Election year is different from all other years. The media will invite progressives into the fray. They’ll goad us, for ratings’ sake: Do you love Obama? Hate him? Are your politics pure?
2012
The Need for Progressive Realism
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Yes, Obama was moderate, and still the lofty sounding rhetoric made us feel that change really was possible. Hope was in the air. With time, we didn’t so much argue about the policies of his administration, many of which seemed fair and forward-looking. Rather, we took issue with the unwillingness to fight, the folding of the hand before the cards were played, the untoward interest in compromise with those who sought his political demise, and the combination of heady discourse with reliance on advisers peddling conventional economic wisdom geared toward the rich.
2012
Why Progressives Should Follow Feminism’s Lead in 2012
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Feminists, facing an escalating “war on women” and recognizing the enormous political stakes, have been organizing with renewed energy. It’s time for progressives of every gender identity to join this bloc and follow our lead.
2012
Obama in Question: A Progressive Critique and Defense
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Four years ago we seemed to take a shortcut to some kind of national redemption. The same nation that enslaved African Americans until 1865 and imposed a vicious century-long regime of segregation and everyday abuse upon them elected an African American to its presidency. The same nation that elected twelve slave masters to its presidency elected a president whose wife was a descendant of American slaves. The same nation that never would have elected a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement to national office fulfilled some of the movement’s most idealistic hymnody.
2012
Why America Needs a Left
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The United States today should be engaged in a great debate, not so much over who the next president will be, or over the role of government in economic life, but over the very identity and future orientation of the country itself. On the one hand, powerful right-wing voices argue that America is an essentially conservative country. On the other hand, other voices, led by the president, argue that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America!” implying that we are an essentially centrist country.
2012
Sabbath Practice as Political Resistance: Building the Religious Counterculture
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One thing Abraham Joshua Heschel and Karl Marx had in common, aside from having both been spectacularly bearded Eastern European Jews, is the shared insight that time is the ultimate form of human wealth on this earth. Without time, all other forms of wealth are meaningless. It is this insight about time—patently obvious but frequently forgotten—that makes keeping a Sabbath day both spiritually profound and politically radical.
Activism
A Salvo Against War, Torture, and Racism: The Art of Mariano Gonzales
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Working in political isolation from most of his artistic colleagues in Alaska, Mariano Gonzales continues a noble tradition of critical visual consciousness that goes back many centuries and that thrives in the early decades of the twenty-first century. His politically and socially charged images challenge his audiences to think about the major issues of their times.
Articles
Peace and Conflict through Graffiti in Israel/Palestine
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Graffiti is the most anonymous, intimate expression of how people in Israel/Palestine interact with their reality. The images below chronicle my journey in search of hope and understanding throughout this war-trodden region, narrated in graffiti.
Editorials & Actions
Songs of the Occupy Movement for the 99%
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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)
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(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.
Articles
Coming Out on Yom Kippur
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The moment I put the tallis around my shoulders, my service started. Immediately, I was taken up in the embrace of the rich cloth, the whole texture, the weave of my life, my family, the renewal of New Orleans. As soon as I felt the cloth on my shoulders, and the fringes between my fingers, I knew that the tallit is for both men and women. As I sat there, I felt every bit a woman, a beautiful Jewish woman in a beautiful Jewish tallis.
Editorials & Actions
Move Your Money from Exploitative Banks
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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.”
Editorials & Actions
Tom Hayden argues for why the Left should support Obama
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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.
Editorials & Actions
Noam Chomsky on the Immorality of US & Israeli Policy Toward Iran–and my small quibbles with Chomsky
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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.
Articles
In Praise of Baseball
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After decades of observation and outright devotion, I believe that even in these difficult days for the sport, baseball continues to instruct on our most fundamental human virtues and values. More to the point, I believe baseball far more that any other team sport embodies and celebrates many of the principles at the core of what it means to be a progressive, and especially a spiritually minded progressive.
Editorials & Actions
Strategic Voting for Progressives in Nov.2012
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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.