Strike

My thoughts have been swirling lately. Murders in Libya. Strike in Chicago. The High Holidays. First week of Hebrew School. And The Little Jewess had to go to the ER. (She's fine now.)

Issues big and small, and I don't see anything that ties them together. I guess I should start with the big ones, and there's plenty been written by Humanists about the events in Libya and Egypt this week, so I'm going to start with Chicago.

For those who don't know, Mr. Jewess is a Public School Teacher. My parents were also Public School Teachers and I was one briefly. I just want to make my biases totally clear here. But I also think that Unions are generally fighting the Humanist fight.

Unions have brought us minimum wage, weekends, Family Leave, sick time and safe working conditions. They ended child labor and sweatshops. And in this case, the Chicago Teachers Union is fighting not just for a fair wage for professionals with Master's Degrees, but also for reasonable class sizes, safe, clean schools and textbooks available on the first day of school. (Sorry--that last was one of the "concessions" they won from the City before the strike began.

Imagine trying to teach in a 100 degree classroom with a leaky roof and no textbooks. Imagine 45 kids who may or may not have a safe place to sleep, who may or may not have had breakfast, who may or may not have a quiet place to do homework or any books in their houses. Forty-five. And then on top of that, you have a City that is looking to shut down any school it can to privatize it, and your school will only stay open if your kids do well on some test. How many of these children have seen a relative die violently? How many have lost a parent to drug addiction? How many spent time fending for themselves before a relative found them and enrolled them in school? (I take these examples from my own experience teaching in New York City, but I expect they translate to other cities. In any case, they're real examples.)

You want to bond with these children, give them the love that they need to succeed, give them the little bit of attention they need to feel good at something so that they have the strength to push through to learn the things that are hard, but there are forty-five of them and if they don't pass this test your job will be gone, your school will be closed and then what?

And so you strike. You strike for the rights of the children to have a decent place to learn and a shot at success.

You can call the teachers greedy if you want. I can't. I've been there.

I stand with the Chicago Teacher's Union.

You think?

I saw a bumper sticker today that read, "God is pro-life." If that's the case, He should really lay off the smiting.

Yech

The religious are sure making it easy to be a Humanist this week. Ross Douthat is plugging his book Bad Religion, in which he argues that Orthodoxy is good and Christianity had a better influence on us in 1957 than it does today. The Supreme Court may invalidate Health Care Reform and uphold Arizona's immigration law, Dan Savage's excellent monologue about his relationship to Catholicism was replayed on This American Life, and now Paul Ryan says that the Pope says that governments shouldn't help the poor.

Maybe I'm confusing "right" and "left" with "religious" and "humanist." But it's hard not to, when Republicans keep citing religion in the War on Women and Douthat thinks Christianity should have more influence over modern culture. (Actually, I think I probably agree with Douthat's politics more than I disagree. What bothers me about Douthat is his relationship to minority religions.)

I should probably unpack that comment. Douthat is arguing that the US is mainly a Christian nation (true) in the sense that Christianity has more influence than any other religion. He's also arguing that when Churches were the center of town life, the country was a better place. Not perfect, not Camelot, and not without major and even tragic problems, but better. What he doesn't seem to get about that is that segregation was integral to that model. Churches are inherently segregated. Because of the history of our country, African American religion evolved separately from White religion, but that's not even what I'm talking about.

If religion is the center of our society, then we are all divided by our religions, and the atheists have no community. Everyone is then trapped by their social structure into a particular religion, and there is mistrust between the religions because there is little or no social mixing. How is that good? One could argue that the centrality of churches to the social order in the 1950's is part of what gave rise to the social uprisings of the 1960's. In order to fight the political fight, the young people needed to separate themselves from their elders, and the only way to do that was to reject religion, which gave rise to free love and experimentation with Eastern religions--religions that had not ever ruled in the structure of American society.

On to Paul Ryan and the Pope (although you should check out Savage's monologue--it's beautiful.) Oh, I can't get beyond "Yech." Here. Read this and if you don't "Yech," too, explain to me what I'm missing.

I just don't want to be associated with these people in any way. Except Savage. He's cool.

Israel and Fundamentalism

I promise, Ethan, I will respond to your comments. They are sitting in my e-mail box where I see them every time I check my mail, so I won't forget. But it's been a busy week, and a friend posted this article on Facebook and it seems more timely to respond to the article.

The struggle between fundamentalists and secular Jews is obvious in Israel, and it is becoming clear how urgent it is that Jews around the world step up and stand strong for Israeli democracy. Israel is right now in danger of becoming a fundamentalist state no better (in terms of human rights) than some of its Muslim neighbors. If a little girl cannot walk to school in a short sleeved shirt without being called a whore, I don't care what religion is behind the hatred: it is wrong.

So I am pleased to hear that American Jews are threatening to direct their money only towards projects that enhance Israeli democracy.

But I would argue that this is the same fundamentalist pressure that started me on my current religious journey. We are experiencing the same pressures here in the United States from religious fundamentalists. When Rick Santorum wins caucuses while arguing that gay people do not have a right to privacy in their own bedrooms and the Catholic Church claims that Obama is anti-First Amendment because he is stopping them from withholding reproductive health care from its employees, we are in danger of a crisis. Chris Christie is trying to divert funds from public schools to parochial schools. Newt Gingrich wants to dismantle the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and says that its judges are "un-American" because they do not think it is Constitutional to have God in the Pledge of Allegiance. We are in danger of the same things happening here.

It is much easier for these things to happen in Israel. For one thing, Israel is so much smaller than the US. For another, Israel's basis as a Jewish State can confuse certain issues. Israel is susceptible to the notion that the Orthodox are the "real Jews" and therefore vulnerable to giving the Orthodox more than their fair share of power.

But when we allow people to refer to "God-fearing Americans" or to call Christians (or the religious in general) "real America," we are giving away power. When we don't stand up to the Religious and we allow them to claim that their rights are being violated, when in fact what they want to do is to violate the rights of others (by denying them the right to marry, or get healthcare, or have consensual sex with adults) we are giving away power. When we don't stand up for our public schools, or for the rights of Atheists, we are giving away power. And how far is it, really, from where we are now to where Israel is headed?