Food insecurity in the U.S. has increased since the beginning of the century. Mark Winne argues that to reverse this trend, food advocates need to collaborate.
Editorials & Actions
American War Crimes That Still Ought to be Prosecuted
|
American War Crimes That Still Ought to Be Prosecuted
Let’s take a moment to think about the ultimate strangeness of our American world. In recent months, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have offered a range of hair-raising suggestions: as president, one or the other of them might order the U.S. military and the CIA to commit acts that would include the waterboarding of terror suspects (or “a hell of a lot worse”), thekilling of the relatives of terrorists, and the carpet bombing of parts of Syria. All of these would, legally speaking, be war crimes. This has caused shock among many Americans in quite established quarters who have decried the possibility of such a president, suggesting that the two of them are calling for outright illegal acts, actual “war crimes,” and that the U.S. military and others would be justified in rejecting such orders. In this context, for instance, CIA Director John Brennan recently made it clear that no Agency operative under his command would ever waterboard a suspect in response to orders of such a nature from a future president. (“I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I’ve heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure.”)
These acts, in other words, are considered beyond the pale when Donald Trump suggests them, but here’s the strangeness of it all: what The Donald is only mouthing off about, a perfectly real American president (and vice president and secretary of defense, and so on) actually did. Among other things, under the euphemistic term “enhanced interrogation techniques,” they ordered the CIA to use classic torture practices including waterboarding (which, in blunter times, had been known as “the water torture”). They also let the U.S. military loose to torture and abuse prisoners in their custody. They green-lighted the CIA tokidnap terror suspects (who sometimes turned out to be perfectly innocent people) off the streets of cities around the world, as well as from the backlands of the planet, and transported them to the prisons of some of the worst torture regimes or to secret detention centers (“black sites”) the CIA was allowed to set up in compliant countries. In other words, a perfectly real administration ordered and oversaw perfectly real crimes. (Its top officials even reportedly had torture techniques demonstrated to them in the White House.)
At the time, the CIA fulfilled its orders to a T and without complaint. A lone CIA officer spoke out publicly in opposition to such a program and was jailed for disclosing classified information to a journalist. (He would be the only CIA official to go to jail for the Agency’s acts of torture.) At places like Abu Ghraib, the military similarly carried out its orders without significant complaint or resistance. The mainstream media generally adopted the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “harsh techniques” in its reporting — no “torture” or “war crimes” for them then. And back in the post-2001 years, John Brennan, then deputy executive director of the CIA, didn’t offer a peep of protest about what he surely knew was going on in his own agency. In 2014, in fact, as its director he actually defendedsuch torture practices for producing “intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” In addition, none of those who ordered or oversaw torture and other criminal behavior (a number of whom would sell their memoirs for millions of dollars) suffered in the slightest for the acts that were performed on their watch and at their behest. To sum up: when Donald Trump says such things it’s a future nightmare to be called by its rightful name and denounced, as well as rejected and resisted by military and intelligence officials. When an American president and his top officials actually did such things, however, it was another story entirely. Today, TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon catches the nightmarish quality of those years, now largely buried, in the grim case of a single mistreated human being.
Activism
Indigenous Activist Assassinated in Honduras
|
Indigenous Activist Berta Cáceres Assassinated in Honduras
Human Rights Organizations Demand an Investigation of the Circumstances Surrounding the Assassination of Berta Cáceres, the General Coordinator of COPINH
HONDURAS – At approximately 11:45pm last night, the General Coordinator of COPINH, Berta Caceres was assassinated in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca. At least two individuals broke down the door of the house where Berta was staying for the evening in the Residencial La Líbano, shot and killed her. COPINH is urgently responding to this tragic situation. Berta Cáceres is one of the leading indigenous activists in Honduras. She spent her life fighting in defense of indigenous rights, particularly to land and natural resources.
Editorials & Actions
S.F. Police Murders (Murderous Police in the City of Love)
|
Murderous Police in the City of Love
Posted by Rebecca Gordon
In one of the widely circulated cellphone videos of the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in December, you can hear the young girl filming his death screaming. “Are you fucking serious?” she shrieks over and over at the crowd of cops encircling the young black man. According to police, Woods had refused to drop a kitchen knife they claim he was carrying. He was nonetheless attempting to walk away from the officers.
Editorials & Actions
On American Racism
|
Race, Racism, & The Spirit:
Our Lives in American Society
By Rabbi Mordechai Liebling
[This exploration of the nature of race and racism in American society, as seen in the context of personal experience, social science, and spiritual tradition, was given as a talk to students and some faculty of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, by Rabbi Mordechai Liebling. Rabbi Liebling is director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and a member of the Board of The Shalom Center. This was reprinted from the Shalom Center’s email with permission from Rabbi Liebling);
Shalom, thank you
It is an honor and privilege to address you Jewish leaders and Jewish leaders in formation. I appreciate the opportunity and feel humbled by the responsibility. Responsibility because racism has been called variously the core wound of American society, the cancer at our core, our original sin, deepest shadow, fundamental contradiction – choose your language- they all convey the same message that the United States can not and will not be a spiritually healthy just society unless and until we put an end to all forms of racism. I will address today some of the different aspects of racism, the process of racialization, how racism and its corollary white privilege constrict the spiritual growth of each one of us and some suggestions of what we can do, in between you will have opportunity to speak with each other and at the end there will be time for some questions.
Activism
The Problem of Evil: Campus, 1968
|
A Short Story
Elena was saying something about how exploited the TA’s were. Maureen, who was also a TA, leaned her head closer, trying to hear her above the din of the students’ chatter in the cavernous auditorium. Then Elena suddenly sat up and pointed toward the front. A short man with long, wavy white hair was rapping a ruler against the podium, attempting to get the students’ attention. He began clearing his throat authoritatively.
2015
To Transform the World, Think Like a Gardener
|
Our social change organizations have internalized the destructive messages of mainstream society. It’s time to compost what’s not working.
2015
Structure Without Hierarchy: Effective Leadership in Social Change Movements
|
It’s impossible to create activist spaces where everyone is equally powerful. Instead, we can acknowledge and encourage different paths to power.
2015
The Power of Service
|
Leadership doesn’t have to be patriarchal. Remembering that leadership is service will help social movements resist the tyranny of structurelessness.
2015
Sacred Earth, Sacred Self: A Meditation on Inner Transformation
|
To overthrow the alienation and false needs of capitalism, we must imagine a culture of love, fearlessness, and honor for the sacred—then start building it.
2015
“I Still Can’t Breathe”: Artists Decry Racism from the Watts Rebellion to the Present
|
A new exhibit speaks to America’s enduring legacy of state violence against African Americans and the revolutionary power of visual art.
2015
Making Amends: Healing from Individual and Collective Trauma and Loss
|
The bloody photos from East Jerusalem triggered memories of violence at home. Resisting state violence can’t be separated from personal healing.
2015
Left-Wing Follies: The Self-Defeating Ideas That Hold Activists Back
|
To access the tools we need to transform our society, we must overcome anti-intellectualism on the left. Let’s reforge the link between head and heart.
Gender & Sexuality
Scholarship Against Desire
|
First published in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities as part of the Part of the Legal Education Commons, and the Legal Writing and Research Commons. [1]
“Where is your heart in this work?”
I often pose this question to faculty candidates I’m interviewing after they share their scholarly agenda. A depressing proportion seems baffled by the question. One refreshingly honest candidate answered: “It’s not.” He had started his career writing about a topic he was passionate about, but had concluded that it hurt his marketability. So he switched, and his stock went up.
Editorials & Actions
Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism
|
Editor’s note: As a non-profit, Tikkun does not take stances on candidates or political parties during election periods, but our authors and readers are welcome to do so! Henry Giroux is one of the most creative theorists on the Left these days, so it is an honor to publish him here. Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism
Henry A. Giroux
In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Donald Trump’s popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgement rather than titillation.