Demonstrators in Washington, D.C. rally for single payer healthcare on October 15, 2009. / Courtesy of Code Pink

Health care is a basic human need. The ability to get this care is a basic human right. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the immortal words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he was stating that all people have the right to equality under the law. Our Declaration of Independence was a call to liberate us from the tyranny and oppression of a ruling power that had no regard for the people they ruled.

Now, more than two centuries later, we are again besieged by oppression and discrimination. The control of health care by private insurers is no less a serious threat to life and liberty than the despotism against which our Founders fought so fiercely. Just ask the 45,000 Americans who will die needlessly each year because of a lack of health care. Ask their family members who must survive without them.

Universal single payer healthcare is a not-for-profit healthcare system that would provide equality of medical opportunity for all people living in the United States. Equality of opportunity is the foundation of our American democracy. Under Single Payer, all medical services and care would be paid by one non-profit funding agency or mechanism, as Medicare does today, without the 20 percent co-pay.

Several hundred participants turned up as early as 6:00 AM this morning to participate in San Francisco’s Occupy the Courts action. The event was part of a nationwide protest to mark the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which granted corporations unlimited spending power via political action committees. As South Carolina prepares to vote in the 2012 Republican primary, the topic is a timely one.

I spoke with a longstanding member of Occupy San Francisco, an elderly woman who lived in the city’s first encampments. We stood in line as volunteers handed out hot meals to protestors, the site cleverly situated in front of Market Street’s (Food) Bank of America.” When asked about the next steps for the Occupy movement, she emphasized that the focus needs to shift toward communities. “We have to occupy our neighborhoods,” she explained, “breaking into smaller groups and fighting for local issues.” Occupy activists, she argued, are probably already experts at local politics, but they need to be take more control over their communities.

Whether this approach would work is difficult to say. As Ira Katznelson revealed in City Trenches, decentralization may lend the appearance of community empowerment, but its goal is often a placatory one. One of Occupy’s strengths has been its relentless attack on corporate greed and federal incompetence; a shift to local politics would fail to address these systemic issues.

The two of us – the woman preferred to remain anonymous – also discussed criticism by the media. “The media has a twentieth-century understanding of protest,” she remarked. “I don’t think anyone knows yet what modern protest looks like.”

I’m fairly certain that, as you read this sentence, you match a certain demographic. In fact, I can say with 100 percent confidence that you do. You are an Internet user and, by virtue of this fact, should be filled with tremendous outrage at the legislation that is set to pass in Congress.

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” (HR 3261), introduced in October, empowers copyright holders to seek punitive action when their material is reproduced online. Fair enough. But like much of the cleverly-worded legislation presented to Congress, this bill’s title is hardly reflective of its likely pernicious effect. (Remember Bush’s “Clean Air Act”?) What SOPA really amounts to is a destabilization of the Internet by corporate entities.

Vodun practitioners from all over the African Diaspora traveled to Benin (formerly Dahomey), the birthplace of the religion, this week to participate in what is known as International Voodoo Day. This January 10 festival of prayers, libations, sacrifices and other rituals is the most important Vodun gathering in the world.

As a Haitian-American, I can’t help reflect on this most African part of our heritage in the New World especially as it is continually maligned by those whose knowledge is restricted to popular images that favor the macabre. Those of us who recognize and respect Vodou’s complexity know we must defend it because the religion remains trapped in stereotypes making it extremely difficult to dispel geopolitically driven myths too entrenched in the spectacular.

Growing up as a child in Haiti, I had no concept of what is referred to as “Voodoo” in the U.S. In fact, the more appropriate word, Vodou, was not part of my vocabulary. The tradition that some members of my family followed was known as “serving the spirits.” Even that phrase was not something we actively used, since our actual engagement was rooted more in daily practice than naming. Serving meant living in a world where the sacred and secular were blurred. So it was commonplace to see adults pour libations of water and coffee three times onto the ground upon awakening in the morning before even speaking to one another. Or sometimes they rushed to the outhouse, I would learn later, to expunge bad dreams that should not be spoken in order to deflect their mal-intention and prevent entry into the home. These and other very conscious acts of psychic repulsion taught me that serving the spirits was foremost about communion and protection.

Courtesy of SoulAviv

.As Administrative Director for Sounds Write Productions, a major publisher and distributor of contemporary Jewish music, a lot of CDs comes across my desk. Most of them are very nice, a few I really like – but most don’t stand out from the crowd in any way and after a quick listen it’s on to the next, with no significant lasting impressions. When I first popped SoulAviv’s third recording, “Soul Service,” into my player, though, I knew right away that we were in completely different territory.

SoulAviv is staking out new ground in spiritual Jewish music. Their unique blend of folk, Motown, gospel, Memphis soul, and world-music grooves is different, fun, inspirational, and engaging. Singing in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish, SoulAviv blends Jewish heritage, spirituality, and celebration with a little California sunshine for a musical experience that is contemporary, yet timeless. It’s different than anything else I’ve heard – and I’ve heard a lot – and it’s working.

Free food at Occupy Oakland. / Photo Courtesy of Wendy Kenin

The messages we take from the stories of homeless people, veterans, women, indigenous peoples, and volunteers involved with Occupy Wall Street demonstrate the keen effectiveness and high spiritual status of the international movement. These points of hope are proof of the positive impact the Occupy movement is having.

Some of the real-life people featured in the television series, "All American Muslim." / Photo Courtesy of TLC

Next Sunday is the last installment of All American Muslim, the reality television series on TLC that was the target of fringe, anti-Muslim hate rhetoric. The show introduced five Muslim-American families to the reality TV audience– two groups who would not, in all likelihood, have otherwise met. As it turns out, these five families are not shills for radical extremists. They are not hiding sinister plots, surreptitiously trying to turn American law into Sharia law, lulling America into a false sense of security by showing a few “good Muslims.”

These families are the real Muslims. They are folks from Dearborn, Michigan, where the show takes place, who struggle to raise their families to the best of their abilities. Some wear headscarves; others wear tattoos. They suffered through 9/11 alongside us, and they decry those who hijack Islam in the name of terrorism. They, it turns out, are just like us, and that is the reality that the fringe groups who called for advertisers to boycott the program, cannot tolerate.

Courtesy of Michele Machles

As a supplementary Hebrew School teacher, I had only seen my students on an average of about four and a half hours a week. Most of the students are together in the classroom on Sunday mornings, one afternoon a week after school, or when they attended the synagogue Shabbat service or holiday gathering during the year. (Realize that this is the maximum school time allotted, and many of my students often had to leave early to participate in sports or theatre programs.)

During out allotted time together, Supplementary Hebrew School teachers are expected to teach 5000 years of history, life cycles, the holidays, instill values, and help to shape their relationship with God – all the while being sure that when our students leave the synagogue and return home, we have implanted a strong connection with our community. Because of this limited amount of time devoted to synagogue study, many congregations are also finding ways to address this by creating family education programs. My way of bringing a bit more Jewish culture into our Jewish home was the creation of Visual Prayer Posters.

A mosque in Dearborn, MI attended by members of the reality TV show, "All American Muslim." / Photo Courtesy of TLC

We are community leaders from the three Abrahamic faiths who don’t normally look to reality TV to teach lessons of faith and religious freedom. But TLC’s new show, All American Muslim, is doing just that. It’s also come under recent attack from Islamophobic extremists who seem to have forgotten the values on which this country was founded. Rather than tune out in protest, as Americans, it’s time to tune in.

Photo Courtesy of Len Radin

When our children were little and pressed their outsider noses against the lighted shop windows of Christmas, I decided we’d celebrate Hanukah. I wasn’t delighted that it commemorated a military event instead of “peace on earth,” but the children could join the season’s merry-making.

Also, the tale of Maccabean rebellion is embedded with legendry appealing to children. The rag-tag Maccabees’ incredible victory over a mighty state, the cleansing and rededication of the great Jerusalem temple, the radiant image of a one day oil-lamp, miraculously glowing for eight days. So, I plunged into candle-lit monorahs, dreidles, fried potato pancakes (latkes), small gifts, and a child’s Hanukah story.

A Palestinian farmer tends to his olive tree. / Courtesy of Canaan Fair Trade

Fellow journalist Aaron Dennis and I will travel to the West Bank in February to document the “Run Across Palestine” – a 129-mile run over five days between Hebron and Jenin that seeks to raise awareness about the everyday struggles facing olive farmers in Palestine.

Inspired by Tikkun‘s mission to “build bridges between religious and secular progressives by delivering a forceful critique of all forms of exploitation, oppression and domination,” I’ll write a feature story about the project for Tikkun.

Pamela Blotner is an artist based in Berkeley whose sculptures use mixed media to tangibly retell specific myths and legends from diverse cultures. She has traveled as an illustrator for numerous human rights groups, including Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, and has taught at numerous colleges and universities across the country.

Blotner’s human hands series speaks to the universal humanity and shared connection of people around the world. The human hand gestures in these pieces are made of wood and covered with felt through a process called needle felting. They are often hand-painted.

James Mitchell / CC

Regardless of the dissembling of corporate state propagandists, free market capitalism has always been a government subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers’ game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con job perpetrators) thrive. By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit.

Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle class have been expanded. For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.

The Jewish cemetery in my parents’ village of Lututow, Poland had disappeared; I walked through the thick forest, vividly green, pushing aside branches that had overgrown what once had been pathways, running my hands through the earth seeking anything – a stone, some mark from a gravesite; but only some fragments of human bones strewn on the forest floor suggested that this had been a burial site for hundreds of years. Somewhere beneath the earth was my family, my kin. How I ached for them. I had come here because of a restlessness I could not understand; somehow I think I needed to bring my parents back to what had been their home. I had, in fact, brought a photograph of them – their marriage picture taken in Germany in a DP camp just after their liberation from concentration camps that had become a kind of demonic home. Here, in this place of absence, I left their picture among some leaves, in the dirt. I said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, as I stood in this emptied, lost space, and wept.

Like so many children of Holocaust survivors, I had flown to Poland to experience my parents’ village. But unlike others who had made such pilgrimages, one trip had not been enough for me. I’ve made three altogether, each a step in a process of healing I could never have envisioned, and each in response to that restlessness that I could not understand.

Santa Claus in Japan. Credit: Creative Commons/Kodomo No Tomo.

I found myself talking about Santa Claus with Sara the other day. She is a charming little girl, 8 years old, and now at a wonderfully delicate developmental stage of her life.

Sara is at that age where the emerging presence of doubt and inquiry are grappling for predominance with the evocative fantasies which have largely colored her young mind for much of her blessed childhood. She was inspecting holiday decorations in my office when I asked her if she thought Santa would visit her this year. The conversation so enchanted me that I hastened to write it down at once to the best of my recollection.

Protesters in Chicago abjam77/Creative Commons

I’ve noticed a meme beginning to fester among liberal insiders who are positing that the Occupy Wall Street movement is starting to “distract” the citizenry from the wicked machinations of Republicans of the legislative class. Nonsense.

The OWS movement is not a distraction from – but serves as an alternative to – the disingenuous theatrics staged by the political hacks of this faux republic. Conversely, movement members have grasped that it is the hollow grandstanding – the modus operandi of the present U.S. political system itself – that serves as distraction from the realities of the day.

Those drawn to the OWS movement realize this: Vast sums of money are required to get the attention of, and gain influence over the entrenched class of self-serving political insiders who hustle their wares in Washington, D.C.

Year after year, election cycle after election cycle, Washington’s political class has revealed whose interests it serves. Accordingly, let the one percent and their political operatives continue on their present myopic, society-decimating course. By doing so, they will just bring more outraged people into the streets and hasten their own undoing.

This post was originally published on the +972 blog.

From Al-Khalayleh, a Palestinian village near the settlement of Giva’at Ze’ev, outside of Jerusalem – A group of young men are swinging shovels and hammers at the walls of a house – their own house.

They had watched as the bulldozers tore down their neighbors’ homes and buildings early the same morning, and decided to destroy part of their house themselves. They were doing this, on one hand, to “not let the Israelis have the pleasure of doing it,” they told me.

But more than that, they were doing so with the hope that the authorities would decide that enough of the house was gone, and allow them to keep one room. Also, this way they perhaps could avoid the fine Palestinians are commonly forced to pay- for the cost of the demolition of their house.

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.

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.

A major modern conundrum is how the Arab/Israel conflict remains unresolved and, seemingly, unresolvable. In his latest book, Embracing Israel/Palestine,Rabbi Lerner suggests that a change in consciousness is crucial. He examines how the mutual demonization and discounting of each sides’ legitimate needs drive the debate, and he points to new ways of thinking that can lead to a solution. Lerner emphasizes that this new approach to the issue requires giving primacy to love, kindness, and generosity. It calls for challenging the master narratives in both Israel and Palestine as well as the false idea that “homeland security” can be achieved through military, political, economic, or media domination. Lerner makes the case that a lasting peace must prioritize helping people on all sides (including Europe and the U.S.) and that real security is best achieved through an ethos of caring and generosity toward “the other.”