Sunday, October 28, 2018

They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.

On Saturday, October 27th a gunman, who expressed a hatred of Jews, entered a Pittsburgh synagogue killing 11 people and wounding six.

The shooter was angry because he thought Jewish communities were funding a caravan of terrorists trying to infiltrate the United States.

From this article in the Atlantic... Trump's Caravan Hysteria Led To This
The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread, and that his followers chose to amplify. 
As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, those who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of anti-Semitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.  


From the Open Culture post that accompanies this video...

In the short New York Times opinion video above, Stanley summarizes his “formula for fascism”—a “surprisingly simple” pattern now repeating in Europe, South America, India, Myanmar, Turkey, the Philippines, and “right here in the United States.”


And as a reminder that we've been here before:
In 1939, some 20,000 Americans attended a Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, New York. In the video clip, Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German-American Bund (the US wing of the Nazi party), attacks the media and minorities... Link to Video

From the Politico article, When Nazis Filled Madison Square Garden:
Those who have studied the Bund’s rise and fall are alarmed at the historical parallels. “When a large group of young men march through the streets of Charlottesville chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us,’ it’s only steps removed from chanting ‘death to the Jews’ in New York or anywhere else in the 1930s,” says David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. “When those young men chant ‘blood and soil,’ it conveys the same meaning as those decades before who chanted ‘blut and boden,’ referring to the Nazi glorification of and link between race and land.” 
“I don’t see much of a difference, quite frankly, between the Bund and these groups, in their public presence,” says Arnie Bernstein, the author of Swastika Nation, a history of the German American Bund. “The Bund had its storefronts in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles—today’s groups are also hanging out in the public space, but in this case, they’re on the internet and anyone can access their ‘storefronts,’ or websites, and their philosophy, if you can call it that, is essentially the same.”

And today Madeleine Albright tweeted:

Which gave me the idea...


Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, Boise




Friday, October 5, 2018

#BlackFridays




Glennon Doyle has started RAGE TO CHANGE: #BlackFridays. Be sure to read her blog post and the Instagram post that preceded it.

It is a wonderful idea to turn RAGE into something positive and actionable.

After reading How To Be Less Stupid About Race by Crystal M Fleming, that question for fighting any kind of oppression "What do I do now?" was answered with:
"The answer is going to vary for each individual, depending on your personality and background, interests, talents, and inclinations. So, it’s your job to figure out how you can best leverage your knowledge and skills to help humanity."

My action today... I started with some VOTE pins and Black paper hearts:




... and used my talents, interests, and inclinations to make:











Join #BlackFridays HERE.
View a #BlackFridays Action Toolkit HERE.
Host an event HERE.




Also, listen to today's Call Your Girlfriend podcast entitled Women's Anger with Rebecca Traister. Rebecca Traister's new book, Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger is on sale now. 

The final tally from today's cloture vote on Bret Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination was 51-49. The final vote may come as early as Saturday. For smart thoughts and links on Kavanaugh, turn to Rebecca Traister, Irin Carmon, Jenée Desmond Harris, Laura McGann, Brittany Packnett


On Fridays we wear black!
Happy #BlackFridays



Tuesday, October 2, 2018

skills to help humanity


I am reading How To Be Less Stupid About Race by Crystal M. Fleming. I heard Dr. Fleming (@alwaystheself) interviewed and thought that this sounded like a great book on getting to the heart of racism in America. How To Be Less Stupid About Race definitely delivers on its title by inspiring critical thinking and in-depth reflection on past, present, and future effects of systemic racism and white supremacy.

Read a portion of the introduction HERE.



The book begins with a guide to Critical Race Theory, then applies that theory to today. It's a hard look at systemic racism in our institutions... especially: education, politics, media, and pop culture (I'm talking to you, ye).



By chapter seven, Becoming Racially Literate, Dr. Fleming writes:
If you've made it this far in the book, then you've faced a lot of uncomfortable truths, and I want to thank you for taking this journey with me. I know from personal experience that studying oppression and confronting racial stupidity can be terribly demoralizing.
I appreciated the recognition that this is hard, but we can do hard things. The “What exactly should I do now?” question in chapter seven acknowledges that there is no one answer: 
The answer is going to vary for each individual, depending on your personality and background, interests, talents, and inclinations. So, it’s your job to figure out how you can best leverage your knowledge and skills to help humanity.

Read this book if you are interested in preventing racism and fighting oppression.

Listen to Dr. Crystal M. Fleming discuss her book...