Category: activism

Chicago Women’s March canceled

December 27, 2018 • 9:15 am

The “big” Women’s March, run by the Women’s March Inc. (a trademark now contested by other branches), will take place in Washington, D.C. on January 19, as well as in several other cities. But some cities won’t be having them, while others, like New York City, will have two marches, one for women of color and the other including Jewish women, who see the Women’s March, Inc. as led by anti-Semites.

One of the cities that won’t be having a Women’s March this year is my town, Chicago, as reported by the Chicago Tribune (click on screenshot below):

To be fair, the local branch has objected to the Trib’s original headline which, thanks to reader Historian, I’ve recovered:

The new headline gives the reason adduced by the organizers—finances:

As controversy swells around national Women’s March organizers, the local group has decided not to host a march in January — an event that for the past two years drew hundreds of thousands of supporters to Grant Park in concert with similar marches across the globe.

While Women’s March Chicago organizers cited high costs and limited volunteer hours as the main reasons for nixing the annual rally and march, the break comes amid splintering within the national Women’s March leadership following accusations of anti-Semitism and scrutiny of its ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

A Townhall report (below) adds this:

Spokesperson Harlene Ellin of the Chicago Women’s March told Townhall that The Tribune’s headline and reporting were “inaccurate and inflammatory.” While also stating that since “The Tribune has apologized and updated the headline.”

Ellin continued by stating to Townhall, “I’m sorry but the reality is not as ‘sexy.’ The march was not ‘nixed’ as the original Tribune headline stated. Women’s March Chicago decided to hold our march early to have an impact on the midterm elections.”

Yet the Tribune’s report still implies that maybe there was a wee role of the kerfuffle over anti-Semitism:

The announcement elicited a range of reactions on the Women’s March Chicago Facebook page.

“This is disappointing,” one member wrote. “Women continue fighting to be heard in this patronizing patriarchal society. We are not done.”

Some made plans to join marches in other cities instead.

“Going back to D.C.!” another member wrote. “There’s too much to march for!”

Others expressed support for the choice to forgo a January march.

“A lot has come to light about national in the last year,” one member wrote. “I support not marching with them.”

And this (my emphasis):

Women’s March Chicago organizers say they are a grassroots group not directly affiliated with Women’s March Inc., though past local marches have been held in sync with the national group and other similar marches across the country. While the decision to forgo a January march wasn’t based on recent controversy, Kurensky said the opportunity to further distance the Chicago organization from national Women’s March leaders was a “side benefit.”

“That sort of infighting within the movement is very painful. It’s very painful to watch,” she said. “When a handful of leaders … say something, they are not speaking for an entire movement.”

Women’s March Chicago leaders also denounced anti-Semitism and Farrakhan’s February comments.

The report at Townhall (click on screenshot below) gives links to responses from the co-leaders of the Women’s March, Inc.: Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, and Carmen Perez:


Do watch the video mentioned below.

Given the prominence of the Women’s March in US politics — Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York called the organization’s leadership “the suffragists of our time” in a blurb for Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2017 — the muted response to the Tablet article is puzzling. But what’s even stranger has been the Women’s March’s response.

. . . In a video posted to Tamika Mallory’s Facebook page, Mallory — flanked by Sarsour and Perez — said that instead of wasting time by responding to reporters’ queries, they want to have a “public conversation” with Wruble, Harmon, and Morganfield.

“These three women have lied on us,” Mallory said. “We want to have these conversations in public, not behind closed doors, but in public. So we challenge the three of” — at which point the video abruptly cuts off.

Sarsour wrote a long post to her Facebook page, which read, in part: “The headlines, the character assassination, the undermining of leadership, discreditation campaigns are nothing new but in fact a bedrock of American society when the status quo is challenged.” Sarsour added: “A million newspapers can write and for those of us who are Black and Brown and from communities under attack — we cannot let hurtful and unvetted words by those who have the luxury of speaking but not fighting to take us off our tracks.”

Click on the video screenshot to go to its page, and the abrupt cutoff when the challenge was, for some reason, deleted:

You can read Sarsour’s response at the link above. But be warned: it’s solipsistic, full of hubris, whiny, and goes more or less like this: “I didn’t choose this life. This life chose me. . ” (direct quote), and I can’t quit it [shades of Brokeback Mountain], as I am in it too deep and I am too caring and it’s hurt my life. And people like me who want progress are always defamed and vilified  by the haters who simply don’t like Black and Brown women, and so on. She ends by saying, “My question to all of you is what side do you want to be on?”. My response is: “Not the side of Jew haters, sister!”

In the past few months Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez have tried to emphasize, by issuing statements in the name of the Women’s March, that they decry Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and really do love their Jewish sisters. I don’t believe them for a minute—not in view of what Tablet reported about their statements about Jews at the first Women’s March meeting—statements verified by the March’s communication’s director. The statements issued recently by the March decrying anti-Semitism are simply damage control by a triumverate of women who would love nothing more than the extirpation of Israel as a country.  I don’t believe what people say when they’re trying to save their organization and keep their reputations intact, especially when they’re said opposite things in the past. And I’ve decided it’s okay to say you don’t believe someone if you have good reasons to think them liars.

By the way, the statement below is pinned at the top of Linda Sarsour’s Twitter feed. (Curiously—perhaps because of the Women’s March fracas—she hasn’t posted there since October 27.)

What this really means, of course, is this: “If you disagree with me, you are by definition oppressing me and denying my humanity and right to exist.”

The Public Hating

February 24, 2017 • 11:00 am

by Grania Spingies

If there was one person in the world who felt genuine gratitude at Milo Yiannopoulos’s swan dive from grace this week, it was Pewdiepie. He must have wanted to send him a fruit basket, for within the space of a single day, Swedish Youtube megastar Felix Kjellberg was no longer Public Enemy Number One.

Last week, first the Wall Street Journal—and then every online paper, blog and social media feed—decried YouTube star Pewdiepie as a white nationalist, anti-Semite and Nazi fancier. Disney severed their contract with him and Twitter was packed with delighted Millennials quivering in joy at his imminent downfall. Of course, Pewdiepie is not even remotely a white nationalist or a Nazi. He’s an outlier on the Youtube scene: a ordinary person who managed to create a channel that attracted millions of subscribers that has turned him into a multimillionaire. His content is gaming, presented in a surreal and comedic way. Like all comedy, your mileage may vary. The humor is somewhat like the 1990’s MTV show Beavis and Butt-Head – often crude, seemingly pointless and utterly irreverent. I cannot imagine what Disney thought they would get out of partnering up with him on YouTube. Actually, I can: money. His crime was the insertion of tasteless, poorly thought-out jokes into his own videos.

That Disney might choose to sever a contract with a personality completely at odds with their syrupy, child-friendly wares is not the issue. Nor is it remarkable that people might find his content to be tasteless and incomprehensible and unwatchable. What is noteworthy is how many people became psychic overnight and declared him a Nazi, a hate-monger and then rejoiced in what they evidently hoped would be his imminent financial destruction—all without actually ever having viewed any of his content.

Trigger warning: lame jokes, gratuitous cartoon violence, mockery of newspapers, crude language, Nokia ring tones

The implosion of Milo Yiannopoulos’s career this week has spawned similar reactions and results: the loss of a book deal with Simon & Schuster and public pillorying in every venue imaginable. The venom this time around is not surprising. Milo could scarcely expect any compassion when he had never shown any himself.

His comments on what may or may not be excusing pedophilia, ephebophilia or relationships between men of different ages caused concern and revulsion, depending on what one believes he was advocating or discussing. It isn’t surprising that people are troubled by his words and repelled and unsure of their possible meaning. What is surprising is the fresh outbreak of psychic ability on social media in which people claim to know exactly what he meant, i.e., advocating for the harm and exploitation of children rather than perhaps displaying the behavior of a gay man known for trying to maximise sensationalism and outrage, carelessly discussing the complex and complicated experiences that many gay men have had in their lives:

Those who have had the good fortune of never experiencing anything other than clear consensual adult sexual encounters might remember that their life experiences are not shared by all. George Takei, Stephen Fry and James Rhodes (relevant interviews in the links) are all men who have recounted being raped or abused while they were minors. All three of them talk about it in very different ways. For Takei, it is remembered as a positive experience. Takei was a relatively mature teenager at the time. For James Rhodes, groomed and repeatedly raped as as small child, the psychological damage will last a lifetime. None of this informs us of what exactly Yiannopoulos intended his audience to understand by his comments on the podcast in question, but it should at least produce some sort of context to weigh against his Facebook clarifications and apologies.

Whenever someone becomes the Monster of the Week in the media, I always recall the short dystopian sci-fi story by Steve Allen “The Public Hating“, in which right-minded citizens could publicly execute criminals by the sheer force of hatred.

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There’s something profoundly ugly and primitive about the public assassination of a person’s character. It is magnitudes uglier when it’s done without a trial—in fact, when no crime has actually been committed at all.

I have landed: 2. Trouble at JNU

March 18, 2016 • 11:00 am

I am now in India, and in the middle of serious turmoil afflicting Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where I am staying with friends for a few days. There is some information on the turmoil at the JNU Wikipedia page under “student activism” and  “2016 sedition controversy.”

On February 9, the JNU students demonstrated for a number of causes, among them the mistreatment of a terrorist who was hanged on this day several years ago (counter to Indian law, he wasn’t allowed to see his family before execution, and his body wasn’t turned over to his relatives). This demonstration, an annual event, has now morphed into a general occasion to express left-wing sentiments. JNU is consistently leftist and secular, a thorn in the side of the right-wing and Hindu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which holds power for at least the next three years.

The new vice-chancellor of JNU, appointed by the BJP government, refused to give the students permission to demonstrate on February 9. They did anyway. There were reports that “anti-India” slogans were shouted, including calls for India’s destruction, and—horror of horrors—for freedom of Kashmir.  Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:

According to India Today, “Anti-India” slogans like “Kashmir ki azadi tak jung chalegi, Bharat ki barbadi tak jung chalegi” (“War will continue till Kashmir’s freedom, war will continue till India’s demolition”) were “reportedly raised at the protest meet.”

Calls for Kashmir’s freedom are not illegal, but calls for India’s “demolition” apparently are.

A short time later, the police (at the University’s request) invaded JNU, imposing a form of martial law on it for a few days, taking photos of anybody talking to reporters and searching the dorms and those arriving on campus.

After the police raid, the government then arrested three students for “sedition,” a vestigial remnant of British colonial law. Two are still in jail, facing serious time if convicted. But some of the tapes produced by the government as evidence of seditious shouting have already been shown to be doctored. Most people don’t think the sedition charges will stick, but it seems likely that the government will cook up other charges, and that the students (and the University) will continue to be pursued doggedly. In the meantime, both the students and faculty went on strike, the former for several days, the latter for one.

Another 15 students stil face punishment from JNU for equally unsupported charges. I attended a student/faculty “teach in” yesterday, which reminded me of the U.S. in the Sixties, when we did the same thing against the Vietnam War and the draft. It was impressive and remarkably peaceful; the students who spoke were passionate and committed. And a substantial number of faculty were there to show support. It was, in fact, far more peaceful than a Donald Trump rally—perhaps because Indians stick to the Ghandi-an tradition of peaceful protest.

All this has become national news: a left-wing university, perhaps the best in India, is pitted against a right-wing government that despises it and, indeed, seems bent on destroying it. JNU is on the front pages of India’s biggest newspapers every day.

As Wikipedia notes:

More than 500 academics from around the world, including JNU alumni, released a statement in support of the students. In a separate statement, over 130 world-leading scholars including Noam Chomsky, Orhan Pamuk and Akeel Bilgrami called it a “shameful act of the Indian government” to invoke sedition laws formulated during colonial times to silence criticism.

For one time I agree with Noam Chomsky!

Only Ceiling Cat knows what the BJP will bring to India, but it’s not good: more nationalism, more Hindu-centric feelings in a religiously divided nation, more punishment of dissenters.  It reminds me of what the Erdogan government—equally religious and punitive—is doing to Turkey. There’s an election here in three years, and maybe they’ll turn the present regime out.

The BJP is driven by a policy called “Hindutva,” which is designed to impose “Hindu-centric” values on everyone. It’s not so much that other religions, like Islam, will be forced to worship Hindu gods, which they won’t but they will be expected to adopt “Hindu values,” defined, of course, by the BJP. It’s much like the “we-are-a-Christian-nation-and-should-have-Christian-values” trope in the U.S., except the Hindutva form of religious nationalism is far more malignant.

UPDATE: I went to this afternoon’s (Friday) demonstration and spent an hour and a half listening to chants and talks, both in Hindi and English. A few photos:

Chanting (in Hindi) in the section of campus now known as “Freedom Square.” I couldn’t understand the words, but I recorded a video. Many news reporters were there.

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Chanting:

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The students listened raptly (except, of course, for those checking their phones):

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This is Shelha Rashid Shora,  the vice-president of JNU’s Student Union. She’s a real firebrand, and gave a speech in English both yesterday and today. (I’ve made a video of a segment.) I’m told that a substantial part—perhaps most—of the campus activism is done by women students and professors. The freedom that women enjoy at JNU, and the fact that the sexes mix freely, is one reason why the school is so highly resented by traditional Indians, who of course don’t enjoy that kind of equality, and whose marriages are often arranged.

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One thing I’ve noticed is that the activists keep a sense of humor, even those who, like Shora, are under threat of suspension (they use the old British term “rustication”). Although I can’t understand the speeches in Hindi, they’re often punctuated with laughter. And here’s further evidence:

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