Jews From The United States

"History is the story we tell ourselves about how the past explains our present, and how the ways in which we tell it are shaped by contemporary needs."

"Childhood is the one political condition, the one disenfranchised group through which all people pass. The one constituency of the oppressed in which all surviving members eventually stop being members and have the option of becoming administrators of the same conditions for new members."

"Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable."

"Joy is to mood as stars are to the weather, a constant to steer by, sometimes hidden by storm clouds but high above them, untouched by wind or rain."

"European Americans in this country need to find out against whom their whiteness has been structured, both historically and in the present. ("Raícism: Rootedness as Spiritual and Political Practice")"

"Memory, individual and collective, is one of the most important sites of social struggle. The "false memory" movement of the 1990s that sought to deny authority over memory to sexual abuse survivors; escalating attacks on teaching the history and literature of indigenous people and People of Color, that frame sharing any information about oppression or the cultures of the oppressed as violence against "Western civilization"; Holocaust denial that pretends the attempted Nazi genocide against primarily European Jews, Roma, lesbian, gay, and disabled people never took place; the bizarre pseudoscience of misogynist politicians claiming that pregnancy results only from consensual sex-these are all examples of the attempted erasure of collective memory and knowledge and represent backlashes against powerful popular movements attempting to wrest control of history from the ruling class."

"There is a place for righteous rage at the torturers and a place to demand accountability and hard work. But punishment is not a tool of liberation. It is the powerless exercise of violence by those who can think of nothing better. It is the refusal to acknowledge our kinship with those who hurt us. It is a laying down of our vision, and ultimately, if we cannot overcome the urge to punish, our vision, which is what truly distinguishes us from those we oppose, will die."

"The first rule I remember learning was never to harm or deface a book. The second was never to cross a picket line. (Introduction/Acknowledgements)"

"She taught me to love the women: Jane Austen, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Virginia Woolf, and later we would trade the titles of new books on the phone: Doris Lessing, Agnes Smedley, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. (Introduction/Acknowledgements)"

"I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroads and I am whole."

"I say solidarity is knowing the future is long and wide, with room for everyone on earth to enter. I say it's taking the long view of the job. (from "Letter To a Compañero")"

"You were my first grief. From the death of you, so intimate, so much an unexplained event of the universe, I made my first decision to live. (beginning of "Heart Of My Heart, Bone Of My Bone")"

"I hope that future generations of women writers will have lives so much easier than mine that they will instantly perceive barbarities of my situation I don't see, because I can't imagine their absence."

"Only a feminism that fully integrates the expertise of all women, that does not indulge in a hierarchy of liberation agendas, will be capable of bringing large numbers of women together in long-term alliance. Therefore the theory we need to be developing is that which helps us understand the relationships between our different and multifaceted lives, with all their specific struggles and resources. Rather than build unity through simplification, we must learn to embrace multiple rallying points and understand their inherent interdependence. Such a theory needs to shed the metaphor of "intersections" of oppression and assume a much more organic interpenetration of institutional systems of power. The idea of intersection treats the social categories "woman," "working class," "lesbian," "person of color," and so on as if it were possible to separate someone's womanness from her class position, her “racial" or ethnic position, and so on. But these social categories do not exist anywhere in their "pure" state. Every woman is a woman of some class, some ethnicity, some sexual orientation, some country. The notion that working-class, colonized Women of Color suffer from triple jeopardy has always bothered me, because the implication is that racism and class oppression have no effect on those who are privileged by it. There is no such thing as single jeopardy. The only way to believe that the isms are separable is by ignoring privilege-so that upper-class, heterosexual, European and US white women are thought about only in the context of gender, as if people existed only in the categories in which they are oppressed. Social categories don't intersect like separate geometric planes. Each one is wholly dependent on all the others for its existence. For a liberation theory to be useful, it must address the way systems of oppression and privilege saturate each other, are mutually necessary, have no independent existence."

"In order to successfully build a politics of inclusion, we need to map the ways in which our own thinking has been affected by our individual, familial, and cultural histories of oppression and resistance. The process of consciousness raising, of naming the specific ways in which our particular experiences of inequity traumatized us, is an invaluable theorizing tool. There are few things as powerful as identifying the manufacturer's mark on what we have perceived as our personal demons."

"Full inclusion requires us to root out all the ways in which we have been tricked into collusion with the oppression of others, and all of us have. It requires us to move beyond our comfort zones. I once heard Bernice Reagon say that being in coalition meant working with people we didn't much like, and we might need to vomit over it for a while, but we had to do it anyway."

"I am shaking with rage that I cannot stop what is being done. That it is being done in the name of protecting Jews. That there are those who will believe that it is in my interest as a Jew, that by being a Jew I have agreed to these acts committed in my name. A logjam of emotions, and beneath, an icy river of fear."

"The concept of internalized oppression, that collective historical trauma has powerful and lasting effects on individuals and communities, provides the most important insights into the behavior of oppressed people. Seeing how internalized institutional abuse affects people's choices allows me to explain their actions as separate from their potential-to say that people make the best choices of which they are capable at any particular moment."

"As in the case of the false memory movement, the privileged accuse the disempowered of oppressing them. Teaching the histories, cultures, and thought of the 99 percent violates the "freedom" of privileged white heterosexual men by forcing them to participate in a world in which their interests and perceptions are not the exclusive priority of everyone."

"Bill Clinton and his two treasury secretary enablers, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, instituted a system of unregulated capitalism that has resulted in financial anarchy. This anarchic form of capitalism, where everything, including human beings and the natural world, is a commodity to exploit until exhaustion or collapse, is justified by identity politics. It is sold as “enlightened liberalism” as opposed to the old pro-union class politics that saw the Democrats heed the voices of the working class. Financial anarchy and short-term plunder have destroyed long-term financial and political stability. It has also pushed the human species, along with most other species, closer and closer towards extinction."

"Robert Rubin stands out as the poster child for the revolving door that exists between Wall Street and Washington. Rubin started his career by making a fortune at Goldman Sachs, where he worked for twenty-six years, including two years as its co-chairman. In 1993, President Clinton appointed him head of the National Economic Council, and in 1995 he became treasury secretary. While in government he spearheaded financial deregulation, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall. He also prevented the regulation of derivatives. In 1999, Rubin returned to Wall Street, and after brokering a deal with Republicans to legalize the $70 billion merger between Citicorp and Travelers Group, he was hired by the newly formed Citigroup and received about $15 million a year for his services. Less than a decade later-a decade in which Rubin earned more than $126 million at Citigroup-taxpayers bailed out his megabank because of the enormous risks Rubin and others encouraged it to take. In 2010, the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) voted unanimously to refer Rubin to the Justice Department for "potential fraud" for misleading investors about Citigroup's exposure to subprime mortgages. When DOJ declined to act, Phil Angelides, chair of the FCIC, said, "It's been a disappointment to me and others that the Justice Department has not pursued the potential wrongdoing by individuals identified in the matters we referred to them. At the very least, they owe the American people the reassurance that they conducted a thorough investigation of individuals who engaged in misconduct." I couldn't agree more."

"One does not have to agree with the sentiments being expressed by a speaker in order to be troubled by the idea that they would be suppressed because of their content."

"[May] twelfth was a day I had hoped would never come; Bob Rubin was returning to private life. I believed he had been the best and most important Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton in the early days of our Republic. Bob had also been the first head of the National Economic Council. In both positions he had played a decisive role in our efforts to restore economic growth and spread its benefits to more Americans, to prevent and contain financial crisis abroad, and to modernize the international financial system to deal with a global economy in which more than one trillion dollars crossed national borders every day."

"Looking back, what most prepared me for the life I’ve led was the open exchange of ideas that I experienced in college and law school... I have seen firsthand the way America’s higher-education system strengthens our nation."

"With its underlying principles of free expression and academic freedom, the university system is one of the nation’s great strengths. It is not to be taken for granted. Undermining higher education would harm all Americans, weakening our country and making us less able to confront the many challenges we face."

"We invest in higher education because there’s a broad public purpose. Our colleges and universities are seen, rightly, as centers of learning, but they are also engines of economic growth... Institutions of higher education spur early-stage research of all kinds, create environments for commercializing that research, provide a base for start-up and technology hubs, and serve as a mentoring incubator for new generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders."

"People in prison are part of America, as are those who have been released. They are part of our society. And we have a powerful stake in their success."

"Higher education helps create the kind of citizenry that is central to a democracy’s ability to function and perhaps even to survive."

"Criminal justice reform is not just about being fair to the individuals who will be most directly affected, but it’s also about doing what’s right for our nation’s well-being."

"When millions of people remain mired in poverty, no matter how hard they work, our whole economy suffers. Consigning millions of people to the economic margins has a serious adverse effect on the economy for all of us."

"The refundable child tax credit is not inflationary if paid for; is not a disincentive to work; and ought to be viewed as a public investment with a high rate of return."

"A refundable child tax credit can decrease infant mortality; improve the health and life expectancy of poor children and their parents; reduce exposure to abuse and neglect; reduce long-term health-care costs; and increase the future productivity, earnings and tax payments of child beneficiaries."

"To close great and growing wealth and income gaps, and to raise badly needed revenue for public investment, it’s not enough to lift the bottom up; we need to ask more of those at the top, too."

"Our political system is in terrible shape. And that's not a partisan comment, though I do think Trump is doing just immense damage to our country, in his economic policies and his actions. But in neither party are we talking about a lot of what we need to talk about."

"ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems."

"What's so sad to me… is we [the United States] have such tremendous strengths and so many advantages. And I think the damage we're doing is very substantial. Attacking our research, attacking science and basic research, attacking our universities, immigration policy that makes no sense whatsoever."

"While the FMLA Family and Medical Leave Act] was a landmark achievement, it doesn’t go far enough. American workers and businesses need a universal paid leave program."

"We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment — or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc."

"Some argue that many dire predictions raised at the start of Mr. Trump’s term did not come to pass. But he has expressed regret that his term was less radical than he would have liked — and has promised that his second term would be nothing like the first. From 2017 to 2021, Mr. Trump, while extreme in many respects, was constrained by key appointees who came from the traditional conservative establishment and by the need to appeal to the business community as he sought re-election. If he wins this November, he’s made clear that he’ll choose appointees who will be submissive to him, and he will have no looming re-election campaign providing an incentive to curb his most extreme impulses."

"Mr. Trump would also take unprecedented action to diminish the independence of the Federal Reserve, pressuring it to set interest rates for his short-term political gain rather than the long-term health of the economy... Such actions could do great damage to our markets and to our economy by politicizing Federal Reserve Board interest rate decisions and undermining the broader credibility of the Fed."

"For our country to succeed economically, our market-based system must function alongside strong, effective government. Strong, effective government, in turn, requires a functioning democratic process."

"Nearly every element of Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda would create great risk of economic harm. In aggregate, there is a high likelihood that his agenda would lead to chaos and unpredictability, including global instability, in that way reducing investment and business activity. Meanwhile, inflation would be increased by tariffs, immigration restrictions and larger fiscal deficits. Some may feel that we made it through one Trump term and are thus likely to make it through another. But a more apt analogy is that after we survived one round of economic Russian roulette, Donald Trump is asking us to take another spin — only this time with many more bullets in the chamber. That would be a very dangerous game."

"Free markets can't be separated from other freedoms Americans have cherished and sometimes taken for granted. Due process, the rule of law, free speech, a free press and honest elections have been among our most powerful advantages in the global economy."

"Over the past year, President Trump has taken unprecedented actions to assert federal control over our economy and undermine the constitutional system on which that economy depends. In response, many leaders in the private sector—as well as in philanthropy, media, law and academia—have responded not with criticism, but with acquiescence and accommodation."

"In my experience, many leaders harbor deep concerns about Mr. Trump's lawlessness, weaponization of the government, and interference in markets. They refrain from public criticism not because they find nothing to criticize but because they're intimidated."

"Markets go up, markets go down."

"When the business community and our leaders cease to speak out on matters of public concern, they turn their backs on the foundations of our country's success."

"We’ve spoken to many leaders in business and finance who, when it comes to economic policy, are open to the premise that Mr. Trump is a normal presidential candidate. We strongly disagree. The two of us have been involved in business, government and policy for many years, with more than a century of experience between us. We’ve worked with elected officials and business leaders across the ideological spectrum... When it comes to economic policy, Mr. Trump is not a remotely normal candidate. A second Trump term would pose enormous risks to our economy."

"I think they [tariffs] create a very serious risk of inflation, not only because prices of imported goods will be higher, but domestic producers will be able to raise prices because their competitors' prices will be higher. But also, I think it's a substantial threat to growth because it can adversely affect productivity since you can no longer have access to whatever is the most efficient producer of goods and services. And… there's a very serious risk of retaliation."

"If you look at the numbers over the last few years and you look at the growth we've had, which has been very good growth, some fair portion of that is because of immigration and the increase in the labor force."