Jews From The United States

"I certainly feel no anger or animosity towards trans people [...] The only feeling I have towards them is compassion. Not to the point where I’m willing to give up all of women’s sex-based rights, no. But I do know I can only imagine the trauma and pain they have endured in their lives."

"[Letter to Katharine Viner, editor in chief of The Guardian, on the transgender debate.] It is astonishing that the progressive media has handed such an own goal to the right, closing its eyes to concerns about the safeguarding out of fear that to do otherwise would lead to accusations of bigotry."

"This is a great example of antisemitism. I’m a Jew from Long Island. Many Jews that live in the states get attacked in the streets for decisions made by the government in a country that we have zero affiliations with. Thank you for this example you miserable cunt."

"Nobody ever asks me what it felt like. They never ask what it was like to spend three of my teenage years in secure psychiatric units for severe anorexia nervosa; how it felt to be so undernourished I could hardly walk; how it feels now to be able to picture the doctors' and nurses' faces more clearly than I can those of my late grandparents; how it feels to have spent my formative years with young women who are now, in so many cases, dead; how this experience changed my personality for ever. No, no one asks that. Instead they ask why: "Why were you anorexic? Why?""

"He was talking about us as if we were scaly little trolls that live under the bridge, when we're normal, functioning members of society. I feel like antisemitism has always been rampant, but it's never been spoken about in the news... Kanye brought into light the fact that there are so many people out there who violently hate Jews."

"You have said that both sides in the gender debate are equally passionate — but only one side demands censorship. It seems to me that at The Guardian that side has won."

"And while there has been much discussion recently about the wrongs of holding the World Cup in a country where homosexuality is illegal, the fact that a man in Qatar can legally beat his wife has merited barely a shrug."

"Few things drive the British press quite so demented as the thought of a pregnant woman with a choice."

"The relationship between Britain and America, from Britain's perspective, has always reminded me of the one between Frasier Crane and his brother Niles: there's the big, brassy, embarrassing, famous and attention-seeking brother who hogs the spotlight, and then there's the smaller, sharper, more self-aware and overly self-conscious brother who is both scornful of his sibling's shallow fame but also faintly jealous of it and hides the latter beneath snarky jibes. Of course I get it: having lived in America and Britain I can see all too well how America's cheerful, unabashed tendencies towards arrogance, superficiality and shameless ambition grate against Britain's preference for self-effacement, awkwardness and grim failure. What I don't get is why folk in Britain bother getting wound up about it. Any hint of an American tradition coming to Britain – high-school proms, Daily Show-a-like nightly talkshow, will.i.am – and Radio 4 programmes and newspaper articles sprout up most self-righteously debating whether America is "taking over British culture". Come on, Britain, you're better than this. Make like Niles and take out your handkerchief, wipe away the germs and walk on past. It'll probably go away soon."

"MJF becomes AEW world champion"

"An eating disorder is a mental illness. It is characterised by the sufferer's belief that they are too fat, that to survive on 500 calories a day is the norm, that doctors are trying to make them fat, that weighing more than seven stone is obese and unacceptable. So far, so paranoid. Yet the current culture of skinniness legitimises the anorexic's beliefs. That is where the danger lies. Once a person becomes severely anorexic, they are usually too locked into their own little world to care if Jennifer Aniston is now a size six, or to read about Jodie Kidd's protruding hip bones. But when they try to recover, it is very difficult to shake off these old beliefs when every other magazine cover seems to validate them."

"I remember getting a call from the fire department commander telling me they were not sure they'd be able to contain the fire. I said, y'know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."

"Not only did week workers have little choice about the time they worked, they were continually subjected to what Rose Pesotta called "the whip of the foreman." Foremen, foreladies, and bosses felt compelled to oversee the demeanor and behavior of week workers in the factory. Too much talking, singing, or visiting the restroom or the drinking fountain cut into production time and thus had to be controlled."

"Rose Pesotta, who would later become an organizer in America's garment shops, recalled that the evening meetings of the revolutionary reading circles attended by seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, and itinerant workers provided an "escape from the monotony of everyday existence.""

"Rose Pesotta said she emigrated in part because she wanted to live in a society where ordinary workers commanded respect. In America, Pesotta thought, "a decent middle-class girl can work without disgrace." Had she remained in Russia her only choice, given her upbringing, would be to marry and become a housewife, a future that had little appeal to her."

"Ambitious females usually learned their skills in a more circuitous manner, resorting to what a Bureau of Labor Statistics investigator called "piratical methods." To avoid confinement to dead-end, low-skill positions, they created do-it-yourself apprenticeship systems, jumping from one learner's job to the next and slowly acquiring all the different skills needed to complete a whole garment. "I learned the trade the hard way, changing jobs often, for in those days there were not training classes," recalled Rose Pesotta of her first years in the women's garment industry."

"Children taking their place on the picket line occurred throughout modern Chicano labor history, as early as the 1930s. As an example, during the 1933 Los Angeles Dressmakers Strike, ILGWU representative Rose Pesotta organized 300 children in costume for an impromptu Halloween parade in front of the factories where their mothers were picketing."

"While we are engaged in a global war nothing is too costly for the armed forces. Billions are poured into the making of implements of destruction."

"Although they have readily spent billions of the people's money for destruction necessary to win the war, they balk at spending for peace-time constructive work at home. By the same token, conservatives who have not been averse to sending the best of American youth to foreign lands to make the world safe for the debaters at home, refuse to grant those boys and girls the privilege of using their constitutional rights in electing their national representatives."

"Rightfully, there have been outspoken demands by labor for a place at the peace table, to insure future amity among the world's nations and security for the working masses."

"Much has been written and said about labor enjoying excessive pay, but little has appeared in print about low-paid workers, such as those in hotels, restaurants, and laundries, being frozen to their jobs if they were employed in "locally needed activities." And scarcely anything is being said about the munitions makers who are amassing huge profits in this war as in those of the past."

"Compulsory military training is conducive to waging wars rather than to the maintenance of peace."

"The Smith-Connally bill's passage marked the beginning of an organized effort to wreck bona fide unions through legislation."

"there is a call to all peace-loving people-to rebuild our shattered world, set up indestructible barriers against war, and create a society based on equality and mutual aid, moving toward a more humane and abundant life."

"To my mind, too, painfully little space was given in the daily press to recent coal mine disasters in which miners perished through underground fires or explosions."

"I, for one, favor a limited tenure of office to get new and dynamic forces to the forefront, to gain a stronger morale for the members."

"Unfortunately, only about one fifth of the nation's working population is organized into unions, but millions of non-union wage-earners have benefited from organized labor's insistence upon decent living standards for all. Those millions remain opposed or indifferent to unions through sheer ignorance of their merits."

"organized labor's strongest weapon-the right to strike"

"Rose Pesotta, one of America's most effective and devoted women trade union organizers"

"May I state at the out-set, that I always regarded the Hearst press as yellow, violently anti-labor and reactionary? In the course of my organizing activities in several parts of this country, the Hearst press consistently attacked us, blaming the ILG and its organizers for instigating strikes, causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods, homes, etc. As last as 1936, the Hearst press, writing about the leadership of the CIO in the Roosevelt campaign attacked our ILG and its leadership, including yourself, as Communists. (I was given the distinction of being an Anarchist and a friend of Emma Goldman, an honor I shall never deny.) I recall that in 1927 a similar stunt was performed by Hearst in printing the story of the lives of Sacco-Vanzetti, who were electrocuted, the articles notwithstanding. The Hearst press has already been on the decline for several years because the awakened labor rank and file refused to be bull-dozed any longer. Today, the printing of your story in the classic Hearst sensational style, is simply giving his yellow, reactionary press a new lease on life, to say the least. I followed the articles and must admit that Mr. Joseph Mulvaney, the fellow who induced you to consent to his writing these stories, will be handsomely rewarded by Hearst, for the circulation will surely jump a score of thousands or more. do not know what objectives you aim to reach in consenting to be publicized in such a fashion, save one-to give the writer a chance to earn a living (is he at least a Union man?)"

"I was always considered a "shaigitz" when I was young and as a militant out-spoken trade-unionist during my activities in the labor movement, I am not afraid of telling the truth to you now."

"Other strikes developed over racial issues, for in the North as well as in the South there are still white Americans who refuse to accept their red co-workers as equals. Vehemently condemned by union officials, these strikes appear to have been skilfully directed by outside forces interested in dividing Americans on one issue or another."

"In 1933 Rose Pesotta, a leading organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and herself a Jewish immigrant from Russia, spent months organizing Mexican women garment workers in Los Angeles. Her preconceptions were stereotyped; she assumed that Mexican women would be passive, intimidated by the sexism of Mexican men, and therefore hard to organize. While she did face difficulties, they were not as great as expected, and her campaign had some significant successes. She came to rely on Mexican women as the backbone of her West Coast organizing and took the male leadership down to the local jails so they could hear the spirit with which the mexicanas sang from their cells. The following year she went to Puerto Rico to organize women garment workers there. The meetings were full, although women often fainted from hunger while she spoke. She began bringing baskets of food to meetings and would ask if anyone had not eaten before she spoke. She was deeply moved by the circumstances of Puerto Rican women workers and continued to speak about their living and working conditions for many years. In 1944 she wrote several articles about poverty and working conditions in Puerto Rico for New York newspapers."

"Fannia Cohn’s service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person for the cause of worker’s education. She remains a tragic figure amidst her own fellow workers…Were she a man it would have been entirely different."

"Our recent entrance into politics, which in my mind is the bane of the Union, has added more woes. Most of the paid officers and active members became politicians, calously [sic] neglecting the duties for which they were elected. Getting wages weekly by the union, a paid officer can abuse his duties more freely now than heretofore, the excuse-elections campaign."

"A member fears nowadays to express an honest opinion, in some locals, for fear of being hooted down or even losing a job."

"Jennie Matyas is recognized by the outside Labor and Education Movement, because she is a leader in her own rights, while countless others remain obscure through the good graces of the men whom they have helped into office."

"Fannia Cohn's service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of worker's education."

"When servility, bootlicking, personal favoritism and above all sensationalism will be wiped off as obstacles to real progress,"

"While organizing new members we preach to them to be independent, to lose their fears and openly express themselves and demand their rights; so here I am practicing what I am preaching and am openly expressing my views to you, Mr. President."

"The change in character of the workers in Southern California's garment industry struck me forcibly. Mexican women and girls were no longer in the majority, although some of the younger generation were still favored in certain factories. The working force in this region had been vastly augmented since 1936, because of the changing trends, and the manufacturers had taken on a great number of women from newly migrant families, largely American-born whites and Negroes, former tenant farmers who had gravitated to California from burned-out and wind-torn land East of the Rockies. Generally referred to as Dust-Bowlers, and made famous as Ma Joads through John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, they had no conception of the meaning of unionism. Some had long been on county relief and WPA, with meager rations and were glad to work for any wage and to put in any number of hours."

"No pictures of pretty girls, baby kissing, trophy-giving for sports, banquets or the like can give our vast membership more aid and comfort (and goodness knows in these difficult times they need it badly) than the feeling that the elected leadership is honest, efficient and sincerely rendering a service for which they were placed in office."

"For centuries the human race searched for some formula, magic or scientific, to extend its life-span, to eliminate disease, to develop strong, enduring men and women. And after long striving yellow fever, tuberculosis, and other scourges were conquered and the average life was materially lengthened. But now all these gains have been set at naught. For scientists with drugged consciences have devised lethal weapons, designed not only to wipe out the manhood of this generation, but to destroy whole cities and whole nations. Robot bombing planes, the latest invention, coming seemingly from nowhere, wreak havoc among defenseless people. Hospitals no longer are spared. For a few years of promised full employment, human skill is lured into making such weapons to annihilate the flower of mankind."

"Aurora Levins Morales's work should absolutely be supported. She has an impeccable progressive and visionary politic. Her prose has the literary eloquence of a pure poetry."

"Listen with your body. Let your body speak."

"Outrage silences nuance"

"disability justice. It’s a framework that embraces abolition. And that is to say, it demands nothing less than the overthrow of all forms of ableism, you know, and the structures that support it. So, the difference between disability justice and disability rights is that disability justice says, you know, we’ve got to deal with racism, sexism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, that these are the forms of oppression that make even disability differential. And so, if you think about the way that we responded to the COVID-19 crisis, for example, and to this day how we’re still responding to it, that disabled people who are Black and Brown and poor, undocumented, Indigenous, queer, gender nonconforming, they’re the ones that end up getting differential care, sometimes less care, sometimes inhumane care. They’re the ones who end up incarcerated, end up homeless, end up jobless, housing insecure. And that’s what disability justice tells us. And for me, I was forced to really come to terms with it by a number of folks who really were involved in the disability justice movement, who really forced me to think deeper about, like, what is a radical freedom dream, you know? Aurora Levins Morales, for example, is one who’s a really important disability justice activist who really kind of pulled my coattails on this."

"For me, the destruction of the land and the poisoning and violation of my body are inseparable, wound together on the spindle of a conquest that from the beginning was narrated as a sexual act."

"Skin of our bodies and skin of the world. This is how to understand the land as well as the flesh. To be unsingular, fractured and whole, grieving and proud, in universal solidarity and difficult alliance, never to allow urgency or burning injury to keep us from demanding the whole, intricate, inclusive story."

"in spite of all the things that make my heart sing, in spite of so many shifts of culture and consciousness, so many structural changes, so much intelligence and passion, sexism and racism both saturate daily life, as of course, they do in most places. Which brings me back to the image of a bridge, and makes me question it. Because what I have wanted, in every case, in every situation in which I straddled some gap of understanding, was to bring my whole self to the table, to have every aspect of my being respected, to have every aspect of my liberation embraced by those whose experience did and didn't overlap with mine. The bridge I keep building is meant to link two shores, but it's not who I am, it's what I do. What I am is the many-rippled, living river below. (in Bridges, Spring 2011)"