I’m often asked how many people really participated in School Meetings at Sudbury Jerusalem – as if it’s less democratic when fewer people choose to participate. But actually, low participation at meetings can be a sign that democracy is working well.
When we started Sudbury Jerusalem, for a few weeks we had a School Meeting every day.
Most of the proposals, at first, came from those who had been in and around the founding process – mainly staff and children of staff. I was a student and a co-founder, and one of the most active participants.
It took months – dozens of Meetings – for the process to become so established in the school’s culture that many other students made proposals. In parallel, as time went by, fewer and fewer students regularly took part in School Meetings.
The early School Meetings at Sudbury Jerusalem focussed on establishing the rules of the game. We spent hours in heated discussion about School Meeting, Committees, procedures – about how the whole thing works. Not everyone is interested in that kind of thing.
But some members of the community, especially those involved in starting the school, felt strongly about these things, and insisted on being part of these discussions.
Those of us who were more involved than others at the time weren’t trying to contol everything, we were mainly trying to lead by example. We, who had spent so much time in envisioning and preparing the school, wanted to demonstrate what the school’s democracy meant: that any of us can take initiative and put forward proposals for improving things in the school.
In the beginning, most students came to those daily School Meetings. They wanted to see what it’s all about, to make their voice heard, and to find out who makes the decisions. I think a few of them wanted to find out who’s really in charge so that they would know who to rebell against.
After a while, most students would only come to support or oppose some specific proposal.
In my view, this was a benefit of having an established way of doing things. It let people relax and trust the process. You don’t have to personally suffer through boring discussions if you know that decisions are made in a fair and transparent way, and that you can always propose to change them later.
For a while, most School Meetings were attended by the staff and one or two students. We came to see this as a sign that all was well.
Students who didn’t come to Meetings knew what was being discussed and what had been decided, and they knew that they could come and change things if need be. But School Meeting was doing a decent job, so most Meetings were small, almost empty.
Once in a while some proposal would come up which interested a lot of students, and suddenly the room would be full. Like the time when a student proposed to create a petting corner. When the proposal came up she called in a bunch of kids who wanted to make it happen, and they easily got a majority, despite some regular attendees (like myself) being against it.
But in day to day life, the Meeting and most of its decisions just didn’t get in the way. They were usually helpful or unnoticable.
The purpose of School Meetings was to ensure that the school continues to exist and that its members are safe and free to pursue their interests.
As a rule, apart from the first year, it was always a small group who was interested in attending every Meeting. We took this as a sign that things were working well.
Of course, different members have a different ability to participate in that kind of procedure, and that is a form of inequality.
But I think back about two younger friends of mine, A.P. and N.F., whom I knew as the kind of boys who would be interested in anything but School Meeting. Both used to have difficulties with reading and writing, another barrier to their participation. Both of them later became Chairs of School Meeting.
They became interested, they attended meetings and learned more about them, they saw work to do, and they stepped up.
People enter a school – or any organization – with diverse interests, different backgrounds, and different skills. Most are not interested in “running the business”, which is what the Meeting does. So a small group ends up doing that. It’s important that the Meeting stay accessible to new participants, but it ultimately has to focus on its important task – which most people find boring.
There’s just not much more you can do, unless you want to force people to participate, or force them to acquire the skills they’d need to participate effectively. But neither option respects people’s individual freedom and autonomy, so neither option is compatible with the liberal-democratic ideal.
All you can do is keep Meeting accessible and lead by example. If you make use of the Meeting on the one hand, and respect its decisions on the other hand, you show others what the Meeting means. If you do neither, there’s no reason for anyone to participate in it at all.
By the way: I haven’t been posting much, and probably won’t be posting much in the coming weeks either. I’m focussing on my work in linguistics now, which involved more than enough writing, but not of the bloggy kind. Being this focussed is a lot of fun and I want to keep it up while my contract lasts. I expect to post more actively starting in August.
10 Things I Really Like About Living in Israel (Note: This is Not a Sarcastic Title)
[…]
I do not have a positive vision as to what should be here, in terms of political “solutions,” arrangements, et cetera. I do, however, have a very strong sense of what should not be here (for a more detailed list, see: Rothman, Blog About Things That He Thinks Should Not Be, Everyday, All Pages, www.thelefternwall.com). Here’s a metaphor I made up for this friend: let’s say Israel is a garden. There are some people who will try and plant flowers of solutions, of development, of progress here in this garden, and I think that is a good thing and I support them. However, I see my role not as planting flowers, but rather as weeding, weeding out violence, weeding out racism, weeding out oppression, weeding out hatred, et cetera. The weeds here have grown quite powerful, and probably by the fault of no single gardener or even group of gardeners but rather by the breezes, rainfalls, insects and chemicals of history and political circumstance. Someone needs to take them out so that there will be room for others to plant the flowers. If you try to plant a flower of “solution” in a garden overrun with weeds of violence or racism, the flower won’t have much of a chance to grow.
[…]
I can only imagine good coming out of my articulating for readers what it is I love about living here, whether to complicate the picture for those who are overly-excited about Palestine/Palestinians (if you will notice, I don’t often write positive things about Palestine/Palestinians either, and I am not a Palestinian Nationalist, even as I support Palestinians’ right to live in freedom, like everyone else), or to clarify for readers who find my work too critical that I truly do what I do out of love and concern, and a desire to build and improve, even if I think that building needs to come from weeding dangerous phenomena (phenomena, and never people […])
[…]
I will indeed make a list of things I really like. Which is fun for me too.
1. The people. In general I really like Israeli people, even if I disagree with many of them re: politics/Palestine. I like their directness, I like their humor, I like their warmth, I like the diversity of history and of journey and of identity and of belief, I like the way we all share a sort of nutsness, especially Jerusalemites.
I love the garden metaphor, and I also love most of the things on Moriel’s list. Many of them really capture why I miss Israel and care so much about what goes on there. This post, like many on Moriel’s blog, is well worth reading.
Meta note: the lack of posts lately was mainly because of some drama I had, which I won’t get into here. The important thing is that everything’s fine now, even better than fine, and once I’ve finished catching up on some things, I expect to be posting again, for real.
I’ve never been much of a fan of nationalism, or the nation-state. The idea seems to me based on imagined communities, and to invite xenophobia, exclusion, and racism. Most of all, it seems particularist (concerns itself with a small group of people) and I’m a universalist by nature (concerned with all people everywhere.)
However, a recent piece by Yoni Eshpar [Hebrew] allowed me to understand a universalist version of the nation-state ideal.
If I get this right, the idea is this: every person in the world should belong to a group of people called a “nation”; every such “nation” should live in a state in which they are able to participate (ideally, via democratic process); the states should exist to serve the “nations” that participate in it. So in the end, since every person is part of a “nation”, and every “nation” is served by a state in which it can participate, every person in the world has a part of the world to call home, where there is a state that serves and protects them.
This is a nice ideal – but it is woefully unrealistic and will never be achieved.
Let’s set aside the issue of border disputes – which are a serious issue for nation-states almost everywhere in the world.
The critical problem, I think, is that not all states serve their people. Many states actively oppress their people, on political if not ethnic grounds, even if they see themselves as nation-states and even if all of the population is considered to belong to the state’s “nation”.
So long as some states oppress their people, people will have a reason to go out into the world to live amongst other “nations”.
Insisting on the well-being of your own “nation” and saying everyone else should go and get their own state to help becomes an excuse to perpetuate the oppression of others, under the guise of a universal liberation ideology.
So long as there are people who have to run away from the government in their home country, nationalism cannot be truly, honestly universalist. It must always collapse into siege-mentality, particularism, and the accompanying xenophobia. Oppression of minorities is then just a matter of time.
Perhaps in an ideal world, each state would have one “nation”, and each “nation” one state. But we do not live in an ideal world, and it’s long past time to abandon ideologies which can only liberate the people of some other world.
Desmond Tutu writes a passionate call for American divestment in Israel. He gives me some food for thought on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and on my role as an Israeli in the struggle for a just peace.
Justice requires action to stop subjugation of Palestinians
Desmond Tutu, TampaBay.com
A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.
I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel’s discriminatory course.
I’m not entirely sure what I think about the Palestinian BDS campaign.
On one level, I support it because it is a form of non-violent resistance (the Israeli claims that this is “financial terrorism” are absurd and preposterous – what do they not call “terrorism” at this point?)
At the same time, it hurts all Israelis to one degree or another, and that makes it hard for me to really feel enthusiastic about it.
As an Israeli, I need to worry about the internal processes, within Israeli society, that can lead to an equal and just resolution to the conflict.
If the rest of the world wants to pressure Israelis into changing course, that’s their own business, and nobody can tell them what to buy from whom. BDS is a fair and reasonable way to go about it, and as long as it’s clearly a boycott of the Israeli state and not “the Jews” I’m glad it’s now such a central part of the Palestinian struggle.
I find Tutu’s piece an excellent contribution to the debate. It is personal, passionate, and compassionate. You don’t have to agree with his position in order to appreciate his ability to communicate in that way.
He quotes the great Martin Luther King Jr.:
I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his “Christian and Jewish brothers” that he has been “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom. …”
This strengthens my feeling on the place of Israelis in the struggle for peace. Some of us struggle because we want to see a different future for Israelis. Some because we want to see a different future for Palestinians. Often it is a combination of both.
Either way, it is legitimate for us to support Palestinian-initiated action we agree with. But it is not our place to tell Palestinians how to free themselves.
We can support them directly; we can support them indirectly by taking action within Israeli society independent of the Palestinians; if we disagree with their course of action, we can and should work against it. That much is ours to choose.
But we are not here to guide them to enlightenment. That mistake is made far too often by progressives, and a habit we have to kick.
After 115 years, it’s time for Zionism to retire
The national liberation movement’s time came and went. Now we have a state. Neither good citizenship nor misdeeds have anything to do with Zionism anymore.
[…]
Zionism’s way has been lost to us. That was inevitable, because it has completed its task. Once the State of Israel arose and became a national home nearly at the retirement age of the movement that engendered it, once it became established, strong and powerful, and brutal and impervious, its flag should have been folded, stored in the repositories of history as a souvenir, and Zionism should no longer have its name taken in vain. The old order of Zionism is over and the campaign over the character and appearance of the state should begin, as happens in every healthy state.
[…]
In the Israel/Palestine debate, there’s a trap that both sides fall into, repeatedly – and I’m no exception – which makes it more of a mud-slinging event than a discussion. In a nutshell, the trap is claiming the other side has a hidden agenda.
I propose we all try to avoid this trap, for everyone’s sake. To make that possible, let’s take a quick look at what it is, and how to avoid it.
The ‘what’
The trap takes many forms. A typical way it looks when me and other lefties fall into it is “you’re only saying that to distract from the occupation and help Israel maintain it.” A typical right-wing version is “you’re only saying that to de-legitimize Israel and lead to its destruction.”
It may be right, or they may actually believe what they’re saying. Either way, what it does to the debate is to change the subject. Worse still, it’s an attack on the person you’re debating, which puts them on the defensive, and that’s usually enough to make sure they won’t change their mind even a tiny bit. In the end, we all get angry and shit all over each other and nobody’s any wiser for it.
The ‘how’
One way to avoid the trap is to just disengage when someone makes a dangerous claim. Just say “okay, bye.” I don’t believe in doing that, but it’s a way.
Another way is to re-state your position and demand a response to it.
Let’s say I claim there’s apartheid in the West Bank; let’s also say you think I’m wrong and that what I’m saying endangers human lives. What you should do is explain why you think there isn’t apartheid, and/or demand that I explain my outrageous claim. There’s a chance I’ll change my mind, or at least that other people will learn to see things your way from watching the discussion unfold. If you just call me a terrorist, I’ll think you’re crazy, and I’ll still believe – and tell people – that there’s an apartheid regime on the West Bank.
It’s the same the other way around. Let’s say someone – call her Jane – attacks International Solidarity Movement activists, claiming they’re agents provocateurs and terrorists; let’s also say that you believe they’re truly working to make the world a better place. Explain why you believe what they’re doing is good, and demand that Jane explain her accusation. Don’t fall into the trap of accusing her of distracting from the point – even if what she’s doing is exactly falling into the trap. Also don’t fall into the trap of defending their motivations. Just focus on what’s actually going on.
Now let’s say you posted something about some protest you support, and Jane fell into the trap, exactly like I just described. You can engage her, even though what she’s doing is counterproductive and distracts from your original point. It’s still better than slinging mud right back at her. Or you can just refuse to be side-tracked, explain (again) why you support the protest, and ask her if she has anything to say about the actual issue.
Finally, you can always link to this post and ask the person you’re debating to read it. It’s short, and here’s a shortlink you can use: http://wp.me/p1gOTH-y6
- Günter Grass
This post is about the Günter Grass poem “What must be said”. If you haven’t read the poem yet, please do so before reading the rest of this post (German/English/Hebrew).
Lisa Goldman shared a NYT piece about how the poem has made more Germans speak up about Israel, sometimes even in ways that make Israeli lefties feel uncomfortable.1
One commenter on Lisa’s post responded: “the creators of Holocaust should keep their mouth shut for the sake of decency”. This would, in and of itself, be a reasonable comment, except that at this point in history, the people actually behind the Holocaust are for the most part dead – a fate far more pleasant than they deserve, as it were – and this kind of comment aims simply to silence all German criticism of Israel. Oddly enough, you don’t hear it when Germans voice opinions supportive of Israeli policy.
I have heard at least one Jewish and one non-Jewish German say they prefer that everyone in Germany just keep their mouth shut on Israel and not have an opinion either way. I can actually understand this and respect it. But it’s one thing to say to a group you belong to “hey guys, let’s just stay out of this” and quite another to tell a group you very much don’t belong to “hey guys, why don’t you stay out of this”.
There’s also something ironic about Israelis, who are typically so keen to tell anyone who hasn’t been in the military not to dare criticize it, telling the state that started the last world war to shut up about starting world wars. Yeah, like they would know anything about how that goes. Of course, this would be a different story fifty years ago. If the people criticizing Israel’s plans to plunge the world into war were ex-Nazi leadership or German politicians who had been active in the time of Hitler’s rise to power – as opposed to pacifists who had been drafted into the Nazi army as teenagers – it would make sense to tell them to STFU, and maybe to give them a fair trial and some swift, cruel, and unusual punishment.2 But the people being told to shut up are not in any way, shape, or form the “creators of the Holocaust”, unless you are the kind of racist/nationalist who doesn’t think individuals do things except as part of a collective, and that the collective bears full responsibility after the individuals involved are dead.
The people being told to shut up here are in a unique position to inform international discourse. The generations forming the majority of the German public were not involved in the Holocaust, but in the subsequent denazification and the long aftermath of collective self-examination. Aren’t we always wiser for having made mistakes? Shouldn’t this be even more so when it was one of the most awful mistakes collectively made anywhere, by anyone, ever? Sure, there are some unreflected Germans whose silence merely mirrors the incredibly heavy taboo on this topic and some of them hold despicably racist/nationalist opinions still. But Grass’s message is not anti-Semitic. It is pacifistic, very brave, and basically friendly criticism. Like many of us, he sees the potential for a terrible war on the horizon, and Israel stirring it up over a mere possibility of future threat.
Germans have reflected collectively on the unacceptability of war and nationalistic violence more than perhaps any other national group in the world. If they choose to remain silent because they don’t trust themselves, due to their culture’s past, that’s their prerogative. But who are we, who did not grow up in the guilt-and-atonement-ridden German context, to shut them up? Isn’t one of the lessons of the Holocaust – and European Totalitarianism in general – that individuals should be allowed to have their own opinions, and if they so choose, voice them, too? Have the unspeakable crimes of one generation of Germans revoked their offsprings’ status as human beings?
Footnotes
- This is not to say that Israeli lefties are used to offensive comments about Israel – but that some of the comments Germans are making may be beyond what we accept as honest criticism.
- Intellectually, I don’t believe in vengeance or violence or really even punishment, as such. But when it comes to violent racists, especially Nazis, I can’t think of anything more emotionally satisfying than knowing they suffer unspeakable physical pain, wrong as it may be.
Everything you do is political, because not trying to change anything is simply working to keep things as they are.
There’s a song by Skunk Anansie called Yes, It’s Fucking Political. I don’t it hear often, but I’m hearing right now. When I first heard it several years ago, I don’t think I really understood it. “Yes, it’s fucking political! / Everything’s political!” Seemed kind of vague. I only really understood it a few months ago, reading an interview in unerzogen magazin with a couple who decided not to tell anyone outside the family about their young child’s biological gender. The point was made there with incredible clarity, and I’d like to argue it here.
But before I get to my main point, I’m going to start with the arguments that I think should be made in favor of staying out of politics.1 Why should you bother to be political? Politics is dirty, filthy! It corrupts everyone who does it professionally, even the most ideological politician ends up going against their beliefs. And what’s worse, we simple citizens can’t really do anything about it, because parties will only push agendas bought and paid for by their donors, and the rest of us can’t afford to get our agenda on the table. And who can even handle dealing with all the bad stuff going on? That kind of worrying can make you go crazy.
All of this, and more, is basically true.
But that’s beside the point. The point is that you don’t have any choice. You’re political, and it’s only a question of what cause you’re fighting for.
Everything’s political!
The reason is surprisingly simple: if you’re not consciously political, or if you’re consciously “neutral”, you’re simply doing your best to make sure nothing at all changes. The reality we live in is made up of a billion tiny choices people make every day. It’s practically impossible to make yourself aware of all of them. If you don’t try to understand the implications of your actions, you’re making a whole lot of choices in favor of the status quo.
Let’s say you’re a normal guy who doesn’t really like feminism. You believe that men and women should basically have the same rights, of course, but you don’t see what all the fuss is about. You’re probably oppressing women in subtle ways that are difficult to understand simply by the way you talk to and about them, even if the last thing you mean to do is oppress them.
Let’s say you’re like me (and most people in the Western world) and get your food from some supermarket, which is cheap enough for your budget but not so cheap you feel poor shopping there. Every time you buy food, you take home probably a dozen items wrapped in plastic of some kind. Each of those pieces of plastic, which you throw away without giving it a second thought, will outlive your grandchildren’s grandchildren. At some point in the next centuries, you can safely assume that at least one animal somewhere (maybe a small ugly one that nobody was going to eat, if you’re lucky) will almost definitely choke to death on it, or die because it blocked its digestion, or whatever.
These are just two tiny examples, and I’m wildly oversimplifying. Your individual action is tiny and almost meaningless. But with almost half the population slightly objectifying and oppressing women, you end up with a situation where a woman has to be really brave to speak out publicly about certain topics she believes in. And with billions of people throwing away a dozen pieces of plastic a week you end up with a whole island made of plastic, bigger than many countries, and growing all of the time.
These things affect your life, and you take part in making them happen, whether you like it or not. Practically every single detail of your life is affected by the tiny choices a lot of simple people make, taken together over time. Yes, it’s way too complicated to ever understand entirely. Yes, the chances of a single activist, you or me or even someone famous, really changing something, are close to zero. But we’re all, always activists for the status quo, and don’t you think it’s a little hypocritical to complain about things while you’re working so hard to keep them the same?
Footnotes
- Keep in mind this all applies to modern, Western-style representative democracies; the situation elsewhere is similar, but still very different.
May each of the 37 “parliamentarians” who voted for this thing die slowly, and alone. Preferably of thirst, in the desert.1
Footnotes
- Note: I am strongly opposed to any action intended to cause any person to die in such a manner, and this is not to be interpreted as incitement to murder. It is merely that I would find it a fitting fate if they were to suffer that way, especially if they had nobody to blame for it but themselves.