In Response to the Response of McCain’s Supporters

This will be brief.

The world is not going to end.

President-Elect Obama is not going to personally kick down your door and take all of your money.

President-Elect Obama is not a Socialist

President-Elect Obama is not a terrorist

It is called the WHITE House because it only happens to be painted white. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool.

You do not need to flee the country and move to an island resort.

“Hussein” is an extremely common name of Arabic and Turkish origin that has several meanings, including “good” and “beautiful”. Several people throughout History have shown us that a person’s name has little bearing on their actions.

Democracy is based on choice. Like it or not, America chose, now you have a responsibility as citizens to follow McCain’s example and put your country before your own interests. His concession speech showed immense courage, dignity, and patriotism. Too many people are thinking of what immediately benefits their small groups instead of what is good for the country. You may not have voted for him and you don’t have to agree with all of his STATED POLICIES (His name and race are completely irrelevant), but since he has been democratically elected according to the doctrine of the American Constitution, you owe it to your country and yourself to give him a chance. If he fails, then you’ll be able to vote against him in the next election just like people did with Bush, it’s not a dictatorship. However, he is far more likely to succeed if he has the full support of the nation.

Want the country to fail? Keep trying to sabotage the President and we’ll see how soon that happens. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Lincoln said that, and he was quoting the Bible. Make your own connections.

That’s all I have to say.

….incredible, right?

As for whether or not the last Union was “progressive”… it feels really, really weird to apply that term to the Union/Brandeis Senators, but for lack of a better one, I understand it to mean the following:

A progressive Union is one that seeks to use what limited power they have to actively improve student life at Brandeis, with an emphasis on the institution’s historic commitment to social justice and an awareness that the school is part of the outside world.

Last year Phil and I sat and watched incredulously as several Senators spoke against and voted against a simple measure to inform the administration that the students of Brandeis would like to be more actively involved in important decisions (such as, but not limited to, the arming of the public safety officers) and feel that setting up an ad-hoc summer committee with two appointed students is not adequate involvement. 850 students signed their names to this resolution– almost exactly as many as voted in the last election. But the Senate voted it down. One Senator gave pedantic and condescending musings about the dangers of “too much democracy,” comparing the students telling the administration “gee, it would be nice if we had just a little more input” to the election of generals in Athenian democracy and the early Continental Army. (WTF?!?!) Another Senator told Phil and me that our collecting 850 student signatures voicing frustration over the administration’s procedures was “disgraceful” and that we should “just focus on our homework.” One Senator actually told us that he could not support the resolution because “what about all the students that DONT want their voices heard by the administration? What about THEM??” Finally, a Senator informed us that passing a polite, toothless resolution that expressed a student desire for more comprehensive student input in certain decisions was simply beyond the power of the Union.

…As I already mentioned, I know the use of the term “progressive” to describe the Union/Brandeis Senators is loaded and awkward. But I think that the incident described above shows that whatever the Union was… it was absolutely ridiculous and embarrassing.

I look forward this year to a Union full of Senators that dont use their positions as personal ego-boosters but who understand that they DO have some power– and they use that power to improve Student life at Brandeis and to preserve Brandeis’ reputation for a commitment to social justice both on campus and in the world.

“I’m not a scientist.”

Well, I’m not a physical scientist, anyway. I am a social scientist, and as a social scientist, I believe that all of human history is a record of the tension between desire for individualism and simultaneous desire for society, for the collective. That tension has been at the heart of American politics since the Puritans, and remains one of the main sources of conflict between Liberals/Progressives and Conservatives today. This tension even exists within the progressive vision. Our most fundamental Progressive ideals are centered around an effort to create and maintain a delicate balance between the collective– without which individualism cannot thrive– and the individual– without which the collective has no meaning.

A new scientific study on the evolution of cancer shows that those two desires are at war on a microscopic yet fateful scale within the body of a cancer patient.

In our bodies, cells must replicate themselves many times. Sometimes, in the complicated process of copying each individual’s unique DNA code, there is a glitch, and a mutant cell is born. When this happens, the cell is programmed to commit cell-suicide (apoptosis). Cancer is when several mutant cells refuse to commit cell-suicide and begin to replicate themselves to form a lump of mutant cells that can take over our bodies if not cut out or killed with radiation.

Why does this happen? Whether the trigger is smoking, poor diet, or simply old age, the reason is the same: these mutant cells forget that they are part of a collective with the end goal of maintaining the health of the body they live in and start to think that it’s every cell for himself. In an April 2008 article in Harper’s Magazine entitled “Cancer: The Evolution of a Killer,” author David Quammen explains:

“Eight hundred million years ago there was no such thing as cancer. Virtually all living creatures were single-celled organisms, and the rule was Every cell for itself! Uncontrolled, undifferentiated cell growth wasn’t abnormal. It was the program of all life on Earth.”

But over time, cells “began to aggregate into colonial units and discover, by trial and error, how they could benefit from division of labor and specialization of shape and function . . . To enjoy those benefits, they had to set aside the old rule of absolute selfishness. They had to cooperate. They couldn’t cheat against the interests of the collective entity. (Or anyway they shouldn’t cheat, not very often; otherwise the benefits of collectivity wouldn’t accrue.) Cooperation was a winning formula. Primitive multicellular creatures, roughly along the lines of jellyfish or sponges or slime molds, began to succeed, to grow, to occupy space, and to claim resources in ways that loner cells couldn’t.”

The problem is that “uncontrolled cell replication didn’t disappear entirely. Sometimes a single atavistic cell would ignore the collective imperative; it would revert to the old habit—proliferating wildly, disregarding all signals to stop. It would swell into a big, greedy lump of its own kind, and in so doing disrupt one or more of the necessary collective functions. That was cancer.”

The evolution of human society follows this pattern of the evolution of cells: over time, we discovered that there was much to be gained from forming societies, specializing, and cooperating. And, like the evolution of multi-cellular organisms, our societies have gotten bigger and bigger, more complex, and more sophisticated. But, like the cells within our bodies, we still face the problem of individuals, or groups of individuals, or nations forgetting the “collective imperative” and aggressively pursuing what is in their own immediate best interest, rather than the “collective interest.”

Of course, while they may certainly benefit in the short term from pursuing their immediate interests, these individuals, or groups of individuals, bring the house down on top of themselves, just like cancer, which, for all its ability to resist extermination, is not very bright. It ignores the first rule of living as a parasite: DO NOT KILL YOUR HOST… at least until you can move to a new one.

If we are to view ourselves as parasites on planet Earth (although it sounds awfully over-dramatic, it is essentially true…), then we are behaving as stupidly as cancer. We ignore the collective imperative, but at our own peril: this is the only planet we’ve got. Like cancer, we can’t move to another host. Once we have killed our host, we die too.

This idea of the collective imperative isn’t The Communist Manifesto, it isn’t It Takes a Village, and it isn’t some hippie-dippy drivel. It’s biology. It’s in our history dating back to the beginning and it’s in our bodies. We have got to stop thinking “every cell for itself” when it comes to global warming, renewable energy, nuclear non-proliferation, poverty, war, and, well… disease!

…Because although cancer cannot now move beyond the host it is born in, just as we cannot now move to and colonize another planet, this may not always be the case. In the same article in Harper’s Magazine, Quamenn presents new studies which show that cancer, like everything else on earth, evolves and is evolving toward one day becoming an infectious disease, like influenza. Already, scientists have discovered cancer in Tasmanian Devils which spreads through exchange of fluids. And for centuries dogs have been affected by a not uncommon– but generally treatable–sexually transmitted cancer. If the ultimate goal of any cancer in any body is to multiply, spread, and perpetuate its existence, then the ultimate evolutionary success of a cancer would be the ability to jump from host to host. It would take just one cancer cell in any person anywhere to somehow acquire this ability; that cell would pass on the ability to its many replicas who would pass it on and pass it on and on and on and suddenly cancer is as contagious as a virus.

But the truth is that such a thing probably couldn’t happen for many many many many years. If after this long cells still cant survive outside their host bodies, it will take a long long time before any learn how to. And by that time, we will have developed a simple cure to cancer… or have all died in a nuclear holocaust…

However, the possibility exists and the threat is there. The point is that not only does the history of the evolution of cancer reminds us that we must think collectively if we are to remain on earth as individuals, but the possible future of the evolution of cancer does the same. We should think of the fight against cancer as a collective, preventive struggle. We should care if children are not being introduced to a proper diet even if we maintain a perfect personal diet; we should care that many people are massively over-weight even if we are not; we should care about cigarette smokers, even if we dont smoke; and we should care that 45 million Americans go without health insurance. We should care if not because we remember that we’re all in this together, then because the possibility is technically there, even though not immediately likely, that one person’s cancer anywhere in the world could become as prevalent as the flu.

So here’s a start:

1) Educate yourself and your friends. The following foods are very important in preventing cancer…

blueberries
celery
broccoli
apples
beans(lentils or chickpeas twice a week can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 20%)
carrots(a carrot a day seriously reduces the risk of lung cancer)
oranges
grapes
garlic
green tea
soy
RED FOODS: red peppers, raspberries, strawberries, grapefruit, tomatoes, cherries, beets, etc, are all key in reducing the risk of cancer. Tomatoes are especially helpful in reducing the risks of prostate cancer.

The American Institute for Cancer Research has an extensive collection of healthy, cancer preventing recipes, here!

2) Make a donation. There are thousands of organizations to give to, but this one is local-ish (in Boston) and you can specify where your donation goes if you want to: Donate.

3) UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.
www.americansforhealthcare.org

Universal health care is the ultimate realization of the collective imparative; one person’s health is everyone’s health. On this issue and on so many others like global warming and nuclear proliferation we cannot wait any longer… or else our greed will quickly destroy our host.

The program kicks off with a week-long summit in DC where I would get to connect with fellow progressive activists from across the country and talk strategy with some big-shot progressive leaders. Sounds good. So I clicked on the video of last years’ summit.  At first I thought I was watching one of those John McCain ads in which he tries to make fun of Barack Obama’s “hope and change” mantra. The video featured clips of speakers proclaiming to hundreds of students that this is their moment, they have the power, they are the ones they have been waiting for. It was completely over-the-top. One starry-eyed student took a microphone and gushed that what he had gotten out of the conference was “hope” and that he was going to “take that hope back home” and spread it. One girl screamed “democracy! justice! change! WEEEEW!” Another repeated the over-quoted-on-high school-graduation-day phrase “What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared with what lies within us” as if she had just come up with it herself. And on and on. Suddenly I realized a visceral feeling of disgust was taking over me. What the hell is wrong with you? I scolded myself. This is inspiring! This is people getting excited about improving their world, about helping others, about politics! You’re supposed to love stuff like that! But I couldn’t help it– I was completely turned off.

In 2004 I watched the Democratic National Convention at home in Fort Worth, Texas and was overjoyed when Howard Dean declared that “never again” would liberals be ashamed of their values. I literally cried when John Edwards said “hope is on the way.” I watched Barack Obama’s key-note address over and over and over. And when John Kerry proclaimed that “for America the hope is there, the sun is rising, our best days are still to come,”… well I think the fact that I can still quote that from memory speaks for itself. Had YP4 contacted me back then I would have jumped at the opportunity. What was different now? At first I thought I was agreeing with Goethe: “I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” But that wasn’t really it. After all, the YP4 summit did seem to “invigorate activity” in its participants; they took what they learned in DC and brought it back to their campuses and communities, didn’t they? Then I remembered the student who said that what he would take from the conference and bring back was “hope.” “Hope”? Seriously?? And I put my finger on the element that I hated so much not just in the YP4 conference but in the modern progressive movement in general.

To quote Karl Marx (because its convenient but also perhaps to establish my credentials as a real left-wing believer in change despite my attacks on the progressive movement in this post), I believe the students at the YP4 conference and other events and organizations like it are just “theoretical bubble-blowers.” Speakers at the events preach to the choir, the participants try and out-do each other in self-congratulation about how great the movement is, they come up with intellectual progressive proposals for intellectual progressives to read, and any talk of strategy and action is theoretical and relies on the assumption that students will have an army of activists on their campuses just waiting to be organized as soon as the YP4 student returns from the Mountain with the Knowledge. And what are these progressives being trained to train other progressives for, anyway? To hold meetings of progressives where they can discuss the movement? To write policy proposals read by other progressives? To spread “hope”?

With this realization I became depressed. A certain question bothered me: For all my claims that I would have just loved to be alive during the excitement and activism of the 1960s would I really just have been as disgusted with the self-congratulation and futility of, say, Abbie Hoffman (with all due respect!) “levitating the Penon” as I am with the self-congratulation and “theoretical bubble-blowing” of today’s progressive youth movement?

Yes and no. I would have been thrilled with CORE and SNCC and sit-ins and boycotts and Freedom Riders and registering black voters and “the torch is passed” and “I have a dream.” These were actions that actually shook the world. And I would have cheered when Mario Savio jumped on the car and cried that “there comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you cant take part . . . You’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels . . . And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!” That movement (the 1964 Free Speech Movement) over-turned a university decision to outlaw political activism on campus and set the percent for student movements across the country. And I would have been thrilled in 1971 when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War marched on Washington, flooded the halls of congress,testified before the Senate, and showed the nation that it was time to “bring their brothers home.” Now, Abbie Hoffman declaring that he would, through mind-power, levitate the Penon 300 ft. and that the “evil spirits” would rise out from under it– this I would have been disgusted with. Ridding the Penon of evil spirits couldn’t change American foreign policy anymore than “hope” or a bunch of progressives repeating inspirational quotations to each other can get us universal health care.

So, is our modern YP4 hope-and-change fest Abbie’s levitation of the penon? This obviously stretched but not completely unfair analogy got me thinking: the people levitating the Penon wanted to “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” But today’s students don’t seem to want that. What do they want? They want jobs. They want connections and resumes. Look at the YP4 summit– its completely centered around the promise of networking. The students connect with other student activists and potential employers. And I’m sure it doesn’t escape the thoughts of the YP4 fellows that their participation in such a program will look nice on their resumes.

In this way, the YP4 program and others like it are actually very smart; they play to what students today want. We are wasting our time if we focus all our efforts trying to get students to show up to an event modeled after the New Left of the 1960s. But the problem is not entirely that the same enthusiasm isn’t there– its just directed in a different way. Like the YP4 summit, if we can just harness what students want (networking, resume building, internships, jobs. . . in addition to having fun and making a difference) we can have a better shot at almost recreating the energy of the 1960s, even if the events have to be a little less creative and “far out.”

To those who say that this job-centered idea is just perpetuating “the system,” think about this: the New Left failed when its participants wanted back in the system anyway. You cant put “tuned in, turned on, and dropped out” on a resume and you cant get a job in Levitation of Important Government Buildings. So the students of the New Left dismissed their beliefs and actions as a “youthful fling” and became doctors and accountants just like their parents. However, today’s progressive movement is sustainable because it opens career paths. You can put your participation in progressive conferences and student think-tanks on your resume, and get a job in community organizing or with an organization like YP4 or People for the American Way. This makes our movement more boring than the movements of the 1960s, but at least it holds the potential to be more sustainable.

So let some other kid take my place as a YP4 fellow. I’ve outgrown my need for gimmicky inspirational and self-congratulatory “bubble-blowing.” But it certainly has a place somewhere. There might be a 16 year old girl stuck in Fort Worth, Texas (or some other red state) desperately needing to meet other people who share her excitement for progressive ideas. For my part, I will try and convert the bubble-blowing that I scoff at so much in to deeds that have an impact on the right people. But from now on I’ll go forward with this new idea about what students today want and “hope” that this will be more successful!

Apply for a Young People For fellowship:
Here

1967 Penon levitation button!:

Mario Savio on “the machine”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Behold…the couch of Apathy!

All photos taken by Rivka Maizlish. To see the whole set of photos she took today, go to this flickr photoset.

many more pictures below the fold…

Meanwhile, in Usdan, activists were reading out the names of the nearly four-thousand dead American soldiers who died in Iraq.

Drop Beats, not Bombs!

Later on in the day, we occupied Shapiro and turned it into a pro-peace zone:

And then, off to Usdan to shout out fun slogans like : “war is idiotic, peace is patriotic”, “what do we want? peace. when do we want it, now” “tell me what democracy looks like: this is what democracy looks like” as well as some subversive chanting of “dual containment works” “what do we want? habeus corpus. when do want it, yesterday!” “autonomy not monopoly” “occupation corrupts the national character. stop this horrible national disaster” and my favorite, “salaam, aleinu v’al kohl ha olam. salaam, salaam”. Jews got style.

Finally, we met in a large circle in Shapiro to hear speeches by such campus figures as Father Cuenin, Gordy, and several members of the Innermost Parts community, including co-founder Loki, contributors Adam and Serby, commenter Lev, and, of course, myself.

We estimate there were 120 people at the rally.

To see more photos of today, go here.

Hey all. Rivka in the house! I worked at the DFA table today at the protest/rally/vigil thinger, and I’m glad to announce that we have raised 81 dollars to send to VoteVets.org, a non-partisan, progressive political action committee that elects veterans who have pledged to end the war.

Hoorah. That’s all. Catch y’all later.