Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/justice-for-all/page/21/)
The time is ripe to inform our current struggles with a look back at the labor unionists and relatively wealthy social reformers of the Progressive Era who helped save America from those who sought to corrupt the democratic system to their own ends. I’d like to share the story of an especially inspirational figure—Rose Pastor.
What’s next, and how do we make it happen? This special section explores all sorts of topics that spring from the Occupy Movement.
During a plenary session at last week’s third annual J Street conference, Raleb Majadele, a Palestinian Israeli member of the Knesset from the Labor party, may have broken an Israeli law. Responding to a question about whether he supports boycotts against Israeli settlements, Majadele said first that he was “against all boycotts in principle.” This prompted a round of applause from a minority of the more than 2,000 people in the audience. But a few sentences later, Majadele switched course and described settlement-only boycott in a positive light, describing it as “a pin-pointed boycott against the obstacle for peace.” A much larger portion of the audience then erupted in applause. (It remains to be seen whether Majadele will be prosecuted for this statement, as a new Israeli law makes it illegal for Israeli citizens to promote boycott against Israel or Israeli settlements.)
The notion of boycotting Israeli settlements was raised frequently throughout the plenary sessions and workshops of the three-day conference—and often to hearty applause. Peter Beinart, author of a recent New York Times op-ed that coined the phrase “Zionist boycott” (i.e., a pro-Israel boycott aimed at saving “democratic Israel” from its “undemocratic,” peace-destroying settlements) was a featured speaker and launched his book, The Crisis of Zionism, at the conference.
We aren’t merely calling for a paradigm shift—we’re calling for an unsettling of the constant haze of distraction, dissatisfaction, and depression in our hearts and minds that denigrates our relationships with one another, the earth, and our most authentic selves.
The question of whether Occupy should adopt a code of nonviolence has stirred contentious debates among activists since the movement began.
The word horizontalidad was first heard in the days after the popular rebellion in Argentina in 2001. Horizontal social relationships and the creation of new territory through the use of geographic space are the most generalized and innovative of the experiences of the Occupy movements.
The Occupy encampments took on feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, albeit in tents, demonstrating an interdependent way of living. What if the Occupy movement called on all of us to take back access to our most basic human needs that are now primarily in the hands of very large institutions?
Occupy has unseated the pragmatic from its throne and replaced it with a mighty emptiness. That emptiness is as pregnant as any womb before fertilization, any wound before its healing, any glass before its filling.
I had come to the General Assembly to listen and participate in a discussion and vote on the place of nonviolence in Occupy Seattle but found myself disoriented by my neighbor’s assertion that “religious” values had no place in the movement’s dialogue. I felt muted by the insinuation that my spirituality, which is at the core of my identity, was unwelcome.
It was forty-seven years ago that I climbed down a rope from the second floor of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall, where we in the Free Speech Movement were holding a sit-in. How exciting for me to watch a new generation beginning to open their minds to the possibility that they might take the reins and become tikkunistas—healers and transformers of our world. It’s also important to note, however, that there are struggles in this young Occupy movement whose outcome will determine its long-term significance.
The current Republican primary campaigns have repeatedly raised class issues, offering an opportunity to examine how the two main competing political ideologies in American politics—defined here as corporate liberalism and Reaganomics—respond to class-consciousness and address class interests.
In addition to being Jewish, I am a member of a definable gender minority that has been conspicuous throughout history. I am a eunuch. Angels in the Torah are the Lord’s trusted messengers; the word angel comes from the Greek word angelos (messenger). In a similar way, eunuchs of biblical times were the emperors’ messengers and guardians. In gender-segregated cultures, our in-betweenness allows us to be able to transgress both worlds.
In Seattle, distance, anger, and pain remain from decades of command and control policing. The success of the Williams Restorative Circle fuels the promise that we can address that painful history, find mutual understanding, ensure accountability, and find a sense of well being and trust in agreed-upon actions moving forward.
We want new men in our classes. We’re recruiting — like the marines — a few good men who’ll help build a movement of folks who see that being intimate, empathic, and warm is a better way to raise our kids and get along with each other.
This manifesto to Middle East revolutionaries is a congratulation, an aspiration, and a blessing that draws upon lessons from Che Guevara.