Most U.S. progressives share the view that the destigmatization of “disability” is a positive thing. Translating that vision into widespread social practice, however, is proving difficult to do.
2014
Deepening Disability Justice: Beyond the Level Playing Field
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I was very lucky to be born disabled in 1966, just as the disability rights movement was gaining strength worldwide—I was born into an era of disability activists agitating for recognition that we are human beings like any other, and that we should be treated with respect and dignity. This is a political claim, but it’s also a theological one that has resonance with the fundamental precepts of most religions. As a Quaker, for example, I am taught to look for “that of God in every one,” in the words of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement. In most cultural contexts and for many centuries, disabled people have struggled for inclusion and survival. Throughout history, many disabled children have died or been left to die.
2014
Angry Jews on the Freedom Bus
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“We have to change the way we talk about and relate to the State of Israel. And we have to do it now.”
So declared one of the almost dozen Jewish participants in the most recent Freedom Bus ride through Palestine. I recently traveled the length and breadth of the West Bank on the annual Freedom Bus trip sponsored by the Jenin Freedom Theatre, a cultural center and theater based in the Jenin refugee camp. Despite having spent more than two decades living in, working on, and writing about Palestine/Israel, I was struck by the intensity of traveling through frontline communities in the unending struggle over land in the West Bank. Reading a Haaretz headline declaring that “Israel authorizes record amount of West Bank land for settlement construction” is one thing; experiencing the realities of constant settlement expansion from the perspective of the residents whose lives are most directly and deleteriously impacted by it, is quite another.
Editorials & Actions
Earth Lost Half Its Wildlife in the Past Four Decades!!!
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A new, comprehensive study of the world’s wildlife population has drastically reduced its 2012 estimate. Why? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer. Earth lost half its wildlife in the past four decades, according to the most comprehensive study of animal populations to date, a far larger decline than previously reported. The new study was conducted by scientists at the wildlife group WWF, the Zoological Society of London and other organizations.
Editorials & Actions
Fukushima, Miso Soup and Me–by Sheila Parks
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Rabbi Lerner’s note: I have no way of assessing the accuracy of this article by Sheila Parks. But on the off chance that it is accurate, it seems important enough for the well-being of our community of caring people for me to risk putting up on my web site something that might turn out to be wildly exaggerated. It deserves scientific attention, and it won’t get that from the food industry which tends to place much higher focus on profit than on health. Fukushima, Miso Soup and Me by Sheila Parks
BACKSTORY
We can never be too careful when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families. There are no safe foods any longer.
Activism
A Wrenching Look at Alzheimer’s
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In her book, Slow Dancing with a Stranger, Comer details her excruciating journey through the maze of Alzheimer’s, an unforgiving disease. Through this book, she is changing the conversation from acceptance of what is to demanding what should be.
Articles
The Color of Judaism: A Cultural Reflection and Plea for the New Year
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No matter what I am wearing, what is covering my head, or what color my skin is, I am Jewish. But being Jewish does not take away the fact that I am a person of color either.
Activism
On Busboys and Poets, Andy Shallal, and D.C.’s Progressive Visual Culture
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These restaurants and cultural centers are important sites for artistic expression, providing artists additional opportunities to disseminate their works and to gain more exposure beyond the traditional avenues of commercial galleries and museums.
Articles
Beyond Walls and Checkpoints: The Digital Occupation of Palestine
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Even as the Israeli government exerts a more visible rule over the movement of goods and people in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel also exercises tight control over the movement of information between Palestinian landlines, computers, and mobile devices.
Editorials & Actions
The Myth of American Exceptionalism by Stephen Walt
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Editor’s Note: Stephen Walt wrote this piece in 2011, but it is just as relevant today as Americans are lining up for yet another war. What Walt misses, in my view, is that many Americans are motivated by a genuine desire to do good, to protect the powerless, and that that motivation deserves praise. Unfortunately, that goodness in Americans is manipulated by the institutions that serve the multinational corporations and the 1 percent of super rich as they give priority to their narrow interests in wealth and power and misuse the goodness of Americans by shaping a media and an educational system which gives most Americans little understanding of the class structure, the destructive impact of multinational corporations, the way the ethos of materialism and selfishness and looking out for number one endemic to the ethos of global capitalism, and the destruction of communities and faith systems around the world have contributed to the resurgence of the most irrational elements in fundamentalist religious communities as a misguided protest against the world order that US power has brought to much of the world. Sadly, most liberals then respond to appeals to fight those crazy and hateful fundamentalists, without any sense of how these enemies are the flip side of the distortions in a country that uses massive violence as well as subtle manipulation to retain its global power. We who love America must do our best to help Americans see that it is precisely their goodness that makes them vulnerable to this kind of manipulation, and that the solution is NOT to then adopt the kind of ethical neutrality about foreign policy adopted by some, but rather to get a more complex picture of what a world manifesting loving and caring values would really look like.
Editorials & Actions
Denying Palestinians Their Humanity: A Response to Elie Wiesel by Sara Roy
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Denying Palestinians Their Humanity
A Response to Elie Wiesel
by SARA ROY
Mr. Wiesel,
I read your statement about Palestinians, which appeared in The New York Times on August 4th. I cannot help feeling that your attack against Hamas and stunning accusations of child sacrifice are really an attack, carefully veiled but unmistakable, against all Palestinians, their children included. As a child of Holocaust survivors—both my parents survived Auschwitz—I am appalled by your anti-Palestinian position, one I know you have long held. I have always wanted to ask you, why? What crime have Palestinians committed in your eyes? Exposing Israel as an occupier and themselves as its nearly defenseless victims?
Editorials & Actions
Alon Gotstein responds to Archbishop Tutu about Palestine and Gaza
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Editor’s Note: Although I believe that it is Alon Gottstein, not Tutu, who has no willingness to honestly confront the history and present reality of Israel, I believe that the deepest truths emerge from the intellectual struggle between different perspectives and for that reason want to print dissenting views from our own whenever they are presented in a coherent and respectful way that Gottstein has done. So since we sent out to our readers the original article by Archbishop Tutu, I want to give his critic a similar opportunity to have his perspective heard in our community. –Rabbi Michael Lerner
To Desmond Tutu: Singling out Israel for blame won’t bring peace
by ALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN
You address the Israeli people in your letter but you ignore their central concern: The conflict isn’t just a struggle for liberation, it’s for survival. It’s not apartheid-era South Africa redux, which is why your boycott ‘cure’ won’t work. Dear Archbishop Tutu,
Recently, you addressed the people of Israel in Haaretz (“My plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine”) explaining why the methods of boycott and divestment used in South Africa should be applied to the situation in Israel-Palestine.
Editorials & Actions
From Just War to Just Peace–a message from progressive Catholics
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From Just War to Just Peace: The Time Is Now
“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”
– Matthew 27:52
“If we cannot know from the New Testament that Christ totally rejects violence, then we can know nothing of His person or message. It is the clearest of teachings.”
– Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical Scholar
“War is the suicide of humanity because it kills the heart and kills love.” – Pope Francis, June 2, 2013
As Catholic Christians, we call on our Church to embrace gospel nonviolence as the only stance consistent with Christian discipleship and to reject the just war tradition (JWT), as expressed, among other places, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (¶ 2309). The JWT is unChristian and obsolete. War undermines human development and human dignity.
Editorials & Actions
Cornel West on Obama, Hillary, Ferguson and More
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Exclusive: Cornel West talks Ferguson, Hillary, MSNBC — and unloads on the failed promise of Barack Obama
an interview by THOMAS FRANK in Salon.com
Cornel West teaches at Union Theological Seminary and is the author of Race Matters and (with Rabbi Michael Lerner) of Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin. Cornel West (Credit: Albert H. Teich via Shutterstock)
Cornel West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and one of my favorite public intellectuals, a man who deals in penetrating analyses of current events, expressed in a pithy and highly quotable way. I first met him nearly six years ago, while the financial crisis and the presidential election were both under way, and I was much impressed by what he had to say. I got back in touch with him last week, to see how he assesses the nation’s progress since then. The conversation ranged from Washington, D.C., to Ferguson, Missouri, and although the picture of the nation was sometimes bleak, our talk ended on a surprising note.
Editorials & Actions
Focus on the Peacemakers–Thoughts About World War One
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The Search for Peace During World War One:
by Neil Hollander
A hundred years ago, just after the First World War began, the Danish
anti-war film, Lay Down Your Arms, had its world premiere in New York. The film was faithfully based on a novel by Bertha von Süttner, who
was, at the time, one of the most famous women in the world. She had
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 and her anti-war book had
been published in 16 languages. It had gone through more than 40
editions and millions of people had read it. In this the centennial year of the beginning of the First World War
there has been, as one might expect, a wave of new books.