I find the discussion around Sanders fascinating – a microcosm of tensions involving race, class, gender, and age.
And while supporters of the protesters claim victory in Sander’s release of a statement on racial justice and detractors of the protesters point to Sanders’ long history organizing with SNCC and marching with Dr. Martin Luther King – all I can think is that black people will continue to die unless we can find some way to put an end to it. To radically reshape our society.
All I can think about is Christian Taylor, the 19-year-old football player who was shot and killed by a police trainee Friday morning.
The nerdy activist in me would love to have long debates about what strategies and tactics are most appropriate and effective, but at the same time…I hardly care. I just want to live in a world where black people aren’t dying at a disproportional rate.
And honestly, I don’t know how to get there.
It’s a fine academic exercise to study and evaluate the action, but as an ally in the movement towards racial justice – my role is to support not to evaluate.
It’s not my life on the line. It’s not my heart and soul that’s at risk. Who am I to tell a person of color what they should settle for?
With disruptive actions more common, there are some good questions being raised about bringing people into a movement versus potentially alienating them.
These are good questions, but – at least within the realm of racial justice – I’m not sure they are my questions to answer.
Activists of color are debating these questions as well. They are, and should be, the leaders of this work – it is their right to choose what strategies and tactics to employ. As an ally, I then have a simple choice – I can choose to support them or not.
There may be times when I’m welcomed to provide constructive criticism or strategic feedback, as a partner working towards the same goal. If not, that’s okay – there are other times in my life when my voice can be heard.
Because after all, really, this is not about me and its not about my agency.
It’s about black people dying and about black voices being oppressed.
And its about working together to change that, in the best ways we know how.
Good afternoon, friends in Civics. I have been asked by our own colleagues Dr. Elizabeth Washington and Dr. Michael Berson to share the following conference opportunity with you. The Social Science Education Consortium is sponsoring an international conference in Berlin, and it may be an opportunity for you next summer to get some rather amazing content-oriented professional development. For more information, please see the notice below and/or contact Judi Moss, SSEC administrative assistant, via e-mail at anextrahand1@comcast.net.
I’ll write more about this soon. I’m still processing what we saw there. It was harshly jarring for my sense of what human beings are capable of doing – not one or a few troubling individuals, but a coordinated secret police force. Truly sobering. The experience was visceral.
The gate door to the camp reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which translates as “Works makes one free,” or “work makes you free.” The message was a horrible lie, as were the fake shower heads in the gas chamber there. More on that in a follow-up post.
Learning about the camp is not for a weak stomach. I’m still processing. I think I need to return to my Viktor Frankl and Elie Wiesel books.
With all I’ve known about the camps, I nevertheless experienced a shaking feeling of deep sadness that came from actually being there. At the same time, this is an experience extremely worthwhile, which should never be forgotten or whitewashed. People need to see it and to remember.
It is easy today to find examples of things that are simply marvels of human invention and brilliance. The everyday cellphone today is a pretty amazing instrument, considering all that one can do. This past week, I had a chance to see an exhibit of replicas of the items that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
What I find remarkable are the incredible effort, skill, and resources that were put into respecting Tutankhamun. At so early a period in history, people gathered and used a simply massive quantity of gold, masterfully designed and adorned, to pay homage to a ruler who died quite young, Tutankhamun. Tut’s tomb featured countless treasures (ok, there were a little over 700), besides the multiple nested shrines, each of which protected yet another shrine of gold-leaf covered wood. Ultimately, inside the larger gold-covered shrines there was an incredible whole piece of carved alabaster, which contained several solid gold nested sarcophagi.
When I try to imagine the skill of the craftsmen of Tut’s day, I marvel already at what people were able to do so many thousands of years ago. There are periods in human history when people were capable of simply amazing feats. The entombment of Tutankhamun is a great example of what people were capable of doing back when tools were at their most limited in recorded history.
On the one hand, the objects and artworks surrounding Tut are enormously enjoyable to look at and think about, given their beauty and the craftsmanship that had to go into them. For instance, it was amazing to see in the furniture included in Tut’s tomb some dovetail joints, that are still woodworking methods that we use today.
On the other hand, when you think about historical artworks, it is important to remember how many people died in their creation. Or, how people were taxed enormously without any kind of representative government, so that the people in power could fund wars, monuments, and solid-gold sarcophagi. It is hard to imagine such times — even if England does still have a queen.
Thousands of years ago, people were capable of creating outstandingly beautiful golden artworks, paying respect to a deceased ruler. It is hard not to marvel at what human beings were capable of accomplishing, even so long ago and with such modest, early tools.
In many ways, I am a fierce partisan. Loyally Democratic, though the mainstream of the party is too moderate for me.
In a Republican vs. Democrat show down, I want to win.
Quite honestly, I’d probably be willing to over look many of a candidate’s questionable actions if it meant putting a Democrat in office over a Republican. If this was the 7th season of West Wing and Alan Alda’s Republican was running against a terrible, not-Jimmy-Smits Democrat…I’d probably still vote Democrat.
The partisan in me likes to see terrible Republican candidates. I was scared of McCain when he was moderate, but breathed a sigh of relief as he ran to the right.
The partisan in me would like to see Sarah Palin run for president. She still has some appeal, no doubt, but her inability read a newspaper and her tenuous grasp on international relations could only serve to fracture the Republican party more.
There’d be a certain morbid delight in that.
Or at least it seems that way in theory.
What I’ve discovered in this election cycle, though, is that when there’s a big, hulking, troll in the room, sucking up all the air time with his bombastic personality and offensive comments – I genuinely feel bad for the Republican Party.
Last night’s Republican debate – the prime-time one, mind you, not the “happy hour” one – shattered viewership records, averaging 24 million viewers and claiming the spot of most-watched non-sports show ever on cable TV.
And all the news coverage today is about the troll who took center of the stage. Everyone is discussing whether his antics gained him favorability or whether his post-debate move to attack Megyn Kelly will ultimately backfire.
In some ways I should be delighted. I can hardly imagine him winning a general and his efforts to get there – especially if he launches an independent bid – will only hurt the Republican party.
But instead, I’m just tired. I don’t want to hear about him any more. I don’t care what racist or sexist thing he said. I don’t care about his backwards views on the issues.
I don’t want to hear from him any more.
I want to hear from some sane conservatives. I want to hear from people whose ideas and experience differ from my own, but who have come to their conclusions through rational thought.
I want to see two parties who can truly balance each other – who can have spirited disagreements which force both sides to improve.
I want to see Republican candidates I can respect and who I can imagine respecting me.
I want an Alan Alda Republican.
…And then, I want to vote for a Jimmy Smits Democrat.
Those of our members with conflict resolution backgrounds or interests should definitely take a look at the new Senior Mediator/Facilitator and Lead Mediator openings that the Center for Collaborative Policy at Sacramento State University recently announced. We’re happy to have the CCP as an NCDD organizational member, and we know that many of our members would make great fits for this position.
Here’s how the CCP describes the Senior Mediator/Facilitator position:
The Senior Mediator/Facilitator serves as senior professional and project manager for multi-party policy consensus building processes dealing with highly complex and controversial public policy issues, using an interest-based approach to problem solving…
The Senior Mediator/Facilitator responsibility includes experience in facilitation, conflict resolution, situation assessments, collaborative process design, public involvement, and strategic planning. The incumbent works independently on large projects, with up to 80 or more external stakeholders. The incumbent also provides project management for client projects including providing work direction to others; contract administration; and quality deliverables on time and within budget.
You can find more information on the Senior Mediator/Facilitator position and the application process by visiting the SSU job site and searching for job opening #101390.
And here is how the CCP describes the Lead Mediator position:
With appropriate oversight, the Lead Mediator/Facilitator serves as lead professional for multi-party consensus building processes dealing with complex and controversial public policy issues, using an interest-based approach to problem solving. This responsibility includes the provision of collaborative process design and situation assessment services as well as the preparation and delivery of facilitation, public involvement, and strategic planning services. The incumbent works independently on large projects, with up to 80 or more external stakeholders. The incumbent also provides project management for client projects. The incumbent coordinates the project work of the Center’s Associate and Assistant practitioners.
The Lead Mediator/Facilitator assumes Center development responsibilities, including assisting with attracting client work to the Center and preparing responses to Request for Proposal (RFP) solicitations, but is not responsible for securing billable work. Coordinates the professional development activities for Associate and Assistant practitioners and other internal development tasks.
You can find more information on the Lead Mediator position and the application process by visiting the SSU job site and searching for job opening #101409.
A few weeks ago I was outside enjoying the summer weather when a man came up asking for spare change. I, like others in the area, politely expressed regrets. He moved on.
Once he was gone, the woman next to me, who had been actively ignoring the whole situation, took out her earbuds and leaned over to me. You know, I’m not really listening to anything. I just put these in so I wouldn’t have to talk to him. You should do it!
I was a little taken aback.
Now, to be perfectly fair, I know plenty of women who listen to music or put in head phones to avoid the constant harassment they face while simply trying to walk down the street. And there are certainly times when – even in a crowd – one might want to avoid social interaction.
But this woman had no problem talking to me – she just wanted to avoid talking to a possibly homeless man.
And she was proud of it.
The man wasn’t causing problems. He wasn’t harassing at all. He was just asking for change.
One might prefer to give money to great organizations like the Somerville Homeless Coalition, or support those in need by buying the Spare Change newspaper, but regardless of whether you might give the person change or not –
He was still a person.
It took two seconds out of my day to acknowledged his existence and tell him I couldn’t help. It was honestly the least I could do.
The least one person ought to do for another person.
Good news! The Civics Renewal Network is sponsoring the Preamble Challenge again this year, and it is a great opportunity to show this state, this great nation, and the world what your kids know about one of the most important collection of words in the history of government.
In 2014, nearly 900 schools from around the country joined us in taking the Preamble Challenge to celebrate Constitution Day. Sign up your class or school here for Constitution Day 2015 (map below), and we’ll give you everything you need to host your own Preamble activity with our free Preamble Challenge Teacher Toolkit! This toolkit contains step-by-step instructions on how to put together your own Preamble Challenge at your school, library or community to celebrate Constitution Day, September 17! It provides activities, lessons and other ways to share the great work of your students and be part of this national celebration!
This is a great way to engage your kids with the Constitution and to show folks that yes, we DO do civics!!!! We ARE teaching these kids what it means to be a citizen!.
(This was written in Lviv, but posted in Cambridge, MA).
We all receive moral and political inheritances. Although the stories of our ancestors are not equally attractive, we all have exactly the same responsibility: to recognize our whole birthright, to address the shameful parts, and to use the best aspects of our histories to improve the human condition. I observe influential Ukrainians doing that very well right now, while the leaders and dominant voices in Russia do it very badly. And that is why I believe it is essential that Ukraine prevails.
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.
Note: the immigration clerk does not show a picture of the would-be entrant, but rather of her or his grandfather. The photo symbolizes the past that we each must carry–both for good and ill. We cannot shed that inheritance without also renouncing all the other ways that our past has shaped us, including even the language with which we think.
The past also gives each of us gifts, and conscience demands that we offer them to humanity:
The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.
It is tempting for an outsider to evaluate the inheritance of a given people and to draw comparative moral judgments about them as a whole group. Canadians born a few miles north of the US border are dealt a hand without the cards for slavery and genocidal settlement that I carry because I was born not far south of that same border. In that sense, at least, the Canadian inheritance is better.
I am not a relativist; I would insist that some political histories and cultures are superior to others. But there are two reasons not to focus on comparative judgments of this kind. If the inheritance of a people is largely evil (which I would not say of the US, by the way), it is too easy to ignore that people’s potential for doing good in the future. And if their inheritance happens to be largely innocent, it is naïve to assume that they will continue to act well once they obtain power.
2.
I have been visiting a country at war. To the east are people who call themselves “Russians.” They carry a thick book of history. One way to make sense of it is to say that the story began in the late 800s in Kiev. That does not imply that Kiev rightly belongs to Moscow today (the reverse would actually be more logical), but some Russian nationalists have drawn that inference. In any case, what followed after Kievan Rus has been–in this version–a long story of patriotism, suffering, military valor, victory under strong rulers, defense of Orthodoxy and other orthodoxies, and resistance to the decadence of the west and south. This is Putin’s way of playing the mixed deck that history handed him.
But it is not the only way. One could tell a story in which the diverse peoples who live within Russia are constantly being oppressed by bloodthirsty rulers from the capital, yet they show a special gift for turning their suffering into witness, resistance, and empathy. Then the best cards in the hand show Decembrists, Turgenev and Pushkin, and Akhmatova and Sakharov, and the worst show Stalin or the Tsars.
Ukrainians have also been dealt a vast and varied deck. One would have to give a different list for any Ukrainian city, but Lviv has been part of at least the Halych-Volyn Principality, the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburg, Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empire, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Republic of Poland, the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Republic of Ukraine. Lviv can count among its famous citizens the Polish saint Józef Bilczewski, the German-Jewish-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber, the Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises, the Ukrainian national poet Ivan Franko, and Muhammad Assad, born Leopold Weiss, who translated the Koran into English and played a role in the founding of Pakistan.
A modern Ukrainian can play these and many more inherited cards in many ways—and can even decide whether or not to identify as a Ukrainian in the first place.
One important and influential group of modern Ukrainians views their inheritance thus: They are a pluralistic people, drawing from many roots. All of the residents of Lviv named above are part of the Ukrainian story. Ukrainians of all backgrounds have flourished best under governments that have been explicitly pluralistic, even when the center of gravity has lain far away, in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth or in Austria. That is one reason the European Union seems so attractive to Ukrainian protesters that some carried the EU flag into fatal conflicts with the police.
They also have a tradition of republican self-government that began in Kievan Rus, when the people held assemblies called vechesto elect their leaders. The tradition reemerged in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, the Cossack states, the late Austrian empire (when there was a Galician parliament in Lviv) and the two Maidan uprisings, when the impromptu meetings were again called veches.
Yes, some Ukrainians were complicit or even aggressively active in pogroms, slave raids, oppressions of serfs, the Shoah, and communist atrocities; but these are inheritances that the modern republic can explicitly acknowledge and mourn.
Meanwhile, I do not currently observe an influential movement of the same type in Russia, one that tries to make the liberal, pluralistic, and humane traditions of that country central while treating militaristic machismo as a threat to the Russian people and peace. A fine article by Karine Clément gives some insight into brave Russian organizers who are creating valuable spaces for democratic engagement; but the date of that article is 2008, and the subsequent seven years have been hard ones.
3.
The reason that liberals are influential in Ukraine and vanishingly marginal in Russia is not that Ukrainians are superior to Russians. No people is superior, and in any case, the differences in their current situations can probably be traced to local and recent contingencies, such as the greater efficiency of the Russian security and media agencies and the flood of petrodollars that fund them. But the fact remains that Ukrainians who are cosmopolitan, liberal, and republican hold considerable power in their country, and there is nothing similar right now in Russia.
It is a deep disappointment that, seven decades after the Second World War, so much of the world is dominated by regimes that are militaristic, authoritarian, and nationalist, devoted to the cult of the strong (male) leader, and content to combine kleptocratic crony capitalism with state repression. One could mention Xi Jinping, Nerendra Modi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many more along with Putin–and American voters are not immune to similar attractions. But Ukraine is a place where civil society has confronted the authoritarian wave and now has a chance to prevail.
And that is why I stand with the Ukrainian people and believe that their country is a front line in our era’s struggle for democracy and human rights.
but posted in Cambridge, MA).