Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/48/)
Liberals and Progressives Happy but Not Elated About Obama’s Re-Election
Sunday, 11 November 2012 07:17By Rabbi Michael Lerner,
President Barack Obama amidst confetti after giving his victory speech during his election night event at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago, following Election Day, early Wednesday morning, November 7. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)The moderate beat the reactionary.
Editor’s note: if you agree with this note, please call your local and national media and ask them to report on this appeal to Obama. They can speak to Tikkun staff at 510-644-1200. Obama Must Use Military to Ensure a Free and Fair Election
by Jonathan Klate
Witnessing this presidential election drama is like a nightmare in which a catastrophic multi-car collision on a fog shrouded, rain-slicked interstate is developing in slow motion. You see it from above, the helicopter view. The cars begin to skid and spin slowly out of control, hurtling towards each other, the inevitable crunches of steel and cascades of splintered glass anticipated. You are powerless to stop it. And, what is worse, in the surreal dreamscape, you are also a passenger in one of the cars. Newly enacted rules regarding who may vote, when they may register, what sort of never before required ID will be required and who faces discouraging obstacles in obtaining it, how underserved will be certain voting precincts resulting in lines and waits so long as to effectively disenfranchise many hoping to vote, and challenges to citizens rights by vigilante mobs are widely forecast to compromise and potentially cast doubt upon the outcome of this election. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, featuring some of the most prestigious scholars in the field of voting rights, reports that the breakdown of those without government issued photo ID includes 6 million seniors, 5.5 million African Americans, 8.1 million Hispanics, 4.5 million eighteen- to twenty-four-year olds, and 15 percent of voters with household income under $35,000 a year.
Editor’s note: Perhaps the most generous teaching of the God or Spiritual Reality of the Universe comes in the second paragraph of the Shma prayer (in Deuteronomy) where it tells us that if we do not create a world based oon love, kindness, generosity, ethical and eoclogical sensitivity,social justice and peace then the world itself will not work, and there will be an environmental catastrophe and humans and all other animals are in danger of perishing. This is not the words of an angry patriarch threatening to do this to us, but rather the kind warning that the universe is sending us that tells us that the ethical and the physical are intrinsically bound together in such a way that when we build a society based on greed, selfishness, materialism and endless consumption without regard to the consequences for the earth, disaster will follow. Growing up, I thought this an extravagant and foolish claim tied to an authoritarian patriarchal and judgment god in whom I could not believe; but as an adult I encountered environmental science and learned that it was all true. There are now a host of books that show the concrete steps that lead from ethical irresponsibility toward the earth and toward each other to the resulting environmental crisis (and we regularly review them in Tikkun magazine). Hurricane Sandy is only the latest manifestation of this truth, and compared with what is coming, a relatively mild reminder.
Here are some fun songs you can use to convey a part of the spirit of the Occupy movement!
Fight the Status Quo
(Tune: Let My People Go, new words by Hali Hammer)
When Egypt was Mubarek’s land (fight the status quo)
Oppressed ones took the upper hand (fight the status quo)
Step up, fight back, stay strong and make a stand
Time to ta-ake command – Fight the status quo!
The Arab Spring spread far and wide (fight the status quo)
As demonstrations swelled in size (fight the status quo) Chorus
News spread by e-mail, facebook, tweet (fight the status quo)
As people gathered in the street (fight the status quo) Chorus
We work for rights, for what is fair (fight the status quo)
At Occupations everywhere (fight the status quo) Chorus
So now change comes before our eyes (fight the status quo)
This happens when we organize! (fight the status quo) (then chorus)
*************
(Take Me Out to the Ball Game)
Betsy Rose 2011 Download printable version (revised 5/17/12) • see video
Take me out of the big banks
Take me out of their game
The credit union can have my dough
I’ll cut up my credit cards, pay as I go
And it’s root root root for the small banks
Give them our business and thanks
And it’s 1, 2, 3 million more and we’ll close big banks
Let’s go occupy Wall Street
In every city and town
We’ll occupy houses the banks foreclosed
Make sure that no one’s left out in the cold
And it’s root root root for the new world
We’re building right here today
And its 1, 2, 3 billion more! It’s a new ball game.
If you currently use a big Wall Street bank, join the wave of people switching to small local banks and non-profit credit unions. Then walk into the nearest branch of your Big Bank and say: “PLEASE CLOSE MY ACCOUNT.”
This and other articles on the election from our readers appear at the Spiritual Progressive website where we wil present a range of views of what spiritual progressives can do in the coming months. SAVING OBAMA, SAVING OURSELVES by Tom Hayden
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 AT 1:47PM | PRINT ARTICLE | EMAIL ARTICLE | POST A COMMENT
The threat of a Romney-Ryan regime should be enough to convince a narrow American majority to vote for Barack Obama, including the disappointed rank-and-file of social movements. A widening of economic and racial inequality. Cuts in Medicare and Medical. More global warming and extreme weather.
Editor’s Note: Noam Chomsky powerfully presents (below) the case against US and Israeli policy toward Iran. Yet I’m troubled by an aspect of the situation to which Chomsky gives only brief lip-service. Millions of people demonstrated against the stealing of the Iranian election by the fundamentalist mullahs who control the state apparatus in Iran. Thousands of them were either killed, wounded or ended up in the Iranian regime’s prisons where they were tortured or disappeared. Tikkun has called for the people of Iran to overthrow their own government the way the people of the Soviet Union were able to do, but we know that this is not in the cards in the short run, given the brutality of repression and the ferocity of the current regime’s supporters based on their interpretaton of how they are serving Islam.
Editor’s note: Robert Crane raises an important issue in the article below. I think the notion of a substantive concept of justice is very important, though I do not think that the way Crane fills this in is satisfactory. Crane believes in other of his writings that justice requires a right to private property–I hold the Torah’s conception that the whole world belongs to God and that no one has “a right” to land or property, all of which is given to us only on condition that we use it to serve each other and God in a love-filled and generous way. But the issue Crane raises deserves our attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Justice as Grand Strategy: The Missing Dimension in American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World
by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane
The ancient Roman philosopher, Cicero, wisely advised that before one begins to discuss anything whatsoever one should first define terms. This would apply to perspectives and entire paradigms of thought. Perhaps the most illusive words in the world today are the terms “American” and “Muslim World”.
Was there, is there, and can there be an essence of America that constitutes its identity? This issue of identity is developed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his recent book, The Garden of Truth: Vision and Promise. He begins by generalizing that humans, both as individuals and as communities, act according to the image they have of themselves.
Editor’s note: Tikkun Magazine, following the regulations that allow you to donate to Tikkun and get a tax-deduction, does not take stands on political candidates or parties. We do encourage people to vote. In the coming two months we will encourage a lively debate on our website and in our magazine in which our readers are free to explain why they do or do not support and given party or candidate. To start that discussion off, we present you with an article by Ted Glick, and as you send in your responses to this or present your own ideas, we will select some to post them on our website. –Rabbi Michael Lerner000000
Strategic Presidential Voting
By Ted Glick
It’s puzzling that there is almost no discussion among progressives about the U.S.’s completely unique way of choosing its top political leader and how we could use that fact strategically.
Uri Avnery
August 18, 2012
The Threat of a War with Iran: Mad or Crazy? BINYAMIN NETANYAHU may be crazy, but he is not mad. Ehud Barak may be mad, but he is not crazy. Ergo: Israel will not attack Iran. I HAVE said so before, and I shall say so again, even after the endless
talk about it.
Editor’s Note: Stephen Zunes is a Contributing Editor to Tikkun Magazine and professor of political science at the University of San Francisco. His article comes very very close to articulating the position on BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions) held by Tikkun Magazine. We differ only in the following respects:
1. We do not agree that the criterion of what counts as an “Occupation” should be determined in the legalistic way that Zunes derives from international law. The Occupation of Tibet by China and of Chechnya by Russia should count, and there may be other such (India in Kashmir perhaps?).
Editor’s note: I have my doubts about parts of this analysis: 1. I doubt if the research he cites can be assumed to hold cross cultures, so I think his numbers are very exaggerated 2. I think there is a big danger in labeling people whose behavior we believe to be ethically offensives as “psychopaths” and 3. I dont know that this gives us much basis for a respectful inervention, but might increase the already strong elitism among many on the Left who now would have a psychologically reductive term to dismiss people with whom we disagree. Still, I think that this piece deserves our attention, even if only to use as a way of showing the limitations of dismissive discourses on the Left.
Publishing an article that intensely criticizes an aspect of Christianity was a stretch for us here at Tikkun. Although we consider this magazine to be interfaith as well as Jewish—and have many Christian readers and writers—the idea of taking on something as sacred to the Christian world as the cross gave us pause. The last thing we want to do is convey disrespect to the Christian community and its complex internal debates. On the other hand, having already gotten ourselves into a huge amount of trouble by criticizing something sacred to many American Jews—namely Israel and its army—we thought it reasonable to take seriously our interfaith status by allowing a writer to take on a very controversial issue in the Christian world. We welcome sharp criticisms and alternative readings of the history discussed here.
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports, and fireworks, while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast. This year that kind of celebration is particularly difficult when many of us are deeply upset as we watch our government escalating its policy of drones, still fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan, running elections in which only the super-rich or their allies stand a chance of being taken seriously by the corporate media, watching as the distance between rich and poor becomes ever wider, while education and social programs for the poor get defunded, the Supreme Court reaffirms the right of corporations to on donate without limit to political campaigns, the envirionment reaches beyond the tipping point and nobody even bothers to pretend that they are going to do something to epair the ecological crisis, and the government passes legislation that in effect does away with habaeus corpus and the right of people to a trial by their peers (by legislating life imprisonment without trial for anyone the government suspects of being a foreign operative, including US citizens), and disspirited by the lack of vision of the Democratic Party, and the dis-unity and nit-picking on the Left which seems to only know what it is against but has not yet developed a coherent vision of what it is for! Oy. That’s why we’ve developed a July 4th celebratory program that you can draw from (and songs–see the bottom of this note) to create for yourself and your friends and/or family a celebration that will have meaning to you. We wish to affirm what is good in America without ignoring its problems, and to affirm a vision of hope that transcends this moment in 2012 and its disappointments. And we can even celebrate that some people who didn’t have medical coverage will now, after the Supreme Court decision last week to allow the Obamacare plan to be implented, and before the Republicans find a way to eviscerate it, have that coverage–a concrete step towards “The Caring Society–Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Planet” that is the goal of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (which is also welcoming to atheists and agnostics and anyone else who wants a world based on love and generosity).
Germany – Aggrieved about Grass
Victor Grossman, Berlin (Victor Grossman has written for Tikkun from Germany for many years)
It’s rare that poems cause such anger and excitement. The only other case I can recall was Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” which once “awoke a perfect storm of derision and abuse”. That was a century and a half ago, but somehow Grass still awakens “derision and abuse”. This time, however, it’s Günter Grass, a Nobel Literature Prize winner, with his poem “What Must Be Said”. And the subject matter is war and peace.
Grass denies the right of any country – and he is courageous enough to name Israel openly– to wage a heavily-armed first strike against Iran based on the possibility that Iran might also acquire atomic weapons.