FBI raids of antiwar activists challenge First Amendment rights

American Jewish World published a very thoughtful editorial by editor Mordecai Spector about the recent FBI raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. It gets what I think is at the heart of the issue -- which is that those raids represent an attack on our supposedly protected constitutional rights to free speech. I mean it's a loooong stretch from antiwar activist to terrorist, right? And lest we forget, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written to "protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority." 

This quote from the editorial sums it up well, and is also a cautionary note to those who would support this action because they may disagree with the views of the people who were targeted.

Applying the rubric of “terrorism” to the exercise of rights that most people take as protected by the First Amendment represents a dangerous trend. The FBI raids last week in Minneapolis and the upcoming grand jury proceedings appear to be a further attempt by the federal government, and law enforcement at all levels, to conflate homegrown dissenters with terrorists. The “war on terror” apparently has come to roost in our domestic political culture. And Jewish World readers should take no satisfaction from the fact that pro-Palestinian solidarity activists are being subjected to this treatment by the FBI. This is the scheme of things right now; but if our First Amendment rights are whittled away to nothing, who can say that at some point, in a future Orwellian version of America, gathering to support Israel will not be declared out of bounds?

Paying Attention Now

I've made a "micro blog" on Tumblr for stuff that is "quick, fun, breaking, beautiful, outrageous, political, politically incorrect, quirky, visual..."  Check it out and feel free to follow me there too, at Paying Attention Now.

(screen grab, not a link)

Justice for Fong Lee rally on Oct. 2

From the Facebook group Justice for Fong Lee: 

On July 22, 2006, Hmong teenager Fong Lee was with a group of friends riding bikes near the North Minneapolis Cityview Elementary School when Minneapolis police officers chased them across the playground. Officer Jason Andersen shot Fong Lee eight times, in the back, side, and then five more shots into Lee’s chest as he lay on the ground. Andersen stated he was justified in the killing, claiming that Lee pointed a gun at him. He was cleared by the MPD’s internal investigation even though neighborhood eyewitnesses were not interviewed, many of whom contradicted the police officers’ version of events in community press reports.

In 2009 the family of Fong Lee brought a wrongful death lawsuit again the City of Minneapolis and Jason Andersen, citing surveillance cameras that showed Fong Lee did not have a gun and evidence that demonstrated that the gun found at the scene had been in police custody, suggesting that the gun had been planted. When an all-white jury found that Anderson had not used “excessive force” in killing 19-year old Fong Lee, community members held numerous rallies to continue to demand justice in what they saw as a police cover-up.

The family has since appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for a new trial, which has been denied. Now, under the representation of Hilliard, Muñoz, and Gonzales, the family of Fong Lee is taking their case to the Supreme Court, in hopes that national attention will result in a new trial.

Happy Fall Equinox

I love the fall and spring equinoxes. A marking of the place between the time of light and the time of darkness. The passing though time.


I'm reminded every fall of that old poem by Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay. The first poem I memorized in elementary school. Still beautiful.


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay. 

All photos by Ann Freeman

I don't know my Somali neighbors

I live in the Twin Cities, home to the largest Somali population in North America. Specifically, I live in the Seward neighborhood of south Minneapolis, a place many Somali families call home, and next to the West Bank, a neighborhood that is sometimes called, usually in a  disparaging way, "Little Somalia." The majority of black children attending our neighborhood elementary schools are Somali.


But I don't know my neighbors. I know next to nothing about Somali-American culture, the intersections of being Muslim and African, or what it is like to be a Somali immigrant or child of immigrants in this state and country.


I am around enough Somali/East African people to observe some differences in custom and dress but I don't know what the differences mean or why. What determines if one woman dresses American style, wearing whatever's hip with her head uncovered, while another woman wears a hijab and traditional clothing? Is it religious, personal preference, family values, or a combination of each? And what is the difference between public presentation and home life?


I worked at Minneapolis Community and Technical College for a couple of years and had the chance to observe and sometimes connect with the large number of East African-immigrant students who attended school there. I noticed many variations in what the young women wore. Some rocked designer t-shirts, shoes, and scarfs, integrating western fashion into traditional Muslim dress. I saw many young Somali women who were proud Muslims and outspoken leaders, respected by their male peers, shattering my stereotypes of oppressed Muslim women. But mostly I saw hard working students with big plans for their futures.


I've kept in touch with one of those young women, mostly though Facebook and the very occasional face-to-face chat. She is currently applying for grad school, wants to go to Japan, but plans to live in her mother's house until she is married as that is their custom and she would not want to disrespect her mother or family by doing otherwise. That is about the most in-depth relationship I have with someone who is Somali.


The Starbucks near my house is a gathering place for Somali men. I have no idea what they talk about in their loud, intense conversational groups. A Somali cab driver in San Diego told me he had been to that Starbucks and that it's a place where people who hale from various tribes in Somalia get together to talk about the news back home, and to debate different issues. That could be true - or not - I have no idea. They could be talking about the upcoming football season for all I know, or whether or not to replace the storm windows on their homes. Or all of the above.


Last January, a neighborhood grocery store that caters to Somali and other East African neighbors was the scene of a robbery gone horribly bad, resulting in the murders of three innocent people - all East African, as were the shooters. It was all over the news. I soon got a few phone calls from family members and friends who live outside of Minneapolis wondering if my neighborhood was going downhill, if I was safe. Me?! What about the people who were victims of this crime - law abiding, contributing East African immigrants who represent the majority of families living here.


I also know too many people who are afraid to go to the West Bank because of all the "African gangs and crime" there. Yet those same people have little fear of walking downtown late at night, or in neighborhoods with just as much if not more crime than is happening on the West Bank. 


I'm sure you've heard about the young Somali men in Minneapolis that were recruited to go back to Somalia to be part of radical, terrorist organizations. The focus of stories in the media and in some conversations seemed to be more about fear of "home grown" terrorism rather than fear for vulnerable young men at risk to be exploited by a radical fringe. 


That is a new turn on an old song - fear of the other. Racism in a new form. Anti-Muslim furor. Anti-immigrant sentiment. The ugly crap that the conservative right is capitalizing on right now to try and win elections.


I feel complicit with my ignorance. If we don't really know our neighbors, how do we stand as one, united in our commonalities? We don't. We stay divided and fearful - and vulnerable to propaganda and fear mongering from either side of the chasm.


A shining light of exception burned brightly in the aftermath of the Seward grocery store robbery and murders. As neighbors we came together in outrage and concern. We lit candles and held a vigil. We held up signs that said, "Seward Stands Together. No More Violence." Shopkeepers put those signs in windows all over the neighborhood. Some signs are still there.

                    photo via jenniferlarson.wordpress.com

                          photo by Peter Fleck via http://sewardprofile.posterous.com/?page=23


But what did we do with that opportunity to step toward really becoming neighbors? I personally vowed to regularly shop in that grocery store. Since then, I've bought one can of pop there. So much for neighborly progress, at least on my part.


I remember when Somalis and other East Africans first came to Minneapolis in the nineties. Suddenly our public schools had whole new cultures of students to deal with, and it didn't take long until my children were coming home saying "I don't like those Somalis. They smell." This from children who were raised to have a broad and open view of the world, who as multiracial African American young people understood their own sense of otherness, and also had an uncanny ability to cross cultural boundaries and play well with others. How was this particular bigotry and hatred infused so easily into them and their peers that they would dare say such racist nonsense, openly, to me?


A generation later my granddaughter just started kindergarten at one of those neighborhood schools where most of the black kids are Somali. As an African American child she is a minority within a minority. Yet the world is different for her than it was for her mother. Somali and other East African people have been her teachers, classmates, neighbors, and playground friends all of her life. She is less ignorant than me and her worldview is already broader than mine or her mom's. She knows more. But there are no guarantees her generation will bridge this gap. Or if they do, that there won't be a new one to divide us in ways we can't even imagine today.

                          photo by Ann Freeman. "Playground friends"

Beautiful - Christina Aquilera

For those of you who didn't pay attention to Christina Aquilera after we met her as the pop princess singing "Genie in a Bottle," you've missed the emergence of a true vocal artist. Four videos are below that will take your breath away, and a fifth bonus video just for fun.

Beautiful (Haunting video makes this cover special)



A Song For You (her amazing collaboration with Herbie Hancock)



Impossible (live with Alicia Keys)



At Last (she does Etta James proud on this cover)



Having fun covering Lady Marmalade in Moulin Rouge! with Lil' Kim, Mya, and Pink 
 


Thank you to my friend Regina for reminding me of my appreciation for this beautiful voice.

What we carry

What are the things we carry that define our lives and our communities? What informs our physical, spiritual, personal boundaries? What is both quotidian and unique to our lived experience?


My friend Lynette D'Amico has an amazing post up at Is Greater Than that considers the things we carry.


She takes us on a wild journey, from an eruv and Orthodox Judiasm to how we carry babies to what we carry in our bags and psyches, and then to West Rogers Park - her neighborhood in Chicago - the place that now carries her home.


Be sure to read the whole essay here, but below are a couple of excerpts:

"...The Hebrew word eruv means “mixture” or “joining together,” as in the joining together of public and private space. An eruv integrates private and public properties into one larger private domain. So the boundaries between private and public are enlarged and carrying is permitted. By some complicated process involving symbolism and thousands of years of Jewish law, an eruv is a wall that is a series of doorways...

...Boundaries construct our identities and clarify what we can carry, whether keys or babies, whether the key is a green card or a bank card, whether the baby is carried across the border on her mother’s back or rides in a Burley, whether we are on our way to pray, on our way to a new life, or just on our way to a decaf latte... 

...We carry resentment and longings; our nephew flipping his hair, a fat old orange cat, homegrown tomatoes. We carry water bottles and cell phones, lipstick and sunscreen, notebooks and pens, umbrellas, chips and nuts and little candies, Xanax, Vicodin, and aspirin; condoms, the latest New Yorker, a Swiss Army knife, a pair of channel lock pliers, a flashlight.. 

...Within my borders—West Rogers Park, the 50^th Ward—I pass through a series of gateways–the Georgian bakery on Devon, Warren Park where the dogs run, the empty Z Frank Chevrolet dealership on Western, the halal and kosher grocers. I am enclosed and enlarged by the walls around me. My hands are empty. Invisible wires guide me. I look up."

 So let me ask this: What are the things you carry? What carries you?