Finkelstein/Chomsky
The Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire once wrote, “There’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.” Late in life, when his political horizons broadened out, Edward Said would often quote this line. We should make…
Tag: Noam Chomsky
Doing Poetic Battle with the United States of Amnesia
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Time of Useful Consciousness* (Americus, Book II) New Directions, 2012 This is Larry’s next installment of pastiche… of his own work, as he continues the Americus odyssey through U.S. history. I wonder what…
Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est la Même Chose
The following is from a 1983 interview with MIT professor Noam Chomsky… Interviewer: If you were to wake up tomorrow morning, and find yourself at the State Department, not MIT, and you were Secretary, what…
Students/2
Before Class In the School of Revolutionary Mindfulness When students arrive early to class No smart phones are anywhere to be seen In the minutes before class begins Students and teachers are sitting Breathing calmly…
Mentshes/2
“I Belong to Chomsky” Spring 1994 was blooming in the Bay Area. We participated in a Good Friday demonstration at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear laboratory with Steve Kelly and our Pax Christi friends. The following…
Political Holiness
Pedro Casaldáliga & José-Maria Vigil, Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation Those who struggle for utopia, for radical change, saints marked by the liberating spirit, are all of a piece; they carry faithfulness from the…
Inspirations
[A Beggar in Jerusalem] is neither novel nor anti-novel, neither fiction nor autobiography, neither poem nor prose—it is all this together. — Elie Wiesel My idea of the ideal text is still the Talmud. I…
Active Participants in a Democratic Society or Effective Corporate Employees?
Alfie Kohn, What Does It Mean to be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies You only learn things and learn how to think if there’s some purpose for learning, some…
After Sanders Makes His Endorsement, I Turn to Some Great Reminderers
Those who live by compassion are often canonized. Those who live by justice are often crucified. –John Dominic Crossan, Scripture Scholar, USA Don’t mourn. Organize. –Mother Jones, labor activist, USA The madness of violence must…
Cultivating Attention and Animating Conscience: Reading Thoreau in Desperate Times
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I…