Culture

Once White in America: Raising Black Sons in a White Country

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It is 2015 and I could list so many names. I would pray, but I am not a believer, as people call us now, but I do believe in action, in what has always been called struggle, in what I insist on calling faith in the human capacity and responsibility to know and feel another human story. I witness my son, now a man of 40, marching from Washington Square Park up Fifth Avenue, across 34th Street, downtown on Sixth, long renamed Avenue of the Americas, to One Police Plaza. He marches and shouts with colleagues and friends: I can’t breathe! Black lives matter!

Culture

Reasons for Departure

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That summer my Palestinian-Jordanian Arabic teacher and closest confidant asked me, seriously, as many cynics told me she would, if the Holocaust actually happened. That summer I summoned up all the grammar and honesty I could find to say “Yes. And to admit that it happened does not excuse what has been done to the Palestinians. It’s not Jewish history, or Zionist history; it’s human history. Just like the Nakba is human history.”

Culture

Generosity Versus Violence

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Some will say the Global Marshall Plan is not realistic. But some of us remember when landing a human on the moon was considered a joke. Contact your Congressperson to lobby for Resolution 1078, the Global Marshall Plan.

Culture

We Are “Carefully Taught” to Hate

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Bandura found in his “Bobo Doll Experiments” that young people can be highly influenced by observing adult behavior, and perceive that such behavior is acceptable, while freeing their own aggressive inhibitions. They are then more likely to behave aggressively in future situations.

Culture

Fifty Shades of Jihad

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Of course “we” are not like “them”. The democratic, secular, it’s all about your choice West is not the woman-hating, veil wearing East. Unlike the endlessly controlled, honor-killed, and uneducated women in Arab countries, in the Grey story the victim gets to sign a contract.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Over 1,000 Muslims form 'ring of peace' around Oslo synagogue, chanting "No to anti-Semitism."

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An anti-hate campaign launched by Norway’s Muslim community last week, after a tragic attack on a Denmark synagogue, culminated tonight with over 1,000 Muslims forming a ‘ring of peace’ around an Oslo synagogue. Citizens linked hands, chanted anti-hate slogans and offered a show of solidarity with Norway’s Jewish community, one of the smallest in Europe.

Culture

Say "No" to Netanyahu's Attempt to Drag the US into a War with Iran

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming here to popularize the idea that the U.S. should essentially make impossible Obama’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, hence putting the U.S. and Israel on path toward war with Iran. We are taking a full-page ad in the NY Times, if we get enough people to donate to make it happen.

Culture

Oliver vs. Cleveland: Beyond Right & Wrong

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Labels aren’t helpful unless we seek to understand why we’re using them in the first place. I will admit that I use them in this article, though in using them I also hope to draw attention to their meaning, and to build a bridge where we can become conscious of our usage of such words and seek to translate them.