the piece is online, at http://monthlyreview.org/090622lang.php, but i also want to encourage you to read it in an actual copy of MR that you can hold in your hands, dog-ear, underline, lend to friends, drip coffee on, prop up unsteady chairs with, &c. because one of the problems with reading online is that you don’t encounter interesting things by accident without doing a lot of work. and MR is well worth stumbling across; i’m sharing an issue with a detailed look at the economics of the u.s. penal state in the current crisis and a look at the prospects for land reform in paraguay, among other things.

a few words for those unfamiliar with MR:

i’d be fond of Monthly Review even if i didn’t find its articles as valuable as i often do, because it’s a non-sectarian radical magazine that’s made it through 60 years of struggle. it’s anchored in heterodox marxism, with a lot more openness to other strains of radical thought than that usually implies, and in a strong commitment to thinking transnationally, while being well aware that it’s a u.s.-based publication. it’s strongest on political economy, which means the tone can be a bit academic at times, but given the lack of serious economic analysis on the left these days that’s a small price to pay. the online MRzine brings together an impressive range of voices and subjects, with the weight generally shifted away from the global north. which reminds me to mention MR Press, which you may know if you’re my age as one of the first to publish EZLN communiques in english, or if you’re somewhat older, as a publisher of socialist feminist writing, or if you’re somewhat older as a key source of writings from third world revolutionary movements from china to chile and beyond. anyway: take a look.

Originally posted on Duluth News Tribune

Considering that John Hope Franklin was a historian — or rather, very likely the leading historian in America until his death on Wednesday at age 94 — I’m embarrassed to say I can’t recall exactly when or where we met.

What I do remember, other than it was in Boston about a decade ago, is that the towering figure both physically and intellectually was nothing like I expected. Instead of a stentorian academic who could destroy my historical musings with a single word, he turned out to be affable, folksy and encouraging. It was an impression he gave to countless others.

“There was a quiet calmness in his voice that was a deep stability, even if it was just saying ‘hello,’ ” said Sister Edith Bogue of the College of St. Scholastica. “He was just somebody you would listen to and who would listen to you, somebody you would respect.”

Though later a college professor herself, Bogue first knew him simply as “John’s dad,” the father of a middle school and high school classmate at the University of Chicago Laboratory School in the 1960s.

“He was the type of parent you could talk to about what was going on in class,” she said. “He would listen as though it was equally important as what was going on his life.”

By then, the senior Franklin’s life already had made an impact on the world. Along with recording history — through his definitive work, “From Slavery to Freedom,” and many other books — he helped change history, contributing to the NAACP’s 1953-54 case in Brown v. Board of Education. As Thurgood Marshall prepared to argue that the then-prevailing doctrine of “separate but equal” was counter to Congress’ intent in the 14th Amendment, Franklin was tapped to find out what exactly Congress had intended nearly a century earlier.

“Answers to these questions required a knowledge … that few lawyers possessed,” Franklin wrote in “Mirror to America,” his 2005 autobiography. “Historians, to the rescue!”

Similarly, Franklin was participating in another turning point of civil rights history when Bogue frequented the family’s home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

“I remember watching the [1965] march from Selma to Montgomery [on television],” Bogue said. “His son John never said, that I remember, ‘my dad’s there, that’s why my dad’s not home,’ but he was.”

Franklin was quick to discount any notion that being a historian and an activist were mutually exclusive.

“I think knowing one’s history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion,” he said in a 1994 magazine interview. “I cannot imagine how knowing one’s history would not urge one to be an activist.”

Three years later, in his 80s, that activism would lead to his most public role when President Clinton asked him to lead the President’s Initiative on Race, an effort criticized by some for talking too much about the subject and by others for talking too little about it. Two central themes were an official apology for slavery and reparations to slave descendants and those dehumanized by segregation — such as Franklin himself who, despite his Harvard Ph.D., dozens of esteemed professorships (the last at Duke University in North Carolina, where he died) and more than 100 honorary degrees, suffered many indignities.

“I learned our history through him,” Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, a protégé of Franklin’s and a mentor to President Barack Obama, said in a statement. “The 1921 Tulsa Race Riots caused his father, Buck Colbert Franklin, a lawyer in Tulsa, to have his office destroyed. Dr. Franklin overcame this setback. He is a legend.”

And a gentle, dignified, and personable one.

“He could just be with us and talk,” Bogue said.

Robin Washington is news director of the News Tribune. He may be reached at rwashington@duluthnews.com.

in this NYTimes article, obama’s justice [sic] department declares that “the change in administration has no bearing” on the government’s ridiculous assertion that the kidnap-and-torture (a.k.a. ‘extraordinary rendition’) program is too secret for any case dealing with it to appear in a u.s. courtroom.

and in this editorial, the NYTimes says this “invo[cation of] state secrets to cover up charges of rendition and torture. . . [is] defending the indefensible”, and declares: “it was as if last month’s inauguration had never occurred.”

there are, it seems to me, two things to watch out for in the present moment.

one is to avoid slipping into the “good czar / bad counselors” syndrome. while named for the shared fantasy of russian peasants and jews, it’s a pretty widespread phenomenon. and always a fantasy. we need to remember that when secretary clinton starts making nuclear threats, when secretary gates escalates the war in afghanistan and pakistan, when envoy mitchell pushes for bantustans in palestine, when secretary geithner socializes the risk and privatizes the profits, their boss is actually in charge. all of those things will happen because obama approves them, not in some mystical way in spite of him. and, since he’s a more straightforward speaker than the last tenant, he’ll probably even say he’s approving them. he’s said it about the second and fourth items on my list already. we need to actually believe that obama means what he says, even – especially – when we’d rather he were saying the opposite.

the other is the need to keep our eyes on the structural. the NYTimes’ editorial sounds shocked that obama’s policy on state secrets has such continuity with bush’s. this is downright weird. the president, whoever it is, oversees a state apparatus that’s dominated by the same corporate interests, beholden to the same rich donors, informed by the same lobbyists’ briefs, largely populated by the same career staff (and often, as in the current case, by the same political appointees), and committed to the same long-term objectives. he’s also the nominal leader of a party which has the same main goal as any other party – to stay in power as long as possible – and the head of a branch of government which has a long-term interest in gathering as much power to itself as it can.

it should be no surprise, then, that obama and his administration are as committed as bush & co. were to policies that serve all of those interests. in particular, state secrets policies and the various other ways that the state avoids accountability are always high on the list of things to condemn when you don’t have power and embrace wholeheartedly when you’re running the show. but just as bush’s worst policies were the ones he built on firm foundations laid by clinton (and the 1970s-80s democratic-majority congresses) – from the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to the indentured servitude ‘welfare reform bill’ to the hyde amendment (passed by a 2/3 democratic congress) – we can expect to see obama expand inherited policies in all directions. not because he’s particularly evil; just because the structural interests of the u.s. state and its owning class are pretty consistent, and are the determining factor.

the determining factor, that is, absent a widespread and effective movement for structural change. not for hope. not for reform. not for legislation. not for patriotic dissent. not to ‘defend the constitution’. not in the name of ‘the true ideals and values of america’. not for ‘change you can believe in’. for change that makes an actual difference in actual people’s actual lives. for a change in the system itself.

not for a change of boss. for getting rid of the boss, and his job description, too.

so, annotated only to explain the pseudonyms:

For Immediate Release

Friday, January 16, 2009

NYC Jews Call for an Immediate End to Israel’s War on Gaza
Banner Drop at U.S.S. Intrepid Marks Spread of U.S. Jewish Solidarity With Palestinian

A banner drop over New York City’s West Side Highway, carried out by members of Jews Against the Occupation/NYC, declared “Jews Say: End Israel’s War on Gaza NOW!” This action by Jewish New Yorkers continued the wave of increasingly public Jewish solidarity with the Palestinians targeted by the Israeli government’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 1,000 people, nearly 1/3 of them children.

The banner, which was seen by thousands of commuters during morning rush hour on Friday, January 16th, 2009, expanded the public presence of the many New York Jews who strongly disagree with the self-appointed community spokespeople who have repeatedly expressed support for the bombing and invasion of Gaza. “We are standing up for justice,” said Niuta Teitelboim [1], one of the JATO/NYC activists, “which is a Jewish tradition that many Jewish organizations seem to have abandoned. Too many have vocally endorsed a war which has involved a continuous string of Israeli war crimes: the mass killings of children and families at UN schools designated as places of refuge; the targeting with bombs and artillery fire of hospitals and ambulances; and most recently the destruction of food and medical aid supplies in a UN facility.”

JATO/NYC placed the banner at the U.S.S. Intrepid to highlight the role of U.S. aid to Israel in the current war and massacres. “Palestinian doctors, ambulance drivers, and children are being killed by bombs paid for with U.S. taxpayers’ money, dropped from planes paid for with U.S. taxpayers’ money, sent by an Israeli administration that could not maintain one of the world’s largest militaries without a constant flow of cash from the U.S. treasury,” elaborated R. Rosenthal [2], another JATO/NYC member involved in the action. “That means all of us are involved in this bloody war. Even if foreclosures and unemployment weren’t decimating our neighborhoods, surely there are better uses for $3 billion a year than helping the Israeli government commit war crimes.”

Over the past week, Jews across North America and Europe have shown their opposition to Israel’s latest war, as well as its ongoing military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and denial of Palestinian refugees right to return home. Jewish groups have held sit-ins at Israeli consulates in Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; taken it upon themselves to declare the cancellation of a London rally in support of the war; participated actively in the many demonstrations calling for an immediate end to the bombing and invasion of Gaza; and joined the worldwide campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel until Palestinian rights under international law are respected. “Today’s action is one small contribution to the growing movement in solidarity with the 1.5 million Palestinians being bombed, shelled, and shot by the Israeli army,” JATO-NYC member Sholom Schwartzbard [3] explained. “We know from our own history what being sealed behind barbed wire and checkpoints is like, and we know that ‘Never Again’ means not anyone, not anywhere – or it means nothing at all.”

-30-

[1] Niuta Teitelboim, known to the gestapo as “little wanda with the braids” was a partisan fighter in warsaw. as part of a mixed jewish/polish communist fighting unit, she was a key link between resistance inside and outside the ghetto. her unit bombed nazi supply trains and officers’ hangouts, robbed banks to reclaim money taken from the people of warsaw, and helped arm the jewish resistance. she personally carried out assassinations of top gestapo officers. Teitelboim was captured and killed, but didn’t give up a single name or piece of information.

[2] ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal was a lifelong peace and justice advocate, one of the rank-and-file radicals who are the often-nameless heroes of every movement. as an air force pilot, he survived being shot down twice over germany during WWII, and was rescued first by the french resistance and then by the russian army he went on to speak out against the u.s. wars on viet nam and iraq, as well as racism and economic inequality in the u.s.

[3] Sholom Schwartzbard was a jewish radical from bessarabia. he fought in the russian revolution as part of a jewish cavalry unit, against the german and austrian armies as well as the ukrainian nationalist armies, whose pogroms had killed most of his family. after the russian civil war ended he became critical of the bolshevik government’s betrayal of the revolution, and was active in the anarchist movement in paris. in 1926 Schwartzbard assassinated symon petlyura, the leader of a ukrainian counter-revolutionary army responsible for many pogroms, and was acquitted of any crime by a french jury.

to me, there’s only one thing worth saying on the journalistic side:

24 israelis have been killed by rocket or mortar attacks from gaza, ever.
more than 300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli blitzkrieg in gaza in the past 2 days.
more than 3,300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli military in gaza since 2000.

and it needs to be said over and over and over again.

beyond the journalistic. words aren’t worth much, or are everything.

i’ve been looking for a translation of perets markish’s “di kupe” ['the heap'], which i remember as a powerful poetic response to the willful destruction of a city, but i can’t find it.

so this will have to do, from howard fast’s raw, flawed, “Never to Forget”:

LET the memory be cold as ice, clear as glass, and bright as a diamond!
For every child killed, for every body flayed,
For every tear wept, for every moan, every scream, every pain,
For every naked body in a mass grave,
For every cut and bruise,
For every oven where flesh became ash, for every gas chamber,
For every diabolical device,
For every gallows where the bodies, swaying, measured the wind,
For every ignominy, for every wrong,
Let there be no forgetfulness,
Let there be no dimming of the memory.

this is not a substitute for our voices in the street, and our concrete solidarity in action. there are demonstrations in solidarity with the people of gaza all over the place today and tomorrow. if there isn’t one planned where you are yet, organize it. and palestinian civil society organizations from across the political spectrum and around the world are reminding us all that they have made a single, specific request of all of us: to actively boycott, divest from, and call for sanctions on israel.

that means following the same principles that the anti-apartheid resistance followed in south africa, and that the worldwide boycott of nazi germany followed (until it was undermined by the zionist ‘transfer agreement’). that means a consumer boycott (if the barcode begins with 729, don’t buy it), a tourism boycott, a boycott of cultural institutions, and equally broad divestment campaigns. all of which will continue until the israeli government complies with international law by

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

you can look here for the palestinian civil society calls to action, and for more concrete details on the boycott campaign, or here for an example of a local, highly effective divestment campaign (and in you’re in NYC, join us!)…

let there be no dimming of the memory

keynmol = keynmol
khurbn = khurbn
shveygn = toyt

It’s US and THEM: the strange, the odd, the eccentric world out there well beyond my well padded suburbs.  Spring Break 2006, my senior year of college, spent in the 9^th ward of New Orleans.  A forgotten place by many ‘til the “Girls Gone Wild” blew its top off.  Katrina and Rita highlight a world we own, a world we don’t have to know.  But now we get to watch, like some type of twisted reality television show.  “We” – me, an upper middle class white Jew from Chicago’s southern suburbs.  A student at an elite private Liberal Arts college, Wesleyan University, with resources, possibilities, access.  The privilege to choose my passions, what I see and what I ignore.

Common Ground, the once-Anarchist NGO taking volunteers for an experience of a lifetime.  “It’s worse than Iraq” an ex-military man gasps during our tour, as we drive along Clayborn, where the levees broke.  And everyone’s taking their picture, the click of a fabulous picture — whoa!  Did you see that car!  That house?!

Yesterday two more bodies were found.  Bodies.  THEM. 

I know the military man’s feelings, I’ve traveled a bit in the West Bank myself.  The 9^th Ward is pretty bleak.  Right here in the U. S. of A.  It turns out, WE still are racist.  The structures, MY structures of power grant me the privilege to show up, to take a break, to drink my bottled water and use any toilet as I damn well please.  And to choose when to get involved and when to sit this one out.

Take a story, any story.  “My family got out the day before it hit.  We thought that it was goin’ to be any old storm, happens all of the time, you see.  I return, finally two, three months later.  Water came up over my attic, though it settled a mere nine feet above the ground.  Volunteers carry out my beds, my chairs, my brother’s death certificate.  Garbage.  Now, my kid travels four hours everyday to get to school.  I get no social services, my schools are closed.  My grandchildren are spread out all over the USA.”

Tragedy through the eye of privilege: I marvel at the faith of humankind.  The touchy-feely loses its nausea when extreme loss greets hope, reclaims power. 

“I Will Rebuild!”

And I know that the tragedy here, emblazoned by the levee’s failure, was underscored, underwritten by racism.  We said “not here.”  We, the white, upper middle class with the capacity to accept 9^th ward refugees, but not the desire.  Too many black folks for us, we say.  But for those of us entirely unaffected by the storm, we can offer our sympathy.  White folks struggling across the river?  They mostly see savages—thieves, liabilities, THEM.

Travel: a time for self reflection.  See the anomalous and recall: I grew up in Flossmoor, fifteen minutes from Ford Heights.  Average annual income 20,000 dollars per family.  One hundred percent African American (according to the stats).  A Katrina of my very own.  And that time I was not a volunteer.  Instead, I was an AP high school student.  Instead I took AP Economics and family vacations.  I was told “stay away from there,” let it remain hidden, dangerous, invisible.  Let them be them, let us be us.

Afterward:

Today, in 2008, the lower ninth ward now has one open school, Martin Luther King Elementary.  Business booms in the economic districts and the blue tarps that covered every building for miles are now re-tiled roofs. 

Unfortunately, ridiculous debates have raged for years amongst political commentators and op-ed columnists on the subject of whether or not it’s appropriate for Congress to take such an action. (If you doubt this, simply read the internet blogs on the issue.) Some people think the government has better things to do than apologize to African-Americans; still, others believe they themselves had nothing to do with slavery and therefore, the government should not apologize on their behalf. Even some black Americans disagree with an apology, insisting that it would be little more than a verbal pacification meant to distract citizens from more concrete efforts towards reparations.

In these debates, however, there’s been a disturbing tendency among people who are against such an apology—they often completely ignore what actually happened during slavery and Jim Crow. For example, many whites are quick to point out that most of those blacks who suffered these injustices are deceased, and so an apology to those people’s descendants can only misconstrue the identity of the victims and deepen present-day racial divisions, not lessen them.

But this argument is really quite stupid…

Why?..

For the simple reason that many of the deceased victims died precisely because they were murdered by whites. Consider the following narrative.

Two women, one white and the other black, have a short exchange during a pre-arranged dinner…
“So you want the government to apologize for slavery, eh?” says the white woman, “But why should our government do that when it happened so long ago? We’ve come such a long way since then. Look at Tiger Woods. I remember when there were no black golfers, but there are black golfers now. I never used to see black professionals, but now there are black news reporters and lawyers and doctors. And look at Barak Obama—he’s even got a shot at being president!”
The black woman shakes her head in disappointment.
“What’s wrong?.. Did I say something wrong?” asks the other woman, now concerned.
“It’s not what you said,” responds the black woman. “It’s what you didn’t say. What is it we’ve come a long way from?.. And why do you say it’s so long ago when you yourself remember these things?..”
“Well, I’m just saying that there’s been progress, and we shouldn’t look so far back into the past that we can’t see that progress. We need to concentrate on the future.”

This is the “victims-not-alive” argument at its best. Ultimately, it boils down to a very racist form of thinking—that for blacks to remember their own experiences is somehow inappropriate. When did mere memory become such an obstacle to good relationships? For example, many people who say blacks should not emphasize our nation’s racist past are the same ones who will protest to keep flags and symbols of the Confederacy active in public rituals throughout the Deep South.

The contradictions are pervasive and thought-provoking. So not only does the “victims-not-alive” rhetoric amount to a distraction from the real focus of honoring people’s memories, it advocates a state of affairs in which racist practices—such as discrepancies in hate crime victimization, health care access, educational opportunities, etc.—continue to be legitimized.

Americans need to wake up. An apology for slavery and Jim Crow is not a task for people who lived one hundred years ago. It is a present-day gesture made in reflection on the past, not vice versa. It is an effort to heal racism’s wounds, not reopen them. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at the three summarizing points of the House’s resolution. They are worded as follows…

Be it resolved, That the House of Representatives– (1) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow; (2) apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and (3) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.

If for no other reason than to memorialize the lives of people who cannot speak on their own behalf, we should support this relatively small gesture. Just as it is absurd for the German, Russian or Chinese governments to not acknowledge their atrocities because the victims are dead, it is equally ridiculous to suggest that our government should not acknowledge its human rights simply because the victims are no longer alive. To illustrate, consider the following story about a member of my own family who suffered under Jim Crow—my uncle.

According to family lore, my uncle was a hard-working, kind-hearted man. But there came a time when the whites living in his area spread a false rumor that he had “whistled” at a white woman. So instead of immediately and haphazardly fleeing the state, my uncle decided to stay in his hometown until he was able to find a new, safer place to live for his wife and children. In the meantime, he told my grandfather that if he was found wearing only one shoe, it would be because he took it off and threw it away while in danger.

True to his word, a few days later my uncle was found… He was wearing only one shoe, and his body lay literally in pieces. Apparently, whites from a neighboring town had hunted him down, lynched him, poured alcohol on his open wounds, forced him to lay on railroad tracks and made sure his body was dissected by a train—all for allegedly “whistling” at a white woman (an accusation his children have, until today, declared to be false and ridiculous). Despite the warning exhibited by my uncle’s lynching, little did my extended family members know that in the near future, his former residence would be burned down during a race riot and hundreds of the town’s black inhabitants massacred and exiled.

It is common knowledge that similar incidents, affecting millions of African-Americans, took place all over the United States during the Jim Crow era. They were often sanctioned by local, state and federal officials in this country, and to this day, there are many people who remember these atrocities, either through first-hand knowledge or family narrative. In light of these events, it is unfortunate that many elderly African-Americans who personally witnessed these terrorist acts still tend to not speak publicly about their childhood experiences, and all too often, whites have used this silence to deny that these atrocities ever took place.

But whether the details are made public or not, we know black Americans have been racially segregated, exterminated, raped, and enslaved in this country. And for these reasons alone, it is absolutely reprehensible to discourage our government from merely “apologizing” for the American people’s—including black people’s—role in them. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to saying that what our government did in the name of Jim Crow apartheid was both morally and politically negligible… an assertion that my uncle and millions of others would surely contest, if only he and everyone else were alive to do so.

(it seems like there are many more radical purim extravaganzas going on all over the country, though, and i’m posting this announcement in part to encourage folks to think big and exciting for next year…)

this year’s eighth-or-so edition of the Workmen’s Circle/arbeter-ring & Jews For Racial & Economic Justice purim extravaganza is fast approaching!

28 Condos Later: A Zombie Purim!

will be a ridiculously elaborate and raucous party
that talks about displacement, gentrification, housing, and zombies
to feed resistance and organizing in our communities.

SEE zombie buildings devouring our neighborhoods! HEAR schemes of eviction – and worse!
SMELL the bitter scent of betrayal! FEEL the the terror of a city without public spaces!
TASTE the growing resistance!

it’s been created under the wings of the arbeter-ring and JFREJ
by jewish performance rockstar Jenny Romaine
and the evolving group of artists and cultural workers known as the Spectacle Committee
with the guidance and collaboration of members of the NYC section of the Right to the City coalition:
Mothers on the Move (kick-ass anti-poverty organizers fron the South Bronx)
Picture the Homeless (innovative local organizers with a global vision)
FIERCE (queer youth of color organizing around public space in the West Village)
Good Old Lower East Side (keeping it live in the alte heym)

TERRIFYING performance! HORRIFYING costumes! DEVELOPERS that go bump in the night!
SPINE-TINGLING drinks! RAVENOUS food by Domestic Workers United!
MONSTERS! DANCING! MAYHEM!

music by:
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra – street brass for the movement!
Rebel Diaz – radical hip-hop!
Michael Winograd & Friends – the hotshots of the next klez generation!
DJ Doom Dub – till morning…
…and more…

spectacle & performances by:
Jenny Romaine – the spectacular spectacle creator
Adrienne Cooper – reigning diva of yiddish song
The Spectacle Committee
(Daniel Lang/Levitsky, Ariel Federow, Killer Sideburns, Aleza Summit, Michelle Kay)
Alessandra Nichols
Sam Wilson
Talya Husbands-Hankin
…and many many many more…

and the details for my fellow new yorkers:

saturday march 22 – doors open 7:00 pm (show starts early, don’t be late!)

45 east 33rd street (park avenue) [6 train to 33rd; everything else to 34th]

$12 – no one fed to zombies/turned away for lack of costume or cash

dress up – everyone else will!

Last fall, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the “white tree” on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a “prank,” more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town’s police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy… I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.”

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Tomorrow, September 20th, is a national day of action in which thousands of people will be descending upon the town of Jena to show support to the families and Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor. There were also be a number of events and vigils held throughout the country for those who are unable to go to Jena.

ColorofChange.org has set up a great array of resources for folks who are wanting to get involved, including posters and handouts for events, tips on getting local media to cover the issue, and tomorrow they’ll have information available for folks to make calls and pressure local officials.

A video that jspot posted gives a good synopsis of the story. If you’re looking for more in depth coverage, Democracy Now has a series of interviews on the subject, and CNN will be covering the issue in depth tomorrow.

We are in the heart of teshuvah, of a time where we are called on not only for individual reflection and analysis, but communal accountability and tochlecha. We must understand our role, and the importance of our work, in not only changing ourselves individually, but of the importance of this communal work. It is why we come together to pray on the holiest of days. It is why we come together in these most trying of times, to remember that the work of calling for justice, individual and systemic, requires a community.

So before Yom Kippur begins, before we look back on the year that has passed and move forward into a new one, strengthened and determined to be better and more just and principled in our actions, let us not fail to look around us, at the many challenges we are facing today, and of the opportunity to act. Take the time tomorrow to go to a local event, to sign a petition, to take one form of action, small or large, and stand with the Jena 6.

cross-posted to jspot

Maalouf observes the ironic fact that, the more connected one is to other people, the more specific is one’s place in the world, and this unique identity becomes a sort of isolation. “Every one of my allegiances links me to a large number of people. But the more ties I have,” he writes, as an Arabic-speaking Christian in Paris, “the rarer and more particular my own identity becomes.” He explains how we often arrange the separate elements of our identities in a hierarchy of importance but that hierarchy can change over time.

In considering the most popular identities worldwide today, Maalouf suggests that globalization is making nationalism obsolete, because, in a globalized age, we desire identities that are not tied down to a particular geographic area. So, where we humans once were nationalists, we are instead phasing in religious community. This partly accounts for the rise in religious fundamentalism today.

But Maalouf speculates that, religion, too, may one day be replaced by something that becomes more relevant, such as language. Language is a top competitor for the cornerstone of identity because one can specialize in multiple languages and because one must have the language of the dominant culture if one does not wish to be cut off. Religion, by contrast, is more exclusivist (one can generally only specialize in one religion) and arguably less fundamental to the larger culture than is language.

Maalouf regards the rise of English as a lingua franca as a positive influence if it can bring people together who otherwise could not have spoken at all, and a negative influence only in cases where it replaces a common language with a richer history. Today, he concedes, everyone needs three languages: English, for global business; then, a language he identifies with; and finally, a language he loves. He believes that freedom of speech should include the right to speak the language of one’s choice.

Amin Maalouf. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. (1996) Translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. See pages 1, 13, 18, 94, 131-140.