Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/page/64/)
When people often say that they are going to reelect Obama as “the lesser evil,” it is important to acknowledge that though lesser evil, the Obama Administration has been involved in considerable evil. By Jeffrey Sachs
Huffington Post
November 25, 201
The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is
now so powerful that we can save millions of children,
mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at
little cost.
Should our energy be focused on finding new spaces to occupy and create encampments? Should we be focused more in our local neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces? Is there a way to both occupy public space with horizontal assemblies yet also focus locally and concretely?
Should a society based on the principles of democracy and Western thinking permit people to circumcise children? The answer to that question may well be no. I suggest, however, that this is the wrong question through which to understand the issue of circumcision.
Matthew Taylor initiates his sharp critique of brit milah (the covenant of circumcision) with anger … as a rabbi, I would of course be very engaged by such a confession and would want to know more. But as an introduction to a learned discussion over a ritual practice that is so central to the Jewish narrative, this expression of anger is not exactly conducive to a rational exchange. It is, however, honest and deserves a sober response.
Like countless men who have been circumcised, I’m angry about what was taken from me. If I could go back in time to the moment before this was done to me, I would use any means necessary to stop it. I wish there’d been a law against it.
I think you might find this exchange between a student and me about Occupy Oakland and the Oakland community of some interest. There is a rumor that there may be a new violent confrontation hours from now as the occupiers refuse to leave (the mayor had previously offered for us to be able to stay 24/7 but without tents–in other words, just as people coming to present our ideas, but not as occupiers. Let me hasten to add that I believe that the police riot 12 days ago was totally unjustified, and believe that the police who were involved should be sent to prison like others who violate the law. The violence of Oakland police is a daily reality for people of color in Oakland and many other American cities, and always a shock to everyone else because it is only when it happens to white people that the media stays on the story for more than a day or two! I have also posted some responses from others below the first two. So here is the letter I received on email this morning:
Jordan Ashe wrote:
Dear Rabbi Lerner:
My name is Jordan Ashe and I am a student member of your Tikkun community.
When my teacher and mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Abraham Joshua Heschel told me and others that he had been “praying with his feet” when he participated in the Selma Freedom march in 1965, he confirmed for many a way of overcoming the dichotomy between my religious practice and my radical politics. In many ways, the anti-war movements of the Sixties and early Seventies of the last century felt like that kind of community prayer. I had that experience again at my various visits to Occupy Oakland, most intensely this past Wednesday, November 2, 2011.
Are those who seek faith healing deluded? Not entirely. Although no amount of faith can regenerate a lost limb, faith can indeed help a person overcome crippling pain. The natural brain mechanisms that allow this to occur are increasingly understood. Believing in a Higher Power—even a fictional one—can cure ills amenable to the placebo response.
In calling for a general strike on November 2, Occupy Oakland took quite a risk. Generations have passed since the last wave of general strikes in the United States, and in many ways political consciousness could not be more different. Historically, mass labor actions have depended on large-scale organization among workers, a clear list of demands, and broad community support. Moreover, changes in labor laws and union membership rates make the kind of well-structured actions seen during the height of the labor movement all but impossible. Bottom line: if you’re looking for reasons why November 2 was not a truly traditional general strike, they’re not hard to find.
This past weekend, Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were held in over 951 cities in 82 countries as people around the globe joined in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%. The media, trying to discredit all the demonstrators, say we don’t know what we are for, only what we are against. In the NY Times on Tuesday, Oct. 18, a story about Occupy Wall Street claimed that the only thing the demonstrators agreed upon was that they were angry, but not about what much less what they actually wanted. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound bite for “what we are for.”
Waking Up from the Nightmare:
Buddhist Reflections on Occupy Wall Street
David R. Loy
In a Buddhist blog about Occupy Wall Street, Michael Stone quotes the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who spoke to the New York Occupiers at Zuccotti Park on October 9:
They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus Identifies more than $4 Trillion in Savings to Create
Jobs and Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
Washington, D.C. – The Congressional Progressive Caucus
(CPC) today sent policy proposals to Senator Patty
Murray and Congressman Jeb Hensarling, Co-Chairs of the
Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,
recommending that the work of the committee focus on
creating jobs, raising revenues through fair taxation
and protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The CPC identified more than $4 trillion in savings,
which would increase to more than $7 trillion if the
Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire on schedule. The
recommendations direct the savings toward job creation,
the single most important means to reduce the deficit. “It’s way past time to talk big or think big – it’s time
to govern big and do what needs doing,” CPC co-chair
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) said. “The American people
are sick and tired of feeling too few in the government
are responsive to their needs.
While Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives believes that the only real way to fix Wall Street is to adopt the ESRA–Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendments to the US Constitution, which we invite you to read and endorse at www.spiritualprogressives.org/ESRA, we also want to empower the Occupy Wall Street Crowd with some more immediate concrete steps that could be taken to show the cynical media that the demonstrators know what could actually be done if anyone cared to listen. So we present here one such set of first narrowly reformist steps, though we know that what is really needed is the larger transformation called for in the ESRA:
50 Proposals for Reform and Reclamation
In Solidarity with the Wall Street Protesters and the 99 Percenters
Dr. David E. McClean
David McClean is a lecturer in Philosophy and Business Ethics Rutgers University & Molloy College, and Principal, The DMA Consulting Group. Part of the problem was that only in an environment of crisis can the self-regulators galvanize themselves to actions that they couldn’t otherwise take. We had Congress pressing us against any of these [difficult reform] initiatives. We had Congress constantly bearing down on the Commission: “Don’t take steps which would hurt the firms, don’t take steps which would change the way business is being done.”…
Especially this year, here in Guatemala, Yom Kippur is not so much the Day of Atonement as it is the Day of Discipline. For if there’s one lesson I have taken so far from my short time here in Guatemala, it is that of discipline.
In popular imagination, jazz emerged from the bordellos of Storyville, the legendary red-light district where piano-players like Jelly Roll Morton entertained the prostitutes and their sporting men. But South Rampart itself was a prior birthplace to jazz along with neighboring Back a’ Town…. Like thrice-born Dionysius, jazz had two mothers, for a while simultaneously: according to the late jazz historian Tad Jones, South Rampart was “the spot for jazz.”