Raising Cain...

A Nazi History Lesson - In These Times

This is one of the better articles I've seen that addresses "alienated whites in Obama's America" in a way that invites exploration...though I'm sure there are many whose world view's are so rigidly fixed that a civil, constructive discussion is not yet possible:

This is not an article about how Bill O’Reilly is just like Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, there are parallels between the multiethnic Habsburg Empire and the contemporary United States, in particular the racial alienation felt by some in the ethnic majority after previously marginalized minorities gained a measure of political power.

via inthesetimes.com

Related articles

The resistible rise of Adolph Hitler

Nazis: A Warning From History (Full Series)

Rev. Lennox Yearwood: The Music of Our Struggle: Celebrating the Hip-hop of 2012

Interesting article from Rev. Yearwood...music and justice, music and healing...

As we celebrate the changing of years this is a good time to look back on the momentous year we endured. And to rejoice in the hip-hop music of 2012 that provided the soundtrack on our journey to hard-fought victories, and helped us cope with tragedy.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

On the 150th anniversary of the largest mass execution in US history, 60 riders from South Dakota reach Reconciliation Park in Mankato, Minn.

Today, after a 300-mile ride from Crow Creek, South Dakota, 60 people -- some of whom are ancestors of 38 Dakota men who were hanged on December 26, 1862 by order of President Abraham Lincoln -- reached Reconciliation Park in Mankato, Minnesota, to hold a ceremony on the 150th anniversary of the largest mass hanging execution in US history.

I first learned about this dark piece of history a couple of days ago, Christmas Eve. I decided to watch the film made about the first ride -- Dakota 38. I was so uplifted by the story of this healing journey that I wrote about it on my In Hawk Space blog and shared it on Facebook as my 2012 Christmas greeting.

In that post, I focused on just a few thoughts that the film stirred up. Today my process with the film and the event continues to unfold. Discussion in the last teleconference call of a psychoanalytic class I'm taking this semester turned to the intergenerational trauma that all people living in North America share. I have been interested in this subject for awhile, but the idea has taken on near-passion status for me in the last year or so. It's a wonderful triple intersection of my practice of psychoanalysis, my volunteer work as a justice activist, and my interest as a spiritual student in the idea of raising Cain.

It was clear to me from the film that these Native Americans, from their own experience of oppression, know that we are all traumatized, and that the way through it is to reconnect with our own pasts and work together to find new ground so that we, both as individuals and a human family, do not keep paying the trauma forward.

I'll be sharing more on this notion of intergenerational transmission of trauma in future posts.

For more coverage of the ceremony in Mankato today see also:

Dakota Indians mark hangings of 1862 with trek on horseback (Yahoo News, 12/26/12)

150th anniversary of the Dakota 38 hanging -- Photo Gallery (Mankato Free Press, 12/26/12)

Related articles

Dakota Indians remember largest mass hanging in US history

Santee tribe to honor anniversary of executions

Dakota Indians mark hangings of 1862 with trek on horseback

David Palumbo-Liu: The need for the other narrative in Gaza

I keep a framed print in my office: It depicts a cat just sitting peacefully (I can't remember the artist). The caption is: "What people need is a good listening to."

I have proven this true time and again -- at least for myself -- not only in my healing practice but in the practice of peace work and justice activism out in the troubled world beyond my quiet holler here in Tennessee. Thus, I was happy to find an amazing OpEd by David Palumbo-Liu at truthout.org yesterday.

Since then, I've spent quite some time deciding where to share it. The thoughts and feelings that have prevented a quicker sharing relate to an indepth (and ongoing) contemplation of the fractured communities, the violence, anger and hate that currently blinds us as a human collective to our essential oneness, our peaceful, loving and cooperative nature.

I think a lot about how we can ever heal all the wounds that keep us from a reunion with the Self and the Source that we as a human race abandoned so long ago. I think we will figure it out. Social healing is a complex process, but I am confident that one of the skills we'll all need is an ability to listen through the heart first, and only then let the words pass on to the head through that powerful field of compassion that allows us to hold extremes simultaneously in one center.

Palumbo-Liu's article offers an opportunity to practice such a thing and to learn more about it, I think. He speaks here about young people in Gaza, but it's clear to me that we could take such an invitation to deep listening anywhere on Earth right now and move ourselves toward something better:

Believing their story is never allowed to be heard, Palestinians have a feeling of dispossession described most eloquently by the late Edward Saidi.  Now Gazan youth are pleading for the world to listen to their rage, sorrow and frustration, and their commitment to a cultural and political project that will endow them with rights and possibilities for life.

via truth-out.org

I discovered more great posts at David Palumbo-Liu's website. He also has a Twitter feed @palumboliu. When I get a minute, I'll add his website URL to Raising Cain's News and Blogroll in the sidebar.

 

Henry A. Giroux | Hurricane Sandy in the Age of Disposability and Neoliberal Terror

Interesting article on environmental disasters, community dislocation and how those impacted can become invisible...

Hurricane Sandy not only failed to arouse a heightened sense of moral outrage and call for justice, it has quickly, if not seamlessly, been woven into a narrative that denied those larger economic and political forces, mechanisms and technologies by which certain populations when exposed to a natural catastrophe are rendered human waste. One reason for this case of historical amnesia and ethical indifference may lie in the emerging vicissitudes of an era eager to accommodate rather than challenge global warming, an era in which freakish weather events have become such commonplace occurrences that they encourage the denial of planetary destruction. These days Americans are quickly fatigued by natural catastrophe. Major natural disasters and their consequences are now relegated to the airborne vocabulary of either fate or the unyielding circumstance of personal tragedy, conveniently allowing an ethically cleansed American public to ignore the sordid violence and suffering they produce for those populations caught in the grip of poverty, deprivation and hardship. It gets worse. Catastrophes have not only been normalized, they have been reduced to the spectacle of titillating TV. Rather than analyzed within broader social categories such as power, politics, poverty, race and class, the violence produced by natural disasters is now highly individualized, limited to human interest stories about loss and individual suffering. Questions concerning how the violence of Hurricane Sandy impacted differently those groups marginalized by race, age, sickness and class, particularly among poor minorities, were either downplayed or ignored.

via truth-out.org

Amy Goodman interviews Alice Walker on 30th Anniv. of "The Color Purple": Racism, Violence Against Women Are Global Issues

One of my favorite stories from an awesome storyteller...can't believe it's been 30 years, though...

On the 30th anniversary of the publication of "The Color Purple," we speak with author, poet and activist Alice Walker about her groundbreaking novel and its enduring legacy. Set mainly in rural Georgia in the 1930s, the book tells the story of a young, poor African-American woman named Celie and her struggle for empowerment in a world marked by sexism, racism and patriarchy. The novel earned Walker a Pulitzer Prize in 1983, making her the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction. Walker explains the origin of the book’s title and explores some of its central characters and their connection to her own family history.

Read the full transcript or watch the interview at www.democracynow.org

Fight Over Closing of Illinois Supermax Ends 14 Years of Prisoners' Silence in Solitary Confinement

Great story on an important issue of justice and human rights, with audio links as well:

Tamms Correctional Center on 200 Supermax Road, near the southern tip of Southern Illinois, may be as far from the hustling and bustling city of Chicago, with its constant city throb of noise, as you can get. And it's likely that no one can feel the difference as much as its inmates.

The only supermax facility in Illinois, meaning it is the only prison built to keep the majority of its prisoners in isolation, Tamms prison was consigned for closure by the state's governor in July.

But the battle between former prisoners, the families of those hurt by conditions at Tamms, anti-torture advocates, the union determined to keep its jobs and the state legislature struggling to contain costs continues to rage.

The story of Tamms is the story of something positive that may have come out of a recession, about what may be the last throes of the supermax movement, and what a campaign against torture accomplished in less than four years.

via truth-out.org

The Unbelievable Brutality Unleashed on Kids in For-Profit Prisons | | AlterNet

It's way past time for prison reform, folks...

The Walnut Grove story is a cautionary tale that raises alarming questions about the treatment of youthful, mostly nonviolent offenders in Mississippi and elsewhere. And it calls into question the wisdom of turning over the care of these youths, some as young as 13, to private companies that exist solely to turn a profit – companies that have no incentive to rehabilitate youths, that thrive on recidivism, and that increase their profits by cutting corners and reaping ever more troubled souls into their walls. 

via www.alternet.org

TV's Overwhelming Whiteness Changes How We Think | | AlterNet

Great article on the neuroscience of racism -- a subject that I think needs to enter the conversation on race. The author is a co-editor of Are We Born Racist?: New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology. Here's an excerpt from the article:

The research is overwhelmingly clear: job one is to confront the fact that racial difference exists. The new science of racism reveals that our brains do indeed seem to react negatively to people of different races — exposure of just milliseconds to a black face can cause white folks’ amygdalae to light up with fear.

Colorblindness doesn’t work because we never stop spotting differences in our environment.  Our brains are designed to do that; that’s how we survived on the savannah 50,000 years ago, and it’s how we survive in the globalized urban jungles of the 21st century.

Read the whole article at www.alternet.org

Learning While Black: A Message From a Mother to Her Son | | AlterNet

The power of storytelling...

For three years of my K-8 schooling, from 7:40 a.m. until 3:05 p.m., I was black and invisible. I was bused across town to integrate a white school in Southeast Portland, Ore. We arrived at school promptly at 7:30 and had 10 full minutes before the white children arrived. We spent that time roaming the halls—happy, free, normal. Once the white children arrived, we became black and invisible. We were separated, so that no more than two of us were in a class at a time. I never saw black people in our textbooks unless they were in shackles or standing with Martin Luther King Jr. Most of us rarely interacted with a black adult outside of the aide who rode the bus with us. I liked school and I loved learning. But I never quite felt right or good. I felt very black and obvious because I knew that my experience was different from that of my peers. But I also felt invisible because this was never acknowledged in any meaningful way. I became visible again at 3:05 when I got back on the bus with the other brown faces to make our journey home.

via www.alternet.org