Havdalah #3: Prison Abolition, Supporting Trans Youth, and Palestine
30 Tishrei, 5784 / October 14, 2023
Dear Neighbors,
It has been a heavy week. This is Lee here at the top of our newsletter, acutely aware that I am not the right person to write to you about what is happening in Palestine and Israel. James has generously taken on that task in our Sidebar, below, and I’m thankful for his direct, challenging, and compassionate perspective.
What I will say is that I am thinking of you, those of you I know well and those I have never met, with care in my heart, with a dull near-numb grief pulsing through my days, and with humbling gratitude for this Never Again RI community that commits over and over to working to build a more just world.
Conversation about Incarceration: Noelle Hanrahan and the Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
When: Sunday, October 15, 4:00pm-6:00pm
Where: 340 Lockwood Street, Providence, RI 02907
Journalist and Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight for freedom over four decades of incarceration has been a keystone in the Black Liberation Struggle. Noelle Hanrahan, founder and director of Prison Radio and longtime organizer in the fight for Mumia’s freedom, will be providing an update. Join DARE, the RI National Lawyers Guild, and local Black Studies scholar Marco McWilliams in conversation with Hanrahan.
Conversation and letter writing to incarcerated people.
Snacks and childcare provided—feel free to bring a dish!
Forum on Detention Abolition Legislation
When: Wednesday, October 18, 5:30pm-6:30pm
Where: Zoom, and in-person if there is sufficient interest
Join AMOR for a Forum on Detention Abolition Legislation and learn about legislation to shut down the Wyatt Detention Center this upcoming legislative session. AMOR will be looking at what legislation has been successful in other parts of the country, what challenges other states have faced and how those lessons can be applied right here in Rhode Island.
Talk will be in Spanish and English
Note that in-person attendance will require masking
Registration is requested to let AMOR know your preferred attendance
If you have any questions, contact AMOR at: info@amorri.org
AMOR is an alliance of community based grassroots organizations mobilizing at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status to prevent, to respond to, and to end state violence against our community.
Speak Up for Trans Youth - A Community Action Meeting
When: Wednesday, October 18, 6:30pm-7:30pm
Where: William Hall Library, 140 Sockanosset Cross Road, Cranston, RI 02920
Learn about current advocacy efforts and ways that you can support trans youth, while the event also marks the 1-year anniversary of a rally at the same location that successfully rebuffed hate in 2022.
The event is sponsored in collaboration by TGI Network of Rhode Island, Youth Pride RI, The Womxn Project, RI Queer PAC, and Thundermist Health Center, and is not endorsed or affiliated with the William Hall Library.
Incorporated in 2011, TGI Network of Rhode Island is the only statewide organization providing support and advocacy for the transgender, gender diverse, and intersex (TGI) community in Rhode Island and surrounding areas. Their mission is to serve the needs of the TGI communities in Rhode Island and surrounding areas through support, advocacy, and education.
Youth Pride, Inc.’s mission is to meet the unique, ongoing needs of LGBTQ+ youth and young adults through direct service, support, advocacy, and education.
The Rhode Island Queer Political Action Committee (RI Queer PAC) is dedicated to creating equitable representation in state and local government by supporting queer, progressive candidates. They pledge to support candidates that embody the core values of equity, community, representation, and intersectionality.
Thundermist Health Center is a Federally Qualified Community Health Center, serving three communities — Woonsocket, West Warwick, and South County — for 50 years.
Thundermist Health Center Website
The Womxn Project October Volunteer Event
When: Wednesday, October 25, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Where: TWP Office Space 189 Broadway, Providence, RI 02903
Join The Womxn Project (TWP) for a night of conversation and crafting! They will be working on items to add to their ofrenda for Day of the Dead. This day is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd but they are hoping to complete this in the days before. You can learn more about an ofrenda and the holiday below.
Congressional District 1 Special Election
If you live in Congressional District 1:
The deadline to request your mail in ballot is October 17th at 4:00pm
Early voting starts on October 18th
Election day is November 7th
More info is available at RI’s voter website
Don’t forget to vote!
Community Needs Pantry at the West Warwick Public Library
The West Warwick Public Library has a take what you need, give what you can community needs pantry near the front entrance. Please stop by to take something or to donate. The pantry is most in need of pasta sauce, shelf stable milk (all kinds), cereal, oatmeal, peanut / nut butter, and toilet paper.
Where: 1043 Main Street, West Warwick, RI 02893
13th Film Screening at the Barrington Public Library
When: There will be two showings of this film.
Sunday, October 15, 1:00pm
Tuesday, October 17, 6:30pm
Where: 281 County Road, Barrington, RI 02806
Join the library’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for two showings of 13th. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation's prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.
Repairing the World Film Screening at Temple Sinai
When: Thursday, October 26, 6:30pm
Where: 401 Elmgrove Avenue, Providence, RI 02906
The Jewish Alliance, the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center, and the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island will commemorate the five-year anniversary of the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh with a screening of the documentary, Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life in the Baxt Social Hall at the Dwares JCC in Providence. No cost to attend.
Temple Sinai is a Reform shul in Cranston, RI.
There isn’t a way around writing about the recent events in Palestine. And yet, all I have to contribute are seemingly evergreen observations. This is as unavoidable as it is redundant. It will continue to be unavoidable and redundant until Palestine is free.
I think it’s crucial that I don’t pull my punches on this simple, incontrovertible truth. My experience is that a clear, unambiguous objection to the Israeli colonial project is rare even among American Jews who consider themselves leftist and principled. There’s many reasons for this. None are important. The fact remains unaltered: this will not end until Palestine is free, or until Israel has destroyed it entirely.
On a schedule that trains can only envy, the deluge of think pieces about the “conflict” has arrived with the customary moral hand wringing, accompanied by an ironic eagerness for retribution. I find the debates over the ethics of violence tiresome and divorced from reality. Our feelings about “right” or “wrong” are irrelevant at best. It doesn’t matter whether you or I believe that the methods of the attacks on the Israeli border were justified; they were foreseeable consequences of the actions Israel has taken since the beginning of the Nakba. Acknowledging this is not a celebration of death, nor is it a condemnation of resistance.
You cannot put people in a crucible and expect them not to be changed. You cannot be surprised when you are finally burned after yet again laying hands upon them.
The expectation of placid acceptance of ethnic cleansing is myopic, yes, but it is also cruel, intentionally ignoring Israel’s crimes against humanity. The somber emails, the social media posts pleading for peace — where are these words the remainder of the year, during the seizures of homes, the extrajudicial murders, the sudden bombings? Where is humanity during the months of building tension before the inevitable, rarer snap of retaliation? Where are our leaders when Palestinians beg for support from the international community? Where are my people when war crimes are done in our name?
This irrationality and selective memory is also revealing. The ugliness exposed demands an answer: why do we find Palestinian losses more acceptable?
Additional context doesn’t complicate the situation; it clarifies it. The violence is disproportionate, the casualties uneven, and the turmoil rationally prompted by invasion, annexation, occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism. Only one party has the power to stop the “conflict,” as it’s usually called. To refer to this as a war obfuscates reality: Gazans, a group of whom the majority are minors, have no standing army. Israel has the Iron Dome and one of the most formidable militaries in the world, with advanced weapons and artillery and the carte blanche support of the world’s most powerful empire.
If Israel stops, this ends. If the Palestinians stop, they die.
In this scenario, it is laughable to be shocked at violent resistance; it is an inevitability. As the critical theorist Frantz Fanon points out, the violence of colonization can only be undone by the violence of decolonization. This is a situation we have created: Israel, the United States, and England together. In passivity, we are all culpable.
It is possible to be compassionate without being complicit, but it demands enough integrity to refuse the imposed silence and the artificial moral dilemmas. It demands enough integrity to remember that Never Again applies to everyone, not just us.
Act Now:
The organization Jewish Voice for Peace has a phone script and contact form for your representatives
Further Reading:
The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
Orientalism, Edward Said
Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, Judith Butler
The Question of Palestine, Edward Said
Neither Settler nor Native, Mahmood Mamdani
Conflict Is Not Abuse, Sarah Schulman
Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, Steven Salaita
On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, with Judith Butler
Ten Myths About Israel, Ilan Pappe
“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”, Jewish Currents
Links to Organizations:
Needle Drop #3: Something different this issue; instead of a song, we are providing a playlist of podcast episodes to serve as a primer on Palestine. If you can only listen to a few, listen to the first four episodes. If you can only listen to one, listen to Shereen’s episode, “Collapse of the Iron Wall,” the final episode in the playlist. If you don’t have a Spotify account, both Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here are available in any standard podcast player.
NSC-131 Wants Attention Super Bad — So They’re Going Diet Nazi
Nationalist Social Club 131 has been littering propaganda all over Rhode Island yet again. This is part of their continuing effort to recruit “patriots” to their grand project of turning New England into a white ethnostate. Activity was also reported in Massachusetts, as far up as Plymouth. There’s also confirmation from their own social media that they were out in Johnston this past Monday (October 9th) to celebrate the rededication of an ugly ass statue of an ugly ass colonizer.
Recruiting may not be going that well, though. It could be that overt Nazism is a little too gauche for most New Englanders. To ease the more demure conservatives into it, NSC-131 has a newly established front group they’re calling “The People’s Initiative of New England,” or “PINE” (aka Diet Nazi). Despite the active efforts to cloak their shit, they’re not slick. Alongside appeals to “patriots” is typical rhetoric you’d find in some dude’s manifesto off Gab. They didn’t even try to disguise the references to “blood and soil” and the 14 words. Subtlety doesn’t appear to be NSC’s bag. Better luck next time, boys.
Also, just a tip for PINE: if you’re gonna try to hide your NSC ties, maybe don’t have one of your public pictures include an easily identifiable Nazi with a rap sheet. Hi Stephen! ❤️👋
As always, if you come across stickers, leaflets, flyers, or other propaganda materials for white supremacists or other hate groups, we advise that covering them works better than attempting to remove them, and is generally safer; Nazis are known for hiding razors underneath stickers. If you encounter any flyers or leaflets, please collect and destroy them thoroughly before disposing of them.
Please do not post pictures on social media of any white supremacist propaganda. Nazis partially rely on the backlash generated by their materials to proliferate through the Internet; sharing images of their stickers and leaflets, even in outrage, is still participating in the dissemination of their content. However, we do encourage you to reach out to Steve Ahlquist, Uprise RI, and / or our tip line at badconsciencerhodeisland@gmail.com if you do find Nazi or fascist ephemera out and about. These are far more helpful ways to combat white supremacist harassment and recruitment.
I’d also like to plug Steve’s piece on the ugly ass colonizer statue, where he mentions NSC's littering. Go have a look, and thanks for reading!
