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We need to understand the specifics of how this divide and conquer mechanism operates. Otherwise all of the listening we hope to do will not succeed.
My colleague Aurora Levins Morales, a Latina Jew, says it well:
She writes, "The oppression of Jews is like a pressure valve, redirecting the steaming rage of working people away from the 1% who own the wealth. For Jews to be blamed for oppression, some of us must be seen to prosper, must be well paid and highly visible, positioned as the public faces of an inequality we might help to administer but usually do not own. "
The purpose of oppressing Jews is not to crush us day by day. It's to have us available for crushing. To be the bone they throw. Nobody sees the owners. They hire us to be their faces. They send us to collect taxes. They appoint us as judges. Long before they let us live in their neighborhoods, they let us manage some of their inner-city buildings. Most of the people who manage those buildings are not Jews. But there are just enough Jewish names to keep everyone confused. And then they keep telling stories of how all Jews are greedy. And how we control everything.
When the New York Senate cut $500 million from the budget of the City University of New York last year, they did not tell the working class people of color who study there that the reason they now can't afford to go to College is because the board overseeing City University doesn't want to continue funding public universities. Instead, the reason they gave is that the Jews were upset by things taking place on campus.
We can't fight against this lie, against the ways our peoples get set up against each other, unless we see it in broad daylight-- right in front of our faces. So let's not just blame the messengers who are making the mistakes. For they are also shedding a light for all of us on the places we all need to work. Anti-Semitism and the intersection of anti- Semitism and racism is not new. What is new is that it's now out there, being talked about, being written about. So now we can do something about it.
5. One more important point about how we get pitted against each other. Because so many People of Color and so many Jews are out there in the trenches, fighting every day for social justice--our struggles sometimes show. The anti-Semitism that some Black or Latino people have often gets pointed out. And the racism that some White Ashkenazi Jews has also gets pointed out. The anti-Semitism and the racism of White Gentiles often stays hidden and unexposed.
When the Klan marched around a synagogue in Charlottesville on Shabbat, terrifying Jews and shouting out, "Jews will not replace us" -- not nearly enough mainstream press attention was given to the anti -Semitism in Charlottesville. So yes-- we need to correct our mistakes. We need to hold each other to a high level of accountability. We need to require each other to speak out against anti Semitism, racism, and all oppressions. But let's not forget that intense forces now are trying to pit us against each other and keep us confused about each other. We cannot let that continue.
May tonight be a night we commit ourselves to stay in the room, no matter how unbearable it gets, teach each other what causes one another pain, hold firm as Allies without taking sides, and fight with all we have against those forces that want to pit us against each other.
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