The creation of, Seeing through the Wall, a documentary; American Jews visit the occupied territories.
Editorials & Actions
Anti-Ageism: The Next Big Social Movement
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By Ruth Ray Karpen
A Review of Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People
By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Forty years ago, Erdman Palmore, a senior fellow at the Duke University Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, published a series of questions – the Facts on Aging Quiz – designed to provoke group discussions about aging and old age. To his surprise, the quiz revealed that most Americans knew very little about the aging process and harbored many misconceptions, most of them negative. Among the most common misconceptions were that the majority of old people (age 65+) were bored, angry, irritated and unable to adapt to change and that at least 10% of them lived in nursing homes. For years Palmore and other gerontologists, used the quiz in classes and public forums to educate people about the facts of aging. They knew from previous research that the more knowledge people gain, the less negative and the more positive attitudes they hold about aging. In 2017, Americans still need to be educated, perhaps even more so, if the proliferation of negative behaviors and hate speech toward old people is any indication. Of all the prejudices that divide us, ageism is still the most universally shared and tolerated. It can be hostile and overt, like the Facebook comment that “anyone over the age of 69 should immediately face a firing squad,” or more subtle and passive aggressive, like the birthday card that makes fun of getting old, the comment that a retired colleague has “let herself go” or your own disgust at the wrinkles and brown spots on your face. These are mere bagatelles, however, compared to the most serious forms of age bias. Consider these facts of contemporary life in America:
Midlife men, especially those once considered at the peak of their ability and experience, are now widely discriminated against in the workplace. In some places, such as tech companies in Silicon Valley, discrimination starts at the age of 35. Among the Facebook groups that focus on older adults – approximately 25,000 members – 74% “vilified” older adults, according to one study, and 37% thought they should be banned from public activities like driving and shopping.
Articles
Gangster Capitalism and Nostalgic Authoritarianism
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Gangster capitalism and nostalgic authoritarianism in Trump’s America
by HENRY A. GIROUX
Just one year into the Donald Trump presidency, not only have the failures of American democracy become clear, but many of the darkest elements of its history have been catapulted to the center of power. A dystopian ideology, a kind of nostalgic yearning for older authoritarian relations of power, now shapes and legitimates a mode of governance that generates obscene levels of inequality, expands the ranks of corrupt legislators, places white supremacists and zealous ideologues in positions of power, threatens to jail its opponents, and sanctions an expanding network of state violence both at home and abroad. Trump has accelerated a culture of cruelty, a machinery of terminal exclusion and social abandonment that wages a war on undocumented immigrants, poor minorities of color and young people. He uses the power of the presidency to peddle misinformation,erode any sense of shared citizenship, ridicule critical media and celebrate right-wing “disimagination machines” such as Fox News and Breitbart News. Under his “brand of reality TV politics,” lying has become normalized, truthfulness is viewed as a liability, ignorance is propagated at the highest levels of government and the corporate controlled media, and fear-soaked cyclones of distraction and destruction immunize the American public to the cost of human suffering and misery. Under the Trump administration, culture has been weaponized and is used as a powerful tool of power, misinformation and indoctrination. James Baldwin, in a 1979 New York Times essay titled “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” wrote, “People evolve a language …
Articles
Walden on the Rocks
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Editor’s note: Ariel Dorfman is one of the greatest living writers. Read and enjoy his reflections, inspired in part by the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thoreau. Walden on the Rocks
Ariel Dorfman
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/Bridgeman Images
J.M.W. Turner: Wreckers—Coast of Northumberland, with a Steam-Boat Assisting a Ship off Shore, 1834
THE bodies are strewn everywhere along the beach. Burials are complicated because nobody knows the names of the dead—mostly women and children fleeing famine and poverty, trying to reach the land of plenty that has been promised to them but finding, instead, an early end in turbulent waters. Spectators gape at the debris from the recent shipwreck “cracked up like an eggshell on the rocks,” while others go about their business.
Editorials & Actions
Thanksgiving 2017: How to be More Effective at a Thanksgiving Gathering
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Ever had a frustrating experience on Thanksgiving with friends or family? Your progressive ideas are dismissed as unrealistic or seem to offend people? Here are some tips on how to navigate that at your Thanksgiving table 2017. First, remember that there is a lot to give thanks for in our world today. We ought not let our celebration of all that is miraculous in the universe, our celebration of the continuing bountiful reality of planet Earth, and our appreciation of all the good people in this would be undermined or ruined by having all the conversation focusing on the Trumpists. So step one: encourage friends and family to spend some time celebrating the good, even at the expense of not watching the t.v. or focusing on everything wrong with the world.
US_Politics
ESRA–the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
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Imagine a world where politicians are not bought by corporations, and where corporations have a responsibility for the well-being of the environment and people. We have a proposal that will accomplish both—The Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ESRA).
Articles
The Republican Tax Cuts Could Bankrupt Our Country
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Dear senators: Don’t bankrupt our country
Jeffrey Sachs || November 20, 2017 || CNN
Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. Dear Sens. Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, Ron Johnson, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski:
I fear for the future of our country. I know that you do as well.
Articles
Thanksgiving Mythology and Reality
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The Thanksgiving Myth
by Cliff DuRand
[This talk was given at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel of Allende, November 23, 2008]
In many ways the Thanksgiving celebration is a unique festivity. As harvest festivals go it’s not particularly unusual: families gathering for a special meal to enjoy the bounty of nature and the fruit of the growing season’s labor. Most societies in the temperate zones of the earth have such harvest festivals. In the more northerly latitudes of Canada it comes in October as it does also in north China at the time of the harvest moon. At the latitudes of the United States Thanksgiving comes in late November, after the harvests are in.
Articles
Sodomites in our own time
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Rabbi Rothbaum presents a humorous yet actually very serious account of what it means to be a Sodomite today. Though we in the liberal and progressive world might immediately identify his description with the policies of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party, with considerable justice in so doing, we ought to also acknowledge that when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, their efforts to end homelessness and hunger in the U.S. (much less around the world) were feeble when compared to the spending that they did for the U.S. military. And when inheriting the economic crisis in 2009, the Dems funded a massive bailout of….no, not the people losing their homes because of deceitful or misleading mortgage practices of the banks and investment companies, but rather the large corporations and the investment companies, without getting in return any serious lasting commitment to change their destructive policies. So we are all implicated in the Sodomite sins of our government until we elect candidates who are unequivocally giving priority to ending the suffering of the most vulnerable in our society and around the world (e.g. through Tikkun’s proposed Global Marshall Plan www.tikkun.org/gmp –Rabbi Michael Lerner
How to become a Sodomite in five easy steps! BY RABBI MICHAEL ROTHBAUM | JULY 7, 2017
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, all asking me the same thing: “Rabbi, I’d like to be a Sodomite, but I just don’t know how to start.”
Believe me, I understand.
Articles
The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class
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The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
IT’S NO SECRET that the past several decades have witnessed growing economic inequality and deepening economic insecurity for a very large section of working people both in the U.S. and other capitalist countries around the world. Yet the Democrats and their supporters in the liberal and progressive social change movements are living in fantasy land if they think that the way the Trumpites are exacerbating that inequality gap will be sufficient to win them control of the Congress and the presidency by 2021. What most progressive and liberal politicians and movements miss are the hidden injuries of class that become dramatically intensified when the underlying psychological and spiritual dysfunction of global capitalism interact with economic insecurity. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist, and/or racist movements gain support as more people begin to lose faith in the efficacy of democratic governments and liberal/left politics focused on providing economic entitlements and political rights to those who had been previously disenfranchised while seeming to ignore or even dismiss as “white privilege” or “male privilege” the ways that many people are in pain. For many, the fact that people of color are more likely to get killed by police than whites or that women face outrageous sexual harassment does not register as a “privilege” to those who have their own forms of suffering, both economic and psychological, which make them feel frustrated with their lives and misunderstood and angry at those who tell them that they are the beneficiaries of a racist and sexist system (which they did not create and which they often feel powerless to change). Sadly, many turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated, in part because the liberal and progressive world makes them feel “less than” and disrespected.
Articles
Corporate Tax Cut Propaganda …. by Jeffrey Sachs
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Corporate tax cut propaganda
Jeffrey D. Sachs October 20, 2017
The White House is selling a tax cut designed for the rich as a boost for the working class. Cut taxes on capital, the White House claims, and investors will raise investment, hire more workers, and bid up wages — a.k.a. trickle-down economics. If the real goal is to use tax cuts to boost low wages, then do it directly, for example by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Of course, there is a basic problem with tax cuts now. They will lead to larger budget deficits even before they lead to more growth.
Editorials & Actions
The Torah heading of Noach from Rabbi Zalman Kastel
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Seeing and not seeing (through the prism of Noah and the Ark) Reflections on my trip to family in New York – Noach
I’m sitting on a flight back home from New York with my young son. Last night both of us danced the night away at the wedding of my niece. I am still savouring the joy of being with family, and observing the delight of my young child. Yet, my tradition, turns our attention to sadness amid joy. A glass is broken during the Jewish marriage ceremony to remind us of loss 1). Oddly, this sombre gesture is not honoured by a reflective silence, on the contrary, immediately after the crashing noise everyone erupts into joyous exclamations of Mazal Tov!
Articles
Noam Chomsky on The Trump Presidency
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(Editor’s note: Noam Chomsky at 89 is one of the great gifts to all of us
who seek a world of peace and justice. Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for sharing this with Tikkun magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives and our community of readers. –Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com)
The Trump Presidency
Or How to Further Enrich “The Masters of the Universe”
By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
[This interview has been excerpted from Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, the new book by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian to be published this December.]
David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, and the actual policies he is striving to enact, which receive less attention. Do you think he has any coherent economic, political, or international policy goals? What has Trump actually managed to accomplish in his first months in office?
Noam Chomsky: There is a diversionary process under way, perhaps just a natural result of the propensities of the figure at center stage and those doing the work behind the curtains. At one level, Trump’s antics ensure that attention is focused on him, and it makes little difference how.
Articles
Fighting Racism and Hate
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A lesson from Germany on eradicating a legacy of hate
by Martha Minow
EDU BAYER/THE NEW YORK TIMESA white nationalist carries a Nazi flag during a protest in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12. By Martha Minow SEPTEMBER 29, 201
What does it take to remove evil and stop hatred? This question has plagued humans throughout centuries, and although there is no simple answer, Germany changed from a pariah state to exemplar of constitutional democracy through the combination of post-World War II criminal trials, reforms of law and media, and investment by new generations who asked their parents persistently, “Where were you during the war?” A crucial element came with the criminal trials, initially through the international military tribunal and then subsequent state-based prosecutions. Seventy years ago, on Sept.
Articles
Cherie Brown on Fighting Racism
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FIRST DAY of ROSH HASHANAH
TALK BY CHERIE R BROWN
SEPTEMBER 21, 2017
It is an honor for me to be speaking today. When David called me shortly after the events in Charlottesville and asked me to try and say something that could reach people’s hearts, connecting the Torah reading for today to the issue of racism, I was first humbled, and then I totally panicked. The Torah reading is about Sarah telling Abraham to kick out Ishmael and Hagar and God telling Avram to listen to Sarah. It’s about Hagar and Ishmael wandering in the desert, about to die from lack of water and their crying out to God. The Torah reading is about racism; it’s about exile; it’s about nation building; it’s about starvation; and it’s about conflicting narratives. It becomes quickly overwhelming. And the growing list of issues we face today are just like that: they are overwhelming. White supremacists shouting racist and anti Semitic chants. Devastating floods in Texas, India, and Bangladesh. Hurricanes in the Caribbean and Florida and Puerto Rico. Not to mention all the contributing factors from climate change. A proliferation of nuclear weapons. And that doesn’t even begin to address all of the horrific policies of our 45th President. Where do we even begin? Several years ago, I was about to give a keynote speech at the University of Texas in Denton. Right before my talk, the international director of Amnesty International addressed the group. He gave a hard hitting speech about all the horrific human rights violations taking place worldwide. I happened to be in the women’s room right after his talk, and I overheard two young women commiserating with each other, “There are so many awful things going on in the world. After that talk, we are totally depressed. Nothing we do could possibly make a difference. Let’s just go home.” And yet, Rosh Hashanah is calling us, shouting to us to break through our numbness, to hear the sound of the Shofar–to dare to let our hearts break about what is happening all around us. To not just go home. So this morning, I want to try and break through the feelings of helplessness I know we all battle and to offer four specific actions or attitudes on the work on racism that we can each do now.