George's - Writings

Zoey, our two and one half year old mini-golden doodle, saw her nephew Ranger, a 16 week old black lab puppy, walking away out of the room.   He stepped on her blanket, which was in his way.   She loudly protested, and we shushed her.   In a brief moment she had been very jealous, and a minute later they were playing happily together. We, white liberals, are supportive of Black People.   We were horrified at the killing of George Floyd, and strongly protested in the weeks that followed.   Then things just went too far!   Police clashed with protestors, as businesses were trashed and fires torched businesses. We need change, but those people need to not do things that alienate white people.    They need to have some patience! Racism is a key issue in our lives!   It is a very different thing for different people. I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color.  I define a white progressive as any white p...

Repression Isn't "The Answer" April 01, 2023   In 1822 the Denmark Vesey slave insurrection was planned in Charleston but was thwarted.  Nearly three dozen people were executed.  Erskine informed us that “thirty-five Blacks were hanged and more than forty sent to the Caribbean or to Africa.”  (40)   Historian Lacy K. Ford added that the Vesey insurrection revitalized the “colonization movement” among Southern whites, as a possible means of colonizing free Blacks and troublesome slaves as a way to enhance white security. (41)  The net effect of the Vesey revolt changed many white Charlestonians views of management of the enslaved.  As Stampp said “After the Vesey conspiracy, Charlestonians expressed disillusionment with the idea that by generous treatment their enslaved ‘would become more satisfied with their conditions and more attached to whites.”’ (42)   In other words, enslavers ramped up greater repressive actions drop...

  SAY Their NAMES: How Black Lives Came to Matter in America  – by: Curtis Bunn, Michael H Cottman, Patrice Gaines, Nick Charles, and Keith Harriston provides an excellent summary of Black perspectives on the systemic nature of racism and the evolution of Black resistance to it. Quotes follow: “I don’t know.  I mean, I thought I understood where Black Lives Matter was coming from.  I thought I understood that there were biases in America,” she said.  “But that…the way George Floyd died, as if his life didn’t matter…and worse, the officer seemed to know nothing would happen to him.  It broke my heart.” (p.33) (regarding the 1793 yellow fever epidemic)  Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia civic leader who signed the Declaration of Independence, called on Black people to assist white people to assist and treat sick white people, claiming, without any evidence, that Black people were immune to the deadly illness.  Rush was also a do...

  Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning , Peter Beinart’s latest book, is interesting for those curious about: Judaism, Israel and Zionism.   Peter Beinart focuses significantly upon his perception that we Jews believe that we are “The Victims” in various contexts (incorrectly).   Talking of Purim Beinart states: Haman is hanged.   Mordecai takes his job.   Good triumphs over evil. When we tell the story of Purim today, many of us stop there.    But that’s not quite right.   The book of Esther doesn’t end with Haman’s death.   It continues because although Haman is gone, his edict to kill the Jews remains.   … “The Jews struck at their enemies with the sword,” proclaims the book of Esther, “slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies.”   On the thirteenth day of the month of Ada, the Jews killing seventy-five thousand people.   They make the fourteenth “a day of feasting and me...

    https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/how-my-family-lost-their-home-when-israel-took-ove How My Family Lost Their Home When Israel Took Over Palestinan Property in 1948 George E. Bisharat, a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, in the Arizona Republic  (May 16, 2004): This month, the 56th anniversary of the Palestinian"Nakba" (Catastrophe), when one people gained a homeland and another lost theirs, I was thinking of a home in Jerusalem. It was the residence occupied by former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir - author of the famous quip that "the Palestinian people did not exist" - when she was Israel's labor minister. It was also the family home built in 1926 by my grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat, "Papa" to all of us.    … My grandparents eventually suffered a reversal of fortunes, and in the early '30s, leased the house to officers of the British Royal Air Force, expecting to return in better ...

  RACISM  ORGANIZATIONS, GROUPS and WEBSITES AWARE-LA - Saturday Dialogue  - (zoom) - https://www.awarela.org/saturday-dialogue Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere-Los Angeles (L.A. - SURJ Chapter) (Western Time) First Saturday Dialogue - 10:30am - 12:45pm, Third Sunday Dialogue - 3:00pm - 5:00pm, Fourth Saturday Dialogue - 1:00pm - 3:00pm Saturday Dialogue  is a gathering for white anti-racists who want to discuss issues of identity, community, privilege and racism in our lives with the intention to strengthen our practice as anti-racists in alliances, relationships, and interactions with people of color. Regular, recurring dialogues throughout the year focus on the intersections of multiple identities, including Race and Class, Sexuality and Race, and Gender and Race. Other workshops focus on relationships, Radical White Identity and Community, and issues such as police and the prison i...