October 2nd couldn’t have been a more beautiful day for a rally. I had gotten on a bus at 11pm the night before to travel to Washington D.C. for the One Nation Working Together rally. Over 400 organizations endorsed the rally’s platform of Jobs, Justice and Education. By the end of the day rally organizers reported that over 175,000 people attended, perhaps that is overstating it a bit, though there were quite a lot of people gathered. The argument over how it stacked up to Glenn Beck’s rally for a homogeneous America back in August will be something that we’ll have to leave to the political pundits.
The main body of the march and the main organizers were members of unions and the NAACP. Jobs were definitely the focus. It was all very posh up towards the front with huge speakers and screens and areas cordoned off for particular group affiliations. I did a loop to take it all in and then ended up over at the corner of Constitution and 14th where a (much smaller) number of anti-war and justice organizations were doing a pre-rally, rally.
For the most part I was heartened by the thoughtful posters I saw and the speakers I heard.
It was particularly important that a number of groups had posters that made explicit the contradiction between the billions in US aid to Israel and our failing economic system here in America. Occupation, whether in Iraq or Palestine, was also on the minds and signs of many.
Michael McPhearson from Veterans for Peace, during the pre-rally, made what I thought was the most important comment of the day. He said, and I paraphrase: For the first time this progressive rally is not explicitly anti-war/anti-imperialist. We aren’t the main organizers of this rally. So, it’s up to us, when we join them to make the connections. We have to reach out to them.
Which is why as we joined the main rally it was so disheartening to suddenly be surrounded by mostly young, mostly white, anti-war activists chanting “Intifada, Intifada. Long live the Intifada!” Which is in no way to suggest that I don’t whole-heartedly support Palestinian’s continued resistance by whatever means they choose to fight the occupation. Unequivocally, I do.
And it is not to suggest that marchers were uninformed. Most chants were witty and relevant and most of the signs carried showed a well thought out analysis. Chants that made me cringe were in the minority. But I’m going to be a bit critical here. Because I think Michael McPhearson is dead right. We have to make the connections, we have to reach out, we have to educate. We can’t afford to drive people who should be our allies away.
And more importantly, I have to ask: how do these words and actions compare to the words and actions of our Palestinian brothers and sisters to whom we should always look for guidance in any solidarity activity?
During the time I lived in the West Bank I was struck, as are many people I’ve spoken with, at how extraordinarily intentional most of the Palestinians I spoke with were when discussing the occupation. Their self stated goal was to educate me so I could return home and educate my fellow Americans. From a Palestinian acquaintance who helped me organize my stay: I don’t want to tell you too many of my own ideas, you’ll go, you’ll see for yourself. To people I met on the street who would patiently, with facts, lay out their analysis of the occupation.
Now “Long live the Intifada” might be a powerful statement in certain contexts. But when you’re chanting in the context of this rally, is that really the best way to start making connections between the place of US billions in the occupation of Palestine for people who might have prime time news misunderstanding of what the Intifada represents? Are you reaching out to educate about the occupation? Or are you venting your own frustration and anger?
When you chant: “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” what are you trying to impart? Are you advocating for a one state solution? The right of return? Or do you want to send all non-Arab Israelis “back to Europe” which is how it could easily be misconstrued. Statements like that are totally decontextualized and most people at the main rally were probably not at all familiar the occupation of Palestine, let alone with the nuances of proposals to end the occupation.
So let’s think about why we march and remember that we have a responsibility to educate. The facts are on our side. Don’t give anyone an excuse to ignore Palestine.
Thanks for those courageous observations, Jo.
Myself, I’ve always, in all contexts, cringed at “Long live the Intifada” chant – I want it not to have a long life, but to succeed and be over with as soon as possible, so the Palestinians can finally have what virtually every one of them I’ve talked to says s/he wants: a normal life!
I agree.
Contrariwise, a peaceful Third Intifada + BDS + a U.S. Justice for Palestine movement with a significant Jewish-American presence = Breakthrough*.
*justice for Palestine attained
“Are you advocating for a one state solution”
should be
“Are you advocating a one state solution”
“For” is necessary when “advocate” is a noun, but superfluous when it is a verb.
RE: “So let’s think about why we march and remember that we have a responsibility to educate. The facts are on our side. Don’t give anyone an excuse to ignore Palestine.” – Erlich
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org
Lakoff is a moron. Contrary to what most Americans think, Europeans hate taxes just as much as their American counterparts, and they also love tax relief, which is the only reason obnoxious people like Berlusconi keep getting re-elected. In general, Euros are more willing to pay taxes, because they assume that the tax revenue is going to people of their own ethnicity mostly, not people of other ethnicities. Tax protest is all about ethnicity, and to the extent that Europe becomes more diverse, I would expect, just as is currently the case with Holland, that there will be more tax protesting in the future in Europe.
The other thing is that I would like to note the myth that Europeans pay more taxes than Americans. If you just count the Federal or national government, then yes, Euros pay more taxes, but the fact is that Americans pay taxes to the Federal gov’t, the state gov’t, the county gov’t and the city gov’t. Americans pay way more in property taxes than most Euros. If you live in some place like New Jersey or New York or Conn or Mass, you play way, way more taxes than people in countries like Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and most people in the UK. Having lived in Spain and Italy, and gotten pay checks there, I can tell you that this is a fact, even if you live in the wealthy north of Italy. Also, there are lots of ways to avoid paying taxes in Europe that are unavailable to Americans. If you live in Italy, it is very easy to pop over the border to Switzerland and open a money market account. If you use cash to open the account, the money is untraceable.
As for Lakoff’s other comment, anyone who doesn’t understand that “partial-birth abortions” are one of the most insane abominations known to humankind is a moral mental-case. It has nothing to do with language– listen to one of the few ObGyn residents who has actually seen one of these done. The people who do them are the equivalent of Dr. Mengele. A fetus at 6 months is a sentient being, just like any domestic animal is a sentient being, and it is certainly more of a sentient being than someone who is in a coma. One should ask oneself why all of the later have rights, where as the former does not. Again, the fact that most reasonable people from the left and the right are against this mad practice has nothing to do with language– it is the practice itself that is heinous.
i think Lakoff is very good. I would recommend his (and Mark Johnson’s) “Metaphors We Live By” to get introduced. It’s linguistics but it’s accessible.
Moral Politics is his big work about the structure of liberal and conservative concepts. It’s summarized in ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’, which was written with the elections in mind.
One challenging part of Lakoff’s treatment of metaphor and framing is that when you’re coming from rationalist truth based thinking there’s a good chance you’ll either end up in some form of relativism or else in blanket dismissal. Another challenge is to get the right feel of how constraining ‘framing’ works. Don’t think of a straightjacket. Rather start by seeing them as a structure that causes some thoughts to become readily available and accessible, while others are harder to reach.
Jeff Halper refers to Lakoff. The immediate value of using Lakoff’s framing is the awareness that frames have their internal consistency making them relatively immune to criticism. Therefore it’s better to develop, to enrich your parallel framing of the conflict, Halper calls it the human rights framework , instead of investing the bulk of your efforts in unmasking the israeli myths. Note that there’s an uneasy flavor of relativism here which takes some time to get a handle on.