Net neutrality is not just for techies. The digital roots of the Black Lives Matter movement show why we must fight to keep the internet open to all.
2015
Jacob Chose Hospice: A Critique of Invasive End-of-Life Care
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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
Metropolitan Books, 2014
What does the Torah have to say about end-of-life care? Its most striking story on this topic appears in the last four chapters of Genesis, which describe the hospice death of the Jewish patriarch Jacob. After Jacob became ill, he summoned his children and grandchildren, and requested burial in the Caves of Machpeleh, alongside his parents (Isaac and Rebecca) and his grandparents (Abraham and Sarah). He gave blessings to his sons, and “when Jacob finished instructing his sons, he drew his feet onto the bed; he expired and was gathered to his people” (Gen. 49:33). He suffered no invasive medical interventions, he was surrounded by his family and was able to bless them, and he died a peaceful death.
2015
What Can Replace Prison?
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Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison
by Nell Bernstein
The New Press, 2014
Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better
by Maya Schenwar
Berrett-Koehler, 2014
If you have the capacity to read one book on prisons this month, which should you choose? For many people I would say without hesitation: Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2012). It is a stunning book. Or it was for me. Call me naïve, but it had never occurred to me that the cancerous growth of the prison system since the 1970s might have been a response to the success of the Civil Rights movement in the ’60s.
2015
A Scientific View of God
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A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet
by Nancy Abrams
Beacon Press, 2015
Nancy Abrams needed a higher power. As one of the premiere science writers of our time, she found both the Iron Age gods of the Abrahamic faiths and the pseudo-scientific mysticisms of New Age gurus wanting. So she turned to what she knew best: science. What she found is set forth in her important, cogent, and challenging new book, A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet. This is not another book about the clash of science and religion.
2015
Rethinking Agriculture: Protecting Biodiversity Amid Climate Chaos
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Biodiverse systems are more resilient to climate change. As the oceans rise, we must hasten to stop the spread of monocultures and protect biodiversity.
Editorials & Actions
The New Brutalism & America’s Racist Killing Fields by Henry Giroux
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The New Brutalism and the Racist Killing Fields in America:
The Death of Sandra Bland
by Henry A. Giroux
On July 9, soon after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, moved to Texas from Naperville, Illinois to take a new job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over by the police for failing to signal while making a lane change. What followed has become all too common and illustrates the ever increasing rise in domestic terrorism in the United States. She was pulled out of the car by a police officer for allegedly becoming combative and pinned to the ground by two officers. A video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest “doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers but does show two officers on top of Bland.”[i]
In a second video released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas state trooper Brian Encinia becomes increasingly hostile toward Bland and very shortly the interaction escalates into a shouting match and becomes confrontational.[ii] During the interaction, Bland is asked by the officer to put out her cigarette she refuses stating “I am in my car, why do I have to put out my cigarette?” Encinia then opens the driver’s door, and quickly attempts to physically remove her. He then states “I’m going to drag you out of here.” Bland says “don’t touch me, I’m not under arrest.” Encinia then pulls out his Taser, points it at Bland, and says “I will light you up.” Spokespersons for the State troopers later admitted that “Encinia did not follow proper procedure; ….
Culture
Foie Gras, Bondage, Cronuts at Dawn
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Blair’s relationship with him was a particularly Californian brand of Elektra complex, constellated by lavish sushi dinners, the interruption of business negotiations to attend her poetry readings, the purchase of swimwear well into her 20s, and on her end, worrying constantly over his health (ironically, in retrospect), visiting him weekly during his brief stint at a minimum security prison, and dedicating to him her two volumes of poetry, Other Minds, Other Bodies and Quantum Vulva.
2015
Making Nonviolent Statecraft into a Self-Evident Truth
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The precedents and models exist to make the case for nonviolent statecraft in the United States, but we need to make this case so self-evident that the war options become plainly absurd.
Editorials & Actions
Who is hoping to lead us into war with Iran?
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THE STRANGE ALLIANCE OF FUNDAMENTALIST JEWS AND CHRISTIANS WHO
ACHE FOR ARMAGEDDON
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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It has often been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. This adage is certainly reflected in the unusual alliance between fundamentalist Jews and Christians, who have joined together to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state and, now, to oppose any nuclear agreement with Iran and to silence campus debate on the Middle East. In June, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson held a meeting in Las Vegas to raise funds and create an organization, Campus Maccabees, to aggressively counter the movement on some college campuses to divest from companies doing business in the occupied territories and to boycott and divest from Israel, the so-called BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) movement. Adelson calls this movement “anti-Semitic,” although many of its leaders and supporters are Jewish. Open debate is being challenged, somehow, as “hate speech.”
Articles
American Jews and Our non-Jewish Allies Should Rally in Support of the Nuclear Deal With Iran (Don’t let past traumas contribute to our inability to see the looming possibility of a more peaceful world)
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We in the liberal and progressive wing of the Jewish world must loudly and publicly congratulate the negotiators who achieved a deal that will prevent Iran from developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons in the coming years, an agreement that also promises an end to economic sanctions. We are glad that adequate inspections and safeguards are part of this deal—no one would have trusted it otherwise. While Republicans rushed to denounce the deal, their response has been predictable and hollow, given their consistent policy of opposing anything that might give President Obama the appearance of having done something valuable. Their primary claim to credibility comes from identifying with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who immediately decried the agreement as “a historical mistake.” The right wing of the Jewish world is already organizing to oppose the nuclear deal, with the aid of a handful of billionaires who will fund a steady and public barrage of opposition. That is why it is important for Jewish liberals and progressives to speak as Jews to counter the right-wing assault.
We at Tikkun hope to see the day when Iran’s oppressive and human-rights–violating government and mullah regime are non-violently overthrown by democratic means and replaced with a government that no longer limits free speech, ends its oppression of women and Baha’i or other minority religions, and offers a path to peace and reconciliation with Israel.
2015
A Response from the River Jordan
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The myth of Sisyphus may imply that the best that we humans can expect is that, when tired from endlessly rolling the rock back up the hill, we may gather together at the River Jordan and weep. I wish Peter were right, but I still doubt that it is possible to overcome the otherness of the Other, except briefly, randomly, undependably.
Editorials & Actions
How to Make July 3-5 a Celebration of Interdependence
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Interdependence Day Celebration
Transforming July 4th into an event affirming the value of everyone on earth and affirming our interdependence with them and with the earth itself
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.
We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is a net loss. There is much worth celebrating in American history that deserves attention on July 4th, though it is rarely the focus of the public events.
We also acknowledge that in the 21st century there is a pressing need to develop a new kind of consciousness—a recognition of the interdependence of everyone on the planet. A new (and this time, nonviolent) revolution is necessary—one in which our actions reflect a realization that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and of the planet itself.
We’ve designed the following material as a possible guide for individual families or for public celebrations that share the values we hold.
Editorials & Actions
A very different analysis of the Greek financial crisis
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Syriza: Plunder, Pillage and Prostration
James Petras
Introduction
Greece has been in the headlines of the world’s financial press for the past five months, as a newly elected leftist party, ‘Syriza’, which ostensibly opposes so-called ‘austerity measures’, faces off against the “Troika” (International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank). Early on, the Syriza leadership, headed by Alexis Tsipras, adopted several strategic positions with fatal consequences – in terms of implementing their electoral promises to raise living standards, end vassalage to the ‘Troika’ and pursue an independent foreign policy. I will proceed by outlining the initial systemic failures of Syriza and the subsequent concessions further eroding Greek living standards. Winning Elections and Surrendering Power
The North American and European Left celebrated Syriza’s election victory as a break with neo-liberal austerity programs and the launch of a radical alternative, which would implement popular initiatives for basic social changes, including measures generating employment, restoring pensions, reversing privatizations, reordering government priorities and favoring payments to employees over foreign banks. The “evidence” for the radical reform agenda was contained in the ‘Thessaloniki Manifesto’ which Syriza promised to be the program guiding their newly elected officials. However, prior to, and immediately after being elected, Syriza leaders adopted three basic decisions precluding any basic changes: Indeed, these decisions set it on a reactionary course.
Editorials & Actions
A Path to End Racism
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A Path to Defeat Racism
by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis
Racism is the demeaning of an entire group of people and refusing to see them as fully human in the way we see ourselves and those we deem to be “like” us. When we fail to see the “other’s” humanity, we ascribe to all of them ugly characteristics that somehow justify treating them with less honor and less generosity and less dignity than we would with others who are part of the groups we do see as fundamentally like us. From this place of separation we justify denying the “other” equal rights, benefits and caring that all human beings deserve. Racism in the U.S. has a long history. It was foundational to US expansion throughout the North American continent, allowing white people to justify to themselves genocidal policies toward Native Americans, to allow slavery and to incorporate into our Constitution a provision that would count African slaves as 3/5 of a human being so that Southern States would have higher representation in the Congress though racists both north and south didn’t think of them as human beings at all.
Editorials & Actions
Love Wins! Lessons from the Movement for Marriage Equality
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By Cat J. Zavis
Wow. For a brief moment I am feeling such gratitude for our Supreme Court—well, at least for five justices of the court! This is a time to celebrate. Gay and lesbian couples are finally recognized for their commitment to love their partners just as any heterosexual couple does. What an amazing moment of honoring and respecting people who choose love and commitment.