part of buffalo is shut down by protests and consequent arrests. we need more of this. #closethecamps
‘The coalition behind the protest includes members of the Buffalo chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Justice for Migrant Families WNY, and the New York Immigration Coalition. Families, including children, attended the event, which is linked to protests going on across the country. Organizers were also in touch and coordinating with Never Again Action, a Jewish organization responsible for carrying out protests and direct action in multiple states. More here.
John Washington: The risk isn’t happenstance: US Border Patrol policy intentionally pushes migrants into crossing in regions where they are more likely to suffer and die. An analogous policy in the interior of the country would be rerouting a sidewalk to force pedestrians to hazard straight across a busy highway, and chasing them with armed helicopters as they do so.
The agent, after scanning the hills, looking up and back down the trail, squatted to inspect the cache. The water bottles had hearts drawn on them, as well as uplifting messages written in Spanish: Agua Pura, ¡Ánimo! ¡Que Vayan con Suerte! He shifted his rifle and awkwardly readjusted his squat. Then he took out his knife and began lining up the water bottles. One by one, he stabbed them, sticking in his knife and then pulling it back out along with a little gulp of water. He stabbed all eight bottles. The water bled out, soaking the dirt.
When you die of dehydration or heat stroke—the most common causes of death among border crossers in southern Arizona—you go insane. Lack of water in your body leads to hypovolemia, insufficient blood in your circulatory system, which dries out your brain. Your skin begins to shrivel, and your body redirects blood away from non-vital organs. Then—without your kidneys working as a filter—your own blood begins to poison you. Without enough water to sweat, your entire body becomes feverish; by then your brain is not only drying out, it is cooking. Severe exertional heat illness—because, somehow, you’re still walking north—leads to vomiting, dizziness, disorientation, and the breakdown of the heart muscle. The pain is slow, complete. Your tongue begins to whiten and swell, and you strip off your clothes, stumble through the thorns and shin daggers, until, finally, you prostrate yourself to the blaze of the sun. In the desert, the chain of causation is short—a day without water, then your corpse is torn apart by animal scavengers. The bottles of water that agent was stabbing may just as well have been the border crossers’ necks. More here.
toni morrison: the language has to be quiet; it has to engage your participation. i never describe characters very much. my writing expects, demands participatory reading… my language has to have holes and spaces so the reader can come into it.
Remember Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour who was convicted by an Israeli court for using the word ‘resist’ in a poem? ICE arrested José Bello less than 36 hours after he recited this poem criticizing the immigration system. Connect the dots and #FreeJoseBello.
Steven Salaita: My loyalty will never accommodate a flag, country, monument, law, luminary, conqueror, tycoon, legislator, myth, party, corporation, military, king, queen, prince, celebrity, or politician. I pledge allegiance to people everywhere in the world who are unloved by power.
Pina Bausch: Il y a aussi des moments où les mots nous manquent, […] Alors commence la danse.
J’ai simplement osé aller… là où je ne connaissais pas le résultat.
[…] Les choses les plus belles sont dans la plupart des cas entièrement cachées. C’est pourquoi j’aime travailler avec des danseurs qui ont une certaine timidité, de la pudeur, et qui ne s’exposent pas facilement. […] La pudeur garantit que si quelqu’un montre quelque chose de très petit, cela est vraiment quelque chose de spécial et qu’on le perçoive comme tel.
[…] Il ne s’agit pas d’un art, ni même d’un simple savoir-faire. Il s’agit de la vie, et donc de trouver une langage pour la vie. More here.
–linda’s comment about how jewish white privilege is tenuous, ephemeral, and at risk of being revoked. therefore the radical left is where the jewish community has a permanent home, rather than white nationalism, christian evangelicalism or even imperial liberalism of the sort embraced by hillary clinton and her ilk.
–linda pointing out how out of all the speakers on that stage, it was marc lamont hill who was heckled constantly, the only black man to speak. she didn’t belabor the point but it illustrates, oh so beautifully, how zionism is racism.
–marc lamont hill urging people to use the words ‘settler colonialism’ to describe zionism and the ethnic cleansing and occupation of palestine. i’ve always used those words because they clarify. ‘conflict’ is an obscene obfuscation.
–dave zirin unpacking the idea of ‘self-hating jew’ by defining it as becoming ‘what we once opposed and mimicking our oppressors from decades past.’ he chooses to walk with ilhan omar rather than benjamin netanyahu.
my jewish compadres from jewish voice for peace, see all of this – the overlap between anti-semitism, islamophobia and anti-black racism – and how we cannot survive unless we band together.
i recently helped organize such a community discussion at the islamic center and got emails from liberal jews engaged in anti-racism work as well as the jewish federation, calling me to task for allowing two activists from JVP to participate because they are a small minority and do not represent the broader jewish community. i disagree. the impulse to censor and shut down is proof that this is exactly where the jewish community is headed and so those are the voices we need to hear most.
Ilhan Omar: In 2016, Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered by US-trained Honduran special forces. The next year, I had the honor of meeting her daughter, Bertha. Today marks 10 years since the coup in Honduras. We in the US must stop funding its brutality.
@TheHipsterRebbe: If you support Warren over Sanders, that’s fine. If you are also an advocate of a reduced military (demilitarization/anti imperialism/etc) in some form and also pro-Palestinian rights, you’re going to have to square that circle in some way.
From ‘The Best Argument for Bernie Sanders Is His Democratic Globalism’ by Eric Levitz:
Warren’s background as a Republican-voting technocrat hasn’t stopped her from mobilizing populist anger at creeping plutocracy. But it did prevent her from assembling a decades-long record of decrying American imperialism, and defending left-wing governments the world over. Sanders’s socialist background, on the other hand, led him to do precisely this. And while that record of international leftist solidarity could be a liability with the American electorate, it’s a singular asset within the global left — and in an era when the survival of decent civilization likely depends on building a powerful, transnational left-wing movement, that is no small asset.
Sanders does not owe this international reverence solely to his advocacy for the global left as a young (or, more precisely, less old) activist. The Vermonter may have been conspicuously reluctant to discuss foreign policy in 2016. But this time around, he’s offered a clearer vision for what a progressive geopolitical agenda should look like than any of his competitors. With the help of his foreign-policy adviser, the one-time left-wing foreign affairs blogger Matt Duss, Sanders has woven the Trump-Russia scandal — and the president’s broader affinity for foreign dictators — into a tale about the global struggle between the forces of democracy and the “authoritarian axis.” Plutocrats the world over are using their wealth — and the retrograde politics of right-wing nationalism — to insulate their privilege from the threat of genuine democracy, no matter the dire consequences for the poor, vulnerable minority groups, or even the planet’s survival. Elizabeth Warren has struck similar notes in her public remarks on foreign policy. But Sanders has matched his lofty rhetoric with boldly progressive stances on concrete geopolitical issues to a degree that Warren has not. Sanders has established himself as the Senate’s most passionate defender of Palestinian rights (admittedly, a title somewhat akin to “the world’s largest chihuahua”), led the opposition to U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen (and has called for a broader rethinking of the U.S.-Saudi alliance), voted against increasing the Pentagon’s budget (Warren voted for it), and announced the formation of a “Progressive International” with radical Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis.
To be sure, Sanders’s foreign policy vision is still inchoate. On the critical questions of how the U.S. should navigate its relationship with a rising China, how it should seek to reorganize global trade and investment in a progressive direction, how it should balance its domestic interests with its obligations to developing countries — and, above all, how it should deploy its economic and diplomatic power to combat climate change — the senator has offered few details. And the utter lack of a left-wing foreign-policy infrastructure in the U.S. could make ironing out such details a difficult (and potentially, ideologically compromising) process.
Nevertheless, through his actions in the Senate and his alliance-building abroad, Sanders has established his commitment to viewing progressive change through an international lens, and his interest in using the powers of the presidency to advance such change on the global level. For the moment, Warren has not. And considering that the next Democratic president will have far more unilateral authority over foreign affairs than domestic policy, this is no minor distinction.
Ultimately, Sanders’s substantive advantage on foreign policy may be less important than his decisive edge in the crasser matter of fundraising. Right now, there is one populist Democratic candidate who has the financial means to sustain an extended campaign, and it is not the senator from Massachusetts. But when and if Warren grows the ranks of her small-dollar army (and/or beats back the “electability” concerns that are suppressing her support), her next priority should be to direct her technocratic talents to the global sphere. It’s fine and good to amass a large pile of bold, imaginative legislative proposals that the next Democratic president will never be able to pass. But it would also be productive for Warren to put together a foreign-policy agenda that her administration wouldn’t need Joe Manchin’s permission to pursue. Bernie Sanders may be the race’s only democratic socialist — but he doesn’t have to be its only democratic globalist.
