Josh Healey

posted by Josh Healey on Apr 27

The students at UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine sent this notice out today, which I got via Jewish Voice for Peace us to send you the notice below. As my friend at JVP said, “This is a chance for you to show your support and to witness a moving, historic debate. We’ll be there, and we hope to see you there too.”

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Berkeley ASUC Senate Debate on Divestment: Round III
Wednesday 4/28/2010 8 pm, Pauley Ballroom in the MLK Building
Corner of Telegraph Av and Bancroft Way

This Wednesday night you have a chance to stand up for universal human rights standards and to object to Cal’s profiting from war crimes and occupation.

Following the veto by the ASUC President’s of a 16-4 vote in the student senate in support of the “UC Divestment from War Crimes” bill, there will be a vote and debate to override the veto again this Wednesday night starting at 8:00 PM. The bill calls for the removal of ASUC and UC investments in companies that supply the Israeli government with weaponry used to commit violations of international law, human rights law, and, in the judgment of the UN, war crimes. It also establishes an ASUC committee to look into a comprehensive divestment policy targeting companies that enable war crimes throughout the world.

Please come show your support.

For more information on Berkeley Divestment please see:

http://www.caldivestfromapartheid.com/

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/impunity-war-crimes-gaza-southern-israel-recipe-further-civilian-suffering-20090702

Please respect the following wishes from SJP:

1. Please do not bring any outside literature or fliers for any other groups.
2. Please do not bring flags, banners or signs.
3. Please do not shout or respond antagonistically to speakers whose views make you uncomfortable or upset.
4. Please do not engage in side arguments or debates with groups or individuals that may try to antagonize you. Remember that we are here to participate in a student senate hearing.

Event: ASUC Final Senate Hearing on Veto of Divetment Bill SB118A
Start Time: Wednesday, April 28 at 8:00pm
Where: Pauley Ballroom, in the  MLK building, UC Berkeley

posted by Josh Healey on Apr 20

“We’re still swimming against the current, but the tide is slowly turning in favor of justice.”

That’s my friend Naomi’s take of the ongoing back-and-forth at UC-Berkeley over Israel/Palestine. Last month, the Berkeley student senate voted 16-4 to officially recommend that the UC Regents divest from two American companies (GE and United Technologies) who supplied Israel with weapons and materials used in war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. To me, this is exactly the type of strategic divestment that the Palestinian solidarity movement should be pursuing: rather than a blanket ‘boycott of Israel’ (which is vague and potentially problematic), this bill targets specific companies with a hard record of supporting the Israeli occupation. I’m with that 100%.

Unfortunately, the student council president was not with that, and succumbed to the pressure of conservative/moderate pro-Israel groups by vetoing the bill. Last week, the senate met and debated whether to overturn the veto — and literally hundreds of students, community members, and even a 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who flew in from St. Louis came to speak their minds. Not surprisingly, the “institutional Jewish community” (Hillel, AIPAC, and my ‘liberal’ J Street friends) came out in force against the divestment bill. But what was so beautiful to hear about was that there may have been MORE Jews there speaking FOR divestment. If not in numbers, definitely in spirit.

We need to hear foremost from Palestinian voices, because they are the people being brutalized in the Mideast and literally SILENCED — both there and here. AND, we need Jews to stand up and be counted. To say ‘not in our name.’ And to do so not just in private conversations with our one liberal cousin, but in public forums, state capitols, and synagogues. THANK YOU to all the Berkeley students and activists of every background who have brought the struggle and debate this far.

It’s not over.

The vote was tabled last week, and will be brought back up for discussion this Wednesday at 7pm at Eshleman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus (near Bancroft and Telegraph). If you’re in the Bay, come through. I’ll be there. It may be a long night, but we know — it’s a long fight.

I couldn’t be there last week, but here’s who was: that 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who flew in from St. Louis. Her name is Hedy Epstein, and she came to speak FOR divestment. Hear why:

If that’s not enough, read this first-hand report from my friends at Jewish Voice for Peace. It’s long, but it’s powerful:

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Dear Josh,

Being a part of the tremendous coalition effort to pass a divestment bill at Berkeley was quite simply an ecstatic experience.

As my colleague Sydney Levy said, “The movement grew by an enormous leap today.”

First, the vote itself: after the UC Berkeley Student Senate originally voted on March 18, by a margin of 16-4, to divest from companies that profit from the occupation, that vote was vetoed by the Senate president. The Senate needed 14 votes to overturn his veto, but early this morning, after an epic 10 plus hour meeting, senators found they had only 13 yes votes with one abstention. So the students tabled a vote to overturn the veto. This means the veto stands but can still be overturned later–there will be much continued lobbying and activism in the coming weeks. (Meanwhile, some weeks ago AIPAC openly threatened to take over the UC government to block the bill.)

But in many ways, the vote itself was not the star of this story. For anyone who was there last night and until 7:30 this morning when the forum ended, it was clear what the future looks like.

For one, the smart money is on the members of UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice with Palestine (SJP), the group leading this effort. They are a remarkable multi-ethnic group that seemingly includes every race, religion and ethnicity including Muslims and Jews, and Israelis and Palestinians. They are just brilliant thinkers and organizers and driven by a clear sense of justice and empathy. They spent a year researching and writing the divestment bill, and I can’t express how much I love and respect them and how much hope they make me feel. And there are students just like them on every other campus in the world.

Second, the feeling on campus and in the room was electric. We filled an enormous room that fits 900. Most stayed through the entire night. If you can imagine, the evening started with remarkable statements by divestment supporters Judith Butler, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, Richard Falk, Hatem Bazian and George Bisharat. And then the extraordinary parade of students and community members who spoke on both sides of the issue until it was past sunrise.

And though the final vote still hangs in the balance, the fact remains that the vast majority of the Senate voted to divest. The bill garnered the support of some of the most famous moral voices in the world, a good chunk of the Israeli left (9 groups and counting), nearly 40 campus groups (almost all student of color groups and one queer organization) plus another 40 US off-campus groups.

In addition, the room was filled with Jewish divestment supporters of every age including grandmothers and aunts and uncles and students. Our staff, activist members, and Advisory Board members like Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Noam Chomsky each played critical roles in the effort. And of course, all of you who generated over 5,000 letters of support.

So much has changed since Gaza

Just 2 years ago we secured only 4 pages of Jewish endorsement letters for a similar selective divestment effort. This time, we put together 29 pages of major Jewish endorsement statements (which you can download here), and the list continues to grow by the day. We also made 400 bright green stickers that said “Another (fill in the blank) for human rights. Divest from the Israeli occupation” and gave every single last one away.

As attorney Reem Salahi said to me, “When I was a student here in law school 2 years ago, no one spoke about divestment. Now everyone is talking about it.”

For those of us there, it was clear–the room was with divestment. The senators were with divestment. And given the endorsements that kept pouring in up to the last second, from Nobel prize winners, from Israeli peace groups, from leading academics and activists–it seemed like the whole world was with divestment.

There were a number of Jewish students who expressed seemingly real discomfort if the divestment bill should pass. (As it turned out, they were repeating these talking points almost verbatim, with histrionics encouraged.) Many said they wouldn’t feel safe on campus, others said they would feel silenced, a few said young Jews would no longer want to come to UC Berkeley.

While feeling for their discomfort, it was difficult to watch how speaker after anti-divestment speaker seemed unable to distinguish between the discomfort of infrequent dirty looks, and rare nasty or bigoted name-calling, and the “discomfort” of having your home demolished or of having only toxic water to give to your family or of being shot or stuck at a checkpoint for hours in the sun.

They were unable to make the distinction between “feeling silenced” because the bill might pass against their wishes, and being silenced because you are jailed for your nonviolent activism or because you can’t get a visa to travel or because your story is virtually invisible in film, in history books, in the mainstream media, everywhere.

I of course wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Students of color, and one student senator in particular, beautifully articulated what it meant to come to campus “already marginalized.” That is certainly a part of why so many student of color campus groups support the divestment effort, and why the links between being anti-racist in Israel/Palestine and anti-racist in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are particularly strong, clear, and important — and these students know it.

Which makes the statements of the anti-divestment Jews all the more striking in juxtaposition to the statements of the many Jewish students who supported divestment, each of whom said, “I feel safe on this campus.” And the progressive Jewish UC-Berkeley senator who said, “this divest bill will actually make me feel safe” and “this [bill] is creating space for Jews to have a community here. I’ve never been prouder to be a Jew.”

And that, if anything, suggests the most exciting part of what happened here.

It’s so clear to me how the organizing itself, and the ways it brought all of us, but especially Jews and Muslims and Arabs of every age together, is the solution. When peace happens, it will radiate outward from these relationships, mirrored in the Israeli-Palestinian relationships in places like Bil’in and Sheikh Jarrah. This was so apparent when I saw, on one side of the room, Jewish and Palestinian and Muslim students literally leaning on each other and holding hands for support–and on the other side of the room, a relatively small (and by their own admonition, fearful) group of Jews that seemed to mostly have each other. It was very jarring and poignant and deeply sad.

The future is clear and it’s already here. It is a multicultural (and queer-integrated) universe bound together by a belief in full equality. Period.

Silence and apathy are the friends of the status quo. Sunlight, debate, facts, passion- these are what justice requires to grow. Open debates like the one UC Berkeley held last night simply must happen at campuses everywhere. The students of SJP have already won by making this debate happen. The whole campus is talking about Israel and Palestine. Last night’s forum and vote will forever impact the lives of every person who was in that room. And the new connections made have strengthened the movement in ways none of us imagined.

No wonder Israeli Consulate General Akiva Tor stayed for the entire vote. If I were he and it were my job to protect Israel’s occupation, I’d be worried. Very worried.

This morning, not hours after the meeting ended, I found an email in my inbox from an SJP group at another campus. “We want to introduce a divestment bill on campus and were wondering if you might assist us with speakers…”

Let this new stage begin.

In gratitude,

Cecilie Surasky,
Deputy Director
Jewish Voice for Peace

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So we keep swimming. Someday, hopefully soon, the tide will fully turn and justice will be won.

posted by Josh Healey on Apr 9

Are we still not allowed to call this a recession?

Last week, the giant NUMMI car factory closed down in nearby Fremont (30 minutes south of Oakland). Just like that, the last auto plant in California and only unionized Toyota factory in the country was gone. 5,000 jobs just at the plant gone, another 20,000 that supported it in danger.

My years in Wisconsin gave me a glimpse into life (and death) in the Rust Belt. Factory closings in Milwaukee, Racine, Janesville: these towns of my friends and co-op roommates are shells of what they used to be. Corporate outsourcing doesn’t just stop machines from running, it’s destroys the lives of millions of people.  It’s not deindustrialization, it’s dehumanization.

I’ve spent less time in the Bay Area, but I’ve been to Fremont a couple times for work. In solidarity with the NUMMI workers, and anti-war soldiers, here’s a short story I wrote last year. From the Bay to Afghanistan and back.

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Of Writers and Warriors

Today is my first day at the new gig. For the next ten weeks, I’m going to free young minds from the terrorism of standardized pedagogy and equip them with the literary weapons of mass liberation. Translation: I’m teaching a poetry workshop every Tuesday and Thursday at the local high school.

This school is less local than usual, though. It’s in Fremont, a semi-industrial town of 200,000 between Oakland and San Jose that can’t make up its mind if it’s a suburb or a legitimate city in its own right. Before today, all I knew about the place was that it was home to the biggest car factory in Cali: 5,000 workers, the only unionized Toyota workers in the country. And of course that the A’s were trying to move there from Oakland. But what company wasn’t trying to get out of Oakland?

When I get to the school, the teacher who has organized my workshop meets me at the main office. Looking out at the sea of students showing off their faux-hawks and headscarves on their way to class, she notices my interest.
“This school, this town is the immigrants you never hear about on CNN,” the teacher says with equal parts pride and warning. “Kids coming from the Philippines, Russia, Peru, a whole bunch from Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan? All I knew about that country was Taliban, mullahs, burqas, and the fact that every military power since Alexander the Great had met its demise in its mountains. My boy Kevin has been stationed in Kabul for three months. He’s 23.

* * *

Ahmed is 17. Born in Kabul, raised in Fremont, his dad builds Corollas and is a UAW shop steward, pushing for better health care in the next contract. When I ask the students at the opening workshop if they have any experience with poetry, Ahmed says his father used to read him On the Road by Jack Kerouac because he thought it was about cars.

The first workshop I always do is some form of Where I’m From exercise. Going off examples from Carl Sandburg (Chicago) and Mos Def (New York), I ask the 12 teenage girls and Ahmed, the only boy, to personify their hometown, to tell us the beautiful, brutal truth of where they grew up. During the sharing, we hear stories of a prostitute who wanted to be a lawyer (Manila), a single father who can’t afford the rent (East Palo Alto), and a strong cowboy on the move (Michoacán).

Ahmed, who has been clapping the loudest after every poem and I’m suspecting may be less interested in being the next Kerouac than being around 12 teenage girls with a soft spot for love poems, doesn’t want to share.

“Come on, man, there’s no wrong answers,” I prompt him. “This is just a first draft. We all just want to hear what you got. Don’t you girls want to hear Ahmed’s piece?”

“Yeah, c’mon Ahmed!” The girls’ cheers do the trick.

“Ok, fine,” he smiles. “Coming straight outta Free-town / we got BART ending here, it’s all going down / punks don’t stick ‘round long / but from the tracks to the bay / I rep where I’m from…”

And another 12 bars of how gangsta Fremont is. Not bad rhymes actually, compared to what I’ve heard in other workshops. It’s just not what I think Fremont really is. Or more importantly, what Ahmed is. 12 bars, and not a single mention of Kabul.

* * *

Kevin’s main assignment in his “new home for the next twelve to eighteen months,” as he wrote me in the letter, was to protect foreign officials (governmental and corporate) coming in and out of Kabul. Not exactly what he was hoping for (that I ever knew), but at least he didn’t have to leave the capital – that’s where things really got ugly.

Kevin was no pacifist, but he wasn’t a gun-toting, Fox News-quoting militiaman either. Joining the National Guard last year after his Cal State tuition got higher than Bush on a Texas bender, he never thought he’d actually point a gun at anyone. Coming west from DC five years before me, American higher education sent Kevin to Kabul, and not to study abroad.

So I could understand why Kevin was pissed when, on his first day, he was given the task of guarding the new president of Harvard. Instated after her Ivy League predecessor was run out for saying women were biologically inferior in math and science, she was in town on behalf of the State Department to reopen Kabul University and show how the U.S. disposal of the Taliban had opened doors for Afghan women in education.

As he stood at those very doors holding his AK-47, Kevin looked out at the hundreds of students that made up the incoming freshmen class and noticed only one actual pair of Afghan breasts. Looking at their owner, he saw a striking young woman with deep gray eyes sneaking out from under a turquoise hijab. By instinct, he smiled in her direction. To his surprise, she smiled back.

* * *

The Fremont workshops are progressing well. The students write with increasing passion and poise, learning how to transform a tired cliché into an original creation. More students are joining in, even a couple more boys. Ahmed really gets into it now, enjoys creating complex rhyme schemes and extended metaphors. He’s even starting to move beyond the MTV themes of money and women that every teenage male poet-who-wants-to-be-a-rapper starts out with.
In our fourth week, Ahmed reads a piece that stays true to his hip-hop rhythm but explores more vulnerable territory.

Line after line, he raps about wanting to get a tattoo and his father’s subsequent refusal. After referencing the Koran, he spits, “I’m trying to paint my body as sacred text / ink to pink skin, Father, please let me get blessed.”

It’s his best piece yet, and I tell him so. After the workshop, with everyone else having left, I ask him, “So, what kind of tattoo are you trying to get?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs. “You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Why not?” I say. “It’s not one of those ones that you think is a Chinese symbol meaning Ocean Soul but is really Japanese and means Cheap Sushi, is it?”

“Nah,” he laughs. “All my boys have it inked on their left shoulder. It’s our crew initials. Not a gang or nothing. Just our crew. Forever Afghan Gunners.”

“Wait, wait…Forever Afghan Gunners. You’re gonna tattoo those initials? This might not be the type of crew you were thinking it was.”

“Man, stop playing. It’s not even like that. It’s just, everyone else has their crew for protection – the Mexicans, the blacks, the whites (except they call them cops). We gotta watch our backs too. Last year, some punk kids from Union City beat my sister up, called her ‘Terrorist! Terrorist!’ They broke her nose and ribs, man. We gotta know who our people are, who we can count on.”

I think back to DC, when Kevin and I used to break up high school fights between different groups, the unsuccessful UN mediators of the senior class, saving our own fists for each other.

“Yeah, but who ARE you, Ahmed?” I ask, my voice rising. “Is this tattoo for you, or for those so-called friends who you have to lie to every week when you come here? Are you trying to be a sacred text, or just another tat up in San Quentin?”

“Man, I’m just trying to be remembered,” he says and walks out the classroom.

* * *

Kevin and Muneera, as she told him her name later that day at the university, carried out their romance in secret for three months. After his fifteen-hour shifts, and before she left for class, they shared three intense hours together in her dorm room. With his Army pass, he could get nearly anywhere in Kabul, and since she was the only occupant of the female floor in the dorm, no one ever saw them together.

They tried not to talk about the war that brought them together. That attempt lasted two days. After that, they talked more than they made love, and the conversations were even sweatier than the sex.

“If you’re so against Bush, why did you join his army?”

“If you’re so against the U.S., why do you go to the school we set up?”

As lovers and students, warriors and writers, they had more questions than answers. Muneera passed her first semester exams as an engineering major, Kevin guarded various ministers and CEO’s without firing a bullet. They both heard the stories – the soldiers who killed three unarmed boys outside the city; the resurgent Taliban beating women who didn’t cover their heads. Both with rumored government support. Kevin and Muneera had both grown up with violence. The only thing that changed was the names of the dead.

One day, a bomb went off outside Kandahar, near Muneera’s home village. Twenty people died, mostly women and children. When Kevin arrived at her dorm that night, she was gone, leaving a room full of textbooks and a note with his name on it. It read:

Love can’t conquer all.
Neither can Americans.

* * *

Ahmed never came back for a fifth workshop. I continued to teach at Fremont, and we produced a nice anthology of student writing, one poem shorter than I’d hoped. Driving home after the last session, I stopped at the Toyota factory, its smoke blending seamlessly into the East Bay fog. I dropped off a copy of the poems, then went home to work on lesson plans.