Posts tagged with "Family"
I wrote an article about how to organize a community swap/barter meet for Shareable
By Shira | Feb 4, 10 12:47 PM
Shareable, a website that "tells the story of sharing,” invited me to write a how-to article for their site and I seized the opportunity in the hopes of inspiring similar efforts in other communities.
Read the article: How to Throw a Community Swap Meet
More: Activism | Art and Design | Books and Writing | Clothing | Economics | Education | Environment | Family | Film and Video | Food | Happenings | Health | Media | Photography | What we're up to | Work
Celebrate a compassionate Thanksgiving this year
By Ari | Nov 2, 09 02:31 PM
Or, just don't eat a turkey, or any other animal who'd rather have a life and a family than fill someone's belly. Dairy and eggs come at a particularly terrible price of suffering (please educate yourself by clicking these links if you're not aware of the suffering and death caused by these industries). There are many delicious alternatives you can enjoy instead of animal products. For delicious recipes, visit FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement)'s Gentle Thanksgiving.
Thanks very much for reading this, and for all you do for animals. Every year I see more folks making compassionate decisions at holidays, and it gives me great hope for my friends of other species.
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace." - Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization
Hunting for houses
By Ari | Oct 22, 09 08:56 AM
Shira and I have embarked on a new stage of our housing journey. After we read Mortgage-FREE! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership by Rob Roy, we were really into the idea of avoiding a mortgage at all costs. We figured out that we wouldn't be able to afford NYC and moved to Ithaca. We figured out we wouldn't be able to afford property alone, so we worked on forming an intentional community with other people. Then we established that that would take too long for us to bank on if we also want to be starting a family, so we focused on homesteading.
We priced out a-frames made from salvaged materials, permanent yurts, puzzled over mobile houses, tinyhomes, and kits. We made spreadsheets that carefully plot out when we could afford a woodstove and how cheaply we could assemble a DIY solar water heater, how quickly we could set up a greywater system and composting toilet so we could move in, how we could put funds into land leasing and well-drilling at once to save time and money, and other thought experiments aimed at maximizing our funds. In the end, my calculator told us the truth: Either we'd put our money into land and then slowly assemble a house from salvaged materials, or we'd lease land and plunk something down on it faster. Either way, our place would be very small. And it could take years. And neither of our affordable land possibilities seem like they're likely to pan out.
So, we're actually considering a mortgage. Seriously. A small, short-term one, but a mortgage just the same. We've got a buyer's agent, are working on our mortgage pre-qualification paperwork, and are looking at houses. Real houses. On land.
The idea of moving into a finished house (even one that needs work) with utilities and a solid roof and some land around it, all ready for move-in, is a relief. We walk around these places and I imagine a baby rolling around on the floor, a child running up and down the stairs, our cats napping in the sunroom. I imagine being able to move all of our copious amounts of stuff into the cozy space, closing the door, and saying, "we're home!" with no additional years of mud and concrete and straw and laying gravel driveways and collecting old windows to deal with. This fantasy is very alluring, even if it messes with my class consciousness, the idea of paying a bank for capital grating at my soul. Maybe this is just what you have to do, if you want to be in a house, quickly. Maybe we just have that privilege, and can do something productive and good with it rather than denying it.
This is where we're at. Who knows what my next post in this story will be - it seems it changes every day. But this time I feel like we're coming full-circle somehow. By embracing convention after running and running from it, maybe we've found a way to make convention work for us rather than against us. I feel like we understand our options and are making good decisions. Slowly, slowly.
More: Economics | Family | Housing | What we're up to
Photos from My Family's Visit to Ithaca Last Weekend
By Shira | Sep 9, 09 11:27 AM
My parents Hana and Dov, my brother Amit and his wife Sharon, and their kids Eli and Natan all came up from Maryland to Ithaca for the weekend. They couldn't sleep at our place because Eli is allergic to cats, but their hotel was really close to The Commons and we managed to pack in a lot of antics - The Cayuga Nature Center, The Johnson Museum of Art and the Suspension Bridge up at Cornell, Cascadilla Gorge, The Farmers' Market, a 2-hour cruise on The Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom and The Science Center. We also took my parents see the land we might buy near The Dacha. Thank you, Ithaca!
More: Art and Design | Education | Family | Film and Video | Food | Games | Photography | What we're up to
Photos from Israel
By Shira | Jul 12, 09 06:38 PM
After our week on Wasan Island in Canada, we traveled straight to Israel for my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration. Ari was out of commission for most of the trip because she came to down with lyme disease (no worries - she's on antibiotics and feeling much better). But thankfully she came out of quarantine the last few days to hang out with my family, check out some art in Ein Hod, and see a modern dance performance in Tel Aviv.
During the trip I spent a lot of one-on-one time with my grandmother, savta Margalit. I shot some beautiful video of her telling stories about the Holocaust and her life since for a film I'm making with my brother. I'm also going to be laying out and publishing a book of her poetry later this summer. She's a very inspiring lady - Happy Birthday Savta!
More: Animals | Art and Design | Books and Writing | Family | Film and Video | Food | What we're up to
This one's for you, animal family
By Ari | Jun 22, 09 09:27 AM
I've realized recently that I don't speak up enough for animals. I fear bothering people. I know that for me, going vegan was a long and sometimes jarring process. I remember feeling afraid and guilty and very challenged and uncomfortable at times. I remember that the idea of changing my life in what felt like a very drastic and unpleasant way (I really loved eating animals and things they make) was very threatening. So, being someone who likes to be liked, who doesn't like to make people uncomfortable, I've moved away from more confrontational advocacy. I do a lot online, where distance eases discomfort, but in the brick-and-mortar world, I sometimes hold a lot back. I'll be in situations where someone will say something or do something that is so, so oppressive to animals, my cousins, my family, my kin, my friends - and I'll say nothing. Out of fear, I won't leap to their defense, I won't say what needs to be said. If someone says something sexist or homophobic or racist I usually speak up, but with animals - I'm sorry, animals. I sometimes am just not the best ally.
So, I think I should write more about it here. I sometimes don't want to barrage our few blog readers with too much animal rights stuff, but it's a daily part of my life, so I think I need to start being more forthright about it. Maybe through writing about it on our blog I'll find more of a voice to speak about it offline.
Why is this so important? Here is one reason. Right now Snow is in my lap. She's a tiny sweetheart, my baby, my furry little darling. She's not a pet, she's family. She's an individual, a person. I respect her and her needs as I respect the personhood and needs of human beings. I can see that she's not a plant, that she's nothing like one, not an object but a person - she has gingivitis, and her gums hurt, and eating is difficult for her right now. Because she's not feeling very well, she's rather low-energy and is sleeping a lot. And because she's a very lovey, cuddly person, comforted by hugs and other physical contact, she likes to lay on me and hold onto my shoulder.
Some folks might balk at calling an animal a person, but they're certainly not places and they're certainly not things. They are definitely thinking and feeling. They definitely have desires and needs and wants. They hurt, and they cry, and they get hungry, and they love, and they play, and they have dignity and silliness and dreams and games. They get bored. They have fun. They are not things, but people. They may be very different from us, but there is nothing at all about them that is so different from humans that they deserve to be treated differently. Fuzziness or smallness or a lack of ability to speak English or Spanish or do math, does not justify their oppression.
So Snow is a reason why it's important I be able to talk about animal rights. She's one very important reason, and Sid and Zora, our other cat housemates, are also very important reasons. But there are even more reasons - billions and billions of reasons. All of the animals all around the world who can't cry out in words that we can understand, whose cries are ignored because we can't understand them, all of those animals are reasons why I need to be a better ally, why I need to wear my solidarity on my sleeve.
I can't forget them, and I never do. When I'm sitting at a table with human friends, and someone is talking about some delicious eggs, how can I be silent? How can I not speak up in defense of my sisters, the chickens? When I remember every moment that billions of you soft, sweet, helpless ladies are captive, making egg after egg until you're too old and too weak and you're killed and turned into soup, how can I say nothing? How can I pretend that everything is okay? How can I smile at my friend and swallow my discomfort? My discomfort is nothing, nothing compared to the suffering that animals all around the world are experiencing because human beings still believe that might makes right.
So, I'll try to be better. I'll try to speak up for my furry, feathery, scaly family. I'll remember they have no way to speak up for themselves, not even the awareness that freedom from oppression is possible. I apologize in advance if I make my human friends uncomfortable, but as a friend said to me online recently, transformation is painful.
And beautiful. The lovely, amazing, delicious thing about stepping away from exploitation and toward solidarity with other species is that it is a joyous thing, a homecoming.
If you feel uncomfortable when you remember where your food comes from - when you recall that it is a dead body, or that it came from someone who is confined, not free, a slave to human desire - if you feel that way, try not eating that food item, replacing it with something healthful and delicious that came from the earth and the warm sun and a seed, something that didn't cry out when it died. See how you feel. I don't mean physically, though it does feel good, physically, to eat healthful plant foods. I mean morally, ethically. See how it sits with your soul. See how your conscience feels about it. See if you feel better when you know that your food came from the sun and the earth, and not from a living, breathing, feeling person, against their will. That you can be nourished without their suffering is a beautiful thing, freeing. This is the feeling that we and our family are at last at peace, reconciled. That is a homecoming.
More: Activism | Animals | Family | Oppression | People we know
Ahimsa evolves, and an a-frame emerges
By Ari | Jun 19, 09 11:01 AM
Ahimsa has evolved from an ecovillage to a network - I think. We're still figuring it out. But it seems that everyone in the group is very motivated to work around the intersections of social justice, animal rights, and environmental sustainability - and we're all into community building. I'm kind of sad to see the idea of an ecovillage be pushed off into the indefinite future, but we were working on it steadfastly and it just wasn't something folks seemed ready to build right now, so we'll see what happens. Fortunately we've met a lot of awesome people and everyone has great ideas and energy - hopefully the convergence we're talking about holding later in the summer will happen, and then we'll see what comes out of that.
So, housing-wise, Shira and I are thinking again about what the two of us can accomplish on our own - or maybe with a friend. Something smaller. Something to help us become more self-sufficient.
I'm kind of in love with A-frames. I don't always blog when learning about this stuff, but I'm not sure how many people read our delicious links (rss feed), and I do think this info is worth sharing.
Why an A-frame? They seem to be easy to build. Based on the reading I've done and the things folks have told us, natural building requires so much labor that it may not be as affordable as it appears. It turns out that using available plans and simple conventions like a pier foundation can really cut costs (including labor). With the use of salvaged and freecycled materials, limited resources can stretch even farther. We like the idea that building something ourselves will give us and education and a workout, and will allow us to avoid a mortgage. We've also considered building something mobile so we could lease land and then take our home with us if/when we leave, but it would have to be very small, and that's probably not best for packrats like us.
So, we don't have to make an A-frame. A small cottage or cabin could work too, one with proper walls. Or a yurt, we've talked about that. But basically, it seems we're headed toward buying land and building something on it.
I think the reason I love A-frames is not only their easy construction but their aesthetics. I like that they look like cute little hills. I love the weird triangular areas that people usually block off and turn into closets - I want to just keep them open and put storage bins and things back there. I love the huge open floor feeling, the lofts. Here are a few links to linger on:
- Cute 1960s style ones that look like ski lodges
- An adorable double-A-frame I'd love to adapt to include a central greenhouse
- This one might be the perfect size for us plus kids
- This one's smaller but adorable and more affordable to build
- This one is my favorite, though it's huge - I love the little bedroom that looks out over the living room, and the back bedroom could be a studio
More: Economics | Environment | Family | Housing | What we're up to
listen to mr. t - treat your mother right!
By Shira | May 10, 09 01:12 PM
More: Family | Film and Video
Weddings and freedom
By Ari | Apr 15, 09 08:40 AM
So, I kind of can't believe this, but I agree with an article in the New York Daily News. And it's called In Vermont gay marriage law, a hidden victory for religious freedom. At first I saw that headline and thought, oh damn, there's some loophole that will make it legal for the Pope to eat gay newlyweds. Or something else similarly creepy and oppressive. But it's actually really sensible: Author David Benkof is happy that the new legislation in Vermont specifically provides an out to any religious groups that have issues with same-sex marriage: They don't have to provide gay couples who are getting married with goods and services.
I'm totally okay with that. This is not a pharmacist denying the morning-after pill to an unintentionally pregnant teen. This is not life-threatening, and it's not violating some "first do no harm" mandate. This is just reason to choose a different florist, one who doesn't believe you're going to hell.
Why force people to do things they feel are wrong? I care deeply about peace, justice and sustainability - so I don't take design work that promotes zoos, "happy meat," sweatshop labor, and other things I find objectionable. People make decisions like this all the time, don't they? So why, as the author of this article points out, was eHarmony forced to create a queer dating site, if they found queerness so odious that they wouldn't allow same-sex searches on their primary, heteronormative dating site? And why would any gay folks actually use the new site by eHarmony? Why not go to any one of the many, many sites out there run by and for queer people who love queer people? If we force everyone to provide services to everyone, aren't we losing the usefulness of the niche audience - the self-selecting community? Personally, I like patronizing those I can stand behind ethically. And not everyone has my ethics.
When Shira and I got hitched, we paid our favorite vegan restaurant to cater it. We rented space from a progressive, arty Brooklyn hangout. We're not into organized, hierarchical religion, so instead of hiring an officiant to approve of our union, we asked everyone in the room to marry us with a toast to fun and love. And so on. In short, we made it our own. We made it something we could believe in, something we loved.
I just can't imagine how much it would have sucked if we'd hired people who think our love is an abomination - and how much worse it would have been to then pay lawyers to sue them, if they didn't do what we wanted. Aren't weddings supposed to be about love? I think Vermont has figured this one out, and I bet their efforts will make this legislation very hard to challenge: Everyone wins.
More: Activism | Economics | Family | Human Rights | Oppression | Politics | Queer
Human Scale Living
By Shira | Feb 24, 09 03:28 PM
A big part of why living in Ithaca has been so good for us is its small-but-not-too-small size. With a population of 60,000 (30,000 of which are students at Cornell and Ithaca College), there are plenty of people to create culture and innovation. But at the same time, it only takes a few social events to realize that this is a "small town." When I meet someone new, I'm no longer surprised to find out they know at least one other friend of mine, or that they've even "heard of me" - which always makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
When we were living in New York City we had a lot of great friends and yet we didn't ever have a sense of community. Part of this was that we dabbled in a lot of different subcultures - independent filmmakers, freegans, socialists, lesbians, radical marching bands, artists, academics, recreational volleyball players - instead of choosing one to call our own. These groups rarely overlapped and I found myself doing a lot of code-switching. Our friends were ideologically and geographically dispersed. The distance between a Red Hook freegan and an Upper East Side grad student is a lot greater than a few subway transfers.
Back in college I took an amazing course called Architecture as a Cultural System in which we explored, among other things, the concept of Human Scale. This is the idea that humans are best suited to live in an environment that is designed to meet their spacial needs. This means walkability, easy access to necessary resources, closeness to the ground and appropriate population size.
According to Wikipedia, "Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150."
Ari and I counted, and in just the last week, we've had 25 different friends over to our house, some of them more than once (you know who you are...Joe). Our friends Jeremy and Teresa came over for dinner on Sunday, Ari taught a freeskool class on web design on Wednesday, we had a ton of extra veggies from our CSA share so we had a potluck/cooking party with a bunch of folks on Thursday, more friends stopped by on Friday after watching Milk together at Cinemapolis (the art house theatre on The Commons), on Saturday the Phillips family came to stay with us for the weekend and Ben and Grace stopped by to join us for dinner and on Sunday we had our second official founders' meeting for Ahimsa Ecovillage with eleven guests, including three kids.
The amazing thing is that there are numerous ways in which all these folks are connected outside their relationships to us. This makes for a very tangible social fabric and a feeling of interdependence that I haven't truly experienced since sleep-away camp as a kid (I went to the socialist Jewish kibbutz-like Camp Moshava for six summers.)
As we move forward with Ahimsa, our sustainable, vegan ecovillage project, human scale will be a key concept. How can we create a community that is big enough to create innovation and cross-pollination, but small enough to maintain accountability and trust? How many people does it take to be self-sufficient? How will our size and location (rural vs. urban) impact our connection to the broader Ithaca community? I don't know the answers yet, but I'm loving the process of finding out. In the meantime, I'm enjoying being part of the monkeysphere.
More: Economics | Education | Environment | Family | Food | Happenings | Health | Housing | People we know | What we're up to
Public Outrage
By Ari | Feb 11, 09 09:25 AM
I realized the other day that ever since Obama won the election I've stopped the frantic politics gossip blog reading I was doing for so long. And before that, I was more into following celebrities, which I'm also behind on. So, feeling a little out of the pop culture loop, I read a bunch of Huffington Post and Gawker and Defamer. Aaaaand then I felt glad I'd been avoiding it. People are weird.
These two stories really caught my eye: Caylee Anthony Doll Sparks Outrage and Octuplets' birth spawns outrage from public. Caylee was a little girl who was killed by her mother, her bizarre murder story followed closely by the media and the public. This story tells about some company that tried to capitalize on the story by selling a doll that looks like Caylee, which plays "You Are My Sunshine" when poked. Obviously many people thought this was in extremely bad taste, and the doll has been pulled. In the other story, we hear about the public's anger at Nadya, a woman who intentionally had eight new babies when she could barely care for the six children she already had. She used expensive fertility treatments to accomplish all of her pregnancies and is apparently racking up a huge public tab at her local hospital - and it appears that she wants to sell her story and photos of her babies to make money off of her story.
These two stories say so much about the strange breaking down of barriers between public and private life, between "ordinary people" and "celebrities" - and the role the media and capitalism play in these evolving relationships. I think we're seeing for the first time that, well, we're all people, we're all the same. If your story is something others are interested in, and if the media cares to discover your story and broadcast it to the world, presto, you're a "celebrity." And then, just like Britney Spears and Health Ledger, you have to deal with the consequences - suddenly you're not just talking to ten people via your blog or something, you're on center stage under bright lights, and the whole audience is ready to pelt you with rotten fruit if they don't like what they see.
Maybe the spotlight will illuminate selfishness or insanity or antisocial tendencies that turn the crowd against you - or maybe it will illuminate your pain with such clarity that others look away in embarrassment, complaining about the lighting - or about the ticket price they paid to see you. But we're all complicit in this show, we're all buying into it by treating each other like celebrities, by shining that bright light on people and pretending for a moment that they're not just like ourselves but are somehow superhuman, objects we can manipulate with our dollars and our attention.
Here are my takeaways from this lesson in media and money and their impact on kids:
- Do not try to profit from murdered children. People will not appreciate this, and it's just creepy.
- Do not make children for personal profit (or the hope thereof). The children will not appreciate this, and neither will anyone else who sees what you're doing.
- Children are the future, and their interests are worthy of consideration - they're not just objects we can make and dispose of according to our whims.
Dissection on Valentine's Day: Where's the love?
By Ari | Feb 3, 09 10:27 AM
There will be an event at Ithaca's Sciencecenter on Valentine's Day, during which children will be shown a variety of hearts taken from dead animals, and will watch a dead pig's heart being dissected.
If you too think that this is an inappropriate event for children - or anyone, especially the animals who have to die for it to happen - call 607-272-0600 and ask to speak to Executive Director Charles Trautmann at extension 26, or Associate Director Lara Kimber at extension 12. You can also email them at: info@sciencecenter.org. Please be polite. My email is below.
Hi,I just heard you're doing a program that involves dissecting animal hearts on Valentine's Day, and I thought I'd let you know my response to it, since I'm an Ithacan, a science fan, and a future parent.
This event seems to me to teach children something very disturbing - that animals are not worthy of our compassion, that these sentient beings are somehow so fundamentally different from humans that it's morally acceptable to kill them and cut up their bodies as a form of education and entertainment. The fact that you're doing it on Valentine's Day just makes it that much more creepy and sad. Animals feel pain and pleasure and sorrow; they have families, interests, lives of their own. They do not exist for us to treat like objects, to mutilate and eviscerate - but to live their own lives. We should respect them, not teach our children to disrespect them as we have for so long.
We relocated to Ithaca because we wanted to start a family. Our little nephews come to visit us, too, and we know many people with kids. When I heard of the Sciencecenter I remember at first thinking it would be a lovely resource. However, I saw an ad for a live bug program you were doing, which gave me pause. I usually don't patronize businesses or organizations that promote the use and abuse of animals. Hearing of this Valentine's Day event has helped me make my decision. No kids I know will be going to Sciencecenter; these values you're teaching do not work for my family.
I thought I would send you this email so that you could understand where folks like me are coming from. Maybe folks who love animals aren't an important part of your audience - but maybe they are. If so, I think you should know what message this event is sending to people like me.
Because I care deeply about animals and my community and know that transparent dialogue is what helps culture change, I hope you don't mind that I'm posting this email as an open letter on my blog:
http://www.shirari.com/blog/2009/02/03/dissection_on_valentines_day_w.html
Please feel free to post your response as a comment if you would like it to appear publicly, or just email me back (I may post your response unless you object). I'm very curious as to your response.Thanks for reading, and peace!
Ari Moore
Shirari Industries
Ithaca, NY"The important thing is to never stop questioning."
- Albert Einstein
Why vegan? http://tinyurl.com/2xkmc
UPDATE, 2.11.09: Received on the vegan wire: "The Valentines Day 'I Heart Science' event that involved dissecting a pigs heart has been replaced with examining the chocolate, strawberry and vanilla plants and talking about the foods that come from them. A much more appropriate activity for Valentines Day, or any day!!!" Yesss!!
On Gaza
By Shira | Jan 15, 09 01:34 PM
A good friend of mind asked me to explain the current crisis in Israel/Palestine. Here are my (unedited) ramblings...
i think a lot of people are confused and torn about this issue, including me. the situation in israel/palestine is a cycle of violence in which the game of "who started it" is meaningless and counterproductive. the basic facts are that jews and muslims (and christians, and druze...) all have historical and religious ties to the land. the problem is that extremists within these populations believe that these rights are exclusive to their people and that they therefore have the right to kill anyone who threatens those rights.
enter modern warfare and politics. after the holocaust, the united nations, which should have stopped violence against european jews before world war II and earlier, was convinced that the jews deserved a homeland of their own. the british had control over palestine at the time, but it was mostly populated by arabs. there were also jews living there, including my father's mother's family, who have lived in jerusalem for generations. the proposition at the time was to create two states - one arab and one jewish, each autonomous. the arab population didn't want to give up what they felt was rightfully theirs. the jewish immigrants and the jews that had been coming to settle the land and established kibbutzim (agricultural communes) starting in the late 1800s were willing to fight. hence the "war of independence" as the israelis call it.
from the establishment of the state of israel in 1948, this cycle of violence has continued. (my mother was born there in 1949 after my grandparents survived the holocaust and met in cyprus, where they were imprisoned until the british let them in to the country). israel, surrounded by arab countries was attacked over and over again. these same countries did little to help the palestinian refugees that lived in camps in their borders. after the 1967 war, israel gained control over the west bank and the gaza strip, and continue to have complete control over the flow of people and resources in and out of these areas. at the same time the israeli government has actively encouraged jewish settlements within these regions. for the most part, jews who choose to live in the settlements are the most orthodox and extreme and see themselves as being on the frontlines. by the way, a lot of them are also american jews.
there are arabs who live in israel who don't identify as palestinians. they are second class citizens in many ways - their communities are generally underfunded and they rarely have high positions in the corporate sectors, but they are allowed to vote and have political parties. many of their palestinian brothers and sisters are economically dependent on israel for jobs, so they come into israel every day, crossing through checkpoints, with notoriously long lines and humiliating searches.
most palestinians feel that they are occupied and want freedom. they want their own country, and they are willing to fight for it using any means necessary. since there is no palestinian military, they use small cells and guerrilla tactics, and are embedded within the civilian population. they send rockets and suicide bombers into israel, targeting civilians. the israeli military fights back with many more resources, thanks largely to the alliance with america. hamas, both a political party and a militant movement, in turn is supplied with weapons by iran, which hates both the u.s. and israel.
it is my belief that when violence is involved, neither side is right. israel has made some very meaningful attempts to create peace and even move towards a two-state solution, but extremist palestinians continue to use violence to call attention to their suffering. in the meantime, most israelis are living in a modern democratic state with all the amenities of western culture, while palestinians are living in much poorer conditions in the west bank and gaza. it's hard to tell an occupied population not to fight for their freedom, but israelis, at the same time, feel like they are defending their own freedom.
there are amazing people on both sides working for peace. many of them are secular, but some are religious. personally, i think that nation states are inherently violent entities, and unless one side or the other is willing to give up, this conflict will continue for a very long time. as a jew, i feel a tie to the land of israel and its people and i do think that jewish people should be able to live there. but i don't think that we are any more entitled to a jewish state than the palestinians are entitled to return to their homes and sacred places. i think the best solution would be one, secular, nonviolent, democratic (or perhaps even socialist) state. will it happen? not anytime soon.
there is so much more to say, i could go on and on. my cousin amir just entered the israeli army, and i worry about him everyday. most of my family lives in northern israel so they are not in immediate danger, but there are of course, random suicide bombings that kill jews in haifa and jerusalem and elsewhere. one of my cousin tal's close friends was killed in a bus bombing in haifa, and she was scared to leave the house for months. if i were them, i wouldn't live in israel, and i think that maybe when they get older, they will leave. on the other hand, israel is the only home they've ever known and it's where their parents, grandparents and friends all live. maybe by the time they have kids, there will be some meaningful peace. we can hope.
there are some really good documentaries on the issue. i recommend promises and encounter point, both available on netflix. there's also a really good film about palestinian hip hop called slingshot hip hop. you should also check out the music of invincible a.k.a ilana weaver, a queer rapper from detroit who raps about social justice issues and does a lot of work with palestinians. her song "people not places" is amazing. you should also listen to mirah's song "jerusalem." for alternative news coverage of the current crisis, check out link tv and al jazeera.
i hope this is helpful. feel free to ask more questions. knowledge is power.
More: Activism | Family | Human Rights | Media | Oppression | Politics
Two new Feminist Reviews
By Ari | Jan 14, 09 12:06 PM
I've had two more book reviews published by Feminist Review. Both of these were awesome books. Ain't I a Feminist in particular really expanded my horizons and pushed me to think about privilege and identity in new ways.
Argentina: Stories for a Nation
Ain't I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom
Yay Feminist Review! Contact them if you're interested in writing reviews - you get to keep the book (or movie or album) in exchange for your review.
More: Activism | Books and Writing | Education | Family | Human Rights | Oppression | Politics | Queer
DIY Holidays
By Ari | Dec 7, 08 05:53 PM
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Prop 8: The Musical
By Shira | Dec 3, 08 01:21 PM
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The Scenarios USA 2008 REAL DEAL Film Premiere - Dec. 10, NYC
By Ari | Dec 3, 08 11:38 AM
Shira and I have been working with an incredible Brooklyn non-profit, Scenarios USA, for years now, and are currently helping them to promote their 2008 premiere. If you'll be in NYC on December 10th, this is your chance to meet the award-winning teen writers and Hollywood directors of the organization's three new sex-ed shorts - and to see the new films. You can catch Scenarios USA's earlier films online at the site we designed for them, scenariosusa.org.
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Taking names and remembering history: Poor little Mormons and the big gay menace
By Ari | Nov 15, 08 09:20 AM
The TIME article What Happens If You're on the Gay "Enemies List" reports that some queer folks have responded to people of color and Mormons who voted down marriage equality in California with some bigotry of their own. I don't know how wide-spread or real these acts of racism and religious intolerance are. I wish we queer folk could all commit to taking the higher ground and using only peaceful, respectful means to get equal rights. But it's not a perfect world, our country obviously has issues around identity politics, and some queer people are bigots, too. I'm not excusing these folks' behavior whatsoever, just pointing out that they're the exception, not the rule, when it comes to activism for queer equality.
This article also calls out queer folks for organizing efforts like Anti-Gay Blacklist, wherein the details of individual donors to the Yes on 8 campaign are posted on the internet so those who support marriage equality can boycott them and send mail to the companies they work for. Let's think about a few other times in which such lists of people have been used, which might point to whether this practice is acceptable. Right Wing Christians have posted lists of their own, which have made it easier for, say, Right Wing anti-choice activists to hunt down and murder doctors who give women abortions. The McCarthy-era blacklists destroyed people's lives. Some militant animal rights groups have used lists to target those who imprison and torture animals in labs for sidewalk demonstrations and harassment in front of these people's homes. None of these seem like good ideas to me. None of these strategies are respectful of people's space, privacy, and families. Some of these strategies are outright violent. Are the lists in California any better? Well, yes. They don't include home addresses and phone numbers, so far as I've seen. It seems their primary purpose is to facilitate boycotts, and to help people know where they can send letters. This is public accountability. This is putting faces on the oppressors. This isn't a call for violence, and this will not destroy people's lives. It might, however, mean they get less business and more mail from people they're oppressing. If that's uncomfortable for them that's too bad - they, after all, pulled together millions of dollars to oppress queer families, which I think is a little more egregious than encouraging letter-writing and economic boycotts. If they really had courage in their convictions, they'd welcome these lists put on the internet by gay people - after all, if they're on the moral high ground, why do they want to hide their faces?
Another article in the New York Times quotes Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church, who donated one million dollars in support of the oppression of families like mine. He calls our protests (including, presumably, the vast majority of our protests, which are peaceful and not marred by bigotry) "off-putting." He says, “I think that shows colors... by their fruit, ye shall know them.” Mormons and other religious groups have been showing their colors for generations. What is the fruit of homophobia? Queer teens are committing suicide. Transgender people are being raped and murdered. People born intersexed are being surgically altered and given drugs that change who they are without consent, in their infancy and childhood. Queer folks are shouted at and hurt in the streets. So many queer people are so crippled by internalized homophobia, or so wounded by the homophobia of their families and communities, that they can never self-actualize and be honest about who they are. Ashton and his millionaire friends might try to paint themselves as the victims now that we queer folks are finally lifting ourselves out of the ashes of history, but I'm guessing they're more afraid of us gaining full personhood than they are of our "enemies lists" and boycotts.
UPDATE, 11.18.08
Editorial: Vandalism, coercion are counterproductive to fight for gay marriage mentions the vandalism of Mormon churches and says of other incidents, "One ugly case was the boisterous protest by dozens of gay marriage supporters outside a small Los Angeles restaurant where the owner's daughter had contributed $100 to Proposition 8. The loss of customers threatened the livelihoods of employees, some of whom were gay and opposed the initiative." This is such a shame. It might not be home harassment but it's still harassment, and I don't think it will make this restaurant owner's daughter any more sympathetic to the idea of gay marriage. We can't bully people into seeing us as their equals.
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Keith Oberman's Book of Love
By Shira | Nov 11, 08 04:51 PM
Keith asks us to spread happiness and protect the ember of love by defending the gay right to marriage...
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Same-sex marriage and caged chickens: Human freedom, animal rights
By Ari | Nov 11, 08 04:30 PM
I just read a piece on the Huffington Post, Shaun Jacob Halper's Why Some Americans Don't Have Reason to Celebrate, and found it interesting from an animal rights perspective. It reads in part:
This past Election Tuesday, Californians turned out in droves to recognize the rights of caged-chickens while denying the rights of gays and lesbians to marry. Passing Prop 2 and Prop 8, Californians secured a chicken's right to "extend its wings, lie down, stand up, and turn around" in confinement, while revoking basic democratic rights from gays; rights like equal protection under the law, the ability to pursue happiness, and the freedom to worship religion without state interference (that's right, there are Judeo-Christian confessions that view same-sex marriage as sacred). In short, Californians sympathize with chickens but not with gays.
Isn't he minimizing the plight of chickens, and saying one oppression is worse (more worthy of concern) than another? I agree it's tragically sad that so many Californian voters have made such an unjust and oppressive choice. But why compare it to their vote to treat innocent chickens with just a little more compassion, as if that decision is somehow silly or less important?
I too am queer, and I too want my partnership, my family, to be legally recognized and not discriminated against. But though I'm oppressed as a queer woman, I've got all kinds of privilege that make my life about a million times better and more free than that of almost any animal of almost any other species. The way that we treat domesticated animals like chickens is absolutely unconscionable - we literally bring them into the world in huge numbers, expressly to suffer and die for our benefit. That voters have made a tiny step toward treating living, feeling animals with just a little more kindness is a beautiful thing. I don't begrudge my feathered sisters their political win. Maybe the folks who care so much about chickens will one day open their hearts a little wider and extend some kindness to queer folks as well. Denigrating their love of animals will not help them to open their hearts.
Maybe Halper is on his way to this realization already, though he's yet to see the connection between the oppression of non-human animals and the oppression of human animals. He writes,
It is the gay community who has failed to build coalitions with other groups. Wake-up call to gay leadership: We must form institutional alliances with other minority communities and start supporting each others interests. We are not going to see these groups support our right to marry if we do not make an active effort to support them as well.
We need to start seeing allies everywhere, and treating everyone as our brothers and sisters in a universal struggle for peace and justice. Maybe some of those we treat with respect and love don't have the power or capability to give us anything in return - but it's not about reciprocity, it's about doing the right thing by our neighbors. A win for the chickens is a win for us all.
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America's First Dog
By Shira | Nov 10, 08 12:47 PM
I think it's really great that the Obamas are considering adopting a shelter dog. However, it seems unjust to me that Malia's allergies might sway the family to go for a "pure" breed. Since when does one person's allergy justify another's oppression? Perhaps it's time to consider adopting a different species altogether. The question is are Americans ready for a ferret in the White House?
Obama bringing out the love
By Ari | Nov 3, 08 10:40 PM
From Tears for Obama, a very touching slideshow of photos on Huffington Post, showing people crying at Obama rallies.
See also: O-Bama Faces, The Obamas' Greatest PDA Moments, Campaign Trail PDA: The Obama/Biden Edition, The Obamas' Greatest Family Moments, and the rest of the slideshows. They're all pretty heart-warmingly fantastic.
Lynn Love Thinks: Ari's mom's new blog!
By Ari | Oct 21, 08 09:52 AM
She's an awesome mom because she always treated us kids as her equals, allowing us room to grow into our own people. I've always thought of her as one of my best friends; she's someone I can learn from and who is willing to learn in turn. Now I'm happy to call her a fellow blogger! She's just begun her own blog, Lynn Love Thinks, where she's writing about the books she reads, progressive politics and social change, art and craft and collecting, and spirituality.
Fun fact: The name of the blog uses her middle name rather than her last name. "Love" was her mother's middle name, and Mary gave it to Lynn, and Lynn gave it to me. It's not a hippie thing (though my mom was a hippie!), but an old Swedish thing, I guess.
Check it out and comment on a post to give her some encouragement - she's new to blogging and I want to keep her at it!
Lynn Love Thinks
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Cool vegan travellers
By Ari | Oct 15, 08 02:04 PM
You can follow their odyssey on their blog, and here's a link to their Flickr photoset about the bus.
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Nebraska and safe haven - for all or just for some?
By Ari | Sep 28, 08 12:00 PM
Has anyone else out there been following this safe haven thing in Nebraska? They created a safe haven law that allows kids up to age 18 to be dropped off at hospitals and such, with no penalty to the parent. Then a ton of kids all got dropped off, and the media and politicians said "Whoa, too many kids are being abandoned! Better limit the safe haven law to only allow kids up to 5 year old or something."
So I read these stories, and was shocked that this was the response. I mean, if so many kids are being dropped off who weren't before, isn't that, dare I say, a good thing? Ostensibly the parents really don't want them or can't handle taking care of them. Why on earth would it be preferable to keep them in their homes if this is the reality of the situation? Why should it ever be considered wrong or illegal - or an offense worthy of punishment - to put your kids in a safer, healthier situation? If we don't allow folks to safely turn over their kids to others who can care for them (and here I know I'm glossing over the painful problems with the foster care and adoption industries), then won't we end up with more horror stories of kids locked up in closets for years, or killed, or abandoned on roadsides?
Anyway, today I finally came across a story that I think helps put the whole thing in context and which is very sympathetic to these parents and their horrible situation - and to the kids who could really benefit if we extended this broad safe haven law to the whole country: Nebraska Must Not Change Child Safe Haven Law by Vigilant Watch. When I saw this I breathed a sigh of relief that I'm not the only one who thinks this safe haven law is not "backwards" but a very, very good idea. Now if only we could extend it to all kids everywhere. They say it takes a village to raise a child, right? Let's act like it and take responsibility for the kids who need help - and work to erase the problems that lead to families falling into this situation in the first place.
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