Washington Jewish Week Letter: Tactics on Trump (from Facebook post)

This week's Washington Jewish Week published, as a Letter to the Editor (http://washingtonjewishweek.com/40875/letters-sept-7-2017/editorial-opinion/letters/), my on-line comment on last week's editorial entitled "Complaining rabbis got outmaneuvered by Trump." I gave my permission to publish it in the print edition as a Letter to the Editor. Still, without context, the Letter may seem a bit odd. The editorial was about the decision of Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Rabbis to decline to participate in the traditional High Holy Days call with the President of the United States.http://washingtonjewishweek.com/40722/complaining-rabbis-got-outmaneuvered-by-trump/editorial-opinion/editorial/

I think criticism of rabbis appearing "political" as a general matter (part of the WJW's concern) is unfair. The moral health of our society is at stake. But the WJW's criticism of the effectiveness of the tactic (as opposed to the strategy) was well-taken. In hindsight, it would have been more effective to draw out President Trump by telling him in advance what issues the rabbis intended to present in the annual call -- something that would have led the notoriously thin-skinned (and cowardly) President to cancel the call. Then the rabbis could have noted that the President could not even bring himself to deal with his dangerous behavior. An on the off-chance that the call would have occurred, some good could have come from that.

As things played out, Trump was, correctly, made to look bad. If the rabbis had been more subtle in their approach, he would have been made to look even worse. We should remember that this is not an "if the Tsar only knew" situation. Trump knows exactly what he is doing, and he needs to be called out on it.

FWIW, here is the WJW editorial:

What is a Jewish group supposed to do when it wants to make a principled statement to the president of the United States? How aggressive should it be? And how carefully should its members consider the political ramifications of what they are doing?

After President Trump’s defense of the white supremacists who staged the deadly Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, and his apparent insensitivity to the moral implications of the public pronouncements he made, the rabbinic leaders of the three main liberal streams of Judaism took a stand in a manner they thought would attract media attention — and it did. In a joint statement on Aug. 23, the leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements announced they would not participate in the annual Jewish communal High Holiday conference call with the president.

According to the rabbis’ statement, Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville violence were “so lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred that we cannot organize such a call this year.” And they went on to say that “the president’s words have given succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia.”

We agree with the sentiment expressed by the rabbis. We are also pleased that in addition to generating headlines, the move may have inspired some Jews who had long ago given up going to synagogue to contemplate coming back. But we do not approve of their tactics.

Most political observers could have predicted — particularly given the president’s past behavior, as well as the fact that the rabbis had yet to confirm a date for the conference call — that Trump would successfully fire back. Indeed, less than 24 hours after the rabbinic letter lecture, the administration responded that there was never going to be a High Holiday conference call. As a result, the rabbis had announced a boycott of a non-event.

At the time that they issued their very public statement, the rabbis knew that the High Holiday call was up in the air. So we can’t help but conclude that the statement was more of an effort at political grandstanding than it was a serious effort to deliver a substantive message.

In retrospect, it probably would have made more sense of the rabbis to say, “We look forward to our annual High Holidays call with the president, during which we plan to make clear our concern and our dismay regarding the president’s recent actions, and intend to encourage him to more forcefully embrace our shared American and Jewish values of inclusion and tolerance.”

Doing so would have put the ball back in the White House’s court and would have made these leaders look more rabbinic than political. And since ours is a tradition that values dialogue, we respectfully suggest that the rabbis would have been better off trying to engage with the president, rather than jumping prematurely to hang up the phone.

"What did you do during the [Viet Nam] War, Daddy?"

Today I posted this article on Facebook, with an accompanying brief commentary.

Born the same year as Donald Trump, Thorne-Thomsen made a very different decision than our current president. How male baby boomers responded in the 1960s and how they saw their decisions, says a lot of about character. There was no one perfect answer. But on any scale of responses, Trump's was near the bottom. And his refusal to recognize his use of privilege (including what appears to have been a phony doctor's note), is consistent with his other character flaws.

Carl Thorne-Thomsen

Brief life of a man of principle: 1946-1967

HARVARDMAGAZINE.COM

At good friend from high school responded as follows:
Sorry, but I have no respect for anyone, especially the educated, who knowingly participated in what I consider the worst thing our country ever did. Citing "justice" after being drafted is convenient. The fight for justice was the fight AGAINST the war, not fighting IN it. Once in battle you are morally obligated to do heroic things -- and to kill people who have done you and your country no wrong. Had he lived, I suspect he would have gone into politics, holding his medal high.

My friend's point has some force, but led me to draft a response.  Since it is too long for a short Facebook Comment, I thought I'd put my response in this blog:

For those of us who were opposed to the War, I think that those who decided to go to jail rather than submit to the Draft were the most principled, but those who were not legitimate conscientious objectors who did submit because of the class-based unfairness (and adherence to the rule of law in a democratic society) were pretty high up there. Both approaches recognized responsibilities of citizenship within a country which elected its leaders, however foolish those leaders may have been. One was the path of civil disobedience and the other was the path of being faithful to democratic and egalitarian norms.

In 1969, upon college graduation, I went to work as a VISTA Volunteer (something I had planned to do since the creation of VISTA in 1964). Working in a prison in Memphis, I concluded pretty quickly that I did not have the courage to do time rather than submit to the draft once my year in VISTA was over. And leaving the country to avoid the draft seemed to me to be an abandonment of responsibility to participate in the movement to end the War, and an abandonment of a country that provided my "tribe" as a Jew a refuge from the terrible fate that other Jews faced in the first half of the 20th Century. I had pretty well decided I would submit to the Draft and hope that I would not become cannon fodder. I was freed from that fate because my doctor's letter -- an honest description of my health (a description which I did not think would get me a deferment) -- caused my Draft Board to classify me 4-F.

So how did our Baby Boomer Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates respond to the challenge of the 1960s. Whatever one thinks of the "political" motives of Gore's and Kerry's decisions to go into the active-duty military (to which I assume my friend was alluding), they were operating within the rule of law and did not pull the 20th Century version of a Grover Cleveland, who paid someone poorer to take his place in the Civil War. Quayle and Bush the Second, on the other hand, hid out in the National Guard -- which, unlike in the post-Draft era of the Middle East Wars, was a virtual guarantee of not being shipped overseas. As for Bill Clinton, while he pulled a fast one on his local Draft Board, at least he continued to work in the Anti-Viet Nam War effort, unlike so many of our generation who, once they were clear of the draft, simply bugged out of involvement. Donald Trump, on the other hand, bought an Upper East Side doctor's note that was illegitimate (he could not even remember on which foot the alleged "bone spur" was located), and did nothing with his freedom but go into the family business, which, it appears, was rooted in part in perpetuating housing discrimination in Brooklyn and Queens.
Trump was the worst of the Baby Boomers, and somehow HE became the last Viet Nam era Baby Boomer President. And I think that is why telling the story of Carl Thorne-Thomsen is important.

Jesus Chavez, July 2017. Thank you.

Last night, Metro DC PFLAG honored Jesus Chavez, who has served as our outstanding Director of Operations for the past three years. We wish him well in his new endeavors back home in California.

In his quiet, yet persistent, work to improve the lives of LGBTQ people and their families, Jesus has exemplified what Robert Kennedy spoke of more than 50 years ago in Capetown: “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Jesus is such a man.

Dr. King and the Second American Revolution: My 1999 presentation at Temple Emanuel

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., SERVICE TEMPLE EMANUEL
February 12, 1999
David Fishback

On this Shabbat Evening, we commemorate the birth, and celebrate the life, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a 20th Century American prophet, who called our nation to its highest ideals.

In reflecting on Dr. King and his legacy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is that Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement forced America to examine itself closely: To confront the simple fact that the principles upon which we believed our country was founded were being ignored with respect to citizens of African-American descent.

The American Jewish Community was particularly receptive to this message, not just because it evoked our ancient stories of slavery and freedom, but because Jews in the Old World were made to feel as outsiders, just as blacks were in America. Our ancestors came to these shores so that they and their children and grandchildren would never again have to be outsiders, oppressed by undemocratic governments and hostile "host" cultures. For in America -- a "nation of immigrants", a "nation of nations" — the Dream was that all peoples could belong, that no one need be an outsider.

The Dream, of course, was imperfect, but the American Jewish experience taught us that, with each succeeding generation, the reality came closer to the theory. As we became comfortable in American, the glaring exception to the American Dream finally was confronted.

It is important to understand that the confrontation was far more than a secular issue. It is easy, but mistaken, to view Martin Luther King as essentially a secular figure, using the church simply as an organizing base. But an examination of his life and work reveals that the religious basis of his vision was deep and profound.

Religion for Dr. King was not merely an organizing tool. Rather, it was the well-spring of public morality that King saw as rooted in, and emerging from, the best Judeo-Christian traditions. He spoke with a religious voice, harkening to the words of the Hebrew prophets: "Let justice well up as waters," he quoted from Amos (5:24), "and righteousness as a mighty stream." Dr. King expressed not a religion of the rulers, but a religion of the masses: Speaking truth to power, condemning injustice, calling on an entire society to live up to the beliefs it held, but did not practice.

It was this prophetic vision that led Dr. King to a deep friendship and alliance with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose yahrzeit commemorate at the season of Dr. King's birthday. Rabbi Heschel was a refugee from pre-Holocaust Europe and a renowned biblical scholar. In January 1963, "an unprecedented ecumenical gathering of nearly 1000 delegates including established leaders of nearly every religious body in America" (Branch 21) met at the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race. This Conference, according to Taylor Branch in Pillar of Fire, was intended to deal with the widely-differing responses (and non-responses) of Christian churches to segregation in America.

But, as Branch relates, "Far from positioning Jews safely as helpful bystanders to an essentially Christian conflict, Heschel declared that the soul of Judaism was at stake and had been so ever since Moses contended with Pharoah at the "first" summit meeting on religion and race. 'The exodus began,' said Heschel, 'but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.'" (24)

What set both King and Heschel apart at the Chicago Conference was their insistence on the prophetic vision and approach to the crisis. "Moralists of all ages have been eloquent in singing the praises of virtue", wrote Heschel. "The distinction of the prophets was in their remorseless unveiling of injustice and oppression." And in the months and years that followed, Rabbi Heschel became one of Dr. King's staunchest allies in the struggle. The large picture along the stairway to the Religious School classes shows them together at Selma. And it was at Selma March that Rabbi Heschel reported, "It felt as though my feet were praying."

It is fitting that the annual American celebration of Dr. King take place in houses of worship, as well as in the secular realm.  First and foremost, Dr. King was a preacher, a man of religion.  But he wove a vital synthesis of religious conviction and a belief in American democratic principles.  In 1961, he observed that America

is essentially a dream, a dream as yet unfulfilled. It is a dream where [people] of all races, of all nationalities and of all creeds can live together as brothers [and sisters] . . . . Ever since the Founding Fathers of our nation dreamed this noble dream, America has been something of a schizophrenic society, tragically divided against herself. On the one hand we have proudly professed the principles of democracy, and on the other hand we have sadly practiced the very antithesis of those principles.

Across the American South, and across our entire nation, Martin Luther King was both the spiritual and the action-oriented leader of the Civil Rights Movement. And he understood that the struggle was not just to bring down the barriers of American Apartheid, but also to bring to reality an America of economic, as well as social, justice; to create an environment in which all of our children would have the opportunity to live happy and healthy lives.

Dr. King saw into the Promised Land, although he did not live to fully experience it. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were only beginning to bear fruit when he was gunned down just before Passover in 1968. It has been nearly a quarter-century since that terrible spring, beginning with the assassination of Martin Luther King and ending with the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Although progress has been slow, and we have, at times, had reversals since those days, we must remember how far we, as a nation, have come from what was, in the lifetimes of the adults here this evening, an apartheid structure in much of our own country.

Dr. King had known it would be a long process. In 1965, he said that

it is the keystone of my faith in the future that we will someday achieve a thoroughly integrated society. I believe that before the turn of the century, . . . we will have moved a long way toward such a society.

Well, we are approaching that turn. And we have, in the last 1/3 of a century, moved a long way. But, as Dr. King knew would be the case, there is still a long way to go.

The wisdom of celebrating Dr. King lies not just in his call for justice and democracy, but in the means by which he achieved it: the doctrine of militant non- violent direct action. The success of that approach enabled us to undergo what was truly a revolution with very little bloodshed. We had our martyrs, black and white, Christian and Jewish. But they died in circumstances which strengthened the Movement, and which caused a rotten system to shrivel up in a few short years. This was, in fact, the Second American Revolution. An important part of its significance was that it dealt with the exercise of power in a revolutionary context in a completely new way. Dr. King explained it thusly:

Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense, power is not only desirable, but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. What is needed is a realization that power without love in reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

The Second American Revolution was not only a revolution in the change it brought about, but in the way it brought about change.

The Second American Revolution -- of which Dr. King was the most visible leader -- may well turn out to be as important, or even more important, in its world-wide impact as in its impact within our borders.

To understand the impact of this Second American Revolution, we must remember the impact of the First American Revolution. In the 18th Century, the fledgling democracy of the colonial experience expelled, by force of arms, monarchical control. What emerged was the first real democracy on a significant scale in the history of the human race. Even though it was flawed by the genocide of the Native American population and the existence of African slavery in the South, the message which went out to the rest of the world was that governments could, to quote Jefferson, be based upon "the consent of the governed."

That message led to a century and a half of upheavals, which ended in the establishment of freedom and democracy in Western Europe and Japan. That message also led to the Gandhian Movement in India, which led to another expulsion of colonial rule and the creation of democracy in the most trying of circumstances. Gandhi added a new element to the formula: militant, mass non- violent direct action. And although the Indian Independence Movement was often overcome by terrible violence, particularly during the partition, it was instructive to a young minister in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.

By 1956, Dr. King was involved in intense discussions with American disciples of Gandhi (Rustin and Wofford). In 1959, he traveled to India to learn more of Gandhi's impact: how his ideas were followed and how they were not. By the early 1960s, the strategy of militant non-violent resistance to injustice and oppression was being refined by Dr. King and his associates, bringing about the Second American Revolution: the turbulent, but relatively peaceful, end of American apartheid. While the First American Revolution was, of necessity, based on the exercise of military power, the Second American Revolution was based on the exercise of spiritual power -- the militant appeal to conscience and love. And its successful implementation brought about the turbulent, but relatively peaceful, end of American Apartheid.

So the ideas that began in the First American Revolution swung to Europe and Asia, where they were refined, and were sent back to America, where they sparked the Second American Revolution. The strategy of the Second American Revolution, in turn, spread back to the Eastern Hemisphere, as the historic events of the last decade have demonstrated.

The success of King's adaptation led, in large part, to its adoption by the freedom movements of Eastern Europe and the Far East. The victorious non-violent massing of people opposing dictatorship and making it impossible for dictatorship to continue, was seen in Manila, Prague, East Berlin, and, finally, even in Moscow. The success of non-violence, I believe, gave heart to those in South Africa who recognized that apartheid was untenable and that a transition to freedom and democracy was not only essential, but possible. Mandela and DeKlerk, for all their courage and vision, stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King. Of course, the work is not finished — the Tieneman Square Movement, for example, was crushed. But, as Dr. King reminded us, "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Just as, at the Seder, we, as Jews, are required to retell to our children the story of the Exodus from Egypt, I believe that, at the King Holiday, we, as Americans, must retell to our children the story of our nation's internal Exodus from apartheid to equal rights. Both are stories of movement to freedom. While the first required flight from an oppressive society -- flight which we as Jews have been familiar with over the centuries -- the second tells perhaps an even more astounding story: a transformation of the oppressive society.

In the Exodus from Egypt, as this evening's Torah portion relates, Pharoah's "heart was hardened" after each plague. In the Exodus within America, Pharoah was the entire white society, and ultimately its heart was softened and its soul was changed by the non-violent demonstrations, the civil disobedience which forced the 20th Century Pharoah to itself be transformed. In many ways, we have gone from the Georgia of Lester Maddox to the Georgia of Jimmy Carter, from the Arkansas of Orval Faubus to the Arkansas of Bill Clinton.

It would be wonderful if the American Exodus had already led to a Messianic Age. But it has not, just as the Egyptian Exodus did not. It took the Hebrew people 40 years in the desert to recover from slavery. It will take American society a long time to recover from slavery and apartheid. But this should not be cause for despair; that is the lesson we must learn from Dr. King. Again, "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." If we work for progress, we can achieve progress. If we work for a Messianic Age, we can continually improve our world, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. 

Frank Underwood and Donald Trump: Which is more chilling, the fiction or the currrent reality?:

I have been watching House of Cards on Netflix.  It is hard to tell whether or not it is a welcome relief from the disaster of the Trump Administration.  The parallels are there, but the differences are also stark.  The fictional President Frank Underwood is contemptuous of virtually everyone else in the world (and of what most of us view as the norms of democracy) and only cares about himself and perhaps a couple of other people.  On the other hand, unlike President Trump, the Underwood character is is totally self-aware and is very, very smart.  

Those who have seen any of House of Cards know that occasionally, Frank Underwood speaks directly to the camera, breaking down the proverbial third wall of drama.  Here is the text of his chilling direct statement to the Netflix audience in the middle of his swearing in as President of the United States.  The text may not do full justice to Kevin Spacey's chilling performance, but here it is:

And now here I am.  President of these United States.  You made this bed, America.  You voted for ME. 

Are you confused? Are you afraid? Because what you thought you wanted is now here. And there you are, starring back, slack-jawed, bewildered, wondering if what this is what you actually asked for. 

This Democracy, your Democracy, elected ME.  And if you think it was hard getting here, you’re beginning to understand what I am willing to do to stay.  

I look across at this crowd gathered today, and I know that that these are not my supporters.  I’m looking at the people who are waiting, with a smile on their face for their turn.  And the most vicious among them are the ones who are smiling and clapping the hardest.  Power IS a lot like real estate.  Remember?

Silver Linings, Dark Clouds, and Hypocrisy: DOJ Pride at the Department of Justice

DOJ Pride DOJ Pride is an organization of LGBT U.S. Department of Justice employees.  It has existed since the Clinton Administration.

I was heartened to read an Associated Press report this morning that yesterday DOJ Pride held its annual Pride event in the Main Justice Building, honoring Transgender Rights hero Gavin Grimm and the DOJ attorneys who worked on the litigation against North Carolina's H.B. 2 until the Trump Administration pulled the plug on the case.

This seemed to be progress of a sort with respect to Republican Administrations, inasmuch as in the Bush II Administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft barred all DOJ Pride activities at the Department, and this exclusion continued until the last year of the Bush II Administration.

Current Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not comment at all about the upcoming event until, according to the AP report, a DOJ intern asked about it.  Then, and only then, did Sessions say that, "We will protect and defend and celebrate that, and protect the rights of all transgender persons," noting that he had directed the Civil Rights Division to review some cases in which transgender people were killed.  "We are not going to allow persons in this country to be discriminated against or attacked in any way because of their sexual orientation." (Sessions does not appear to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.)

The hypocrisy of the current Attorney General's statement is palpable -- it is nice that he is against murder, but opposes all laws protecting LGBT people against discrimination.  (Similar, I suppose, to those 20th Century Southern politicians who decried lynching, but opposed all moves toward racial equality.)  But even that hypocrisy has its value, since it is a public recognition of the humanity of LGBT people -- something virtually absent from recent Republican/Trump/Family Research Council discourse.  That seems reminiscent of the Reagan Administration 1984 Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Ceremony at DOJ.  I had just started working at DOJ, and initially was horrified that the speaker at the MLK Ceremony was Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, whose mission seemed to be to halt civil rights enforcement.  On reflection, I realized that this represented progress, because the culture had so changed that even people like Reynolds felt the political need to pay lip service to civil rights.

But upon closer reading of the AP report, I learned that the Sessions Department of Justice excluded the press from yesterday's DOJ Pride event.  And then I learned from another report that this exclusion was unprecedented.

So Sessions does not even meet the Brad Reynolds standard of decency.  Sessions allows DOJ Pride to meet, but then hopes that his homophobic/transphobic base will not notice.

Prince George's County Executive Candidate C. Anthony Muse's history of opposition to laws protecting LGBT people

Longtime Maryland State Senator C. Anthony Muse announced yesterday that he is running for the Democratic Party nomination to succeed Rushern Baker as Prince George's County Executive.

LGBT people, their families, their friends, and all people who support equal rights and treatment of LGBT people should be concerned.  From 2007 until 2014, Senator Muse opposed, and was in a position often to block, legislation barring discrimination against the LGBT community.  In 2007, as a member of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, he voted against protections for transgender people, and his vote prevented the full Senate from voting on an anti-discrimination bill, even though he had previously indicated support.  See here.

In 2008, again as a swing vote on the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, he indicated opposition to Civil Marriage Equality at the hearing on S. 290, although he left the meeting before testimony from the public.  As a Board member of the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG, I wrote to Senator Muse, hoping to address the concerns he set forth at the meeting.  This, and other appeals, had insufficient impact; Senator Muse helped block S. 290, and set forth his theologically based reasons in statements given to the Washington Post.

In 2011, Senator Muse again opposed Civil Marriage Equality.  Note this excerpt from a Post report:

"Here's my question: Where does it stop?" asked Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's), who is also senior pastor at the Ark of Safety Christian Church of Upper Marlboro. He questioned whether polygamy or marriage between people of very different ages would one day be acceptable.

The next year, 2012, Civil Marriage Equality was enacted by the Maryland General Assembly, but Senator Muse continued his vociferous opposition. See here.  Indeed, he was a leader in the unsuccessful effort to overturn the Civil Marriage Equality law by referendum, publishing an impassioned op-ed piece in the Post just a couple of weeks before the referendum vote.

A few months later, in March 2013, Senator Muse was a key Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee vote blocking a bill to extend anti-discrimination protections to transgender people.  See here.

Happily, however, the next year, Senator Muse voted in favor of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, extending civil rights protections to people regardless of gender identity, and it became law in May 2014. See here.

So has Senator Muse had a change of heart on LGBT matters?  With respect to transgender people, it would appear so.  But with respect to gay people, there is no reason to believe that his views have changed. In any event, the burden is on the prospective County Executive to show that he has moved passed the things he said at least as recently as 2012.