At the D.C. March for Palestine
Lest anyone mistake me, I’ll begin here by noting my personal history as an admirer of Jewish culture and tradition, having written about authors like Hannah Arendt, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and others. I fall into the old cliche about having “lots of Jewish friends,” etc. And they have inspired much of my work. A friend once jokingly referred to me as “a rabid pro-Semite”. At one point I even thought of converting to Judaism.
That said, I didn’t hesitate to join my daughter and her Palestinian friend last week for D.C.’s March for Palestine where for the first time, in the crowd of tens of thousands, you might say I saw the face of the Palestinian people. It moved me greatly.
In actuality, what I saw were lots of smiling keffiyeh-wearing grandmothers, flag-waving children, and impassioned young people holding up signs (“Resist until Return”, “There’s No Both Sides to a Genocide”, “Biden: In November, We’ll Remember”), all of whom came together in my mind in a kind of group portrait.
In many of these faces, I detected something else: a look of wary celebration worn by people heartened at finally being seen politically and now standing up amidst so many others of their community.
As I moved through the crowd captured in the photo above, I noticed dozens of people holding up a huge sheet of some kind—like a huge Jewish wedding huppah, I first thought, incongruously enough. I couldn’t tell what it was.
Only later when I saw the crowd photos did I grasp it was an enormous Palestinian flag, the very one in the photo above, in fact.
Standing next to me at one point was a bearded older man holding a small hand-lettered sign reading simply “42:42.” I asked him what the sign meant. He surprised me with his idiomatic reply, “Check it out.” Guessing it might be a Koranic verse, I attempted to google it but couldn’t connect amidst so many thousands of live cellphones. He came over to me looking a bit conciliatory. “You were checking if it’s the Koran?”, he said. “Yes, it’s from the Koran.”
“The blame is only against those who oppress men and wrong-doing and insolently transgress beyond bounds through the land, defying right and justice: for such there will be a penalty grievous.
Whether the Koran was speaking of a “penalty” in this life or in the hereafter, it’s clear that Hamas enacted something grievous on October 7.
Another figure—looking quite American—was handing out flyers with the heading “Victory to the Palestinian Struggle”. Its list of demands—a mix of humane, militant, and utopian proposals—included a halt to the bombing and invasion of Gaza, a renewed intifada, opening of the Egyptian border with Gaza, massive international aid, condemnation of genocide, bringing down the Netanyahu government, and a new Arab Spring. The flyer’s co-sponsors included the International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International and a group called By Any Means Necessary. Other advocacy groups had a presence as well.
We sometimes see commentators wondering aloud whether Palestine will follow the path to liberation taken by societies like Algeria or South Africa. In the near term, it’s hard to see a hopeful path of this kind, only a terrible and destabilizing period of mutual violence.
My unexpert observation is simply that the two most important powers in this region’s conflicts—Israel and the U.S.—are both countries with a deep and dangerous conviction of their own exceptionalism. Which is likely to mean an evasion of responsibility by both at a particularly murderous world-historical moment.
Some resources for greater clarity in these times. Here’s an excellent group Substack written by informed observers:
Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson has written a helpful article on the unfolding Gaza catastrophe here.
For the long view—especially important in this crisis—historian Jerome Slater talks about the span of fiercely contested Israeli history between 1917 and 2020 in his book, Mythologies Without End in a YouTube interview here.
Why You Should Join a Club
My friend and colleague Pete Davis and his filmmaker sister Rebecca have spent the best part of the last five years making a doc film about the collapse of membership and belonging in the U.S.—the “bowling alone” phenomenon frequently cited as a key factor in the loneliness epidemic.
So it was wonderful last Thursday evening to catch a screening of the final product—called “Join or Die”—at Georgetown University. Here’s a short description:
JOIN OR DIE is a film about why you should join a club — and why the fate of America depends on it. In this feature documentary, follow the half-century story of America's civic unraveling through the journey of legendary Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam, whose groundbreaking "Bowling Alone" research into America's decades-long decline in community connections could hold the answers to our democracy's present crisis. Flanked by influential fans and scholars — from Hillary Clinton, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Eddie Glaude Jr., Raj Chetty, and Priya Parker — as well as inspiring groups building community in neighborhoods across the country, join Bob as he explores three urgent civic questions: What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis? And, most importantly…What can we do about it?
After the screening, Pete and Rebecca were part of a panel which included Robert Putnam, Justin Giboney (The AND Campaign), Eboo Patel (Interfaith America), and Nicole Perone (ESTEEM), moderated by Kim Daniels of GU’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. The video of the panel is here.
The title “Join or Die” is a reference to Putnam’s research indicating that club membership can apparently lengthen your life expectancy, rather like the way loneliness seems to shorten it.
For what is essentially an explainer film about a social science concept, “Join or Die’ is surprisingly entertaining. Several themes intermingle throughout: 1) a portrait of famed academic Robert Putnam whose “Bowling Alone” made the phrase social capital famous; 2) a retracing of his steps to show how he gradually realized the massive scope of his discovery about the decline in American community life; 3) numerous cameos of wonderful individuals and their groups (the Odd Fellows Lodge in Waxahachie Texas, for example) still working to build up connection.
The film is not available for streaming quite yet, although you can request to host a local showing. The film’s website is here.
“You Can’t Say That!”
Our recent webinar (“The Stronger Towns Conversation”) was to have included my friend and Strong Citizen Ron Green, a resident of leafy Albany Oregon, but technical probs prevented that. So I’m offering a bit of his story here.
I’ve known Ron since childhood, following his various careers as a professional musician (jazz and bluegrass bassist, French horn) and as a candidate for public office in his adopted town back in 2012.
Albany is in the Willamette Valley just east of Corvallis. Its traditional economy was around timber logging and paper mills.
I always knew Ron to be a visionary guy. So I wasn’t too surprised to hear for his run for the statehouse he hired a campaign manager whose job was to quietly advise the candidate after some radical statement, “You can’t say that!” (One wonderful instance: Ron offhandedly remarked at a campaign event that people who owned big Ford F-150s could help the planet by sharing their trucks. Stunned silence.)
“It was after my unsuccessful bid for representative that I discovered Strong Towns,” he told me. “Back in 1973, Governor Tom McCall had somehow gotten the first Urban Growth Boundary bill through, hoping to both conserve farmland and avoid sprawl. But that kind of thinking had not reached down to the local level. When I was running, the Albany city council’s members were mostly folks installed by the Chamber of Commerce.”
So Ron became a Strong Citizen in a non-governmental sense. “I was floored by reading the Strong Towns book and I bought a dozen copies, including one for each city council person. As I walked around town thinking about all the conversations I had had in my race, I handed out little flyers I printed up with Strong Towns ideas—the growth Ponzi scheme, the cult of infrastructure. One of the city council members then got fired up and bought another twenty copies for his friends.”
Ron went on to become a member of his town’s Planning Commission (“I got to cast a vote eliminating parking minimums—that was really satisfying”) and their Traffic Safety Commission. Another shift occurred when his town went over 50,000 in population, thus moving from a “micropolitan” designation to a “metropolitan” one—i.e., it became a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
“This meant we had to comply with state land management standards—including in our state the 2019 elimination of zoning for single-family homes in localities, following the lead of Minneapolis and other places.”
Ron thinks the Albany city council today—whose members are either women or people of color—would be open to much progressive ideas than only a decade ago. “[Strong Towns founder] Chuck Marohn likes to say we want places that build wealth. But how do we define wealth? Certainly you can define it in other ways than as money.” Which might lead to your town becoming even stronger, of course.
A Time to Resist and Build
Coming out of the pandemic, the Virginia Solidarity Economy Network (VASEN) has been mostly a virtual affair, as I learned from their director Matthew Slaats. Until recnetly, when a group of 60 national organizers and 30 more local organizers convened in Richmond, VA October 20-22, for the in-person Resist & Build Summit, sponsored by the US Solidarity Economy Network.
The event at Richmond Hill Retreat Center aimed to strengthen relationships and vision for a growing movement dedicated to building a world beyond scarcity, crisis, and war. Other participating groups included Common Futures, the Democracy Collaborative, the Well-Being Economy Alliance, Native Roots, Boston Impact Initiative, the Highlander Center, Incite Focus, among many others.
They were joined by VA-based Dandelion Health, Rag & Bones Bicycle Cooperative, The Hive Project, and George Mason’s Next System Studies.
The weekend began with a public event focusing on bringing national and local knowledge together to spur further action and build solidarity. Next came sessions and workshops on:
community production,
building state networks,
developing citizen assemblies,
the theatre of the oppressed, and
regional organizing.
From these conversations participants strategized about the ways the movement could collaborate better, develop circles of action, and develop specific goals for the coming year, including a follow up virtual event in early 2024.
To learn more about the VASEN, their contact page is here.
Big thanks to all you new paid subscribers!
See you next time—peace.