Being a theologian/writer with a background in Jewish-Christian dialogue, I have mainly sought to speak to peaceseeking Christians—and others—who are willing to look beyond the polarity of being either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli towards envisioning a solution for both communities and building on the prophetic traditions of each other. I believe—like Gandhi—that you have to look truth in the face, and take the courage to tell it.
Politics aside, it was pretty astounding to see so many people in the streets on Election Day, this past Sunday. And I think it’s important to learn from how people organize, even those with goals we may not fully understand, have no role in participating in actualizing, or certainly don’t implicitly support.
Suddenly AIPAC is a lobby without a cause. In three weeks thousands of delegates from all over the country will descend on the Washington, D.C. convention center to get their marching orders but, as of today, AIPAC hasn’t even drafted them. That is because the centerpiece of the conference was to be dispatching its people to Capitol Hill to lobby for AIPAC’s Iran sanctions bill. The lobby had anticipated that its bill would still be very much alive in March. In fact, it would be at that sweet spot, with hundreds of co-sponsors but not quite enough to pass over President Obama’s veto.
I urge the pastors and bishops of my own Methodist denomination in Africa and elsewhere (as well as all right-thinking people) to sign a covenant condemning, at minimum, the extra-judicial murder of persons on the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Without this, we are indeed hopelessly divided, not only on what it means to be a religious person, but also on what it means to be human. We are not animals.
I spent a chunk of last week in a very cold and snowy Toronto at Staging Sustainability 2014, a conference with the subtitle “People. Planet. Profit. Performance.” It was masterminded by Ian Garrett of the Center for Sustainable Practice in The Arts, who teaches at York University. The University was one of an impressive array of sponsors, reflecting the reality that many scientists took part side-by-side with artists and scholars.
In the movie “The Monuments Men”, directed by and starring George Clooney, we see other casualties of war – fine art. We see a dedicated quest for a particular piece of art, the Bruges Madonna and Child, a representation of the feminine divine.
Nearly 100,000 people took to the streets in Raleigh, North Carolina on February 8 in a Moral March to say “NO” to the state’s sharp right-wing political turn and “YES” to a new, truly progressive America. They weren’t just marching for one issue or another. They were marching for every issue progressives care about: economic justice; a living wage for every worker; support for organized labor; justice in banking and lending; high quality, well-funded, diverse public schools; affordable health care and health insurance for all, especially women; environmental justice and green jobs; affordable housing for every person; abolishing the death penalty and mandatory sentencing; expanded services for released prisoners; comprehensive immigration reform to provide immigrants with health care, education, and workers rights; insuring everyone the right to vote; enhancing LGBT rights; keeping America’s young men and women out of wars on foreign soil; and more. All this in Raleigh, a metro area of barely more than a million people. It’s as if a million and half turned out in New York or DC, or a million in San Francisco.
Reporters Without Borders, in its 2014 World Press Freedom Index, has dropped the United States below Romania, Papua New Guinea and Botswana due to the Obama administration’s targeting of both whistleblowers and those journalists who report on leaded information
When Carole Zawatsky, CEO of the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center (DCJCC), informed me that my March book event had been cancelled due to my political views, I was stunned. However, when she explained that one view in particular precipitated her decision – my position that Palestinians’ use of nonviolent opposition (boycotts) is legitimate – I was no longer just stunned. I was deeply saddened.