HungryBlues

Prison Policy Initiative

Yesterday evening I was one of the co-hosts of a reception for the Prison Policy Initiative. It was a great event with Executive Director Peter Wagner speaking alongside Joseph "Jazz" Hayden and Mark Dubnoff.

Wagner spoke about his innovative work on census policy and felony disenfranchisement. Hayden spoke about his 15 years of work to overturn felony disenfranchisement laws. Dubnoff spoke about being pro bono counsel in Simmons v. Galvin—the case challenging the constitutional amendment adopted by Massachusetts in 2000 to deprive convicted felons of their right to vote.

For the last two years, PPI was sustained by Executive Director Peter Wagner's Soros Fellowship. When the fellowship ran out last spring, Wagner just kept working on his projects, unpaid, but also set himself the task of finding a fiscal sponsor that could accept donations for PPI once it incorporated as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

Both Hayden and Dubnoff testified to the fact that a wide range of people who work on prisoners' issues have come to rely on the work that PPI does. Hayden traveled from New York City in order to support the cause.

PPI is now a 501c3, and Wagner has found a fiscal sponsor, so you can support the cause, too, by making a tax-deductible donation here.

(Image via Prison Policy Initiative.)

Author Applauds New Possibilities for Solving Civil Rights "Cold Cases"

Regarding this news, Susan Klopfer has put out this press release:

September 17, 2005 -- Sixties voting rights advocate Birdia Keglar was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen on her way home to Charleston, Mississippi after meeting with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in Jackson.

Keglar's January 11, 1966 death and the murders of her best friend and then her youngest son have never been resolved or even investigated by law enforcement agencies - local, state or federal.

Susan Orr-Klopfer, author of a new book on civil rights in the Mississippi Delta, believes these three "cold case" murders should get the immediate attention of a new Unsolved Crimes Section of the Justice Department.

Under a measure approved Thursday by the U.S. Senate, the new office would target such pre-1970 racially motivated homicides that remain unsolved because of lax state and federal prosecution at the time they occurred.

The bill was inspired by recent efforts to reopen the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American youngster who was murdered in 1955 while visiting relatives in the Delta.

"Young Till’s crime was whistling at a white woman while inside a small grocery store. For this, he was lynched and the men who admitted committing the crime went free.

"Birdia Keglar’s crime, 11 years later, was to advocate for voting rights. She and her friend Adlena Hamlett were driving home from Jackson after meeting with Senator Robert F. Kennedy to talk over civil rights issues. But their car was stopped in a small Delta town where they were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Klansmen.

"Very likely, the Klansmen who killed Keglar and Hamlett were also highway patrolmen. Both women’s bodies were mutilated – both were decapitated and Hamlett’s arms were cleanly severed from her body," Klopfer said.

"Their deaths were attributed to a car wreck by officials. But the car disappeared along with Keglar’s briefcase and witnesses were threatened with murder if they did not remain quiet."

Three months later, after Keglar’s youngest son went to Washington D.C. trying to learn what happened to his mother, he was murdered.

"James Keglar was knocked unconscious and burned alive in his house. This happened hours after he was released from a Clarksdale, Mississippi jail on a bogus charge. He was expecting help from the FBI but it never came, according to his brother."

Klopfer’s book, "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," details these Mississippi Delta murders and dozens of others, including the lynching of young Till.

The book contains newly discovered information on several other Mississippi civil rights murders including "strong evidence that civil rights leader Medgar Evers was not murdered by Byron de la Beckwith who was finally convicted for the crime, but by a friend of Beckwith’s, another member of the Klan who was Beckwith’s superior," Klopfer said.

Klopfer lived in the Mississippi Delta in employee housing on the prison grounds of Parchman Penitentiary for two years while she researched and wrote her 680-page book that contains over 1,400 footnotes as well as names and information regarding nearly 1,000 black people who were lynched in the state – "a small representation of the racial murders and lynching that have taken place in Mississippi," Klopfer said.

Senator Jim Talent, R-Mo., sponsored Thursday’s legislation with Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. The Senate voted by unanimous consent to add the measure to an appropriations bill that is expected to pass the Senate this week, according to Associated Press reports. The bill was introduced by Talent and Dodd in July after a Mississippi court sentenced former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen to 60 years in jail for the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.

"There are 13 Klansmen mentioned in the book who are known to the FBI and still living in Mississippi who helped murder Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Robert Goodman. Yet no one has been prosecuted except for Preacher Killen who was not at the murder scene. Maybe some progress will finally come about because of this Senate bill," Klopfer said.

Klopfer said she feels closest to the Keglar and Hamlett murders, however. "These were two older, established Mississippi black women – Adlena Hamlett was 77-years-old and was a well-respected teacher for many years.

"Birdia Keglar was a business woman who was trying to start a local chapter of the NAACP. She was the first black person in her county to vote since Reconstruction following the Civil War. She was earlier represented in federal court by John Doar of the U.S. Department of Justice and was Doar’s first voting rights test case when he came into Mississippi after the election of President John F. Kennedy."

One of Adlena Hamlett’s granddaughters in August told Klopfer about going with Hamlett to the courthouse square as a child to request a ballot.

"Nina Zachery said the clerk tore up the ballot and ordered their departure. But Zachery’s grandmother said not to worry because she – Nina – would be able to vote one day, and that was all that mattered. Hamlett and Keglar were later hanged in effigy at the Tallahatchie Courthuse and were strongly warned by Klansmen to stop their voting rights activities."

Klopfer is the first journalist to write about Keglar and Hamlett. "I learned about this story from a nurse at Parchman whose wife was a relative of Mrs. Keglar. Very little was known about them and it took the entire two years to piece this story together – it was very complicated with numerous entanglements that reached from the Delta to Washington, D.C."

Klopfer also asserts it was significant that Sen. Edward Kennedy led off the questioning of Chief Justice nominee John Roberts on his Senate confirmation hearing this past week.

"Sen. Kennedy reminded Roberts that people died for the right to vote. Sen. Kennedy is concerned about reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – and opposition to equal voting rights and other civil rights supplied the motives for all of the murders listed in this book."

Klopfer left Mississippi at the end of August and said she added newly discovered information to the book even as she was packing to leave.

# # #

About My Language

[Kaspit raised some concerns about my use of the word "genocidal" in my first post about FEMA and the Red Cross. Since others may have felt similarly, I'm going to offer an initial response to my friend's comment out here, as a new post. For ease of reference, I'm going to repost Kaspit's comment in the comments to this post. --BG]

Kaspit,

Thanks for your feedback. I value it a great deal and hope we can have more exchanges on these and other related topics. At the moment it is a little difficult for me know how to modulate my anger in a way that isn't off putting to some (maybe many). Some of that may be warranted by the scale of injustice and some of that may be a reflection of my having much shorter experience than you in doing social justice work, and maybe with experience you learn how to take things better in stride in order to be more effective politically.

That said, this is my personal blog and not the website of an advocacy organization, and I don't know that I necessarily need to do anything differently. I provide the links for my sources, which others can use in other ways, if they wish. I also think there is some value in being open about how angry-making recent events are for me and, I'm sure, for many others (including you, I would guess).

A philosophical and moral question in many areas of the Katrina tragedy is at what point does willful neglect carry the weight of intent? The legal profession uses the categories of gross negligence and wanton misconduct* to describe forms of negligence that border on or are equivalent to intent. Regardless of what could be argued in a court of law, on a moral level I believe that government and Red Cross officials have crossed that line, showing "indifference to whether harm will result."

Willful withholding of food and water that can only result in death, illness, and irreparable harm definitely qualifies in this department, in my opinion—especially when the evidence shows that there is no practical or administrative reason, at this point, that the Red Cross could not have been delivering relief inside of New Orleans for some time. As I said in my post, it is a genocidal policy. That is, the policy has genocidal effects. I do not see how those crafting the policy can be unaware of those effects. Therefore, I hold them responsible.

Maybe it would be helpful if I say a little on how I think about the relationship between institutional and individual expressions of racism (and other forms of oppression). One of my analytical aphorisms is that institutionalized racism promotes individual, local acts of racism. For example, in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, elections officials created long lines at the polls in heavily African American neighborhoods by purposefully withholding voting machines from those areas. Because there were up to 10 hour waits to vote in some of these places, there were horrendous parking problems. Many had to park illegally in order to be able to vote. At some polling places, poll workers went around threatening to have voters' cars towed, forcing voters to choose between staying in line and paying towing fees. There were also gross acts of cruelty against disabled and elderly voters whom poll workers forced to stand in line with no option to sit or receive other appropriate accommodations.

I feel reasonably confident that those officials, who were administering racist policies at an institutional level, did not instruct poll workers to discriminate against Black voters in local situations. I do, however, hold elections officials culpable for cultivating an atmosphere in which it was okay for individual poll workers to violate the voting rights of, and demean, Black voters. Maybe not legally culpable (lawyers, please opine...)—but definitely morally culpable.

Similarly, long standing institutionalized racism in NOLA made Black people disproportionately vulnerable to profoundly neglectful government policies, individual acts of neglect, and overt, racist aggression on the ground.

I think I understand part of your criticism to be that it is not practical to argue that policies under discussion are genocidal in their effects. In fact, I think you're saying that it's not even that practical to try to convince Americans that the Red Cross is messing up. Maybe from a political strategy / policy making standpoint you are right. However, I feel a moral obligation to speak about the ramifications of behaviors as I see them.

I do hear you when you point out that that the word "genocidal" is potentially inflammatory and that wielding it at the outset, before I've made my argument, may undermine my argument for some readers. On reflection, I think you are probably right and that if I had it to do over, I might have used the word later in my post and defined it in my post. Still, I stand by the usage and think that stating it upfront also has some value, the value of breaking a taboo on speaking directly about the nature of injustices that we have all witnessed.

I know there are fine points in your analysis that I have not addressed as of yet. As time permits, I'll try to get to them back in the comments thread.

Your friend,

Ben

Notes

*Links are to legal definitions in Michigan state law and are being used as reference points only. I make no legal claims about the technical application of "gross negligence" and "wanton misconduct" in Louisiana state or national contexts.

Jonathan David Jackson Responds To Steven Sherman

Jonathan left this in the comments. I think it should be read by all.

I guess my only problem with Sherman's CounterPunch article (a great publication by the way) is the identification of the peace movement as "predominately white" and the manner in which the author's very writing narrows the pitch of his message to apparently privileged white peace movers who must now bring their attention to downtrodden blacks.

What peace movement is predominately white and where? Just because Steven Sherman hasn't interacted with a lot of blacks for peace (or other non-whites, for that matter) does not mean that blacks and indeed many nonwhites are not actively thinking, writing, and working for peace. And, in consideration of the fact that whites in many major cities are becoming voting minorities as latino/a and hispanic populations rise, it is incredibly important that we interrogate the problems inherent in dichotomous discourses of "majority/minority."

Nor are the black poor of New Orleans without agency (meaning, the power to act). While they may not be economically powerfull, it is imperative that we consider their power to vote, and their power on a number of spiritual and intellectual levels.

Ben, that's why your own posts on the FRAUD of the black Republican-turned mayor were so apt. There may be people who are actually afraid of those poor New Orleans blacks' power--the same power that put that fraud of a black mayor into office in the hope that he would do something, anything, for them--the hope that as a black person he would somehow empathize with the blistering, entangled racism and classicism that informs so much of everything Southern-style. Exposing the complexity of simultaneous power and powerlessness...that's what I got from those recent posts on the New Orleans mayor, the walking "race-card."

There is a quiet undercurrent of "saviorism" (to coin a term) in Sherman's otherwise strong and well-meaning rhetoric. In truth, blacks' commitment to peace in the face of racism and violence has defined peace movements in so many ways in 20th century America:

Baynard Rustin developed concepts of peaceful activism from satyagraha and applied them to his early socialist and anti-racist activities. Ella Baker and Martin Luther King, Jr. then further refined satyagraha for the civil rights movement and, of course, King was killed at the height of his agitation against the Vietnam war. Many of the agitation protest strategies employed by peace movers everywhere are constructed in the spirit of the kinds of protests that these black women and men designed. We must not forget how black workers essential contributions inform peace movements.

So, even if in your town, you only see white peace workers at your meetings, their activities contain the presence of black cultural workers as well as many different people all over the world who have sacrificed so much for peace.

The first step for any progressive movement is not to ever think that it is "predominately anything" but to reconceive of their movement as stretching beyond the bounds of people who individual workers within specific locales see in their day-to-day activities. Fundamentally, there is a level of consciousness-raising that is necessary within us as well as outside of us so that we interrogate the silent colorlines that inform our quotidian social realities and make us think that our movements can be defined within majority/minority polarities.

Essential Analysis From Kaspit

Go read Kaspit's Ten days after hurricane Katrina: interim critique for a thorough yet concise critique of I) Preparation, II) Response, and III) Political smoke and mirrors and for many valuable links for further reading. Take special note of Kaspit's grasp of the environmental issues that follow the Katrina disaster. It is unfathomable that the EPA is being kept out of NOLA cleanup management. (Did you know that??)

Go read.

With Silent Lips She Cries

by Marsha Joyner

With silent lips she cries. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This is etched in stone on the Statue of Liberty—as Lady Liberty looks out to the Atlantic Ocean, her back turned to the rest of us.

The huddled masses: the poor of all sizes, shapes and colors,
The people whose skin color is red, yellow, brown or black, whose eyes are slanted, whose religious Sabbath is celebrated on Friday or Saturday, the disabled,
Those whose sexual preferences are not "normal"(?), are we the wretched refuse,
The brown skinned people who struggle across a hostile border to realize an unkept promise— yearning to breathe free—

Mahatma Gandhi said, "passive violence fuels the fire of physical violence; and if we want to put out the fire of physical violence, logically we have to cut off the fuel supply." What is passive violence? According to Gandhi and his grandson Arun, passive violence is what we do to criticize and disrespect other people’s lives, their heritage, their history and their values. I will have to add ignoring or acting as if the huddled masses do not exist.

As the TV cameras give us a look into the faces of displaced people, children without parents, old folks without homes, the sick and dying left behind. We must ask the question, are they the wretched refuse? Are they tomorrow’s terrorists?

What happens to them two weeks from now when the cameras stop rolling, when the public moves on to the next headline? Is that what the huddled masses will look like?

For those of us who have glanced at the other side, can we say, “send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me”?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People, who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop it now. I don’t have the answer, but I do know that collectively we can.

West End Blues

The flooding in New Orleans reached its current epic proportions when—after one levee was breached on Monday morning, August 29, in the eastern, downriver portion of the city, known as the Ninth Ward—another was breached across town at the 17th Street Canal Levee, very early Tuesday morning, August 30.

The 17th Street Canal separates New Orleans’ Jefferson Parish (west) from Orleans Parish (east). The canals of the city, as well as the Mississippi riverbanks and the shore of Lake Pontchartrain are lined with earthen levees that usually keep the low-lying city from from being flooded. But as high water and wind from Katrina scoured the levees, large sections washed away, including a section reportedly several hundred feet long along the eastern side of the 17th Street Canal. . . .

The breach in the levee along the canal’s eastern bank is obvious as a break in the tan line that runs along other portions of the canal. The hole allowed Lake Pontchartrain to pour into the neighborhoods known as the West End. Some homes and other buildings are completely submerged, while the roofs of others appear to float above the murky water.

The West End is 90% white, 1.7% Black. 9.1% of its residents were living in poverty. The Lower 9th Ward is 98.3% Black, .5% white. 36.4% of its residents were living in poverty. On average in New Orleans, 66.6% of the residents are Black, 26.6% are white, and 27.9% lived in poverty. One of the wealthiest and whitest parts of New Orleans, the West End was presumably one of the areas whose residents mostly got out of New Orleans in time to escape the devastation that is now there (though their homes and other possessions may not be so lucky).

The map, above right, shows NOLA neighborhoods by percent white, with the West End outlined in red. Click here to see the same map done for percent African American, Asian and Latino. All demographic data in cited in this post are drawn from 2000 census data, as assembled by the Greater New Orleans Data Center.

The West End has been a wealthy area of New Orleans since the the turn of the 20th century. With lake front property, it was a resort area whose patrons wanted to hear the African American vernacular dance music, known as jazz.

West End was originally called New Lake End to distinguish it from Old Lake End, which sometimes referred to Milneburg.

New Lake End served as a port for craft traveling along the New Basin Canal. Between 1835 and 1876, individuals involved in the coastwise trade and those who belonged to yachting and rowing clubs primarily frequented New Lake End.

The Mexican Gulf Ship Canal Company had begun construction of a harbor with railroad facilities when the city acquired the company’s partially built embankment at the New Basin Canal and the Seventeenth Street Canal. The 100 foot wide bank was raised to a height of eight feet. Subsequently, the New Orleans City and Lake Railroad routed trains to the embankment, which was developed to house the West End resort.

A hotel, a restaurant, a garden and various amusement spots were built on a large wooden platform that was constructed over the water. In 1880, New Lake End took the name West End. Sailing and rowing regattas added to the popularity of West End. Over the next 30 years, West End achieved popularity to rival the resort at Spanish Fort.

West End contributed to the early development of jazz in New Orleans. Its bandstand was a center for early jazz concerts performed by notable jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong. The famous jazz song “West End Blues” was inspired by this resort area.

In 1921, the city completed improvements that included the construction of a seawall 500 feet further out in the lake and filling in the space between the old embankment, expanding the park to thirty acres, all of which resulted in the present West End Park. The first houses were built near West End Park around the 1920s.

Within the city of New Orleans, African American vernacular dance music originated in a number of places, far across town from the West End. One of the most vibrant homes of early jazz was the Back o' Town neighborhood, where Louis Armstrong grew up.

Back o' Town included illicit gambling and prostitution houses as well as residences. The adjacent South Rampart Street corridor contained more respectable AfricanAmerican businesses and legitimate places of entertainment. From the turn of the century through the 1920s, Back o' Town had a concentration. of saloons, social halls, dance clubs, and vaudeville theaters where early jazz was played. These ranged from low-down dives, such as the Red Onion, to a middle-class ballroom like the Parisian Garden room in the Pythian Temple building. Most of the area has been redeveloped for government offices, parking areas, high-rise office buildings, and the Superdome. The Red Onion, the Pythian Temple Building, the Odd Fellows and Masonic dance hall, and the Iroquois Theater remain. Louis Armstrong's birthplace, Union Sons hall, the Astoria Hotel and Ballroom, Spano's, and several other important early structures have been torn down.

Another source of musicians for the wealthy audiences on the West End would have been the Eighth and Ninth Wards.

The Eighth and Ninth wards begin east of Elysian Fields Avenue. This was a racially mixed workingclass neighborhood at the turn of the century. Woodmen of the World Hall, where early jazz was played, still stands. Famous residents of the area included Papa Jack Laine, Manuel Mello, Manuel Perez, and John Robichaux.

The African American working class people of the Ninth Ward were still supplying labor for the the greater economy of New Orleans, up until last week, when their neighborhood was destroyed and they were left to the death and chaos of their flooded neighborhood and city. (Map above right: NOLA neighborhoods by percent African American, Lower Ninth Ward outlined in red, other racial composition maps here.)

People in the Lower Ninth Ward use the bus to get to work because of lack of finances, lack of private cars. You've got to use the bus even though the services continue to be limited. You've got to use the bus because that's the only means you have to get out to make money. There are no jobs here, and there is nowhere you can walk to do things. (75 year old African American social worker, Fall 2003)

"In other parts of the city, a lot of people have the option of walking to their jobs. But on this side, because of the canal, we are separated from the city.” (53 year old African American laborer, Fall 2003)

Whereas only 6.1% of West End residents had no vehicle available, a third of Ninth Ward residents were without vehicles prior to Katrina. There were things that could have been done to get Ninth Ward residents and others without cars out of the city, along the lines of what Malik Rahim has pointed out.

We have Amtrak here that could have carried everybody out of town. There were enough school buses that could have evacuated 20,000 people easily, but they just let them be flooded. My son watched 40 buses go underwater - they just wouldn't move them, afraid they'd be stolen.

People who could afford to leave were so afraid someone would steal what they own that they just let it all be flooded. They could have let a family without a vehicle borrow their extra car, but instead they left it behind to be destroyed.

There's lots of ways to guess at the meaning of Louis Armstrong's rendition of his mentor Joe "King" Oliver's West End Blues. Maybe it was just a blues written while in the West End. Maybe it was a blues for people whom Oliver performed for on the West End. Maybe it was a blues for all the people who worked in the West End and lived someplace else. Right now it's a blues for all of New Orleans, though some folks have it worse than others . . .

Louis recorded the song in Chicago, after he had left New Orleans and had already spent some time in New York City. The Hot Five/Hot Seven recordings were not three minute digest versions of what he was doing in the clubs. Rather, the ensembles and the arrangements were assembled especially for the studio dates. Louis' West End Blues were designed for the act of recording and were therefore a blues for all us.

Anyone with an ounce of compassion also has more than just a touch of the West End Blues—especially if they're asking questions like Marsha Joyner's questions.

Did Katrina open our eyes to a problem, which has been glossed over? Are we seeing the under belly of America, the poor, the minorities, the people who could not afford to evacuate; whose very existence depends on the meager handout of the government. A government, which we saw was too long delayed in coming to the rescue.



Did Katrina show us an America that we pretend does not exist? The magnitude of everyday suffering is intolerable and such conditions must be changed through social action. We, members of SNCC and countless others, worked tirelessly to enact social changes only to see subsequent Administrations dismantle them. We are now back to square one. Like Victor Hugo, again, we must convince America that the poor, the minorities, the outcast, the people stealing in the midst of Katrina, the outcast—the misérables—are worth saving.

Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five, West End Blues

June 28, 1928, Chicago

Les Misérables Deja vous All Over Again

By Marsha Joyner

New Orleans, the city of romantic myths and memorable music, Gulfport, Pass Christian, little towns and villages whose names only appear on a AAA map are “Deja vous all over again”. If you will remember in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, he had to come to grips with the social problems of the day, which demanded reflection upon the nature of society and, therefore, upon the nature of man.

He showed us a man who went to jail for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. Of course, while he is in jail his family starved to death. We became acquainted with children who need to be fed, men who need jobs, and women who need to be treated humanely. By the end of the play we were crying out for change. The suffering of the people was more than we could endure.

And so it has been with the people suffering from Katrina. People dying in the flood ravished streets, baking alive on roof tops in 95 degree heat, five days without food and water, crowded into the domed prison without the basic sanitary facilities. “Les Misérables”, American style.

Over the course, thanks to the the television coverage of Katrina, we witnessed poor people trapped in a social/political system with no way out. What little they had to sustain life, washed away by the most powerful forces of nature.

President Bush said, ''there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud." Troops with guns are meant for desperate people breaking through stores, wading through polluted water to get the necessities of life, dry clothes, drinking water, medicines and a loaf of bread; not for the rich corporate entities.

Did Katrina open our eyes to a problem, which has been glossed over? Are we seeing the under belly of America, the poor, the minorities, the people who could not afford to evacuate; whose very existence depends on the meager handout of the government. A government, which we saw was too long delayed in coming to the rescue.

Did Katrina show us an America that we pretend does not exist? The magnitude of everyday suffering is intolerable and such conditions must be changed through social action. We, members of SNCC and countless others, worked tirelessly to enact social changes only to see subsequent Administrations dismantle them. We are now back to square one. Like Victor Hugo, again, we must convince America that the poor, the minorities, the outcast, the people stealing in the midst of Katrina, the outcast—the misérables—are worth saving.

Aloha pumehana

Marsha

Staying On Subject

Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled,
she beheld her tender Child
All with scourges rent:

For the sins of His own nation,
saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.

--Stabat Mater

studyholic,

Sorry it's taken me a little while to respond to your second comment. But maybe it's a good thing that some time has passed and there is more information about the statement we've been discussing. It has also given me a chance to think some more and talk some of this over with a couple of friends.

As far as the "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel" statement goes, either

a) Cindy Sheehan didn't say it, or
b) she wants to distance herself from any such statement

"[T]hat doesn't even sound like me," she said to Anderson Cooper. It does not sound like her now, anyway, and I affirm what she is doing now. If she did say it, I think I would have advised her to distance herself from the statement a little differently, but she did solidly disown it. I have to agree with you when you say, "People can change and people make mistakes."

A friend of mine reminded me of a Jewish ethical principle that was very important to my father—dan b'kaf z'chut, judging others (and yourself) in the scale of merit.

Our Rabbis taught: A person should always regard himself as though he were half guilty and half meritorious. If one performs one good deed, happy is he for weighing himself down in the scale of merit. If one commits one transgression, woe to him for weighing himself down in the scale of guilt, for it is said, “But one sinner destroys much good” (Ecclesiastes 9.18). On account of a single sin which he commits much good is lost to him.
 
R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon said: “Because the world is judged by its majority, and an individual too is judged by the majority of deeds, good or bad, if he performs one good deed, happy is he for turning the scale both for himself and for the whole world on the side of merit; if one commits one transgression, woe to him for weighing himself and the whole world in the scale of guilt, for it is said, ‘But one sinner.’ – on account of the single sin which this man commits he and the whole world lose much good.' ” (Talmud, Kiddushin 40a)

In the end we are judged by the sum total of our actions, and right now Cindy Sheehan's message is unambiguous and morally compelling.

I think my friend DK is correct that currently the world sees Cindy Sheehan as a living Stabat Mater—making it rather difficult to think clearly about anything negative that might be attributed to her. It is therefore a good thing that we can look at the remark in question by itself, uncolored by any ideas of what Cindy may have meant by it.

So let's go back to the statement: "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel." Speaking to you as a Jewish person who is opposed to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and who supports the rights of Israelis and Palestinians to political self-determination, I am saying the statement trades in—or, at the very least, invites—antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of US foreign policy.

Perhaps to support this claim, I should elaborate on the history of the antisemitic tract, Protocols of the Elders of Zion and link to current examples of the kind of thing I think the statement comes from and encourages more of. Perhaps you would want to debate whether assertions that the war in Iraq is a war for Israel are antisemitic. However, I do not think I need to debate the rights of others to criticize Israel. Asking me to do that inappropriately changes the subject.

Consider this scenario. It's December 2002. Trent Lott has recently spoken at the birthday and retirement party for Senator Strom Thurmond, saying, "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." You bump into an African American friend who asks you if you've heard about the Lott statement and immediately starts cursing him out for being a racist.

In an effort to be fair minded you tell your friend, "Hey, Lott's entitled to criticize the American electorate. After all, it is true that Mississippi has a terrible economy and its schools are a mess. I think Lott just means that Thrumond's a Southerner who understands the problems of the South and is uniquely qualified to address them."

Your friend storms off, really pissed. To her, it doesn't matter what Thurmond may understand about the special needs of Mississippi or anywhere else in the South. To her any praise of Thrumond's agenda is praise of states' rights, segregation, Jim Crow. But if you didn't already know the history, you needed to have asked her why she thinks supporting Thurmond is inherently racist, above all else. If you'd asked that question, instead of launching into a defense of Lott's right, on principle, to be critical of the American electorate, your friend might have rattled off from memory the quote from Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign speeech:

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres into our swimming pools into our homes and into our churches.

I know the analogy isn't perfect. But I hope it makes the point.

(Special thanks to hf and to b.)

~
Painting: Mater Dolorosa by Spanish artist Luis de Morales (Public Domain, via Wikipedia).
Photo: Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, Texas (Lonestar Iconoclast)

Gimme Some Truth (I)

In the comments we've begun discussing the latest controversy concerning Cindy Sheehan. No, not her and her husband's divorce. That got cleared up the same day it hit the news. I'm talking about the March 15, 2005 letter to Nightline that's been shooting around the internet in various forms at least since August 11.

Before I proceed, I want to state that I do not yet have satisfactory verification that the letter to Nightline comes from Cindy Sheehan. I'll address that question in part II, later on tonight.

Here is the paragraph, attributed to Cindy Sheehan, that is under discussion:

Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by a George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy...not for the real reason, becuase the Arab-Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy. That hasn't changed since America invaded and occupied Iraq...in fact it has gotten worse.

DK, who is a friend of mine, was the first person I heard this from. Yesterday DK wrote:

And I thought, oh yeah, same shit, different decade. I resent like hell having to support an anti-war activist who is an anti-semite. In fact, I can't. I can't describe how much I want a voice without an agenda as nefarious as this administration's to come out of the wilderness and just speak against this inhumanity of war, but this ain't it.

Now Cindy Sheehan is a veritable pieta, and her son a christ figure, killed by the machination of Jews. Can you amen that?

studyholic responded to DK:

Being against the colonial occupation and policies of Israel is not the same as being either anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic.

[snip]

No one people are saints and no one person is a saint and I'm going to support Cindy's anti-war cause. I have empathy for both Israel and Palestine and I realize the faults on both sides.

I also know that the anti-war movement needs Cindy, and she has the right to be critical of Israeli policies and not be called an anti-Semite.

That's the gist but not all of what studyholic said. I took serious issue with some of how studyholic defended Cindy Sheehan's purported remarks and you can read the rest of studyholic's comment and why I objected in the comments section. studyholic wrote in again, to respond to me. While I appreciate studyholic's good faith efforts at dialogue and mutual understanding, I am going to respond here with a more general statement of my bottom line.

I don't question anybody's right to be critical of Israel's policies, especially regarding the occupation.

What I question is the statement, "My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel." That is not a criticism of Israeli policy. That is an assertion of a lie that solidly crosses the line into antisemitic conspiracy theories about how Israel controls US foreign policy.

I have not heard Cindy Sheehan holding forth on the Palestinian need for contiguous territory, water rights, freedom of movement, freedom from indiscriminate shelling, house demolitions, uprooting of olive groves, etc. Nor have I heard her express solidarity with the Israeli soldiers who are refusing to serve in the occupied territories, any number of whom have gone to prison for their patriotism.

What I would like to hear now from people on the anti-war left is a solid disavowal antisemitic conspiracy theories—not knee-jerk rushing to defend Cindy's right to be critical of Israeli policies.

I think I understand studyholic's anxiety that criticism of Cindy Sheehan from the left hurts the new momentum that she's given to the anti-war movement. However, not demanding clarity and accountability on this subject hurts the anti-war movement even more. If folks on the left can't disavow a statement like "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel," the left will increasingly find that is keeping some unpleasant company.