On Tuesday, June 3, I went downtown to a 5:30 demonstration against the current Israeli policy of starving the people of Gaza. There were only about 200 protesters, but then the event was poorly publicized. Most of the protesters were either quite old or quite young. Many were Jewish; some were people of color. One, a lovely young Asian woman, said it was the first time she could allow herself to be photographed without a mask at a protest. She had just become an American citizen. Now she doesn’t have to be afraid of deportation for protesting a war crime.
We had been asked to wear black and bring an empty pot. I understood the black: we were mourning tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. The pots were to bang on, it turned out. The symbolism was wasted on passersby, and there was quite enough noise without the banging.
My protest buddy said she agreed with about 60% of what the speakers said. I agreed with about 80%. Some of them spoke about the 1400 medical workers killed in Gaza since the Hamas attack of October 7, the journalists killed, the international journalists prevented from reporting on the scene. One of them, the angriest, was the only speaker I’ve heard who seemed to support Hamas. He was listened to, but the crowd murmured, and didn’t bang on their pots when he finished.
Some of the signs: “Gaza Genocide: we can’t say we didn’t know.” “Let the children eat.” “Gaza: the graveyard of international law.” One tee shirt quoted George Carlin: “I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the Government tells me.”
A man in a MAGA hat tried to ride his bicycle through the crowd. The monitors stopped him, politely, but he wanted to argue. “Now you’re behind me, and I’m feeling threatened!” he said, and added, “You judge me because I’m wearing a hat?” He kept getting louder. A youngish man stepped up, telling the guy he was going to change his mind. The monitors asked the two men to take their argument further away from the speakers, which they did.
For the next half hour, the two men continued their discussion to one side of the protest. The older man mentioned Dresden and Nagasaki as the kind of horrors that are sometimes necessary in war. He said he had seen videos of Hamas hijacking aid trucks. At one point I heard the younger man say, “I’m hearing a little too much dry drunk right now.” Finally they shook hands, and the MAGA guy rode away on his bike. I doubt his mind had been changed. But he clearly felt that he had been given a respectful hearing.
I remember, wistfully, an occasion nearly a year ago when I had a good conversation with a Zionist Jew on the Harvard campus. We disagreed on most things about this war, though we agreed on many other issues. We came up with the idea of the university holding a series of informal meetings on Gaza, to be called “Let’s Just Talk.” We parted amicably. But the last time we saw each other on opposite sides of a protest, he hissed at me, “So you support terrorism?!”
Our opposing sides are operating with two different data sets. Two different sets of photos, videos, eye witness accounts, casualty numbers: everything. We really, really need to just talk.
Children crying from hunger. This is the age of cruelty. It ends now.
People sleeping in doorways. This is the age of poverty. It ends now.
Styrofoam washing up on beaches. This is the age of garbage. It ends now.
Neighbors burn down neighbors’ houses. This is the age of hatred. It ends now.
People with no hope pick up guns. This is the age of violence. It ends now.
This is the age of new creation. It begins with you.
By Jane Collins and Christina Starobin
Christina is the author of CORONA WILDFIRE & POEMS OF PROTEST, This Changes Everything, KALEIDOSCOPE CAFÉ, & A Human Being Is Not a Remote Control Device, the beginning of a series; all available through Cyberwit or Amazon.
On November 16, around 150 people, nearly all white men, marched against abortion in Boston. I was proud of our city. The counter-protest was about ten times larger than the march. Approximately one in ten counter-protesters came dressed as clowns. There were a few Antifa people in black and a few communists with pamphlets and a bullhorn, whom everybody ignored.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm for the season. My son and I arrived late to the planned rally at the bandstand in the Boston Common. We thought we might have missed the whole thing. Then we saw a couple of cute young female clowns coming up the path. They told us the march was delayed but should be arriving any minute. Some student journalists from Emerson College, intrigued by his Veteran Healing sweatshirt, interviewed my son. Their questions boiled down to, Why are you here? His answer was, To fight fascism.
According to an NBC News report, police made nine arrests earlier in the “National Men’s March to Abolish Abortion and Rally for Personhood”. The report’s headline called it “a large anti-abortion march”, even though the only large crowd was the one that came out to oppose it. All the news reports I’ve seen feature many photos of the stern-looking men in black suits or priests’ clerical robes, and few photos of the much more colorful and numerous counter-protesters. There were almost as many police as marchers, some in full riot gear; the photographers liked them too.
The counter-protesters carried handmade signs: “Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you! He believed in the separation of church and state.” “Wealthiest Nation with highest Maternal Mortality.” “Life begins at ejaculation/ Mandate vasectomies.” “Letting men decide about women’s healthcare is like letting your dog make decisions about your car because he likes to ride in it sometimes.” And my favorite: “He who hath not a uterus should shut the fucketh up; Fallopians 19:73.”
Trying to drown out the speakers, people blew whistles and horns, rang cowbells, and shouted slogans like “Racists, sexists, anti-gay/ All you fascists, go away!” “Pray! You’ll need it! Your cause will be defeated!” “Pro life? That’s a lie/ You don’t care if people die.” Pleasanter noise came from the Clown Band, about two dozen musicians, heavy on the brass. When the Men Against Abortion entered the cordoned-off bandstand, the band greeted them with the Imperial March from Star Wars.
Some of the police looked ready to attack the clown-inflected protest crowd. Two cops, though, stood right in front of the anti-abortion folks’ worst sign. It was a huge blow-up of a dismembered full-term fetus, which if it was real at all must have been from the delivery of a stillborn child in a last-ditch effort to save the mother’s life. Maybe those cops didn’t mean anything by blocking that sign for a few minutes. Or maybe they were wishing they had taken a sick day.
When the rally was over, and the marchers left the Common behind walls of police and metal barricades, clowns and friends lined their route with middle finger salutes. Most of the men in black marched on with jutting chins, looking straight ahead, and the few male children with them seemed to share the smug arrogance of their fathers. But I saw two boys, probably eight and ten years old, who hung their heads and looked completely miserable. Those poor little ones might already have been wondering which marchers were the real clowns.
There will be no way to avoid a succession of horrors in the coming four years. It’s no use waiting for the Democratic Party to tell us what to do. It has become a creature of corporate interests, out of touch with the needs of the non-rich. We have to tell the Party what to do.
The non-profit sector is a mess of single-issue organizations competing for attention and money. We are not single-issue people. Whether you are on a board or just a member, pressure your group to join other groups in as many coalitions as it can manage. All our issues are connected under the banner of peace, justice, and a survivable environment. Progress on any of our goals helps us to achieve all of them. Solidarity is key. We must stand up for one another.
More than changing institutions, we need to change minds. Leave your comfort zone. Don’t stick to preaching to the converted. If you can get access, go on Fox or the bro podcasts. Wait in line for a call-in radio talk show. Try to reach new audiences. Don’t talk down; persuade. Explain what you believe, and be ready to back it up.
We need big change. That means our actions must be non-violent. Violence is not change; it’s just part of the same cruel culture that is wrecking our world. If you are part of a protest, do whatever you can to keep things civil, no matter the provocation.
Expand your social set. Meet people who are not like you. Listen to them with respect. Everyone has something to teach. You don’t have to leave the country to find whole new worlds to explore. Besides, we need you here.
Most of all, keep yourself and your friends from wallowing in despair. If we think there’s no hope, we’ll stop trying, and then there really won’t be any hope.
I’m an American Jew, and this year the High Holy Days of my religion have a special, and terrible, meaning for me. Another year of violence in the Middle East has brought tragedy to millions, and contributed to a surge in anti-semitism around the world. Last Monday, I found some comfort in the company of others who feel, as I do, that our community should mark this Day of Atonement with more than personal acknowledgement of what we have done wrong.
A year after a vicious Hamas attack on Israeli civilians turned long-simmering violence into open warfare, a couple of thousand non-Zionist Jews and our allies gathered in the Boston Garden. We met to grieve — not only for the more than 1200 Israelis killed on that day, and the hundreds kidnapped, but for the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the bloody year since then, and for the Lebanese who are now also under Israeli attack. The event was organized by IfNotNow, a group devoted to ending American support for Israeli apartheid and aggression toward Palestinians.
Late on the damp Monday afternoon of that sad anniversary, before most of the crowd showed up, a young rabbinical student led us through an ancient Jewish ritual called Tashlikh. This ceremony is performed during the “Days of Awe” between Rosh HaShanah – the Jewish New Year – and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. One symbolically casts off one’s sins by throwing something in flowing water to be washed away. Usually people throw bread crumbs, but out of concern for the fish in the pond, we threw pebbles or dead leaves instead. The pond water wasn’t washing anything away, which also seemed symbolic to me.
The theme of the main event was “Every life is a universe”. Speakers included Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rabbi Toba Spitzer, Imam Ahmad Barry, and Rakeea Chesick Gordis. That young woman gave eloquent testimony to losing close friends and family members during the Gaza war, including both Israelis and Palestinians. She spoke of drowning in grief, feeling overwhelmed by waves of it. Again and again, the speakers insisted: Jews cannot be safe if Palestinians are not free.
After an hour of speeches, prayers, and songs, rain began to drip through the trees. Mosquitos emerged from the mist over the pond to ensure our discomfort. Considering the suffering we were there to commemorate, nobody complained. At one point, volunteers handed out small strips of cloth we were to rip, as a sign of mourning, and attach to our clothes.
October 12 is the Day of Atonement in the current year 5785 of the Hebrew calendar. I believe that American Jews have a lot to atone for. I am not refering to personal sins; Jews are no more or less hateful, thoughtless, or selfish than anybody else. I mean the Jewish community as a whole. For the most part, we have supported Israel for the 76 years of its existence, no matter what it did. We have pressured the US to continue sending more than $3 billion a year in military assistance to Israel, and ignored what Israel did with all those weapons.
Ever since the Holocaust killed six million Jews in Europe and the Nakba displaced three-quarters of a million Palestinians in Israel, both sides have committed too many atrocities to list. The difference is that American weapons have turned the Jewish state from David into Goliath. Israel has become a paragon of military might. Nearly all of its people are or have been soldiers. They believe they are fighting for survival, which excuses all their violence as self-defense.
According to the United Nations, from 2008 through 2020, 5590 Palestinians were killed in the ongoing hostilities, compared to 251 Israelis. There are many conflicting estimates of the casualties since the founding of Israel in 1948, but on one thing they all agree. Far more Palestinians have died than Israelis. This conflict is deeply lopsided, and not only in lives lost. The longer it goes on, the more territory originally set aside for a Palestinian state disappears into Israeli hands. Even the rubble that was Gaza is likely to get rebuilt into beach towns for Jewish tourists.
Now it seems that many American Jews have decided to drop their indifference to religion and rejoin the Jewish community. During most wars, previously apolitical people tend to rally around the flag. This is “my country, right or wrong” time. Jews everywhere have been taught to believe that Israel, and not the Torah, is the central element of our religion. In many ways, Israel has become our religion.
After 9/11, the US squandered the world’s sympathy by starting two completely unnecessary and unprovoked wars. Instead of hunting down the gang of Saudi terrorists that bombed the World Trade Center, we invaded and occupied Afghanistan and then Iraq. We killed hundreds of thousands, and made millions homeless. Now Israel has squandered the sympathy it garnered after the Hamas attack by bombing the millions of Palestinians it holds captive behind walls and military checkpoints in Gaza and the West Bank. Most of those who survive are now homeless, and many are starving.
Zionist Jews, and most Israelis, believe that this violence is justified because it’s the only way to destroy the criminal gang that is Hamas. Yet this policy is doomed to fail. Violence begets violence. Every time an Israeli bomb kills someone, Hamas can recruit more members from among the people who loved them. Zionists blame Hamas for all the destruction on both sides, just as the most extreme pro-Palestinians blame it entirely on Israel’s decades of oppression and occupation.
The truth is that there is plenty of blame to go around. So long as we find war acceptable, we all must share the blame for the loss of so many irreplaceable universes. I am grateful to IfNotNow for giving us a chance to start the new year by acknowledging our part in the ongoing crime of mass murder. May the year to come bring a ceasefire, and healing to all who suffer. We must make peace. If not now, then when?
I’m 76 years old. I’ve been homeless, crazy, sick, lost people I love, seen good things turn to shit. And I still believe in magic.
I believe in the magic of loving kindness. I have seen it, felt it. Tried to practice it. And I’ve been watching a long time, and it works. I’ve seen it work.
I felt it in the streets in the ‘60s and at protests and vigils and marches ever since. For every useless war, every awful court decision, people come out in the street to say no together: No, please, not again.
I’ve felt that magical fellowship in congregations of many faiths, at neighborhood barbeques, at music and art events, parks, and beaches. I even felt it once in the Manhattan terminal of the Staten Island ferry, when a woman’s parrot got loose and many teams of strangers instantly formed to get it back.
The meek are everywhere. We take comfort in one another’s presence. We get along peacefully. We’re all colors, genders, religions. We exist in every country.
Some big ape starts hooting and beating his chest, and all the other big apes start hooting and beating their chests. Usually it’s just noise, and boys marking their territory, but sometimes it gets serious and leads to war.
This has nothing to do with protecting mothers and children. It’s anger, insecurity, arrogance, and pride, all the worst parts of our nature, roused up, encouraged. Feeling things are going their way, the big apes can strut their supremacy. They have the power now; they think it’s done. But this is not over.
We are the people of peace, and we must win. Magic lives in our hearts. The secret is to practice it together, in solidarity, across every issue, and to never give up.
Yesterday, Mother’s Day Sunday, was the last move-out date for freshmen. Now the campus is eerily quiet. The only noise comes from riding lawn mowers, and a supporter of the protest – not obliged to follow its policies – who is standing outside the gates with a megaphone, shouting Free, free Palestine! He calls out the University for its complicity in war, fossil fuels, and Big Pharma. Spread out on the lawns near Johnston Gate are at least five very long scrolls of canvas with the names of the dead in Gaza.
The protesters have planted an olive tree outside Harvard Hall, surrounded by placards bearing photos of people killed in Gaza, their names and ages, and the phrase “Martyred by the IDF” (Israeli Defense Forces). The placards bearing photos, names, and ages of people martyred in the October 7 Hamas attack that were in this area last week are no longer in view.
All the campers but one are talking inside a gazebo-style tent with one wall covered by the sign “Harvard Jews for Palestine.” A supporter tells me they are taking a “wellness day”. They’re discussing what to do next. The University is sure to dismantle the camp before Commencement, Harvard-speak for Graduation, which is coming up in ten days.
I missed a lot of excitement on Saturday. There were marches and rallies as scheduled, with about 200 people attending. There were also unplanned events. Some marchers sat down in Peabody Street, blocking traffic for ten minutes. They spent two minutes in silent meditation.
During all that commotion, somebody broke the big padlock on the main gate into the Yard. Evidently they decided to open up the Yard to outsiders with a bolt cutter. This too was not something the group had agreed upon. Nobody managed to get in, however, before security people installed a wire lock to close the gate again.
Now, while the students talk in the gazebo, about a dozen faculty and staff supporters form a circle outside the camp perimeter. A camper wanders by on his way to the tent. “Cookies? There are cookies?” A supporter has baked them in quantity. “Everyone needs cookies,” she says, with authority, “all the time.”
A student tells the group that Saturday was supposed to be more like a party, with music and food. But somehow, he says, “the plan ended up shifting for reasons I don’t know.” I think of the Paul Simon song “Peace Like a River,” about anti-Vietnam War protests: “And I remember misinformation followed us like a plague. Nobody knew from time to time if the plans had changed.”
The student also says that there has been a lot of struggle within the encampment, a lot of dissension, which has been exhausting for them all to deal with. The protesters include both Jews and Palestinians. I imagine that some are pushing for compromise and some for more radical action. However they continue to co-exist peacefully and collaborate in running a clean, quiet, protocol-following camp.
I read a few Crimson articles on recent developments. Wednesday night, protest representatives met with College Dean Khurana and HU President Garber, among others. The University offered to hold further conversations with the protesters and let them avoid disciplinary action if they disbanded the camp, an offer they declined. They had offered a lower bar than divestment from Israel, such as the establishment of a center for Palestine studies, but they felt the University had not come close to meeting it.
Then Garber met with the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, to discuss anti-semitism. Greenblatt conflates anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, and praises Harvard for its unwillingness to entertain the protesters’ demands. Shortly after this meeting, the first round of 20 students were placed on involuntary leave. By now, more than 60 students are facing disciplinary action. The Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Instagram page said this showed that Harvard had capitulated to outside agitators.
I sit in dappled shade with the faculty and staff group. One of them has made bookmarks with space for messages to the protesters. She says some could use a little “parental love,” since they’ve been having difficult conversations with their families. They’re stressed, unsurprisingly, and not sleeping well. A camper asks if anybody could help them charge some of their small generators. “We need power,” he says, to laughter.
Around 3:30, seven Harvard police and security guards circle and enter the camp, filming the students. One camper tells supporters on the steps, “They’re taking pictures without our consent. Hide your faces!” I don’t need to hide mine, so I smile and flash the peace sign.
I start to leave for the day, but then I hear a commotion outside the gates. It’s a pro-Israel demonstration; tonight is the start of Israel’s Independence Day. A wild-eyed man speaks to the small crowd through a megaphone. I learn later that this man is a Columbia Business School professor, Shai Davidai. He says, “What’s at stake here is American values, which are also Israeli values. Freedom, democracy, peace. Five US citizens are being held by Hamas, the same people that they [nodding toward the encampment] are cheering on.”
This is where I lose my self-control. I letter a sign on a leaf of my notebook: “Protest does NOT cheer on Hamas. We mourn all these needless deaths.” I stick it through the bars of the iron fence. Alex, from CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), holds a small Israeli flag in front of my sign, trying to hide it. He says I’m delusional. Some pro-Palestine protesters are standing on the curb, waving Palestinian flags and chanting. When the Israeli speaker starts to list names of Hamas victims, I wish they would stop chanting for a few minutes, but they probably don’t even hear what’s going on.
The pro-Israel group sings the Israeli and American national anthems. They wave Israeli and American flags. The speaker taunts the pro-Palestine group, which is chanting “USA, USA, how many kids did you kill today?” Why don’t you honor your own country’s flag, he asks. One student turns around and snaps a smart, ironic salute.
After the rally, Davidai speaks at length to a Crimson reporter, Frank Zhou. I hear him claim that Jews and Israelis are not safe around the encampment. I try to tell Frank that I have photos of a dozen pro-Israel demonstrators entering the middle of the camp, singing songs and chanting. Nobody bothered them. Frank seems distracted since Davidai does not stop talking at him. When his article appears in the Crimson, it reports what Davidai said, without investigating or refuting any of his claims. I certainly believe Jews have been experiencing anti-semitism on campus; unfortunately it is as endemic to our society as any other form of racism. The encampment, however, has not been practicing it.
When I go back to rest on the steps of University Hall with other camp supporters, a student comes over and delivers the gentlest possible rebuke, reminding us (not looking at me especially) not to engage with counter demonstrators. I am embarrassed. The students have shown tremendous discipline and self-restraint. I failed to show equal maturity, and egregiously violated camp protocol. I think most of them agree with what my sign said, but I had no right to speak for them.
Now I hear on the news that the students have agreed to dismantle their camp immediately, and the University has agreed to rescind their punishments. I feel proud of both the protesters and the University. Protests won’t end so long as the misery of Gaza continues. But Harvard and its students have managed to close this phase with a degree of dignity and mutual respect that few other universities have achieved. To this, I can only say, Shukran, and Mazel tov.
It’s Monday, May 6. At the Harvard Square T station, around 200 excited kids carrying signs, wearing kaffiyehs, or bearing small Palestinian flags are heading for a high school demonstration on Boston Commons. A girl with a megaphone reminds them, “This is NOT a confrontation. If you are approached by counter-protesters, DO NOT ENGAGE.”
The Yard entry gates are very busy. Parents are driving in to pick up freshmen who have finished final exams. Other students are rushing back and forth from their dorms to the libraries, or to take their finals. Students wait in line to get past the security personnel who are checking IDs. I thank Ali, a high-ranking member of the security staff, for their good work in keeping students safe. I’ve known him for years as sweet-tempered, friendly, but alert. He acknowledges the praise with a big smile.
The mood in the camp is much more tense than when I visited last week. Vague threats have been exchanged between the Administration and the protesters. Few campers are available to speak with the (Harvard-affiliated) public; most sit in a circle in the middle of the tents, deep in conversation for hours.
I walk the perimeter of the encampment with M, a small woman in a headscarf. I ask her if the camp would like more alumni to show up as protection, liaisons, or just moral support. She texts the organizers, but says she thinks they would appreciate it.
Students not involved with the protest are ignoring it. A few are playing frisbee in a roped-off area that only contains a few tents in one corner. I hear a girl say, “I’ve got a 20 page paper due tonight. I’d better stop putting it off.” It’s a lovely warm day. The temptation to put that paper off must be pretty severe.
Some protesters or supporters are sitting on the steps of University Hall. The doors at the top of the stairs have been locked since the protest started. I overhear a discussion of the legal ramifications of Harvard’s threatened actions. Some protesters can’t afford to lose their housing. One says she only spent three nights in the tents, worried about the consequences. There are rumors of hunger strikes.
Rakesh Khurana, the Dean of the College, won’t meet my eyes or talk with me, even though (or because) I worked for him for several years. I spot him talking with a well-dressed man in late middle age, though, or rather listening while the man speaks emphatically, gesturing toward the camp. Rakesh looks unhappy but meek, as though he’s being reprimanded by his superior. The man says “I walk through here several times a day and I’ve never seen any kind of disruption.” I wonder if the man is a professor, an alum, or a donor. Rakesh asks him, “Do you have a generous interpretation of what they’re doing?” I can’t hear his answer.
I have an unexpectedly pleasant conversation with Gid’on, the counter-demonstrator I walked rounds with last week. He says he’s a leftie on most issues. We talk about Venn diagrams of our opinions. We are both frustrated with the lack of real dialogue between moderates on both sides. I say, can’t we agree we all want the killing to stop? He says, maybe we argue and you raise three points. On the first, I’m secure in my opinion. On the second, I think, that’s interesting. The third is persuasive and I think, maybe I have to reconsider.
Gid’on is hopeful that there will be real campus discussions this fall. I suggest round tables where we can get past shouting “Nakba” and “Holocaust” at one another, where we can just talk. Gid’on says that would be a good name for a series: Let’s Just Talk. Since it’s Harvard, we’d need an acronym: LJT. We laugh and go our separate ways.
I eavesdrop on a young person in an Ironmaiden tee shirt, who I think is Israeli and trans, talking to a beautiful and sympathetic middle-aged woman. They tell her that the militarization of Israeli culture starts when kids are ten years old: chanting, marching, and singing patriotic songs. If Israelis refuse to serve in the army, it hurts their career chances. This person’s younger brother is in prison for defecting. Once his term is over he’ll go back on trial and get another 100 days. “He’ll end his puberty in prison.” His job was coordinating night-time raids on people’s homes. He soon found out he’d been lied to about what the soldiers were doing and why. “Israeli kids don’t imagine that they have counterparts on the other side of the fence. It’s all so absurd…” they say.
They go on: “If you’re forced to commit atrocities for your country, you find ways to justify it…Israel is basically a military outpost of the United States.” Their sister is a Major in aerial defense. “We disagree…I love my family, but they’ve been sold so hard on these lies…My father grew up in Toronto. His synagogue had molotov cocktails thrown through its windows.”
The camp liaisons are wearing pink vests. A passerby asks one what he can do to help. “Tell people we’re not being violent.”
M tells me there’s going to be a press conference at the Johnston Gate at 5pm. I head over there a few minutes early. Two chairs are set up near the unoccupied guardhouse, and I sit in one to rest my aging bones. I figure I’ll get up when asked, but nobody ever asks.
The press are already crowding outside the gate, photographers grimacing as they try to fit their lenses between the bars. One reporter calls out to me, “Would you open the gate?” Nope. I take a picture of them, which seems to amuse a few. “Are you with the Gazette?” one asks. “I’m not with anybody,” I say.
Now the counter-protesters show up. I agree with some of their (professionally printed) signs. “Free Israelis and Palestinians from Hamas terrorists.” If only. A reporter calls out, “Did Bill Ackman pay for those signs?” One responds, “No, George Soros. We scammed him.”
Someone outside the gates yells, “Shame on you! Are you Jewish? Shame on you for defending genocide!” This guy says he’s not Jewish, but he has friends whose parents survived the Warsaw ghetto.
When the pro-Palestinian protesters arrive, there is some jostling while the counter protesters try to hold their signs in front. Nobody goes as far as actual shoving. I see people trying to be courteous about sharing the space. A papermache missile that must be eight feet long reading “Paid for by Harvard” gets held over my head, with apologies. One girl stands on a guy’s shoulders and leans against the iron railings to hold up her Free Palestine sign.
I imagine what the reporters are seeing: photos of Israeli hostages and children killed in the Hamas raid; photos of starving Palestinian children. This jumble of imagery seems only appropriate. Why is it that we can’t mourn all this suffering together?
I leave the camp while a camp spokesperson is still addressing the press. I hear they will not take questions. Outside the gate, some policemen are hanging around. Asked if they’re Harvard police, they say, “No, we’re not as cool, but we try.” One mishears me and thinks I said something about ice cream. Another says that might help the situation, if everybody got some. I say, Good idea, let’s have a party and just talk! They laugh and tell me to stay safe.
When I left Medford, it was a warm sunny day. In Harvard Square, it was chilly, damp, windy, and overcast. The mood of the encampment was equally gray. The students had just received a warning from the Ad Board that if they continued to camp outside University Hall they would face serious consequences. They were busy texting their family and friends, and possibly lawyers and media as well. I was there most of the afternoon from around noon until past 4 pm, and nobody was shouting, chanting, or using a bullhorn. There was one very interesting session on Palestinian textiles, especially the kaffiyeh and embroidery (tatreez), attended by half a dozen women.
If people are concerned about a kaffiyeh being draped over the John Harvard statue, I would remind them that it is an ancient Harvard custom for frat boys to piss on it.
I tried to respect the community norms. First I spoke with a nice young woman who was patrolling the perimeter of the camp, to find out with whom I should speak, as a friend of the camp and not a member of the media. She promised to find me a member of the outreach committee. Meanwhile I took photos, careful not to include anyone’s face.
The signs outside the tents were hardly combative. Demands were posted, for HU to disclose and divest from its investments in Israel, and to drop all charges against students for their activism. I doubt any of the protesters expect these demands to be met. Other signs said: While you read, Gaza bleeds; Nationalism is Chametz (Hebrew for food prohibited on Passover); No Justice, No Peace, Palestine will never walk alone; Harvard invests in Palestinian death; and a big banner saying Harvard Jews for Palestine.
As for the slogan “From the river to the sea,” it first appeared in the original charter of Israel’s Likud party, where it did not refer to a hoped-for multi-ethnic democracy.
I chatted up several people while I waited. I asked if any administrators had opened a dialogue with them; they said not yet, but they were trying to negotiate something.
The students are risking their academic careers, and probably the wrath of their parents. As always with student protests, they are among the University’s most thoughtful, serious, and conscientious affiliates. They have a lot to lose and nothing to gain, on a personal level. What is the administration afraid of? Losing Zionist donations; and losing even more face than it has since it bumped its first Black president over…not much. Looks like somebody could go out with a handheld mic and just let people talk.
Finally I got to speak with one of the organizers, a Palestinian freshman named Mahmoud. He and many others have been protesting since Israel began its crazy over-reaction to the brutal Hamas attack in October. He said “The administration doesn’t understand that repression fuels us to fight harder.” The community is committed to non-violence, he told me.
As I started to leave, a man approached the camp wearing a kippah and a scarf with Stars of David on it. The perimeter-walker I first met was tailing him, much to his annoyance. She wouldn’t talk to him, which he thought was rude; I agreed, but I pointed out she was probably following camp protocol, and the idea was certainly to protect both him and the protesters. I made four or five rounds of the camp with this guy and the very determined young woman. She had probably never been called rude in her life. She couldn’t talk to the guy; he refused to tell me anything about himself or his opinions since he thought she was recording him; so I talked to him. As usual in such discussions, we got nowhere, but we parted on friendly terms. I walked him out the library gate.
5.2.2024
An old colleague of mine was gracious enough to meet with me for half an hour yesterday. She’s a very sweet, thoughtful person, and we were glad to see each other again. I asked her if the administration had established any dialog with the protesters. She couldn’t tell me details but said there were talks going on quietly in the background. She told me some students were feeling a lot of pressure from both peers and outside forces, and were afraid to speak out. We agreed on the nature of the encampment – nonviolent, disciplined, and committed – and on the need for the students to come up with some achievable goals.
The protesters’ three current demands, set by the national movement, can and will not be met. The University certainly will not disclose, much less divest itself of, its investments in Israel. It still hasn’t divested from fossil fuels, and many of us have been working on that for decades. It took forever to divest from South Africa during Apartheid. The third demand, for amnesty for student activists, can’t be met before they even go through the disciplinary process.
So I went back to the camp to tell them the little I had gleaned from talking with my colleague.
The weather was warm and sunny, and the mood seemed lighter accordingly. My perimeter-walking friend told me everybody was happy I had talked (and talked) with the counter-protester on my first visit, since their camp has agreed not to engage with provocateurs.
I tried to convince a few protesters to have the group consider setting goals the University might actually meet. Maybe teach-ins, or listening sessions, or moderated debates could be small steps toward spreading their understanding of the war in Gaza and the history of Israel/Palestine in general. While we were talking, I noticed Dean Khurana on the outskirts of the camp. The students said he’d visited before but wouldn’t talk with them.
There are about 50 tents in the Yard, fewer than during the Living Wage campaign in 2001 but probably more than during Occupy Harvard in 2011. Like those encampments, this one is self-policing and keeps itself clean. Yesterday some clotheslines had been strung up between trees. Sleeping bags and coats were hung up to dry.
At this time, early afternoon, about a dozen counter-protesters showed up. I have to describe them as quite loud and aggressive. They marched right into the middle of the encampment, singing Hebrew songs, accompanied by a man with a guitar. Their signs quoted the very worst threats from Hamas (“October 7th was just the first time…”) and showed photos of some of the hostages. They stayed in the middle of the camp for around 15 or 20 minutes. The pro-Palestinian campers did not engage with them at all. While the singing and shouting was going on, the campers quietly rearranged the perimeter ropes so the Zionist group had its own little peninsula open to the paths.
The counter-protest moved out of the camp itself to the lawn outside Mass Hall, where it could be more easily seen and heard by the media outside the gates. One man shouted: “Jews on this campus will not be intimidated, and we will not be silent.” I noticed my walking buddy from Monday in the group, and waved to him; he smiled and waved back to me.
I overheard a counter-protester say “Stop them from using the name Harvard, it’s a violation of trademark rules. Call Meta.”
A man from CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, a decades-old pro-Israel group, told passersby that they had planted 1200 Israeli flags on the HLS campus. I didn’t go to see and can’t find any reports confirming this. He expected they would soon be taken out. He also told a Globe reporter hovering outside the gates that this encampment was an unprecedented disruption at Harvard. I joined their conversation to correct that statement. As for noise, the encampment schedule for some days lists about an hour at dinner time to “make noise for liberation.” I haven’t stayed late enough to determine just how much noise that comes to. Most of the time the camp seems extremely quiet.
The camp was treated to a show of more than 100 bare backsides late last night during the annual Primal Scream event. The Crimson asserts that the streaking was nonpartisan and nonpolitical. Nobody seems to object to the primal screaming.
Let’s deal in oversimplifications for this argument. Imagine an extremist Christian man and an extremist Muslim man talking about their beliefs in a living room somewhere. Their discussion grows more and more heated, and, depending on the men’s temperaments, might even come to blows.
Meanwhile, their wives are in the kitchen, fixing tea and a snack. Are they discussing religion? Most likely not. They’re talking about men, maybe even about the challenges of living with true believers. The men in the living room are fussing. The women are laughing. The real difference in this (terribly stereotyped) scenario, I respectfully submit, is not between the Muslim couple and the Christian couple, but between the men and the women.
Any time you try to talk about culture you are forced to generalize. If you constantly qualify your projections by acknowledging the wide spectrum of behavior in any one culture, you can’t reach any conclusions at all besides the fact that people are strange, which holds true everywhere. When it comes to human behavior, there are more exceptions than rules.
In general, though, there are two cultures in conflict in the world today. One is dominant, but unstable. The guardians of this culture tend to be “alpha males,” that is, men with a need to be on top of their worlds, who are aggressive, self-centered, ambitious, and willing to resort to violence. This culture has encouraged certain kinds of material progress but results in constant struggle and increasing divides between haves and have-nots.
The other culture is submissive but stable. This culture is maintained and propagated mostly by women. It is other-centered, conciliatory, patient, and prevents or tamps down violence wherever possible. This culture keeps the human world going, for without it, the dominant culture would tear everything apart.
I’m going to call the dominant culture male, though it includes many biological females. I’ll call the complementary culture female, though it includes many biological males. There is no question about which culture is uppermost today. Anywhere you find hierarchy, whether in a capitalist, nominally communist, or oligarchic society, the male culture rules. Wherever you find egalitarianism, cooperation, and collaboration, the female culture is in charge.
Not every society in history has been ruled by alpha males. Sophisticated justice systems; decisions by councils of elders; inclusive mores that provide for and protect society’s outliers; peaceful agrarian societies: all of these indicate the primary influences of women’s culture.
On the other hand, violence; the heedless destruction of human and other natural resources; the oppression of the lower classes: all these are sure signs that the male culture is running the show.
Clearly women’s culture evolved around the need to protect children from men’s aggression. If some sector of society did not propagate the values of caregiving, altruism, and sharing, that society would not survive two generations.
In a world of many languages, where communication was difficult, male culture evolved to settle disputes through physical violence. It would be up to the males whether a tribe’s territory expanded or contracted. The more territory, the more access to game, water, and fuel, the better the tribe’s chances of survival. If you see the world as belonging to “us” or “them”, you want the biggest, baddest guys on your side.
Our world today hangs in the balance in more ways than one. Scientists tell us that our behavior over the next decade or so will determine whether global climate change continues at a pace likely to doom our (and most other) species, or whether it will moderate to a manageable level. Nuclear proliferation proceeds at a rate where unstable regimes and non-state actors have access to weapons that could render the planet uninhabitable except by cockroaches and rats. Water pollution and over-use is at the point of making entire countries vulnerable to death by disease or famine.
Whether our species survives these crises depends upon another balance: the balance between male and female culture. Male culture has ruled, nearly planet-wide, for centuries, cementing its hold though tyrannies and then through the spread of capitalism, which values and rewards selfishness, aggression, and greed. But the destruction that attends these values is catching up with us. More and more people realize that we could very well do ourselves in if we continue on our current path.
Meanwhile, female culture has begun to strengthen in ways unimaginable a century ago. Women’s liberation has barely begun, but its effects are threatening male dominance in every society. Some ancient techniques (violence against women and LGBTQ people, veiling, double standards on sexual experience) and some new ones (high heels, sexualization of younger and younger women, co-optation of women leaders) work against women’s rise, but the trend continues. Women have gotten the idea that they should participate fully in public life, and they are insisting on their right to do so. What has given this idea such strength and persistence?
I believe that deep in our collective unconscious, we know that women’s culture must assume dominance if humanity is to survive. We must stop hurting one another and start taking care of one another; we must stop wasting resources, and learn to conserve; we must clean up the messes we have made; we must stop rewarding greed, and place more value on sharing. Only women’s culture carries the tools and techniques to bring about these changes.
This necessary revolution, which seems so radical, would actually require only a shift in the balance of cultures. We just have to listen more closely to what Jung called the anima, the feminine side of our consciousness. The center in us that corresponds to female culture – the center of nurturing, caring, sustaining values and behaviors – must gain our respect, as it is the key to our species’ survival.
The movement toward women’s liberation arises from the deepest place in ourselves: the part that wants to live, and wants our children to live. Right now, many of the stories we tell ourselves are generated from our fear that survival is not possible. Even though every one of us contains the seeds of a new world, we despair of the possibility that they will grow and thrive.
When we choose our leaders, we should ask ourselves which culture they embody. We need more representatives of female culture to set public policy, whatever their gender. We need more women in positions of power, not because women are that different from men, but because they have been the custodians of the set of values around which our species must reform its behavior.
Those women laughing in the kitchen do not need to come into the living room and argue with the men. No: it’s the men who need to come into the kitchen, drink the tea, eat the cookies, and learn to laugh with the women.
We’ve been told it’s the things we have that make up our quality of life. That’s only part of the truth. We must have enough to eat and drink, and some place to get out of the weather. If we’re going to eat our food cooked, we need things to cook it in. Stuff does pile up around us; we’re messy, curious, greedy beasts like magpies or packrats, but we don’t have to make a virtue out of it.
Some things do make lives better, though they’re not usually the things advertisers are trying to sell us. Plumbing, for example, is a really good idea. Fashion is not only fun, it keeps clothing on everybody. The rich change clothes every season and their leavings filter out to everyone else.
Whatever we have, we can do without or make new, except for people. Only the people we’re close to are irreplaceable, our family and friends. We can lose a neighbor sometimes and go on all right, but it is devastating to lose a whole neighborhood.
Real quality of life depends on how we feel. If we’re healthy, and the people we love are healthy, and our household is peaceful, that’s worth any amount of money and any pile of stuff. If we’re suffering in mind or body, few things can comfort us.
Beautiful things soothe, please, and excite us, in the moments when we truly notice them. Art can improve our lives if we pay attention to it. Being in natural surroundings, where beauty continually renews and reinvents itself, comforts and sustains us. Many broken hearts have begun to heal in the woods and on rivers.
Community is precious. Fellowship is precious. That’s why a lot of people go to religious services. We get to feel kinship with the people around us. Community, fellowship, friendliness, peace: these provide real quality of life.
Networks of people are not material things. They are emotional and intellectual connections of shared experience. These invisible things, beyond what we can hold or measure, keep us alive.
Ants, zebras, monkeys, snakes: each member of a species looks and acts pretty much like all the rest. They can tell one another apart, but we can’t, unless we study them closely. The differences are tiny; the similarities, vast.
The same goes for humans: each one of us is unique, but we’re as alike as snowflakes. No person’s history, character, or appearance is the same as any other’s. These variations are endlessly fascinating. We need them; they are how we tell one another apart. But they form only a tiny fraction of what we really are.
Science tells us that all humans are almost exactly the same. Day to day, we ignore that knowledge, though it explains a great deal.
Why can a good actor portray a wide range of characters? Why, when we go to the movies, does the whole audience agree on who is the good guy and who is the villain? Why do we laugh and gasp in the same places? How can good novelists get us to understand people we’ve never met, and who in fact do not exist?
Because people are pretty much all the same: variations on the theme of being human. Shouldn’t we be talking about this theme and not only its variations?
Our dominant culture emphasizes the individual — one’s career, one’s wealth, one’s behavior — even though these things usually matter only to that individual and perhaps a few relatives and friends. We pay much less attention to our behavior as a species. Yet it’s our bad behavior as a species, not as individuals, that is endangering the future of humanity.
There’s a lot of talk lately about “transhumanism,” the attempt to transcend human limits. I believe that before we can transcend humanism, we must achieve it.
The problems that threaten human survival arise from our refusal to acknowledge our behavior as a species rather than as individuals. The only solutions to them are global — in other words, species-wide.
The internet is revolutionizing global communications, maybe not a moment too soon. Now people can communicate across the world in real time. You don’t have to be rich to do so; all you need is access to an online device. The barriers of personal appearance, location, and circumstance vanish, leaving only your words, and images (mostly) of your choice. Being online is as close to becoming a spirit — transcending material limitations — as we are likely to get.
Of course we use the internet mostly for sex and music. This is typical behavior for our species. Without regulation, we also use it for insulting one another, showing off, lying, and gossiping. Also standard. We form interest groups; we make friends as well as enemies; we come to the aid of people in trouble.
What we don’t do online, at least not yet, is run the planet.
Right now, humanity is poorly organized for survival. So long as we primarily identify as members of subgroups like nations, religions, or ethnicities, we will find it hard to deal with problems that pertain to all those subgroups. Our organizations focus on issues specific to themselves and compete to place those issues above the rest. Even though, as individuals, most of us want to end hunger, war, and environmental devastation, our organizations have different priorities.
We are such a creative, adaptable species that we manage to live in every environment on earth, the deep sea, and outer space. The climate change our bad behavior has engendered is creating a new environment for us all. It’s impossible to predict whether, much less how, we will figure out how to survive this different world. If we survive, the global reach of the internet will have everything to do with it.
One thing is certain. However humanity re-organizes and adapts, everyone alive will be involved: not just the 1% global elite, or the 99% of us who do not have illusions of limitless power, but 100% of us. None of us stands alone. All of us need other people. Our individual lives will end one day. In the meantime, though it seems unlikely, don’t give up hope that humanity itself – our pattern, our theme, our weird and wonderful species – will find a way to endure.
It’s June, so there are lots of babies. Baby rabbits, nibbling on the gardens and driving the dogs crazy. Baby ducks, gathered closely around their mothers. Baby geese, joining the honking, pooping herds in the meadows.
This year, a pair of swans nested at the confluence of our town’s river with a small stream. They spent weeks building up the nest, bending their long necks to scoop dead leaves and twigs into a pile that rose a couple of feet higher than the river surface. Once the eggs were laid, the pair took turns sitting on them. The one swimming around and noshing was on patrol. If a duck or goose or dog came too close to the nest, there would be a great loud flapping of wings, and the intruder would leave in a hurry.
Now there are four fluffy little baby swans, cygnets, visible on royal cruises with one parent ahead and one behind. Nobody messes with the swans. They can fly, but they don’t have to.
I watch the adults learn how to co-parent. Swan #1 swims quickly under the bridge, minus offspring, and then flaps its wings and rushes up the bank, rousts Swan #2 from its resting place in the brush, then swims back down the river in a big hurry. Swan #2 scrabbles down the bank, calling out this really loud noise that starts with a squeal and ends with a honk. It swims around a moment, stretching its wings and neck, and then follows Swan #1 under the bridge. A couple minutes later, here comes one of the swans with babies close behind it. I think that was a shift change and Swan #2 was yelling “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute, let me finish my coffee!”
Several years ago, the government rebuilt the old dam between the lakes our river flows through, complete with a modern fish ladder. Thanks to the ladder, the dwindling stock of alewife – a small herring-like fish that breeds here – has rebounded. The state estimates that their population has gone from 200,000 to more than 700,000.
Black-crowned night herons come for the spawning run of alewife every spring. At night, they pick a local tree to roost in, crowding the branches like big ripe fruit. The great blue and little green herons also enjoy the alewife. They’re so full, they often stop fishing to stand around and nap.
Since the state closed storm sewer overflow pipes, the painted turtles have also rebounded. They bask in family rows on riverside logs and driftwood every sunny morning, lined up by size from large to very little. When danger approaches, they plop into the water one by one, with the biggest the last to go and the first to re-emerge.
The other big change on the river is the traffic. We used to get motorboats and jet skis going much too fast, leaving wakes that eroded the banks. Then a canoe and kayak rental place opened up. During the pandemic, boating has been a great way to have some safe family fun, or just to get outside without a mask. The river is full of these little boats on every nice weekend. Although the herons don’t like being in the public eye, they haven’t gone far.
There are two big upsides to this new kind of traffic. One is that the motorboats have slowed way down. With so many kayaks, a speeding boat might run somebody over. I suspect that the boat club lawyer sent a memo.
The other upside is that now the river is known and loved by many more people. Some are bound to join the community that defends the river. The water and its woodsy banks are always in danger from pollution, garbage, and invasive species. Our wild, or wildish, places need all the friends they can get.
People have plied these waters in canoes for centuries or longer. Until this past century, the river ran through woods and swamps. Now there’s only a narrow green strip on either side of it, trees and shrubs growing thickly up the steep banks. Beyond that, in most places, small grassy areas lie between the river and the streets, houses, and shops of our town. Nothing much lives in the grass besides ticks and field mice.
The river shows many signs of abuse and neglect. Plastic water bottles and other trash get stuck in the driftwood. Lack of maintenance on the walking paths has exposed the roots of riverside trees that keep the paths from washing into the water. Maintenance and oversight are the easiest things to cut from state and city budgets.
But what a rich variety of life still manages to thrive in the river and those two narrow strips of green. Water lilies by the thousand open their fragrant white petals; small-mouth bass nestle in the reeds; dragonflies dart and hover. Once I saw an otter, undulating at the surface like a broad brown velvet ribbon.
Humans also thrive along this water. People walk, run, bike, watch birds, have picnics. A woman dances along to the music on her headset. Nobody can calculate the river’s physical, mental, and social benefits to our community. Recently, plastic lawn chairs have appeared in a few choice sitting spots. Some walkers bring bags with them to pick up litter.
This is a beautiful world. Maybe we’re learning to stop our trashy ways and cherish it. If so, it won’t be a moment too soon.
A friend of mine in her 80s has always been active in her community. She raised her own two kids and several others by herself in spite of never having any money to speak of. She’s a wonderful artist, an inspiring teacher, an ardent and articulate lefty, a doting grandmother. But her only surviving child and her grandchildren live far away.
Ten years ago, she was taking African dance classes and swimming across Walden Pond. Today, she can’t stand up straight. She isn’t sick but she doesn’t feel so good either. She still takes care of her old house and rents the extra rooms, so she’s eking out a living. But it’s getting hard for her to do simple things like grocery shopping.
When I spoke with her the other day, she was excited and happy. A purely accidental meeting led to a connection with local volunteers who are, she says simply, “helping each other.” This informal group started online in mid-March, when this country first began to take the pandemic seriously. Now they’re filling a few of the many needs that are not being met by either charitable organizations or government. For one thing, they’re helping her bring in the groceries.
The internet is an amazing tool. Maybe it’s the brain of our species, forming just in time. This network connects billions of us in ways never possible before. But a network of actual in-person humans is still the best thing of all.
My friend has been helping others throughout her long life. Sometimes it’s hard for such people to accept help when they need it. My friend, though, is a philosopher. She knows that kindness is its own reward. The folks who are helping her now are fortunate to do it. They are experiencing the warmth of real community.
May such kindness sustain us through these dark days: both giving, and receiving.
I’ve been noticing a trend among people lucky enough to frequent our local public green space. More people are wearing masks lately. The holdouts, however, seem to be mostly young to middle-aged white people.
People of color understand how vulnerable they are to random, undeserved misfortune. Ahmaud Arbery was only the most recent victim of homicidal racism to get the nation’s attention. No one knows the true count of unarmed people killed for doing normal things while black.
My city is fortunate enough to contain immigrants from many parts of the world. They wear masks. Like native-born people of color, they know that life can be cruel and unfair. They take what precautions they can.
A couple of months ago, when I first started nagging store clerks to insist their employers give them masks, they looked at me like I was crazy. Now they’re wearing masks. But these people are not rich. They know life is full of inconvenient and uncomfortable requirements.
Women should know how fragile our bodies are, and how subject to change. But our culture has taught women that how we look is the most important thing about us. So a pretty face is too powerful to cover up, and some young women will be pretty if it kills them — which, these days, it might.
Young white people with money have led protected, easy lives until now. They have little experience with real danger, much less with danger in public places. They feel invulnerable. What is far worse for the rest of us is that many seem to believe they have a right to do whatever they want, no matter how it affects other people. That’s what privilege is all about.
When a young person without a mask bikes past you, or brushes by you running on the path, or just saunters along as though “social distance” referred to the difference in your class status rather than a life-saving space, you are seeing the literal face of privilege.
In a democracy, privilege is a long-term threat to the idea that we are all equal before the law. During this pandemic, privilege can be deadly.
Is it more important to move fast, or to get where you want to go? Isn’t it better to move slowly in the right direction than quickly in the wrong one?
We learn to rush in school, if not before. I never understood why school children have to answer test questions in such a hurry. Wouldn’t it be good to give them time to figure out the correct answer instead of panicking them into wrong guesses?
I wonder if the children learning online at home these days are able to do it at their own pace. Online learning has its own stresses. I hope time pressure is not one of them.
Our culture prizes the race to “get ahead.” Get ahead of what? Well, poverty maybe. People are rightly afraid to make too little money in the US. Since Reagan began to blame poverty on poor people, the American safety net has become more hole than net. Millions are finding that out right now.
Life is not a contest. It’s not a race. Every life has the same finish line and few of us know when we’ll reach it. Whatever you thought you earned or thought you owned, you can’t bring it with you over that line. The only thing we know for sure remains after we’re gone is the effect we had on the people around us and the places we’ve lived.
Do you work for or support a non-profit organization? You want to help people, or the environment, or otherwise contribute something positive to life on earth. You probably care about a number of worthwhile causes. But most non-profits concentrate on single issues. They compete with all the other non-profits for donations, media attention, and government resources.
Apples, oranges, peaches. We need them all.
Non-profits don’t tend to collaborate. They struggle for top billing on the national or global agenda. Yet all their good causes are separate battlefronts in the same war. Each organization fighting for racial justice or economic fairness, against fossil fuels or against war, is trying to shape a future that reaches all these goals. They seem like separate causes, but they depend on one another for success. How can we achieve economic justice, for example, while the poorest communities are most threatened by climate change?
Urge the organizations you support to find ways to work together. Form coalitions. Publicize one another’s campaigns. Explore links between issues. As long as we allow the single-issue groups to ignore everything else we care about, we won’t have a movement for positive change. We’ll only have “special interests.” And there’s no profit in that.
I’m afraid people will be forced to go back to work, if they can find a job. Some jobs will be available to replace “essential workers” from grocery stores, hospitals, and delivery services who fall sick. There might soon be more. Too many Trump supporters are echoing his demand for “re-opening” the US economy whether or not it is safe to do so.
There is simply not enough protective gear to make workplaces safe, even the ones that have remained open. But if you’re out of money, you might have to work, no matter the danger. The one-time $1200 payout from the federal government can’t keep households going for more than a few weeks, and not everybody got one. They should be sending everyone $2000 a month and paying for all necessary health care. But… Trump.
Opening the country long before we are ready will only set up the next big wave of the pandemic. Trump does not care how many of us die. Most big corporations also do not care how many of us die, in spite of their recent deluge of commercials thanking front-line workers. Judging from the mask-free faces I see in public, a lot of ordinary people seem not to care either. They might just be in denial, but that’s not a good excuse.
Now is the time to fight in the most passive possible way. Don’t show up. Don’t go to work. Don’t open your store. Stay home and wait for the tests and the gear. And when you have to go out, for all of our sakes, wear a mask.
Love your neighbor. Wear a mask. Show you care. Wear a mask. Come to the rescue. Wear a mask. Protect yourself and your family. Wear a mask.
Voters in Wisconsin just helped save democracy. Many wore masks. All of our heroes should be wearing masks. Walmart and Amazon, instead of buying ads to praise your workers, give them masks!
Be cool. Be fierce. Be kind. Be fashion-forward. Be a human update. Be a decent person. Wear a mask.
I live in a kind of neighborhood that’s hard to find these days. Kids rule the streets, playing ball and riding bikes. We can actually go next door and borrow a cup of sugar — or we could, until the pandemic, and one day we will again. People walk, on their own two legs, to little stores that sell the necessities of modern life – videos, manicures, lottery tickets, karate lessons – and on the way they stop and talk with whoever is out in the yard or sitting on the front porch. It’s like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, except for one thing. The whole world is here.
There are Sikhs in turbans, orthodox Jews in yarmulkes, Muslims in headscarves, and Baptists who go to church every Sunday with the women in big flowery hats. There are dreadlocked Rastas, tattooed punks, and a transvestite with an artificial beehive.
Only the teenagers all look alike. No matter what their color, religion, or parents’ country of origin, the boys wear ball caps and enormous pants that mysteriously fail to fall off their skinny behinds, and the girls wear tops tight enough to worry their grandmothers.
And many of their grandmothers live nearby. Some families have lived here for generations and see no reason to move. This neighborhood works. People look out for one another. Small children play on the green space by the river while their parents take turns keeping watch. Young people hang out at the park, or play basketball and tennis on the courts, and old people sit on benches in the shade. Gardeners trade plants from their yards or the raised beds the city set up.
When some folks (mostly new to the neighborhood) objected to the regular gathering of older men under a big tree by the river and their ratty collection of old furniture, others defended the men’s right to be together in a public space. They don’t bother anybody, these folks argued, and they were here long before the people who minded their presence. A compromise was worked out. The men still park themselves under the big tree, but they have to park their rusted vehicles somewhere else.
A river runs through this neighborhood, bringing the immeasurable gifts of nature to city-dwellers. Whenever weather permits, the riverbank paths host strollers, dog walkers and joggers. During the pandemic, the paths are so crowded that social distancing gets quite hard to maintain. There are those who let their dogs leave a mess right in the paths. Amazingly, there is also a Poop Fairy who sometimes disposes of the mess.
As with any public park, government workers mow the grass, prune the trees, and stop industries from fouling the water. People complain about taxes like anywhere else, but when they’re pressed, most will admit that they’re getting something for their money here. It’s called civilization.
When people talk about “quality of life”, sometimes they’re just talking about the quality of things: the size of their houses, the newness of their cars, the fanciness of their gadgets. But when you come right down to it, as long as you have enough to eat and housing that keeps you warm and dry, your quality of life depends on your health and the people around you. If you’re well, and the people around you are happy and friendly, you have a good life. If you’re sick or lonely or live in a house full of tension and strife, it doesn’t matter how nice your stuff is.
Neighborhoods make a difference. If you can go for a walk when you’re feeling down and see people who smile at you, you’ll come back with lower blood pressure and a higher heart. Good neighborhoods give you time outside work and family, space to live in a larger world. That’s real quality of life.
Good neighborhoods nudge people toward behaving decently. Out-of-control parties, parking conflicts, and other urban stresses can happen anywhere, but people with histories of civil behavior can work it all out. In the place where I live, people have come from every corner of the planet to create a new history of peaceful coexistence.
So let the yuppies have their McMansions where there are no sidewalks or corner markets. Let the super-rich live behind their high walls without bumper-crop tomatoes from the gardeners next door. I wouldn’t trade my quality of life for any of theirs.
I’ve lived in a lot of places, from a split-level in Scarsdale to a kibbutz in occupied Syria to a farm in a Kentucky holler, and this is the best place I’ve ever seen for raising a family. My kids didn’t have to travel the world to get to know its people. All they had to do was go outside to play, and the whole world came to play with them.
Alice T4 