Letters to the Editor for July 26, 2024

I Wasn’t Going to Vote For Joe Biden Anyway. Kamala is Giving Me Hope.

This week, I was so proud to see 500 protesters from Jewish Voice For Peace as they marked War Criminal Netanyahu’s arrival by refusing to leave Congress until our government stops arming Israel and ends the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. I was moved as thousands showed up to D.C. to protest and call for the International Court of Justice’s warrants to be used to arrest War Criminal Netanyahu.

Growing up in the Bernstein home meant that on your 18th birthday my mom, Lillian Bernstein, would take each of her children down to city hall to get us registered to vote. It was our family’s ritual of Democracy. In the Bernstein home, I got my 10,000 hours of politics before I was out of elementary school. I learned about the importance of community and being an ally to others who need support.

I was taught that the slogan ‘Never Again,’ means Never Again For Anyone. Because of his stand on Gaza, I would not have voted for Biden, had he stayed in the race.  As a Jewish person of conscience, I could never vote for someone who is complicit in genocide. Although Lillian Bernstein was still a Zionist when she died, I do believe that Netanyahu’s Israel would have changed her. Because once you see what Israel has wrought with our weapons and tax dollars, you must see what Israel has done all along to get us to this point in history.

Obviously, Kamala Harris won’t go as far as I (as a member for Jewish Voice For Peace-Action) and millions of others would like. But I hope she will step away from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), follow international law, consider the humanity of Palestinians, and work for full, shared legal rights for Palestinians and Israelis. I hope she will listen to the majority of her constituents who are squarely for the end of this genocide—a majority which includes Jews, by the way. While the Jewish community is still divided, there are more and more in the community who understand that no one is safe unless all of us are safe. No one is free unless all of us are free. That is a huge shift given the pro-Israel, Sunday school education many of us experienced.

I believe Kamala Harris can beat Trump. But my California vote isn’t going to make a difference because of the Electoral College. It is the swing state votes that Harris must get. It is the uncommitted vote. It is the Muslim vote. It is the youth vote. It is the progressive vote. She must move away from Joe Biden’s complicity in genocide to get those votes and win the election. Refusing to preside over Congress during War Criminal Netanyahu’s visit was a teeny-tiny start.

For now, I am going to choose hope as a refreshing change to the last 10 months of Biden’s complicity.

Deb Sullivan
Alameda

Response to “AUSD Superintendent Addresses Hate Speech in Alameda Schools”

I write in response to “ AUSD Superintendent Addresses Hate Speech in Alameda Schools ” published on July 22. I am a cisgendered white man, and do my best to recognize the privilege I enjoy as such, and not to direct people who do not enjoy the same level of privilege how to think, feel, or what language to use.

While the writer recognizes the long, complicated, and painful history of the n-word, I write specifically in regard to its usage amongst and within the Black community today, by the Black community, after a long and painful (and continued) history of its usage against the Black community by white people and others outside of the community.

The writer states “that the N-word—or its variation ending in “a”—has [no] place in our schools” and simultaneously that “students will encounter the word in their studies of history in literature” in those very same schools. In the latter scenario, it’s apparently “up to educators and parents to contextualize and facilitate those encounters.” Why is it not similarly up to educators and parents to facilitate encounters in more colloquial spaces? Does that responsibility only exist in the “white space” of the classroom, and not in microcosmic black spaces that may be created by Black students?

Prohibiting the Black community’s use of a word that belongs to them—a privilege they enjoy that I do not, and one of the very, very few—introduces a binary that advantages non-Black students, and in fact makes schools even more a “white space” than they already are. Is it not true that the n-word exists in a much different context in Black spaces than in white spaces? And might the real problem the writer and ASUD staff are trying to solve be a difficult level of nuance and complexity that cannot be addressed in a “matrix,” and issues that might arise when Black spaces are created within white spaces?

A blanket prohibition limits safe Black spaces that may exist within a white institution that has historically failed the Black community and makes Black students even less “included and safe.” I would be curious to understand the extent to which the district solicited advice from and consulted with Black communities in Alameda and Oakland in the development of their discipline matrix, and why instead of a matrix we are not instead developing a more nuanced toolbox for understanding.

Perhaps instead of pulling aside students—many of whom will probably be Black students—to “remind them that schools are not the place for such language,” the writer should instead pull aside the non-Black students who might have an issue with Black students being able to use a word they are not and explain, facilitate, and contextualize those encounters with reference to the institutional racism that still very much exists in this country, rather than denying Black students the privilege to use a word that their community has very much earned the right to.

Joseph Dierking
Alameda

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