Refusal (Muhammad Ali)
I came across the following when preparing tonight’s session of our reading circle of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (the chapters on the Black Freedom struggle and the Vietnam War). Why should…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Weekend Meditation
A recent conversation with Sharifa led me to look again at one of Said’s many penetrating studies… 1. In fact, there is no way that I know of apprehending the world from within American culture…
The Right of Jim Crow to Defend Itself
“We do not believe the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza,” [Hilary] Clinton told reporters at a news conference with the visiting foreign minister of the…
Palestinian Identity
Sharifa, Apropos of our conversation today, here begins the opening paragraph (and after) of chapter 1 of Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness… The quintessential Palestinian experience, which illustrates some of…
For Hedy/By Mev/Via Mark
Dianne and I drove Hedy to the Missouri Scholars Academy in Columbia at Mizzou on Sunday, where she spoke for the 17th straight year to 300+ gifted students from across the state. She shared her…
To Be Radical Is Habitually To Do Things Which Society at Large Despises
1. I have seen the victims. And this sight of the mutilated dead has exerted such inward change upon me That the words of corrupt diplomacy appear to me more and more in their true…
Continuation
I just finished reading the beautiful memoir of Sister Dang Nghiem, Healing: A Woman’s Journey from Doctor to Nun. Here is one passage… When we love someone, it’s not because we live next to the…
Taking a Stand: A Reflection on Elie Wiesel and Hedy Epstein
These days I am thinking of two Holocaust survivors. I met with one today: 86 year-old Hedy Epstein and I had lunch at Blackberry Cafe in Clayton. The other is receiving an honorary doctorate tomorrow…
Simile for the On-Going Nakba
“You feel like an infantile child with a magnifying glass that tortures ants, you burn them.”[1] –IDF Soldier, on Operation Cast Lead
Manifest Destiny
1. And that claim [to Oregon] is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great…