Events

Jamelle Bouie Gives the Larger Picture

Photo by Steve Rhodes Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Steve Rhodes
Flickr/creative commons

Why the Fires in Ferguson Won’t End Soon

But while calm is hard to predict, one thing is clear: The events in Ferguson—from the shooting to the police response and everything since—are a product of familiar forces and stem from a familiar history. Put another way, the area’s long-bottled racial tension has burst, and it’s difficult to know if it can be resolved, much less contained. — Slate’s Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) 

In a mere 3000 words, Jamelle Bouie schools us in reality versus perception. The article is well worth a full read and understanding because it applies to every other American city. Here are some highlights . . .

Mr. Bouie aptly blends history with current events to put the Michael Brown shooting into a larger context. He forces us to recognize that modern events cannot be considered apart from St. Louis area’s dark history of segregation and police brutality.

An overbearing police presence is a defining feature of life in Ferguson and the rest of North County. Last year in Ferguson, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests involved blacks, despite the fact that police found more “contraband” stopping white residents than black ones. I spoke to several young men in Ferguson—all teenagers or in their early 20s—who said they were stopped on a weekly basis. At a makeshift Michael Brown memorial, I asked one 20-year-old how many times he’s stopped by police, “About 10 times a month,” he said.

Mr. Bouie takes us back to 100 years when St. Louis became one the first places to create African-American ghettos with boundaries illegal to cross, and sequestered areas where brown and black people were allowed to own homes.

He goes on to offer the best analysis of the facts I’ve seen anywhere, including a documented history of police brutality that breeds fear and disables any notion of serve and protect. He points us to The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (also a must read).

“Blacks were the easiest targets of the police; their rights were the least respected, and they had only a modicum of political influence to hold officers accountable.

Criminality was well-distributed among the ethnic and racial groups of the North, but blacks were disproportionate targets for police. The result was a perception of black criminality despite the lack of clear evidence it actually existed.”

This deep distrust of law enforcement stems from decades of unfair treatment, says Bouie, who suggest this is perhaps what motivates desperate looters. Unless we can turn this tide with new laws, policies, and human rights protections the current state of affairs will continue and there will continue to be police shootings of brown and black men in this country.

***

I submit that tonight in American there are hundreds of African-American parents forced to sit their young children down to explain how they should watch out for and behave in any encounter with the police. These hard truths rob these children of part of their childhood, making them feel there is something wrong with them in spite of their parents’ attempts to dispel that false and crippling notion.

Congressional panels and other inquiries are being launched to answer the epic questions raised by Michael Brown’s murder: the war on brown and black men in this country, police bias and brutality, systems of mass incarceration in for-profit prisons. It is our job to make sure we find the answers and create new, human, and voluntary associations to replace the coercive systems built on the pain of many for the advantages of the few.

We need to coproduce a world in which no mother ever has to have that conversation with her children.

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Also see:

Old Ferguson Makes New Commitments

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

VenusPlusX’s unique mix, what we mean by The New Age of Sexual Freedom, is aimed at solutions to change the state of our country, our world, through the removal of all obstacles such as racism, sexism, the worst of nationalism, and all the other “isms,” that stand in the way of Peace, universal pluralism based on love. (Our Mission, our Manifesto.)

In this context, we have written all week about the shooting of young Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, his legacy and his family’s continuing legacy, a lightening strike heard around the world that has forever changed how many people look at the self-destructive systems, laws, and policies that led to this senseless death. These obstacles to Peace include the war against young black men, the militarization of local police, mass incarceration, for-profit prisons and probation systems, and more that we have long focused on, and will continue to.

So, what’s the good news?

Today, Attorney General Eric Holder is visiting Ferguson as part of the Justice Department’s federal civil rights investigation.

“I realize there is tremendous interest in the facts of the incident that led to Michael Brown’s death, but I ask for the public’s patience as we conduct this investigation. The selective release of sensitive information that we have seen in this case so far is troubling to me. No matter how others pursue their own separate inquiries, the Justice Department is resolved to preserve the integrity of its investigation. This is a critical step in restoring trust between law enforcement and the community, not just in Ferguson, but beyond.”

Holder’s full statement is available here. He has ordered a third and last autopsy on Michael Brown to establish evidence, and finally freeing the family to bring him to rest. All this is happening as the county grand jury for Ferguson is convening to consider criminal charges, a result we might not know until mid-October, a result entrusted to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch with a questionable track record who has refused calls for his recusal. 

In the meantime, Holder has fielded 40 new FBI investigators to canvas the area, interview witnesses, and collect evidence as part of the federal investigation. Justice awaits us.

Also, today, the Ferguson Police Department issued a list of new commitments. Again, we have to try not to be immediately skeptical, but again, we will have to wait and see. Here is the full announcement.

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http://www.mobile-vision.com/products/vievu/

http://www.mobile-vision.com/products/vievu/

The other day, we noted how effective body cams can be.

Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality.

We asked that you sign the White House petition demanding these body cams for all police officers, and it has just reached over 100,000 signatures, a threshold that requires a direct response from the President.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Do Your Part To Break The Cycle

 

By Elvert Barnes Washington, DC August 14, 2014 Flickr/creative commons

By Elvert Barnes
Washington, DC
August 14, 2014
Flickr/creative commons

Michael Brown and his family have finally put a face on police brutality, sparking a robust national conversation that must take place. Freedom and human rights are just words, words this country peddles abroad but does little for at home. We can honor this family’s awful sacrifice by doing more each day to end this scourge in our nation. Will you? (VenusPlusX, August 18, 2014)

Yesterday, we wrote Solutions Are Available But Will We Pay Attention? to start a list of what we can do to bring about substantive change to the circumstances that lead to the tragic killing of young black men in this country. We talked about three things we need to be doing to get started:

  1. Mobilize people of color to vote, making sure they are represented proportionally at all levels of local, county, and state administration. The most recent elections in Ferguson brought out only 12% turnout by minorities, less than a third of white turnout.

  2. Support national legislation to reverse the decades long, constitution-bashing systems that turn local police forces into armed militias who must overreact to justify their existence. (Sign the Care2 petition.)

  3. Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality. (Sign White House petition.)

Today,  and  expand on our list, writing on Huffington Post, 10 Ways You Can Help The People of Ferguson, Missouri.

  • Donate to the Michael Brown Memorial Fund to assist the family with legal, burial and travel costs as they investigate their son’s killing.
  • Support and donate to Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment’s Legal Defense Fund for Justice for Mike providing legal support for those arrested as part of the protests, primarily on bailing or bonding residents out of jail.
  • Sign the Amnesty International petition, and/or the related one launched by the American Civil Liberties to show support for and voice your opinions to Ferguson’s elected officials charged with helping to mediate the conflict.  You can also contact the Ferguson Police Department, urging law enforcement leaders to release public information related to the shooting (Police Chief Thomas Jackson, 314-524-5269 or email tjackson@fergusoncity.com).
  • Don’t allow irrelevant narratives to deflect front he larger issue at hand.
  • Send condolences or a message of support to Brown’s family.

Ashtari and Boboltz urge everyone to invest ourselves in the cause of racial equality (one of the pillars of VenusPlusX’s work). They also talk about something we stress over and over: Always remember that if you have any privilege whatsoever its only use is give it freely to those who have none.

How will you use your privilege today to help others?

 

 

Solutions Are Available But Will We Pay Attention?

“Every once in a while, a dramatic news story can actually produce real reform. More often the momentum peters out once the story disappears from the news (remember how Sandy Hook meant we were going to get real gun control?), but it can happen. And now, after the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missiouri, turned to a chaotic nightmare of police oppression, we may have an opportunity to examine, and hopefully reverse, a troubling policy trend of recent years.” — Paul Waldman, The American Prospect

Photo by Chase Carter Flicker/creative commons

Photo by Chase Carter
Flicker/creative commons

We’ve written our initial response to the unfolding events in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting over a week ago of Michael Brown by a white police force.

The escalation of protests and more violence at the hands of police continues as justice is delayed or denied for the Brown family, such as:

  • The Browns had to watch their son languish in the middle of the street, unattended for more than 4 hours.
  • The local police and the county prosecutor have completely failed in their duties, not releasing the name of the police officer for 6 days, and still giving no information from law enforcement’s reports on the shooting.
  • The pre-emptive release of a tape alleging Michael Brown was a shoplifter, although the policeman who shot Brown was unaware of this (not that it should have made any difference).
  • The overreaction of a militarized police force, a big nationwide problem that must be reversed, a key issue we will continue to cover.
  • The bull-headed insistence by Governor Jay Nixon and the rest of the white establishment that the community must first demonstrate peace before they will deal out justice when it is obvious that the reverse must take place in order for the unrest end.

It’s time to start looking for real and sustainable solutions, and we will dive deeper into these in the coming days:

  1. Mobilize people of color to vote, making sure they are represented proportionally at all levels of local, county, and state administration. The most recent elections in Ferguson brought out only 12% turnout by minorities, less than a third of white turnout.
  2. Support national legislation to reverse the decades long, constitution-bashing systems that turn local police forces into armed militias who must overreact to justify their existence. (Sign the Care2 petition.)
  3. Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality. (Sign the White House petition.)
  4. More to come . . .

Michael Brown and his family have finally put a face on police brutality, sparking a robust national conversation that must take place. Freedom and human rights are just words, words this country peddles abroad but does little for at home. We can honor this family’s awful sacrifice by doing more each day to end this scourge in our nation. Will you?

 

 

 

Follow The Money To Ferguson

Light Brigading August 14, 2014 Flickr/creative commons

Light Brigading
August 14, 2014
Flickr/creative commons

No doubt I will have more to say about the events still unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, because the underlying factors are key issues for VenusPlusX.

For now, we’re are pointing you to Mass Incarceration: Follow The Money (Part 1 and Part 2), a 2012 analysis and op-ed we produced following the publication of Michelle Alexander’s scholarly and myth-shattering book, The New Jim Crow, well worth a full read and understanding for anyone committed to systemic change in this country. It answers the question, “Why?”

Institutionalized racism, money, greed, and special interests are what makes brown and black young men primary targets and victims, and it is being financed by your hard-earned tax-dollars.

Alexander points out the undeniably connection between the action-reaction cycle: the end of slavery delivering Jim Crow laws, the voting and civil rights acts of the 60s giving rise to the political Southern Strategy meant to rile southern whites to support radical conservatives, and the election of our first black president leading to the Jim Crow 2.0 and mass incarceration of brown and black young men we have today.

This is not just about another black teenager being gunned down by a white policeman because this is a regular occurrence in America, nor is it the completely bungled response by the police and political leaders who continue to fail this heart-broken and understandably convulsing community, or the deployment of militarized SWAT.

The legacy of Michael Brown, the Ferguson teen shot this week, will be the commencement at last of a serious examination of the underlying issues that created the atmosphere for it to have happened in the first place. It is a significant turning point in our shared history because people all over the country are finally standing up to be heard, embracing their power they too often surrender.

More to come . . .

 

 

 

Professor Walt Helps Explain America’s Bankrupt Israeli Policy

 

Palestine vigil and demonstration Effi Fuks Flickr/creative commons

Palestine vigil and demonstration
Effi Fuks
Flickr/creative commons

AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America’s Morally Bankrupt Israeli Policy

As we speak, today, Israel is expanding it ground offensive in Palestine.

[US] politicians and policymakers continue to back a brutal military campaign whose primary purpose is not to defend Israel but rather to protect its longstanding effort to colonize the West Bank.

— Stephen M. Walt, International Affairs Professor
Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government

 

In a two-parter this week, Israel’s Messy Package (Part 1 and Part 2I offered up my youthful experience of my own family of “regular jews” to trace the more than 100-year history of what is now known as the Israel Lobby and its agency, AIPAC (American Israeli Policy Affairs Committee). This history is why we support activists worldwide who are helping the Palestinians end the 50-year humanitarian crisis Israel and the U.S. have created, and all those working in support of a two-state solution, something the current Israeli government is committed to fight at all costs.

We pointed you to this wonderful paper from Professor Walt that was published this week on The Huffington Post, but we are highlighting it here especially so that more people will have a chance to read it, and be further armed with the truth about Israel and its relationship with America.

The official name for Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is “Operation Protective Edge.” A better name would be “Operation Déjà Vu.” As it has on several prior occasions, Israel is using weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers to bombard the captive and impoverished Palestinians in Gaza, where the death toll now exceeds 500. As usual, the U.S. government is siding with Israel, even though most American leaders understand Israel instigated the latest round of violence, is not acting with restraint, and that its actions make Washington look callous and hypocritical in the eyes of most of the world.

This Orwellian situation is eloquent testimony to the continued political clout of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the other hardline elements of the Israel lobby. There is no other plausible explanation for the supine behavior of the U.S. Congress–including some of its most “progressive” members–or the shallow hypocrisy of the Obama administration, especially those officials known for their purported commitment to human rights.

The immediate cause of this latest one-sided bloodletting was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli hikers in the occupied West Bank, followed shortly thereafter by the kidnapping and fatal burning of a Palestinian teenager by several Israelis. According to J.J. Goldberg’s reporting in the Jewish newspaper Forward, the Netanyahu government blamed Hamas for the kidnappings without evidence and pretended the kidnapped Israelis were still alive for several weeks, even though there was evidence indicating the victims were already dead. It perpetrated this deception in order to whip up anti-Arab sentiment and make it easier to justify punitive operations in the West Bank and Gaza.

And why did Netanyahu decide to go on another rampage in Gaza? As Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group points out, the real motive is neither vengeance nor a desire to protect Israel from Hamas’ rocket fire, which has been virtually non-existent over the past two years and is largely ineffectual anyway. Netanyahu’s real purpose was to undermine the recent agreement between Hamas and Fatah for a unity government. Given Netanyahu’s personal commitment to keeping the West Bank and creating a “greater Israel,” the last thing he wants is a unified Palestinian leadership that might press him to get serious about a two-state solution. Ergo, he sought to isolate and severely damage Hamas and drive a new wedge between the two Palestinian factions.

Behind all these maneuvers looms Israel’s occupation of Palestine, now in its fifth decade. Not content with having ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 and not satisfied with owning eighty-two percent of Mandatory Palestine, every Israeli government since 1967 has built or expanded settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem while providing generous subsidies to the 600,000-plus Jews who have moved there in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Two weeks ago, Netanyahu confirmed what many have long suspected: he is dead set against a two-state solution and will never–repeat never–allow it to happen while he is in office. Given that Netanyahu is probably the most moderate member of his own Cabinet and that Israel’s political system is marching steadily rightward, the two-state solution is a gone goose.

. . . Continue . . .

 

 

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 2)

flickr/creative commons

flickr/creative commons

Yesterday, in Part 1, I told my personal family’s jewish history in an attempt to put the existence of Israel into a broader context. Earlier enough, I had dispensed with the myth of my youth, that Israel was simply the world’s and Palestine’s gift to the jewish culture, a safe harbor for Jews following the atrocities of WWII. In fact, Israel was conceived by a militant zionist movement begun in the late 1800s, so it is motive that has to be understood for anything to change.

(We use the word, zionists, as we use the word, christianists, to denote fundamentalists who purport to believe in their respective religious traditions but display none of the characteristics, quite the opposite.)

The early zionists set on their quest to establish a religious state, with eyes on the grand prize: the occupation of the geographical, historical, and religious epicenter of the Middle East. Its big mistake, and the mistake of the US and other countries that helped bring about the 1948 establishment of the state Israel, was that two other major world religions, Christianity and Islam, also lay claim on the same pile of sand, sharing reverence to the same Abraham.

Zionists, however, proceeded and proceed today according to their belief that they are the superior race and religion which has suffered injustices for centuries (more and worse than any other) making them singularly deserving of a special berth in the world, a completely new class of world citizen with complete dominion over their tribal enemies. For starters, that’s just a galling affront to all people and all religions. Logically, adherents to any theoretical superior religion would perforce never resort to violence, and never deny the beliefs or non-beliefs of their neighbors.

Upon arrival in the region, the zionists saw no wisdom in becoming the local peaceniks or diplomatic leaders to bring about world peace (in which case they might today be considered one of the most respected countries in the region and the world). Instead they began an unending and bloody campaign to expand, encroach, invade, disenfranchise, and discriminate against all non-jews in the way, in any way they could. Rather than justifying war as their need to secure their borders, they would do better to ask themselves what they have done to draw the ire of their sequestered and suffering neighbors.

Israel was founded on the basis of religious extremism and discrimination, and has rendered itself indefensible. Just yesterday, Navi’ Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an investigation into Israeli war crimes.

Israel’s failure to fully enfranchise the Palestinian people from the start, its commitment to stand in the way of any two-state solution, and their institutional religious discrimination set the course for failure. We are now living through the results of these failures, waiting for new, younger, progressive, and humane leaders to take the reins of the Israeli government, and waiting for America to wake up.

The zionists have steadily expanded their movement, now known as today’s Israel Lobby (greater than AIPAC), monolithic in scope, hiding in plain sight, and controlling practically every aspect throughout modern American life. It’s not just the $3 billion a year and technical/military assistance our tax dollars pay for. The Israel Lobby controls the election of congressmen and every presidential election, and, sadly, all media. Unquestioned loyalty to Israel has, unfortunately, always been viewed as being in America’s interests by guaranteeing a permanent base in the region to spread our own nationalistic, capitalistic religion. And, in case we forget, because the existence of Israel happens to coincide with christianist belief that it is necessary for Jesus Christ’s someday return.

The Israel Lobby reminds me of another group: the secretive christianist organization known as The Family (also as The Fellowship) with its 10,000 cells world wide that is also working for religious dominion over its perceived enemies.

So, today, I’m asking some starting questions. We’d like to hear what you think.

1. Why are activists, who are no longer hypnotized by the Israel Lobby rhetoric and working to solve the humanitarian crises underway, so roundly criticized, even from their left flank?

2. Why are so many vocal members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement still blinded by the Israel Lobby’s talking points, failing to recognize our innate solidarity with Israel’s victims?

3. When will America take down the veil and reveal to the world that today’s Israel has no intention of seeking a two-state solution under any circumstance and that’s why it is so ready to resort to untold violence that stifles more moderate Palestinan voices?

Israel has forgotten that diplomacy is a table from which you never get up and leave. No matter what you think about the inferiority of your neighbor, nothing, no thing, justifies violence. There is always a way. You simply need to keep talking until you get to the last word: peace.

I remember my daughter one day when she was 7 years of age exclaiming, “Mommy, mommy, I know what the opposite of war is! It’s creativity!”

It’s not too late to heed the prophetic wisdom of some of our greatest statesmen, such as Dean Acheson in 1947 warning that creating land already occupied by Palestinians would “imperil not just American but all Western interests in the Middle East.”

Also see: AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America’s Morally Bankrupt Israel Policy

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 1) here.

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As you may have seen in VenusPlusX’s Manifesto and all over this site, we are dedicated to the end of nationalism (racist by nature) and the end of racism (the chief expression of sexual oppression) by fostering progress (universal human rights, global peace). We align with all others who see progress as the the elimination of useless, coercive, inhumane systems of governments, corporations, and religious hierarchy, salvaging parts of our human legacy worthy of respect, and adding new and human and largely voluntary associations.

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 1)

“Creating land already occupied by Palestinians would ‘imperil not just American but all Western interests in the Middle East.'”

Dean Acheson, 1947, statesman and foreign policy expert
for several presidential administrations,
including as
 Harry Truman’s Secretary of State

In the early 1900s, both sides of my Jewish family fled the Kiev countryside because of the militant anti-Jewish pogroms, leaving dead my paternal great grandfather and my grandmother’s infant sister killed by armed men on horseback who burned their farm to ground. Both my grandfathers were born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They didn’t know each other and didn’t know they would someday each meet and marry women, all four families strangers to each other but all springing from thriving family farms outside Kiev. My mother’s folks sought refuge in Glasgow, Scotland, before most of them came to the US after WWI. My paternal grandmother and her siblings, the oldest was 12-year-old Pincus, came alone in steerage and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Growing up in this family, we all lived decidedly to the far left of Reform Judaism, anxious to not be so “jewish” as to be noticed, understandably so.

In 1967 I spent the summer in Durban, South Africa, getting to know some of my cousins, the half of the next generation of the Glasgow clan who chose to emigrate to South America instead of America. When I arrived in Durban, one cousin, a young woman close to my age of 19 at the time, was unexpectedly out of the country, much to her family’s consternation, joining the Israeli zionist army who that year expanded the chartered territory of Israel through violence and repression, into Gaza and parts of Syria and Egypt.

Photo by LeftMedia  Flickr/creative commons

Photo by LeftMedia
Flickr/creative commons

That summer, I came to realize that my childhood ideas about Israel were overly simplistic: My US born family were just plain Jews, explicitly not zionists, allowing themselves to adopt the modern myth that the establishment of a modern Israel was a gift from the world (and Palestinians) following the horrors of WWII death camps (rather than an unlawful occupation of another’s country).

Before going to South Africa, my personal radicalization was underway as a deeply embedded anti-Vietnam War activist, so this summertime visit to the shores of the Indian Ocean solidified my life long commitment to pacifism. My quest for world peace is a force within me that always questions why anyone goes to war. Israel is the case study, forcing the question, How could a group, a culture and religion combined, victims of hatred for 100 years, partially eradicated in concentration camps 70 years ago, themselves become purveyors of violence and oppression?

I came to understand that this militant campaign for a Jewish state, dominating control in the Middle East, and especially over Jerusalem’s ancient, holy geographic touchstones, had being going on since the beginning of the 20th century, around the same time as my relatives’ horrors and forced migration from what is now Urkaine. This scheme was doomed from the start because of its underlying motives, not to bring peace but to go to battle if necessary for what they perceived they were owed simply because they believed they represented a race of people who are the most pure and the highest expression of religious superiority. For these reasons only, however delusional, these militant Jews should always hold a deferential berth in the world. Since WWII, this battle has resulted in the displacement and disenfranchisement of an entire population who, ironically, itself shares the same legacy despite not being “jewish.”

Any attempts at forming a theocracy are fate-filled mistakes that only end badly, whether you are talking about Israel or other countries, including in the US where we are suffering under a nascent political theocracy that would enslave its citizens just as surely as those calling for Sharia Law.

The scheme to reign supreme began long before Israel formally declared it independence in 1948, and long before my young cousin risked her life in 1967 to further an expansion throughout ancient Palestine, displacing and killing everyone in the way.

Israel is a state founded and run on the basis of religious extremism and discrimination, and should be fairly dealt with on that basis.

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Israel’s Messy Package (Part 2) which delves into the monolithic Israel Lobby that has long controlled our Congress and decides who can and cannot become President of the United States; and why those who escape Israel’s fancy hypnotism and stand up for the human rights of Israel’s victims — the Palestinians themselves joined by groups such as CodePink and activists worldwide, all the time forced to endure so much criticism, even from their left flank.

Inform yourself further with Alison Weir’s recent book, Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel, and websites such as www.ifamercansknew.org and www.popularresistance.org, and, of course, here at www.venusplusx, Facebook/venusplusx, and Twitter/venusplusx.

 

Our Horrible Days

How Do We Respond to This Really Horrible Day?

“It’s too late to reverse the death and destruction, but it’s never too early to advocate for peace and life.” — 

by Alfonso Flickr/creative commons

by Alfonso
Flickr/creative commons

Just 3 days ago, believing things are getting worse at a faster pace than ever before, we revisited Where Does of All This F*cking Evil Sh%t Come From? to offer up some explanation of why the world seems to be plummeting downward.

Yesterday, everything got much worse.

While the media was fixed on the passenger jet that was shot out of the sky by Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists, ground troops started rolling into Gaza with seeming impunity. Today, I am publishing in full Raushenbush’s thoughtful, 400-word call for action — we are fast losing our humanity but each of us must recognize that we are not impotent.

GAZA

What a horrible day. Israel has begun a ground offensive in Gaza, the White House is on lockdown, and a plane has been shot down in Ukraine. Today’s news piles on an already shaking landscape of ISIS in Iraq, immigrant children suffering on the U.S. border, and still missing Nigerian girls. My Twitter feed has been raging with information and disinformation today, but underneath the diatribes I have been struck by a sense of despair and disbelief that the world can unravel this fast, and anger at our sense of impotence.

But we are not impotent, and this is not “happening to us.” We, the human race, are doing this to ourselves. These aren’t natural disasters, or “acts of God.” It’s just us, humans, having completely lost our humanity. We are warring, and hurting, and intentionally or unintentionally killing one another through direct assault or indifference and neglect.

We have forgotten that we belong to one another, that we are connected, that we are all sisters and brothers, that we need one another.

Today, right now, I want us to take back our power, and begin to mend together what has been ripped apart.

It is too late to bring back the innocent lives that have been lost so far in the Middle East, but it is not too late to stop the killing that is happening now.

It is too late to bring back the innocent plane passengers who died in Ukraine, but as a human race we can insist that this is unacceptable and not let the incident be a springboard for even more violence and hatred.

It’s too late to reverse the death and destruction, but it’s never too early to advocate for peace and life.

It is hard to know what to do, but, even within this dark day, we need to continue to insist on the possibility of peace — and to have that start with ourselves. If all I can do today is pray for peace and the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians and refuse to accept that war is inevitable or hate is natural, that will be a start. If I can pray for the people in that plane and try not to be swept into a rage calling for revenge, if I can make myself open to being an instrument of peace, then that will be a start. That is one, very small, way that I can respond to this horrible day.

Each person who loses their life for no reason represents a tragedy. What would each person have done to contribute to a better world? There were 100 experts heading to an AIDS conference in Malaysia, for example. When will it end? What can you do to make the world better today by advocating for peace and life?

Rounding Out for Independence Day Weekend: 7-minute Video Montage

Closing out a good weekend of reflection, remembering the once cherished America that valued its diversity born of immigration, yearning for the end of hate worldwide. As we wrote over the weekend, the puritans are responsible for the corporatized theocratic fundamentalism today eating away America and trouble spots across the globe; and, how and why sexual freedom is the bedrock of all freedoms and is worth fighting for.

So here’s our little celebration — a montage of some of our best Sexual Freedom Project videos of the last few years.

We send each contributor one of our prized VenusPlusX T-shirts (with our slogan: Sexual Freedom, You Are Born With It) when they send us a video (or an essay, work of art, etc.) expressing what sexual freedom means, or means to them. So get out your phone or video camera and let us hear from you!

This video runs 7:18 minutes. For more videos, click here.

Also: A Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom (2014)