban the sale of fur in 2012, Chicago is no longer a fur capital. One reason is the annual Fur Free Friday parade held the day after Thanksgiving. For 25 years, the march has crawled down the Magnificent Mile, stopping at every furrier along the way. Some years the parade has attracted 800 marchers.
Commensurate with the best street theater, the march has featured coffins, piles of animal pelts, dangling steel jaw traps, mock burials and phalanxes of monster masks for those monster enough to wear fur. It has featured PETA style disrobing (confirming the observation that the prettiest women lean toward animal causes), interpretive dance and of course a drum corps.
Since the late 1990s, some of the scheduled “stops” where a spokesman delivers a speak-out about the cruelty of the fur trade, the stores are happily gone. Evans, the world’s largest furrier who anchored the State street shopping corridor since the Great Depression went out of business in 1999 citing “anti-fur activism that focused on convincing the American and European public that wearing any kind of fur was cruel and malicious to the animal it was taken from.” Evans had a second store on Michigan Avenue and on the day of the Fur Free Friday parade, it would hire a billboard truck to park in front of it and occlude its sign.
Across the street from the Evans State street store, Mysels Furs, in the Palmer House Hilton, stood as a last bastion against anti-fur sentiment. Its State street door was actually locked and an Addams Family-esque live male mannequin performed in the window, furthering the crypt-like feel. No one ever saw a live customer. Mysels, too, is gone.
Also gone is a Michigan avenue store called D’ion Furs whose slogan was, “Give her her own D’ion.” But nearby, on Michigan avenue, Andriana Furs still stands despite news reports in 2009 that Sohrab Tebyanian was using the store to launder drug money and pay employees.
Once upon a time, Fur Free Friday was the one day the tables were turned on the Mag Mile and women in full length minks and lynxes were not admired but booed as they underwent a perp walk past the marchers. But now, there are few furs in Chicago (except for last year’s “fox hat” fad; what was up with that?)
But the fur industry is alive and well, bolstered by cheap “Asian wolf” skins from China reported to be dog. And department stores like Macy’s hawk the heartless outerwear pretending they have never seen the videos on YouTube that show where fur “comes from.”
In fact, the fur and fashion industry deliberately mix faux and real fur to deny consumers an ethical choice. They dye “fun” furs that are from real animals wild colors to look fake and funky and people buy them. Fun furs are not fun for the animals.
Written by Marianne Møllman for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
If you are poor, chances are it is your own fault. At least that’s what Americans thought in 2001. In a National Public Radio poll from that year, about half of those surveyed said the poor are not doing enough to pull themselves out of poverty.
Now, one would think that since the recent economic crisis predictably has led to increased poverty people would start blaming circumstances more than the poor. This has not been the case in the United Kingdom. A recently published survey shows that Brits over time have become more likely to blame poor people themselves for their financial trouble. From 1986 to 2009, the proportion of people who attribute poverty to laziness and lack of willpower has grown to a little under 30 percent, with the proportion blaming “injustice in our society” conversely falling.
People’s attitudes towards poverty to some extent determine sentiments about health care, welfare benefits, and other collective interventions. Not surprisingly, the UK study found that more and more Brits believe government benefits are too high.
In the United States, the picture is, perhaps surprisingly, a bit more nuanced.
Written by Antón Castellanos Usigli for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The other afternoon, I was in a rush, about to brush my teeth, and I remembered I had no toothbrush. In the morning, I had thrown out an old toothbrush thinking that I had to buy a new one, but I completely forgot, so I had to run to the nearest drugstore to get it. When I arrived at the drugstore, one of the employees, a woman, asked me which toothbrush I wanted. I scanned the options behind the counter, and I came upon a model I liked. The first toothbrush in the row was purple, so I told the lady I wanted that one. However, I was surprised when, instead of handing it to me, she started looking over toothbrushes of other colors (I thought she wanted to give me some options), disregarded a pink one (which I incidentally liked) and finally grabbed a blue one, which she put in front of me, telling me the price…
I would never have imagined that such an experience was meant to become one of the most shocking I have ever had regarding gender prejudice. Its apparent simplicity is what makes it so terrible. We can look at hundreds of statistical indicators and surveys that report gender inequalities in educational, workplace and political settings, however, the real magnitude of this phenomena is not to be found in numbers but in “meaningless” everyday occurrences (like my experience with the blue toothbrush), as they reflect that many of our rigid cognitive schemas regarding gender have not undergone significant transformations and that they have thousands of invisible expressions. Those expressions perpetuate inequality, prejudice and violence in a very powerful and dangerous way, as they can be internalized unconsciously in various contexts of socialization.
