Tag Archives: revolution

More Jews for Justice

The People Speak

Ever since Trump and Musk began to take a chainsaw to the work of generations, I’ve been hearing, “Where is the outrage?” Go to a protest near you; you will find that outrage.

On Thursday, March 26, I went to Tufts for a rally against the abduction the day before of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at the school. She was snatched by masked federal agents as she walked toward a friend’s house, handcuffed, and driven away in an unmarked car. Before a judge could order that the government not take her out of Massachusetts, she had already been spirited away to an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

Ozturk was grabbed without any form of due process. She was in the United States legally on a student visa. She had done nothing wrong. About a year ago, she objected to Tufts’s refusal to divest from Israel in an opinion piece in the student paper. Trump & company have decided that anyone who uses their freedom of speech in a way they don’t like is a threat to national security, maybe even a terrorist.

Outspoken international students are low-hanging fruit. Trump means to pick them and throw them somewhere to rot. He doesn’t have to abduct all of them, just enough to shut the rest of them up.

But students are not shutting up. Ozturk’s abduction, added to the equally outrageous detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student, three weeks ago, and the rendition of  more than 250 Venezuelans to the worst prison in El Salvador with no proof that any of them were criminals or gang members, has pushed many into activism.

The Tufts rally comprised about 2000 people, most with handmade signs. Never mind the speakers, whom I couldn’t hear anyway. This is what their signs said:

An injury to one is an injury to all.
Free Rumeysa!
Democracy NOT deportation protects Jewish students
We will not be silenced!
Silencing dissent is the REAL cancel culture
If not fascism, then why fascism-shaped?
Democracy > Deportation
Release all prisoners of the secret police
Democracy is under attack!
Speak out against injustice or you’re gonna be silenced next
I love inclusion, equality, diversity
Stop doing evil shit
Abolish ICE
ICE out of our communities! Free Palestine!
Jews Against Deportation
This Tufts alum affirms the equal dignity and humanity of all people
Nice Jewish Students for Democracy
(a ten year old with a rainbow sign) RESIST!
Jewish Civil Liberty
Hands off our neighbors
Find courage/ find community/ fight fascism
They want us scared/ We’ll show them our strength
This is fucking insane
Free Rumeysa – Free speech
It starts with students!
You wanna mess with our freedoms? You gotta go through me!
Stop kidnapping students.
You can’t appease a dictator!
Show your face when you steal our students.
This is OUR Somerville.
Immigrants make us great.
Don’t sleepwalk through fascism.
Stand together.
Never normalize kidnapping.
Melt ICE
Silence is complicity.
When speech is silenced, Revolution speaks.
First they come for the scholars.
Against Genocide Anywhere.
(More signs from a small, poorly organized protest in Harvard Square the next day:)
In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America
Hands off legal students and visitors
Stop the fascist assault
I(ncompetent) C(ruel) E(xpensive)
Due process rights for ALL people (see the 5th amendment)
Our tax dollars fund genocide
In the name of humanity, let in asylum seekers and refugees
Deport ICE not students
1st amendment? Hello???

Project 2025 indicates that it won’t be long before Trump uses the military against peaceful demonstrators. There will be tear gas, pepper spray, and water hoses, mass arrests, and eventually, rubber bullets or worse.

Meanwhile, Trump is damaging everything we love: our communities, education, alliances with other democracies, the environment, and most of all our rights. Democracy is clearly under attack. As Americans realize how much harm is being done, we get angrier, maybe even angry enough to get up off the couch and do something.

The protests are becoming more frequent, and the crowds keep getting bigger. If you’re not on the streets already, I hope you will join us soon. The homemade, passionate, outraged signs at every rally help me to believe that maybe we can save democracy. Not leaders or heroes, or the corporate-owned Democrats. We, the people. 

Prayer for the New Age

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.

Here Come the Clowns

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.

Clowns, 1: Fascists, 0

What we do now

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 Believe in Magic

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.

Harvard Protest, part 4

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.

Harvard Protest part 1

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.

Time to Grow Up

Our species has had a wild and crazy adolescence. These days we’re facing the consequences of our irresponsible behavior. We can now see that our bad habits will kill us if we don’t quit. It’s time to grow up.

Can we stop eating too much meat, using too much fuel, buying too much stuff we don’t need? Can we stop using plastic? Can we stop making war?

Many of us believe that only the rich have the power to change anything. This sense of insignificance is a delusion. Every person is just as significant as every other. Each of us offers a unique perspective that adds to our common understanding of our world. Whenever we listen to a new viewpoint, our culture shifts a little. We grow. Barriers fall; we make new connections. And anyone who has managed to kick an addiction knows that it’s not easy to change, but it’s possible.

We have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us. There’s no guarantee we can make the necessary changes. Maybe the civilization we have built is too powerful and its inertia too great, our addictions too ingrained. Maybe people are too greedy and violent to change our ways.

But we are much more than our bad habits. Every human survives infancy because someone fed us and wiped our little bottoms; such ordinary kindness is the neglected background of our lives. Nearly all of us are capable of caring for others, creating beauty, inventing new ways of doing things. And for the first time in history, we have the tools to take full advantage of these assets for the sake of all humanity: the internet and Artificial Intelligence.

In recent years, our culture has focused on our differences. We needed to understand how the spectrum of race, gender, and wealth affects individual lives. We needed to hear more voices than those of rich, straight, white men. With the internet, finally, all of us can speak. AI can tell us what people have already figured out about how to fix things, if we ask it the right questions. We are barely beginning to understand the power of this new tool.

The next stage of evolution is looking at common ground – what we share, how we’re all alike – instead of only at our differences. We can feel this common ground in a movie theater or concert. Everyone in the audience is at one with all the rest, in a way. Our attention has a common focus. Changing our culture means changing what we pay attention to. It’s time to focus on human survival.

Our attention is our singular gift, our most valuable asset. We can choose what we look at, what we like, what we buy – in both senses of the word. This is our vote. This is the direction we’re taking the culture, whether or not we want to admit our personal responsibility for it.

Status, wealth, nationality, and religion are things we made up, stories we tell ourselves about who we are. It can be hard to admit that we’re really just a bunch of panicky primates trying to figure out how to run the planet before we ruin it.

Our world is changing quickly. We now have the tools we need to organize ourselves for survival. Whether we can manage this or not is an open question. Let’s not give up before we try.

War of the Worldviews

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. 

Intersectionality

Sometimes, in our culture, it seems the individual is all that matters. Life is about me: my career, my wealth and status, my history. We talk about intersectionality, the many identities that make up one person. What about intersectionality among people, rather than within them? Isn’t that our most important circumstance, as a species?

Say one person is gay, male, white, urban, and Jewish. Another is straight, female, Asian, suburban, and Buddhist. According to what is usually meant by intersectionality, one might expect them to have little in common. But they both love dogs; they’re both poets; and they’re both passionate gardeners, though the guy’s plants are all in pots on his balcony. How different are they?

Ethnicity, gender, religion – these are aspects of the self that help us feel part of groups larger than our immediate friends and family. These aspects are endlessly fascinating. They take up most of our public discussion. Yet they represent a fraction of what a person actually is. More of our couple’s thoughts and daily activities are likely to concern their dogs, their poems, and their plants than any of the supposedly more significant aspects of their identities.

Ethnicity, gender, and religion are stories we tell ourselves. These histories are important and yet, to a degree, imaginary. They help make individuals what we are. But how have they come to outweigh other aspects so much that we sort ourselves into such narrow categories?

This sorting is far from accidental. A very few people have accumulated most of the economic and political power on this planet. So long as Black and white, male and female, Hindu and Muslim, are convinced we are significantly different, we can’t get ourselves together to challenge that power. One only has to look at Trump, Xi, Putin, Modi, or any other authoritarian to see that they deliberately foment enmity among ordinary people.

Imaginary boundaries keep us fighting one another, instead of taking charge of the planet, which the current culture is ruining for everybody. Preventing ordinary people from organizing is a short-sighted strategy on the part of elites, since their grandchildren as well as ours will have to inhabit this poisoned planet. But the elites, being human, are not good at taking the long view.

The internet gives us new opportunities to take down the walls we have built. Rapid and radical climate change gives this project new urgency. Online, people can identify with other dog lovers, poets, or gardeners. One’s ethnicity, gender, and religion can begin to appear less relevant in these circles. Old associations give way to new. Meanwhile, racist, ethnic, and anti-LGBTQ violence reinforces the old boundaries. Hate crimes are committed by people who depend on those boundaries for their whole identities. The increasing violence points to the degree that such people feel threatened. Whenever there is peace, the old boundaries erode.

The Black Lives Matter movement drew in white as well as Black people, not just in the US but globally. The (nearly all peaceful) demonstrations centered on the suffering experienced by Black people for no reason except that their skin color put them on the wrong side of an imaginary wall. Earlier, the Occupy movement also spread around the world. Wealth is another imaginary wall that causes great suffering to people on the wrong side of it. In addition, the environmental movement and the #MeToo movement are global or in the process of becoming so. All these movements indicate that at least some people are beginning to see ourselves as human first, with every other aspect of ourselves being less significant than that primary, leveling, identity.

Every human is clearly a unique world unto themselves. Every human is also 99.9% exactly like every other human. If we focus only on the individual, we just see the actions of one person, subject to chance, a sort of Brownian motion, like the movements of a particular molecule. If we’re interested in the larger movements of our species, we have to consider that most obvious and invisible thing: our culture.

The paradox of being human is that the essence of our personality provides a through-line in our lives; we carry that essence with us, like a smell or a sound that only we can produce. Yet we change constantly. Every day brings us new experiences, and every experience changes us, becomes part of who we are, whether or not we think about it or remember it.

Imagine if we could see the connections between us. Every meeting would form a line. More meetings would make a stronger line. There would be lines between clerk and customer, police and criminal, writer and reader. Instead of a universe of separate points, we would see a dense network in which no point existed in isolation. The loneliest individual, after all, would not have survived infancy if someone had not fed them and wiped their bottom.

This dense network of connection, though impalpable, is who we are. This is the reality of our species. Like the individual, humanity has through-lines. The constant is human nature. The flux is culture, which never stays the same, one day to the next.

We can’t change human nature. We can, however, change culture. Everything we say or do changes the culture, as well as everything we buy, or boycott, everything we listen to, argue with, dismiss or support. In such small increments, the body of humanity moves. In what direction are we moving? Tiny cells in the body of our species, we can hardly tell. All any of us can do is move in any way we are able toward peace, sustainability, and justice. And hope.

Atheist’s Bible: Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen appear on the news every day: war, disease, famine, environmental catastrophe. Gee, who could have seen this coming? Whoever wrote the Book of Revelation two thousand years ago, for one. None of these things are exactly new in human experience. Since humanity decided to base our civilization on greed instead of compassion, this has been an easy prophecy to make.

The thing about prophecy is that it’s meant to scare people into changing our behavior. If it works, the direst predictions won’t come true. The prophecy makes the threat of extinction both vivid and immediate. We already know that our current path is not survivable. We just think we can keep going a little while longer, in spite of the evidence. Addicts need to “hit bottom” before they quit doing whatever is killing them. Has our society hit bottom yet?

Not the Neighborhood Watch

All our addictions – to drugs, to war, to fossil fuels, to accumulating stuff – stem from humanity’s central problem: how to keep from being ruled by the worst of us. The problem shows up in Putin’s aggression, Trump’s hatefulness, Big Oil’s continuing lies. The solution is not any single hero coming to save us. The solution is the best of us, working together.

Addicts endure going cold turkey through the love of friends and family, the encouragement of others in the same situation, and inner strength. The same things apply to all our addictions. If people can quit drinking, we can quit buying plastic junk. If one fragile, needy individual can stop smoking, this fragile, needy species can stop war.

Right now, the good guys are terribly disorganized. We’ve allowed ourselves to be separated by nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender identity. Even our do-gooder organizations are separated by the causes they support, as though peace and justice and environmental sustainability were not deeply interdependent.

National boundaries, financial wealth, and all the other barriers to our solidarity are products of human imagination. Apocalypse, on the other hand, is the furthest thing from imaginary. It will be the only reality if we remain divided behind those barriers instead of getting ourselves together.

Like it or not, this is our planet. It’s time we start owning it. Here’s another 2,000 year old prediction: the meek shall inherit the earth. If we do, it won’t be a moment too soon.

Atheist’s Bible: The Meek

I was raised Jewish. The New Testament was off limits. When I got old enough to question why, I read the books, and became – not a Christian – but a fan of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a radical poet, a superb teacher, a lyrical rabbi. His words, his stories, his metaphors, moved and delighted me in a way that rarely happened when I studied Jewish lore in the Talmud.

What was so dangerous in the teachings of this great rabbi that his work was forbidden to Jews? He taught that the most important thing was to be kind to one another, not to follow the rules. This threatened the fabric of Judaism, knitted from thousands of strands of legal arguments, meant to cover the actions of Jews at all times. If one could put aside these historic threads, one would be, in effect, naked in the world. One would be the agent of one’s own actions rather than limited by the prescriptions and prohibitions of generations of wise men.

If the meek are going to inherit the earth, we should get ourselves organized.

In a system, or an anti-system, like the one Jesus proposed, every individual would be a free actor. Such a person might or might not choose to remain in the community built for protection and survival over the centuries. The rabbis, those living encyclopedias of rules and regulations, would be no more and no less than any other people except as they demonstrated compassion towards others, non-Jews as well as Jews. All would be equal in the sight of God.

What Jesus represented was a threat to the powers that be. In his day, those were the Sanhedrin, the council of rabbis, as well as the occupying army of the Romans. In the centuries to come, they were the Church, and the priests who claimed its power for themselves, as well as nation-states. He taught that souls were equal, even the souls of small children, and of women. What glory they could claim belonged to themselves alone, for their acts of kindness, and not for their service to organized religion. To counter such egalitarianism, the Church turned the words of Jesus into mysteries that could only be safely plumbed by priests, intermediaries trained by the Church. Ordinary people could not be trusted with the Word.

Jesus trusted ordinary people. He could have remained among the rabbis, a precocious scholar, rising to be powerful and important among the established leaders of his faith. Instead he hung out with prostitutes, drinkers, and gamblers, not to mention fishermen. He believed in the meek, the gentle, the powerless. He threatened the idea of corporal power itself. If you knew that all you needed to satisfy the only true Power in the universe was compassion, you would be less likely to submit to those who rule through fear. You would be free.

Nobody who has risen through a hierarchy of power likes people to be free. What would happen if the masses of people, the lowly ones, the meek, began to see themselves as equal to those who rule them? Every person who has fought for and gained power in an organization would feel a disturbance, shall we say, in the force. The few who use force would have to recognize the overwhelming numbers of the gentle. Such a change in public consciousness would shake not only religions but nations.

The rabbis knew Jesus was a threat. All hierarchical organizations know that he remains a threat. He didn’t believe in top-down power. He tried to awaken power in the grassroots, from the bottom up. He believed in people; he exalted the meek. What he preached was neither obedience nor resistance, but solidarity, the most revolutionary concept in a world designed to keep the meek under the knee of the powerful.

My 50th Harvard Reunion

Harvard Square was empty this Commencement day, as it was last year. Except for the pandemic, it would have been mobbed with black-robed graduates and their beaming, picture-taking families. It would have been the 50th reunion of the Class of 1971.

Some of my classmates were involved in the takeover of the main administration building during the so-called Revolution in the spring of 1969. I was out of town that year, in a frontier kibbutz in Occupied Syria. The then-president of Harvard University called mine “the worst class ever.”

I’m not the worst member of the worst class, but I try. Every five years, at the major reunions, I make a fool of myself in some way. Our reunion committee used to schedule talent shows where any member of the class could sing or recite or play an instrument for five minutes.

At the 20th reunion, I read a poem about a new world forming suddenly, like crystals in a supersaturated solution. At the 30th reunion, in 2001, I read one about the meek, so nervous about it that I had to take my shoes off to be sure of my ground.

At the 35th, I harangued the audience about the Iraq War. At the 40th, I ran a slideshow called “Instead of Apocalypse.” By the 45th reunion, the committee decided those open-mike nights were too hard to manage. Instead, they offered an evening of entertainment by the famous artists and performers in our class. A good friend of mine ran off a few hundred stapled-together booklets of his artwork and my poems. We stood at the doors of the entertainment, handing them out. People took them thinking they were programs for the evening.

This year there were no events to take part in, or to crash. So I postered the Yard.

            Every life is big to the person living it.

The bulletin boards had just been cleared. There were many open places where I could tape up little slips of paper. I broke one poem into stanzas:

……………………………..

Love is not dead, not defeated, not damaged, not out of reach. Love has not been bought, sold, or stolen. Love is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of any corporation. The kingdom of loving is within you. Love is not something you fall into. Love is something you make and keep on making. Love is an act of will. Love is a way of life. Love is the opposite of greed. Love is not blind; lust is blind. Love sees truly. Love is the only path to our survival. Love is revolution.

Revolution cannot be violent. Revolution is change. Violence is just more of the same damn thing. There is no use fighting to save the world with violence. The rulers of this world have more weapons and fewer scruples than anyone else. Violence is their game. We cannot win that game. We must stop playing it. We must play a new game. Our strength lies in one another. Love is real change. Love is revolution.

The world is changing. Learn to travel light. When the water rises, all your stuff will not help you. The things you own will mean nothing any more. Your community will mean everything. Be ready for the change. Pay attention. Help where you can. We will survive by taking care of one another. Selfishness is suicide. Love is revolution.

When the old world ends, the new world begins. In the old world, money was power. In the new world, spirit is power. You choose to make the world better or worse with every act. This is your power. Race, nationality, class, gender, physical appearance – these matter in the old world, not in the new. The most important things in the new world are the quality of your awareness and the strength of your relationships. The old world ran on greed. The new world runs on human connection. Love is revolution.

……………………………..

I said hello to a few old friends: the guard at the gatehouse, the head of Yard security, an eloquent and clear-minded homeless man. Otherwise I was confident no one would want to look at me. I’m a short, plain old woman with a peace sign on my hat.

I’m invisible. I have trouble talking. But I can still speak my mind, and I hope you will speak yours.

How many lives do you think you have? Is this not your planet?

After Trump

When America defeated Trump, the whole world danced in the streets. We have faced fresh horror every day for four nightmarish years. All we got from the leader of the free world was lies, contempt, indifference to suffering, incitement to violence, and a quick descent into fascism. That’s almost over. Even though the plague Trump ignored rages more fiercely than ever, Americans deserve to celebrate for bringing him down.

So now what? Two more months of Trump doing as much harm as he can. Local stop-gap measures until national leadership can bring the virus to heel. Coming up on January 5th, there will be a crucial run-off election for two Georgia Senate seats. If Democrats lose even one of those seats, Senate leader Mitch McConnell will continue to block any help for increasingly desperate Americans and small businesses. McConnell could stop Biden from accomplishing much of anything at all.

But what has already changed is the mood. Trump made people despair. Now we feel like humanity might yet manage to survive. We know, however, that can only happen if we change the way we live, fast. Masks, distancing, and temporary shut-downs are part of our new way of life, maybe for a couple more years. The more basic change involves American consumerism.

The same capitalist system that produced Trump as its avatar has convinced us that we need new stuff all the time. That stuff requires energy to make and distribute. Burning fossil fuels to get that energy is broiling the whole planet on our watch. No alternate energy system can keep up with us if we don’t stop consuming at our present rate.

The current global economy assumes infinite growth, which is not health; it is cancer. Greed isn’t going anywhere. But basing our whole civilization on greed is killing us. We need to turn toward sharing instead of accumulating, toward healing instead of destroying, toward compassion instead of selfishness, toward making do with what we have instead of making more.

Such a turn depends on a change in our culture that no government can bring about by itself. Culture is formed by a billion choices made by individuals: what we watch, what we say, and what we buy. Already social media make clear that our attention – which can focus on only one thing at a time – is our most valuable asset. Let’s use this time of new hope to focus on things that nourish and heal us. Let’s make kindness fashionable.

Change isn’t up to Biden. It’s up to us.

The uses of despair

I wouldn’t trust anyone who has not despaired. How is it possible to look at the world we have made and still believe humanity can, or should, survive? If you have never felt hopeless, as they say, you haven’t been paying enough attention.

That despair is where our true hope begins. Being human means learning and changing, every day. When we face what our civilization has done to our beautiful world, what terrible things people have done to other people, and how little our governments have done to stop all this harm, that knowledge changes us. We can give up and withdraw to our own lives and pleasures. Or we can turn sorrow into outrage, and fight.

The situation is dire. Consumer culture is based on the assumption that earth’s resources are infinite, and we can keep mining them forever to make more stuff. Now that we know this assumption is wrong, and that our greed has poisoned the earth, the air, and the water to a degree that threatens human survival, what can we do about it?

The key to our survival is non-violent revolution. Revolution is change. Violence is only more of the same damn thing. Real revolution is what we see in the Black Lives Matter movement in streets around the world: the peaceful insistence that human life means more than money or power. This belief can change everything.

In the USA, we face almost seven more months of Trump in the best of circumstances. He will do as much harm as he can in that time. COVID-19 will kill hundreds of thousands because of his carelessness, depriving us of the wisdom of our elders when we need it more than ever. He will continue to whip up hatred and fear. He will destroy the environment to make his rich friends richer. So we must continue to fight, until the election and then far beyond it.

Despair stops being useful when it makes us stop trying. Take a break. Listen to music. Walk by a river. Talk with a friend. Then get back to work, because, my friends, we have an awful lot of work to do. We have to reboot human civilization. We’ve based it on selfishness. Now we need to base it on caring. The turn begins in each of our troubled, doubting, loving hearts.

Rainbow Shards

Helene Williams sings; Leonard Lehrman pianist & composer

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I want to see the rainbow shards of shattered dreams reform

the crystal mend itself and be reborn

new patterns from our minds take hold

and mold the world a new way

as we do every day

before we fade away

and let the next lot have a chance

I want an election that will make me dance

Downsizing Blues

In the industrial deli
I’ll have the CD on rye
Well I was running the rat race
But I’ve been disqualified
So give me an order of data to go
I’ll eat it by the TV while I’m watching the snow

At the industrial deli
We wear the company hat
I’ll have the white collar special
Do I get fries with that?
There’s a crowd in my coffee, a bug in my tea,
Every time I turn around they try to automate me

I’ll have to do some moonlighting
to beat the downsizing blues
You’ll see me doing my new job
in my high heeled shoes
I know what to do with a working stiff
I’ll be a boy’s best friend on the midnight shift

Cruel Way to Run the World

If your family needs you, you will pull the plow
You’ll do anything for your children
You’ll become a slave in the rich man’s house
In the hope you’ll be able to save them

So you keep on going, working all the time,
Always on the edge of exhaustion,
Never finding time for your own life
Knowing you’re going to need some

It’s a cruel, cruel way to run the world

They don’t care how many people they use —
the Trumpers and the Koch brothers —
They keep us tired and they keep us confused
Blaming what’s wrong on each other

Aren’t you tired of just standing around
Waiting for something to change
We better decide to get serious now
We have our whole world to rearrange

Cause it’s a cruel cruel way to run the world

Eight Bucks an Hour

Eight bucks an hour is plenty of pay
as long as you don’t need to eat every day.
Frisco, Los Angeles, New York too,
take your whole paycheck when the rent is due.
Many generations have fought for the right
to work eight hours and go home at night.
They fought for a paycheck to cover the nut,
food, shelter, healthcare, the basics, but
in spite of all of those battles won
it seems like the struggle has just begun.
“You’re waging class warfare!” the right’s accusing.
Well the war has been raging. And guess who’s losing!
The poor have to scramble after every dime.
Revolution? Who’s got the time?

Communism popped like a big soap bubble.
It’s capitalism that now is in trouble,
rotting inside like a moldy pear,
’cause the way that it works is so far from fair.
Money makes money, penny makes penny,
You’re out of luck if you don’t have any.
When you work all the time and you still can’t save,
you’re not a free person, you’re a virtual slave,
nose to the grindstone, you never get ahead,
work every day til you wake up dead.

The whole world over, workers have to fight,
’cause a living wage is a human right.
All over the world, change is way overdue:
Too many suffer for the good of the few.
A living wage for every person would sure
Help to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

But of violent revolution I never would sing
‘cause war is just more of the same damn thing.
We need a big change, but the change must start
in the loving kindness of the human heart.
Set a course toward justice and hold it steady.
Too many people have been hurt already.
If we can make a world where everybody’s fed,
everyone’s got a place to lay their head,
if we can make a world where we care for each other,
student for janitor, sister for brother,
maybe we can stop all this waste and war,
and keep from dying out like the dinosaur.
This species is heading for some heavy weather.
We’re only gonna make it if we stick together.

If Icarus Did Not Fall

Imagine Icarus in reverse: instead of an innocent horse
scratching its behind against a tree
while the hero flies too high
and goes down in flames into the sea

What if Icarus succeeds in his flight
and as he coasts to triumph,
behind him the farmer’s barn is burning

So Elon Musk is playing with space flight
using the money he took from the rest of us,
at this time when we the people
need every resource if we are to survive…

Such contempt for our little lives!