Credit: Flickrcc/marcin wojcik

Watching NYC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center succumb to pressure to cancel a kick-off party for Israeli Apartheid Week, I feel compelled to write an epilogue to my recent post on Pinkwashing.

I am reminded once again that we must be vigilant in refusing to allow queer liberation to be pitted against Palestinian liberation because as we know from our queer Palestinian colleagues, the two struggles are intertwined.

On February 22^nd, Michael Lucas, a right wing Advocate columnist and gay porn entrepreneur, issued a press release calling on the LGBT center to cancel the scheduled “Party to End Apartheid,” which he called anti-Semitic. He threatened to “organize a boycott that would certainly involve some of the Center’s most generous donors.” Infamous for his attacks against Islam, Lucas argued that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death…” Relying on traditional Pinkwashing tactics, Lucas positioned Israel as a liberal democracy in opposition to its backwards and homophobic “enemies.”

Just a few hours later, the LGBT center announced it would cancel the event and bar its sponsors from meeting at the Center in the future. The Center’s executive director Glennda Testone issued a brief statement claiming, “We have determined that this event is not appropriate to be held at our LGBT Community Center, which is a safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals.”

“The people want to bring down the regime” is the cry of the people of Libya. But what will they create? Well, that’s always the question with democracies. Guess who said

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.

No surprise, it was Plato. Even “the best people,” perhaps especially them, those high-minded patricians who want an ethical, moral government, tend to fear that the people will become a mob. There are plenty of examples from history to back them up, but plenty more that show how popular government muddles its way towards more just government. I don’t know of any country that made that transition fast or that isn’t still struggling with its oligarchies.

Kristoff has a good column today on the Western racism involved imagining that Arabs, Africans and Chinese are somehow unfit for democracy.

But the piece to read is by Mark LeVine (Tikkun‘s longest serving contributing editor): “History’s Shifting Sands, The revolutions sweeping the Arab world indicate a tectonic shift in the global balance of people power.”

In Kristoff’s piece you still feel a little bit of the self congratulation Americans feel about their own democracy, along with the magnanimity to believe others are capable of it too. In LeVine’s, you get the sense that many of us have watching these Arab uprisings, that their democratic energy is by far eclipsing ours at present. He doesn’t downplay the value of the example of Western democracy, but he is also clear-headed about what it has always lacked, not least in Western attitudes to the Arab world:

Ever since Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, the great Egyptian chronicler of the French invasion of Egypt, brilliantly dissected Napoleon’s epistle to Egyptians, the peoples of the Middle East have seen through the Western protestations of benevolence and altruism to the naked self-interest that has always laid at the heart of great power politics. But the hypocrisy behind Western policies never stopped millions of people across the region from admiring and fighting for the ideals of freedom, progress and democracy they promised.

Even with the rise of a swaggeringly belligerent American foreign policy after September 11 on the one hand, and of China as a viable economic alternative to US global dominance on the other, the US’ melting pot democracy and seemingly endless potential for renewal and growth offered a model for the future.

Trading places

But something has changed. An epochal shift of historical momentum has occurred whose implications have yet to be imagined, never mind assessed. In the space of a month, the intellectual, political and ideological centre of gravity in the world has shifted from the far West (America) and far East (China, whose unchecked growth and continued political oppression are clearly not a model for the region) back to the Middle – to Egypt, the mother of all civilization, and other young societies across the Middle East and North Africa.

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We are honoring six spiritual progressive leaders at our 25th Anniversary celebration on March 14:

Of these six the most controversial is surely Justice Richard Goldstone.

Richard Goldstone first got involved in politics as a college student in South Africa where he was an outspoken opponent of Apartheid. He became a close associate of Nelson Mandela in the early 1990s and served on South Africa’s Supreme Court. He was then picked by the UN to head their inquiries into human rights violations in Bosnia, Rwanda, and then most recently in Gaza.

Justice Goldstone approached the Gaza assignment with some trepidation. He refused the assignment until the UN had changed its charge to be one that would include human rights violations by Hamas as well. He had been a noted Zionist in South Africa and had been the international chair of the Jewish ORT — organization for rehabilitation and training — and had been chosen to be a member of the Board of the Hebrew University. He had expected that Israel would fully cooperate in this investigation, and when it did not and he had no recourse but to collect the facts as presented to him by the Palestinian victims of the Israeli army’s assault on Gaza, he made clear that he felt that his report only provided a prima facie reason for a fuller investigation by the UN and the World Court.

by Douglas C. Smyth

Compare Qaddafi to Mubarak and Ben Ali: the latter two look mild by comparison and Qaddafi’s held power for 41 years. Qaddafi has styled himself as leader of a people’s revolution, sequentially a pan-Arabist, a pan-Islamist and finally, a pan-Africanist. He recently crowned himself “King of Kings” at a meeting of African nations; he even tried to sponsor anassembly of Kings, but his Ugandan hosts canceled the meeting as contrary to their constitution!

In his activist heyday, he exported, or supported terrorists or terrorism globally: he was for almost any revolution, of whatever kind– unless it’s his own people rebelling against him. Recently, he appeared to go a zany with his pseudo-king costumes, but seemed to moderate his politics: he negotiated with the US and the EU, gave up his nuclear weapons program and cooperated with international cases against terrorists he had previously sponsored. However, his current resistance demonstrates Qaddafi hasn’t moderated at all. He defends his power at all costs. As to costs, he’s now using Libya’s oil money to fly planeloads of mercenaries from African countries to mow down his opponents. A survivor of one massacre in Benghazi said the shooting by Qaddafi’s forces is not to drive demonstrators away: “it is meant to kill them.” The security forces might have been Libyans of other tribes–it’s a tribally divided society–but they were probably “African mercenaries.” The just-resigned deputy Ambassador to the UN from Libya pleaded with African states to stop exporting them to kill his countrymen.

This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website.

Captain of My Heart
Rabia al-Adawiyya

Do I consent to your being in charge,
Leading the daily dealings of my heart?
Am I able to yield my comfortable control
Even if I prefer to do things my own way?
Can I surrender to what I know is right
When I hear your voice within my conscience?
How do I bend my strong independence
And move in directions of your wise choosing?
O Captain of My Heart, slowly I am accepting
The wisdom of your divine authority within me.

It’s time for bolder international action against the ruthless dictator of Libya who is killing his own people.

Military jets, helicopter gunships, and mercenaries with machine guns are indiscriminately attacking unarmed demonstrators while heads of state just make statements.

Only a vigorous global response can help prevent the situation from spiraling into greater violence. Please ask the US to play a leadership role in forcing the UN Security Council to act.

There are peaceful and effective international actions that could save lives in Libya. For instance, the members of the UN Security Council control a large part of the international financial system – where Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and his henchmen keep their money. That means we could in short order freeze most of the regime’s assets — hitting it where it hurts most.

Add to that an embargo on military aid and supplies (including funding for mercenaries); humanitarian assistance for refugees and victims of violence; human rights investigations into officials leading the crackdown; and economic sanctions targeted at the top levels of the Libyan regime; and we’ve got a good chance of making a difference. But we have to act fast.

My sister in London, Hilary, who is much more of a fiction reader than I am and gives me wonderful tips as to what I would enjoy reading, just sent me this video of the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie speaking about stories. It’s 19 minutes but worth it.

Here’s the link if the embedded video above fails, as it has done on me several times while writing this post.

Adichie talks about how, raised in Nigeria, she went to college in the United States, and found that her roommate was surprised that she could speak English and use a stove, and liked to listen to American music. This may sound like a straightforward aggrieved litany against white racism and ignorance, but Adichie had already told a story about how she, raised middle class, had once visited a poor family in Nigeria and been surprised that they created beautiful craft objects. She had had only pity for them, in her ignorance.

What Adichie does throughout this talk is to shift from blaming any one particular group, to showing universals of the human condition, and the frame she uses is that of the single story. It’s when we hear only one dominant story about any people or place that we fall into racism, patronizing class attitudes, and innumerable demonizations. The trouble with stereotypes, she says, is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. And at base, of course, it’s about power.

If this old stereotype of women had truth to it once, it doesn't now. Harriet Fraad writes, "Women now initiate most US divorces as well as refuse to marry in the first place." Why? Because men just aren't doing their share.

The latest census figures (9/28/2010) have resulted in such mainstream articles as “New Vow: I Don’t Take Thee” in the Wall Street Journal, “Marriage Rate Falls to About 50% As People Say Institution Is Obsolete” in Bloomberg, and “Recession Rips at US Marriages, Expands Income Gap” from AP. The articles cite census figures showing that US marriages fell to record lows in 2009.

For the first time since the US began tracking marriage statistics in 1880, unmarried people of prime marrying age, 25-34, out numbered those who are married.

What has happened to create this tectonic shift in American marriage?

Two related changes are important to consider. One is in the US economy and the other is in North American gender relationships.

Started some 15 years ago after the first conference on The Politics of Meaning in Washington DC, The Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP) is a nationwide group of lawyers, law professors, and law students who seek to shift the focus of American law and legal institutions away from the individualism, self-interest, and materialism that undergirds all of American law and toward seeing law as a central cultural arena for fostering empathy, compassion, and mutual understanding.

We have taken to heart Martin Luther King Jr.’s definition of Justice as “love correcting that which revolts against love” and are seeking to build a new movement in law that makes restoring community through understanding and social healing our highest value. Sometimes out-and-out adversarial battles are necessary, but the principal shift that needs to take place in legal culture is toward the new bottom line articulated by the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) — that institutions be valued according to how much love and generosity they generate rather than only focusing on a material war of all against all in a socially separated, self-interested world. That’s why PISLAP is glad to be the “legal arm” of the NSP, serving as its task force in this important professional and cultural arena.

Below is the welcoming letter and agenda for our upcoming gathering in New York, an agenda-building gathering for the coming year among the organization’s leadership group. I’ll post follow-ups in Tikkun Daily, including the final plan we decide upon as we move forward toward fundamentally transforming law and legal culture. You out there in other professions: Why not do the same?

Tonight we’ll celebrate President Obama and Attorney General Holder’s decision to NOT defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. Following in the footsteps of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the White House announced that the Justice Department could not defend DOMA, in part because “congressional debate during passage of the Defense of Marriage Act contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the (Constitution’s) Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”

Could this be the beginning of the end of DOMA?

Today is exactly the anniversary of starting this blog. I looked at the first piece I wrote, and have been reflecting for a few days on this past year through the lens of writing the blog. What stands out to me is that writing this blog marked the beginning of an amazing journey of freedom and finding room for myself in this world.

The very act of writing a blog has been liberating. I remember even when I started the blog I was still struggling with wondering why anyone would want to read my thoughts. Over the course of the year I have felt bolder and bolder in terms of what I am willing to say. I have shared openly about myself and my inner world over the course of this year. I have ventured into controversial topics. And I have allowed my passion and my vision to show. I am holding back less and less, perhaps not at all any longer. This has been a profound experience for me.

By Paul K. Chappell

As a soldier in the U.S. Army, I often pondered what it means to be patriotic, what it means to serve our country, and what it means to love America. In my book,Will War Ever End? A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century, I described a dangerous misconception of patriotism that I witnessed while deployed in Baghdad.

Paul Chappell in 2008

While in Iraq watching American news channels, I heard commentators say that those who questioned or criticized our government did not love America; that they were being unpatriotic. According to the commentators, patriotism meant waving a flag and being blindly obedient; but this is not what it means to love our country.

We can better understand love of country by realizing what it means to love a child. Parents who love their children will try to correct a child caught stealing, abusing people, or being dishonest. For parents who do not truly love their children, apathy will enable their children to get away with anything. In this same way, if we love our country we will do our best to improve it. We will try to make America a better place for everyone, as courageous citizens have always done.

Since our country’s founding, brave patriots have worked to give us the many freedoms we enjoy today. Although I am part African-American and part Asian, I had the opportunity to graduate from West Point, and I have the freedom to write these words because patriotic Americans loved, and were therefore willing to improve, their country

Our liberties were not achieved overnight. Two hundred years ago any American who was not a white male landowner suffered oppression. During this era, the majority of people lacked the right to vote, and many Americans lived as slaves. Today our country is much more egalitarian. This happened because courageous citizens such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony, Woody Guthrie, Maj. General Smedley Butler, Henry David Thoreau, and many others struggled to make our country a better place for all people.

The Waterboard. Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Creative Commons/Waterboard.org

On February 14th, David Frum, the Bush speechwriter-turned-pundit, published an Op-Ed for CNN.com that was truly Orwellian in nature. For those who enjoy seeing politics and facts totally at odds in print, Frum’s column was cause for celebration. I’m calling it here — 2011 already has a strong contender for the top prize of most hilarious Doublespeak! Despite strong opposition, the winner for 2010 was Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s accusation that Europe’s general commitment to peace was a threat to its security. Gates’s “War is Peace” formulation was classic Age d’Or Bush administration rhetoric- a sentiment so at odds with reality that one has to laugh. Leave it then, to Frum, who gave the world the “Axis of Evil,” to deliver his own Valentine to fans of unintentionally hilarious authoritarianism.

Frum’s righteous indignation stems from a trip to Switzerland that former President Bush had to cancel over fear that he would be prosecuted for torture. Following the submission of a 2,500-page case against Bush by Human Rights groups, Frum argues that the  possibility that Swiss authorities might prosecute an admitted torturer is wrong. The idea of charging a torturer with War Crimes is so hateful to Frum that he declares:

This use of law as a weapon of politics is an assault upon the basic norms of American constitutional democracy.

And there we have our top contender for 2011!

The following is an editorial originally printed in the Forward

America is entering its 10th year of war, but outside certain neighborhoods and communities, it is hard to tell. Afghanistan and Iraq are worlds away, the missions there cloudy and complicated, and the absence of military conscription means the sacrifice is inequitably distributed. We all are paying the mammoth costs of these conflicts: A September 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service put the total federal price tag since 9/11 at $1.12 trillion. But the human toll escapes most attention.

And yet the casualties are real: 5,775 dead so far, men and women who volunteered to serve in wars that have largely been financed by federal debt and largely fought beyond the nation’s consciousness. In the Jewish community, there is often more focus on those Americans who enlist in the Israel Defense Forces than those who have chosen to fight under the stars and stripes. It’s an unspoken, uncomfortable truth: the IDF is the Jewish military. About 650 of the “lone soldiers” currently serving in the IDF are dual American-Israeli citizens, and there are untold numbers of foreign volunteers.

By contrast, of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, only 1,500 are Jewish, 1% of the total currently deployed there.

Ninth demolition of Al-Arakib

Israeli government forces have razed Al-Arakib, a Bedouin village in the Negev, eighteen times since last July. The Israeli government does not recognize Al-Arakib and has been coercing its Arab inhabitants to relinquish the land they say they have owned since the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an Israeli environmental organization that has planted 250 million trees, built over 210 reservoirs and dams, and created more than 1,000 parks in Israel has plans to plant a forest over Al-Arakib, with the assistance of the Israel Land Administration (ILA), once the Bedouin people are forced out. (Refer to Devorah Brous’s widely-read Tikkun Daily blog post, “Where are the Jewish Greens?” Brous argues that it is irresponsible for a non-profit environmental group to plant trees on this contested land.) Ironically, the JNF credits itself with “bringing life to the Negev desert” as it is fomenting the death of a community.

Westboro Baptist Church protest (photo by JCWilmore)

Given the events happening around the world and in our own country, this may seem like a strange time to pause and ask questions about what kind of religion would heal the world now. To me, it is a perfect time. Our religious and spiritual commitments are undoubtedly influencing how we respond to the news each night; we could do worse than make that point explicitly.

Two weeks ago I proposed that we desperately need religions of grace and compassion right now. This week I would like to add another criterion for world-healing religion. This is extremely hard to live out but I think it is worth our consideration, and particularly worth some conversation given the state of our own society right now.

Universal human rights are pesky ideas. They show up wherever and whenever human beings take a hard look at their lives compared to those around them and perceive injustice. They show up in distant foreign capitals. They show up in our own home towns and states. We applaud our sisters and brothers in distant lands standing up for their human rights, and we ought to applaud the government workers in Wisconsin who are standing up for their human rights.

The United States is a plutocracy wearing the garments of a democracy. We have elections. We have a strong civil society. We take the freedoms of speech, assembly, press and religion for granted. However, our government is run by the rich for the rich. Fiscal and monetary policy are made by legislators and appointed officials whose primary concern is pleasing the people who finance their election campaigns. Their policies serve the rich, and they make either/or arguments to persuade the demos, the ordinary people.

Such is the case in Wisconsin. The governor says that he needs public employees to pay more for benefits such as health care and pensions. Beyond this, he wants to take away the right to collective bargaining for anything other than wages from certain state employees. He argues that the fiscal problems of the state demand such sacrifice or the state will fall into a financial abyss that will jeopardize the living standards of generations to come. At the same time, the governor and the Republican controlled legislature have passed tax cuts. The argument is that these tax cuts will attract businesses into the state and create jobs.

Friends in Wisconsin have been daily attending the Madison demonstrations for the right of union workers to bargain collectively. They report spirited and witty placards: “The People’s Republic of Curdistan” for Wisconsin’s infamous snack food. People who were activists since the sixties and whose parents and grandparents fought for the right of unions to exist have been hailing each other via email and doubtless more sophisticated social media: All power to the people!

Popular revolution is clearly catching, as people from one Middle Eastern nation after another throng their public squares. The placards in Madison include “Walk like an Egyptian.” And Governor Walker has been called the Mubarak of the Midwest. It is an exciting, scary, encouraging time. Union workers and social activists in other states are taking note of – and maybe notes on – what is happening in Wisconsin.

I can’t help but ponder the differences between our Midwest and the Middle East. In Wisconsin, the tea partiers have jumped into the fray with counter demonstrations. My husband pointed out, they think they are The people, and theirs is the revolution. In most Middle Eastern nations there is no such confusion. A dictator is a dictator. He takes care of his people, a minuscule power elite, and The People en masse suffer, economically and politically. The young especially, with little prospect for employment, have nothing to lose and every reason to spend every day demanding change.

I will be profiling the honorees at our March 14 celebration over the next couple of weeks (see my last post), not just to promote our event, since most readers of this blog live far away and can’t attend it, but to promote these people and their tremendous contributions, to explain why they are receiving the Tikkun Award. In addition to speeches from the honorees and editors, we will enjoy some terrific music and poetry at the event. Again, for people far away, as well as to bring more of you nearby folks to the event, I am hoping to profile the musicians. (We are also in the last days of creating our new magazine website which will debut in early March so it’s another of those insanely intense two weeks at Tikkun — so who knows what I will actually manage to post about here).

Today I want to start by writing about Kelly Takunda Orphan Martinez, because she has a fundraiser concert of her own this week that I encourage Bay Area people to come to.

I first heard Kelly Orphan play at Oakland’s First Congregational Church (known as First Congo), where she was the music directors for many years. She was remarkable. I tried to explain why when I invited her to play at our event: “I never felt seeing you play at First Congo that your performance was about you: it was always about the people in the pews and the worship of God, about creating the spirit and feeding the spirit. That is the kind of music we would like to have at our event.”