Hello again!
While the grand geopolitical plots unfold on the world stage, awareness is spreading across the planet. Ever more people are waking up and reacting to the cumulating threats that mainstream media are programmed to distract us from.
This week, for a sane break in reporting all the political insanity out there, I wish to draw your attention to input from two independent Jewish sources in the US. In contrast to the official hardcore posturing, they display a wise, compassionate and humane attitude.
The first one came to me from Rabbi Michael Lerner, who quotes Joshua Holland thus,
“What If They Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?
Around the country, cities are cutting back on vitally needed social services. At the same time they´re buying expensive military gear for their police departments.”
“Occupations across the country have struggled to feed and shelter the least fortunate among us, and then faced often violent police crackdowns at great taxpayer expense. Pause for a moment and imagine what might result if mayors sent in social workers to help people rather than riot police to bust some heads?
In a society that tends to avert its gaze from the homeless, the hungry, the addicted and the mentally ill, the Occupy movement’s compassion has become an albatross around its neck. ‘We don’t exclude the people at the margins,’ one protester at Occupy Oakland told me. ‘We invite them in and feed them.’
Around the country, occupations are struggling to provide a semblance of social services that cash-strapped cities are failing to provide. An organizer with Occupy Portland, said that the majority of those at the recently evicted camp were ‘homeless or disenfranchised people. We have folks that have just recently lost jobs, lost their homes, and the Occupy encampment is all they have right now.’
He added that the city might be contributing to the problem. ‘I have heard from three individual sources that some of the city institutions that help the homeless and disenfranchised are actually sending some people our way because we have services that we’re providing that apparently others cannot or will not,’ he said.
With the influx of the homeless come various problems, and cities have used them to justify sometimes violent crackdowns on the occupations. In Oakland, a homeless man with a history of mental illness attacked several protesters in an incident that officials touted as being indicative of the ‘violence’ surrounding the occupation.
In Burlington, Vermont, a homeless veteran killed himself in the camp, prompting city officials to cordon off the park where the occupation had been established. As USA Today noted, ‘authorities cited the potential hazard of police not being able to see what is occurring inside the tents as the reason for the tents’ removal.’
Veterans’ suicides are a national disgrace that we rarely talk about. A veteran attempts to commit suicide once every 80 minutes, on average; 1,868 of them tried to end their lives in 2009 alone. An overdose at Occupy Vancouver, one of the 47,000 drug-related deaths each year in Canada, prompted that city to deliver an eviction notice.”
Rabbi Lerner adds his own comments: “And this leads us to yet another obvious point: there are millions of retirees or unemployed professionals who could volunteer their skills to help reduce the burden on the public sector. It would not be very costly to organize their talents to serve the needs of those who have been hurting most in this economic crisis (even at the moment while Wall Street is booming with peak earnings). Unions who fear that this effort will undermine their desire to get more funds out of the cities’ budgets must be challenged by the ethos of community service so that they put the general good over their own mistaken notions of the workers’ best interests.
The truth is that the cities simply do not have the funds, and people are hurting, and those who can help should be mobilized to help in all the ways that they can. If we had a decent President, he or she would have already done this along with a campaign to create paid jobs through a Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration such as existed and created millions of jobs during the New Deal. We need a NEW New Deal, and we need it now, and yet that New Deal should not be counterposed to organizing volunteer professionals (including those who are currently employed during the day) to pitch in to help.
We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is the moment to call for a fundamentally different orientation to government and to social values. We call for “The Caring Society–Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth.” In that simple way we can communicate what it is that the 99% really wants!!!!
You don’t have to believe in God or be part of a religion to be a “spiritual progressive.” You just have to agree that we need a New Bottom Line so that productivity, rationality and efficiency are no longer measured only by how much money or power gets accumulated, but also by how much any institution, social practice, corporation, government policy, educational system or even personal behavior tends to increase the amount of love, caring, kindness, generosity, ethical and eoclogical sensitivity in our world and to enhance our capacities to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is!”
Here is the link to Rabbi Michael Lerner´s NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES, if you wish to know more about them: www.spiritualprogressives.org
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The other independent and unconventional source I mentioned is the JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE. In a resumé of their activities during 2011, Rebecca Vilkomerson writes,
“What an amazing year it’s been. I’m so proud of what Jewish Voice for Peace has done this year. I’m really proud that no matter what or who we go up against—how big their titles or budgets, our members and friends and allies are never afraid to speak out. We’re not afraid to hold them accountable or to make them uncomfortable if that’s what it takes for the truth to come out.
I think what I—and all of us at JVP—are experiencing is a reflection of events all over the world in this landmark year. All year long, people everywhere have been rediscovering how much power we really have—even in the face of armed governments and billionaire banks. Whether in the Arab world or on Wall Street, we’re getting in the streets, saying the things that must be said, and challenging power.
Earlier this month, when a team of breathtakingly courageous Palestinian Freedom Riders went up against massive systemic discrimination and made news around the world when they integrated a settler bus line from Ramallah to East Jerusalem, they asked JVP to be one of the main U.S. supporters of their action. And we said yes—we organized street demonstrations and actions across the United States and worked with you to get thousands of support letters to the U.S. State Department.
When the first day of rides was done, they wrote to us “..all the Freedom Riders want to send you and JVP a very warm thank you… the fact that young Palestinians and Jews put their energy together to make this act of civil disobedience and direct-action successful is ground breaking….together, with a lot of hard work and resilience, we will alter the course of history in this region.”
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., a bunch of big Jewish national groups like Hillel and the Jewish Federations of North America are trying to ban any discussion at all of the nonviolent Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. But despite their best efforts, we have been able to bring the debate into synagogues and other major Jewish spaces all up and down the East Coast this year.
I was so proud when our Los Angeles chapter secured national media attention for Jewish support for Muslim students being unfairly criminalized for protesting the Israeli ambassador. Now chapters in cities like Detroit and Olympia are hosting the students as they go on tour to tell their story. —
—“This year has been full of boldness. Inspiration. Progress. And plenty—PLENTY—of challenges. Attacks by mainstream groups have occupied too much of our time. Keeping our organization afloat, financially, hasn’t been easy. It never is. And, we can never forget that, as we fight for change here in the U.S., conditions on the ground worsen every day, in Israel where democracy is daily deteriorating, and in the occupied Palestinian territories, where the web of human rights abuses and inequality continues to grow, even as non-violent resistance grows bolder and more inspiring by the day.”
Here is a link, if you wish to know more about the Jewish Voice for Peace and its brave and fairminded members: http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
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And finally, from a nondenominational source, namely Avaaz, I reiterate their campaign to save the freedom of Internet. It´s possible that the vote in Congress has already been taken by the time you read this, so it may be too late to engage in this campaign, but I still advise you to sign up for the petition, just in case the debate is still on in the US congress. Here is their battle cry:
“Let’s urgently raise our voices from every corner of the world to build an unprecedented global petition. For years, the US has condemned countries like China and Iran for their clampdown on Internet use. But now, the impact of these new censorship laws could be far worse — effectively blocking sites to every Internet user across the globe.
Last year, a similar Internet censorship bill was killed before reaching the US Senate floor, but it’s now back in a different form. Copyright laws already exist and are enforced by courts. But this new law goes much further — granting the US government and big corporations enormous powers to force service providers and search engines to block websites based just on allegations of violations — without a trial or being found guilty of any crime!
Free speech advocates have already raised the alarm, and some key senators are trying to gather enough support to stop this dangerous bill. We have no time to lose. Let’s stand with them to ensure that American lawmakers preserve the right to a free and open Internet as an essential way for people around the world to exchange ideas, share communication and work collectively to build the world we want.
Click below to sign and then forward to everyone: http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/?vl ”
So much for Avaaz.
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Well, dear readers, that was this week´s blogpost. Please don´t be shy or afraid to network tirelessly to spread awareness of what our dear leaders, elected or not, have hidden up their sleeves for you, and what you can do to outsmart them and create a peaceful, healthy, prosperous and sane future for yourselves and your descendents.
In addition to awareness, it requires both courage and determination. So, take heart!
Dr. Jens
