Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Columbia U Alumnus Juan Gonzalez reflects on 1968 and 2024

Chad Pesach to all who observe.

Eid Mubarak to all who recently celebrated the end of Ramadan.

Cut to the chase: one of the most moving things RantWoman absorbed when Dudu Mtazo was Friend in Residence at NPYM: one powerful form of resistance during the apartheid era in South Africa was people who defied pass laws to pray together. What if EVERYONE just stepped back from their buttons and figured out ways to pray together, pay attention to the needs of women and children and decided to figure out how to live together?

RantWoman is:

--noting all the campus demonstrations against the humanitarian outrages in Gaza

--noting both physical and electronic walls going up lots of ways

--noting rounds of military tit for tat: oh look what our drones and air defenses can or cannot do. Oh look. See us strike near to but not directly at nuclear facilities.

--Overly opinionated about a bunch of sad old men world leaders losing their grip.

--As outraged as anyone about humanitarian disaster in #Gaza

--prone to fall into rabbit holes about assymetrical warfare, one term for both September 11 and October 7

Full disclosure1: RantWoman graduated from Princeton on disciplinary probation as one of 89 students arrested for occupying Nassau Hall in connection with demands that the university divest from companies doing business with South Africa and a statement from then President William Bowen about Board of Trustees action.

Full disclosure 2: In 1982 the Israeli Defense Forces collaborated with a Lebanese militia conducted a massacre at two refugee camps in southern Lebanon. RantWoman and others in a small affinity group stood on a street corner outside the Israeli consulate while a number of Jewish human rights activists occupied the Israeli consulate demanding that Israel take steps to allow humanitarian assistance.

RantWoman will probably post some more protest links just for documentation purposes.





No comments:

Post a Comment