The idea that our government thinks it can lock an American up based on “suspicion” that he or she somehow “supported” an alleged “terrorist” organization just doesn’t seem very constitutional to me! Yet our current law allows just that. Senator Dianne Feinstein and others in the Senate are trying to do something about indefinite detention and I’m hoping they’ll get enough support from Americans across the political spectrum to remove this affront to freedom from the next Defense Authorization bill. Perhaps they could call it a Korematsu amendment.
“Standing”with Israel during last week’s assault did not denote support for people, Israeli or otherwise. It was support for a status quo in which cyclical mass violence has become accepted and even valorized.
America’s annual consumerism orgasm is just passed. And if a little bit of post-sex let-down is to be expected, it may also be that some of us view the whole thing with negative feelings ranging from mild distaste to horror. People camping out on the sidewalk for days to buy a 54 inch flat screen, Wal-Mart customers coming to blows over a pair of shoes, families devoting hours to military style strategizing for the best way to hit the mall, a holiday defined by “thanks” and “giving” followed straightway by a veritable festival of desire, grasping, and I-me-mine. Endless environment damaging heavy metals, transportation, packaging and fossil fuels.
Today, Partners for Progressive Israel, an official American-Zionist organization formerly known as Meretz USA, has issued the following statement:
November 27, 2012
Partners for Progressive Israel strongly endorses the application of Palestine to be accorded Non-Member Observer State status at the United Nations and calls on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to do so as well.
I will not sit idly by and watch the moral authority of a country that is so important to us wither under the walls of racism and violence. No Jew, indeed no human, should live that way or allow others to do so either.
As I write this, my plane has just taken off from Heathrow, seven hours after its scheduled departure. I spent six of them on the tarmac, trying to soothe the part of my brain that was spinning a story about British Airways’ incompetence. That was fairly challenging: during the previous hour, I’d stood in the aisle of an overheated and airless bus wondering why it was taking so long to board, when it was at last announced that the flight would be a little delayed because the door had been damaged when the boarding stairs were wheeled into place. Through the bus window I could see the hapless ground crew, including the man who towed the staircase, idly ambling up and down the stairs in an unsuccessful attempt to look innocent and helpful.
We live in a time of great ingenuity, incredible scientific advances that extend life, repair damaged cells, modify food supplies, expand the limits of our universe and yet we’ve lost touch with the most important thing in life – the thing that keeps us all alive – our humanity. Consider the reality of our world today:
The United States has the second highest child poverty rate worldwide
The prison-industrial complex warehouses human beings like animals only to have them either released into society without any greater skills than which they arrived, or left to languish until their final breath
We are warehousing and torturing animals in the name of increasing food supplies without a care for how that impacts the animals, the planet or our own health. We are destroying our planet, food and water supply
Our corporations’ profits exceed reasonable needs while their employees cannot afford to put food on their tables
1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth
We are buying and building bombs instead of supplying food, shelter, education, and health care
The list goes on and on but need I really say more. We seem to have arrived at a place where getting, achieving, taking and winning are more important than caring, concern, generosity and love. And I am left wondering, “when did this happen?”
I. Wearing Blinders
I grew up listening to stories of Jewish exceptionalism, stories that were both beautiful and exceptional. These stories I grew up with weren’t biblical tales of chosenness, nor were they Zionist visions of Israel. Instead, they were tales of progressive heroism, tales of American heroism, stories of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, stories of Gertrude Weil organizing women’s suffrage leagues in the early 1900s, stories of Jewish immigrants’ integral role in sparking America’s labor movement. They were stories of Jews fighting for the human rights, equal rights and dignity of those oppressed, maligned or ignored. They were stories of progressive activism spurred by Jewish values.
Over the last year I’ve written several articles and a book chapter trying to demonstrate the moral ambiguity of spiritual practices like yoga and meditation. In other words, I’ve argued that these practices won’t lead one to be aware of or challenge the injustices in their surrounding culture. They are ethically and politically neutral. Furthermore, the increased presence, clarity and focus gained from these practices can and has been used to support war, killing and racial hierarchies. In response to my recent article “Why the Dalai Lama is Wrong to Think Meditation Will Eliminate Violence,” my writing colleague Matthew Remski (see the new book 21st Century Yoga) challenged my assertions.
Want to give your spirits a lift by doing something different? Put your zip code and email in here today and they let you know where you can turn up to show solidarity tomorrow. Feel good working off a bit of that tofurkey. Not sure they deserve the help? Check out their video: