A take on the pepper spray meme. CC/JoeInSouthernCA

The recent pepper spraying “incident” at the University of California at Davis represents more than an opportunity to create a cleverly photoshopped, viral meme. The act is part and parcel of a larger collective mindset-a proclivity towards authoritarian overreaction now deeply internalized in daily life in the U.S.

To cite only a few examples, by means such as, “zero tolerance” policies in public school systems, to “no knock” warrants, to snooping on and control over employees private lives by corporate employers, to the war on the Bill of Rights that is the so-called war on drugs, to the brutal suppression of constitutionally granted rights to free assembly and free expression by militarized police forces, to the unconstitutional killing of both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals abroad by predator drone attacks-daily existence within the nation has become more repressive, less inclined to the acceptance of the moments of creativity and uncertainty inherent to freedom. In fits and starts, by law and deed, the U.S. has moved closer in the direction of a panopticon-prone, brutality-leveling, waking authoritarian nightmare than a democratic republic devoted to erring in the direction of the ideals of justice and liberty.

Militarized riot police stand against Occupy Oakland on October 29, 2011. Photo by Soozarty1.

A month before Occupy Oakland was violently raided by riot police using chemical weapons, rubber bullets and flash grenades – a raid which critically injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen – the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department trained alongside a military unit from Bahrain and an Israeli Border Police unit.

The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual training competition which gathers heavily militarized police from the United States and across the globe to explore the latest in tactical responses and to promote collaboration. It’s a training that northern California police departments credited for their “effective teamwork” in dealing repressively with Occupy Oakland.

Max Blumenthal, who broke this story in al-Akhbar in an exhaustive piece on the militarization of U.S. police, describes the units alongside which multiple California departments trained before violently crushing Occupy Oakland:

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

A meeting of students from School Down Under, a semester-abroad program in New Zealand that partners with Global Village School. / Photo Courtesy of Global Village School

The Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment (ESRA) articulates a clear call for a much-needed type of education – one that prepares youth to live as socially and environmentally responsible citizens of the world. It defines the kind of education required to provide them with “the appropriate scientific, ethical, and behavioral knowledge and skills required to assure the long-term environmental sustainability of the planet Earth.”

Global Village School, an accredited, non-profit, international K-8 and high school distance-learning diploma program, embodies the vision the ESRA articulates for education. Founded in 1999, Global Village School (GVS) prepares young activists by incorporating peace, justice, diversity, and sustainability education into the core curriculum. A typical Global Village School high school course poses the kinds of questions that provoke dialogue on issues of environmental and social justice.

Occupy Wall street has inspired a wild level of creativity which comes from hope. Hope is so badly needed in America. For over 20 years, we have been passively enduring capitalist abuse and blaming ourselves for our suffering. Antidepressant pill use has increased 400% in the past 20 years during which the 99% sink into poverty, and precarity.

People have been savaging the most helpless of Americans, their children. Over the past ten years, 20,000 children have been killed by their families.

I believe that there can now be a change as people stop blaming themselves and their helpless dependents and start building a better America. I am including three examples of our creativity so that others can share my hope for OWS creativity and real change all over America.

When I reached manhood, I saw rising and growing upon the wall shared between life and death, a ladder barer all the time, invested with an unique power of evulsion: this was the dream….Now see darkness draw away, and LIVING become, in the form of a harsh allegorical asceticism, the conquest of extraordinary powers by which we feel ourselves confusedly crossed, but which we only express incompletely, lacking loyalty, cruel perception, and perseverance….

Rene Char, Fureur et Mystere

Last week, we discussed the confusion surrounding the blessings given by Yizhak in terms of the texts’ “concretization”, the way textual blessings might take on interpretations based on changes in their historical actualization. This week, we will leap beyond blessings into dreams and from dreams into reality, and perhaps, back again, by focusing upon the episode of Yaakov (Jacob)’s dream of the ladder ascending to heaven as narrated at the start of this week’s Torah reading.

There are several midrashim which will guide us on our exploration of dreams. The Midrash latches on to an extraneous word in the verse- “and he chanced upon the place and rested there”. The Midrash explains the word vayifga, “and he chanced upon”, as meaning “he prayed there”, using as a proof text the use of the same term in the Jeremiah 7:16 and 27:18. The Midrash states that there, in that place where Yaakov rested, Yaakov created the evening prayer, the Arvit service, described by R. Shmuel bar Nahman as embodying “May it be Thy will that You remove me from darkness to light”. A second curious midrash is found on verse 28:16, which reads “and Yaakov awoke from his sleep, mishenato“. The Midrash alters it to miMIshnato, from his studies, from his “learning”. At first glance, one might suspect a surprising anti-study, anti-intellectual message, likening study to sleep, in that Midrashic reading. Why is the midrash linking study to sleep?