Resource List: Gender Oppression

Comic on the mental load: "You Should Have Asked"
https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

Resource List: Class Has Always Been In Session

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/06/advice_on_how_to_talk_to_the_white_working_class.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

Resource List: The Situation

http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-peace-talks-between-israelis-and-palestinians-keep-failing/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/05/the-arab-world-has-never-recovered-from-the-loss-of-1967/

https://www.facebook.com/harold.feld/posts/10155132322066293?match=aGFyb2xkIGZlbGQsaGFyb2xkLGZlbGQs

This picture

If anyone can find me the artist and origin of this picture, I want to know.  The earliest I have been able to trace it to so far is 2015 out of Malaysia.

We Are All Living History

So, yesterday, I was teaching boichik his tunnel stops (Westlake is the monorail, University is Hammering Man...). 
 An Asian American student who was pure effervescence overheard us and launched our section into a rollicking conversation about the public transit experiences no one talks about. (Like when the person sitting next to you has fallen asleep, and you don't know if letting them stay asleep it is the best thing you could possibly do, or if they are going to be totally screwed by missing their stop if you don't do something…)
Then I said to boichik, "And International District means-"
And he said, "Mochi! Mochi!"
And I said, "Daifuku mochi!"
And he said, "Daifuku mochi!"
And our bubbling student *squealed*, "Daifuku mochi! You have made me homesick! I grew up with my grandmother making daifuku mochi for me!"
And as we pulled into the station, she added, "They lived right here-- before the internment camp."

-------

Being a citizen is like... it is like being born into a collective body. And to live well in that body, you need to know its triumphs and its injuries, what it has overcome and what it is struggling with.

You have to know what you are a part of now, and what is a part of you-- the monorail, Hammering Man, daifuku mochi, the internment camps.

It's not trivia. It's a difference in consciousness. And differences in consciousness are what make differences in conscience.

"Ooo, Eema, here's an elevator that no one has peed in!"

- Yesterday, downtown

Shame on You, Rabbi.

"But issues like slavery and civil rights are very rare, once in a generation, and invoking them for everything from social welfare policy to Dodd-Frank to the methods of vetting immigrants is both dishonest and cheapening a great moral legacy. If you are using the march on Selma to religiously validate your views on the minimum wage, shame on you."

One of the best loved and generally most thoughtful rabbis of our time wrote these words.

They are a shattering, clarion indictment of the level of privilege, comfort, and blissful ignorance taken for granted in much of the American Jewish world.

In point of historical fact, when slavery was the leading issue of the day, synagogues were overwhelmingly silent. When Rabbi Herschel marched by Rev.Dr.King, he was ostracized and roundly criticized by his peers. The priority of the rabbinic pulpits of the day was to be polite and quiet and avoid rocking the boat. The most obscene and obvious of injustices were normal in their day.

The very statement that such issues come along once in a generation is a statement of faith in the status quo, of confidence and complicity in the current normal. It is not a statement rooted in social analysis, historical aptitude, or moral or intellectual rigor; it is a statement rooted in comfort, and a desire to keep things comfortable.

It is not acceptable for a professional who has never had to choose betweeen food and heat, who leads a community that take for granted the ability to own their own home and eat regularly in restaurants, to wish shame upon those speaking for the lives warped and lost to the travesty of working poverty. It is not acceptable for a parent who does not live knowing their child has double, triple, quadruple the chance of dying of violence to dismiss current identity issues as special interest politics.

It is not acceptable for spokesperson of an ethos whose single most emphasized commandment is to welcome the stranger-- to actively consider and care for the well-being of the outsider-- to advocate for "The Gentleman's Agreement" of valuing the camaraderie of the complacent above the inclusion of the marginalized.