POLITICS – Page 4 – Don't Gel Too Soon

Ferguson, Missouri, Yale and What We Learn If We Listen

The first version of this post appeared in August of last year, just 15 months ago. (Ironically, Ferguson is only 2 hours from Colombia, MO, home of the University of Missouri. ) Much of that year’s BlogHer had dealt with intersectionality; Ferguson demonstrated how much I didn’t know and how much I could learn from listening to friends of color both on Facebook and on their blogs.

Well – the posts connected to what’s been happening at Yale and U. Missouri illustrate that all the more. I’m going to leave that earlier post but just so it’s clear what I mean, here one from a professor that circulated in the past week.

Listen, I need you to understand what I’m about to say. This is what I taught the students at Morehouse last week.

2015 is not what we thought it was. The deadliest hate crime against Black folk in the past 75 years happened THIS YEAR in Charleston.

More unarmed Black folk have been killed by police THIS YEAR than were lynched in any year since 1923.

Never, in the history of modern America, have we seen Black students in elementary, middle, and high school handcuffed and assaulted by police IN SCHOOL like we have seen this year.

Black students, who pay tuition are leaving the University of Missouri campus right now because of active death threats against their lives.

If you EVER wondered who you would be or what you would do if you lived during the Civil Rights Movement, stop. You are living in that time, RIGHT NOW. Shaun King

One of the bloggers I admire most is Kelly Wickham, who writes Mocha Momma. I “met” her online 7 years ago because she was a reading specialist and, as the parent of a dyslexic child, I was so grateful for the committed, loving, determined way she wrote about her work. I kind of stalked her in comments until we met at BlogHer in 2007. (Actually I also stalked her after that, too, but at least by then she knew who I was.)

She writes, with honesty and rage, about race. About family, and love, and education and whatever else occurs to her, but also about race. I’ve learned a lot from her, including how much I didn’t know. As the years have passed, and more women of color have joined BlogHer and Kelly’s Facebook feed, I’ve learned from others, too. The BlogHer community grew and widened, and with it the gut understanding of the whole community. On our blogs we tell the truth, and the different truths shared by the bloggers who are now a part of my life have been an immeasurable gift.

Of course it is beyond wrong that, in 2014, we still have to seek diversity, to go out of our way to learn lessons we should have learned long ago, and that those most in pain still experience so much that we haven’t figured out how to learn.

The trouble is that there hasn’t been nearly enough intersection between us and those experiencing the harshest emotions that emerge in response to American racism.

I remember once talking with author Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, who said to me “Don’t you see, we black mothers must be lionesses to protect our sons.” I thought of her statement often as I was raising my own.

I remember a colleague describing to me, when we were both pregnant, her fear of the first time someone called her not-yet-born child a “n*$%#&r” – of what she would say to him, what she would do.

But despite having African-American colleagues and friends, I’m not sure I ever, until these past days, completely heard the depth of anger and despair that lives within so many.

It’s not that I didn’t know; most people I know care about and have seen plenty of racial injustice and have worked, in our own ways, to change it. But that’s different from opening someone else’s door and walking in. It’s on fire in there. And it should be.

Listen to these:

Everyone can’t stand up the moment something pisses the off and we’re all different in how we react. Some people shut down because they don’t even know where to start. Some people just need a nudge to be emboldened to speak. Some people need to know they’re needed before they speak.

Well if you need that nudge, here it is. If you’re afraid because you don’t want to say the wrong thing, push past that fear. Because right now, your silence about the continued devaluation of Black lives is wrong. Your lack of acknowledgement is not ok. If you need tips before speaking out here’s 3: don’t blame the person who was killed. Don’t say you’re color-blind. Acknowledge the racism at play.

Speaking up when it matters is usually when it’s also the hardest. When your voice shakes, that’s when you’re standing in truth. But that’s usually when it is most needed. And when you do it, someone else might be encouraged to do the same. Do not be silent. Awesomely Luvvie

I am outraged but I do not know what to do with my outrage that might be productive, that might move this world forward toward a place where black lives matter, and where black parents no longer need to have “the talk” with their children about how not to be killed by police and where anger over a lifetime of wrongs is not judged, but understood and supported. Roxanne Gay

Black bodies matter. Black bodies matter. Black bodies matter. Say it with me: Black bodies matter. This isn’t a question. This isn’t a euphemism. This isn’t an analogy. This is a fact. Black cis and trans boys, girls, men, and women and non-binary folks, they all matter. Until that fact becomes a universal truth due to the precise liberty and justice the Constitution of this country promises, I won’t stop fighting and neither should you. Jenn M. Jackson

But it wasn’t what I could see and hear as Ferguson residents fled and were pursued into residential areas that gave me chills. It was what I couldn’t see. Because behind the walls of those smoke-shrouded homes were parents comforting their frightened children. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. They could have been me. They could have been my children.Kymberli Barney for Mom 2.0

This is what I need, dear friend.

I need to know that you are not merely worried about this most tragic of worst case scenarios befalling my son; I need to know that you are out there changing the ethos that puts it in place. That you see this as something that unites us as mothers, friends and human beings.

My son needs me, as much as yours needs you. Sadly, my son needs me more. He needs someone to have his back, when it seems that the police, the men he’d wave to with excitement as a little boy, see him as a being worthy only of prison or death.

I need you, too, because I can’t do this alone. Keesha Beckford “Dear White Moms” on BonBon Break

This is where the story gets tricky. This is where our son paced up and down the stairs—in his under shirt, gym shorts and crew socks—telling us about the police who came to our door and handcuffed our son and pulled him outside. “Why?” It was the only question I could come up with — “why?”

His hands ran over his face and found each other behind his head. I knew this look too. The one of lost words—of previous trauma—of discouragement.

“I don’t know. There’s some robberies in the area? I guess? And they saw me here—I don’t know. They thought it was me. They thought it was me and wouldn’t listen. They didn’t believe me that this was my house.”

He shook his head and looked at me. “It didn’t even matter that I had a key, moms.” Elora Nicole

For each of these there are dozens and dozens more. No more to say.

Notorious RBG: the Gift of Her Story with Thanks to Her, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik

Notorious RBG cover - book by Irin Carmon — Notorious RBG cover – book by Irin Carmon

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an enormously compelling figure. How do I know this? Authors Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik have given us the gift of this book, that’s how. Described by the New York Times as “a cheery curio, as if a scrapbook and the Talmud decided to have a baby,” it is a lively, engrossing, humanizing introduction to a revered figure.

Born in 1933, six years before World War II, she remains, at 82, very much a part of our present, and our future. Hers are the shoulders so many of us stand upon, proud of what we’ve fought for for today’s young women and men, parents and professionals, teachers, truckers and temps — all of it so much less than she faced down and conquered. For all of us.

Beyond the exploration of her remarkable intellect and judicial virtuosity, Carmon reveals the warmth, spirit and personal moments that transform an icon into a person. Her unlikely close friendship not only with Justice Scalia but also with his family, is intriguing, of course. The genuine partnership she shared with her husband Mary for 56 years is a unifying thread through much of the book; the story of his last days one of the most moving.

Of course, threaded through the narrative are the legal and policy changes she championed and often brought from idea to reality — and, in recent years, fought, not always successfully, against the reversal of some of them. From her days at Harvard Law School to those on the O’Connor Court, the impact of her passion and intellect is clear.

So. If you want to have fun and be inspired at the same time, or need a gift for anyone who cares about women, or law and policy, or just loves a great story, this is it. (Full disclosure: I DO know Irin but I never expected to write about the book until I read it. Couldn’t help myself….)

50 Jewish Stars; 21 Interesting Women

Meet the Forward 50 – fifty Jewish Americans designated worthy of special attention as 2015 draws to a close. That “Forward” in “The Forward 50?” It’s The Jewish Daily Forward. A newspaper founded in 1897 as a Yiddish language publication, it has also published in English for the past 25 years, won a ton of awards, and at one time in the 1920’s had a larger circulation than the New York Times!

Every year, most likely as circulation-building clickbait, the paper publishes a list of fifty Jews who are “deeply, loudly and passionately embedded in some of the most pressing political and social issues in the nation.”

Not so unusual, but I was pleased to see that nearly half (21) were women so I decided see who they are, and they’re pretty interesting and modern.

Two of their “Top 5” are women, one an academic, one a star: Princeton professor and newly minted MacArthur “genius” Marina Rustow – who is also the first Jewish Studies person to receive a MacArthur — and our own beloved Amy Schumer.

Four of the six “Activists” are women: Rachel Sklar and her daughter Ruby, Emma Sulkowitcz who carried a mattress – everywhere – through her last years at Columbia University to protest the school’s inaction in her rape allegations. Ruth Messinger, long-time crusader and organizer, who in the 17 years she spent running the United Jewish Word Service, “created a uniquely Jewish way to promote economic and gender equality in the developed world” and street harassment activist Shoshana Roberts .

In general, this is a varied, original and exciting list. Twenty-one of 50 isn’t perfect but what’s kind of cool is how many of these women are closer to the edge not just of Jewish culture but the culture of the US generally. Which is nice, given the battles going on in some other Jewish institutions.

Race, Power, Education, . . . and Football

1950 is the year the first Black student enrolled at the University of Missouri.

“We have to do it on our own, Cindy. You can’t help anymore.” She said it gently, but it was pretty painful. I’d been involved in campus civil rights advocacy since I’d arrived as a freshman in 1964, just a little bit more than a year after the March on Washington. Now it was the fall of 1966 and we were back from summer vacation.

I was early for the first action meeting of the year and ran into my friend Cheryl on the steps. I started to ask about plans for the year and she shook her head — then told me that the Black students on campus had decided to build from within their own community. It was kind of “thanks but no thanks.” I was sad, but not angry – I knew what she was saying and as much as I wanted to be part of what they were doing, I understood their desire to act independently.

That was almost 50 years ago and still students of color are forced to demand respect, rather than assume it. This time, at least, they got it.

My sister Pittsburgher Dr. Goddess sums up: “The Movement we just witnessed was intersectional, humanist, gendered, Black-led and labor-fed. Celebrate the Vision!” #Mizzou

OH – and because we should always seek the wisdom of Dave Zirin in moments like these,, take a look at this thoughtful meditation on racial justice AND the power of student athletes.

Good Girls Revolt — When Men Were “Mad” and Women Were Researchers

Good-Girls-Revolt-Amazon-Pilot — Three “good girls” at Newsweek talking with brief hire Nora Ephron, who left her researcher role for “someplace I can write.”

It’s hard to believe, watching now. Even more than Mad Men, Amazon’s Good Girls’ Revolt is all too familiar. The story of the women of Newsweek and their battle for equality in the newsroom, it’s a heartbreaker, and it’s not because of the huge moments of oppression or betrayal, although they are present. (Through some creative reporting, a young researcher discovers what really happened at the 1969 Altamont Festival that “killed the 60’s.” But the rewrite assignment – and the credit – goes to a guy who never left the building. “That’s how we do things here. We have a process. Men are the reporters – you girls are the researchers.”) The researcher on this story loves the thrill of reporting so much she surrenders everything she’s learned, even though she’ll never get credit for it in the office, much less in print.

Sadly, many of us remember; it happened to us.

Implicit, explicit and intractable power all in male hands, all the time, permeates every moment of Good Girls Revolt’s pilot episode. We know where their pending revolution is coming from.

Even more frequent than the “big stuff” were the small assumptions, dismissals, insults and slights that eat away, day by day, at confidence and ambition and hope.

Four women in a hallway conversation greeted by the boss: “Hello, my little coven.”
The Managing Editor sending his best researcher, who keeps her reporter partner (and lover) safe and “his” stories on the cover, for coffee. “Black, two sugars, right?”
“Sweetie,” “honey,” “cutie.”
A husband who “gives his wife a year” to write a novel before moving her to Connecticut to raise babies, but then puts a hole in her diaphragm so she’ll be pregnant before that year ends.
Three guys hungrily ogling a smart, but lovely women as she tries unsuccessfully to make it through the newsroom without incident.

Sadly, many of us remember; it happened to us.

For me it was a very sweet 60 Minutes producer sitting next to a very pregnant me in the newsroom and urging me not to come back to work – to stay home like his wife did. Or the executive who called with sympathy for my miscarriage and told me that, pregnant woman that I’d been, I shouldn’t have been working so hard – as if I was my fault. (His assistant asked me if I’d even wanted the baby at all.)

In addition to newsroom battles, this introductory episode takes us to a “consciousness raising” meeting, led by a pregnant “Eleanor Holmes Norton” and featuring, like a 12-step program, the telling of individual stories of humiliation, discrimination and sexual harassment.

Sadly, many of us remember; it happened to us.

In my own community, oppressive sexual relationships between researcher and producer weren’t frequent, but they weren’t rare, either. They almost never ended well. One correspondent told me at a bureau Christmas party “I’d really love to sleep with you. Really. But I never dip my pen in the company inkwell.” He thought I’d be impressed.

We need this show – and so do our daughters and nieces and sons and nephews and husbands and young friends. Here’s how Buzzfeed’s Ann Helen Peterson ends her piece on the show:

Good Girls Revolt may be about a bunch of accidental revolutionaries. Its politics may be embroidered with melodrama, and romance, and fixation on clothes. But, then again, so is life. And that doesn’t make the show, or the work of the women behind the scenes, any less feminist — or necessary.

As [production designer Jeannine] Oppewall says, “Sometimes I look at my nieces, who don’t quite yet see the amount of work it took for us to pull this off, and I’m like, ‘You better have a look at the past, because if you’re not vigilant, the past can always be your future.’ You gotta babysit it and talk about it and push it and make it seem like this is absolutely the way it should be.”

The War for the Souls of Orthodox Jewish Women (and Men) and Why It Matters

The young woman who wrote and recorded this song (watch it if you haven’t; it’s wonderful) is a “Singer/songwriter, vlogger, Orthodox Jew, and English major on the verge of ‘real life.'” Her name is Talia Lakritz.

The young woman who wrote and published this piece, which begins with the word “Hineni” (Here I am – a response to God’s call several times in the Torah) is a Maharat and a pioneer in ritual Orthodox Judaism. Her name is Rachel Kohl Finegold.

The young woman who was my best teacher of all things Jewish (and many other things) is a model for many. Her name is Aliza Sperling.

The young woman who helped to support traumatized victims of the “mikvah rabbi scandal” is a Maharat at The National Synagogue. Her name is Ruth Balinsky Friedman.

The young women who ranked highest among my other great teachers offered wise, knowledgeable, exciting education both in theory and practice. Their names are Laura Shaw Frank (JD and almost PhD), Rachel Weintraub (JD), Brooke Pollack (JD), and Aliza Levine (MD). There were more, too.

They are all treasures in my life; I wish every Jewish seeker could have so stunning an educational-religious posse.

So what’s going on? Why has The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) stuck a stick in the eye of every Jewish woman, especially women like these – passionate Jews; learners and teachers – by issuing a kind of fatwa against the rabbinic ordination of Orthodox Jewish women. This is just the most recent episode in the soap opera that their effort to keep women from formal religious leadership. Predictably, outrage ensued.

From New York’s towering Modern Orthodox leader Avi Weiss LA’s Rav Yosef Kanevsky, word emerged that this blow was unacceptable.

Why does it matter? RCA claims that there are plenty of ways for women to participate and even lead, they just can’t be ordained. Why the uproar from college women and teachers and rabbis and parents and – generally – people who really like being Jewish?

Because it’s terrible to continue, with even more emphasis than usual, to shut half your community off — by fiat — from the privilege of spiritual leadership. Remember the slogan “If you can see it, you can be it.” Sounds right doesn’t it? But if you’re set apart, part of your soul is set apart too.

The Jewish people lose way too much, kept from 50% of the talent and strength and smarts and love in our own communities.

Read this story by the renowned feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, on the death of her mother:*

“One night about twenty people are milling about the house but by Jewish computation there are only nine Jews in our living room. This is because only nine men have shown up for the memorial service. A minyan, the quorum required for Jewish communal prayer, calls for ten men.

“I know the Hebrew.” I say. “You can count me, Daddy.”

I meant I want to count. I meant, don’t count me out just because I am a girl.

“You know it’s not allowed, he replies, frowning.”

“For my own mother’s Kaddish I can be counted in the minyan. For God’s sake, it’s your house! It’s your minyan Daddy.”

“Not allowed!” says my father.

Later she wrote:

“The turning point in my spiritual life….I could point to the shivah experience in my living room, say that my father sent me into the arms of feminism, and leave it at that….No woman who has faced the anguish and insult of exclusion on top of the tragedy of her bereavement forgets that her humiliation was inflicted by Jewish men.”

It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? Such a loss for those who wish to serve and all of us who need them. Besides, as my friend Chana reminded me, in last week’s parsha God told Abraham “Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you.” If only He’d get in touch with the RCA and remind them, too.

*Deborah, Golda and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America

When the “Homeless Problem” Lives Next Door

Homeless, homeless, Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake – Paul Simon

This is the alcove between our house and the building next door. Our neighbor has been here for a couple of months now and we have to figure out what to do. This being San Francisco, we are all – to varying degrees – terribly uncomfortable with the decisions tied to such a situation.

For a long time those of us who were most uneasy hoped we could just let him stay. We live right at a busy bus stop though, and there’s a 4-year-old upstairs from us and a preschool across the street. And I remember…

We lived in Manhattan, on Broadway and 79th St, in 1970’s and 80’s, when the city, and many of its inhabitants, were broke. Homeless New Yorkers were placed in “welfare hotels” – beat-up old places nobody wanted; there were 3 or 4 of those within blocks of our building. An island with trees and some greenery divided the uptown/downtown sides of Broadway. Many lost souls slept there too, especially where we were, above 72nd St. – and on the sidewalks and benches.

Once after school, when my older son was around five, we stepped off the bus on Amsterdam Ave, right outside PS 87’s playground, to find ourselves two steps from a man sleeping on the sidewalk next to the playground fence, his penis hanging out of his pants. Other times the men (they were mostly men) suffered serious mental illness, yelling at voices none of the rest of us could hear.

Because the circumstances were so troubling, we worked to find ways for our kids to feel even a little bit empowered to help. They always wanted to offer money. We asked, if they did want to help, that they provide food, since so many just bought alcohol with spare change. They did this often – buying a bagel or some juice at one of the neighborhood bodegas and passing them on. We also got involved with Paul Simon’s Children’s Health Fund, which sends medical vans and doctors to New York’s underserved neighborhoods. In the 80’s the vans spent much of their time at family shelters and welfare hotels. Our younger son chose it as his portion of family donations for years. No effort, however, eliminated the fear.

We’d be walking through the discount stores on the Lower East Side and there would be a couple of homeless guys outside a door or on the corner. I’d feel a little hand move into mine and, usually, squeeze pretty hard. My husband, who worked in inner city medicine, always said “Don’t forget, they won’t hurt you; if you blew on them they’d fall over” but that information was only partly successful. No matter how much they understood, no matter how much compassion they felt, many of these people scared them.

In other words, my personal experience with my own kids slams into my sense of that old Greater Good. I know that a little kid getting scared once in a while is nothing compared to the ordeal the man next door faces every day but I keep remembering those small hands reaching out to mine and what I know remains, however faintly, from those daily encounters. I know, too, that I’m partly hiding behind the interests of the lovely little boy upstairs and the school across the street. Social services are limited by budget, so I’m reluctant to act and struggling to figure out what I think we should do. No ending here – ending to come.

NaBloPoMo and the Cold November Rain

And it’s hard to hold a candle In the cold November rain — Guns N’ Roses

We’re on our way now- committed to NaBloPoMo*: the pledge to post every day in the month of November. Needing the discipline of a public pledge, I’ve taken it on. November: the month when my second son and first daughter-in-law arrived on the planet, when I first saw Africa, when the hero of my youth died in Dallas; the month of Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sherman’s burning of Atlanta and the launch of Queen Elizabeth’s record-setting reign. So much has happened in this month that ends with our beloved Thanksgiving.

There’s plenty to talk about: a Presidential election that’s precisely a year away, an unprecedented assault on women’s rights, faith, grief, the vagaries of our popular culture, families, grandparents, holidays, admired friends, books, music, movies and the world in general. Oh, and the wonderful work of the women whom I’ve joined on this adventure. You can find them all here.
*National Blog Posting Month

Mom to Mom: “Is There a Gun in Your Home?” #playdates2015

Guns in other people’s houses: here’s what one mom wrote last spring in the Washington Post, that emerged again on Facebook after the Oregon school shooting.

The other mom might say, “Can Chloe come over here tomorrow to play with Maddie?” I would ask, “Do you keep guns in your house?”….I’m not quite sure what compelled me to ask about guns when my children were small. I just added it to the litany of things I would tell parents – we have a dog, we have a pool that’s fenced, we don’t keep guns. It seemed that if a parent told me about their child’s food allergy, I could and should ask if they kept guns.

When my older son was in kindergarten, he used to visit his friend Michael. One day he came home and announced that Michael’s father had a gun – he had seen it. Thirty-five years ago that was a shock, especially on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We decided all playdates with Michael would move to our house and explained to his parents, who weren’t particularly troubled by our decision. But it’s not easy.

It’s in our nature to be polite, civil to another parent, especially when their children like each other, but even I, the pathological people pleaser, couldn’t do otherwise.

As I watch what is unfolding in our country now, recalling the frightening relief that we learned about The Gun before anything happened, and reading on Facebook how many of our younger friends’ kids have lockdown drills even in 1st and 2nd grade, it’s tough not to feel sad — and angry.

There are more than enough words written about this already, but as we experience the continuing epidemic of tragedy and our national unwillingness to confront the issue, and I see my oldest grandson almost the age at which our son first faced this, I just wonder if our country has any will left to improve anything – even the safety of our children.

Dirty Dancing and Planned Parenthood: a Perfect History Lesson

This showed up in my Facebook feed Thursday night and blew me away. It may have been funny to many, but it left me breathless.

I don’t know if it’s possible for younger people today to know how terrible that time before Roe was for so many young women like Penny, who faced the terror and hopelessness of an unwanted pregnancy, or what a real miracle it was that she was rescued.

Dirty Dancing is set in the summer of 1963, just before Francis “Baby” Houseman is about to leave for Mt Holyoke. I left only a year later, for Smith. So she and I are cousins, if not sisters. Each wanting to change the world, each with a wonderful, trusting father, each falling for a bad boy with such a different history from our own … and each inexperienced in realities such as those faced by a pregnant dancer with no money whose illegal abortion goes terribly wrong.

She nearly dies — saved only by the skill of Francis’ doctor father. The film is a fairy tale – in the love story for sure, but also in the story of the damsel in distress rescued by a fatherly wizard who brings her back from the brink. Most women in those pre-Roe days – and many again now, in states where abortion rights are savaged every day — faced real back alleys and unskilled procedures on kitchen tables with no wizard, or anyone else, to save them. Penny’s story was as real as they come, and it’s no joke to remind us that her fairy tale is in real danger of once again becoming the dark horror story it used to be.

So yes – it’s always fun when cultural references inform reality. But it’s hard to enjoy even this clever comparison when the lives of so many Pennys and her sisters are in such terrible jeopardy.