Jakelin Caal Maquin

I am quite certain that Kirstjen Nielsen doesn't know Neri Caal personally. That didn't stop her from blaming the 29-year old dad for the death of his daughter, Jakelin Caal Maquin. Jakelin is the 7-year old who died of dehydration and toxic shock while in the custody of the Border Patrol in southern New Mexico. Nielsen is the Secretary of Homeland Security.

I don't know Neri Caal either. I don't know what made him undertake the dangerous trip from his home in Raxruhá, Guatemala with his little girl. I do know some things, though.

I know that Neri Caal didn't want to leave his home, that he considered it a necessity.

I know that the Q'eqchi' Maya of Raxruhá have been victims of corporate and state violence for decades. I know that a Hydro Santa Rita employee shot 11-year old David Pacay Maaz and 13-year old Isaac Guitz Maaz to death a few years ago because of local protests against the dam project. I know that Hydro Santa Rita was a scheme by Dutch bankers to cash in on EU carbon credits without consulting with anybody in the community.

I know that when Congress tripled the budget for border enforcement, President Bill Clinton instituted the policy of concentrating resources on the areas around San Diego, El Paso, and the lower Rio Grande, funneling border crossers into the most dangerous deserts and mountains like those around Antelope Wells where Neri Caal and his daughter Jakelin crossed.

I know that Border Patrol agents consider it "smart" to destroy water jugs left by good samaritans on the desert trails. (You can see video here.) I know that the ACLU has identified a "culture of cruelty" within Customs and Border Protection.

I know that the horror of our southern border as a war zone did not begin with Donald Trump. I know that the horror of ethnic and class violence, backed by US military power, in Central America did not begin with Donald Trump.

I know that Jakelin Caal Maquin is not the first child to die from the horror. I know she will not be the last.

Nevertheless, I cannot get her dad, Neri, or her mom, Claudia, out of my mind. I cannot stop thinking about her siblings, Abdel, Angela, or Elvis.

I cannot stop mourning the death of Jakelin. I cannot stop mourning the death of Jakelin. I cannot stop mourning the death of Jakelin.

Being in the moment with Prophet

A little over two months ago I noticed that our dog, Prophet, was unsteady on his feet when turning around quickly. He was also struggling to jump into the car, and slipping when walking downstairs. The vet thought we were looking at arthritis, and I began giving him anti-inflammatories along with the dietary supplement he has been taking since having surgery for a ruptured cruciate ligament in 2017. After a couple of weeks, though, I wasn't seeing any improvement with the Rimadyl, and the vet asked that we get an x-ray.

Prophet racing down a 75˚ incline

The images showed only minor arthritis -- not nearly enough to account for Prophet's problems with walking -- and the vet said this indicated degenerative myelopathy. He explained that it is a progressive and incurable condition and that it is similar to ALS in humans. Prophet is seven. I know that the lives of dogs are quicker than ours, but I had been hoping for a few more years of long, active, daily walks in the wooded parks of the Bronx. The vet said that he couldn't predict the progression of the disease, but that we were probably looking at half a year to two years.

Prepped for cold laser treatment.

After Prophet's cruciate ligament surgery, we took him to an animal hospital in Manhattan for some physical therapy. We decided to bring him back with this new problem. The rehab vet did a gait analysis and a DNA test. He recommended a daily regimen of massage and exercise that I could do and also initiated some sessions with their physical therapists, including cold laser treatment, underwater treadmill, balance challenges, and walking over hurdles. Back when Prophet was a puppy he had a catastrophic illness.  After that, e purchased health insurance. It paid for part of this.

Some dogs don't like the vet. Prophet fights to go. It is the one destination that makes polite leash

Underwater treadmill.

walking impossible because he is so anxious to see the people he knows there. The animal hospital is a little different. He treats that as a day spa. He loves the underwater treadmill and loves being towel-dried afterward. He really likes being rubbed with the cold laser and even tolerates the protective goggles. He doesn't fight to go inside as he does at the vet. He just gets a huge smile and leads the way.

I don't know why the rehab vet is so confident that I am fastidious about doing Prophet's exercises and massage everyday. Maybe he says this to everybody on the theory that they are more likely to be consistent if he says that they are. Nevertheless, I do, in fact, make certain to follow all his instructions. If I am honest, it is another way of expressing our closeness and that became increasingly important after being told that our time together would be shorter than I thought. And I realized, too, that dogs live each day for that day. They don't fret about the future. I owe it to Prophet to try to do the same. As long as we are out in the woods every morning I should enjoy those walks and not worry about how many more we might have.

After a month and a half we returned for a new assessment. This included the same measurements and gait analysis as before. I hoped that we were slowing the progress of degeneration. Instead, the rehab vet informed me that Prophet's thigh muscles were stronger than they had been at our previous visit with more bilateral symmetry! He reminded me that during our previous visit Prophet had stumbled each time we turned around at the end of the hall. While his gait wasn't perfect, this time there were no stumbles at all. And he told us that the DNA test was inconclusive, that Prophet only had one copy of the gene associated with degenerative myelopathy and was therefore probably only a carrier.

At the time I found all this news merely puzzling. Myelopathy is a diagnosis of exclusion and I knew I was not going to do all the tests necessary to rule everything else out, especially because it wouldn't affect treatment: there is no treatment for the condition. And since deciding that I need to live in the moment with Prophet I felt less worried about an actual diagnosis anyway. So I just continue to give him his daily physical therapy and massage. But this weekend felt different.

Saturday we went to Van Cortlandt Park and I decided to let Prophet decide where we went. He was very determined to set a course and a pace. He led me from the Northwest Woods by the horse stables across the bridge to the Parade Ground then all the way down Broadway to the Van Cortlandt House. Then we had to cross the old Putnam Division right-of-way to the lake, through the marsh, back across Tibbett Brook and back to the Northwest Woods. He was in an extremely cheery mood the entire time, despite the fact that he has to be on leash the entire way and this is close to a two-hour walk, longer than we have done since the weakness in his hind legs appeared.

Up on the ridge in Van Cortlandt Park

Yesterday we went to Van Cortlandt Park again, but this time I insisted on setting the course and the pace. We walked the Northwest Woods, up the flat path to Yonkers, then climbed to the ridge and back south. One thing I have not done since the initial diagnosis is to put him in a sit-stay and then summon him from a distance over rough ground. It seemed reckless. But that is just what I did yesterday. Near the end of the walk is a rocky promontory with a precipitous drop of over 80 feet to the paved path. It's emotionally an easier ask with the leaves off the trees because he never loses sight of me. I second-guessed myself a lot as I walked down, but I talked myself into it. He made the twists and turns of his descent at speed and without incident.

So my decision to live in the moment is surviving. He is not one hundred percent, but there is no doubt that he is stronger than he was when we first brought him to the vet and stronger still than he was when we first brought him to the animal hospital. His friendship is a blessing to me and I am thankful for it every day.

Fred Hampton

Today is December 4, the forty-ninth anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton. In the predawn hours of December 4, 1969, a death squad from the Chicago Police Department, working with the FBI, shot up an apartment where members of the Black Panther Party were living. An undercover agent had drugged Fred Hampton, the 21-year old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, so he was not awakened by hundreds of shots coming through doors and walls. The police dragged his pregnant girlfriend from their bed, then shot him again. She heard them say, "He's good and dead now."

I was a classroom teacher from 1975 to 2000 and I did not let a December 4 pass by without explaining this story to my social studies classes. After the second Eyes on the Prize series came out on public television I was able to use the episode titled "A Nation of Laws?" to do this better than I could with my words. For the last decade, or so, I have been posting about this on Facebook.

But this post isn't about the murder of Fred Hampton, it is about teaching and learning. I won't see it this year, because 49 years isn't a round number and there won't be a huge number of social media posts about him. I'll see it next year. I will see a former student posting, as a rhetorical question, "Why didn't they teach us this in school?"

Now I know very well why that individual, whoever it will be, will have forgotten that, yes, I did. Yes, I did teach you about Fred Hampton. It will be because they never quite heard it. There is a profound difference between what I say aloud in a classroom as a teacher (what I "teach") and what my students learn.

In the years after 1989 I worked hard to incorporate this understanding into my classroom practice. I still hear former students who remember things that I don't even remember happening and don't remember things that I truly emphasized. But I hear fewer of them from the students I taught in the last decade before I became an administrator.

I write this here. I don't know if anybody will read it. But on Facebook and Twitter I remind people about Fred Hampton. I put it up less than an hour ago. People are already seeing it. Still trying to teach.

You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer

Our Torah commands us:

לא־תעשק שכיר עני ואביון מאחיך או מגרך אשר בארצך בשעריך
You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. (Deuteronomy 24:14)

 And Rashi explains that "abuse" refers to the substandard wage that the laborer's neediness or their foreignness might allow you to extract from them.

I am reading a history of farms and farm labor which is reminding me of all the ways we have historically done just that in this country. Chattel slavery built this country, its financial system, and some very great fortunes by treating African captives and their descendants as property. After the Civil War ended chattel slavery, Klan terror allowed the white people who took the land to continue exploiting the Black people who farmed it by means of debt peonage and sharecropping.

We have a minimum wage in this country (which has reached historic lows) but it explicitly says it is for "non-agricultural labor," meaning that gouging the pay of farmworkers is legal. And by keeping most of those farmworkers in a status that denies them the protections of law, we restrict their means of resistance: of bargaining for better. Sometimes we do that by laws and treaties, like the Bracero Program of the 40's, 50's, and 60's or the non-citizen status of Filipinos in the first half of the 20th century. Sometimes we do that simply by hiring people from other countries but declaring their presence here to be "illegal."

The most fundamental thing that makes me human is treating you as human.  Leviticus 19:18 expresses it this way:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Treating others as something other than human is demonic. It is demonic when we rip infants from the arms of their mothers. It is demonic when we herd teens into concentration camps. It is demonic when we gas moms who are trying to bring their children here for safety from death squads and gangs and sexual abuse.

As I write these words I can hear an imaginary reader objecting, "But what about..."

And I fill in the words "But what about if it were you?"

What if it were your toddler being forced to testify alone in court in an language they don't know as to why they would be in danger if they were still at home?

What if it were your teen confined behind razor wire, under the supervision of predatory and violent adults, because they seek sanctuary here?

What if it were you being gassed because you are trying to keep your children safe from murderers and predators?

If you cannot identify with the exploited and the oppressed, then you are identifying yourself with the exploiter and the oppressor. You don't have to gas that mom yourself. You don't have to rape that teen yourself. You don't have to kidnap that infant yourself. If you fail to see them as human -- if you fail to see them as YOU -- then you share in the guilt of those who do those things.

I am uncertain what it would cost to reduce the super profits of agribusiness by paying a living wage to the people who actually farm our food, the people we choose not to call "farmers" but "farm workers." I do know that if they cannot feed their own children while those children live indoors and attend school, then we do not deserve to eat. I do know that if they cannot live free of pesticide poisoning, then we do not deserve to eat. I do know that if we cannot treat the people who feed us as human, then we ourselves are not human.

Cherem

So far as I can tell, my dad's dad, Harry Levine, was born in London, England on August 4, 1889 and came here in 1901, before the US Congress decided that he was a member of an undesirable race. That race, listed on a number of official documents, was "Hebrew."
My mom's mom, variously know on official documents as Molka, Molly, Margaret, and Marjorie, was born here. Her mom, Betsy Stenzler, came here from what is now Ukraine, but was listed in official documents in 1907. She is also listed as a member of that undesirable race, Hebrew.
None of my grandparents or great-grandparents had to undergo "extreme vetting." None of them had to get permission to come here before they arrived. All they had to do was show up, look reasonably healthy, and give some sort of indication that they would not immediately become public charges.
When white people brag that their families came "the right way" that is generally what they are talking about, showing up.
I find evidence that Harry, my paternal grandfather became a citizen in 1918. I find no evidence that my paternal grandmother, Cecilia became a citizen. That did not stop my father or his brothers from serving in the US Army and Navy.
I find no evidence that my great grandparents, Betsy or Sam, ever became citizens. That didn't stop their son, my grandmother Margie's brother Arthur, or their grandson, Margie's son Roger, from serving in the US Army.
Coming from England in 1901 I would have to guess that my grandfather Harry was not fleeing a horror that he had to prove in court at the age of twelve, nor that he was separated from his family and put in a cage. When I knew him he had a little shoe store on Burnside Avenue in the Bronx at a location which is now a Payless.
Coming from Galicia in 1907 it is possible that my great grandparents were frightened by the pogroms in Russia, just across the river. They did not have to submit to a hearing to demonstrate that this was a justifiable fear, nor that they fell into a recognized class, approved for asylum.
After 1924 the Congress decided that "Hebrews" were an undesirable "race." I suppose one proof is that all these people I mentioned remained Jewish. I, their grandson and great grandson have remained Jewish. Betsy and Sam continue to be listed in census reports as Yiddish speakers, even thirty plus years after their arrival. Even Harry, born in England, is listed in some census reports as Yiddish speaking, although my father remembers him refusing to speak to his customers in Yiddish, yelling "Speak English!" at them.
After the Nazis took over central Europe, huge numbers of Jewish people wanted to flee. But by then the United States had implemented strict quotas on this undesirable race and was unprepared to waive them. Their were no gas chambers yet in 1938. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Sessions and their ilk could have argued that they had no justifiable fear. Hell, they could have looked at the possibility of coming conflict with Germany and argued that all those desperate Jews were "bad hombres" and possible enemy combatants. Six million of them died.
I am unsurprised by Graham and Sessions. I don't expect any better. But now I hear some Jewish Americans feign outrage at comparisons between the US Coast Guard forcing the MS St. Louis to return to Europe in 1939 and Customs and Border Protection gassing asylum seekers at the San Ysidro border crossing.
You don't see the connection? You pretend it is disrespectful to the dead?
It is you who disrespect our dead. You disrespect them by allying yourself with the Cordell Hulls of today. You disrespect them by allying yourself with the Hamans of today. Your disrespect them by allying yourself with the Labans of today.
You risk cherem. You risk cherem. You risk cherem.

מודה אני

Was I five years old when they first taught us to sing "Modeh Ani"? It is the first prayer an observant Jew recites in the morning, even before one washes ones hands. It is a simple prayer that can be taught to young children and I see posters and plaques of it for sale, to be hung in a child's bedroom before they can speak.

I translate the words as: "I am thankful before You, living and eternal King! You reanimate my soul within me in the great mercy of Your faith!"

These words - in the melody I first learned for them - come to me often while my dog Prophet and I walk together in the woods along the Hudson, looking at the Palisades across the way. Everything about those walks is a gift. Once or twice a winter we hear a piercing screech and see a bald eagle winging up the river or sitting and watching us from a tree. Occasionally the air and the water are still enough that we can see the cliffs on the Jersey side reflected on the river's' surface. Frequently the rising sun moves down those cliffs, so that their upper reaches are illuminated bright red, while the lower part is still black and gray in the shadow of the Bronx side. The light in the woods we walk in is different each day. So is the color of the leaves. And - not to be forgotten - there is the everyday blessing of a companion who enjoys the walk as much as I do, although his sensory universe is totally different and his list of the blessings would have much more to do with sounds and scents: his friends, their human companions, coyotes, opossums, rabbits, and feral cats.

So those are all extraordinary gifts for which I have to remind myself to be thankful. But the words of the prayer which take my breath are "b'chemla rabbah emunatecha": in the great mercy of Your faith. Your faith. Your mercy. Because I failed to live up to my promise yesterday. I may fail again today. But I am still here, still breathing. There is mercy for my failures. There is faith that I will eventually do right.

After the Shoah the rabbis devoted a great deal of attention to theodicy, the question of how a good God can permit the presence of evil or of unmerited suffering. What interests me every morning is the problem of unmerited grace. What have I done to deserve all my blessings? What have I done to deserve a good friend like Prophet? A wife like Judith? All my human friends and family? Living indoors? My health? What have I done even to deserve a breath: the reanimation of my soul within me?

Every single one of these things is an unearned blessing. I receive them due to great mercy for my failings and faith that I may eventually merit some of them.

A note. While writing the above yesterday I was thinking about the world-class view that is the Hudson and the Palisades from the Bronx. We once took an excursion boat on the Danube from Kelheim to Weltenburg Abbey. It was spectacular, with 80 meter cliffs rising above the river. I am really glad to have seen it. But the Palisades are twice that height, and I get to look at them every single day. You see what I mean about making time to appreciate a gift?

So I was thinking about the Danube and all the literary and musical works it has inspired. I looked it up on Wikipedia and there was a mention of Chabad niggunim from the 18th century that Lubavitcher Hassidim used to sing. To clarify, a niggun is a repetitive melody, often sung with nonsense syllables, to aid in meditative prayer. And the claim - unsubstantiated in the Wikipedia article - was that these Hassidim used these melodies to heighten their appreciation at seeing the Danube! In other words, they were doing the exact same thing that I do with letting Modeh Ani run through my mind as a walk along the Hudson.

I texted my college friend Pinchas in California to ask if this were so. In addition to being a professor of Talmud and a scholar of Zohar, he is familiar with Yiddish literature and has done translation for YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research. He responded almost immediately that yes, it is so, and that the best known of these niggunim is the refrain to the song "Dona Dona."

I know this song from the Folkways records of Mark Olf, who was a friend of my grandfather. But it achieved great popularity in the Sixties in English versions. It was the B-side of a Joan Baez single in 1960 and was also recorded by Chad & Jeremy, Donovan, and the Chad Mitchell Trio. I always wondered about the refrain to that song, which is just "dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, do; dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, dona, do." If it is a reference to the Danube, ("Donau" in German, "Duna" in Yiddish) it suddenly all makes sense.

Today as Prophet and I walked by the Hudson in the steady rain, I sang "Dona Dona."

Why I use the term "Neo-Confederate"

The other day I responded to a friend's Facebook post about the election with a comment using the term "neo-Confederate." One of his friends, a stranger to me, objected to the tone. Not knowing him at all I could only guess why he would find this characterization of today's Republican Party objectionable: Not "nice"? Calculated to shut down discussion? I chose not to engage with a stranger on a friend's page. But I do think it is worth my time to explain why I think it is an accurate characterization. 

1) Since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder 570 US 2 (2013) Republican leadership has instituted voter suppression rules of various types in many states. Georgia, for example, insists that the voter's name on the rolls be consistent with every other place it is listed. This rule is designed to exclude people with names the average Anglo Saxon finds "unusual.  My stepchildren, for example, have a Portuguese surname. It is two words and doesn't begin with a capital letter. I can't tell you how many incorrect variations I have seen on official forms because the computer (or the clerk) insists on inserting a capital letter or deleting a space, or even deleting the second part of their name! By far the silliest of these misunderstandings transforms the surname to Da.

North Dakota now insists on street addresses, which excludes rural residents who use PO boxes, the majority of whom are Native. Alabama first introduced an ID requirement for voting, then closed DMV offices in majority-Black counties in order to increase the difficulty of obtaining that ID. All these subterfuges to reduce the presence of people of color on Election Day mirror the 8-box laws, and spurious "literacy" tests, and poll taxes that the original Confederates used to retake political power after the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution. Should their advocates be insulted to be called neo-Confederate? They want to disfranchise African Americans, just like the ex-Confederates of the late 19th century.

2) Apropos those Reconstruction Amendments, the President has now announced a campaign against the 14th Amendment's explicit statement that people born here are citizens. That Amendment was originally put in place to nullify a Supreme Court decision almost universally regarded as its worst: Dred Scott v. Sandford 60 US 393 (1857). In Dred Scott the Court specified a class of people -- those of African descent -- with "no rights that a white man was bound to respect." That is exactly how immigrants and their children would be treated if we were to abolish birthright citizenship. CBP and ICE are already acting as if due process doesn't apply to non-citizens who live in this country, arresting them and holding them without court orders or indictments. Now the Republican Party wants to treat people who are born here the same way. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham described the Constitutional right to citizenship as a "policy." Actually, he called it an "absurd policy." The 14th Amendment is a Constitutional protection that the original Confederates tried to prevent when it was first introduced. What better description of its current opponents could there be than neo-Confederate? They, too, believe in a group -- immigrants from countries outside Europe -- with no rights that a white man is bound to respect.

3) And then there is their worship of the regalia and "heritage" of the Confederacy. Why would people who fly the white supremacist banner of the Confederacy object to being called neo-Confederate? Why would people who insist on public monuments to Confederate leaders (originally erected not to commemorate that past, but to emblematize disfranchisement and Jim Crow) be uncomfortable with that characterization.

I chose not to have this argument on Facebook. But I definitely wanted to articulate and clarify my thinking on this. I don't like to throw around inflammatory phrases in lieu of making a case. I also like to be clear and accurate. "Neo-Confederate" is both when it comes to describing the Republican Party of 2018.

"A Well-Ordered Militia"

This old photo (2014) of armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is circulating again today on social media (and even some legitimate news sites) as a kind of placeholding illustration to represent the private "militias" that claim they are deploying to the southern border in terror of a few thousand desperate and impoverished refugees from Central America. My first reaction was to wonder about an inverse relationship between gun size and anatomy, or perhaps a direct relationship between caliber and IQ. Then I remembered the Second Amendment defense of a "well-ordered militia" and wondered whether this assortment of crackpots would have qualified.

But I am a student of US history. So I quickly realized that, yes, had they had iPhones in the early 19th century, one of the main activities of the militias of the time would, indeed, have been the taking and posting of heroic selfies, probably with explicitly racist hashtags.

I started thinking about the Red Stick War of 1813-1814. The Mississippi militia burned Native farms without engaging them in battle before installing themselves at a fortification they called Fort Mims. When two African American teens told the Mississippi militia's colonel that Red Sticks were in the vicinity, he had them beaten for lying. Then he served several barrels of whiskey to his men, so that they were actually both drunk and outnumbered when the Red Sticks attacked and defeated them. All the African Americans present at Fort Mims then departed with the victorious Red Sticks.

The Tennessee militia, led by Andrew Jackson was plagued by infighting, indiscipline and desertion. It was only the arrival of several hundred Cherokee and Creek allies along with a regiment of US Regulars that allowed Jackson to mount an offensive. And (of course, this is Andrew Jackson we are talking about) he subsequently treated his Creek allies as a defeated force, making them sign a humiliating treaty as if they had been opponents!

Then there is Black Hawk's War of 1832. Black Hawk led a group of Sauk and Fox Natives across the Mississippi River from Iowa to settle on lands in Illinois. When his scouts discovered a large body of Illinois militia, he sent three men to parley with them. Major Isaiah Stillman shot them, then sent his men after the Sauk scouts who were observing from nearby hills. When the militia encountered Black Hawk's main body of fighters, they turned and fled. His defeat sparked a general call-up of militia, but they were plagued by insubordination and desertion and they were finally disbanded. Black Hawk was eventually captured by Regular troops of the US Army, but the militiamen who accompanied them engaged in a wholesale massacre of non-combatant Natives.

Abraham Lincoln was 23 when he enlisted in a company of Illinois militia to fight the Sauk. He was elected Captain, apparently because he was a very good wrestler. He remembered his service in an 1848 speech to Congress saying, "I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry."

I think sending large bodies of US troops to the border now is a political stunt by a racist President. But they are being sent, nevertheless, and they have to prepare for the conditions there. Among the concerns of planners is the presence of heavily-armed (and poorly-regulated) civilians. In fact, the planning PowerPoint for "Operation Faithful Patriot" refers to "Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments. They operated under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP." Here is a copy of that slide.

All of which is another way of saying that racist militias are not a new phenomenon in US history. Neither is their disorganization. It seems not just to be part of the imagined heritage of the American white man, but an essential piece of our actual history, too.

Finding Common Ground

My wife Judith and I used to attend an annual retreat for school leaders at which some classic text was the focus of each year's discussion. One year the assignment was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Not long into the seminar, Judith revealed that she had only read as far as page 9 and then put the book down when she encountered the sentences: “You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It’s quite astonishing, when you’re used to working with European material.” The other participants - like me mostly white, mostly male - could probably be excused for not having had the same visceral reaction to those words that she did. They could certainly be excused for having written them: they hadn't; Huxley’s book, not theirs. But they could not be excused for refusing to hear her horror and revulsion. Yet this is precisely what they did. And they insisted that Brave New World was something that should be treated as ironic literature and that must be “discussed.”

When Sylvia was a senior in high school, her humanities teacher had the class read a couple of coming-of-age memoirs by immigrants and then discuss US immigration policy. One day one of her classmates announced that she believed no new immigrants should be allowed in the country, then added that current residents who had been born elsewhere and their children should also be deported. Then she gave Sylvia a long smile. The teacher insisted that this was an opinion (instead of an intentional and very personal provocation) and that it should be “discussed.” 

Jessy was a college freshman in a writing seminar when the professor prompted the class to describe a scene that was scary. She wrote a few paragraphs about a cloudy night in the woods with unidentifiable rustling noises in the brush and mysterious animal calls. One of her classmates complained that it was utterly unfrightening and would have been better if it described an urban nighttime scene with street lights and lots of “diverse” people. Nobody objected. Jessy was the only person of color in that class. She heard this to mean that her family was more frightening than wild animals. The professor saw that Jessy’s feelings were hurt, but felt that Jessy should have “discussed” it.

I choose these examples because they are about feelings and identity. In the case of Jessy and Sylvia, good instructors, with the trust of the class, may have been able to get people to look at why these comments were direct insults, intentional in both cases, instead of “differences of opinion” but their own points of view prevented them even from seeing this. In the case of Judith, nobody set out to insult her intentionally. Instead, the erasure came when educated, mostly-liberal people insisted on treating her reaction as a failure to engage intellectually, as if her reaction proved that she, too, was nothing more than a “negro ovary.” Again, an attentive facilitator might have directed participants to examine their own responses to Judith. Instead, and again, that facilitator was only interested in what he already understood about the book. 

What about a person who tells me, “It’s too bad Hitler didn’t kill your parents”? Or a teacher, assigned to my faculty, telling me, “I didn’t go to Harvard to become a zookeeper caring for your animals”? Those aren’t differences of opinion. I have no interest in discussing them. 

I believe in good and I believe in evil. I don’t think Sylvia or Jessy’s classmates, or the people in Judith’s seminar (or even the Nazi or the teacher I fired) are themselves evil. But they choose to serve evil. 

I am well aware of the danger of confusing my own views with “the good” and of demonizing people who disagree with me. But I see a danger as well in valuing civility above empathy and in failing to see that words harm.

Last week we saw a white extremist send bombs to multiple prominent Democrats, including the former President of the United States and the former Secretary of State, and to a mainstream news outlet. He was apparently motivated by our current President's "opinions" about them. We saw a gunman enter a synagogue and slaughter 11 worshippers, apparently motivated by his "opinions" about Jews and immigration. We saw another gunman attempt to enter a Black church, and -- failing that -- murder two African American shoppers in a supermarket, apparently motivated by his "opinions" about Black people. Much of the commercial press (cough-New York Times-cough) seems to think that the problem is "incivility."

All of this is just to say that I don't believe in finding "common ground" with those who would annihilate me... or anybody else.

Nostalgia and Memory

I was in high school during some key years of the American war in Viet Nam. My friends and I participated in large protests in Washington, like the Moratorium and the Mobilization in the fall of 1969, but we also organized our own protests at the school. We held a rally one afternoon in the bleachers by the football field. We wore black armbands one day in all our classes. After the murders of protesting students by National Guardsmen at Kent State in Ohio and by police at Jackson State in Mississippi, we held a memorial in the park in front of school, which included lowering the flag to half staff.

One day during my senior year I was discussing the antiwar movement with a classmate, a girl who was not in my social circle, who told me that she, too, was opposed to the war. With my adolescent arrogance I asked why, if this were true, she did not participate in our Students for Peace organization, or in our protests. She told me that we were no organization at all, we were simply a clique. I insisted that she was wrong, that our meetings were open, and challenged her to come to the next one, which was in a few days.

That meeting was in the basement of a friend's house, which should have given me a clue. She arrived well after we started, with a friend for moral support, and left well before we finished. I was feeling pretty vindicated (and happy to have recruited two new members). But before they could exit through the basement door at the top of the stairs (and while I am certain they could hear) one of the members said, "Well, guys, should we let them in?"

She had been right. This was a clique after all. I felt pretty chastened. I apologized profusely to her. I expressed my strong disagreement to my friends over the notion that we were voting on new members, like a private club. And I am afraid this was not the last time I was mistaken about the true nature of something to which I committed myself.

I have reflected on that experience often over the years, usually to remind myself to be more open to comment and criticism. But I was reminded of it this week by people who remembered that same episode, but differently and fondly!

One of my high school classmates posted a photo on Facebook of a band practice. It was the same fellow in whose basement we held that Students for Peace meeting and the rehearsal was in that same basement. And -- reinforcing the critique that the peace organization was really a clique -- the set of people who were musicians in that band intersected considerably with the set of Students for Peace. I was a little surprised by the level of excitement that photo caused, but it was mostly people who I don't even have as Facebook friends, so... different strokes, you know?

Then, on day six of the nostalgia fest (really, it just kept going) certain people started reminiscing about the time the popular girls came to a band practice and asked to join! How am I certain that they were referring to the same incident? Because they called my name; they said the girls visited with me. They recalled this as a transformative moment, when the outsiders became insiders, when the insiders begged to join the outsiders. And this characterization is reinforced by a particular adolescent insecurity, the sense that some other circle of friends occupies a higher status than yours and is aspirational.

I understand this in teens, I really do. I have to say that I saw it much less during my career in city high schools than I did in the suburban high school I attended. In the fifteen years I spent in a school of 6000 I thought that was because there were just too many kids for them to be aware of any social hierarchy, only of their friends. In my twenty years in small schools I thought it was because we worked hard at creating community across the board, a sense of belonging and mutual respect. But maybe this kind of stratification is really a suburban phenomenon. I don't know. I really don't have broad enough experience to comment.

But I do feel uncomfortable seeing sixty-five year old men and women for whom this is still so vivid and so present. I am left wondering why they are still so identified with that moment, that band practice. Granted, there are ways in which I never graduated high school, since I attended every day until I was sixty or so. But I think I continued growing. I hope I continued growing.

أهل الكتاب‎

"People of the Book." We Jews like this designation that we were awarded in al Qur'an. And we have produced a lot of them. Tanach, (the Bible) is already an anthology of 24 books. The Mishnah contains six volumes. The Gemarah is typically published in 70+ volumes. And there are so many more that we consider authoritative -- if not canonical -- by Rashi, by Rambam, by Joseph Caro, and others. There are also esoteric texts to study, like Zohar. A lot of books.

A little thought will suggest that so many books will find ways to offer different viewpoints and approaches: multiple Judaisms, if you like. There is a Judaism that foregrounds the purity laws, a Judaism that wants to restore the Temple worship, a Judaism that stresses our ethical treatment of others, a Judaism that seeks hidden truths in the texts, and a Judaism that highlights the united Kingdom of Israel and Judea.

These are not exclusive. Plenty of observant people attend to all these, albeit to a greater or lesser extent. But that caveat -- "greater or lesser" -- means that not everyone with fringes is dreaming of the same Messiah. Look at the purity laws, such as kashrut. We know that the Torah forbids us only from cooking a calf in its mother's milk. Over the millennia we have adopted various stringencies (chumrot) that "make a fence for the law" in order to avoid accidentally transgressing it. Nowadays, no observant Jewish person would eat cheese with turkey. This despite the fact that turkeys are not mammals and consequently have no milk! But there are common stringencies and there are those that go beyond. Observant Jews eat no leavened bread during the festival of Passover.  But some insist on Shmurah,  or "guarded", matzah which tries to ensure that there is no possibility that the wheat in the matzah be exposed to water even before it is milled. The wheat is raised in areas without rain. The farmworkers may not have water bottles in the field. This is a special emphasis on Exodus 12:17, which reads "You shall guard the matzah." (Although the KJV reads, "Ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread.) My point is that some people are always looking for additional stringencies.

I grew up reciting the prayer "Restore the service to your sanctuary." I didn't give it a huge amount of thought, and certainly had no great ambition to see animals slaughtered and burned on the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock, قبة الصخرة‎ , now stands. I have no interest in rivers of blood and shit in this holy place. When I thought of it at all, I considered it a metaphor for something. The rabbis of the first centuries after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans devoted a lot of attention to discussing the minutiae of that Temple worship. I always thought studying those texts was a perfectly acceptable substitute for actually killing all those animals. As the Prophet Isaiah said (during Temple days!): "Of what use are your many sacrifices to Me? says the Lord. I am sated with the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; and the blood of bulls and sheep and he-goats I do not want." Nevertheless, today we have a trend in Judaism that wants to bring all this back. They obsess over the details of priestly robes and utensils and are practicing to perfect the offerings themselves. I find this, too, rather bizarre.

But I think that the sect with the most peculiar reading of Judaism may be the largest one. This is the Judaism that finds its text in the Books of Joshua and Samuel, although most of them haven't read even those books. They seem to believe that the State of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet (internal security) and Mossad (international espionage) constitute the highest achievements of the Jewish people. Some of these people are conventionally observant of kosher and Sabbath laws, but many are minimally Bar Mitzvah and know nothing of sacred scripture or thousands of years of Rabbinic literature. You can see their work in TV and film stories ("NCIS", "Covert Affairs", "The Blacklist") that have Israeli agents embedded with every NCIS, SEAL, and Delta team. You can see the young people who take their Birthright Israel tours and return thinking this is the height of Judaism. You can see it in the Jewish Day School graduates taking a gap year in Israel before starting college.

It is evident in the proliferation of Krav Maga schools. It is evident in the little boys who have no intention of serving in the US armed forces running around in their IDF tee-shirts. When high-profile scumbag Harvey Weinstein wanted to erase the evidence of his serial sexual abuse of vulnerable female actresses, he hire a firm called "Black Cube" led by former Mossad agents.

I understand the desire to separate ourselves from the self-image of weak yeshiva boys. The Jewish emigres to Palestine of the early 20th century substituted the imagery of halutzim, pioneers, who were tanned and muscled from outdoor work. But this is a militaristic cult, and - moreover - one to which the American Jews who join it have no legitimate claim. My father, may his memory be a blessing, used to say these were people sitting in the safety and comfort of suburban New Jersey who were willing to fight to the last Israeli.

There is Jewish liturgical and exegetical literature that I find sterile, but there is much with which I am proud to claim my familiarity and kinship. The same with philosophy, science, and fiction. We have a long and rich history that remains worthy of study. I am proud to be Jewish.

But the worship of guns and missiles and warships is a death cult. It is idolatry. It is tref, forbidden. I condemn it.

Reach Out

Fifteen years ago V--- was a ninth grader in the inaugural class of a brand-new high school in the Bronx. With no older kids to teach them how to act, with too many rookie teachers, with a lack of preparation by the project director, I will charitably describe the environment as "challenging." But V--- stood out for her intellect, seriousness, and cooperation. Our most intellectual teacher, a career changer who picked and chose who he wanted to connect with, made her one of his group.

We sent four kids to a leadership retreat that year with students from the Connecticut suburbs and two other Bronx schools. I can't remember exactly why we identified V--- to be one of them, but I remember that we bypassed the obvious stars and selected boys and girls who we felt could step up and lead with just a little support. The idea is that we were not only investing in those individuals, but in all our kids by creating more leadership.

The retreat was facilitated by Project Adventure, Inc. and it was built around a ropes course with both group and individual challenges. By far the most dramatic of those individual challenges was a towering vertical obstacle course. It required the climber to switch from rope ladders to plastic handholds, etc. and to conquer their fear of height. Of course they were wearing a climbing harness and belayed by top rope, so the danger was all in the sensation. But that sensation is very strong. It's hard to imagine if you haven't done it yourself.

Few kids reached the top. Most of them turned back well before, after one or two obstacles, fifteen or thirty feet from the ground. Everybody received raucous cheers for whatever they accomplished and most of them responded with giddy enthusiasm.

Then there was V---. After some initial pride over getting up a third of the way she shifted into a determined, fearful, slow pace. She seemed deaf to the wildly positive support she was getting from the ground and simply struggled her way up. When she made it to the top, the applause went on and on.

But she would not come down.

Being lowered from a belay is an entirely different challenge. It requires you to surrender to the support of your partner on the ground. It requires trust: of the system and of that other person. You have to let go and drop into space and let the rope hold you. See would not do it.

No amount of explanation or coaxing or encouragement was enough to convince her to let go of the top of that tower. We were in the process of sending up a specialized rescue when we heard the thunder and heard the lightning in the distance. It was only an electric storm that convinced Vee to allow herself to be lowered from that tower.

Challenge rope courses provide living metaphors for the actual challenges we face in our real lives. I know that as well as anybody (a subject for another essay.) So over the next few years I referred often to that episode as I saw V--- insist on doing things herself. I pointed again and again to her refusal to accept an outreached hand from peers and from teachers. I kept reminding her how this insistent, stubborn self-reliance had almost got her electrocuted!

As a senior, V--- turned her ambition to the US Marine Corps. I had doubts about this, and they went beyond my concern about our already endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They went beyond my concern that women in the Corps seemed to cook and clerk for the men or put on makeup and recruit them. I was concerned about the Marines' emphasis on teamwork, because it was something that V--- still resisted. She was insistent, though. Uncles, male cousins and friends were Marines. She wanted to be, too.

Except. Except that this always capable student, easily in our top five, suddenly stopped working and even attending. This is not uncommon. Countless good students have gone to pieces in the spring of their senior year. It goes way beyond a "senior slump." That is the stereotypical calculated drop-off in work of a high achiever who gets a college acceptance letter and feels that what they do no longer "counts." No, this is the complete disappearance of the successful student who seems suddenly fearful of what is next. They have high school wired; what if college or trade school or employment (or the Marines) is totally different?

V---'s recruiter came to speak to me. I contacted her repeatedly and brought up all these things. It didn't matter. She failed to graduate. Her recruitment date was postponed until after summer school. Her teachers felt that now she would "learn her lesson." She did not. She failed to complete her summer school assignments.

The recruitment date was pushed ahead again and the recruiter asked if V--- could complete her work (only two credits!) independently with me instead of holding her back an entire semester. I was definitely in favor of this because I saw nothing to gain by asking her to attend another five months with younger kids for two hours a day. And, despite the fact that my work was considerably harder than anything she was supposed to have done in class, V--- completed those assignments brilliantly by the end of September. By October, she was in Parris Island.

I will skip ahead here because - although I have seen a couple of written letters and a couple of Facebook private messages from her in the intervening years - I have not seen V---'s face or heard her voice. She fulfilled her commitment to the Marines. She was married and divorced. She has two young children. Sometimes I hear back from her when I message, sometimes not.

And then Hurricane Florence. V--- is still living with her boys right outside Camp Lejeune, directly in the path of the storm. On Facebook she expressed contempt for preemptive school closings and evacuation orders. Then she acknowledged an about face and a fear that she had made a wrong choice. Then she posted that her lights were out. And then she was absent for two-and-a-half days.

I was frightened for her. So were her friends. There were multiple postings on her Facebook page by people asking whether anybody had been able to reach her. Nobody had.

My nervous energy got me googling. It was not a good idea. I discovered that she had been cited five times for leaving her boys to take care of each other while she was at work. I discovered that she had been cited for driving with a suspended license. These are not the offenses of just any single mom. They are the offenses of a single mom who insists on doing everything herself, who will not reach out for a helping hand.

This is not just my projection. When she got back online (her cell tower had been out) she said the city is flooded but everything could be rebuilt, so I offered what I could and noted: "I really hope you have gotten better at letting people help you."

Her reply? "Nope. Still the same old me."

But it is not. She has two young children depending on her, and I said so. I can only hope she can hear.

Habits of heart are so hard to change. Even when we have a dramatic awakening, the habit is still there the next day. I know this. I have to receive the same epiphanies day in and day out. I think that's what they mean when they say "One day at a time" in the 12-step programs.  But I am haunted by this and all I know to do is to gather my thoughts here and communicate them to V---.

I only hope she can hear.

Music of Our Youth

In the fall of 1968, I was a junior in high school. Richard Nixon was running for President, promising a “secret plan” to end the American war in Viet Nam which he would accelerate and expand once he was in the White House. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had each been shot to death within the previous few months. 

I listened to WNEW-FM on a radio that was about 8” by 6” and probably weighed 2 lbs. Radio mattered. In the evening, a DJ named Rosko played whatever he wanted – in whatever genre - and read poetry by Kahlil Gibran and Yevgeny Yevtushenko and antiwar columns by Pete Hamill. Artists that caught my ear on the radio then included Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, the Temptations, and Miles Davis.

I also had a plastic record player that I equipped with a high-end stylus to be certain that I was caring for the LPs that I listened to over and over again. That fall those records were “We’re Only in it for the Money” by the Mothers of Invention, “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” by the Incredible String Band, and “Meditations” by John Coltrane. That last was not a new release (Coltrane died over a year earlier) but I just got it. I was still listening often to Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix. My friends and I saw Jefferson Airplane the previous spring in East Orange. The opening act was Iron Butterfly who had not yet released the song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

Fifty years later I am a retired high school educator. We have a mid-term election coming up in which I am hopeful that at least one house of Congress will have a Democratic majority so that there can be (at least) committee investigations of, and (possibly) an obstacle to, President Trump’s corruption, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and endless lying. In the past few months I have been most agitated by campaigns of voter suppression; attacks on journalists, including arrests and murders; kidnapping of children at our southern border; and the ongoing and callous disregard for the people of Puerto Rico, still struggling to recover from a hurricane over a year ago.

And what new music do I hear now? And where do I hear it? I have an iPhone. I look at the playlist and I see -- along with tracks from throughout the last sixty years -- “Cuba” by Arturo O’Farrill and “It’s Time” by Las Cafeteras. But they haven’t received nearly as much play as the older music. Songs that got multiple plays were “DNA” by Kendrick Lamar, “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B, and “Despacito” by Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi. Those are all from last year, which shows how little I keep up. And the truth is, none of that newer music means as much to me as the stuff from before.

So what does that mean?

I am so tired of hearing people my age arguing that no contemporary music can possibly compare with the music of our youth. The truth is, I am tired of hearing people in their late twentiesarguing that no music of today can compare with the music of theiryouth! The simple response is that the culture hasn’t gone downhill; you have.

When I was in my teens and early twenties the music was everything to me. I studied mimeographed magazines like Crawdaddyas if they were sacred texts to learn what was going on outside Top Forty radio. The LPs I bought were generally the ones that I couldn’t hear even on FM radio stations that (at that time) allowed the DJs some freedom to play non-commercial and album tracks. I thought that our music was transformative by itself. 

But I think the role of that music as a soundtrack to everything else in my life gave that music a much larger resonance. I hear “A Very Cellular Song” by the Incredible String Band and I think of a girl I went out with in 11^thgrade. I hear the opening bars of “Volunteers” (1969) by Jefferson Airplane and I am transported to the moratorium against the Vietnam War and the local demonstrations my friends and I organized and attended. Even a track like “Jumping Jack Flash” by the Rolling Stones, which I never owned, makes me stand up and dance. And that is so significant, because it says that even a song that I didn’t love, a song I didn’tlisten to over and over, is coded in my memory with the feelings of being sixteen. I hear “I Wish It Would Rain” by the Temptations or “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf and I am  sixteen.

Each of us has a special connection with the music of our youth. And some of it has held up, too. I can listen to “Are You Experienced?” by Jimi Hendrix with the same enthusiasm as I did the week it was released in 1967. “Disraeli Gears” by Cream, which I compared to it at the time, failed to keep my interest even a few years later. I still listen to “Surrealistic Pillow” (1967) by Jefferson Airplane. I don’t care as much about “The Doors” (1967) as I did that year when I couldn’t stop playing it. But all those tracks bring me right back.  I will never care about the music of today in the way that I cared back then. That doesn’t mean that I have some compelling need to belittle Beyonce as failing to live up to the “giants” of my high school days. I ask that you refrain, too.

Race and Class: This Socialist Moment

Twenty-nine years ago (July 26, 1989) I wrote an introduction to a book I was writing on revolutionary movements in America. I titled that introduction "Against Amnesia" and opened it with these words:

I am really scared about loss of memory. I keep thinking that the revolutionary movement in this country won't revive until there is nothing left of the organizations of the last generation to provide a bridge to the past. I'm afraid that the new generation of radicals will have to start from scratch, just like we did, as if nothing had come before.

We are living through an ascendance of unabashed racism, misogyny, xenophobia, corruption, and unrestricted capitalist greed associated with the presidency of Donald Trump. Despite (because of?) that, it is also a moment of enthusiasm for socialism in this country. Bernie Sanders did well as a candidate for the Democratic nomination two years ago while broadcasting his identity as a democratic socialist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz scored a primary upset against the number-four Democrat in the House of Representatives a few weeks ago and has been riding a wave of national enthusiasm since then that shows no sign of ebbing.  She, too, is unafraid of the word socialist, which she defines with a platform of extending free public education through college, Medicare for all, and a living wage.  So I definitely think we are looking at a new birth for the radical movement. But will the young socialists of today have the benefit of understanding the victories and defeats of previous generations? And - importantly - can we elders share our own experiences without descending into grumpy-old-codger behavior?

Yesterday I listened to Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, as he discussed the revival of American socialism with Bob Garfield on WNYC radio. Robinson spoke enthusiastically about the history of socialism in America, especially the period between 1908 and 1912 during which socialists held over 1000 elected offices in this country. When he referred to the divisions among those socialists I thought I was about to hear something significant and difficult, but, no; he only wanted to talk about their debate over the importance of elections. He described the 110-year old argument between electoral and direct-action socialists. He saw a parallel between that dichotomy and the differences between the Justice Democrats of today and the Occupy movement of 2011.

Why did this disappoint me? Because the challenge facing a socialist movement is the same as that facing this country as a whole: Race.

Remember how this showed up in the 2016 campaign? Remember the Black Lives Matter activists who interrupted a Sanders rally in Seattle that August? And do you remember the fury of the Bernie supporters on Twitter, insistently whitesplaining that Bernie was the best friend Black people had and referring to his 50+ year-old participation in the civil rights movement (which they insisted on characterizing as "marching with Dr. King")?

I don't want to argue that Bernie Sanders is personally racist toward Black people. I do want to argue that he assiduously avoids issues, phrasing, and slogans that he fears may alienate white people. After he was pressed on the question of Black Lives, he responded by speaking out about criminal justice reform. See the difference? When he was pressed on the question of reparations, he responded by arguing that tuition-free college, a living wage, and investment in our cities would help "the most impoverished communities, often African American and Latino." See the difference? For the Sanders socialist, everything has to be expressed in color-free terms. Benefits for working-class Americans will automatically address the problems of racism.

It may be necessary to clarify why this is untrue. You may want to revisit how the discussion of a "white working class" since the 2016 election has made excuses for racism. You may want to look at the extent to which the U.S. union movement has been a bulwark securing good-paying jobs from members of racial and ethnic minorities, and not just in the building trades. You may want to look at how people of color have been historically excluded from the benefits of FHA loans. You may want to consider how AFL agitation against Americans of Mexican descent during the Great Depression led to the deportation of over 400,000 (about half of whom were US citizens!) You may want to remind yourself of the role of labor organizations in perpetrating mob violence and pogroms against people of color. (Just two examples: the 1885 Rock Springs massacre of Chinese coal miners in Wyoming; the 1917 massacre of African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois.)

If we return to that period of 1908-1912 that Nathan Robinson was talking about, we find that there were two distinct views among socialists on race. On one side you find those like Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the first socialist member of the House of Representatives, who said, "There can be no doubt that the Negroes and mulattoes constitute a lower race." Kate Richard O'Hare, the socialist candidate for Senate from Missouri wrote a pamphlet supporting racial segregation and opposing what she called - in its title - "Nigger Equality"!

The opposing view was represented the by Socialist Party's candidate for President, former union leader Eugene V. Debs. Debs stood firmly for racial equality. He responded directly to views like those of Berger and O'Hare, writing, "The man who seeks to arouse prejudice among workingmen is not their friend. He who advises the white wage-worker to look down upon the black wage-worker is the enemy of both." He rejected the fear that belief that social equality is "divisive":

I say that the Socialist Party would be false to its historic mission, violate the fundamental principles of Socialism, deny its philosophy and repudiate its own teachings if, on account of race considerations, it sought to exclude any human being from political equality and economic freedom. Then, indeed, would it not only "jeopardize" its best interests, but forfeit its very life, for it would soon be scorned and deserted as a thing unclean, leaving but a stench in the nostrils of honest men.

Yet this is the same Debs who wrote: "We have nothing special to offer the Negro, and we cannot make special appeals to all the races. The Socialist Party is the Party of the whole working class, regardless of color - the whole working class of the whole world." How? Because he believed that the class struggle is colorless. In writing about this in 1990 I commented that "The most obvious 'special' things in those days were an end to segregation, an end to lynching, an end to discriminatory voting laws" and added: "These are things Debs should have been able to see."

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in January 2016 that he found it hard to believe that Bernie Sanders was concerned that reparations were politically divisive because "there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist." He identified Sanders's reluctance to address race directly in what he identified as "the 'class first' approach, originating in the myth that racism and socialism are incompatible." It is precisely the view of Debs in his articles of 114 years ago. It is a view that insists on working-class unity, but without asking white people to reject the less obvious (to them, not to people of color!) benefits of white supremacy.

Consider the current debate on immigration. Bernie Sanders has tried for years to thread a needle that allows him to retain progressive credentials while continuing to ally with the dominant elements in the AFL-CIO that see immigrants as competitors for work. I have always been mystified by the blindness of this view. When the law restricts migration into the US but the economy demands workers that mismatch creates a caste of workers who are restricted from defending themselves, either in court or through organizing unions. It is immigration restriction that puts downward pressure on wages, not immigration. But Bernie opposed the 2007 immigration reform and was only a reluctant voter for the 2013 immigration reform. And he still characterizes any policy that would provide a welcome to immigrants as a "Koch Brothers proposal." On its face these positions are nuanced discussion of policy. Hiding behind them, though, is the belief that everybody south of the Mexican border is some other kind of person.

What about Black Lives? Everybody who has met with Bernie on this subject is quick to point to his willingness to discuss the problems with mass incarceration, asset forfeiture, and inequality in the justice system. But they also remain uncomfortable with his insistence on talking about the "hard job" police face in providing safety in some neighborhoods. He seems not to be aware of the role of police as an occupying force, nor to recognize the way the "blue wall" protects those who took jobs in urban police departments just so they could be abusive toward people they hate. I could point to the rush of racists into ICE, which provides them the cover of a rogue agency for their vicious behavior, but you see the same thing in so many departments. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began trending in 1913, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the racist murder of Trayvon Martin. Ever since, there have been white people who pretend not to understand it. They forlornly ask, "What about my life?" They counter with the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, although they don't seem to insist on this to cry for justice for Sandra Bland, or Eric Garner, or Philando Castile. When Bernie finds other words, when he calls for "criminal justice reform" instead of insisting that "Black lives matter," I feel that he is echoing Debs in refusing to offer something "special" and claiming that fighting for workers' rights is enough.

I don't think Bernie has any problems personally with people of color. I don't think he is racist in that way. I have long suspected, though, that Bernie moved to Vermont fifty years ago because people of color introduce too much complexity into his class analysis. In Vermont (95% white) he could talk about labor and capital without talking about race. Brooklyn, where Bernie grew up, is -- by contrast -- 36% white, 35% African American, 20% Latino and 12% Asian. Roughly half the people speak a language other than English when they are in their homes. Chicago, where he went to university, is similarly diverse. So I can't help but feel that he wanted to avoid talking about things that "didn't fit" with his theory.

I can't say that about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz. She is Puerto Rican herself. Even if she hasn't developed a theoretical understanding about the relationship between Puerto Rico and the US, she sees the effects of colonialism, especially since last year's hurricane. I cant't say it about Kaniela Ing, either. He is not afraid to speak about colonizers in Hawaii. That's why I have a great deal of hope about the new generation of socialists. But I also feel strongly about the need to share what we have learned about the relationship between race and class. History tells us that there will be white people in the socialist movement who are afraid of antagonizing "the white working class" with talk of "special demands," even if those demands are as elemental as not killing people of color.

This conversation is not unique to the United States. Throughout the imperialist world there are colonizers on both sides of the class divide who take the supremacy of white people and culture so much for granted that it is invisible to them as a question. In 1960, Ousmane Sembène wrote Le Bouts de Bois de Dieu  about a railway strike in 1940's Senegal. The meeting between the workers' committee and the company gets off to a contentious start when the manager insists that it be conducted in French. Bakayoko, a leader of the strike replies:

"I am not alone in this strike," he said, looking at the personnel director, "but since your ignorance of any of our language is a handicap for you, we will use French as a matter of courtesy.  But is is a courtesy that will not last forever."

This exchange has stayed with me because the demand for French could as easily have come from a white union leader. In February 2017 I wrote an essay questioning the very existence of a working class in the US today. I pointed out that in 1964, when there was still an immense steel industry in this country, a quarter of union steel workers were African American, but no African American had yet been elected as a national officer of the USW. The contract negotiated by the union itself had the effect of keeping African American steel workers in the hottest, most dangerous, worst paid jobs in the mills. There is nothing about working class organization that guarantees justice for all. That requires "special demands."

איכה ישבה העיר רבתי עם

Tonight begins the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av on which we mourn the many calamities that have befallen the Jewish people:

-The destruction of the Temple of Solomon by the Babylonians in 587 BCE

-The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE

-The destruction of the Jewish communities of France and the Rhine by the Crusaders in 1096

-The expulsion of Jews from England in 1290

-The expulsion of Jews from France in 1306

-The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492

-The Shoah attempting extermination of all Jews begun in 1941

All those calamities were initiated by our enemies, but our tradition treats them differently, looking to those enemies as instruments of retribution for our failing to live up to what we claim of ourselves. We commemorate Tisha B’Av with the reading of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, mourning Zion from his captivity in Babylon. Consider how this book treats the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the people.  It opens:

Alas!
Lonely sits the city
Once great with people!
She that was great among nations
Is become like a widow!

But Jeremiah quickly moves to his explanation for the destruction:

Her enemies are now the masters,
Her foes are at ease,
Because the Lord has afflicted her
For her many transgressions.

And that is the theme of Lamentations. We mourn the humiliation of Jerusalem and our people, but we confess our sins which led to it. In other words, our adversaries are carrying out God's will by humbling us for our pride. Each chapter of Eicha follows this pattern and each concludes with the prayer that God will once again have faith in us and restore us to grace:

Arise, cry out in the night
At the beginning of the watches,
Pour out your heart like water
In the presence of the Lord!
Lift up your hands to Him!

The message is consistent with the prophecies of Jeremiah before the Babylonian captivity. He repeatedly foretold destruction and warned the people of its source in their own failures. You can find these predictions everywhere in the Book of Jeremiah. Consider this:

Thus said the Lord:
Cursed is he who trusts in man,
Who makes mere flesh his strength,
And turns his thoughts from the Lord.
He shall be like a bush in the desert,
Which does not sense the coming of good:
It is set in the scorched places of the wilderness,
In a barren land without inhabitant.
Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord,
Whose trust is the Lord alone.
He shall be like a tree planted by waters,
Sending forth its roots by a stream’
It does not sense the coming of heat,
Its leaves are ever fresh;
It has no care in a year of drought,
It does not cease to yield fruit.

This reading of God - that he punishes us all for rejecting our calling to good - lost favor in my community after World War 2. People were horrified by the suggestion that we had somehow brought the Holocaust on ourselves. What could we possibly have done that was bad enough to warrant the burning of 6 million souls? We chose to attribute this evil to the presence of evil itself in the world, not to God. Frankly, I prefer that view. A God who would destroy children as a performance of punishment does not deserve worship. But with that rejection of Divine retribution seems to have come the arrogance that believes that we know more than we in fact do, a worship of ourselves.

Then, too, there was the birth of the State of Israel. Instead of waiting for a miraculous restoration to Zion, Jewish people began to believe that we could do it ourselves. Instead of focusing on our belief that God wants justice, we came to the faith that our weapons were instruments of God and that whoever stood in the path of our conquests was an enemy. We adopted the idolatrous view that God wanted us to destroy his children! That worship of "mere flesh" - that "trust" in ourselves - is the beginning of the calamity that I commemorate on this Tisha B’Av.

When we confine our brothers to outdoor prisons like Gaza and the towns of the West Bank,

When we tell our neighbors that they are no longer citizens of the land,

When we rip out their vineyards and olive groves in violation of our Torah,

When we bulldoze their homes,

When we shoot their children,

When we bomb them from the air,

When we deny them food and water,

Whe we do these things we are praying for our own destruction.

But it is not only a prayer.

Because when we do these things we have already surrendered our humanity.

We have hurried to repudiate our Judaism.

We have ceased our worship of God and replaced it with a worship of missiles and guns.

We are idolators who no longer know what it is to be a Jew.

This year on Tisha B’Av I mourn the destruction of Judaism itself, not by Romans or Babylonians or some other enemy serving the destructive will of God, but by ourselves and by the State of Israel.

For my friends who fast this year in the other mode, thinking our most important enemies are external, I recommend the prophet Amos:

You who wish for the day of the Lord, why would you want the day of the Lord?
It shall be darkness, not light!
As if a man should run from a lion and be attacked by a bear.
Or if he got indoors, should lean his hand on the wall and be bitten by a snake.
Surely the day of the Lord shall be not light, but darkness, blackest night without a glimmer.
I loathe, I despise your festivals.
I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies.
If you offer Me burnt offerings or meal offerings I will not accept them.
I will pay no heed to your gifts of fatted calves.
Spare me your hymns, don't let me hear your praise songs.
But... Let justice spring up like water and righteousness like an unfailing stream.