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A note just received from J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami attests to the new dynamics in the American Jewish community on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the changing dynamics in Washington and new possibilities to really achieve the two-state solution:
(J Street is the progressive "pro-Israel pro-peace" lobbying group formed last year - see their website for more info.)
I just left an extraordinary meeting with President Barack Obama, which he called to meet with the leadership of the American Jewish community. A dozen organizations - including J Street - were at the table. It was made clear to the President and his team the strong support that exists among American Jews and the broader public for a strong push to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a two-state solution, and for a regional and comprehensive approach to the peace process. The President said such a resolution was in Israel's interests. In the interests of the Palestinian people. And clearly in the interests of the United States. The President expressed his gratitude, as did many of his aides, afterward for our attendance. You should feel great. After little more than a year - and through your online advocacy and donations - J Street has arrived. We are your political voice when it comes to Israel and the Middle East - representing you in Washington and in the national political debate. In recent days, much has been made in Jewish media of supposed concerns and reservations in the Jewish community about President Obama and his approach to the Middle East. And today I had the opportunity to take our message of support directly to the White House - that there's a big difference between the views expressed by a vocal minority on behalf of the Jewish community - and what that community really thinks and supports. We'll be in touch, Jeremy Jeremy Ben-Ami
Executive Director
J Street
July 13, 2009
 Photo by H. Beckett of activists gathering in front of the government building, before being ordered away A group of about 25 concerned constituents gathered in front of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's Dallas office on July 9 only to be rudely turned away. The group was one of over 150 organized by move-on.org to rally for health care all over the US. This particular group in Dallas was there to urge Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to fight for President Obama's health care plan with a strong public option. This plan will make affordable health care for all Americans possible while keeping choice of providers and competition. It was also pointed out that alternative plans such as the regional, private co-op plan were unacceptable. Many attending the rally had personal stories to share. One single mother, for example, mentioned that her health plan offered by her employer was too expensive to cover her whole family. The peaceful demonstrators were very shocked to hear that the Senator's staff not only refused to meet with a delegation, but also had called the police who promptly asked the group to leave the premises and move to a sidewalk in front of the neighboring property. Rightful citizens were unable to to peacefully meet with the Senator's staff and these very constituents were actually thrown off the property initially without a chance to be heard. After negotiating the organizer of the group was given permission to bring the staff a petition signed by several thousand demanding support for a strong public option health care plan. A vote on this bill is expected in August. A statement was given saying that Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was for competition, but that she hadn't made a decision about the overall plan yet. The newspaper reported that she, like Senator Cornyn, opposes the public option. One thing is not debatable for this mother who brought her teen daughters to the rally: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is unwilling to hear what her constituents have to say about health care reform.
How are the global economic crisis, water in Bolivia, oil in Iraq, and the fast lane on Highway 635 in North Dallas related? And what do they have to do with the airport in Tegucigalpa?
They’re all part of a jigsaw puzzle called, at various times, Reagonomics, neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, globalization and gobblelization.
As the world capitalist crisis began to crunch, in the mid-1970s, the transnational corporate “solution” was to use state power to squeeze more profit out of all economic activity. They began an assault on workers’ wages, hours, and benefits. They pulled weaker nations into disadvantageous “free trade” agreements that gave their resources, their markets, and even their workforces to the transnational corporations. They used the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and the World Bank to force intolerable conditions onto weaker, debtor, nations. They pried all forms of economic activity out of the democratic control of the people and into private, corporate, hands. Those who did not cooperate faced the full military power of corporate-dominated nations.
It didn’t work out. In the 1990s, the Argentines rejected the conditions that the International Monetary Fund tried to oppose. The World Trade Organization weakened and became an international epithet. The Bolivians rejected the privatization of their water supply. Privatizing Iraqi oil fields turned out to be much more of a problem than anticipated. Bush failed to privatize Social Security. People all over Latin America began to elect governments who wouldn’t cooperate with the transnationals. The people of the United States elected a President and other leaders on the basis of their commitment to a change in economic models. As this is written, Latin America is raging because the President of Honduras was kidnapped and exiled by neoliberals.
This quick look around brings us to the highway lanes in North Texas. Governor Perry called a special legislative session that ignored the big problems of runaway unemployment and children’s health care, but left the door wide open for more privatized toll roads, including “managed lanes” in the middle of existing highways. Texans have had more than enough of Perry's privatized toll roads. Prices are skyrocketing and people are getting bills over $1,000!
Two years ago, Perry was still hoping for a privatized toll road up to a quarter mile wide and stretching from Laredo to Oklahoma. The Lege didn’t let him have it. In the special session just ended, they turned their backs on Perry’s toll road ideas altogether.
Neoliberalism, including privatization, did not work. It is being rejected all over the world, and in Austin.
--Jim Lane
The annual Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival runs July 8-12 in Okema, Oklahoma. Meanwhile, in Dallas, the basement section of Theater Three (called “Theater Too”) is packing in big crowds with Woody Guthrie’s American Song. Eight singers, musicians and story tellers weave together the best of Woody’s tales and music. Every word spoken or sung, they announce, came directly from Woody. The effect is dazzling! The original conception and adaptation are the work of Dr. Peter Glazer of the University of California at Berkley. Among his many qualifications listed in the program, he is a Governing Board member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade archives. They save the memories of the American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The presentation from the actors/musicians is all immediate and unrecorded. They use no artificial amplification, but just sing at the top of their lungs. The stage is made to look more or less like a porch on a ramshackled dust bowl house, but it doubles as a hobo jungle some of the time, and as a boxcar for Woody’s train songs. All of the characters, men and women alike, speak in first person, for they are all Woody, except for a few scenes when one of them becomes Cisco Houston making sidewalk music with Woody for coins in New York. Except for a rousing version of “Reuben James,” they don’t say a lot about World War II. “This Machine Kills Fascists,” Woody’s proud guitar sign, is in some of the photos on the wall, but not in the presentation. As we sat teary-eyed in the Sunday matinee among the mostly silver-haired audience members, we began to wonder why we were in $30 seats in a downtown theater instead of in the union hall right outside of town, where a strike just started its fourth week. Such wondering caused my pal to start checking on the show’s union credentials, as she always does. Only 3 of the 8, the program said, were members of Actor’s Equity. But then, we weren’t really thinking about them. We were thinking about Woody.
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