Education

Occupy Education: A 99-Mile March for Education and Social Justice

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Another round of protest on behalf of public education commenced today as students and educational workers across California, as well as other states, held teach-ins, rallies, and walkouts at their schools and universities; in doing so, we have begun shaping the latest sequence of what’s become a multi-year struggle against rising student fees, layoffs of instructors and service workers, the re-segregation of our campuses, and massive budget cuts to all levels of public education.

art

Cheering & Jeering Iran/Israel at Oscars & NY Times

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… the Islamic Republic couldn’t stop itself from touting “A Separation,” Iran’s winning submission for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language category, as a victory over “Zionism” for triumphing over Israel’s “The Footnote”….

Culture

Gandhi and the Dalit controversy: The limits of the moral force of an individual

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When I first heard that Gandhi was viewed as “the enemy” by many Dalits in India (formerly called “untouchables”), I was dumbfounded. How and why could Gandhi be seen as having betrayed the Dalits when he opposed untouchability even in the face of active discomfort on the part of close associates? Last month, while I was in India teaching Nonviolent Communication to 120 people, including a significant number of Dalits, I had the opportunity to explore this question further. During a session called “Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living,” a topic about which I have written at length, one of the 60 people present expressed anguish, pain and anger towards Gandhi. He was a Buddhist, like many other Dalits who had chosen to follow the Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in leaving behind centuries of mistreatment under Hinduism.

GMP

Help Tikkun Place a New York Times Ad Against Striking Iran

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Would you please help us put an ad in the New York Times, Washington Post (or maybe also Ha’aretz and Yediot in Israel, and other media, depending on how much money we can raise) to put public pressure on President Obama to NOT agree to overtly or covertly approve an Israeli preemptive strike on sites where Iran is developing its nuclear capacities? Click HERE to see the ad and hopefully make a donation. As of now, Iran does not have those capacities, and though Israeli leaders are arguing that they must strike now before it becomes impossible to block the development of nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence sources said on Friday, Feb. 24th, that Iran had not made any decision to go forward with developing nuclear weapons. You can view a sample version of the ad below(though when it is layed out beautifully on a full page in the NY Times and Washington Post, it will not look as wordy as it looks now, and there will be room for the names of some who have signed and donated to it).

Culture

Life in an Arizona Classroom

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Ever since I heard the news about a law in Arizona prohibiting the teaching of ethnic studies courses in public schools, and banning one of the books we sell (Rethinking Columbus), I’ve been wondering what it was like to be a teacher there. What did enforcement of this new law look like? How were the students reacting? This morning I received this email from Curtis Acosta, who now teaches English (formerly taught Latino Literature) at Tucson High School. His message is heartbreaking and frightening.

Culture

Conflict and the Illusion of Safety

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“I will do everything in my power to resolve every conflict, however small.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
I think I am not alone in nursing the fantasy that if I only got the “right” people in some “right” configuration, we would essentially have no significant conflict. Of course I know better. From personal relationships to organizations, conflict is an integral part of life. Still, when conflict arises, especially for the first time in any particular grouping, I recognize in myself and know in others a kind of disappointment, a loss of some hope that maybe this time we can have it be different, perfect.

Christianity

And They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love?

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As a Jew in the pew for the last two decades, I think I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of what being “Christian” means. Most of that experience has been gained in the midst of a particular group of Christians who believe that their actions, the way they live their lives, speak much louder than any words. But it is also a church where the pastors follow the lectionary most Sundays, meaning that those gathered are hearing exactly the same scripture readings from the Bible that most other Christians are hearing on those same Sundays. Frankly, from my two decades of listening to those passages, the message is pretty clear to this possibly distant relative of a nice Jewish boy from Nazareth. To be a Christian means that you are called to follow “the way” that Jesus lived.

Culture

The Two Faces of Convenience

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I landed in Delhi on Friday morning, Jan 13th. By noon I was already in love with India. By the time I left 3 weeks later, I was committed to going back to learn more about life, to offer, humbly, what I have learned about human relationships and systems, and to nurture relationships that have become significant in a matter of days. Except for a small minority of affluent city dwellers, people in India don’t have access to the amenities we have come to take for granted in North America. I was only in one place that had a shower with running hot water.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Israel's Repressive System of Military Justice Is No Longer Invisible

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Israel’s system of military justice – the complex and suffocating legal framework which has governed Palestinians in the Occupied Territories for decades – has been largely invisible to the outside world, including to many Israelis. However, a confluence of events in the past month is illuminating on a grand scale this cruel and repressive legal system that has dominated the lives of Palestinians for far too long. Last month, a piercing documentary by Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz – The Law in These Parts – won the 2012 World Cinema Grand Jury Documentary Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The film forces former IDF officials and judges to wrestle with the inherent injustices they helped create in forming Israel’s military justice system – including the practices of indefinite detention, land confiscation for settlements and the use of torture in interrogations. The Law in These Parts, and the prestigious award it garnered, helped spark conversations in Israel and abroad about the legal system which enables Israel’s occupation.

Culture

Spirituality of Charlotte’s Web

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A woman probably has about 450 egg cells available in her lifetime; in the U.S., perhaps one or two of those become children. A man, of course, has millions and millions of sperm, but again, only a handful become children; even for overachievers, a couple hundred is high – and still a tiny percentage. Most of those potential lives go nowhere or at least nowhere we know of besides the clothes washer. So all of us here have won the big lottery. We held the winning ticket for a life on earth.