Tag: racism

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

I saw “42” when it came out and liked it a lot.

It is hard to stay focused on changing the world when you look around and see not only the same battles all over again, but in many cases the same increasingly elderly activists joining those battles. For me, the wave of youth activism that started with Seattle in 1999 and crested with the Occupy movement–and will return when we least expect it—is very exciting, because it means there IS a critical mass for social change one and two generations younger than us.

I also avoid burnout by regularly thinking about all the areas where we HAVE made progress. And while police violence is an area that needs a LOT of work (since the 1960s, I haven’t understood why they reach for bullets instead of stun guns first), I think about what it was like for blacks in South Africa, Rhodesia, and the American South in my own lifetime…the way the environmental movement has gone from fringe to mainstream…the shattering of the idea common when I was a kid that the only appropriate careers for women were teaching and nursing and domestic work…the relatively new understanding that domestic violence and hate speech and school bullying are crimes we don’t have to tolerate…the string of fallen-dictator dominoes around the world, from throwing off the shackles of colonialism in Africa to the Arab Spring. (We may not always find the replacement governments an improvement, but the truth is, when the people say ENOUGH, governments topple and there is a brief space for something better. Once in a while, as in Mandela’s South Africa, that better thing actually emerges victorious.)

In other words, I look around and I see that within the brief span of my own lifetime (I turn 58 on Wednesday), we’ve made very real change on many fronts, even if it feels like we’re running in place or even backsliding.

These are what gives me hope and keeps me working for peace, justice, and the planet.

The above is my response to a friend posting her response to the movie, “42,” about Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball. She wrote,

Black Lives Mattered in that struggle against racism in baseball–perhaps the beginning of the civil rights movement…Sixty years later, same struggle. Oh, God help us win this time ’round. Does the arc of justice bend?

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Reading a newsletter from a marketer I generally find thought-provoking, sincere, and personable, I was rather surprised to read an article where she took one of her subscribers to task for objecting to the word “sucks” on her home page.

To me, that word inserts an unnecessary barrier, the more ironic because she bases her whole approach on connecting person-to-person.

So of course, I wrote her a note:

As some one who does my best to–and *usually* succeeds–find the best even in the grumps (in that way, I’m like your late father, I guess)–may I put another possible interpretation out there? It’s likely that this person was just looking for an excuse to act out–BUT it’s also possible that he had good reason to be offended by the S word. I personally don’t use that word, because it can be can be interpreted as homophobic–being derived from a longer expletive that starts with a c, the first four letters of which represent the male organ (I’m not being a prude here by not stating the word, but I do have a goal of avoiding the spamfilters). For the same reasons, I don’t use the word “niggardly”, even though its etymology has nothing to do with the n-word–I don’t want people who don’t know that etymology to think I’m racist.

And there’s a difference between “plain language” and foul language. I grew up on the tough streets of the Bronx, and it was a minefield of F-bombs and other expletives–but I’ve lived in places where cursing is considered not just extremely rude but an offense against religion. So, take your choice–the left -wing or right-wing possibility of why he was teed off.

I don’t remember how I found your list, but I suspect I would not have subscribed if the first thing I’d seen was “disconnection sucks”. I have a thicker skin than to be offended, but there are always better ways to say it, and I would not have wanted to get into the network of someone whose language could have been interpreted as mean and deliberately offensive, because I surround myself with people who empower others and don’t denigrate them.

Luckily, I found you some other way (I have no idea how our paths crossed, actually)–and I know you to be a caring and empowering person. But think about the message you’re putting out here, intentionally or not. This is not so much a question of political correctness as it is of establishing unnecessary barriers. yes, I understand that you want to drive the wrong people away, and I respect that. I do the same thing. For instance, when someone approaches me about working together, there’s a paragraph in my reply that says,

“Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.”

But I wonder if what your doing might drive the RIGHT people away too–especially since to me, it is so out-of-harmony with your real core message of marketing through the power of personal story.

I’ll be very curious to receive her response. And meanwhile, how about a response from you? Are curse words a barrier for you? Am I overreacting? Is she unnecessarily defensive? Why, or why not?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

This is very personal to me; my son’s college is about a mile from Copley Square.

He was fine, but he and a group of friends decided to walk home (several miles) rather than take the train as usual.

9/11 was also very personal. I was one connection removed from at least two people who were killed, and it took me two frantic weeks to find out that my ex-housemate from my Brooklyn days, who was at that time living just two blocks from the WTC, was all right.

But what made me want to write tonight was not those deep personal connections. It was a question by my friend @PeterShankman, founder of HARO, about how he can talk about this sort of random violence to his daughter, due to be born in a few days.

My answer, I admit, talked around his question rather than going straight for the center. I wrote:

We explained to our young kids (now 20 and 25) why we were bringing them to protest various wars and injustices and environmental atrocities, and to talk of the importance of NOT accepting evil, that we could always do SOMETHING and whether it worked or not was less important than that we did not turn a blind eye.

Interestingly enough, they both have been involved in social justice work quite a bit. My daughter defended a nerdy male classmate against bullies when she was six, and my son was also six when he organized a children’s fundraiser for Save the Mountain, the environmental group my wife and I started that actually did save our local mountain. I was and still am very proud of them.

I do feel that one of the things we did right as parents is to inculcate our kids both with a sense of social justice and with the knowledge that they can actually have an impact. These were lessons I got from my own mother, the late Gloria Yoshida; as a young mom in New York City, she was one of the white volunteers civil rights groups could call upon to find out if that “already rented” apartment was REALLY rented, or if it was only off the market if a black family came to look at it.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Apparently, a lot of people who voted for Romney would like to secede from the United States.

OK–let’s put aside for now the clear absurdity of this…the condemnation of the idea by Republican governors…the enormous difficulty of getting a majority of any state’s citizens to go along with it…the likelihood that this is based in crude racism…and the zero percent success rate of state secession movements in the United States.

Let’s just say they really do secede.

Most Southern states extract more money from the federal treasury than they pay in. And many people in the region work at US military installations or government offices. Everyone in the region relies on federal funding to maintain their transportation infrastructure, civil defense/disaster response And then of course there are those getting by with the help of federal assistance programs such as food stamps and Social Security (the ones Romney derided as “the 47 percent”).

In other words, if the secession movement succeeds, the secessionist states are going to take a huge economic hit. Bob Cesca, in one of the links cited above, says the federal government could simply starve them out and have them rejoin without military action. He’s probably right.

But here’s something perhaps more important that I don’t hear anyone saying:

If the Red states secede, Democrats will have a whopping majority in Congress and could actually get a much more humane, people-centered society in place–which the Red states would have to accept as reality when they come crawling back in a few years, IF the US will have them back.

Wouldn’t it be grand to have a country with a European style single-payer health plan…a solar-powered economy with jobs for all…a military designed to actually defend our shores instead of pursue imperialist wars in countries where we have no justification for our invasion (can you say Iraq?)…an education system that values science and knowledge, and prepares the next generation to play a leadership role in advancing society through technological progress…and so on?

So I say…let ’em Secede!

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, language, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Bad enough that Arkansas State Senator Kim Hendren called Chuck Schumer ‘that Jew’–but even worse is the anti-Semitic trash talk from so many readers of the New York Daily News story about it.

Eeeew! In 2009, we should be better than that! In fact, that kind of racist crap should have been unacceptable in 1809. No matter what ethnic or racial group is being denigrated, the message needs to go out that this is unacceptable. I’m not blaming the Daily News for having an open comments page, but I wonder about these narrow-minded bigots who are posting.

Mind you, I’m one Jew who does NOT believe in “Israel right or wrong.” But I do believe in treating every person civilly, and in condemning racist behavior.

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