I didn’t know I needed a month off until I took it. I am deeply touched by a couple of inquiries from prison friends (and their friends) who look forward to my Approximately Monthly Missives. I tried to make it up to my incarcerated recipients by sending some of them a few articles I was moved by. I am okay, and my family too.
Now it is the time of the autumnal equinox and the High Holy Days. The Reclaiming Community’s annual Spiral Dance will be held in person on October 29 at 2pm Pacific Time Zone, with plans for that annual ritual coming together to come together again (at long last) in person! Please send in names of loved ones who died since last year’s dance (October 29) to be included: https://www.reclaimingspiraldance.org/beloved-dead-additions-for-2022 The more, the merrier as we dance in trance with them!
Family visits were quite wonderful this summer as a couple of cousins and myself all turned 60 around the same time. (See some pics below.) I went to a couple of live, indoor performances. I saw Burning Spear at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. I went with someone who didn’t mask, and I was among only a handful of people who wore them. I felt stiff and un-close by masking, with a “date” who wasn’t. We had fun, but the mask was literally a bit of a barrier. I prefer being indoors with mostly masked masses of people, at worksites and in stores. I like staying outside at parties, but I get a bit uncomfortable if an unmasked person unconsciously stands or leans in too close without permission. I think about going to events, but I work harder now than ever, and I think it tires me out more than I thought, or more than it did.
Giving into being tired is a paradox. I am way behind on this Approximately Monthly Missive because I am not very good at making computer time after work. Before I leave the house in the morning, I may be on a roll, but then I need to race to get myself ready to get out the door, cutting off the flow I may be feeling.
I’m strong in many ways and a workhorse. I can out-dig people half my age. I am very weak with some motions though. I am going to need hand surgery again in the coming year, as a previous malady (dupyutrens contracture) has returned, this time at the base of my thumbs. I also am trying to exercise and brace-away carpal and ulnar tunnel syndromes.
I am getting more re-vigilant about masking. I started being less rigid in the presence of my co-workers in large rooms. If my mask gets all sweaty and uncomfortable, and I don’t think that I will have much more time or close contact with anyone, then I just leave it off and blaze on with the task at hand rather than immediately sweating up another new mask. The way I use my masks, briefly in stores, scoping out a problem/project/repair, or working alone, I think I can legitimately get a fair amount of reuse out of standard KN-95s. I do prefer the vertical center seam; no duck-bills for me, but no fabric close in on my mouth is key! I wish most of the ear loops were a couple of millimeters longer, but I usually don’t care about my ears being bent down. At this point, they still bounce back up into shape.
I feel like my car is my safe space when I am out. It decreases my impulse to take my bike on BART instead of being a solo person in a car commuter. I get upset at myself being a single driver car person, and if traffic is at a crawl for parts of my drive, I curse myself for not having gotten going in time catch BART instead. But I do value my own little refuge, some measure of privacy and a place to store things. The ride back to BART from my work’s base of operation is also in southeast SF, and I have a 5 mile ride with a couple of uphills and into the winds for my ride home which curbs my enthusiasm as I contemplate my end of day as I prepare for my day in the a.m. What can I say?
Love the Poor.
For many years, I would prefer to give two quarters to panhandlers. Then, for a dollar, paper money, seemed more respectful. For a while I gave $2, but it actually felt showy, like I was putting them down, as though I were flush and they were pitiful beggars. I went down to giving single dollars without question. In the last couple of months I have gone back up to $2. One dollar feels less substantial than it did a couple of months ago.
The deepening nature of the war on the poor is more upsetting to me with every news cycle. It is a racist, mostly white-supremacist, patriarchal, even misogynistic, war on the poor. I heard a black commentator reflect on the radio recently that they were in the group of people who grew up with access to services that many of their racial peers did not. Sometimes one can’t un-benefit from being among the haves even if bearing such favor violates all the love in my heart and every belief in my head.
These are all manifestations of the war on the poor who are seen as expendable commodities. The floods of Pakistan and Jackson. The hurricanes and typhoons of Puerto Rico and Sri Lanka. The famines of several countries in Africa. The increasing abuse of social media tracking and manipulation by rich, brutal autocrats and oligarchs to dupe populaces into supporting violent, authoritarian rulers…All of this is almost unbelievable to me. God save the people of Afghanistan and Italy and The Philippines where new votes have been lost. I pray Brazil survives their upcoming elections.
At the same time, there is so much wisdom, love and compassion and people expressing great beauty and honesty throughout the world. Bless the new leaders in Chile, Honduras, Colombia and Barbados. May the Democrats win big despite the predictions, not because I don’t decry greedy war crimes of their leadership, but because they at least know to be ashamed of their ignorance and cheating.
It is weird to see ignorance extolled and celebrated. I find most of what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said to be inspiring and unassailable. He was wise and so very articulate. He was pre-intersectional (ala Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw) when he spoke of the Three Evils of Society: Racism, Economic Exploitation (or Excessive Materialism)…and Militarism. It is amazing that the point he made in the excerpt below about civilization not going backwards is turning out to be challenged by Trump and his minions who champion ignorance and see security in something being unprovable:
"No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stage coach or the tractor in favor of the hand plow or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition. But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth. Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard word and sacrifice, the fact is that Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., August 31, 1967
Who is Teaching About Rules of Engagement?
This headline from 31Aug22 is all too typical and really struck me hard. It is about police busting into an apartment and within a second–literally literally–an officer had shot an unarmed black man dead. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/8/31/headlines/police_in_columbus_ohio_shoot_dead_unarmed_black_man_in_bed When is it okay to shoot someone? For a pacifist, the question is perhaps easy, but a pacifist isn’t the necessary target audience for that query.
These guys are acting like they are walking into a room on a gaming console where there is no identifying of themselves as they bust in, weapons drawn. And sadly, for reasons of qualified immunity and patriarchal white supremacy, the shooters with badges, and sometimes those without, do face little or no consequences for murder “under cover of authority.”
At my job, if I yell at someone on the phone, I am likely to be written up. I was told by a new administrator to repair a dining room wall in an afternoon as though it was trivial, never mind what I was already working on. I responded to the email with a one word reply: “Declined.” I wasn’t really refusing, and I did do it, with more like 5 worker days than .5 days. I got written up for insubordination. If my job is too stressful, I am made to to adjust, or I get another job. Amazingly, our society largely accepts that people with jobs that license them to kill should get more of a pass than a handyman. Soldiers and soldiers of fortune get so much slack, and yet, they should get the least, because they are making more life and life-ending decisions. They don’t deserve the trust placed in them.
I think I have written about this before, wondering what has happened to the training of the laws as they pertain to shooting at people. I know “stand your ground” laws have emboldened racists with guns, and allowed their “fear” to trump the fear that their victims surely deserved to feel. But I still think that it is so obvious that the unarmed should have the right to the defense of being afraid over the fear of the person with the gun. That a person carrying an assault weapon into a crowd of people they see as a problem, shoot people and get off for killing four people is a nightmare. “Stand your ground” laws have got to go away for civilians along with “qualified immunity” for law enforcement and “status of forces agreements” for the military.
Against this backdrop, Joe Biden gave his “beware of MAGA Republicans and Trump” speech in Philadelphia. I agreed with much of what he said, but the Democartic Party leadership has acted in line with the ignorant, hateful and violent policies that he decried for years, and that hasn’t changed. The DNC and its variants diminish participatory democracy when they undermine progressive primary victors, preferring to lose to a Republican in the general election rather than support a progressive.
One of the hardest aspects of watching right wing politicians and most mainstream media pundits is how they brand “moderate” Democrats as rabid lefties out to destroy them with their radical agendas. Meanwhile their boogeyfolk are attacking my progressive (s)heroes. Nina Turner should be the Democrat on the ticket in Texas this November. Pelosi supported the anti-abortionist Cuellar instead. Atrocious! And the corporate Dems then have the gall to lambast us as uncompromising. It makes me shudder.
And then there are the attacks on civil servants like people working in elections departments and county clerks offices. People are being harrassed, and some contorted use of the first amendment makes their stalkers legally protected? No!
I heard about a lawsuit challenging an abortion ban on religious freedom grounds, arguing that as Jews and Muslims (and others?), abortion needs to be available to our people as it doesn’t violate our religious laws or beliefs. I think this is a possibly successful tack to take.
My Palestinian Friends are Under Assault by Military and Civilian Attackers. Please Don’t Fund, Enable and Ennoble Their Ignominious Attackers
I remember when the US Marine Corps. base at 29 Palms in the Mojave Desert constructed mock villages for training, and they hired “extras” to play Iraqi and Afghan villagers for military training exercises. Israel is attacking actual Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta, but calling it “training.” They are shooting up schools like the one I had lunch at in in A-Fakheit with deadly ammunition. The Israeli military and (un)settlers are confiscating and destroying water tanks and pipes..in the desert. But it isn’t really for training. It is actual terrorism. Israeli Tanks are damaging roads I helped repair and caves I helped rehabilitate. They are using helicopters on purpose to freak out livestock and hurt plants and people. I get alerts and laments from Palestinian friends from Masafer Yatta and around the south Hebron Hills and Jerusalem about demolitions of homes. There are too many to share, but a link to this report in the September 28 Guardian (UK) just came in. I hope you are paying attention too. It seems like nothing can stop it, but they are so steadfast, how can I–how can we– not try to stand with them? Here, we must unfund the abusers like Regavim, Ateret Kohanim, El Ad and diaspora groups that support them like the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council.
(Un)settlers turned a Jewish day of repentance and introspection into a bigoted affront. They call themselves Zionists. Please, I beg you to consider joining me therefore as an anti-Zionist. Standing against oppressors and dispossessors is a positive good. https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-village-shut-down-settler-prayers/
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/08/saving-masafer-yatta-the-fight-against-expulsion/
This film has been highly recommended for people to get a real sense of The Settlers: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thesettlerseng/263370018 I haven’t been able to psyche myself up to watch it even though I want others to. A committee at Kehilla may screen it as well as My Tree which is follows someone trying to find the tree “he” funded as a child or received as a B’nei mitzvah gift.
I have shared this link before. It was on my birthday in 2017. I was on a CJNV delegation, and we had had a very intense day in Issawiya and Sheik Jarrah. I was with my work group of 20 or so. We ended up for dinner and a fascinating life story talk by the Palestinian chef at Yad Vashem. But also, to my great surprise, I received a stunning, fiery happy birthday as you can see in this clip, thanks to the artful Gili Getz. This was the most surprising and fiery birthday cake with candles in my life, and it shows in my face.
I am sharing this video again, now, because I got word that the Jerusalem municipality demolished the community center in August. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220816-israel-demolishes-a-banqueting-hall-in-east-jerusalem/
George Eade, My New Friend, ¡Presente!
I announced a garden party I was hosting on July 31 in a previous Missive. It was a lovely affair, I am pleased to report. As with my birthday party in May, some dear friends and family needed to absent themselves due to illness. They were missed.
No one was missed more than George Eade though. He died suddenly of what I presume was a massive coronary failure on July 30. He was with friends doing something, heading out to the Farallon Islands to observe raptors (his specialty). You can see many of his photos through the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. We were new friends, having been paired as hotel roommates and “buddies” for the ten day, Center for Jewish Nonviolence delegation in June. We had never met although he lives in the north bay. Suddenly, we had a certain responsibility to one another, and we were grateful for the good fortune. We were together when we were attacked by Israeli police outside of the illegal outpost, Mitzpe Yair just outside the western edge of Firing Zone 918 on June 10. Earlier in the week we spent time repairing unpaved road into the firing zone. Water trucks, teachers, doctors are key reasons roads need repairs, not tanks driving over them.
Since George and I were there, Israeli violence against the Palestinians has worsened precipitously. As I spoke at a very touching memorial his raptor-watching community organized at the Marin Headlands on September 11, what would have been George’s 75th birdday, I had to balance describing the situation that brought George and I together with trying to stay focused on George. Most of them didn’t know he cared about what was going on there. It was kind of a new area of activism for him.
I was touched when some former interns who knew George spoke. One young woman who has gone onto an environmental position at the Presido in San Francisco said that George was able to make her interest and work “legible” to her father who was from another state. I think the two videos that George made, one with Keifah about A-Tuwani and the women’s cooperative there, and the other being Hamudi’s Story help make legible, the horrible injustices and the honorable struggle waged by our friends and the entirety of Palestine.
I was honored to offer a few words and a prayer for comfort for George’s widow Carole, their beloved children, grandchildren, and all his grief-stricken family and friends.
Good Lawsuit. Bad Lawsuit
I had the honor last night of standing with young Muslims in the San Francisco Unified School District school board meeting. AROC and the students organized for a year and got the board to pass at their August meeting, a resolution so that they could celebrate Eids as official holidays.
Then the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, a horribly anti-Palestinian organization with far more power than it should, pressured and threatened the school board with a lawsuit. Don’t ask me why or on what grounds really.
So the board instead is now going to create a general policy about adding holidays to the school calendar. Creating the calendar is actually not the job of the board but the superintendent and staff so they’ll come back in January with a proposed schedule but between now and then presumably a process for adding holidays will be decised. fortunately an amendment was voted down that would have undone the resolution they passed in August. Now it’s on hold but not canceled.
I don’t mean to give a full news report but just to say that islamophobia is awful and it felt really good to be there as a white older Jewish guy saying this is messed up. It was good to be with Sharif and AROC and the Muslim students standing up. This is racist. This is not in the best interest of Jews in any way. The offensive ones call themselves Zionists and they demand to speak for Jews whether we like it or not. If I say I’m an anti-Zionist don’t be mad at me. The violent ones say they’re Zionists as they attack my friends in the West Bank and young Muslims here too.
On the other hand, I heard about a lawsuit challenging an abortion ban on religious freedom grounds, arguing that as Jews and Muslims (and others?), abortion needs to be available to our people as it doesn’t violate our religious laws or beliefs. I think this sounds like a legal tack to that could gain traction against the “religio-fascists.”
The Right-Wing talks like Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi are as Left as It Gets, Even as They Override Progressive Votes and Voices. How Can We Be So Invisible?
Gavin Newsom vetoed vital harm reduction legislation and consistently hates on Latinx Workers by vetoing legislation for domestic servants humanity and rights intending to do the same against farm workers (including those on his expanding vineyards). His decision to extend the “life” of Diablo Canyon (nuclear power plant) another five years makes as much sense(less). Water rights for fracking and industry (and golf courses) are more important than for people. To Hell with his Presidential Ambitions! It hurts me deep inside, that such positions of his are political pluses. I know from his San Francisco days that he isn’t a progressive, but that is how most people see him.
A beloved cousin of mine recently lamented that what they don’t like about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is that she isn’t willing to do the political work of compromising. I think the moderates take the progressives for granted as they get apoplectic talking about us. Meanwhile they get attacked as though they are the progressives they themselves attack through undemocratic internal party politics. So many wonderful progressives could have made a difference, not least of whom was Bernie Sanders in 2016.
A Summer of Family Fun!
Restaurants aren’t very kid friendly, but sometimes happy squeals can be seated instead of running around everyone’s table but our own! Genghix (Asian Fusion)
I am grateful that Lacy prioritizes that Eamon know me and my environment, and especially my mother and family. Even Quinn is getting to know everyone. I don’t see enough of my niece Aubrey. Shelly and I see each other more which is great as we check in with mom more often. Lacy and the little wild ones stayed at my house, in my room. I wasn’t sure how Ardys and I would make the place safe for them, but we all survived and had a good time of it. I got to provide…at home. The one unhappy cat was the cat, Calsifer. He made some sounds that I have not heard before or since, when he first heard Eamon’s voice approaching. The kitty was mewing uniquely and trying to escape out windows and climbing drapes that I never saw him approach before. Calsifer didn’t come inside until after they were gone gone. We fed and scratched his soft furry head and belly outside which worked, and Calsifer has access to an indoor space in the basement. And Chava was visiting!
Chava and Lacy both planned visits this summer, and it worked out for them to be here simultaneously. We had to have a gathering, and neither of the spaces we have used before were going to work. I am so happy to have been able to host people for a garden party like I did in May for my birthday. I think my cousins weren’t sure what to expect from my space, but it was comfortable and very fun. A great mix of friends, new and old, though as I wrote above, I mourn the death and absence of George Eade. My sisters and I had guests from high school! We got some nice pictures of us and my mom. Various circles of friends got to meet. The children were moving too fast to photograph!
I am heading back east for a visit soon. I hope to get the next missive out in half the time instead of twice the time. I look forward to sharing some reflections from a couple of wise, incarcerated friends and more family pics. Thanks for staying steadfast, SUMUD. We can’t give into thoughts of futility, not as frontline communities struggle on. At the end of Rosh Hashanah services, as part of the reading of the prophets, I became a teary-eyed, snotty-nosed mess as we sang, “If one of us is chained, none of us are free!”
I was moved on Evev Rosh Hashanah to be on janitor duty at Kehilla in person. It was an honor to help bring in the new year. Shabbat Shuvah was also sweet a week earlier. It was also a privilege to get to attend as there was actually a lottery for people who wanted to be there live. It was an extra honor since I was alone as a member of the Middle East Peace Committee and the Chavurah for a Free Palestine, and we were called up to the bima to be part of the crew opening the doors of the ark for the chanting of the thirteen attributes of G+d.
Rosh Hashanah day, I attended Tzedek Chicago via zoom. I got to see my friends Scout read the Torah and Leslie Williams called up to give a drash. The incoming president gave an inspiring talk too, and I cried a lot, singing a little less out of tune when I dropped an octave. I like being moved to tears. It lets me know that I feel; that I care. I just follow crying with acting as much as possible. L’Shanah Tovah, y’all! See you soon, back here in Missivistaville!
Jim's Approximately Monthly Missives 
Thank-you, Jim, for your continuous, strong efforts to be an honest and good man.
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