On 2/24/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Media will say what the Media must say to protect the Media's
interests...which is to defend the Establishment.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/23/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That's really interesting because I've seen his name, heard him
interviewed,
and never knew anything about him. But I do have to comment that when the
Weather Underground used bombings as social protest, they were careful to
bomb symbolically, places free from human beings like weapons factories
when
no one was working there. That's always called violence in news reports,
but
I think that the proper description is "property damage".
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2020 1:09 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Rabbi Michael Lerner, US is a Meritocracy
I'll need to read further, but Michael Lerner claims that we are not a
democratic Republic. Rather, we are a Meritocracy.
Here's a bit on Michael Lerner from Wikipedia:
While at Berkeley, Lerner became a leader in the Berkeley student
movement
and the Free Speech Movement, [5] chair of the Free Student Union, [6]
and
chair from 1966 to 1968 of the Berkeley chapter of the Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS).
[7]
After teaching
philosophy of law
at
San Francisco State University,
[8]
[9]
he took a job as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University
of
Washington and taught ethics, social and political philosophy,
philosophy
of literature and culture, and introduction to philosophy.
Distressed over the disintegration of SDS in 1969, Lerner sought to
re-organize New Left cadres formerly associated with SDS in a new
organization called the Seattle Liberation Front
(SLF) on January 19, 1970.
[10]
While SLF did not publicly endorse violence as a political tactic, SLF
members including Roger Lippman, Michael Justesen, and Susan Stern were
also members of the Weather Underground, which had bombing attacks as a
central part of its political strategy.
After the "Day After" demonstration SLF had called on February 17,
1970 (to protest
the verdicts in the
Chicago Seven
trial) turned violent, Lerner and others were arrested and charged with
inciting a riot.
Lerner and his co-defendants became known as the "Seattle Seven".
During their trial,
FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover
issued a public statement (repeated on radio and television) that
described
Lerner as "one of the most dangerous criminals in America", even though
he
had never engaged in any act of violence. Federal agents testifying at
the
trial later admitted to having played a major role instigating the
violence
and ensuing riot.
[11]
The trial culminated in a courtroom brawl (during which Lerner was the
only
defendant to remain seated), and the presiding judge sent the defendants
to
jail on contempt of court charges.
[12]
[13]
Lerner was transported to
Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary
in
San Pedro, California,
where he served several months before the 9th Circuit Federal Court of
Appeals overturned his conviction for contempt of court and ordered him
released. The main charges relating to the riot were subsequently dropped
by
the federal government.
Meanwhile, the
Washington State Legislature
had passed a law, commonly referred to as the "Lerner Act", that
prohibited
the University of Washington from hiring anyone "who might engage in
illegal
political activity", and Lerner's contract was not renewed. (The law was
later overturned by the Washington Supreme Court).
During this period Lerner met several times with boxer Muhammad Ali, who
was
also active in the anti-war movement, at anti-war meetings organized by
Lerner.
[14]
Lerner recounts that Ali was the first practicing Muslim he had ever
met.
[14]
The two never met or spoke again after this period though in 1995 Lerner
received a letter from Ali expressing appreciation for the book Lerner
co-authored with Cornel West, Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin.
[14]
Muhammad Ali included an invitation to Lerner to speak at Ali's
memorial,
to represent progressive Jewish faith, which took place in 2016.
[14]
Lerner also learned from Ali's lawyer that Ali had been a "big fan"
of the rabbi's work and that Ali was really sorry that he had not made
more
contact with Lerner over the past two decades. Ali and his wife had
intended
to do so many times and just hadn't followed through.
[14]
Professorship and research[
edit
]
After completing his Ph.D. Lerner moved to Hartford, Connecticut where
he
served as professor of philosophy at Trinity College until 1975, when he
moved back to Berkeley, joined the faculty at the University of
California
in the Field Studies program and taught law and economics until 1976 when
he
accepted a position at Sonoma State University for one year in
sociology,
teaching courses in social psychology.
[15]
Meanwhile, he completed a second Ph.D. in 1977, this one in social/
clinical psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley.
[16]
In 1976 Lerner founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health to work
with the labor movement and do research on the psychodynamics of
American
society.
[17]
In 1979 he received a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health
to train
union shop stewards
as agents of prevention for mental health disorders, and he
simultaneously
extended his previous study of the psychodynamics of American society.
With
a subsequent grant from the NIMH he studied American politics and
reported
that "a spiritual crisis" was at the heart of the political
transformation
of American society as well as at the heart of much of the psychic pain
that
was being treated in individual therapy.
[18]
His writing reflects a transposition of this analysis to economics too,
viz.
"This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it
creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day
learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no
position
to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans
hunger for a different kind of society—one based on principles of caring,
ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need
for
meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." :
[19]
Tikkun magazine[
edit
]
After serving for five years as dean of the graduate school of psychology
at
New College of California (now defunct) in San Francisco, [20] Lerner
and
his then-wife Nan Fink created a general-interest intellectual magazine
called
Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society.
Tikkun was started with the intention of challenging the Left for its
inability to understand the centrality of religious and spiritual
concerns
in the lives of ordinary Americans.
With his associate editor
Peter Gabel,
Lerner developed a "politics of meaning": that Americans hunger not only
for
material security but also for a life that is connected to some higher
meaning, and that the failure of the liberal and progressive movements to
win a consistent majority support was based on their inability to
understand
this hunger and to address it by showing Americans and middle income
working
people in other advanced industrial societies that it was the values of
the
competitive marketplace and its Bottom Line of money and power that is
the
fundamental source undermining ethical and spiritual values in the public
sphere and then undermining friendships and marriages when these values
are
brought home into personal life.
[21]
This was intended to speak to the hunger for meaning that was
characteristic
of the thousands of people that Lerner and his colleagues were studying
at
the Institute for Labor and Mental Health. Tikkun was formed to educate
the
public about the findings of the Institute and to develop some of the
implications of that work. However, because it also had an interest in
being
an "alternative to the voices of Jewish conservatism,"
Tikkun was criticized by some Jewish groups.
In 1993,
First Lady
Hillary Clinton
included the "politics of meaning" in her synthesis of political and
social
philosophy she was forming.
[22]
[23]
In 2002, Lerner organized a group called the Tikkun Community among
readers
of Tikkun magazine and those who share its editorial vision.
[24]
Rabbinical ordination[
edit
]
Lerner received
rabbinical ordination
in 1995 through a
beth din
(rabbinical court) composed of three rabbis, "each of whom had received
orthodox rabbinic ordination".
[1]
According to j. the Jewish news weekly, "mainstream rabbinical leaders
of
the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements" have questioned
private
ordinations such as Lerner's, arguing that non-seminary ordinations risk
producing poorly educated or fraudulent Rabbis.
[2]
Similarly, some rabbis have challenged Lerner's decision to not be
trained
for the rabbinate in a classical Jewish seminary (although Lerner did
spend
three years as a student at Jewish Theological Seminary). Lerner has been
quoted in Jewish Weekly as saying that the non-seminary track is one that
"every Chabad rabbi takes, & every ultra-Orthodox rabbi". Lerner pointed
out
that none of the rabbis in Jewish history ever attended a "seminary"
until the middle
of the 19th century, and that most rabbis in Israel today did not attend
a
seminary. They all got their ordination in the same way Lerner did,
through
a Beth din composed of three rabbis. When Lerner attacked seminaries for
being "more interested in producing organizational men for Jewish life
than
spiritual leaders connected to the deepest spiritual and social-justice
minds", Rabbi Alan Lew said "That is arrogant nonsense ... I spent six
years
in extremely rigorous, round-the-clock study in the classic texts of our
tradition.
Authentic Jewish spirituality is in the texts, not in some fancy New Age
ideas or watered-down kabbalah".
[2]
Lerner's synagogue 'Beyt Tikkun' became an embodiment of what he
described
as "neo-Hasidism," passionately pursuing the spiritual dimension of the
prayers rather than rushing through them. The goal, he insisted, is to
connect to God, not simply mouth every prayer in the prayerbook. His
synagogue grew, according to members, not only because of Lerner's
willingness to take the social justice message of the prophets seriously,
but also because the actual experience of being involved in prayer,
meditation, singing and dancing in the synagogue became an ecstatic
experience of transcendence for many of those who attended.
Lerner's 1994 book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation
published by HarperCollins (and in paperback as a Harper Perennial),
became
a national best-seller and brought thousands of young people into the
emerging Jewish Renewal movement. After studying his background and
qualifications, the Northern California Board of Rabbis accepted Lerner as
a
full member and he has remained a member ever since. Lerner was the first
Jewish Renewal rabbi to achieve membership in a local American Board of
Rabbis, but since that time in 1997, many local Boards of Rabbis have
accepted Jewish Renewal rabbis into full membership.
Lerner is the spiritual leader of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, and
a
member of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California. He is also a member
of
Ohalah, the organization of Jewish Renewal Rabbis.
Network of Spiritual Progressives[
edit
]
In 2005 Lerner became chair of The
Network of Spiritual Progressives
whose mission was to "challenge the materialism and selfishness in
American
society and to promote an ethos of love, generosity, and awe and wonder
at
the grandeur of the universe."
[25]
They have since sponsored national conferences on both the East and West
Coast. In 2007 Lerner launched a campaign for a "Global Marshall Plan".
[26]
Cancer[
edit
]
In February 2009 Lerner publicly announced he had been diagnosed with
lung
cancer, and mentioned this in many promotional mailings and published
pieces.
[27]
[28]
He was treated with surgery in March 2009 which was apparently
successful.
