Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
For most of my years in school, I was ostracized, teased, and tormented by others. More often than not I wasn’t invited to participate in anything social, be it play or, later, parties. This went on for years, with two periods that stand out in particular. Before I was eleven, I was blackmailed by a classmate for three months, and subsequently banned for some weeks by everyone in my class, at which time only one brave girl would sneak to my home to play with me. Then, when I was thirteen and lived with my family in Mexico, I was continually tormented and taunted by others and saw swastikas on the blackboard that were hastily erased when a teacher would come. At one time I was locked out by a group of girls who didn’t want me to be part of their cabin, and I was all alone all night, leaning against a tree and shivering.
Miki at thirteen (front row, second from left) amidst her tormentors and other classmates.
The word “bully” hadn’t existed in my world at the time. I had no context for making sense of the trauma I endured. Like so many people who suffer at the hands of others, I didn’t talk to anyone about it at the time and had no hope of being understood. Today, the phenomenon is widely recognized as a major stressor in children’s lives. The Bully Project-estimates that thirteen million children are going to be bullied this year. One study indicates that 88% of children have observed bullying, and in one poll 42% of those who attended health ed centers admitted to having participated in bullying others. These numbers are staggering. READ FULL POST
by Alana Yu-lan Price
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
President Obama’s personal expression of support for same-sex marriage on ABC is sure to galvanize a new wave of gay rights activism across the country. It’s a heady moment — where might it lead?
The vibrant coalitions that developed this year in North Carolina, where activists fought simultaneously against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and against anti-immigrant and anti-worker legislation, offer a vision for a more expansive and radically engaged form of LGBT organizing than the narrower struggles for marriage equality that have dominated the activist landscape in recent years. It’s a model that I hope organizers in other states will look to in this moment of renewed energy.
Even though the majority of North Carolina voters cast ballots in favor of the anti-gay amendment, which was worded so broadly that it could threaten domestic partnership protections for all couples, the fight against the measure has offered a sense of the sort of multi-issue coalitions that, if replicated on a national scale, could bring about significant social transformations. Before writing off the North Carolina struggle as a total defeat, it’s worth watching this video of North Carolina activists discussing all that was built and won, despite the loss:
After years of watching Obama make strategic compromises rather than use his influential position to rally mass energy around the idea of health care as a human right or the wrongness of torture, it was heartening to watch him take a principled stand on this issue, despite the political dangers and risky timing. Regardless of whether marriage equality is the right goal for LGBT activists to be focusing on right now (rather than, say, an employment nondiscrimination act), Obama’s announcement feels meaningful on a symbolic level. So often the gay marriage debate seems to stand in for a more basic discussion about whether queer and transgender people deserve the same compassion and respect as heterosexuals and people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. In this context, it does feel new and meaningful for a president to refuse to cave to right-wing pressure to paint gay people as somehow monstrous or less than human. Not that we needed his approval, but still…
Yet it’s important to remember that the direction that state-based organizing takes in the coming months — not Obama’s personal views — is what will determine whether today’s high hopes translate into policy changes in the future. This is particularly true because Obama’s statement of support, though welcome and encouraging, came with no active policy commitments. In fact, as John Cook pointed out in a hard-edged Gawker article, Obama arguably affirmed the notion that states’ marriage bans are valid and constitutional by stating that he believes the right to gay marriage should in fact be decided on a state-by-state basis, even though he personally thinks that “same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
One glance at the Guardian’s chart of the rights accorded to gay, lesbian, and transgender people in each state shows how grim the scene will be, not just on the marriage front, but on other fronts as well, if state decisions continue to determine the conditions of LGBT lives:
As tends to occur when the marriage fight rises to the fore, some queer activists are expressing ambivalence about whether marriage equality is the right fight to prioritize, when issues such as employment discrimination, police brutality, homelessness, a lack of access to health care, and transphobic attacks are so acute. The recent murder of Brandy Martell, a trans woman of color, and the racist and transphobic attack faced by CeCe McDonald, who is now facing jail time for having defended herself, are painful reminders of the many forms of violence that will not dissolve once same-sex couples can tie the knot. Dean Spade and Craig Willse’s 2008 statement on why they feel marriage is the wrong goal is once again being passed around by many who agree that “marriage is a coercive state structure that perpetuates racism and sexism through forced gender and family norms” and that expanding marriage “only strengthens that system of marginalization and supports the idea that the state should pick which types of families to reward and recognize and which to punish and endanger.”
While some of these concerns about the limitations of the marriage goal resonate with me, I’m most interested in imagining a dynamic new landscape of LGBT organizing in which the fight for gay marriage and the struggles against policy brutality, employment discrimination, and transphobia gain strength from each other rather than being pitted against each other. That is part of why I am so excited about the work in North Carolina, which offers a vision of how to incorporate the energy around marriage equality without falling into a narrow struggle that cuts out the concerns of transgender people, poor people, incarcerated people, disabled people, and others who are often marginalized within the most powerful LGBT organizations.
Southerners On New Ground (SONG), which describes itself as “building a political home across race, class, culture, gender, and sexuality,” is one of the groups that has worked intentionally to build a diverse, multi-issue coalition during the struggle against Amendment One in North Carolina.
In a lively interview on Pam’s House Blend, Manju Rajendran and Jade Brooks of All of Us NC, an offshoot of SONG, told the story of how the coalition against the amendment came into being:
We were interested in making this fight into an opportunity to encourage connect-the-dots thinking between issues of sexuality, race, class, gender, immigration, and ability. We decided to educate ordinary people across the state about the amendment and practice mobilizing our friends and neighbors to vote against it through respectful, honest conversations. During the first workshop we did after Durham Pride, we were overwhelmed by the enormous number of folks who showed up: church folk, veterans of the labor movement, parents, queers. We had planned that workshop in just a couple of weeks, but it gave us the momentum to create something beautiful, intergenerational, multiracial, queer, and people of color-led in the span of a campaign season.
All Of Us NC is an alliance of North Carolinians who stick up for each other when any of us has our humanity questioned. Our alliance builds on a long history of life-affirming courageous acts of our ancestors. We respond to direct attacks on families and communities such as the family discrimination constitutional amendment, anti-immigrant policies, anti-worker legislation, the voter ID act, and other attempts to disenfranchise any of us….
At our workshops we connect this amendment to attacks that harm all of us-as immigrants, as people of color, as workers and students and those out-of-work, as parents and single people, as women and transgender individuals-we’ve used this fight to strengthen our bonds with one another. All of our workshops incorporate singing, a lot of laughter and dirty jokes, big paper and markers, meaningful childcare, food, money for transportation, Spanish-English interpretation, and other welcoming practices. In practicing what we preach, we are teaching each other and learning how to build an inclusive movement….
Some of us in leadership have seen this fight go down in other states in disappointing ways- organizations that aren’t led by the people who will be most impacted if this harmful legislation passes; campaigns done in a cutthroat, unsustainable way, leaving burnt bridges and depleted resources; single-issue assimilationist messaging that doesn’t reflect the world we want to build. Here in North Carolina, it is important for us to center LGBTQ people of color, poor and working class people, and rural people. We want human rights for everybody.
Claudia Horwitz, the director of Stone Circles, a North Carolina organization that seeks to sustain activism through spiritual practice, reflected on the success of the coalition-building, even as she mourned the passage of the amendment in a Facebook note on Wednesday morning:
The level of coalition-building that occurred in North Carolina around this was unprecedented…. As awareness of inextricable links between issues and constituencies grows, so too does solidarity. When the NC chapter of the NAACP stepped out early on to endorse the campaign against the amendment, it paved the way for others to come out of the shadows of homophobia.The amendment’s proposed illegality of some families in the state eerily echoes the struggle for immigrant rights and to quote Alex Nogales from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, “when you ask for social justice, you can’t just ask for yourself. You have to ask for everyone.”
The day the amendment passed, activists such as Katy Munger on the BlueNC blog were already planning next steps, calling for those involved in the fight against Amendment One to continue the broader struggle by fighting “attempts to limit access to the ballot box, such as the voter ID bill,” fighting to keep the Racial Justice Act in place, boycotting local businesses that took a public stand for the anti-gay amendment, supporting businesses that fought it, and seeking to “hold the people who introduced this bill and who voted for it accountable for every penny” of the costs that will start racking up once this vaguely worded amendment lands the state of North Carolina in court.
I don’t think we’ve heard the last word out of North Carolina yet. Especially not with young people like these already engaged in the struggle:
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by Ianna Hawkins Owen
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
The corner of 13th and Franklin in Oakland, California, has become a makeshift memorial site for Brandy Martell. Credit: Photo by A.M. (http://transfeminism.tumblr.com).
It is not easy to mourn the dead, it’s an assignment without hope of closure. Nor is it easy to defend the living, but for other reasons. The living pose questions that we hesitate to answer: Whose bodies are grievable? Are our responses sustainable? How much do we have to give, for whom, and for how long? We do not sign up for shifts of pain, they spirit us away. But we do we have a choice to show up – in myriad ways, to make eye contact, to pack the court, to pick up the phone. We must not remember the dead at the expense of the living but instead balance our dedication to freedom.
Just three nights ago here in downtown Oakland Brandy Martell, a trans woman of color, was murdered. There were a lot of people gathered at an emergency vigil on Sunday night at the site of her passing on 13th and Franklin. Friends, community members, and family spoke and witnessed, shouted and cried. An Occupy Oakland street medic, who happened to be out late that night responding to another shooting (despite a curfew order), described trying to save Brandy’s life with CPR and pressure applied to her bullet wounds while the police came late and stood idly by as she died.
Not having known Brandy or her friends, I showed up because, among other reasons, this happened in my neighborhood. The next day when I woke up, I read that CeCe McDonald’s trial was just beginning. Having survived a racist and transphobic attack, she is facing not justice but two counts of “second degree murder” for defending herself. Today she has taken a plea and as her supporters there are things that we must do and things we mustn’t do. We must respect her decision. Yet, we must not allow the state to gaslight her determination to live. CeCe still needs our support. She needs our energy and efforts not only as she awaits sentencing, not only if/as she moves through the system, not only in the days when she is free again. As the old saying goes, “the heart is a muscle the size of your fist”; so long as it flexes within you, pray with it for Brandy, fight with it for CeCe, and speak from it with one another.
Are you hurting? We shall be free.
Visit ColorLines for an update on CeCe’s plea.
Here’s what out-of-towners can do to support CeCe (still relevant).
Ianna Hawkins Owen is a graduate student in African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. In New York she organized with All City and the Audre Lorde Project. Her research interests include failure, desire, and abolition.
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter, sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a regular Op-Ed columnist and blogger for The New York Times, is one of America’s leading progressive voices on a host of political and fiscal issues. However, as a liberal American Jew, one subject Krugman intentionally refrains from treating is that of Israel, and not because he isn’t invested in the country’s success or highly critical of its current political directions.
No, Krugman typically refrains from critiquing Israel because – as he wrote yesterday in a rare moment on the subject – to do so “is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.”
And yet, Krugman was moved to do just that for a brief moment yesterday – offer up a few brutally honest words on Israel.
What was his motivation for doing so? Krugman felt compelled to come to the defense of Peter Beinart, whose book – The Crisis of Zionism - has elicited unhinged personal attacks masquerading as critical reviews from all quarters, including those published in the pages of the Times and The Washington Post.
Beinart’s book proposes (quite reasonably) that Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories and its eroding democratic principles are pushing it into a moral abyss, and that the reactionary defense of Israeli policies by American Jewish communal leaders and lobbyists, many of whom in other realms claim adherence to liberal values, is contributing to Israel’s reduced standing in the eyes of young, American Jews.
Predictably, Beinart’s book has elicited exactly what he critiques in its pages: reactionary apologetics and pure venom. And this is where Krugman stepped in yesterday for a rare, brief moment:
Something I’ve been meaning to do – and still don’t have the time to do properly – is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism.
The truth is that like many liberal American Jews – and most American Jews are still liberal – I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide – and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.
But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.
Krugman’s words, that “the narrow-minded policies of the current [Israeli] government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide,” are as direct and pointed as Krugman has ever been on the subject in recent memory. And, predictably, he has run into the “buzzsaw” of being lambasted for daring to critique Israel (as the comments to his blog post attest).
Of course, he knew this would happen. But he opened himself to attack precisely because of the distressing beating Beinart has been taking by American Jewish “reviewers” who have become unglued by Beinart’s unapologetic liberal stances on Israel – stances that an overwhelming majority of young American Jews share.
J.J. Goldberg, writing in the Forward, gave himself the unenviable task of chronicling some of the “unhinged” responses to Beinart’s book, and writes:
The reviews, meanwhile, consist largely of, well, knee-jerk apologetics. They all seem to intone the shopworn catechism that absolves Israel of any responsibility for its own difficulties: that Israelis want to end the occupation, but it’s too risky; that criticizing settlements is a red herring, because they aren’t the real nub of the conflict; that the Palestinians’ misfortunes are due to their own behavior, not Israel’s; that it’s dangerously naive to believe that Israel got through six decades of war without ever dirtying its hands. (Funny: That’s what most of us were taught to believe.)
The litany is remarkably unremarkable. It offers little more than fatuities trotted out as though they were settled facts rather than what they are: points of argument in a fierce trans-Atlantic debate. Nor do the reviewers bother to acknowledge that Beinart’s book actually considers most of their objections and answers them, agree or not. No, their goal is to show that they know what’s going on and Beinart doesn’t because he’s – well, that’s where the reviewers get creative. How many ways can they insult him?
Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens, writing in Tablet magazine (reprinted on the WSJ website) says Beinart is “singularly intent on scolding Israel, like an angry ex who has lost all grip on the proportions of the original dispute,” a lazy reporter whose work is “hysteria-fueled,” “an act of moral solipsism,” “another squeaky note in the blasting chorus that is modern-day Israel bashing.” Tablet’s own editor, Alana Newhouse, claims in The Washington Post, that Beinart is actually running for “the job of spokesman for liberal American Jews” while leading his putative flock in “erecting their own self-satisfied and delusional monolith, calculated to appeal to disillusioned Jewish summer camp alumni, NPR listeners and other beautiful souls who want the Holy Land to be a better place but do not have the time or ability to study the issues, learn the languages or talk to the people on both sides…”
Such “reviews” are precisely what compelled Krugman to enter the fray, for he intended to counter, in a small way, the rampant tribalism that often infects discussions on Israel within the American Jewish community – discussions which find themselves on the pages of our country’s largest newspapers and into the general public discourse.
Krugman’s move was a brave one, and should serve as a call to other liberal, American Jewish writers (who are afraid to offer progressive critiques of Israel for fear of being branded as anti-Semitic) to stand up and do as he did yesterday: refuse to be silent.
Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG.
To read more pieces like this, sign up for Tikkun Daily’s free newsletter, sign up for Tikkun Magazine emails or visit us online. You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
In his recent New York Times op-ed, Peter Beinart makes a linguistic distinction between “nondemocratic Israel” and “democratic Israel” – a distinction meant to jolt American Jews from their slumbers regarding the reality of life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
The linguistic distinction is, in my view, brilliantly conceived.
It is also too kind.
See, Israel’s democracy is not merely cracking under the weight of its own internal prejudices and perceived external threats, as Lara Friedman clearly outlined recently at Open Zion. It is also becoming, all too often, a satirical stage upon which the country’s political players continuously – and unintentionally – mock the idea of democracy while attempting to defend the skewed version that currently exists in Israel.
Witness the latest episode, which was set off by “flytilla” activists who, on Sunday, attempted to legally fly into Tel Aviv on commercial jets and declare their intention to visit Bethlehem. The activists (called provocateurs seeking the de-legitimization of Israel) and their protest attempt (visiting Palestine) put Israeli officials everywhere on edge. So much so that the idea of democracy was supplanted by a different one: stop these protesters from entering Israel, even if we look absurd in doing so.
How absurd?
At +972 Magazine, Dimi Reider was forwarded a contract that a Swedish citizen was forced to sign in order to gain entry into the country at a border crossing, the type of contract free societies do not impose upon frolicking tourists. It is truly a sight to behold:
Can one imagine a similar scenario playing out in America? Picture a European tourist, driving into New York State from Canada, being handed a contract by a border guard that demanded she agree not participate in any Occupy Wall Street or Tea Party protests, for doing so would result in her immediate expulsion from the country.
Of course not.
Such absurdity doesn’t stop with the above contract. Netanyahu’s spokesperson, Ofir Gendelman, presented the official letter those “flytilla” activists who actually landed in Israel were to receive upon stepping foot in Ben Gurion. (Countless flights were canceled at Israel’s behest, preventing over sixty percent of the original activists from landing in Israel.)
The letter was composed with serious intention:
The “Middle East’s sole democracy” is turning away those who desire to visit the Occupied Territories with a letter extolling Israel as a beacon of human rights, religious freedom and equality. It is a country that has transformed the mere act of visiting Palestinian lands into an act of protest, as an act of de-legitimization.
What’s being de-legitimized is not Israel, but Israel’s own democratic standing (not to mention a future Palestinian state).
These contracts and letters border on an absurdism that, unfortunately, is anything but funny.
Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG.
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Crossposted on Tikkun Daily.
I returned to my City College of New York (CCNY) alma mater on the evening of March 29 to be inspired by a truly gifted and socially committed journalist. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The NY Times, Nicholas D. Kristof, began his talk by asking the audience whether there were more males or females in the world. I, along with most, responded incorrectly; despite a natural numerical advantage in female births, there are more males alive today. Why? Because gender discrimination drives greater mortality among girls, including abortions and infanticide of females, as well as instances of abuse and the exploitation of women. This 2012 Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture at CCNY was entitled “Half the Sky: Changing the World by Empowering Women.”
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, his wife and colleague.
At the end of the evening, when I reached him online to get his autograph for my newly purchased copy of Half the Sky, I told him of my writing for Tikkun, and the fact that I had nominated him for Tikkun’s human rights award last year, and expect to do so again, if this prize is still in the offing. He smiled broadly. (Are you reading this, Michael?)
In a recent column, Kristof follows up on his exposure of Backpage.com, an online marketing vehicle which allegedly deals in the enslavement and trafficking of underage girls for the sex trade. This company is owned by Village Voice Media (yes, the owner of The Village Voice, no longer the crusading progressive voice that it once was) and among its investors is no less than Goldman Sachs (putting graphic new meaning to the notion of a “rapacious” Wall St. firm); the latter moved rapidly to divest itself in response to his initial column (to be fair, Goldman claims to have had no say in, nor knowledge of, VVM’s operations).
But Kristof’s most impressive work has been in Asia and Africa. When asked by a journalism student of any ethical dilemmas between his dual roles as a reporter and as an advocate, he recounted what happened when he and his wife READ FULL POST
Crossposted on Tikkun Daily.
by Josh Healey
Before he became the latest and most-Tweeted victim of racial violence in America’s long, dirty history, Trayvon Martin was just another kid growing up in Miami. He was a high school junior, got A’s and B’s in his classes, planned to go to college and become a flight mechanic. His folks were separated, so he split time between his mom’s house and his dad’s. He was just another kid.
Just another black kid, that is.
To George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon last month in the gated community outside Orlando he shared with Trayvon’s father, Trayvon was suspicious. Up to no good. A walking, talking threat of darkness.
Trayvon’s innocence — what could be more all-American than bringing home a bag of Skittles to watch the NBA All-Star game? — juxtaposed with Zimmerman’s vigilante persona makes this appear a classic case of right and wrong, black and white (or at least light-skinned.) But this is bigger than two individuals. This is bigger than the District Attorney who – unbelievably – still has yet to arrest Zimmerman. This is the reality of institutional racism in 21st century America: a racism that creeps along quietly, strong and determined, touching every corner of American life, until before you know it, it has touched a new corner of American death.
By coincidence of work and schedule, I spent the last week in Miami. I was here on an arts residency, doing spoken word and youth empowerment workshops in the Miami public schools. And so as Trayvon’s murder became world news, I got a chance to experience the reality of Trayvon’s hometown, his community, his generation. One week in this city — or any big city in America — and it is plain to see the legalized pain and prejudice that led to the demise of another black boy before his time.
For my residency, I went to five public high schools all over town — North Miami, Wynwood, Little Havana. Except for the one charter arts school I visited, I never saw a single white student. Not one. Plenty of white teachers and principals of course, but not a single blond ponytail with a backpack in any of Miami’s largest public schools. Segregation may be off the law books, but American schools have never been more separate, less equal.
At the first school I visited, I was shown around by a Latina teacher who gave me the uncut, unofficial school tour. “You see how there’s no windows on this building?” she pointed out. “The same company that built this school builds jails all over Florida. That’s why our school looks like a jail, it feels like a jail…it’s not getting these kids ready for a college quad, it’s getting them ready for a prison cell.”
Two schools later, I got to meet a 16-year-old poet named Tavaris. In the second grade, Tavaris told the class, he saw a policeman shoot and kill his neighbor. To this day, he has flashbacks whenever he hears sirens. In his poem, he spit about his own dreads, baggy clothes, and black skin: “They say I fit the description / but the truth is, no matter what I wear / the description fits me.”
Meanwhile, on my day off amidst the white sand and five-star hotels of South Beach, I overheard a group of white college students on spring break. One kid was complaining about the recession and his job prospects after graduation, a familiar problem these days. His solution, however, was more Tea Party than Occupy: “You know, what I need is some black spray paint. I’ll paint myself up, then Obama will get me all the food stamps and welfare I’ll need. “They rushed off before I could tell them that they shouldn’t waste their money on paint (after all, most people on welfare are white), but as they sped off to their next keg stand, I wondered which one of them might be the next George Zimmerman.
Here’s the thing that most white people don’t understand: Race matters. It destroys. It dehumanizes. And it kills.
The killing is the noise. The murders, the riots, the protests: these are the loud outbursts we hear about when we hear anything about race these days. But it’s the everyday things — the interactions and the isolation, the public policies and the marketing strategies — that quietly set the stage for the Next Racial Unrest.
It’s not just the cops, although they are often the worst of the worst. It’s not just the vigilantes or neighborhood watchmen. It’s the principal expelling a boy for a fistfight. It’s the retail store manager following a girl around his store. It’s Hollywood executives killing off the black X-Man first — and not showing any real-life black superheroes. And it’s me every time I cross the street because a young man is walking towards me, and damn if he doesn’t look a lot like Trayvon.
And here’s another hard truth: the problem is not just white people. In Oakland, three kids under the age of five were killed this past year. Innocent bystanders, even though they were too young to stand. Black on black, black on brown, brown on black…but it would never be a white two-year-old who got shot like that here. Not just because of geography, but because the sad truth is that in America, white lives are valued more. By the police, by the schools, and yes, even by criminals. They know which cases will get judicial and media attention — and which ones will quickly go away.
The issue is not individual cases here and there. The issue is institutional racism and white privilege. The media loves to remind us that George Zimmerman was half-Peruvian (as if there’s no racism in Latin America), but that’s not the point. We all internalize America’s racist stereotypes – of black men, Muslim women, Asian athletes – to different degrees. The question is: do we recognize and fight against those personal and social prejudices, or do we ignore them and allow them to fester? To survive silently, noiselessly, until one day…
Oscar Grant.
Aiyana Jones.
Sean Bell.
Carlos Nava.
Danny Chen.
Sergio Huereca.
And now Trayvon Martin.
Now is no time to be quiet. Now is the time to be loud, to be together, to be organized. We have had moments for justice before: some we won, and many we lost. In this moment, in this time, let us be strong and let us be victorious. Not just this case, but let us win over this country that points a quiet gun to a black boy’s face every time he steps outside the door to get some Skittles.
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You can also like Tikkun on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
by Miki Kashtan
crossposted from Tikkun Daily
Seriously, don’t you wonder if anything can be written about good and evil that hasn’t already been said many times over? I did, too, until I encountered Nonviolent Communication while I was in graduate school pursuing a doctoral degree in sociology. I wasn’t studying good and evil, at least I didn’t think I was. I had no idea, at the time, that my interest in the relationship between reason and emotion was intertwined with the deepest and most perennial questions of human nature, hence with matters of good and evil which I had set aside for years.
I never liked the Medieval belief that human beings are innately evil, bad, or sinful, because I intuitively couldn’t fathom why and how nature would give rise to sinful creatures. I also didn’t ever find more satisfaction in the modern notions of “evil” such as the “selfish gene” evolutionary theory or the Freudian notions of an innate aggressive drive. Proponents of all such theories are hard-pressed to explain acts of true kindness, especially in the face of potential consequences, such as those who saved Jews during the Holocaust at risk to their own lives. READ FULL POST
Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
Last week, when graphic designers Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir decided to counter the war drums beating in Israel with a simple message of peace to the people of Iran, little did they know it would create a viral Facebook initiative which would help to inspire a massive anti-war rally in Tel Aviv.
Protesters hold a sign that reads "Israelis Against the War" at a large anti-war rally in Tel Aviv on March 24.
On Saturday night, this is precisely what happened, as Israelis flooded Habima Square in to protest the elevated war rhetoric coming from their leaders and to stand squarely against the hypothetical bombing of Iran.
It’s not difficult to trace much of the momentum for Saturday night’s rally back to the married duo of Edry and Tamir, who last week created images of themselves with the superimposed message, “”Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We ♥ You.”
Their images inspired countless Israelis to post their own Facebook versions, which in turn inspired Iranians to do the same, creating a virtual, imagistic message of love cycling between the two peoples. It’s a message that helped to inspire Israeli activists – many of whom were involved with this summer’s social justice protest movement – to organize the county’s first significant anti-war rally concerning Iran.
Public opinion in Israel is squarely against the idea of an Israeli attack against Iran, something that protest organizers were quick to point out in promotional messages leading up to the rally. Organizers also made a point of arguing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s war rhetoric and preparations were simply intentional diversions meant to distract citizens from the country’s pressing social and economic problems:
[W]e will not agree to an irresponsible Israeli attack in Iran, leading to a war with an unknown end-date and casualty count…The billions that this war will cost will be paid by us – in health, education, housing – and in blood.
An elderly Israeli hold a sign that says, "95, believing in and demanding peace."
While a plurality of Israelis are not in favor of military engagement with Iran, the scene on Saturday night in Tel Aviv was, for the most part, a decidedly leftist one – a melding of social justice activists and activists from Hadash (the Jewish-Arab party).
Protesters among the approximately 1,000 who flooded Tel Aviv.
Protesters with a sign that reads "Bibi Don't Bomb Iran."
Where this anti-war momentum will lead remains to be seen. However, at the very least, the reverberating drums of war being pounded upon by Israel’s leaders are now being accompanied by discordant and oppositional vocals.
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Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG.
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Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.
In the past month, we’ve seen the issue of a possible Israeli strike against Iran receive increased attention. This is thanks, in part, to the GOP candidates’ irresponsible (yet politically expedient) parroting of right-wing talking points on the matter in a race to win over both “pro-Israel” backers and votes.
Politically-motivated bluster aside, though, there is a real potential for the issue to become a significant part of our national discourse in the run-up to the 2012 election.
Political guru Nate Silver certainly feels such is the case, particularly after reading a Times piece on the U.S. military’s classified war simulation last month, which showed that an Israeli attack on Iran could have perilous consequences for America.
Silver Tweeted, along with a link to the Times‘ article:
Pretty clear that Iran/Israel is displacing Europe as the most important election wild card.
The GOP sees this as a winning issue – a foreign policy arena where they can score points by playing both on voters’ fears and prejudices (against both those evil Iranians and our dark-skinned President). It’s for this reason that conservatives have been playing up the rhetoric and drum beats, doing everything possible to convince Americans that both an Israeli attack and an American response are not only necessary, but inevitable (which couldn’t be farther from the truth – more on that below).
Just witness the blustery “HR 3783 – Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012,” which is sponsored by Jeff Duncan (R – South Carolina) and has made it out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. While it will be put to a vote, the bill has little chance of passing. But passing isn’t the point. Raising the issue’s profile is.
Witness also the Times‘ article over the weekend entitled “Hawks Steering Debate on How to Take on Iran,” an article which almost accepted the inevitability of an Israeli strike. Of course, as M.J. Rosenberg points out in The Huffington Post, those cited for the story are a veritable who’s who of conservatives invested in making the issue of Iran front-and-center:
The far-right Emergency Committee for Israel and its vice-chair, the Christian right and GOP leader, Gary Bauer. The ECI’s chair is William Kristol, a leading Republican;
The House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the GOP’s #1 spokesperson in Congress and close ally of Binyamin Netanyahu;
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a hawk in almost all conflict situations and a vehement adversary of President Obama;
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC;
Sheldon Adelson, the “billionaire casino owner” who is a primary funder of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign;
The Republican candidates for president; and
Richard N. Perle, the leading neoconservative who famously started pushing for war with Iraq within 24 hours of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Two years ago, the potential for an Israeli attack on Iran began to receive public attention thanks, in part, to Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover story for The Atlantic, which predicted an Israeli strike within 12 months.
That story, which cited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as well as high-ranking Israeli officials, and which made an Israeli attack seem inevitable, was one of the first notable seeds placed in our media on the issue of a contemporary attack. Goldberg recently admitted that it’s possible Netanyahu was bluffing, both then and now. And while he doesn’t yet believe in this possibility (or won’t admit to believing in this possibility), he’s likely just one in a series of pawns that have been used by both Netanyahu and his Republican, conservative allies for a host of security and political reasons.
While the U.S. military is not taking any chances, the likelihood of an Israeli attack is small. The Israeli public is squarely against such an attack, the Obama administration’s disapproving stance on the matter is quite clear, and most parties involved understand (even if they won’t say so publicly) that Iran is nowhere near capable of producing a nuclear weapons program.
While anything is possible, the chances for an Israeli attack are slim.
But you wouldn’t know that by listening to Romney on the stump. Or Santorum on the pulpit. Or Gingrich in a donut shop. All of whom continue to saber rattle, hoping this issue’s bark will yield some savory electoral bites.
Follow the author – David Harris-Gershon – on Twitter @David_EHG.
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