The Frog Prince

A few days ago, a viral video circulated of a neo-Nazi agitator interrupting a psychology class at the University of Washington ... and then being chased out of the room and across campus by basically all the students in the class (as well as the professor). At the end of the video the guy trips and is held down by some of the students (you can hear him pathetically mewling "I thought you were the party of peace!") until campus security arrived to arrest him; those students also prevented anyone from enacting any violence on the man.

On the reddits, I saw a lot of praise for the students' solidarity and discipline, and in particular their decisive action to assume that the Nazi scumbag they had on the ground was not physically attacked or injured. But I remember reading one commentator who was a bit confused by that angle of praise. Aren't we all fans of punching Nazis? Don't we understand that violence is sometimes necessary to defeat fascism? Why was everyone so insistent that this Nazi, who very clearly brought it upon himself, be left unharmed?

My response to that was simple: if you're not a pacifist, then yes, you accept that sometimes violence is necessary to achieve important political ends. But if you're at all a liberal, then violence should never be your preferred choice. If there is a nonviolent way to accomplish your goals, then that's what one should do -- violence is not a good for its own sake (in fact, it's quite bad "for its own sake"). In this circumstance, the students were able to neutralize the Nazi without resort to meaningful violence. Violence wasn't necessary, so it was good that they didn't resort to unnecessary violence.

I was thinking about this with respect to the anti-ICE protests in Portland, and in particular, the comical sight of inflatable frogs, chickens, and other absurd animals that have taken center stage in these protests. This being Portland, the worry when Trump announced his invasion plan for our city was that some group of rabble-rousers or agents provocateurs would take it upon themselves to enact violence, which Trump would then use to bolster his lies about Portland being a wartorn hellscape. But instead, they've been met with these ridiculous animal outfits, which have been incredibly effective at making the fascists look ridiculous. Kristi Noem trying to play tough gal while overwatching an "army of antifa" comprised of about a dozen peaceful protesters, one in a chicken suit? Comedy gold. But also, political gold: it highlighted in brilliant and excruciating detail how profoundly unserious Noem and her gang of fascists are. They are playacting a crisis of their own creation so that they can present themselves as action stars; countering that absurdism with humor and whimsy and comedy does more to resist their agenda than any masked stone thrower could accomplish.

In saying this, I'm in no way downplaying the seriousness of the moment we are in. Nothing could be more serious than the specter of one's own government invading your city in order to enact an explicit agenda of ideological terror and suppression. But it is that very seriousness that compels serious thought about what would constitute the most effective countermeasure to that attempt.

The violent/non-violent protest debate, too often, is presented in ethical and philosophical terms -- (when) is violence justified? But this skips past the more immediately practical question of (when) is violence useful? Often times, one can (or should) leave aside the question of justification because the utility just isn't there. And often times, it seems like those who grimly intone the need for violent action because "power cedes nothing without a demand" or some such cliche are very self-evidently excited at the opportunity for violence. It is something they revel in, and desire for its own sake -- the move of first resort, not the last. As much as that instinct presents itself as rising to the demands of the moment -- "by any means necessary" -- it more often than not represents an abdication of the need to actually respond to the demands of the moment in favor of personal indulgence.

So once again, kudos to Portland for resisting that impulse. The point of activism is not to provide an outlet for one's personal rage (however warranted it may be). The point is to figure out effective strategies for undermining one's opposition, and seize on those weak points. Fascists are weak wherever the people show joy. The Portland protests, which show our city in all of its joyful weirdness, represent the best possible response to Trump's pathetic efforts to slander our city as something it isn't.

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

After furious pushback from pretty much every quarter, Sunrise DC claims to be reflecting and pondering upon the reaction it got from its announcement demanding the expulsion of three Jewish groups (but not other groups with similar views) from progressive coalitional spaces for being "Zionist".

The probability that they will issue an actual, unequivocal apology strikes me as essentially nil. I welcome being disproven on this point, but it is a prediction I'm quite confident in. For starters, genuine moral epiphanies do not come so fast. Their initial sin was not a harsh word taken in a moment of weakness or impatience, but something pondered and considered. If they are to come to the conclusion that what they did was simply wrong, flat period, it will take more than a few days of bad PR.

But beyond that, as much heat as they're taking from bigger fish in the progressive ecosystem (including the Sunrise Movement as a whole), the local and interpersonal connectors which promoted and lauded this decision in the first place remain operative and will be no doubt furious if Sunrise DC shows contrition. When one gets far enough out into the fringes of political activism, where purity of purpose and practice is the only currency, one's situation is not dissimilar to what Churchill said of dictators -- they ride to and fro on tigers they dare not dismount, for the tigers are hungry. If the back down, they'll be eaten alive by their erstwhile allies and they will not be forgiven by those they have wronged. That's the other thing: there is no chance that any apology, right now, would suffice to heal the wound that Sunrise DC caused -- at least not right away. And to be clear, that's not anyone's moral failing for being insufficiently forgiving -- in a case like this, the wronged party is not obliged to simply accept an apology and immediately wipe the slate clean. All I'm saying is that, even if one does recognize that one has done wrong, it takes a very strong person to apologize knowing that the only tangible result is that they'll be pilloried by their "friends" and unforgiven by those they hurt. Sunrise DC has not shown much evidence of possessing that sort of strength.

Far more likely, then, is that Sunrise DC will look for some alternative pathway to get to a similar place to where they had initially wanted to go, but that avoids the nominal arguments for their particular statement aroused such ire. It has been noted that the argument I made in my post -- that Sunrise DC targeted exclusively Jewish groups for positions that are common among the great bulk of left-of-center organizations, Jewish or not -- seems to be one that has gotten considerable traction as "the" reason for why what Sunrise DC did was wrong. For some, this set off a hunt for some hypothetical set of criteria and distinctions that just happened to include only these three Jewish groups. They would then triumphantly ask whether the American Federation of Teachers' website mentions Israel-related programming on its front page, as if that was the actual demarcation between acceptable and unacceptable (Answer: "No, of course [these other groups] were not in this new reference class which you have just now constructed in such a way as to contain only [the initial three].").

More likely is the promulgation of a new criteria which does expressly include some other, non-Jewish groups they won't work with (the AFT is an obvious candidate). But again, the goal is tractability -- the new standard has to be one that can be enforced, and that means limiting its scope. "Just the Jews" was one such limit that allows for tractability, and I noted in my prior post that if SunriseDC actually meant to preclude cooperation with all groups that hold views on Israel similar to that of the RAC -- which just this summer reiterated its long opposition to "the military occupation of the West Bank, which humiliates Palestinians and causes much daily suffering... the expansion of settlements and annexation in the West Bank and the eviction/displacement of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, elsewhere in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank" -- would mean it basically could not work with any liberal person or organization of any significant size (Jewish or not) of any that had ever ventured a thought on Israel, since such a position is absolutely the normal one among liberal political sorts. 

To be fair, it was pointed out to me -- and I had come to this thought on my own -- that SunriseDC might not especially mind this outcome, as its theory of change is not particularly tied to having close collaborative relations with mainstream liberal organizations or politicians. While I still think that SunriseDC would think carefully about how many bridges it wants to burn, it still is the case that such a move would be less costly for them than for many comparable organizations. Nonetheless, my guess is that SunriseDC does not want to commit to more tangible exclusions than it must. Indeed, right now I think SunriseDC has a potential trust issue looming over any potential partnership it might want to make. Forget what it did to the Jewish groups, what it did to the DFAD coalition, or to Sunrise National -- it was a blindside hit. Anyone who might be interesting in collaborating with SunriseDC has to wonder whether two weeks from now they'll be publicly castigated for having an investment banker on their board or having the wrong vowels in their name or defending "capitalist" solutions to social problems or some other heresy that will come out of nowhere. The hidden utility of only targeting the Jews was that it implicitly signaled to all the non-Jews "don't worry -- you're going to be fine. This isn't about you." If it starts lashing out willy-nilly, everyone has to wonder if they're next; and the best way to dissipate the worry is to just partner with someone else.

So SunriseDC still has the same basic incentive coupled with the same basic moral orientation: it wants to keep excluding the Jewish groups, and a few others for "neutrality's" sake, while keeping the total number of exclusions tractable and enforceable. To this, I see two options. First, come up with a new set of criteria that is very precise and gerrymandered to mostly encompass the Jews they were already targeting (and now a few others). This might be something like "no groups that do work in Israel that isn't expressly about ending the occupation" or "no groups that have hosted Israeli politicians". Again, anyone who thinks these rules actually demarcate the difference between morally acceptable and unacceptable organizations is deceiving themselves as much as if the rule was "no organizations which mention Israel on the front page of their website." These criteria are there for tractability -- it is another way of signaling to everyone else "don't worry, we're not coming after you, we're only going after this slice" (a slice that "just happens to be" overwhelmingly Jewish). Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem if the criteria tracked a moral division -- but it doesn't. The goal, again, is to limit scope. Make an example out of a few, and the rest fall into line (or make an example out of a few, and feel happy that you destroyed a few evildoers. Even SunriseDC can appreciate some marginal gains).

Option two is to retain what they have now -- an intentionally broad and underspecified criteria of "no Zionists", and then just declare that a few more non-Jewish organizations are now qualifying miscreants. The breadth and vagueness allows people to fill in the content however they want (how many people did we see argue -- somehow with a straight face -- that all SunriseDC was doing was announcing opposition to the occupation!), and few will research to see whether the criteria is in fact being consistently applied (particularly when it now facially includes both Jews and non-Jews -- notwithstanding this is a bit like Trump's travel ban expanding to include North Korea and Venezuela).

What will remain true is that this alteration is, at root, nothing more than a gotcha play: "you said the problem was that Jewish groups are singled out? Well now our standard includes non-Jews too -- so there! We corrected the problem!" Of course, my post anticipated this move in noting that Randi Weingarten is sufficiently prominent as a Jewish leader that her, and through her the AFT, could easily be attacked as well without much adjustment. 

But more to the point: it is neither unreasonable nor goalpost moving to hold that when an actor has just a moment earlier engaged in naked discriminatory conduct, it is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt when it reorganizes to do almost exactly the same thing as its initial discrimination, but this time with a fig leaf in front of it (Muslim Ban 1.0 should have altered our assessment Muslim Ban 2.0). Being antisemitic should extract a cost like that; one should be limited in what policies one can endorse or what steps one can take in ways others are not. When you engage in rank antisemitism, you lose -- at least for a little while, certainly for more than a week -- the right to play in sandboxes that are filled with precious Jewish objects.

Sunrise, Sunset

The American Federation of Teachers has several hundred thousand dollars invested in Israel bonds.

It has publicly endorsed a two-state solution promising self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and rejected BDS. It has promoted its work in Israel to facilitate peace and coexistence via collaborative initiatives that bring Jews and Palestinians together, presenting them as models for similar work aiming dissipate conflict and dismantle unjust structures domestically and internationally. It has proudly hosted an Israeli MK, Stav Shaffir, at its convention to speak on politics, justice, and inequality. Its leader, Randi Weingarten, has been vocal about her passionate connection to and care for Israel, and ran on the left-wing Hatikvah slate for a position in the World Zionist Congress.

The AFT is not, of course, blindly "pro-Israel" in all things. It condemned the nation-state law, and the denial of entry visas to Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. It grouped Bibi Netanyahu in with other democratically-elected authoritarians such as Orban, Erdogan, Putin, Bolsonaro, and Modi. Sometimes, in opposing certain Israeli policies, it has collaborated with other Israeli groups, such as joining with Israeli academic and student unions to oppose a politcally-motivated "academic code of ethics".

None of this is especially noteworthy. The AFT's positions on Israel are ordinary and unremarkable -- entirely the norm in contemporary establishment liberal politics.

Today, there was a big story that the DC branch of the Sunrise Movement was withdrawing from a DC statehood rally because the sponsoring coalition, Declaration for American Democracy, includes three Jewish groups Sunrise considers to be impermissibly "Zionist": the National Coalition of Jewish Women, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Jewish Council of Public Affairs. Sunrise DC said it would refuse to operate in any space where such groups were included, and accordingly urged DFAD to consider expelling them from the coalition.

Others can write on the pernicious effect of drawing the exclusionary border this far -- one that would have the effect of locking out the overwhelming majority of even progressive Jewish political organizations and actors from progressive organizing. Others, too, may wish to comment on Sunrise DC's de rigueur claim that in standing up against Zionism it was standing up for "Black and Brown Jewish-Israelis" -- an assertion so far removed from the actual politics and priorities of those communities that one wonders whether Sunrise DC actually believes it or is simply engaging in reflex. And others can look at the repeated invocations of "indigenous" rights and consider my hypothesis from just the other day that "As far as Israel and Palestine are concerned 'indigenous' is where political commentators go to when they don't want to compromise a single inch but still want to appeal to some sort of putatively non-partisan moral principle."

I want to focus on something a little different, though.

The three groups Sunrise DC targets -- NCJW, RAC, and JCPA -- primarily concentrate on domestic issues. JCPA considers some amount of Israel advocacy to be a priority, the other two do not. All three, to the varying extents they do "work" on Israel, take positions that are materially indistinguishable from that of AFT. That is, they are engaged in the normal promotion of two-states, co-existence, collaboration, liberal values, and so on, that is utterly ordinary and unremarkable not just among Jewish liberals, but among liberals, period.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The American Federation of Teachers is also a member of the Declaration for American Democracy. And yet Sunrise DC did not say -- I suspect it did not even occur to them to say -- that AFT should be expelled, or that it would not operate where AFT was present. I wager that Sunrise DC only "checked" the Jewish groups to see whether they were "problematic". The litmus test it imposes is one it imposes on Jewish groups only. Jews are the ones for whom Sunrise checks to see if they're dangerously "Zionist" in orientation, and so Jews are the ones subject to the exclusion.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so sanguine about AFT -- Randi Weingarten is prominent enough as a Jewish leader that they very easily could be the next target. But the broader point would remain: if Sunrise tried to say it would not work with all groups who have roughly the political outlook towards Israel as does the NCJW, it could not work with essentially any mainline liberal group, because the stances NCJW takes are materially identical to those taken by essentially every major liberal group, Jewish or not.  I expect that the overwhelming majority of groups in the DFAD (at least, those of any size) who have thought about Israel have thought in terms that are roughly in line with what NCJW thinks. If such an outlook is unacceptable, then all of them should be targeted for removal or ostracization.

That wouldn't be practicable of course. What is practicable and tractable is to ask the question of the Jews, specifically, and make the demand of Jewish groups, specifically. A Jewish litmus test, not a general one.

This observation is not quite the same thing as saying that Sunrise is "okay" with the sort of mainstream liberal outlook on Israel so long as its non-Jews expressing it. Even if the end goal is to demand that every group abandon this outlook, the above points about practicability and tractability can justify -- on a bloodless, purely tactical level -- a decision to focus on the Jewish groups first: a point of vulnerability, an easy place to put one's foot in the door. How often have we heard, after all, that boycotts need not and reasonably do not target everyone at once, but pick their targets at the point of maximum leverage and impact? The logic extends here too. How much should it matter that the selection criteria is "go after the Jews", if we accept for sake of argument that the reason "the Jews" were picked is not merely some unthinking atavistic hatred but makes "political" sense? The answer depends on how much you think unthinking atavistic hatred is the sine qua non of wrongful discrimination.

So is that Sunrise's end game -- it knows that lots of groups have "sinned" identically" to NCJW et al, but it is making a strategic choice to go after the Jews first? On that point, I am unsure. Is AFT not on Sunrise's hit list just out of ignorance -- they didn't bother to check? Or would it stay off the list for the time being because of the practical problems (or strategic prioritization) identified above -- limiting their test solely to Jewish groups being manageable in a way that an actual universal principle would not be? Or perhaps it is the case that the policies AFT promotes re: Israel, whether or not they're the ones Sunrise DC would choose, are within the "zone of acceptability" -- at least when non-Jews are promoting them. I suspect that they would certainly be happier if AFT, too, switched its policies to be more in line with anti-Israel maximalism. But I also suspect they'd be happy enough if the "only" practical effect of their policy is that the Jewish groups are sabotaged, and everyone else can keep on going largely how they're going. Actually changing AFT's outlook on Israel may be a happy bonus, but the primary mission objective is to kneecap the Jewish organizations, and their acting in pursuit of the latter goal far more than the former.

To some extent, I think all of this -- imagining a set of policies Sunrise DC opposes and then imagining how they're trying to alter or punish organizations for adopting them -- is giving Sunrise DC too much credit though. Why? Because I think what they actually did was not look at a bucket of policy and practices and say "we simply cannot support an organization that does this or advocates that", but rather simply check to see which (Jewish) groups had "Zionist" somewhere on their website and called it there.  And perhaps you are tempted to think that this demarcates an actual difference between NCJW and AFT -- the former will use the word "Zionist", the latter won't. I already have in my mind's eye some Jewish Currents editor frantically looking to screen grab some obscure corner of the NCJW website where they dare characterize what they do as "Zionist", in order to Silence Liberal! those who insist that NCJW's work on Israel is not remotely characterizable as oppressive or problematic.

It is true, after all, that at least among left-of-center "pro-Israel" folk, "Zionist" is a term mostly restricted to the Jews. Take two Democrats with identical, AFT/NCJW-style views on Israel, one Jewish and one not, and the former is going to be far more likely to characterize herself as "Zionist" than the latter, even though they advocate for the exact same things and have the exact same vision of what justice and equality look like in Israel and in Palestine. But if that is the case, and the distinction is purely terminological, and the difference between who uses that word lies overwhelmingly along the dimension of "Jewish" versus "non-Jewish", then using that as the demarcation point between acceptable and unacceptable reduces into different standards for Jews and non-Jews -- right back to where we started. Be embarrassed, those of you who clung to the idea that this makes out a neutral distinction.

In any event. What Sunrise DC is doing is targeting Jewish groups for especial scrutiny and exclusion as Jewish groups. That it does so while nominally accepting other Jewish groups is immaterial -- it is the heightened scrutiny, not the conceptual possibility of clearing the bar, that is the problem. And it is not correct to say that Sunrise DC's selection criteria is neutral -- it isn't; the reasons these groups are targeted is not because their policy outlook on Israel is wrong in a way that other mainline liberal groups avoid, they are targeted because they have the "wrong" outlook and they're Jewish -- the conditions are jointly necessary, neither is sufficient on its own.

This is antisemitism. I hope it is recognized as such.

I'll end on a very small hopeful note. They are many differences between the situation of Jews in Democratic Party politics compared to Jews in UK Labour. But one major one is that there are simply more of us, who have been doing this for a very long time, and are deeply embedded in the fabric of the entire liberal political apparatus at every level. Groups like the NCJW and the RAC have been building out connections and coalitions and relationships across the liberal political space since well before the Sunrise DC activists were a twinkle in anyone's eye. We have the high ground, in more ways than one. And if a few political performance artists think we'll be dislodged that easily, they are in for an awakening.

Zioness Has Another Manifesto

Zioness, the progressive Zionist group, has released a new "activist's guide" on the issue of racial justice. It consists of:

1. One page on the need to overcome implicit bias;
2. One page on the need to "show up" for racial justice, even when one encounters antisemitism; and
3. Six pages on how to respond to antisemitic tropes (many, though not all, Israel- or Zionism-related) one might encounter while engaging in racial justice work.

This distribution of attention -- centering antisemitism in a pamphlet supposedly focused on racial justice -- has caused Zioness to be the target of numerous social media dunks. I think many of them are deserved, albeit with a few minor reservations. Here are my quick thoughts:

• From its inception, my primary critique of Zioness -- and I've expressed this personally to their leadership -- is that they resolutely refuse to declare what progressive values demand with respect to Israel. Their justification for their reticence is that they are a domestic policy organization -- a response that is never going to sit well for a group called "Zioness". And documents like this only emphasize why this stance is untenable: Zioness can't forward opinions about Israel and then say "we don't take a position on that" when people ask them to register opinions on Israel. It's a circle they're never going to be able to square, and until they steel themselves and have the guts to forthrightly say "progressivism demands X, Y and Z out of Israel", people are going to going to be justified in looking at them with a skeptical eye.

• It may be that a guidebook offering suggestions on how to respond to antisemitic tropes a progressive Jew may encounter while engaging in racial justice activism would be useful. But if you're going to make such a resource, don't title it "Racial Justice: An Activist's Guide". An activist's guide to racial justice should center questions of racial justice -- period. This is the locus of the criticisms Zioness is getting over this document, and it is absolutely correct. Creating a document on "racial justice" that has barely any direct discussion of racial justice is almost impossibly cringe-worthy.

• Of course, the possibility that it might be useful to have a guidebook on how to respond to antisemitism while engaging in racial justice work also poses the question of whether now is the right moment to center that conversation. There is, shall we say, good reason to be skeptical on this front.

• What little substance there is on racial justice is, to be generous, perfunctory. I'm probably more attached to implicit bias as a useful framing device for understanding contemporary racism than many of my colleagues in the progressive world (it's falling out of vogue), and even I'd say that talking about that alone is woefully incomplete. This is a case where something is worse than nothing -- if they hadn't made the limp gesture towards talking about racial justice qua racial justice, maybe it would have been clear that this document was meant to serve a different purpose (namely, "Responding to Antisemitic Tropes in Racial Justice Activism"). Of course, if that purpose had been made evident it would have more clearly posed the question of whether now was the right time to center that conversation. See the previous bullet point.

• I've seen for awhile now the allegation that Zioness is an "astroturf" organization. There's virtually no evidence this is true. Moreover, anyone who knows anything about the constitution of American Jewish community politics should very well know it isn't true. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the politics of the American Jewish community -- and Zioness' critics certainly are included -- knows that there are a great many American Jews who (a) have relatively conventional "pro-Israel" politics, (b) have relatively conventional progressive domestic politics, and (c) feel aggrieved when they see these two commitments treated as antithetical to one another. Even if one hates that particular political cocktail, surely there's no dispute about its prevalence. Given that, there's no grounding to the idea that Zioness, which centers its appeal to just that political intersection, could only have sprung up via artificial seeding.* Since I'm confident that Zioness' critics are not ignorant about the political composition of the American Jewish community, I'm equally confident that their use of "astroturf" is entirely as a slur (meaning something like "activist group with more conventional and less radical politics than mine"), not an analytical category.

• Many of the document's critics have cast it as specifically focused on "defending Israel" rather than addressing antisemitism more broadly. Much of the "antisemitic tropes" they address are Israel-related, but not several are not (ex: "Jews were behind the Atlantic Slave Trade" or "White nationalism isn’t about Jews"). There's something interesting about this, because formally speaking the elision isn't necessary: the locus of the critique -- that, especially right now, the centerpiece of a document on "racial justice" should be "racial justice" -- would I think carry equal punch if Zioness' document were accurately described as talking about antisemitism. So why fudge the description? The answer is that the criticizing "Israel talk" is more comfortable terrain for many compared to criticizing "Jewish talk", and so we see activists instinctively slide into the former even in cases where analytically they're just as much talking about the latter.

The tl;dr is that Zioness is a regular grassroots organization with a pretty obvious base of support, pairing conventional pro-Israel views with conventional mainstream Democratic domestic views. That, on its own, isn't too remarkable. But the document they've produced on "racial justice" is (a) justly being mocked for having a barely even perfunctory focus on racial justice; (b) bad on its own terms; (c) poorly timed with regard to its actual-albeit-understated purpose, and (d) inadvertently demonstrative of how Zioness' ostensible commitment to being a purely "domestic policy organization" that can't be expected to take positions on what progressive values mean for Israel is untenable.

* The closest evidence one has for Zioness being "astroturf" comes from its early funding from the right-wing Lawfare Project and Brooke Goldstein. That would raise legitimate flags, except that Goldstein has been extremely vocal about how much she hates Zioness precisely because they refused to take the pseudo-left concern-troll line that she had expected out of them (which is to say, they've actually been independent). The fallout has gotten so intense that Zioness has outright blocked Goldstein on Twitter. Whatever Goldstein's initial intentions, she'd be the first to agree that Zioness has charted its own path.

The Role of Jewish Activists at the DC Dyke March

One thing that's been bandied about in the controversy about the DC Dyke March's decision to ban Jewish Pride flags (for being allegedly too similar to an Israeli flag) is the role that Jewish members of the DCDM played in proposing the policy, defending it public, and later in enforcing it, as part of the group of bouncers seeking to keep Jewish counterprotesters outside of the event.

But "role" is a vague term, and I'm curious about the specifics. Specifically, I can imagine three potential roles the Jewish members could have played in bringing about the Jewish Pride flag policy.

1. The policy banning Jewish Pride flags was proposed by other members, and the Jewish members agreed to it, ratified it, or otherwise signaled it was permissible.
2. Some policy regarding Jewish symbols was proposed by other members, and the Jewish members modified or modulated it -- possibly to make it more limited (i.e., initially it was a ban on all Jewish symbols), or possibly to make it more expansive (i.e. initially it was solely a ban on the Israeli flag, as such).
3. The Jewish members proposed this policy sua sponte -- it was their idea to have a policy whereby Jewish Pride flags were banned; DCDM wasn't really considering having a policy regarding Jewish Pride flags until the Jewish members brought it up.

In all of these, to one extent or another, the Jewish members might be thought of as having "set up" the DCDM, at least to the extent they presented the policy as a valid compromise that would be viewed as permissible within the Jewish community when anyone could have known it would provoke a furious backlash. But in some they have considerably more agency than others.

On that note, though, the third possibility -- or the "more expansive" iteration of the second -- is the most interesting, because it raises the possibility that the DCDM as a whole viewed itself as deferring to its Jewish members and might have even been taken aback by the strength of the broader communal response. That's hard to process because it's so obvious to us the way in which a policy like this is harmful to Jews, polices Jews, and gatekeeps Jews. But I have to remind myself that most non-Jews don't know that much about Jews, and in particular don't know enough to necessarily realize that the Jews in their little circle who are assuring them "this is fine, this is okay, if anyone gets upset it's just the usual right-wing rabble-rousers" aren't actually representative.

And likewise, remembering that Jews generally pay more attention to Jewish issues than non-Jews means the Jewish DCDM members were among the most likely to have vivid memories of Chicago, and most likely to have strong opinions about what the Jewish Pride flag represents. It strikes me as entirely plausible that they leveraged their "insider knowledge" to present a narrative where this flag was the banner of the infiltrators and the pinkwashers -- a threat that they knew of and were doing the service of warning DCDM about in advance. From their vantage, they were dissipating a threat to Palestinian or Arab safety at the march that otherwise might have gone unnoticed -- like someone who knows a subtle "insider" gesture of White supremacy that, precisely because of its superficial banality, can normally be made in public settings without challenge.

Or maybe not. The Jewish members could have been in reactive role, agreeing with a proposal made by others, and had little to do with placing this issue on their agenda. Most obviously, this could have been a position spearheaded by Palestinian members (or people who identify strongly as "pro-Palestinian" -- though the latter group, of course, overlaps significantly with the Jewish members). As I said, the particular role that the Jewish members played in promulgating this policy is opaque -- other than that they stood (literally) on the front lines to defend it.

But I don't think that it's implausible that their role was a relatively active one -- that at least in part this happened because they wanted it to happen. It is an interesting fact about what I call "dissident minorities" that they often have a material interest in not making the spaces they occupy inclusive to the broader membership of their minority group. A DCDM where more Jews feel comfortable marching is a DCDM where these Jews, in particular, are less influential and less powerful. And so, far from being the brake that prevents the space from going to far, often times they're the accelerator pushing it forward and the bouncers standing between their "compatriots" at the entrance (as was quite literally the case here).

So it's reasonable to wonder if that's what was going on here -- anti-Zionist Jews, in a sense, egging the march on, trying to maneuver it into an antagonistic position towards the broader Jewish community while simultaneously using their own identities to ratify the legitimacy of the posture.

The Nub of the IfNotNow/Birthright Dilemma

The crux of the dilemma in observing the fallout over the latest IfNotNow Birthright protest is as follows:

1) Everything I've seen from institutional and establishment Jewish organizations over the last few years indicates that a group like Birthright is wholly capable of wildly overreacting to perfectly legitimate demands that they take seriously the occupation and the equal standing of Arabs in Israel in Palestine.

2) Everything I've seen from IfNotNow over the past few years indicates that they're exactly the sort of organization whose activists would stage a preplanned massive disruption that completely obstructs the operation of their Birthright trip, then innocently bat their eyes at passing journalists while saying "we were only asking questions!"

Since both #1 and #2 are equally true, the fair-minded observer stands at an impasse. And impasses like these permeate this entire arena.

It is simultaneously true that open questioning and free inquiry are at the heart of any Jewish communal experience worth its salt, and true that operators acting in bad faith can hijack such openness and freedom in order to take over a space in service of a narrow ideological agenda.

It is simultaneously true that no understanding of Israel is complete without a fair and honest reckoning with the reality of the occupation and the continued unequal and subordinated status of Palestinians (both in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Israel proper), and true that not every single Israel-related experience needs to be constantly refracted through that lens at all times.

It is simultaneously true that participants signing up for Birthright presumably know that they are getting only a partial view of Israel (what curated trip could promise otherwise?), and true that Birthright would be betraying its own mission if it ever started to conceptualize itself as a propaganda vehicle sold via the bribe of a free vacation.

It is simultaneously true that there is something tacky about taking Birthright's money and then spitting in its face, and true that there is something tacky about acting like the young Jews who take Birthright's money are somehow cheating if they don't agree that they've been bought off.

These and these are the words of the living God.

IfNotNo....?

My last post on IfNotNow's attempt to introduce Palestinian narratives into Jewish summer camp programming suggested that INN missed an opportunity to Brandi Maxxxx its putative adversaries. (The "Brandi Maxxxx" strategy is when a somewhat-marginal group or institution holds its position out as being of a kind with that of a centrist group -- in this case, e.g., emerging out of genuine love for Israel and a place of care and concern for Israel's future -- thereby forcing the centrist group to either implicitly accede to the connection or aggressively repudiate the principles).

The unnecessarily harsh and distancing statement of INN directed at Camp Ramah (one of the major Jewish camps INN had sought to work with) emphasized the gap between the two (and therefore, in effect, the non-mainstream nature of INN's position) and effectively let Ramah claim the "big tent" high ground. By contrast, if INN had suggested that they and Ramah were in agreement, in order for Ramah to disavow INN it would have to "register a much more specific disavowal of IfNotNow and discussion of the occupation in its camps, in which case -- IfNotNow has a much stronger basis for critique against Ramah and Jewish camps going forward."

But now Ramah has come out with a new statement that basically did that anyway. It is rather gratuitously nasty in tone and makes it pretty clear that it is the one taking its ball and going home, not INN. The result is that INN gains a lot more credence, in my book, when it asserts that organizations like Ramah are institutionally allergic to any serious reckoning with the reality of the occupation and Palestinian lives. It also reemphasizes something I've long railed against: that when it comes to Israel politics, the Jewish community places a border on its left flank but not its right. Ramah is rigorous and emphatic in policing how far to the left its willing to let its staff go on Israel -- but there's no indication that there's any standards they apply on the right.

(Interestingly, the commentary IfNotNow gave to this letter was I thought much better in tone than its prior response to Ramah's more moderate initial statement. It might just be a matter of comparison though -- it's easy to look reasonable and fair-minded when your interlocutor so nakedly decides to go overboard).

IfNotYes ...?

I have a relatively negative view of IfNotNow. It's certainly not from any pro-occupation place, but every time I see them in action they appear to have the political instincts of an arsonist. I once said of Simone Zimmerman "some people haven't met a forest fire they didn't ache to pour gasoline on," and I feel like that fits INN pretty well too. As someone who's never thought regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict "you know what this needs? More incendiary rhetoric and us-versus-them tribal organization!" IfNotNow was never going to be among my favorites.

In many ways, I view IfNotNow as the Jewish heirs to the "Occupy" movement -- both in their preference for disruptive politics (not my cup of tea, but not per se invalid) and their utter allergy to actually accomplishing anything concrete if it involves working through establishment channels (which drives me up the wall). Hence their signature move: hosting sit-ins with Jewish organizations they think are insufficiently anti-occupation, and then refuse to actually meet with said organizations when they agree to discuss their demands. The results are ... basically what we saw with Occupy: managing to harness a ton of progressive energy, and then have it completely dissipate with nothing to show for it save self-righteous declarations about how pure they are and how broken "the system is". They're all ethics of conviction, no ethics of responsibility.

Here's the latest: IfNotNow has been hosting training sessions for Jewish camp counselors (that is, counselors at Jewish camps, not counselors who happen to be Jewish) to help them teach about the Occupation. Cool, in concept. Following those reports, one of the camp bodies released a statement saying, in part:

We, the leadership of Ramah, are proud that Zionism is a central part of our core mission, as we nurture within our campers and staff members a deep and enduring love for Israel.

Unfortunately, some recent articles in the Jewish press have mischaracterized our educational mission, leading some to believe that our 70-year history of strong pro-Israel ideology has changed. It has not. 

[...]

Our older teens and staff members represent a range of opinions on many contemporary issues, and a wide variety of positions supporting Israel can be voiced and discussed. We do not, however, permit the sharing of anti-Israel educational messages at camp.

 Okay. Now, one could interpret this as a repudiation of IfNotNow, saying their training sessions are "anti-Israel" or do not come from a "deep and enduring love for Israel." But IfNotNow could also very easily nestle itself inside this message, affirming that its educational mission stems from a "deep and enduring love for Israel" and that its arguments exist with then the "wide variety of positions supporting Israel" that Ramah is open to facilitating.

Guess which side IfNotNow picked? Yep, the one that maximizes confrontation.

After our meeting with Mitch Cohen, Director of @NationalRamah in March of this year, we believed that they would keep their word and muster the moral courage to include Palestinian narratives and have the tough conversations that we know are necessary, especially this summer.

— IfNotNow🔥 (@IfNotNowOrg) June 8, 2018

However, as the leadership of @ramahwisconsin makes clear, they “have made no changes in our approaches to Israel education from previous summers.”

— IfNotNow🔥 (@IfNotNowOrg) June 8, 2018

Now, part of this may be a matter of honesty, of a sort. INN is internally diverse on questions of Zionism, and it is possible that some members would blanch at the idea that their anti-occupation curriculum even comes from a place of "deep and enduring love for Israel." But that's their problem, and at most I think it's only part of the story. The bigger issue is that IfNotNow really loves its lone wolf fetish, which depends on constructing the Jewish center as irredeemable opponents who must be wholly thrown off (one advantage of this is that it conveniently takes compromise -- and the threat compromise poses to moral purity -- off the table).

And there are other approaches available. I wrote years ago about what I called "the Brandi Maxxxx strategy" for Jewish liberals, which basically is a form of killing-by-agreement. Keep on insisting that mainline Jewish organizations actually agree with you -- that only a two-state solution is acceptable, that the occupation exacts terrible costs on Palestinians, and so on -- and force them either to very explicitly disavow those positions or accede to the linkage of the Jewish left and center in the public imagination. Consider the following hypothetical response by IfNotNow to Ramah's statement:

IfNotNow is pleased that Jewish campers will have the opportunity to learn about the reality of occupation at Camp Ramah. 

Our discussions with Mitch Cohen confirmed that this is an important arena of learning for young Jews, and we fully agree that such discussions are an integral part of the "variety of positions" Jewish should be exposed to and entirely consonant with "deep and enduring love for Israel" that the camp tries to facilitate.

That is entirely consistent with the Ramah statement -- it just very publicly and agreeably posits a harmony between the two organizations. But lest you think it's a case of IfNotNow rolling over, notice the position it puts Ramah in. They can specifically agree with INN's statement, in which case -- IfNotNow wins. They can not respond to it at all, in which case -- IfNotNow wins. Or they can register a much more specific disavowal of IfNotNow and discussion of the occupation in its camps, in which case -- IfNotNow has a much stronger basis for critique against Ramah and Jewish camps going forward (which is to say: IfNotNow wins).

I suspect that Door #2 would be the most likely outcome, and the upshot of that is that they've got an open door towards bringing in the sort of learning that they want. But my sense is that IfNotNow cares a lot less about getting the occupation taught at Jewish summer camp than they care about being able to loudly declare how radical and disruptive it'd be if the occupation were taught at Jewish summer camp. If getting the former requires them to use conciliatory rhetoric or suggest that the distance between themselves and mainline Jewish organizations isn't the gaping chasm they like to portray it as -- well, they can always go back to the ethics of conviction, can't they?

It's not quite an inability to take "yes" for an answer. But it's something very close.

Zioness Has a "Manifesto"

Zioness -- a campaign for progressive Zionists launched in the wake of the Chicago Dyke March fiasco -- has a "manifesto". This perhaps offers an opportunity for me to share my thoughts on Zioness, which I've been observing since its initial inception and towards which I maintain a wary but not wholly antagonistic posture.

Some people think that Zioness is just a false flag operation -- people who don't actually care about progressivism at all trying to infiltrate and kick-up-dust within progressive communities. There are several bases for this assertion. First, critics point out the links between Zioness' leadership and the Lawfare Project, which tends to take a relatively conservative line on Israel advocacy issues.  Hence, they suggest that Zioness is really just a stalking horse for Lawfare's right-wing agenda. Second, some have claimed that Zioness has taken a confrontational posture towards the progressive groups it marches with that, it is alleged, is designed to provoke and sow division. This, the argument goes, militates against the interpretation that all they really want is inclusion.

These arguments don't quite track for me, however. On the first point, there are, for better or for worse, plenty of Jews with non-progressive (even conservative) views on Israel who genuinely care about and support things like reproductive access, gay rights, economic redistribution, and other pillars of the progressive community. I'd be entirely unsurprised if the leaders of the Lawfare Project fit that profile. Call them inconsistent if you like, but I think there is little evidence to suggest they're lying about the cluster of beliefs they hold. And indeed, at least in the social media feed I've been pleasantly surprised at how Zioness has seemed to genuinely pick up and promote progressive causes in a way that feels organic and heartfelt. Groups or commenters that ignore, say, women's rights six days a week and then parachute in to say "what about women in Saudi Arabia?" whenever someone says a bad word about Israel are a dime a dozen. But Zioness has not actually been doing this -- it has promoted progressive causes in ways and in contexts where there is no clear reason to do it other than that they believe in it.

On the second, there's probably something to the claim that Zioness takes on a defiant tone that can be read as hostile. There's also probably something to the claim that people being open and unapologetic about their Zionism in spaces like this will be automatically read as "confrontational." Both of these interpretations, I think, make sense given the genealogy of Zioness as reaction to the expulsion of several Jewish marchers from the Chicago Dyke March for simply holding a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it -- an act which was taken to be sufficient proof of being an outside agitator who wasn't part of the progressive community. One lesson one can take from CDM is that being subdued in one's Jewishness, and adopting a go-along-get-along stance, isn't going to save you -- in fact, it isn't even going to protect you from accusations of tossing "Zionism" in everyone's face. Another lesson is the need to avoid the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic where Zionists are told not to be open in their Zionism when engaging in progressive causes (because it's distracting and making it "about us") and then, when progressive activists seek to define Zionists out of the camp it's justified (because where were all the Zionists during all these other campaigns?). So it doesn't surprise that the new tactic will be out-and-proud, taking a more aggressive and less conciliatory stance.

To be clear: this sort of confrontational, disruptive presence is very definitively not my preference. It flies in the face of all my own political instincts. But I've written about how certain modalities of organizing and protesting serve as markers for progressive orientation -- the medium very much being part of the message -- and as much as I hate it there might come a point where it's necessary for more mainstream Jewish groups to pivot towards more confrontational methods of political advocacy that "code" as progressive. Put another way, there's something a bit odd about folks from the IfNotNow wing of Jewish political action complaining that another group is behaving in a disruptive and confrontational manner, and doesn't seem interested in quietly and unobtrusively talking things out without making a big stink in public. To the extent Zioness is confrontational in demanding inclusion, that's wholly consistent with, not in opposition to, speaking in progressive shibboleths.

So those are reasons why I don't join the antagonistic camp. Yet I remain wary. And the main reason is that Zioness utterly refuses to even try to think through what progressive commitments mean with respect to Israel.

If we return to the manifesto, for example, it's pretty vague on what Zioness actually wants to achieve in the world. Indeed, it tries to hold that vagueness out as a virtue: "We will not define your progressivism or your Zionism." But the fact of the matter is it gives very little guidance regarding what it means, in practice, to "dismantle institutionalized racism in our government and our society." What does that commit us to? What policies are and aren't compatible with that ambition?

Most tellingly, Zioness doesn't seem willing to grapple with the fact that progressivism requires certain things out of Zionism. One can believe (and I do) that Zionism and progressivism are compatible while observing the should-be-obvious fact that not all iterations or implementations of Zionism are progressive or consistent with progressivism. Being a progressive Zionist imposes certain obligations with respect to Israel as much as anywhere else; a fact that Zioness seems resolutely uninterested in contending with (and here the link to the Lawfare Project really may do some important explanatory work). So while it claims that it wants to mobilize "progressive Zionists," that term doesn't actually encompass any set of "Zionist" beliefs about Israel so long as the holder is also pro-choice. The progressive Zionist community is already existent in organizations like Ameinu, Partners for a Progressive Israel, and J Street (to name a few), and all of these understand that progressive mobilization around Israel can't be agnostic on matters of Israeli policy or even the best understanding of Zionism. If, as I've often argued, caring about Israel means having opinions about it, these groups care a lot about Israel -- but that manifests precisely because they have particular concepts of what they want Israel to be and an active desire for it to live out a progressive credo.

So ultimately, I remain wary. I've already got a progressive Zionist community that I'm comfortable with; it works through the organizations I've just mentioned and they seem to do it better than Zioness is currently capable of. And while I can't fully join the critique of Zioness for behaving in a confrontational, stand-up-and-notice-me sort of way since that mode of social activism is increasingly de rigueur on the left, I don't like it and I don't have any interest in joining it.

Solidarity is for Goyim

Apparently there was another instance of Nazi flyers appearing on Berkeley printers and fax machines. I hadn't heard about it; the Berkeley administration didn't see fit to tell us. This isn't the first time this has happened. I asked Jill, and she said it's actually a rather regular occurrence at this point. It's virtually just background noise.

I thought about this in tandem with those bomb threats that raked across Jewish Community Centers this month -- dozens of them, coordinated, nationwide. It was, unsurprisingly, all over the Jewish media. Did it also resonate among our putative allies? I remember Carly Pildis' pleading tweet:

I am looking for ANY social justice/human rights/anti-racism/anti-oppression group to stand in support with our community today.

— (((Carly Pildis))) (@CarlyPildis) January 18, 2017

Did she find any? I don't know. There was a powerful statement from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. But it does seem exceptional. Maybe there were more. I do know that it scarcely even occurred to me to look for such solidarity. I've become conditioned not to expect it. It's not that other groups never have our backs, but it's a rare enough occurrence that it doesn't factor into my default strategies for protecting Jews.

I keep going. Researching this post, I Google "solidarity with Jews." The first hit is a link titled "Jews lead march for solidarity with Muslims." A noble undertaking to be sure, but that's not solidarity with Jews. Solidarity, apparently, is something Jews give. It is not something we receive.

I continued to think. I remember the email I wrote following the election to the UC-Berkeley Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion, when her message to the community offering support to (a lengthy list of) threatened campus populations failed to include Jews. I remember how, just a few days after that dust-up, my union sent its own email standing in solidarity with an even larger group -- still managing to omit Jews.

Meanwhile, I came across an event hosted by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists' Social Justice group featuring notorious antisemite Alison Weir. Weir regularly collaborates with neo-Nazis and White supremacists. She questioned the Garland nomination because there were too many Jews on the Supreme Court. She contends that the medieval "blood libel" -- responsible for countless antisemitic massacres across history -- is accurate. She has referred to Judaism as a "ruthless and supremacist faith." I know Unitarian Universalists -- including clergy who do solidarity work. In accordance with said solidarity, they have supported sit-ins in front of Jewish communal organizations who cut ties with the Movement for Black Lives after the latter accused Israel of genocide. Will they address the log in their eye?

Maybe. Maybe not. It's a busy time for folks combating hate, after all. So many groups need solidarity.

Of course, there's a pattern at work here. Berkeley doesn't publicize the fact that its printers are regularly appropriated to launch antisemitic Jeremiads. It not being publicized means that persons who might be receptive to a claim of solidarity aren't on notice that Jews are in need of it. Not thinking that Jews are in need of it, they don't view the absence of distinctively Jewish voices or campaign as a loss or gap. Indeed, being blissfully unaware of the continued fact of antisemitic oppression, they may think of Jews as in the category of those who should solely be givers of solidarity and support. The politics of Jewish invisibility continues unmolested.

This narrative may seem too innocent, though I would not be averse to citing some James Baldwin: "It is the innocence which constitutes the crime." Yet it is not entirely even criminal innocence. There are affirmative beliefs about Jews that contribute to the problem. Solidarity with Jews means breaking down the sense that Jews are already spoken for, are anti-discrimination winners, are if anything too greedy in what we demand from our fellows. It requires overcoming the deep Gentile Fragility (if I can appropriate a term) that has a hair-trigger around claims of antisemitism. It requires active work and active unlearning of established patterns. It requires acknowledging that antisemitism is not an external infection but emerges out of our own movements and our own practices. Opposing antisemitism will sometimes mean reassessing things precious to us. It will sometimes require costly grace.

Some might say that, until we are included as equals in communities of solidarity, we should not contribute our energies to the fight. Why should we fight for others who will do nothing for us? A tempting proposition, but not one that appeals to me. I engage in such a fight for self, because it's right, not because of what I expect in return. Nor does it mean I claim that Jews have it worse than anyone else, that we are uniquely threatened. Every group faces its particular set of challenges, the glass blocking the way is as always sometimes visible and sometimes obscure.

But let's be clear: Swastikas are appearing on campuses, on fraternities, in Jewish neighborhoods. Bomb threats are being called in by the dozens on Jewish communal centers. Jews are being compared to Nazis by persons on the right and left -- persons who will in the next breath loudly proclaim their allyship to the Jewish people. Social actors shun Jewish spaces, activists blacklist Jewish voices. In our own way and in our own context, Jews are among those groups under threat. We are not people that can be justly excised from communities of solidarity. We have the right to demand inclusion.

But we aren't included yet. Right now, solidarity is for goyim. A provocative indictment for solidarity activists to grapple with, but that is my charge.

Indivisible: The Rise of the Constitutional Caucus

This document is "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda." It was coauthored by a friend of mine and some fellow ex-congressional staffers as a how-to for exerting leverage on your members of Congress during the Trump administration. It's drawn directly from the hard lessons they learned enduring the Tea Party wave in response to Obama's election. It's very good: exactly the sort of realistic, practical, no-nonsense advice progressives need right now.  Read it, digest it, circulate it, live it.

To repeat if I wasn't clear: I highly recommend it, and I highly recommend you distribute it. That all goes double for those of you in even vaguely (and "vaguely" here is defined as broad as possible) competitive states and districts. It is far more important that you read it than you read the short addendum I put out below.

* * *

Okay, now my far less valuable two cents. The above document is focused particularly on how to interact with one's own Congressperson -- a very worthy aim. I have two minor additions of my own that are mostly beyond the scope of the document, but I think supplement its advice nicely.

First, the Tea Party was successful in large part because it really transformed Republican politics on the local level. That meant getting its people onto school boards, county councils, and state assembly seats. These sorts of low-information, low-turnout elections are precisely where a small group of motivated individuals can make an outsized impact. They offer the opportunity to acculturate people into voting Blue. And they build up a Democratic bench for later on.

Second, names matter -- and the Tea Party was a great one. One reason it was excellent is that it evoked a classic protest moment in American history. Another was because nominally, it was not affiliated with a particular party. Obviously, in practice it was -- it operated as a faction and arm of the Republican Party. But I think it would have been far less successful had its name including "Republican" in it -- they weren't the Republican Party, they were the Tea Party! Much of its appeal was precisely to persons who styled themselves as independents (even if that's mostly a special-snowflake syndrome) fed up with party politics but who thirsted for an alternative avenue to participate in politics. One certainly can see a similar instinct among liberals in the Sanders crowd -- many very much liked that he was not technically a "Democrat" but an "Independent". Particularly for persons who have a dim view of politics generally but are attracted to a strong populist message (like many Sanders voters were), not branding oneself as a "Democratic" organization probably is a good idea.

Like the Tea Party, it would be great if there was a national label identifying the resistance movement being generated here. The document authors are fond of the name "Indivisible", and while I like it too, it's a bit abstract to be used as a group descriptor ("We're the Indivisibles" is a little harder to grasp than "We're the Tea Party"). Like the Tea Party, one wants a name that evokes a unifying element of American history that also resonates with the values we are seeking to defend and which Donald Trump clearly places under threat.

So my working recommendation for a unifying name is the "Constitutional Caucus". We are Americans from across every corner of the nation, united in common cause to defend the values and principles of constitutional law and liberty that today are graver peril than they've been in my lifetime.

Welcome to the Caucus. There's work to be done.

"If It Had Happened To Any Other Group....": Looking for the Glass

Someone who does not see a pane of glass does not know that he does not see it. Someone who, being placed differently, does see it, does not know the other does not see it. --Simone Weil

Commenting on this passage almost a decade ago, I wrote the following:

The same reality can look quite different to those differently situated. When a person in a different social location remarks on an event or experience that we--despite living in the same "world"--do not perceive, our first response may be to deny or deride them as liars, charlatans, or fakes, for we do not see what they see. It is difficult for us to imagine that our vision may be constrained--especially if one is situated in a position that is treated as if its perspective is universal and whole. Meanwhile, the interlocutor is presented with a very similar problem. When an experience is right there in front of you, a fundamental part of ones existence that can feel, touch, block, or even slay you, it is hard to imagine that your partner cannot see it. The first person's objection is taken to be in bad faith, a manifestation of hostility. 

[...] 

Ideally, both parties should recognize the limitation of their and their partner's perceptual horizons, adopting a stance of humility. She who does not see should nonetheless be willing to accept the other's sight, she who sees should be generous to those whose vision is lacking. The reality that our perspective is constrained by our social position affects us all, and that is something we share with every other body, no matter how far apart we seem on everything else. Thus, our demand should not be for others to see what we see. Rather, we have the right to demand a certain degree of wonder (to borrow from Luce Irigaray) on the part of our interlocutors in social discussions, "Wonder which beholds what it sees always has if for the first time, never taking hold of the other as its object. It does not try to seize, possess, or reduce this object, but leaves it subjective, still free." No matter how complete we feel our experience is, other people remain in some sense beyond us, and only they have the authority to tell the story of their own experience.

I was thinking about this in relation to two articles I recently read -- Yair Rosenberg's piece on "How Oberlin Has Repeatedly Failed To Confront Anti-Semitism on Campus" and Nathan Heller's profile (also centered around Oberlin) regarding "The New Activism" on college campuses.

Rosenberg's piece, specifically on anti-Semitism, documents just how hard it has been to get the Oberlin community to take anti-Semitism seriously. The initially tepid response of the university president to vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories peddled by Joy Karega, a tenure-track professor, was met with considerable frustration, prompting the Board to step in and issue its own statement. The sense among many was that this chain of events showcased just how marginalized Jews were -- "if any other group" had been subjected to such naked bigotry it would not have taken such herculean efforts to secure a meaningful condemnation of the idea that Jews run the media and are responsible for ISIS. It's not that other groups don't face serious wrongs -- the putative difference is that when something bad happens, a statement gets made. No muss, no fuss.

Heller's profile doesn't talk about Jews that much -- an interesting elision that I may write about in another post -- but he does gather the sense of several black student activists on the topic of the Board's statement on Prof. Karega's anti-Semitism:

Like everyone else at the table, [Jasmine] Adams believes that the Oberlin board’s denunciation of Joy Karega’s Facebook posts shows hypervigilance toward anti-Semitism and comparative indifference toward racial oppression. “We want you to say, ‘Racism is not accepted!’ ” Adams says.

When I first read this, my eyes nearly popped out.  "Hypervigilance"! As Rosenberg's piece documents, getting even a half-decent statement out of the Oberlin official was like an exercise in pulling teeth. And this view isn't just found at Oberlin. At Emory, students aggrieved at pro-Donald Trump chalkings contrasted what they took to be an indifferent administrative response to the supposedly quick action against swastikas defacing a Jewish fraternity. The university president had to correct the students by noting that the university actually took its sweet time issuing a condemnation in that case (it actually took a second case of swastika vandalism to prompt a public university response).

I've typically talked about this phenomenon -- the reflexive assumption that Jews are protected, if not overprotected, by powerful actors in contrast to the "real" victims whose plight is almost entirely ignored -- as the concept of Jews as "anti-discrimination winners." And I do think that's part of the story, particularly in explaining why the left's solidaristic impulses so often seem to be lacking when it comes to the Jewish case.

But I was also reflecting on the odd mirror image that has emerged: Both the Jews and the students of color contrast the innumerable hoops they have to jump through against the express-lane treatment the other group supposedly gets. Is it possible we're both right and both wrong?

What I suspect is going on is this: When your own group faces a case of oppression or marginalization or wrong, you see every step in the process: The community which seems indifferent. The administration which seems to want to sweep it under the rug. The critics who roll their eyes at your oversensitivity, or who outright accuse you of fraud. You go through all of that, and what emerges is probably a statement that feels half-hearted and pro forma. It's maddening.

But when another group experiences a similar wrong, you don't see the process. All you see is the beginning and the end: "Bad thing happens --> Statement gets made." It looks like they get as an entitlement the vigorous, robust university response that you had to scrape and claw to even get a whiff of. And that's doubly maddening.

But in all likelihood, it's also just an illusion. What's really happening is the shifting visibility of that pane of glass. It's in front of us, and we see it, and we find it incredible that our fellows don't see it staring us in the face. And meanwhile, they've got their own pane of glass that we don't see, blocking their way, mocking them in comparison to the free and clear (as far as they can tell) path before us.

What to do about this? I endorse what I wrote back when I was a precocious liberal arts college student: We should be humble about what we see, and in particular humble about what we imagine others to have seen. I know how hard it is for Jews to get anti-Semitism on the agenda in the institutions I care about. I also know that other groups feel the same about their own marginalizations. And so, I try not to presume that they've really got it easy. Solidarity starts with taking what other people say seriously, even when it doesn't immediately ring true to one's own view of the world. Because by definition we don't know that we don't see the pane of glass invisible to us. And equally by definition, we don't know that our fellow really doesn't see the pane of glass that's all too present for us.

Crabs in a Bucket

From Happy Bodies:

I feel betrayed by these activists who work on issues I care about, because they don’t seem to care about me. Activism must come from community. How can I be part of a community of activists that fights for aids awareness, when I don’t feel like my body is respected? I don’t want to be part of a green movement that thinks the environment is greater than gender equality. I won’t join a movement for same-sex marriage, if they can’t understand that sexual objectification contributes to a culture of sexual violence, and that all these issues are intertwined.

Boy, do I relate to that. I was just instructed to ignore a whitewash of anti-Semitism in Venezeula (except for the 2009 synagogue attack, virtually none of these events are even mentioned. But don't worry! Chavez says he opposes anti-Semitism! So it's alright then!) because the article, even though the person sending it to me admitted it was distorted, provided an important "counterbalance" to the "corporate media's" hostility to Hugo Chavez. This didn't sting quite as much as it might have, because I'm actually only interested in one of those campaigns (anti-Semitism concerns me; hostility to Latin American autocrats, less so), but I was still rather stunned that somebody would think it's legitimate to erase anti-Semitic hostility because it was critical to some putatively superior struggle.

If someone genuinely feels that protecting Hugo Chavez (or opposing capitalism, or indicting the corporate media, or attacking imperialism, or really, anything) is so important that it's okay to erase and marginalize Jews and Jewish experiences in Venezuela, fine, tell me that. But don't expect me to view you as an ally. Don't even expect me to view you as particularly progressive. You're not.

That Activism Thing

Judge Sotomayor's most controversial case right now is the New Haven firefighter's case, where she upheld the city throwing out the results of a promotion test because they would have led to a promotional scheme inconsistent with the mandates of Title VII. The firefighters (mostly White) who lost out sued, alleging discrimination.

Reasonable people can disagree on this case (Ta-Nehisi Coates, I know, has been skeptical). But it is important, for those who wave "activist" like a talisman, to remember that this is a case of the judiciary deferring to democratically elected officials on matters of social policy. The closest thing "activism" has to a principled definition is "striking down democratically enacted laws" (and, ironically enough, it was the conservative wing of the Rehnquist court that made it the most activist Supreme Court in history). But the popular definition of "activist" is "judge who makes a ruling I dislike" (see also, Kelo), so I doubt this observation is going to deter much of anyone.

Victory on MPIRG

With the votes tallied, the "no on MPIRG" campaign has won a crushing upset victory, 321-847. This is obviously a huge victory, and my congratulations to those who organized and led the campaign.

I sent an email to some of the MPIRG staffers asking them for comment. I laid my cards on the table about where I had come down on the referendum. But now that the election is over, I want to reiterate what I said in my piece: MPIRG is a democratic organization; ideally, it should take this resounding message by the voters of Carleton to heart as it evaluates how to grow and change from here.

MPIRG has the potential to be a great progressive backbone once more. But it will only get there if it takes seriously the concerns of its student members and gives them the space and respect necessary to do their jobs. It should not have come this far, but hopefully last night's elections were a wake up call.

I'll let you know what response, if any, MPIRG had to my inquiry.

No on MPIRG

Though not the type myself, most of my friends at Carleton were deeply integrated in Carleton organizing and activist community. So I was surprised when many of them told me they were opposing the renewal of MPIRG's (Minnesota Public Interest Research Group) automatic refundable funding program. I was even more surprised to find out that the very persons whom I had known as MPIRG leaders on campus were the same people leading the charge to defund it.

But the reason I was surprised is the same reason I take these people seriously. And their indictment is a serious one. MPIRG, they argue, is wasting Carleton student funds on overhead and salaries that could be put to better use on campus. MPIRG has set its agenda with an eye towards bigger chapters in the Twin Cities, while ignoring the goals, desires, and priorities of Carleton students. More damningly, they have dealt with the students they are supposedly "representing" in an arrogant and high-handed manner, effectively ousting several long-time student organizers, prompting a massive turnover in MPIRG's Carleton leadership as many of the group's longest-standing members left in solidarity. Those people -- who had direct experience with what MPIRG has and hasn't been doing -- have come to the conclusion that it's time for Carleton students to take control of their own destinies. The old MPIRG would have taken this groundswell of popular discontent as a signal. The MPIRG we have seems to see it as insolence.

MPIRG hasn't taken these charges lying down. And they are certainly entitled to state their case. But unfortunately, their argument seems to be high on mud-slinging and political tricks, and light on substance. They implied that the constructively dismissed student leaders had engaged in harassment -- a vile slander of some of Carleton's most hard-working activists. They took credit for the accomplishments of the very organizers they successfully pushed out of the group. And unfortunately, they've only brought more of the same to this campaign: bringing in their professional organizers to tear down opposition posters, accost students in class, and illegally place posters in campus bathrooms (in violation of election rules). I wonder if MPIRG supports EFCA -- for it certainly seems that their commitment to fair and deliberative democratic process is, at best, a fickle thing.

I know the students who are leading the anti-MPIRG fight. They are an incredibly accomplished group of activists who show the full breadth of Carleton's talents and ingenuity. If they feel stifled by MPIRG, I believe them. If they believe MPIRG is poisoning their efforts to enact progressive social change, I believe them. If they feel that MPIRG has been disrespectful of Carleton students and Carleton values, I believe them.

MPIRG proclaims itself to be a democratic organization. Democratic theorists will tell you that democratic organizations respond to one and only one type of pressure: that of the voting booth. So long as MPIRG thinks it can maintain the blind support of the student body without a corresponding commitment to humility, engagement, and respect, we can't be surprised when it doesn't enact those values. You make MPIRG better by sending it a message: shape up, or ship out. Vote no on MPIRG.

More on the "no" campaign can be found here.

OPIRG Snubs Hillel

Many universities across North America have branches of "PIRG" (Public Interest Research Group) -- college based progressive grassroots organization. My girlfriend, for example, did a lot of work for Carleton's chapter of MPIRG (Minnesota-PIRG). They often team up with other campus-based organizations on various projects related to human rights and social justice.

At the University of Ottawa, the local Hillel (Jewish students group) thought it had just such an event: a speaker from the African Jewish community coming to talk about sustainable development projects and interfaith schooling for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children. But when it asked OPIRG for funds, it received a shocking rebuke:

Hillel organizers didn't get a response to their request before the event, but later received an e-mail from the board of directors at the research group, saying it had researched Hillel and decided that though the event "seems very interesting," the board of directors had decided not to endorse or promote it.

"This decision was made because your organization (Hillel) and its relationship to apartheid Israel," said the e-mail. "Zionist Ideology does not fit within OPIRG's mandate of human right's (sic), social justice."

Pressed by the Ottawa Citizen, the organization refused to even identify who made the decision, but affirmed that "Our position is outlined in that e-mail you have." Given the attenuated relationship Hillel has to Israeli policies (it does generically support "Zionism" as the Jewish right of self-determination -- a far cry from any reasonable definition of apartheid), I'd say that there is a name for OPIRG's position: anti-Semitism.

Via The Z-Word. And I should note that MPIRG is entirely independent from the broader PIRG structure.