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C.K. Williams To Be Honored March 14 at Our 25th Anniversary Celebration

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The last time the Tikkun Award went to a poet, it was Allen Ginsberg who received it in person at a ceremony at Columbia University in New York City. He joined a list of significant figures who had previously received the award including Grace Paley, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, and Abba Eban. Tikkun’s poetry editor Joshua Weiner provides some context on why it is going this year to C.K. Williams.
What is the role of the poet in Tikkun’s core vision, of commitment to peace, social justice, ecological sanity? What is the role of the poet in a movement that aims to foster solidarity, generosity, kindness, and radical amazement? What is the role of the poet when it comes to social change and individual inner change?

Culture

Mysteries of Male Behavior (Mass Pyschodynamics)

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Harriet Fraad’s illuminating piece here last week about marriage has got me thinking about men. We men are still not getting what the women’s revolution can give us. At least, many are but way more are not. We’re not getting it en masse. The evidence for this is that women are turning their backs increasingly on marriage.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Why we are honoring Justice Richard Goldstone

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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.

Culture

Chimamanda Adichie (and Tikkun Daily): The Danger of the Single Story

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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.

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Music at Our 25th Anniversary Celebration #1: Kelly Takunda Orphan

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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.

Politics & Society

Israel has nothing to fear from the Tahrir Square revolution

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Don’t miss this exclusive analysis from Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco and a long time contributing editor of Tikkun, just posted here on our main website. Mubarak’s Ouster: Good for Egypt, Good for Israel
By Stephen Zunes
The inspiring triumph of the Egyptian people in the nonviolent overthrow of the hated dictator Hosni Mubarak is a real triumph of the human spirit. While there will likely be continued struggle in order to insure that the military junta will allow for a real democratic transition, the mobilization of Egypt’s civil society and the empowerment of millions of workers, students, intellectuals and others in the cause of freedom will be difficult to contain. It is disappointing, then, that what should be a near-universal celebration comparable to what greeted the nonviolent overthrows of authoritarian regimes in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, Chile, Serbia and elsewhere has been tempered by the right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel and its supporters in the United States who oppose Egypt’s democratic revolution. Israel’s standing among democrats in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world has no doubt suffered as a result of the Israeli government’s outspoken support for Mubarak and opposition to the pro-democracy struggle during the Egyptian dictatorship’s final weeks.

Politics & Society

Gandhi and Tahrir Square

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Like every other lover of democracy in the world I have been thrilled and at times moved to tears by the courage and success of the Tunisian and Egyptian democracy movements. And like many others I have wondered: where did this extraordinary commitment to nonviolence and creative organizing come from? One commentator wrote that they thought the most critical moment followed Mubarak’s speech on February 10, when he was expected to resign and didn’t, and the Tahrir Square protesters restrained themselves from reacting with violence. If you look at this map of Tahrir Square, above, on the BBC site where it is interactive, you get an idea of how that degree of self control was possible: these people were organized! But this piece, “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History”, from yesterday’s New York Times has done more to explain the movement to me than anything else I have read.

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Invitation to Join In Some Political Theater on the Subway

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Harriet Fraad forwarded us this beautiful email from someone she knows in New York this week:
I experimented yesterday with a Steve Colbert-like agitprop stunt, the purpose of which was to mock the absurdity of Bloomberg’s and Cuomo’s refusal to tax the rich and their preference for budget cuts that penalize working people and ordinary citizens in the city and the state. I wrote up a text, which I attach, which I then performed three times in subway cars. The results were quite encouraging. People laughed, and my girlfriend, who was with me at the time, was impressed by people’s receptiveness, their attention, and the fact that they accepted and carefully read the text of the speech, which I distributed after I was done. The text is a bit long, so my performance usually omitted the middle paragraphs.

Politics & Society

Jews Supporting the Arab Uprisings

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An article by Daniel Ming and Aaron Glantz in yesterday’s (San Francisco) Bay Citizen, also in the New York Times Bay Area edition:

A Jewish Group Makes Waves, Locally and Abroad
Some Bay Area activists hope a new Egyptian government will lead to an end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories
Hundreds of people, mostly Arab-Americans, are expected to gather Saturday in downtown San Francisco to support anti-government protests in Egypt, and a large contingent of Jews representing a Bay Area peace-advocacy group will join them, one of its leaders says. “We are deeply inspired by their push for democracy and freedom,” said Cecilie Surasky, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, based in Oakland…. The unrest in Egypt is merely the latest issue to pit a number of Bay Area activists against prominent Jewish organizations, as well as against some Israelis who have come to see the Bay Area as a locus for Jewish opposition to Israel’s government…. The divisions have heightened tensions among Bay Area Jews. During one altercation last year, a pro-Israel activist attacked two representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace with pepper spray.