Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/174/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
In response to weeks of protests that have attracted at least one million people across dozens of Brazilian cities, and to solidarity protests around the world, President Dilma Rousseff announced concessions to protestors’ demands last week: a one time investment of $25 billion for public transit, tougher penalties for those charged with corruption, and a national referendum on constitutional reform.
I’m not sure we’ll ever know who was crying out on the recording when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. But I am certain that millions of mothers in this country are crying out for something that our current justice system cannot give: the assurance that their black and brown boys will not be suspect before we bother to learn their name or their story.
President Obama’s Insider Threat Program has turned millions of federal workers into mandated, behavioral profiling specialists, ordering them to report colleagues whose actions raise supposed red flags. Security can no longer be a justification for these programs. Not just because they violate our rights as Americans. But also because they will not work.
As we were celebrating the 4th of July in traditional American style — barbecue, flag, fireworks, and all — a question popped into my head: Are conservatives really more patriotic than other Americans? Well, it depends on what you mean by patriotism. And there lies the heart of the matter: Conservatives appear to be more patriotic because they have so much control over the very meaning of the term. Most of the time, when anyone uses the word “patriotism,” it turns out to mean what conservatives say it means.
Clayton Seymour, a 36-year-old IT specialist from Hilliard, Ohio, recently sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the NSA, curious as to whether any data about him was being collected. What he received in response made his blood boil. Seymour had his FOIA request denied by the NSA, and he isn’t the only one to have recently been denied – dozens of citizens have emailed me to say they’ve received a similar, if not identical, letter. And it’s clear from the exemption the NSA is using that every single American is having their FOIA requests similarly rejected.
Today, I learned that – due to my writing for Daily Kos and Tikkun – I have been officially declared a self-hating Jew, joining the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman on a list I’m only too proud to embrace (links to which appear below). How did this happen? It’s quite simple and rather mundane.
Remember those long, long, Reagan-Bush years? For me, one toxic byproduct of that time was a continual sense of rage and despair. My pattern at the time was this: flash of outrage, flurry of activity, desperate waiting, defeat, despair. Repeat until burnout. Since then, I’ve thought long and hard about an activism that continues past fury to true solidarity with the power to inspire and sustain over the long haul. And I recently had a chance to experience this at the Solidarity Singalong in Madison, Wisconsin.
Since April, a growing number of North Carolinians have gathered at North Carolina’s General Assembly to collectively petition an extreme legislature whose daily decisions are attacking the general welfare. We have called these gatherings “Moral Mondays,” and an awakening of hope led by people of faith has been at the heart of them. On this Monday, dozens of doctors, nurses, school teachers and environmental activists led the crowd of over 4,000 people. This is the statement made by a public school teacher before she was arrested.
This week my heart experienced incredible joy and deep sadness about the Supreme Court decisions. I am so thankful to God for the historic Supreme Court decisions on DOMA and Prop 8. But the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act felt like a punch in my stomach. Race still matters. And as people of faith, we are going to have to keep testifying to congressional leaders, rising up, and saying “not on our watch.” Human beings, inspired by the still speaking Word of God, need to teach, preach, blog, tweet and testify about the need for a just world. Together, we honor our stories and work to write new ones.
It’s time to end the charade and that means pulling the plug on the peace process surrounding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Doing so will have no effect on the Palestinians who already know that they are on their own. But it will send a clear message to the Israeli people that no one is going to bail them out of problems their government has created for them. The irony, of course, is that if the United States wanted to resolve the conflict, rather than to pretend to, it can.