Nowruz Felicitations and Ramadan Mubarak
“Nowruz is a celebration of new beginnings – the start of a new year, the arrival of spring, and the rebirth of nature.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres. As millions of people around the world mark Nowruz, a time for hope and new beginnings….“In these times of great challenge, Nowruz promotes dialogue, good neighborliness and reconciliation.”
Nowruz stands therefore, in stark contrast to the story of Purim, also recounted at this time of year in the Jewish world. The book of Esther should not be taken as an historical record. Every indication is that it was a farce, known to be unreal by people of the culture and time from whence it was written. It is a scary holiday for Palestinians who Zionists like to equate with villains of the Bible like Haman and the Amalekites.
I have been skipping lunch and not snacking or eating an early dinner, most days during this Ramadan. I am not stopping eating in the morning at sign of first light, more usually eleven or twelve hours. It makes me think and feel. Ramadan Kareem-May you have a month full of generosity and love.
…And honesty: The “US Has Redefined “Human Shields” to Enable Israel’s Slaughter of Gaza Civilians” by Stephen Zunes recently at Truthout.org: He wrote, “Should this bipartisan policy of justifying staggering civilian death tolls on the grounds that Hamas is using human shields remain unchallenged, it will only make it possible for Washington to aid and abet even greater war crimes in the future.” This redefinition is in service of Israel’s and the United States, anti-Palestinianism even more than it is Islamophobic.
Big change often comes unexpectedly and faster than we can imagine. Positive change requires of us to be ready in those moments. Organizing helps us be ready to foster and direct revolutionary redirection. Here is a great call for support from Israeli youth who are going to prison instead of taking up arms against Palestinians. Here is a recent message from the Refuser Solidarity Network.
More on Basel and Yuval’s movie, No Other Land: https://filmmakermagazine.com/125182-interview-basel-adra-yuval-abraham-no-other-land/ I think that streaming opportunities will be coming soon.
As I open my heart to the Muslim world in response to the devastation of Gaza, I remind myself that Palestinians aren’t all Muslim, and the genocide against them is because they are Palestinian, not because of their religion. Groups like CUFI make it clear that they support Israel, not Jews, per se. As Hani Sabra’s article in the Intercept was entitled: “Let’s Name It: Not Just Islamophobia, but Anti-Palestinianism. From Joe Biden on down, liberals denounce anti-Muslim bias to avoid mentioning the scourge of hate against Palestinians.”
URGENT ACTION BEFORE MARCH 31 for Real Ethnic Studies in Berkeley Schools
If you are reading this Missive before the end of March, please take a moment to sign onto the following letter, whether or not you live in Berkeley. Thank you.
SIGN THIS LETTER which offers a full explanation.
Please sign the letter by March 31, 2024 at the latest.
Non-Berkeleyites are welcome to sign too.
Please indicate when you sign if you are Jewish.
The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) hired the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium Institute (LESMCC) to provide professional development and collaborate with district teachers to co-create six tailored pilot units for our unique Berkeley context. This vital work is in the beginning stages and an extended contract is necessary in order to support the roll-out of these units in the 2024-2025 school year, train teachers, and to continue co-writing pilot units for additional grade levels.
Zionist organizations such as the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) the Brandeis Institute and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) are organizing to stop the continuation of this contract because LESMCC ethnic studies educators insist that teaching about Arab-American and Palestinian history and narratives belongs in ethnic studies. Per their usual tactics, they are lodging false charges of antisemitism.
JVP-Bay Area and JVP National both support liberated ethnic studies and the teaching of Palestine in K-12 education. JVP members who are parents of kids in Berkeley schools are working together with other families and staff to support the extension of this contract.
Additional Information: BUSD Ethnic Studies Fast Facts and visit the WEBSITE of LESCC which contains more information about the content of liberated ethnic studies and its history in CA.
“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”
Public Participatory Reading
Tuesday, April 4, 2024; 12 noon – 1 pm+
Oscar Grant Plaza, Oakland
If you can’t make it in-person on April 4, there will be a statewide online reading at 6:30 pm. Register here. For questions about the Oakland reading, contact Jackie Cabasso at wslf@earthlink.net .
United for Peace and Justice, along with the Poor People’s Campaign have created a tool kit for organizing public readings of the speech, one of the most prophetic of the modern era. https://www.unitedforpeace.org/organize-a-public-reading-of-dr-kings-beyond-vietnam-speech-in-your-community/
Make April 4 a day we rededicate ourselves to service as Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of service in his sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct.” Let us also remember the spirit of Juliano Mer Kamis, inspiring leader of the Jenin Freedom Theater, who was gunned down in front of his home in Jenin in 2011 on April 4.
Tax Blackout 2024. Tip of the Hat to the PLF/Nor. Cal. WTR. Get Your WRL Pie Charts Now! Oppose Further Nuclear Weapons Modernization and Development
Please go to nwtrcc.org, and check out the many easily accessed resources right on their homepage. That’s the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee supports the call for a #TaxBlackout2024 that was initiated by We the People Resist (not to be confused with the We the People Foundation). They are managing a campaign to encourage symbolic resistance of at least 5% of people’s tax liability.
Write a statement of conscience on a separate piece of paper. You can include it with your return. Don’t write anything out of the ordinary on the tax forms themselves or they may add on penalties for filing a “frivolous” return. War Tax Resisters won the right to include a statement of conscience with one’s return though.
Resistance is harder if you are owed a tax refund. If you have some remaining liability, or if you make quarterly estimated payments, please consider the–relatively low risk–statement of withholding 5% or 10% or 3% or the classic $10.41! Any little amount will get noticed, and you can always pay at any time.
There is a lot of news and resources to mull over. Taxes pay for war and the carceral state. I don’t think that I’m absolutely against taxes, but if they are funding violent, hypocritical, vindictive, greedy, down-right genocidal United States policies, I prefer to make them take it.
So far, I can’t say that the penalties and interest have effected me. They accrue. At the same time, each year that passes, another year of liability drops off the books. I am close to writing off my 2013 tax liability as the ten years since they processed that return approaches. I didn’t have to file from 2014 to 2018 when I was an “income reduction” war tax resister. My more recent years continue to remain vulnerable. My paycheck has federal taxes removed, but I don’t pay my estimated taxes for my contract work.
More effective than a few of us resisting large amounts, I think a lot of people withholding a small portion might get more attention. People are putting their bodies and livlihoods on the line like I can’t remember. Fears of the IRS are overblown. Enforcement could step up again, but for the last 30 years there has been very little attention paid to war tax resisters. Next Missive will include this year’s statement of conscience.
Their communiques are generally encouraging and friendly. They want to help you settle up. A lot of little resisters will muck up their flow too, and I like that. I file a paper return which also blows their “mind.” And as Alexander Haig may (or may not) have said, “Let them march all they want as long as they pay their taxes.”
“Dancing With Death”: We Might Ignore Nukes, but Nukes Won’t Ignore Us
Tri-Valley CARES 2025 Nuclear Weapons Budget Analysis is both informative and also very readable. Their information always informs my statement of conscience to the IRS, and makes me feel less crazy and alone. https://trivalleycares.salsalabs.org/dancing-with-death-the-fiscal-year-2025-nuclear-weapons-budget
I Often Don’t Know When or Where I Will Get Arrested. I decided to Cross the Line at the NNSS with the Pacific Life Community again, and this is why: “I have opposed U.S. militarism as hypocritical and offensive for several decades now. Nuclear weapons undergird our illegal and immoral state violence, including the U.S./Israeli genocide against anything Palestinian. Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, our government supports more nuclear weapons not their elimination and makes horizontal proliferation seem reasonable or necessary for other states parties. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us not to be ‘mesmerized by uncertainty,’ so I crossed the line at the Nevada National Security Site in the hope that my little action will be like a grain of sand that helps grind the wheels of injustice to a halt.”
During the weekend, we reflected on our small group’s purpose, and Steve K. reflected, “[W]hile many of us are people of prayer, mostly a faith based group, we are not a prayer meeting, going on, and secondly many are gifted with the insights and knowledge of how the economy and politics of nuclear weaponeering buys off congressional and world leaders. That analysis, although necessary, does not make us merely a think-tank, or study group. We come together to act together, for we are an action community.”
I worry that I “wasted” an arrest. Who will know? How can it effect the world? What if I really want to put my body on the line when it will feel like I’m doing more? Am I taking myself too seriously? For a fuller treatment of our weekend and action, check out the Nuclear Resister newspaper article. And the PLC WordPress blog has a reflection by Steve Kelly about why we gather.
I do expect to head out to Travis AFB again soon, but I have had to miss the last couple of vigils/actions. I’m not in the streets enough. I am not keeping up on Signal group chats because I don’t think I am going to make the actions or be ready for major, life-changing consequences. I want to quit work, not life. I hope that my efforts at communication like in these Missives also gum up the works of injustice. We all count! I want my actions to count MORE as I act MORE, but we don’t usually see or know, especially when we feel small.
The Sacred Peace Walk is happening now. I think they will make a stop at Creech Air Force Base. Brian Terrell told me that the base PR wing has been crowing about how their drones are active for Israel over Gaza. Such a shame. It has been eleven years since I was on a SPW. I was glad to get a sense of ongoing purpose at Nevada Desert Experience.
Sudden Death. No Overtime
In the last two weeks, I have found out that several venerable friends transitions/died/went home in the past three months. I feel a hole in my heart knowing that I won’t get to speak with them again.
In the last three years, Sat Santokh and I spent some amazing time together, but not enough, walking in Redwood Park or sitting outside his house having deep and meaningful spiritual and political discussions. He reached out to me after quite a number of years since we met through early efforts of United for Peace and Justice here in the Bay Area. He felt a pull to reengage with political activism, and he looked me up. I was quite honored that he actively sought out my take on his new book, There is a Way (to Create Our Future).
He was very motivated to help people connect the problems of child abuse and harsh child rearing practices with war and other societal violence that grows out of how we are raised. Not an entirely new thesis, but he brought fresh urgency to the issue. In his memory, let us redouble our own efforts to violence on societal and personal levels. Genocide is societal, but it is made up of personal pain and suffering. That pain and trauma should not be used or manipulated for political reasons. Please read and sigh onto this petition to stop “abuse abuse“: https://stopmanipulatingsexualassault.org/
Sat Santokh made me feel like I wasn’t just banging my head against a wall. He made me feel that I was on a good path. He made me feel that life is worth living, despite it all. Such a man of love!
I have been to Las Vegas twice in the last six months. I always want to rendezvous for a drink with my old Rhythm Society buddy from the Bay, but a Las Vegan, the incomparably loving Mike Barrie. Mikey’s wife Beth responded to last week’s attempt with her heartbreak and the news that her sweet, sweet husband died a couple of months ago (December, I think). Two huge losses for me of men I so, so, so, so bonded with, relaxed with, shared emotions with, laughed with, shook our heads with, respected and loved. And both unnoticed by me for too long. (I could have attended Sat Santokh’s funeral.)
The same day that I cried to the news that Mikey had died, I was informed that a stalwart of Jewish Voice for Peace had just died the day before, Bruce Ballin. Bruce dated back to JVP’s earliest days, before the turn of the millennium, He was a “quirky” guy as one friend remarked. He knew a lot. He was passionate. Sometimes he connected dots in ways that were not clear to others. We had our similarities, perhaps. He lived in the north bay, later in life, and that made getting to JVP meetings and events difficult. Getting rides was an issue after he had to stop taking his bike on the bus. With Bruce, I shared a closeness with our dear friend at AFSC in San Francisco, Allan Solomonow, also of blessed memory.
In 2022 Bruce wrote a group of 18 or 19 Jewish activist friends with some thoughts. This one bit was something Bruce would often try to drive home: “As I have said before Cultural Zionism has had its merits, but its achievements have been diminished by Political Zionism. Political Zionism boils down to saying what is normal for the world is Fascism. The solution for the years of Jewish oppression in Europe and culminating with the Holocaust is a Fascist State of our own. Let us oppress another people and be “normal.” Further let us encourage antisemitism in the world so that all Jews, at least those we want, come to Israel.”
Jess Curtis, Gravity, died unexpectedly on March 11. He was scheduled for heart surgery, but he died on a bicycle in Golden Gate Park first. Heartbreaking loss to my community of anarcho-pagans in San Francisco. He was a radical choreographer and dancer extraordinaire. What a stunningly beautiful man. I felt special to know him. His bright smile lit up a room. He made me see creativity in myself. I admired him greatly. He was always so genuine, intense, but not stressed. He touched a lot of people in our orbit more frequently and closely than me, and I honor their collective work I get to play with and hopefully enhance. In Jess’ memory, I want to thank all the founders and keepers and visionaries who gave us Contraband and 848 Community Space, Counterpulse, CELLSpace and PLACE!
From My Rabbi’s Conscience to Our Consciousness
I wish for you, a rabbi such as Tzedek Chicago’s Rabbi Brant Rosen. I am pleased to claim him as one of “my rabbis.” He can be heard on this Notre Dame panel discussion including Atalia Omer and author Mikhael Manekin: https://kroc.nd.edu/news-events/events/2024/03/04/reimagining-jewish-ethics-and-politics-in-israel-the-diaspora-ethics-tradition-and-power/ During a recent Torah study, he pointed us towards a 2021 piece he wrote about how to read the Torah through a “decolonized lens”: https://rabbibrant.com/2021/07/29/who-is-the-stranger-here-reading-the-torah-through-a-decolonized-lens/ And just the other day, as Purim start was about to start, a day when rabid Israelis have felt encouraged to attack Palestinians for years, Rabbi Brant shared a report from a Canadian doctor who was just in Gaza for two weeks. Brant wrote on X (Twitter), “Read this. Every word. Now you know. What will you say years from when you’re asked what you did in this moment?” https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/intercepted-doctor-gaza-interview/
Sun, Son, Sun, Son: Gonna Watch the Total Eclipse of the Sun with my Son!
Jim's Approximately Monthly Missives 
Thanks Jim for sharing your life so fully and honestly and lovingly!
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