In the midst of an Israeli military slaughter of civilians in Gaza
and now, its announcement it will
,000 acres of land in the
West Bank—the largest Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land in 30
years–to build homes for Jewish settlers the title “The Palestinian
people will win” may seem delusional and hyperbolic. But it is not a
rhetorical device; it is a moral argument rooted in a reading of
anti-colonial history. Israel has browbeaten the world, manipulated
anti-Arab sentiment, and attacked its critics to justify its escalating
occupation.
It is possible that this recent escalation of barbarism may
become a tipping point in world public opinion to oppose Israel
ethnocide and support the right of self-determination of the Palestinian
people.
Discrediting and dismantling the Israeli ideological arsenal
and getting our government to withdraw all military aid from Israel is a
key battleground for the human rights movement in the United States.
When I first joined the civil rights movement in 1964 as a field
secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and first heard the
militants from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee chant
“Hell no, we won’t go” to fight in the war in Vietnam I understood that
the Black and Vietnamese national liberation struggles were an
ideological, strategic, and emotional common reality. From the beginning
I believed the civil rights/Black liberation revolution would win
“Freedom Now” and we would see that “Jim Crow Must Go.” But my first
years of anti-Vietnam war work were marked by an excruciating sense of
outrage and despair. I watched in horror as my own government—that Dr.
King would later call “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”
—dropped napalm, cluster bombs, fragmentation bombs, and Agent Orange on
a civilian population—eventually killing 4 million people.
I felt the
people of Vietnam were heroic; but I had little hope that we could truly
end the war with Vietnam intact and independent. Then someone gave me a
copy of
Vietnam Will Win by Wilfred Burchett, an Australian
supporter of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. He explained in
great detail the long-term military capacity of the Vietnamese people to
withstand U.S. barbarism, but—as was later expressed to us directly by
Vietnamese representatives to the U.S. peace movement—also explained
that key to that victory was a powerful anti-war movement in the United
States that could weaken, undermine, and eventually destroy public
support for the war and force the U.S. government to withdraw all troops
from Vietnam.
Applying these lessons today, we have to turn our focus to the United
States government, which is Israel’s largest military and ideological
ally. We should demand a complete cutting off of all U.S. aid to Israel,
our government’s disassociation from Israel’s policies, and aggressive
support for Palestinian self-determination and national liberation.
This tactical plan involves three components.
1) Support for the Palestinian political project. This
will support and end to Israeli interference in the internal affairs of
the Palestinian people, an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West
Bank and conditions under which Palestinian people have the right to
travel and meet and receive humanitarian aid from all over the world.
2) An international ideological counteroffensive against the
Israeli government’s colonial master narrative. As one element of a far
broader campaign I will address the Israeli government’s charges that
Jews in Israel and throughout the world who oppose its occupation,
partition, and oppression of the Palestinian people are “self-hating
Jews.”
3) Strengthening a broad, multi-racial united front in
the United States rooted in Black and Latino communities with strong
support from people of all races and classes, including Jews, to demand
the complete and immediate cutting off of all U.S. military aid to
Israel.
The Story of a Self-Respecting Jew
 |
| Eric Mann |
The Israeli thought police have tried to silence or intimidate Jewish
critics and opponents in Israel, in the U.S., and throughout the world
by labeling them “self-hating Jews.” Israel’s argument is that these
Jews have responded to anti-Semitism by trying to disassociate
themselves from their Jewish identity and history—and thus side with
Israel’s “enemies.” Israeli ideologues argue that since Israel is “the
Jewish state” and thus speaks for all the Jews in the world those who
disagree are by definition “anti-Semitic” and “self-hating Jews.”
But
in fact, there are many Jews in the U.S.– especially those who have been
part of the civil rights, anti-war, anti-apartheid, environmental
justice, and international human rights movements–who have contempt for
the Israeli ideologues who would rather foster anti-Semitism against
their Jewish critics than engage in an honest debate—let alone look in
the mirror. I think we consider ourselves “self-respecting Jews” or
some concept similar to that and out of that self-respect and an
independent political perspective based on the principles of human
rights and self-determination for oppressed peoples comes respect for
the people of Palestine.
This self-respect includes an ongoing and militant opposition to
anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish remarks, slurs, and actions—including
statements by some who oppose Israeli policy by using anti-Semitic
arguments. This is complicated by the fact that Israel itself tries to
make a complete identity of itself and “worldwide Jewry” and attacks Jew
who oppose both anti-Semitism and Israeli policy as “anti-Semites.”
While this makes the job more difficult, those Jews who are militant
opponents of anti-Semitism and Israeli policy can help provide some
leadership in fighting on both fronts.
From this perspective, as my relatives often said, before telling a
long narrative, “To make a long story short….” let me tell you about my
own journey of consciousness and commitment.
My life has been shaped from birth by
the Jewish,
anti-fascist, working class, pro-union, pro “Negro” internationalist,
and socialist traditions. While I joined the civil rights, Black
liberation, anti-Vietnam war movement in 1964 (when I was 21), my
involvement in the struggle against anti-Semitism and fascism and “for
the Negro” began in my family and my life experience prior to my next 50
years of a lifetime of organized resistance to the system.
I have always been a member of an organization. As I say in my book,
Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer,
in order to be effective you must “join an organization based on
political agreement with its strategy and tactics and build a base and
never walk alone.”
For me that meant the Congress of
Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a
Democratic Society, organizing prisoners as I spent 18 months in prison
for militant anti-war demonstrations, Soledad Brothers and Attica
Defense Committees, United Auto Workers New Directions Movement, Jesse
Jackson Rainbow Coalition, Labor Community Strategy Center in Los
Angeles, Bus Riders Union, Community Rights Campaign, and our Fight for
the Soul of the Cities.
In my case, it is not possible to separate my Jewish identity,
history, and experience from the life choices I have—shaped by the
revolutionary Two Decades of the Sixties in which hundreds of millions
of people turned the world on its head. So, when the apologists for
Israel’s militarism accuse people like me of being “self-hating Jews” I
see it as despicable and desperate. But I also know that those arguments
are used to intimidate and silence many Jews of conscience including
those in Israel who are standing up to these atrocities. I also know
that many non-Jews who are appalled by Israel’s policies fear
accusations of anti-Semitism.
As such, I want to explain the deeply
personal/political experiences that lead me to support the Palestinian
people’s right to a homeland and self-determination and opposition to
Israeli policy, politics, and persecution very early in my life. I
present my journey as a “self-respecting Jew” as one tactic in the
larger ideological war.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942. My father was
in Europe as a member of the infantry during the Second World War
against the German, Japanese, and Italian fascists. My mother Libby and
Aunt Marcia raised me. I have a picture of me holding a picture of my
father in an army uniform when I was 2—before I had ever met him.
Both sides of my family came from Jews who fled Russia and Poland
during the anti-Semitic pogroms of the early 1900s. Some became
impoverished small shop owners—like my mother’s father whose “candy
stores” always went out of business despite her efforts to help him–as
he labored 16 hours a day only to work himself to death at an early age.
Others, like my grandmother Sarah Mandell, were teenage, immigrant,
Jewish garment workers. My grandmother worked in a sweatshop close to
the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory in Manhattan—whose workers were among
the most militant and politically conscious, leading strikes of the
International Ladies Garment Workers of which she was a proud member.
Management kept the factory doors locked so the workers could not
escape. On March 25, 1911 the factory caught on fire killing 146 women.
I learned of that story from my grandmother long before I read it in
labor history books. She worked in the industry as a pattern cutter
until she was 50. She was among the last Jewish workers as the workforce
became Black, Puerto Rican and Dominican. I was honored to speak for my
family at her 100
th birthday party and thanked her for being
one of my role models. She said, “The best thing about this party is
that I know who all of you are and still have all my marbles.” She read
the
Jewish Daily Forward (Fovitz), a secular, socialist, Yiddish newspaper all her life.
My parents were militantly anti-Nazi. My father,
Howard, spent his teenage years as an organizer for the Textile Workers
Union—having gone to the South to organize Black and white workers in
the 1930s. He was also a member of the Young People’s Socialist League.
My mother hated the fascists more than anyone I knew.
“The fascist bastards” was one of the first expressions I learned. I
understood the Germans had done something terrible to us but was
surprised, at 5 years old in 1947, to experience anti-Semitism by some
of the kids on Argyle Road across from Prospect Park in Brooklyn where I
lived. They called me “a Jew bastard” and said, “You killed
Christ”—who I did not know at the time. My mom got very angry and said,
“Scratch a goy and you’ll find an anti-Semite.” She went
storming out to confront the mothers whose sons had said it, telling
them “they learned that hatred from you.”
When I was six, I came up into our apartment repeating a
rhyme I had heard the older kids say: “Eenie Meenie Miney Moe, Catch a
N—-r By the Toe.” My mother was livid, “What did you say? Don’t you
ever use that word! Do you know how cruel that word is? The word is
‘Negro.’
It describes people who are Black-skinned. After what Hitler
did to our people, how could you talk badly about the Negroes? The Jews
and the Negroes are in the same boat.” I felt terrible. I had grown
up with such adoration from my mom that I was shocked at her anger at me
and felt truly terrible about what I had done. I was proud of my
mother and wanted to apologize to the Negroes I had not yet met. I went
back down to my friends in Prospect Park—Jews, Italians, and Irish—and
told them the terrible mistake we had made and how we hadn’t known what
the word meant. They smiled at me as if I was really stupid; they had
known exactly what they were saying.
So at an early age my worldview was set. We were Jews
who were for socialism and the labor movement and we fought for the
Negro and against the fascist bastards inside and outside the United
States. That worldview continues to shape my life today.
In 1950, we moved to Valley Stream, Long Island, a
working class, white suburb just outside of Queens. I loved going to
Saturday morning services at Temple Gates of Zion—for the camaraderie,
the mystery of a Torah I would touch with the tallis as the Rabbi
brought it through the aisle for all of us to embrace. I loved the
Hebrew and Yiddish languages I did not speak—the songs, Adon Alum, Ein Keloheinu, that I knew by heart, the Kaddish, the mourners prayer with its alliterative and evoking Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba to which we responded Amein–and the chalah and pickled herring.
Each week we would be asked to donate so that the Jewish
people in Israel could plant trees in a desert. Our Rabbi explained
the miracle that Palestine was “a land without a people” and we Jews
were “a people without a land.” Then the Rabbi continued, “We have to
plant the trees because they had it for 1,000 years and did
nothing with it.” I asked, “Who were they?” He simply said, “The
Arabs”—with the clear implication it was “us” against “them.” He
continued, “After the Holocaust, we desperately needed a land. So we
got Israel, and the Arabs have so many countries why can’t they take
“them.” (I later understood he was talking about the nakba in
which 700,000 or more Palestinians were forcibly driven out of Palestine
and have still demanded “the right of return.”)
I still remember the
contempt in his voice. One of the ways a movement loses support is when
it can’t make sense to its own members and its “logic” is morally
questionable. If there was one thing I came away from that conversation
with, at 13, was that in fact Palestine was not “a land without a
people.”
In high school I played JV basketball and was in the
theater group and student government. Traveling in those circles I knew
about the high school fraternities and assumed me and my friends would
all be “fraternity brothers” in one of the two fraternities—Black and
Gold or Green and Red. I was not asked to join either one. My liberal
Christian friends explained that Red and Green did not accept Jews—but
assured me that when they got in they would change all that. My friends
who got into Black and Gold told me more firmly that it was a Christian
fraternity and I was not welcome.
I was then approached by two very impressive guys, Howie
Sandler and Bob Pelcyger. They were members of a Jewish fraternity, Mu
Sigma. When I asked them why I had never seen anyone with their sweaters
they explained that it was sort of underground. “Since our sweaters
are all gold with black trim and their sweaters are all black with gold
trim, Black and Gold says they do not want to be confused with Jews—so
anyone caught wearing the Mu Sigma sweater will be beat up.”
Besides how intellectually ludicrous the racist argument
was, this was my first “identity crisis.” I was an internationalist; I
did not believe in racial segregation. I did not want to be in a
Jewish only fraternity. But the choice was not of my making—I would
join an all Jewish fraternity or no fraternity at all. This whole
rejection by my former friends was unsettling. What about us was less
than them? Were we outcasts? What about us didn’t they like? If I
joined Mu Sigma, would I once again be stigmatized as “the Jew” which I
hadn’t experienced since I left Brooklyn? But for reasons I can only
trace to my parents and, by then, my own character, personality, and
politics I responded to the high-school anti-Semitism with anger,
contempt, and resistance.
While it had not been my first choice to be
in an all Jewish fraternity, if that was going to be forced on me, then I
would embrace it and make it into a cause.
Again, years later, when I read the world-shaping
Wretched of the Earth
by Franz Fanon I understood my own situation in a far broader
historical and racial context. I was deeply moved by his discussion of
the terrible self-image many Algerians had to confront because of it was
imposed on them by the brutal French occupiers–who enthusiastically
murdered unarmed and poorly armed Algerians but folded in front of
Hitler’s army like a house of cards and turned over French Jews and
resistance fighters to the Nazi occupiers. Fanon argued that no amount
of individual psychotherapy could undo the degradation of a people who
were systematically vilified by an oppressor.
Only rebellion, armed
force, aggression towards the oppressor, and an ideological
understanding that your movement reflected civilization in the face of
the barbarism of the oppressor could offer any chance of personal and
collective liberation. Only national liberation could heal the wounds
of national oppression.
I read W.E.B. DuBois and listened to Malcolm X.
They were “race men” and Pan Africanists who understood that the
healing of the profound wounds inflicted upon Black people by a white
supremacist system based on slavery required a war to the death with
“the white man”—not every white person–but as the personification of
racist, white supremacist, capitalist system that had to be overthrown.
In thinking back on this, I am again thankful beyond words for my
mother Libby. When she witnessed anti-Semitism she never tried to give
me “arguments” about how to pacify the savages, like “Well actually, we
didn’t kill Christ” or “not all of us have big noses or are dishonest
businesspeople.” She understood that whoever won the battle of ideas
would win the war. As such, she went on the warpath against “the dirty
anti-Semites” and “the fascist bastards.” I saw her tell an
anti-Semitic man on a bus he was an “ignoramus,” which I thought was one
of the greatest curse words I had ever heard. Like Fanon, my mom
taught me that the only way to address racial degradation is to stand up
and fight back.
I also came to understand that agreeing to join Mu Sigma
was not just an act of defiance. As I got to meet many of its members,
I really liked them a lot. They were smart, intellectual, had a great
sense of humor—Jewish humor—ironic, sarcastic, philosophical, with long
stories that people had to perform not just tell. They were also cool
guys. In realizing I liked those “Jews,” I realized I also liked
myself.
After my 3 month “pledging period,” I was finally
“initiated” and got my Mu Sigma sweater. I told my fraternity brothers
that we should all wear our sweaters to high school and stand up to
those Black and Gold idiots. They all refused. Some accused me of
“picking a fight” to which I replied, “Of course, that’s exactly what I
want to do and what we need to do.” I also thought they must be
exaggerating the consequences.
Again, to my shock, many of my former buddies from the
baseball league where I had been an “all-star” physically attacked me,
beat me up, spat on me, called me a fucking Jew bastard, and once again a
Christ killer. These were guys who I had grown up with since 7th
grade, had gone to their homes, and yes, who came to my fucking bar
mitzvah before they learned from their fraternities and families that
they hated me. The idea of being attacked by people who knew you
personally showed me the depth of racial hatred—once the ideology took
root you became the “other” and your former friends could beat you with
not an ounce of moral ambivalence.
My attackers called our fraternity “Jew Sigma.” Groups
of 3 and 4 guys threw me up against the lockers, and punched me until
they knocked the wind out of me. As the week went on, every day my
sweater was covered with more and more dried spit. I would not wash it
off. I treated it like a badge of honor. But I was also very
frightened. I realized I was physically afraid, not physically tough
enough to stand up to my attackers. I was practicing passive resistance
out of necessity not philosophy.
The next Sunday I went back to my fraternity and, in
retrospect, organized my first civil rights action. I challenged my
fraternity brothers, “Look, either we all wear these sweaters or I quit.
We should not let those anti-Semites push us around. But if we are
afraid of being beat up then let’s disband the fraternity.” In the
movie, all of the guys would have charged out of the meeting and taken
on the bullies. But in the real world the campaign turned on the
decision of one person to stand with me the next morning. Marvin
Weinstein was a wrestler and a body builder.
When he put on his Mu
Sigma t-shirt his muscles rippled out of the sleeves. He was the
perfect person for the job.
I went to school the next Monday. The Black and Gold
guys came towards me again, but then they saw Marvin right next to me as
my bodyguard. Marvin confronted Pat Zarcone, one of the leaders of the
pack, in front of 100 people in the hall: “Hey Pat, do you have any
problems with us wearing these sweaters?” Pat, also a jock and as big
as Marvin, assessed the situation and said, “Not at all Marvin, I don’t
know where you got that idea.”
The war was over; the other side had
backed down. I had not been the strongest. But I was the best
tactician, I had a strong class stand, and was able to rally forces to
my side—and win the battle. The next day more fraternity brothers,
hearing of the truce, came to school with their sweaters on. Many of
the girls said, “Oh, there is a new fraternity at school.” It was a
rite of passage for me—the first time I had fought for a principle
involving a lot of personal risk. I was really surprised that I was
willing to fight so hard—and of course it was great to win.
Throughout this time, I did not think the oppression of Jews was the
central problem in the world or even my life—but it informed my
emotional make-up and worldview. By 13 I was reading
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison and learned of the death of Emmett Till—tortured and
murdered by white racists for looking at a white woman in Mississippi. I
understood the experiences of the anti-Semitism I experienced with some
sense of proportion and priority. Out of the interaction of personal
experience and political perspective I understood that we all had to
make choices and mine would be to consciously disassociate myself with
the oppression of the dominant culture and to side with the oppressed.
By the time I got to Cornell University in 1960, I worked with the 10
Black students in the entire university—including Angel Flemings and
Sam Carradine—to challenge Cornell’s racist admission policies. Every
summer I worked in the South Bronx as a social worker with Black and
Puerto Rican kids. When I graduated I joined the civil rights movement
as a field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in
Harlem and the Northeast.
My experience reflects the choices of many other Jews as well. I just came back from the 50
th
Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer, hosted by Tougaloo College
in Jackson, Mississippi. It was a transformative experience to see
Robert Moses, Dave Dennis, Hollis Watkins, Courtland Cox, Dottie
Zellner, Frankye Adams Johnson, Charlie Cobb, the SNCC Freedom Singers,
and many hundreds more who made history 50 years ago still working full
time for social justice and social revolution. It was heartwarming that
several Black speakers at the event, thanked the organizers of Jewish
origins for the historic role they played
—not in comparison to others but in terms of their overwhelming over-representation.
To make this concrete, it was estimated that about 1,000 volunteers
went to Mississippi and the South in the summer of 1964. Of the white
kids who went, more than 50 percent were Jewish, while Jews in 1964 were
2% of the U.S. population and 3% of the whites. What is the
mathematical probability of that happening as a random act? Virtually
none. But as a political probability it is very high and even
predictable because of the long history of Jewish suffering,
discrimination, and the trauma of the Holocaust–but also because of the
long social justice traditions and proven leadership in social
revolutions all over the world. As Nelson Mandela observed, “I have
found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race
and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been
victims of prejudice.”
And yet in Mississippi in 2014 there was not one supporter of the
Israeli occupation of Palestine. How was that possible? Because the
civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, anti-apartheid, and Palestinian
liberation movements have been allies since at least the 1960s.Today,
the vast majority of liberal, radical, progressive, revolutionary Jews
work in inner city, urban communities as teachers, social workers, and
live and work in a multi-racial reality in which their identity as Jews
is an important but not primary point of reference. The Israeli state
and its ideological warriors have no buttons to push with them. They
have no ambivalences about Israeli brutality and nothing to prove to the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Israeli government.
These Jews, as part of a far larger social justice movement can play a
critical role in opposing U.S. military aid to Israel and opposing
Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the Palestinians.
Exposing Israeli Human Rights Abuses and Demanding the End of all U.S. military aid to Israel
There are moments in history that are tipping points—often not fully
understood at the time but in retrospect—when the tide turns and
seemingly impossible revolutionary objectives become shockingly
possible. Often, they are when a system exposes itself in ways that
even its closest supporters find disgraceful and are unable to defend to
themselves let alone others.
The occupation of Gaza has gone on seemingly forever, but today the
United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating war crimes charges
against the state of Israel because “more than 1,900 Palestinians were
killed in the recent fighting, a majority of them believed to be
civilians while on the Israeli side 64 soldiers and 3 civilians were
killed.” Human rights lawyers are documenting that the Israeli army
attacked homes, schools, hospitals, Gaza’s only power plant, and U.N.
premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied,
“Hamas has carried out ‘a double war crime’ for targeting civilians with
its rockets and ‘using civilians as human shield for its activities.’”
Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a full-page ad, called on
President Obama to condemn Hamas for “using children as human shields:”
Wiesel argues, “I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And
now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by
worshippers of death cults…
What we are suffering through today is not a
battle of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian.
Rather, it is
a battle between those who celebrate life and those who champion death.
It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism.” By posing the battle
of a barely armed, occupied, blockaded, starving people with rockets
trying to stop ethnocide by a nuclear power with one of the best
financed armies in the world as one of barbarism versus civilization,
Wiesel is correct but needs to look in the mirror—for in his aggressive
defense of the murder of children it is he who has become the
barbarian. In my many conversations and readings over the past weeks I
have found that many of those who have strained to find some rationale
for Israel brutality have reached the breaking point—and agree that this
is a
shanda, a great sin that must be stopped.
For those of us in the United States, the focus of our work should be
in demanding the end of U.S. military aid to Israel. The numbers are
staggering. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid
since World War II, $121 billion to date. The 2014 federal budget
includes $3.1 billion in direct military aid and an additional $504
million for research, development and production of anti-rocket and
missile defense systems, most of which are US-Israeli joint projects.
Annual Foreign Military Assistance grants to Israel represent 23 to 25%
of the overall Israeli defense budget. Defense Department contracts
since 1999 show that at least 50 companies have profited from contracts
totaling more than
$6.5 billion benefiting Israel, either for the Israeli military or for work performed in Israel.
[1]
In the present attacks on Gaza, Israel has hit houses, offices and
farmland with airstrikes by F-16s (manufactured by Lockheed Martin),
missiles fired from Apache helicopters (manufactured by Boeing) and
shelling from naval gunboats. The US government has continued to fuel
for fighter jets and military vehicles, to Israel’s armed forces despite
a soaring civilian death toll from aerial and other military attacks.
On July 14, the same day President Obama vowed that “We’re going to
continue to do everything we can to facilitate a return to the 2012
ceasefire,” the State Department approved a $544 million sale of AIM-9x
sidewinder missiles and associated support services to Israel. These
missiles can be used by F-16s to hit ground targets.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said “[The US]
has not only provided the heavy weaponry, which is now being used by
Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in providing
the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rocket attacks, but no such
protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.” Glen
Greenwald’s recent release of new Snowden documents indicates that
“Israeli aggression would be impossible without the consent, lavish
support, and protection of the U.S. government…the relationship between
the NSA…and the Israeli spying agency…is at the center of that
enabling.”
To continue this lethal partnership, many U.S. police are being
trained by Israeli defense forces in suppression of Black and Latino
colonial subjects in the U.S. As one example, in the recent armed
police suppression of demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, both the St.
Louis County Police and St. Louis police department have received
training by Israeli security forces.
As such, it is President Obama even more than Prime Minister
Netanyahu who should be the primary focus of our demands and our
organizing. In that context, Jews in the U.S., just as they were in
Freedom Summer 50 years ago, can be a critical component of a
multi-racial united front for social justice and human rights.
Eric Mann, a veteran of Congress of Racial Equality,
Students for a Democratic Society, and the United Auto Workers is the
author of Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful
Organizer. He is the host of KPFK Pacifica’s Voices from the
Frontlines: Your National Movement-Building Show www.voicesfromthefrontlines.com He can be reached at eric@voicesfromthefrontlines.com
