Politics & Society

Jewish & Palestinian Women Are Fasting in Front of Netanyahu's Home for 50 Days

By |

Over 300 Jewish and Palestinian women will be fasting together over the next six weeks in a tent outside Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. Those fasting are part of Women Wage Peace, which formed during the Gaza war last summer as a collective voice standing against Israel’s brutal assault. Their fast is taking place from July 7 to August 26, marking the 50-day span of last year’s violent conflict, in which over 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis were killed.

art

Darío Mekler Illustrates the Absurdities of Modern Life

By |

Working with oils, watercolors, and acrylics, Argentinian artist Darío Mekler creates bold, colorful paintings that address the complexities of modern life. He skillfully uses fantasy and humor to illustrate human nature, painting monsters, angels, and absurd robots alongside images drawn from everyday experiences. Mekler has been creating for as long as he can remember. “Making things feels pretty natural to me, since when I was very little,” he says. “Not just drawing, but all kinds of creative activities: inventinggames, building things out of paper, writing.”

Culture

A Krisis With a Creative Solution

By |

Technology has become a cipher for the collective anxieties of a society in the throes of florid death denial. Even though we think we “cheat death” and “steal time,” the piper always demands his due, and the price is the return of the repressed. Technology isn’t the death of Spirit; it is its efflorescence. The choice is ours, to embrace or deny. And we already know the price of denial.

Culture

NRA's Strategy of Blaming the Victims

By |

While LaPierre by implication blames the massacre at Sandy Hook on school officials for not having armed guards, Cotton places direct blame on the murdered pastor for his own death and the death of nine others.This strategy of blaming the victim is often used to reverse and thus deflect the argument by skewing the actual power dynamics and thereby attempting to misappropriate responsibility for the oppression from the dominant group and to those who are, in fact, most negatively impacted by the oppression.

Christianity

Terrorism in Charleston: It's About Racism, Stupid!

By |

What are the possible reasons why this young man drove approximately 2 hours from his home in Columbia, South Carolina to this particular house of worship carrying with him the pistol he purchased? All indications present in stark and glaring terms that his “mission” was not to kill Christians, per se. Rather, he was bent on killing black people, period!

Politics & Society

The Villain's Advantage

By |

The events of this week highlight the striking advantage that the villains hold. Simply put, they have access to guns and some have a willingness to use them. A single person full of hate can destroy the potential of nine loving people in moments. Love, on the other hand, takes time.

Christianity

To Evangelicals: "Can We Forgive You?"

By |

In reaction to a New York Times article, Blumenfeld struggles with whether or not he can forgive the oppressive institutions (particularly Christian) that are starting to open up discussions about alternative genders and sexual identities. Trying to balance an acknowledgment of the societal progress in LGBT rights with the fact that there is still rampant and unacceptable systematic oppression of the LGBT community leaves him on a bittersweet, yet extremely honest note.

Culture

One Year Sick & Then Not: On the Social Construction of Homosexuality as "Disease"

By |

In a piece written in honor of LGBTIQ Pride Month, Blumenfeld recalls an moment in the Gay Rights movement. In the past century, some members of the scientific community viewed people attracted to their own sex, those attracted to both males and females, and trans people as constituting distinct biological or “racial” types — those who could be distinguished from “normal” people through anatomical markers. This “medicalization” of homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender non-conformity only serves to strengthen oppression and heterosexual and cisgender privilege through its relative invisibility. Given this invisibility, issues of oppression and privilege are neither analyzed nor scrutinized, neither interrogated nor confronted by members of the dominant group.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Why Oakland's Crackdown on Protest Is Sure to Fail

By |

Is the Oakland Police Department decision to limit protest activity backfiring? As the NLG and ACLU meet with City officials to try and come to an agreement over nighttime protesting policies, Rachel Lederman argues that the proposed policies will ultimately fail to address the concerns about protests leading to property damage.

Christianity

Patriarchy, Religion, & Policing the Body

By |

Blumenfeld argues that the Catholic church’s reaction to Caitlyn Jenner and other trans individuals follows their pattern of using means of attempted body control (whether that’s reproductive, sex, or otherwise) to control minds. “when patriarchal social and family structures converge with patriarchal religious systems, which reinforce strictly defined gender hierarchies of male domination, women and girl’s oppression and oppression of those who transgress sexual-, sexuality-, and gender binaries and boundaries became inevitable.”