Jewish-Muslim Unity: JAM on it! October 31, 2007

First of all, I wanted to thank and sent out my heartfelt acknowledgements to everyone who I met on the PLP conference I was attending in Santa Monica, California this week. A city whose beauty is surpassed only by its warm inhabitants, the beach and sun served as the perfect backdrop for the conference of idea exchange and bridge building among Jewish leaders and professionals. I thank G-d for giving me the merit to be part of such an event.

Speaking of meritorious events, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a group of students at Yale University had the foresight to realize that there was a need for dialogue with Muslims, especially between Jews and Muslims, and that bridges needed to be built after the towers fell. A group of undergraduate students formed JAM (Jews And Muslims) to bridge gaps and unite communities. Now, six years later, JAM has launched its own blog, as the Yale Daily News tells us:

Yale students with opinions about the relationship between Jews and Muslims now have an online forum in which to air their thoughts.

On Sunday night, Jews and Muslims at Yale (JAM) launched a new blog called “Jews, Muslims and Dialogue” that members said they hope will be a vehicle for discussion about issues ranging from the concept of justice in Islam and Judaism to student reactions to Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s LAW ’62 visit to Yale earlier this month….

The blog should be an online meeting place for people of all ideological views to listen to each other and their opinions, Blau said.

“I don’t want people leaving feeling like ‘Oh, now I see,’ ” Blau said. “[But at least] they can see why their colleagues would think something like that.”

Altaf Saadi ’08, a JAM member who served as its co-head last year, said she hopes the blog’s dialogue will serve as a model for discussion of controversial issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We are such a diverse body of students at Yale, with such varied thoughts and opinions, that there needs to be constructive forums like JAM where all those ideas can be exchanged in a respectful way,” Saadi said in an e-mail. “Our hope is to try to bridge those gaps and points of misunderstanding, real or perceived,” Saadi said.

Jeremy Avins ’10, one of the current co-heads of JAM, said both the Jewish and Muslim communities feel threatened. This reciprocal fear has led members of each group to “dehumanize” members of the other, making mutual understanding difficult, he said.

“It’s too easy to dehumanize a people you either don’t know or feel threatened by,” Avins said in an e-mail. “JAM is one of many efforts to bring the human back into the equation.”

Battling mutual fear with open and respectful idea exchange. May this be the way all of humanity begins to cope with its fear of communities and ideologies.

JAM’s blog can be found at jewsandmuslims.blogspot.com.

Like JAM say, “Peace, Shalom, and Salaam.”

Iraq: 46 billion, Kids: Zero October 23, 2007

In what’s being called a new Iraq showdown with Congress by US News & World Report, Bush, in a move of gargantuan audacity, requested an additional $46 billion in Iraq war and overseas military funding. This request comes on the heels of Bush’s hotly contested veto of $33 billion in health care funding for the S-CHIP program, which would have been expanded to cover children not covered by Medicaid but who could not afford private insurance. The request for additional funding, in light of the recent veto, caused Democrats to react with dismay:

Representative David R. Obey, Democratic of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, criticized Mr. Bush for pushing the extra financing even as the president attacked Democrats as spendthrifts.

“It’s amazing to me that the president expects to be taken seriously when he says we cannot afford $20 billion in investments in education, health, law enforcement and science, which will make this country stronger over the long term,” Mr. Obey said in a statement.

“But he doesn’t blink an eye at asking to borrow $200 billion for a policy in Iraq that leaves us six months from now exactly where we were six months ago.”

…The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said that the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq would pay for health-care coverage for 10 million children for a year.

Currently the war in Iraq costs American taxpayers, on average, $330 million a day.

The funding is not all slated to go to Iraq, as the New York Times tells us:

While the bulk of the money requested would go to the Defense Department, the proposal also includes nearly $800 million to support a United Nations peacekeeping mission and elections in Sudan; $106 million for fuel oil under a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program; and more than $400 million in assistance to the Palestinians as part of the administration’s efforts to nurture a peace treaty with Israel.

Were this funding request to pass, it would bring the grand total spent on Iraq and Afghanistan military operations to $806 billion, almost ten times as much as Gulf War I and almost $300 billion more than Vietnam, in today’s dollars.

I am inclined to react like Rep. Obey, how could the President even expect to be taken seriously , when he turns down healthcare for children and advocates increased military spending? Are we suffering under a leader with such callous disregard for his citizens that he would doom them to waste away to their deaths in hospital beds on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?

(As an aside, the fact that Darfur funding AND North Korea’s nuclear disarmament fuel-oil trade program are bundled in with this is yet another slap in the face. No funding for war, no funding for Darfur? And this is the president whose “good moral character” was touted by Republicans?)

Perhaps The Seattle Timescan give us a bit of insight:

The Defense Department’s new Iraq war funding request proposes upgrading the B-2 stealth bomber to carry the military’s largest satellite-guided bomb capable of penetrating deeply buried bunkers. The Pentagon’s proposal is one sentence in the measure seeking $45.9 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush gave to Congress Monday. The extra money would be on top of $150.5 billion in previously requested war spending.

The new 30,000-pound bomb is six times bigger than the Air Force’s current 5,000-pound bunker-buster. Chicago-based Boeing is developing the bomb for the Pentagon agency that researches technology to counter weapons of mass destruction. The bomb was first successfully detonated in March.

Ah yes, where there’s Bush foibling, you’re bound to find some smidgeon of corporate cronyism.

Boeing gets 53% of its sales from its defense unit, a unit which had forecasted sales of $31 billion this year, down from $32 billion in 2006. They are looking to “generate foreign sales of F-15s and other fighters as the U.S. curbs spending on large aircraft programs.” (Wow! A huge aircraft sale just in the nick of time for Boeing! Good thing they don’t have to post that $1 billion loss from their forecasted figure!)

The death toll in Iraq currently stands at over 3,830 American soldiers.

So more important than S-CHIP is this bill. Granted, the White House did state that the only reason that S-CHIP was vetoed was because it was “poorly written legislation,” even though they had called it “expensive” at the time. If by bringing the troops home, such legislation could finally find its place on our lawbooks, then for every military servicemember who comes home alive, another child can make it through childhood alive and healthy. Saving 2 lives for the price of one.

Surely that’s got to be “common-sense” enough for the President.

Those Oppressed Jewish Republicans October 22, 2007

I learned something very important while reading Bradley Burston’s piece today on Ha’aretz. Mr. Burston, like me, is unsatisfied knowing that he still harbors vestiges of bigotry and ugly prejudice inside. He took it upon himself to analyze one of his lingering prejudices: as he puts it, the “queaze I feel when I consider the idea of Jews voting Republican.”

I am also no stranger to this “queaze”. I also find it hard to believe that corporate exploitation, the absolute degradation of poor communities and of poorer populations, debacles like Iraq and Katrina, and felonious Congressional and Presidential conduct can just be overlooked and swept under the rug with a “at least they support Israel!” To me, it’s akin to being robbed by someone who, while poking the gun in your chest, is explaining all the wonderful things he’s done for your cousins. Supporting Israel is great — but “unwavering support” for Israel does not impact the grief of now over 4,000 families whose prides and joys have died in Iraq, nor does it put food on the table for the millions of families for whom S-CHIP coverage is slated to become a lost dream.

Burston calls Jewish Republicans an “oppressed minority”, and while I am loath to place the “oppressed minority” tag on the political engine dedicated to helping the rich stay rich and get richer, many of his propositions are intriguing:

All too often, the price paid by Jewish Republicans for their political choice has been the need to shoulder a high tolerance for intolerance. The intolerance of their party chiefs, that is. All too often, Jewish Republicans have been forced to swallow - or worse, perhaps, to explain away - the manifest Jew hatred of certain of their party superiors.

The most familiar of these, of course, is an observation by the first president Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker,who was widely quoted as having told a colleague prior to the 1992 elections: “Fuck the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.”

To the dismay of Jewish Republicans, Baker’s remark proved to be one of the most effective of self-fulfilling prophecies. In the next election, Bill Clinton would garner 78 percent of the Jewish vote to a bare 15 percent for George H.W. Bush.

But Baker’s irritation with the Jews pales when compared to the level of grand old anti-Semitism revealed by Oval Office audio tapes of Richard Nixon.

“Most Jews are disloyal,” Nixon told his aide H.R. (”Bob”) Haldeman in a 1971 conversation. The president would cite as exceptions his national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and speechwriter [now New York Times columnist] William Safire. “But, Bob,” he then continued, “generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?”…

The Jewish Republican of today would be expected to shrug off these comments - not without justification - as ancient history, irrelevant to the current reality. In fact, the Jewish Republican of today might well argue that the Republican incumbent of the presidency is the greatest friend Israelis have ever had in the White House. Depending on what Israelis might be looking for in a president, the Jewish Republicans might just be right. That same Republican would be expected, no less, to wave away the John McCain’s recent characterization of America as a Christian country, and Ann Coulter’s vision of an ideal America where Jews are “perfected” into accepting Jesus as their lord and savior and all Americans are Christians.

…In retrospect, moreover, the Iraq debacle has proven especially bad for the Jews. Not only because “the Jews,” in the person of the neo-con corps, were unjustly blamed for instigating the war. Primarily, the war was bad for the Jews because it strengthened and emboldened Iran as a regional power, at the same bolstering Hezbollah and paving the way for Lebanon II. It was also the Bush White House, it may be recalled, which pushed for the elections that brought Hamas to power.

And so there goes that “unwavering support of Israel” and being the “best friend Israel has ever had.”

Burston ends his article by proffering that maybe “we have left the underclass to sink in its morass of unsafe and unsupported public schools [and] its plagues of drugs and despair and darkness.” One is forced to perform textual acrobatics to fit the words of such a view into the words of the Torah — “f**k the poor” has never been a Jewish viewpoint, or a viewpoint looked upon kindly in Jewish Law. However, as Scripture tells us in Ecclesiastes, “money answers everything” — the drive to hoard and retain wealth will give one justification for almost any atrocity, and apparently here, “he’s Israel’s best friend” was the justification for the decomposing bodies of infants cascading through toxic waste in the summer Louisiana sun. Are buzzwords like “war on terror” a sufficient antidote to the poisons of no-bid contracts and flagrant violations of human rights — as we see from our very own gulags?

It is my sincere hope that these words once spoken in jest, do not prove to be the mantra for the lamentably growing right-wing Semitic clique of our generation:

The stereotype, that of the upwardly mobilized breathing the rarified air of the American Dream, was already in place in the early 1960s, when satirist Allen Sherman set the tune of “Hava Nagila” to a family saga that took a New York Jewish couple from relatively humble Kennedy Democratic activist beginnings to the shiny Jaguar poolside lifestyle of Lalaland:

Harvey and Sheila moved to west LA
Harvey and Sheila flew TWA

Traded their used MG for a new XKE
Switched to the GOP
That’s they way things go.

I would hope that Jews aren’t seeing, en masse, the messages on the media and thinking “wow, these Republicans are the best friends Jews have ever had!”. Every statement made by a candidate is a calculated marketing decisions, designed to put forth “brand attributes” which are intended to trigger a “consumer response”, i.e., your vote. Anyone who thinks that one of the candidates is “their friend” has a PR company to thank for that, not the candidate.

I would not be so naive as to suggest that the Democratic party is this yedid nefesh which would never legislate anything bad for the Jews, far from it. But what we need to do is look for the proof in the pudding — the main yardstick for a candidate should be, what type of America are they advocating, and how would life be in said America?

A Racist With a PhD Is Still A Racist October 18, 2007

Dr. James Watson. DNA pioneer. Nobel Prize winner. Racist. The South African Mail & Guardian online has a rather unsurprising story on how this scientist is in the middle of a furor in Britain over statements he made regarding the “differing intelligence levels” between Africans and Europeans:

An American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the molecular structure of DNA has caused an uproar in Britain by reportedly saying tests have indicated that Africans are not as intelligent as whites.

A government minister, scientists and a human rights activist condemned James Watson’s comments as racist, and London’s Science Museum cancelled his speech, which had been scheduled for Friday. Watson’s interview in the Sunday Times Magazine also set off a furious debate in the British media, from the BBC to the front pages of other papers.

In its profile of Watson, the magazine quoted him as saying he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really”.

In the Times magazine interview, Watson was quoted as saying he opposes discrimination and believes that “there are many people of colour who are very talented”. But he also was quoted as saying that while he hopes that everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

Yes, I’m outraged at his statements.

Yes, I’m disgusted.

But my outrage — and that of the media in Britain — is derived not only from the fact that one would think that a person in such a position would not voice such opinions, but also from the mistaken assumption that education rids one of prejudice. We look at academics — especially Nobel Prize-winning biologists — as the pinnacles of intelligence and worldliness. They should know stuff.

But inside all of those diplomas, grants, and fellowships is the same racist who would be gumming split-pea soup in hate-filled anonymity at a nursing home in Appalachia were his circumstances different. He’s a 79-year-old white man who still considers his rightful place to be the front of the bus, and chances are this tainted every study he ever spearheaded researching the link between race and anything.

It throws us into cognitive dissonance when we see educated people exhibiting signs of ignorance, but we must remember: a person has to decide to transcend their boundaries, and no amount of college credits can open minds.

No, Really, Let Ann Coulter Clarify

So apparently, after being blasted by so many of her critics, Ann Coulter decided that she wanted to set the record straight. She felt she had been misquoted, and, in this piece on the very right-wing NewsMax, wanted to strike back at those who had lambasted her as of late.

Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, was quick to condemn her comments, calling them “hate speech” and saying:

“How does someone who says that Judaism should be thrown out, that Jews should be ‘perfected’ and that America would be better off were everyone Christian continue to receive a megaphone and platform from the news networks? When will the media say ‘enough is enough’?”

Coulter – author of the new book “If Democrats Had Any Brain, They’d Be Republicans” – responded by telling Newsmax:

“Let’s rewrite the NJDC statement to refer to what I actually said: ‘How does someone who says it would be better if everyone were a Christian or practicing Jew continue to receive a megaphone and platform from the news networks? When will the media say ‘enough is enough’?

“Who’s engaging in hate speech now?” she asked.

Ahh, so we “practicing Jews” can sleep easier. I wonder what her definition of “practicing Jew” is. Everyone sins — the verse in Ecclesiastes says it flatly that there is no “righteous man [on the earth] who only does good and never sins”. Then again, a “practicing Jew” is also probably practicing repentance as well.

Coulter, in the NewsMax piece, though, when all is said and done, goes right back to what she was saying in her original interview though. Quoting the Catholic Encyclopedia as her source, and flatly dismissing her critic, the head of Catholics United, she brings that “the imperfect state of yesterday must give way before the perfection of today although the one has normally prepared the other” vis-a-vis the transition from “Old Testament to New”.

I don’t doubt she’s not making it up — there is no end to the amount of anti-Jewish literature the Christian scholar could theoretically draw from in dissing his Semitic counterpart. There being an extant source doesn’t dilute the fact that one would have to be an unmitigated ass for saying something like this on TV.

But, again, this is her MO — and she is proving herself to be the disgrace to the Republican Party with zero tact we’ve all come to expect to see soiling our screens.

In the midst of it all… October 16, 2007

While Ann Coulter is steadily proving herself to be an embarrassment and a disgrace to conservatives and the Republican Party — if not to America itself, one has to remember, in the midst of it all, that this is not only not a new development with Ms. Coulter, it’s her modus operandi, her “MO”.

One can not forget one of her most famous quotes:

Remember, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are tightly knit first cousins. Whether or not Ms. Coulter is anti-Semitic herself is actually, at this point, beside the point. This woman considers herself licensed to inflame anyone and everyone she sees fit — debasing herself like a harlot with language so inflammatory as to make even the most callous clod wince, as the Canada Post’s Jonathan Kay notices:

Ann Coulter is an embarrassment. And the people who should be most embarrassed are self-described conservatives. Whenever liberals want to make us look like bigots and mental cases, all they have to do is trot out one of Coulter’s whoppers, and the job is done.

This is an 800-word column, so I don’t have space to rehash every appalling thing Coulter has written or said. But the highlights include her description of Al Gore (”total fag”), John Edwards (”faggot”), Muslims (”ragheads,” “camel jockeys,” “jihad monkeys”), her suggestion that said monkeys should stick to “flying carpets” instead of travelling on commercial airlines, and her next-day reaction to 9/11: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

She also had this charming riff on four women who became activists after losing their husbands in the 9/11 attacks: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much? How do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy.”

Could the Republican party wish for a friend more disgusting and lewd?

Oh, wait a second…

Who Cares About Ethiopians?

An article from YNet today caught my eye. The body of Gabi Ababao Dwait a”h was returned to Israel from Lebanon on Monday, ending a three-year harrowing experience for the Dwait family, during which they had no idea where he was. No whereabouts. No videotaped messages flooding CNN. Nothing.

YNet reporter Danny Adino Ababa’s op-ed piece today, entitled “Who Cares About Ethiopians?” asks a question which I think should both ask, and answer, itself:

The Dwait family is a typical Ethiopian family whose world collapsed. The family was hit by one tragedy after another: A father who was run over by a car; a brother who committed suicide. For three years now, the family has been engaged in a search for the lost son. The son who nobody heard about, saw, or cared about. He just disappeared. Evaporated.

Just like any of us would do under such circumstances, they turned to the authorities, to the Israel Police. Yet the answer they received at the police stations in Haifa and Be’er Sheva was always the same: “He’s a big boy, he’ll return home.” Just like that. Just another Ethiopian guy wandering around – as if all members of the Ethiopian community are destined to wander forever.

Imagine that Gabi Dwait’s name was in fact Danny Gutshtein; imagine his family was Israeli-born and that his parents had connections in the right places – what would the last three years look like? Wide-scale searches, photos in the media, interviews with leading journalists?…Maybe some good will also come out of the fact that Gabriel Dwait’s tragedy finally exposed the humiliating attitude of the establishment, media, and Israel Police to members of the Ethiopian community.

Danny Admasu, director of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews (IAEJ), in his Jerusalem Post interview, shows that the Israeli Mishtara (Police Dept) is not the sole culprit, and that “integration of Ethiopians” into mainstream society (i.e., decreasing passive and covert racism) must be put on the front-burner in numerous arenas:

Admasu believes his role is to create awareness and dialogue so that Ethiopian Jews are more readily integrated and accepted.

“I want people to know that even if they don’t want us here, we are here to stay,” he says in a tone that he has made many an MK sit up and take notice.

“In the beginning, when Ethiopians first arrived here people said, ‘They are not educated; it will take at least 50 years for them to catch up,’ but that has happened much faster than anyone thought. Today, there are many educated Ethiopians, but they still end up working as security guards in the mall.

This is a serious problem and it must be solved. These people are the leaders of their family and their immediate community. If these people, who went to college, end up guarding a mall, everyone in the next generation sees that and says why do we bother? Why do I have to go to college if I will just end up working in a mall? We need to make this a big issue.”

Israeli security forces were unaware Dwait’s body was even in Lebanon until Hezbollah hinted that they had another Israeli there. “He’s a big boy, he’ll come home?” Would any Israeli-born family with “the right connections” even be told such a callous thing by an official? As his death wasn’t caused by Hezbollah fire (he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea), perhaps we can say this caused some of the lag in information gathering (after all, if you’re picking up bodies from a battlefield, drowning victims do begin to fade in priority), but to dismiss a grieving mother for three years and not even be aware of whether or not a soldier is in one’s own country or in enemy territory?

My condolences to the Dwait family, and I hope they are comforted in their time of need. I hope the Ethiopian community gets the representation it deserves. And above all, I hope that the worth of one’s lifeblood does not remain inversely proportional to the amount of melanin in their skin.

Anti-Muslim Propaganda at George Wash U October 9, 2007

Thankfully, one doesn’t see things this ridiculous on a daily basis.

This was the poster many George Washington University students woke up to this morning, according to the student-run Hatchet newspaper. The posters, describing the “typical” Muslim’s features as including “venom from mouth,” “suicide vest,” and “peg-leg for smuggling children and heroin,” were signed “the Young America Foundation” and mention Islamo-Fascism Awareness week, being held by YAF beginning October 19, which features several lectures on counterterrorism.When you advertise any event dedicated to exploring “Islamo-fascism” you’re not going to end up with the most diverse-minded people in the world backing your event. The murder of innocent civilians is effectively termed “terrorism” or perhaps “fascism”: attaching “Islam” to it only serves to foment the racism already too rampant in our society against Muslims. One can not call a blatant violations of the tenets of a religion the “upholding” of that religion. There is simply nothing Islamic about fascism.Nor is there anything American about this “young American” posting up this racist propaganda.

The University is presently gearing up for Iftar, an interfaith event later this week that to celebrate Ramadan - an event which “speaks to our university’s commitment to global cultural understanding and respect” according to the University President.

Some people just can’t stand understanding and respect. And so they do things like this.

These racists should be found and penalized harshly — but they should also have to attend Iftar. Hatred like this can only be counteracted through intelligent discourse, and since these racists are so incapable of such discourse now, perhaps they can be educated and enlightened…by speaking to intelligent Muslims.

Anti-Racist Action Members Assaulted by Cops

You tell me if this protester is “actively resisting.”

This group of Toronto protesters was from Anti-Racist Action, protesting a group of neo-Nazis who had come to support Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, author of such works as Did Six Million Really Die?. The protester in question was sprayed with pepper spray.

If you are interested in supporting Anti-Racist Action and/or its network of affiliated organizations, donation information is located at AntifaSupport.

Anti-Racist Activism Works October 8, 2007

Apparently, I’ve been a little negative lately.

Over this past weekend in Baltimore, one of my oldest friends told me that she had to stop reading my blog. She said that it was too negative, bordering on depressing at times, and encouraged pessimism and apathy. After all, she said, if there’s so much hate and so much corruption going on in the world, why should anyone bother changing anything? The impression she got from This is Babylon was, “the world is screwed.” She told me that I should write about more positive topics, and ended off by telling me a mantra which I committed to my psyche upon hearing it:

“The energy flows where the attention goes.”

In light of this, I’d like to direct some attention to some people who are changing the world — by showing, in the most practical and clearcut ways, that hatemongers are not welcome in their communities.

A perfect example of this is this weeks story from Willamette, Oregon of the planned Nazi concert that wasn’t:

This Saturday afternoon in Portland’s southeast Lents Park, anti-racist activists held a rally in response to the gathering of white-power skinheads (and their hardcore bands) known as Hammerfest 2007.

Billed as an event which “all who support HSN” were invited to attend, Hammerfest 07 was to be THE bonehead event of the year, with an all-star neo-Nazi musical lineup. Out of this whole rally of anti-racist activists, it would turn out to be a small group who decided to take action:

After the rally, a diverse group of about 50 people, including a number of anti-racist skinheads, spontaneously arranged a caravan to a nearby neighborhood to leaflet. The fliers warned residents that one of their neighbors is neo-Nazi Randall Krager , who lives with his partner and fellow “racialist” Abbie Chelf on Southeast 70th Avenue near Johnson Creek Boulevard. The white power leader is one of the founding members of Volksfront, an Oregon-based white power group that helped sponsor Hammerfest 2007.

And what happened when they went to the “nearby neighborhood”?

Most of the people who were handed fliers by the motley parade of anti-racist activists were concerned and somewhat horrified to learn that a neo-Nazi leader lives steps away from their own homes. Standing in Harney Park at Southeast 70th Avenue and Harney Street, a crew of soccer moms read the fliers and called their kids in from the field, expressing plans to talk to other moms in the area about Krager’s presence. After about 20 minutes of walking around the area, the action dispersed and leafletters went their separate ways without incident.

How long did it take? Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to mobilize a community. No one wants to know that a neo-Nazi activist and organizer is serving the cookies at the PTA.

But they didn’t stop at the soccer moms:

At the time of the rally, members of the organizing group The Ad-Hoc Committee Against Racism and Fascism still didn’t know the location of Hammerfest. Then around 6 pm, anti-racist organizers were tipped off that the Aryan moshpit was taking place at the Sherwood Elks Lodge at 22770 SW Elwert Road in Sherwood, Ore . They immediately posted their findings to activist newswire portland.indymedia.org, with hopes that Portland area residents might pressure the Elks Lodge to shut down Hammerfest by calling the venue’s booking agent…

Now, indymedia.org is no MSNBC. Many of the articles there are often dismissed as being the work of fringe conspiracy theorists and ineffectual punk rockers. This, however was different. After first dismissing Hammerfest as “just a bunch of guys playing music”, the Elks organizer decided to double-check the “music-playing guys” after reading the indymedia post:

As one of the leaders of the leaders of the Sherwood Elks Lodge, I wanted to let everyone know that we were duped. This group identified themselves as a “rock group reunion of friends” when arranging to use our facility…

Once we received received indication that the hammerskin nation was using our facility, we worked to confirm as quickly as possible…We talked directly to the organizers, who denied involvement in the racist group and reiterated their story that they were a rock group reunion…

In spite of outward appearances, the evidence soon indicated that we had been very badly misled, and the guests in our facility indeed were an organization whose beliefs we can neither condone or support. They had also misrepresentated themselves in renting the facility, and continued to misrepresent themselves in the evening. We shut down the event as quickly and as safely as possible after that and the group left before 8:00. None of the guests ever did admit who they were and their organizational affiliation.

They pulled the plug on the Nazis. What started out as a group of fifty anti-racist activists turned out pulling the entire plug on Hammerfest 07. One group of kids, one FedexKinko’s, a couple copiers…and they changed things.

It doesn’t take big committees or endowed organizations to change the world. Just look at the difference a few kids that care and 20 minutes can make.

Rare Music Video Post October 2, 2007

Rarely do I post a music video from a band that I like on this blog. Unless it’s something particularly newsworthy or political.

In this case, though, there’s another reason to make an exception. Serj Tankian, the vocalist from System of a Down, has released a couple videos on YouTube, promoting singles from his upcoming solo album. One of them, “Empty Walls” is transparent in its intent: to redirect our attention away from the rhetoric and towards the tragic losses of humanity in our invasion of Iraq.

Of course, it’s nothing less than the politically supercharged wake-up call we’ve come to expect from System of a Down and Serj Tankian.

This video leaves little left unsaid and bears reposting and replaying. Bring the troops home…if not immediately, then at least bring them home alive.