It has taken me a long time to let the mental and physical dust settle from my recent trip to Palestine and Israel. As expected, I find myself wanting to return to the region and wondering how and when that might be possible.

I have returned to Los Angeles, where most people are less connected to the land than they are in Palestine/Israel. I have gone back to New York, where I have more history with the land, but I find I am hungry for the air of Jerusalem, a city that both excites and sickens me.

Most of us are descendants of opportunists in America, particularly in the cities. Our ancestors, those who were not slaves or natives to this land before colonization, first set foot on the land seeking opportunity, or escape from circumstances whence they came. Now, we are a beautiful patchwork of diverse voices and expressions of human seeking opportunities in the city lights of a land that most of us have no blood lineage to. This American “land of opportunity”  is populated mainly by people who do not have a blood connection to it while it is riddled with inequalities, oppressions, and issues of land rights and access to resources. These are issues that in many ways parallel those of Israel/Palestine and so one might assume that the two places would have a similar affect on people, yet I feel a sense of being more grounded in myself, my cultural history and land when breathing the the thin Jerusalem air.

Whether or not I, as a Jewish woman, have any legitimate blood lineage to Israel, I am comforted by a place where I am the norm and not an exception. In many ways we, Jewish people, have been made into an ethnic group by others (in particular white Europeans) who have in past centuries pointed their fingers at us, saying “you do not belong here,” and inflicting violence on our communities. Whether or not we are under real threat anywhere in the world, danger is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, fear in most of our psyches, in my psyche. But I am sickened by my desire to be in Jerusalem; I find that too often Jews romanticize the “holy land” ideal and use itas a means of colonization. So I am left to question: does my yearning for the Jerusalem air make me a part of that colonization? And then the larger question: what defines colonization?

I was raised with many mystical Muslim traditions as part of my spiritual practice, despite maintaining a strong Jewish cultural identity. And my father trained as a minister; he has held several unconventional pulpits at different times in my life.  So, I question if I crave the Jerusalem air because it is the only place where I have experienced the coexistence of Muslim, Jewish and Christian prayers on the wind, where I have experienced a commingling of melodies and chants that have touched my understanding of the sacred. But this coexistence of religious practices exists in a place riddled with political and economic inequality, division, and a denial of the divine feminine aspect of God.

As a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and as an American woman with a Jewish cultural identity and the privileges that come with being a white Jewish woman, I feel a simultaneous sense of being at home in Israel and of being a guest in a home where I am overstepping the hospitality of my hosts. I have traveled to countries in Europe where my family lived before moving to the USA, and I feel like a visitor there, a guest among the tormented ghosts of my ancestors… And now I find myself in Los Angeles, a hundred-year-old concrete city covering old Tunva and Chumash indigenous lands. Here I am, cradled in the American Imagination Empire, where, as a musician/producer friend recently put it, we make “Art by the Pound” for global consumption, and I feel like a total alien, like a guest who walked in the side door and can’t find my way out of the damn house.

In the midst of my contemplations about how to check out of The Perpetual Guest Hotel, I am reminded of the music director of a dance/music company I worked with for many years, Bill Vanaver. About a decade ago he had a bumper sticker on his car which read, “WAKE ME UP WHEN POSTMODERNISM IS OVER”, and at the moment I have to agree. I want to be awakened, shaken out of this postmodern experience; it seems no matter how many cups of coffee I drink, I cannot shake the weariness I feel while trying to make some type of grounded connection to the land I walk on and the world in which I live.  But every land is complex and carries a history of conquest. So I am left to figure out how to make sense of being the perpetual guest. Sometimes the only thing that saves me is putting on my flamenco shoes and pounding out my confusion as gitana [a person?  Gitana?] wails her own landless sorrow while desert sun reflects off my eyelashes.

Final days in Palestine/Israel

After three weeks of gaining a better understanding of the type of persecution and occupation experienced by the Bedouin in the Negev/Naqab desert, getting brushed up on the issues of settlement expansion around East Jerusalem and taking a hard look at both my disdain and love for Israel and my hopes and fears for Palestine, I had the pleasure of attending a Sulhita Gathering. I spent four days with passionate, vulnerable and kind Israelis and Palestinians, telling personal stories, praying, deconstructing aspects of the conflict, cooking, singing, dancing and generally just existing in the expansive sky and piercing sun of the Naqab/Negev desert.   (For more information regarding organizations that I visited and partnered with while in the region, please go to www.sariaidana.com/news.htm)

Sulhita is the youth arm of Sulha, an organization that brings together secular and religious Israelis and Palestinians from the three major regional religious traditions for the purpose of developing understanding. Participating in the Sulhita was a wonderful and challenging experience.  I left knowing that dialogue is complicated and often requires translation, both from one language into another and from one human experience to another. In many ways, the Palestinian, Israeli, Arab-Israeli and African-Hebrew-Israelite youth were like oil and water, though music, movement and other activities created a space for inter-group interaction. I believe there is something very powerful for these groups to simply co-exist, with the exuberance of teenage energy, armed with the knowledge that they all want an end to the current division and violence. Laughter rang, tears were shed and there was very little sleep.

I witnessed the fear of the Palestinian youth that they were participating in a process of Normalization, and I believe this contributed a good deal to the lack of mixing between the Palestinian and Israeli groups, though language also creates a barrier. The Normalization issue is a real one, and it must be understood and addressed. There is a legitimate fear within the Palestinian community that mixed interaction will make the occupation look solved or resolved, that those interactions will Normalize the conflict and thus slow or halt the movement for equality for Palestine.

I believe real dialogue can only happen after Israelis/Jews can first recognize that we are the powerful, the oppressors in this situation. While the cycle of oppression is a complex one, and oppression is an experience that the Jewish community is all-too familiar with, it is essential that the current power dynamic is addressed before any real dialogue or any real change is possible. I believe the organizers acknowledged this power imbalance, though they did not address it outright and perhaps this is a wise choice.

I hope that the work of Sulhita, and similar work, will grow, and in so doing, build larger movements within the Israeli and Palestinian communities to support and nurture a lasting peace, in which all people in the region have equal rights and respect for the land.

Yom Kippur

As a result of changing my ticket to stay for the Sulhita, I ended up staying in the region for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Day of Atonement. This is the day to seriously ask for forgiveness; it’s also the only day every year that all Israelis, religious and secular, leave their cars parked. West Jerusalem was full of a stillness; all the roads were void of cars and sounds except for the few streets crowded with young Israelis mingling in the middle of the road simply because they could.

Holidays in Israel inspire an increased paranoia about security, especially Yom Kippur after the Yom Kippur/Ramadan War of 1973, in which the State of Israel was attacked by both Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur.  As a result, while much of Jerusalem was praying and accounting for a year of wrongdoings, the West Bank was on lockdown.  The little freedom of movement that is normally granted to Palestinians shrunk even further. While some had the privilege to enjoy one of the most profound, sacred experiences of the year, others had to suffer the least.  Another paradox, another imbalance of power.

It was powerful to be in Jerusalem for Yom Kippur for many reasons, and more or less by accident. For one, most religious Jews want to be nowhere else but Jerusalem for the holiday; I had the opportunity to witness the influx of people, mainly Americans, who flooded the city specifically for the holiday. I also had the opportunity to spend a day in deep contemplation, as the holiday encourages; thus I was in deep contemplation while on land that I have been deeply contemplating for years. The most profound experience, however, came from the shadowy history the land.

On the eve of the holiday, Erev Yom Kippur, I walked through the old city, to the Wailing Wall, and I found myself asking forgiveness from the city herself. I was muttering in my mind, and sometimes under my breath, asking Jerusalem forgiveness for being part of a group of people who have spilled blood on her stones. I was asking forgiveness for Al-Nakba, the catastrophe, the killing of thousands of Palestinians and turning 800,000 into refugees in 1948 in order to establish the Israeli State. I asked forgiveness for the recent attacks on Gaza, and for the continued occupation. I asked forgiveness for my yearning for home, for my desire for Jerusalem to hold me in her walls in a way that comforts me more deeply than land I was born on. I walked her cobblestones, seeing ghosts of peoples from many traditions and ethnic groups who have killed and been killed on her layered streets: Canaanites, Jebusites, Israelites, Romans, Assyrians, Byzantines, Persians, crusading Europeans, Ottomans, Palestinians, Israelis.

In the silent corners of a city in prayer, I witnessed thousands of years of bloodshed and I was overcome by both the magnitude of the history of the place and the fact that while it is called “holy land” and there is a vibration I feel rising from it, there has been so little peace in it; is peace not considered the holiest of experiences? While shedding tears of sorrow and confusion, I wondered if peace is even possible for this land, or for human beings as a whole. Politics and religion swept me into contemplation of the sheer human condition; I was left with a deep yearning to find peace from an inner place and a need to ask forgiveness for not finding that in myself yet, for seeking comfort outside of myself, in the arms of lovers and lands, and for confusing Peace and Justice, because they are two different things.

I approached the Wailing Western Wall, the Kotel, and a group of about a hundred men, mostly from New Jersey, it seemed, were dancing in a circle and singing songs of jubilation, and I was utterly confused. After sitting on the ground and listening to them, I walked into the women’s side of the Wall, pressed my head against the smooth surface, and wondered what I was up against, in myself, outside myself. I wondered what I, a nonreligious  American Jew, can really do to influence Justice in the Middle East, and if it is even my place to try. I wondered if Peace and Justice actually existed if walls did not divide people from their holy sites and from each other, if my, jewish, and perhaps even human reason for being would cease to exist. Walls offer us opportunities to find another way around an obstacle and finding these ways round obstacles seems to be my, certainly jewish and in many ways, the human, reason for being.  I then began asking forgiveness for the Walls closing in on Palestinians, closing them off from their land.  Stealing their land. I asked forgiveness for not knowing how to imagine a Jerusalem, a world without strife. I asked forgiveness for always making things more complicated and existential than is probably necessary.

I smiled and was grateful for being alive.

Change

Change is happening and will continue to happen, slowly. In many ways it seems absent; there is a supposed Settlement Freeze, but illegal Israeli settlements continue to be built and the occupation continues to expand, particularly in East Jerusalem. A year after Israel’s deadly attack, Gaza is still entirely isolated, hungry and in need of aid. The West Bank’s thirst grows as more water resources go to Israel. Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has yet to be swapped for a few hundred Palestinian prisoners. Hamas still claims the land “from the river to the sea” though there is a very real and existent nation of Israel that exists in that region and does not appear to be going anywhere. But I urge the international community to know that there is work being done to create justice on the ground in Palestinian communities, in Israeli communities and between Israelis and Palestinians.  This work is complex and often conflicted/imperfect, but it is happening. It is happening and it can be strengthened by participation from the international community.

I strongly encourage members of the international community to recognize their power as consumers.  We can all take action with the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions movement against Israel that has been modeled after the BDS movement that ended apartheid in South Africa. There are many ways to engage in this movement, particularly if you are connected to an institution of some kind, for example a campus, religious organization or company. There are numerous aspects of this movement, and many make people uncomfortable for a variety reasons.  There is an economic boycott, an academic boycott, a cultural boycott and a sports boycott. I invite people to engage in this movement at whatever level they are capable and comfortable. But if nothing else, I urge people not to support industries and companies that profit from the occupation, specifically products made in occupied Palestine that claim to be made as Israeli Products. For a list of these companies and products go to  HYPERLINK “http://www.whoprofits.org/Involvements.php” http://www.whoprofits.org/Involvements.php

Here are a few more resources to investigate the BDS movement.

www.bdsmovement.org

http://endtheoccupation.org

www.icahd.org

www.freegaza.org

But mostly I urge you to pay attention to the news without becoming overwhelmed. Seek multiple perspectives, be informed about where your money is going, and allow yourself to imagine the world you want to create.

Since I have been here, I have danced to late night Israeli Hip-Hop and eaten vegetarian food in the market. I have walked through Israeli settlements and impoverished neighborhoods of Hebron, prayed that we remember what the wrestle if for at the supposed feet of Jacob. I have held dear friends, I have yelled at friends I have cried and laughed and made new friends. I have prayed at the Wailing Wall and bathed in an outdoor mikva purified by moonlight. I have gone to a demonstration at the Gaza Boarder calling the Israeli state to exchange Gilad Shalit (one Israeli prisoner) for 450 Hamas prisoners. I have compiled information for people back in the USA on ways to engage, organizations to work with and tools to stay sane. I have been compiling information about home demolitions, seen demolished homes in bedouin villages and realized that the issue is not about the demolition of structures called “homes” but about the demolition of spirit, of traditions and ancestral connection to land, demolition of the possibility of coexistent self-determination.

I have talked to journalists and direct action activists, legal theorists and co-existence musicians, and what I can tell you is this. There are many ways to engage in this struggle… this struggle for a reality in which all people are safe, healthy and have the freedom to live their lives as they choose with equal rights to land, economy and education. There are radical ways and moderate ways and all are needed though they sometimes counter each each other. The BDS (Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions http://www.bdsmovement.net/) movement is picking up steam, and while I sometimes find it to be extreme, extreme might be needed in order for the Israeli State to change it’s policies. I encourage all of you to research and understand the BDS movement, and if nothing else, support the Palestinian Economy through purchasing Palestinian products such as Canaan (Alter-Eco) Olive Oil, Zatoun Olive Oil and Dr Bronner”s soap made from Canaan Olive Oil.  (Check out http://www.drbronner.com/olive_oil_from_the_holyland.html) Supporting the Palestinian economy is a peaceful way to support Palestinian self-determination and thus a more peaceful future for both Palestine and Israel. While I am no economist, I understand that boycotting the Israeli economy has the potential to damage the Palestinian Economy as well and so I question the validity of this boycott.

I am in the middle. In the middle of comedy and tragedy, of secular and religious. I am in the middle of the state of Israel; in between Israel and Palestine as I travel many days between the West Bank and Israel, between their hour time difference, between languages and customs and different cab prices. I am in the middle of deconstructing my love and hate for this place; in the middle of feeling at home and at war with home. I am in the middle of loving and hating my jewishness and wishing it defined me both more and less than it actually does. I am in the middle of my stay here not wanting to leave and anxious about what is next, I am in the middle of the personal and political, the middle of music rehearsals, poetry editing and drafting humanitarian rights documents. I am in the middle, witnessing myself in the middle and wishing I was anywhere but the middle, feeling lonely in the middle. But here is where I am.

When the vision of Birds Eye Project, (which is still very much in development as I am in development as an artist and educator)  first came to me, it was with the intention of creating understanding and coexistence in the world at large through art and artistic dialogue. This is a huge undertaking, and not a new idea. I needed training in the specific, and to stand in the specific in order to hold a larger vision. Well here I am. My theories (which are still baking) with regard to Birds Eye Project is that through witnessing specific experiences of culture and conflict, we have the opportunity to understand something larger about our own humanity, about our similarities; when looking at conflict with a Birds Eye view, it is possible to see the unique specifics but also how extended communities are affected, connected and responsible. This is also not a new idea, but an intention I hold in my life, in my work; it’s like the butterfly affect, the theory that the movement of a butterfly flapping it’s wings on one continent, can cause a tsunami on another continent. Oppression in the world affects all of us, liberation in the world affects all of us. Imagine a world in which all people have physical liberty; will we then move on to liberate our minds? hearts? I am getting lofty and idealistic here, but sometimes we all have to indulge in idealism in order to keep moving forward.

Over the course of being In Israel and Palestine for the past two and half weeks, I have realized that I have made myself the ginny pig of my own theories. I am like a restless lab rat in a land of sacred places used to justify un-sacred actions. I have been subjected to communication meltdowns, tested friendships and tested ideals. I have been tested by a new and large compassion for the Israeli narrative which until now I have been critical of, almost to the point of demonization. I wanted to push it as far away as possible from any association to me; some may have categorized me as a “self hating Jew”, and many have. And yet I am painfully aware that in many ways this is not my struggle as I am not Israeli or Palestinian.

This time back on the ground here, with my feet slowly finding grounded steps on the earth of this land, I have been struck my desire to be here, in a place where I am not a minority, on land that is talking to me at a depth of my core though I am still unsure what it is saying and it continues to repulse me that it is easier for me as a Jew to be here than it is for a Palestinian who’s parents were born here.

I have been blessed to meet a few other people who are sitting in the middle. The middle is not common here as this is a place of extremes, one side and the other with a common quote everywhere of “yes, but they hate us”.  Boarders and identities are constantly used as a way to divide, a way to keep communication from happening. The juxtaposition is intense.

Last night I saw a post modern dance performance in the Bak’a neighborhood of Jerusalem about 5 kilometers from the Bethlehem Checkpoint. The theater reminded me of Williamsberg Brooklyn; warehouse space, train track, red lit bar. There were two dance pieces; one was an ensemble choreography about interpersonal relationships and the other was a tribute of sorts to the great Greek opera singer Maria Callas. Both used the contrast of beautiful and grotesque movement, grace and carnal sexuality and the dancers were often seen in their underwear. While my eyes are more used to fully covered bodies in this country, I was not uncomfortable as I am accustomed to this kind of material and have been known to perform it myself, but a strange feeling of disjuncture came over me as I remembered having an Iftar dinner with my very religious muslim host family in the Deheisha refugee camp 8 kilometers away just the night before in their home where three grown daughters share one large bed and toast bread on a space heater. Most of the family has never been to Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem they yearn for, Al-Quds they call it “the holy”, is the Al-Aqsa mosque and the visions Mohammed brought back from paradise.  But there I sat 8 kilometers away in Jerusalem with well dressed modern dance goers in heels and miniskirts watching a light-skinned Israeli dancer mock lip-sink Maria Callas in her underwear and robe while her body jerked in simulated orgasmic pulsation. The experiences of this Jerusalem and that Deheisha dinner were worlds apart, and yet neighbors, an experience few people have at all let alone in the same 24 hrs!

The boarders here take many shapes, from walls to separate roads, to separate time zones.  Some times the boarders are simply the walls people put up in order not to see the other side, the other side of the story, the city, the wall. There is the blindness of privilege that most Israelis carry and many Palestinians carry the blindness of a sorrowful rage, albeit justified.

Last week I went to the Bloomfield science museum to see an exhibit called PEACE MAZE that was about how conflict can be navigated to find peace. The museum is designed as a learning center for children and I was excited to see how conflict and peace are being illustrated scientifically to Jewish Israelis and Palestinians who have the ID appropriate to be in Jerusalem. I was hopeful that perhaps the exhibit would illustrate conflict in a way that might be constructive for the future generations to find ways out of this current mess.  But the exhibit wasn’t there. When asked, no one knew why it had ended early. I was disappointed but not surprised.

What I DID learn at the museum, was that sight is the most powerful of the five senses. In an audio visual piece in there was a video of a man clearly repeating the syllable “BA” three times though the video had no audio. The audio portion was a man’s voice clearly repeating the syllable “DA” three times. However when you listen to the audio with the video, the audio begins to sound like “BA”. This instillation illustrates that the eyes over power the ears, that site speaks louder than sound.

Of course, in my preoccupation with the occupation, I thought about the conflict from the perspective of division, of walls, of the lack of ability Palestinians have to see Israel and Israelis to see Palestine; how Israelis are discouraged from seeing the unrecognized Bedouin villages and the Bedouin, Druze and Palestinians are discouraged from working in solidarity with each other. Physical space is carved up making it almost impossible for people from opposing realities to witness each other. I believe this witnessing is essential and yet there are many on the Palestinian side that argue that bringing Israelis and Palestinian together for dialogue is only a way to Normalize the occupation, to make it not look so bad. While I understand this sentiment, and I agree that at times this is true, I wonder, how is the situation ever going to change if Israelis and Palestinian continue to exist as an inhuman “other” for each other?

I have been struck during this visit how invested I am in the coexistence movement, in having conversation and staying in the conversation, that this has been my objective without realizing it. To say that I want to be in the “coexistence conversation” is easy for me to say as a jewish woman (and an american at that), because this conversation has the capacity to make me feel better, make me feel that “my people can kill and imprison your people and give you hell, but we can still be friends, right?” And it’s not right.  I have heard repeatedly from Palestinian artist friends, that they need to tell their stories outside of relationship to Jewish stories, that the occupation needs to end before we can start talking about healing, before we can “all just get along”. And I agree, but the idealist in me wants to know that there is future to build, that if and when we stand on level playing ground, when Jews/Israelis are finally comfortable taking less so that Palestinians can have more, that we know how to hold space for coexistence.

At many times I wish I could take back history. In many ways I wish I did not feel a connection to this place, because that connection is problematic. I wish I could protest the Wall in Belin with fervent angry solidarity. I wish I could give all the land back to the Arab communities that lived here pre-Israel and grant a peaceful displaced experience to the Jewish diaspora pre-Zionism, transform the Jewish yearning for a place of belonging into a yearning for G-d, divine expression, that we could create a world of more holiness instead of this unholy nation state called Israel in a supposed holy land.  But I cannot turn back time. Israel exists, Israel is not going anywhere, there are both Israelis and Palestinians who want the land from the river to the sea, but at this point it is not possible for either to take hold of it.

So, where do we go from here? There are numbers of theories; settlement freezes, jewish immigration freezes into Israel to limit the number of poor new immigrants who need subsidized settlement housing, we can continue to march against the Wall in Bil’in and Nil’in but the military will most likely continue it’s building no matter what the courts decide. I have talked to many Israelis and Palestinians who find it is easier to feel powerless than proactive; to wallow in sadness and anger and indifference.

I wonder where I will go from here besides into my gut wrenched poetry I use as a tool to release the anguish from my body; use my words to engage in fierce conversation in dialogue in which I and my audiences, my dialogue partners, can be changed. I pray that one day I will move into vision for future, vision for Palestinians to have access to basic rights, for myself to feel more at home in my experience of this place, this world, in myself.

If I can change my plane ticket to stay a few days longer, next week I hope to volunteer at an event, to witness dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian youth at an event called Sulhita. As cliché as it sounds, they are the future. Perhaps they will lift my hope……

It is a new year…. may it be one in which sweetness over powers the bitters.

Now, the air is a twinge yellow and full of possibility. I want to grab a boom-box and a Stevie Wonder mix-tape, or even the best of the Bee Gees, chill in the park with neighbors, have a BBQ. I want to rap in afternoon sun with friends and strangers about our visions for a peaceful, equal and creative world. Visions no longer seem like pipe dreams, but tangible, buildable structures.

YES WE CAN! It has been chanted by so many, from the United Farm Workers mobilized by Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, to a nation of people believing that we can change America by voting for an intelligent, caring and in touch African American President. But this is only the beginning. Barack Obama will not change the American society, we will. It is now our responsibility to use vibrant imagination to create a society with the strength to unify the many states of being within the boarders of these United States of America, and YES WE CAN! Rising from the ground under LA’s traffic, I hear lady liberty singing “How Deep is Your Love”. Let’s show her through our freedom of expression!

What are these states? They are physical states with local governments, state constitutions and boarders; but they are also states of mind, states of thought and differing opinions. They are different social and ethnic cultures. They are different belief systems within the body of one person, whether they are of mixed racial or cultural background or simply complex in their ideologies. The arts have always and will always be a bridge to unify these states of being. All artistic media from music to visual art to dance, have the capacity to show us both microcosm and macrocosm. Artist, activist and writer Luis Rodriguez, writes in the introduction to his book Hearts and Hands,

The development of a worldview is almost always linked to art … to the intersection of external and internal energies that impel us onto a creative terrain where spirit and body, the conscious and the unconscious, the universal and the singular, the personal and social live through us in a delicate dance.

Through participating in creative exploration we have the opportunity to develop an understanding of ourselves, our cultures and how we relate to the world around us. As audience members we learn about other people’s selves and their cultures. The arts provide a place for unifying self with self, self with god self with community and communities with other communities. Is it possible that through the arts we can learn to embrace a new national collective identity, a new sense of “US”? Can we through the arts create a new United States of Being, American? I think YES. This art need not be political, but simply authentic in its dream.

            It is essential to remember that every person is creative in their own ways as life itself is a creative process. Thus every person can claim the role of artist; the way they live their lives, along with the things that they make, is their art. As artists we have three central responsibilities to attend to in our art, 1. to remember the past, 2. to make sense of the present and 3. to vision the future. The past eight years we have been in an age of making sense of the present, of explaining and griping, complaining and educating about the state of the world through the Bush administration’s reign. We have spoken out against war and human rights abuses. We have spoken out about the energy crisis and the greed of the corporate machine. We have risen up against the Prison Industrial Complex and the criminalization and incarceration of youth. And our work has informed the populous to step up and make changes! The renewable and green energy movements are building momentum and popularity. Our hard work has set an atmosphere in which Barack Obama, a man of mixed race, could not only run but be elected as the first African American President! These are big steps forward into a society of equality that awaits us, but we have also taken steps back. Last spring through a supreme court ruling, the State of California legalized gay marriage, but on November 4^th 2008 through ballot measure “proposition 8”, the State of California revoked the right for same sex marriage.  Is it ever just to take away rights from a citizen? Where was our vision then?

It is essential that we continue to reach for our ideals and share rights, even when we are stretched as a society out of our comfort zone. The great early 20^th century anarchist and woman’s suffrage activist, Emma Goldman wrote about the USA saying that “Few countries are as unsafe for the man or woman of independence and idealism.” While I believe this still to be true, our idealism is essential now more than ever as it is strength of idealism that has brought us this far and will create the safety necessary in which to continue the dream. It is safe to continue to harp on the negative, but now is the time to move out of griping about the past and into visioning the future. By no means should we abandon the causes we have been focused on nor forget our histories of struggle, but we must move passionately out of thought into action, from laundry lists of complaints into building proactive solutions. In the infamous words of Gandhi, it is time to “be the change we want to see in the world“. It is time to walk into the paintings of Vision!

This is scary, like diving off a cliff into dark placid water. We have no framework for true vision because our visions have not yet existed! Perhaps if we dive in good form, and trust gravity to carry us gracefully into those waters, we will find them truly delicious and full of underwater worlds we never imagined!

As it is time to focus on the future, it is now time to not only empower young people to discover their voices, their cultures and claim their identities, but also to claim their visions for the brightest future they believe possible!  As arts educators, it is our duty to provide them with tools to authentically express themselves, but more importantly to usher them onto stages from which to express their experiences and dreams. We must assist them in finding the materials necessary with which to build those dreams!!

YES WE CAN and YES WE HAVE spoken, yes we can unify and yes we can create a vibrant culture of positive action embracing the complexities that we are! Yes we can and now more than ever yes we must create art of Vision. The facts are on the table, what will we make with them?  

I say YES to the new US the new unity of the many states of being. I look forward to experiencing and participating in what we make together in those uncharted waters!!

Let’s dive in… 1, 2, 3…. GO!

 A Call to Action….

          To the old, the young, the rich, the poor, to women, men, and children; To the workers, laborers and farmers; To the artists, intellectuals, teachers and students; To the bankers, policy makers, the convicted and the free, the dark-skinned and the light; To the Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, followers of indigenous shamanic paths, monotheists and polytheists and secularists; To the tired and the frightened, the inspired and apathetic, to the patriotic and the anti-patriots, to the immigrants and the citizens of this blessed and cursed country…

DEAR AMERICANS!

We live in the most powerful nation on the planet. What does this mean?

This means responsibility, responsibility to hold our government accountable for its actions and to hold each other accountable for ours. Responsibility to speak our minds, speak our hearts, speak our visions. We have a responsibility to revision and rebuild America. An America that can adequately provide Life, Liberty and Happiness for all whom are affected by U.S. policies and in whatever forms Life, Liberty and Happiness take for the diverse populations that are affected by the U.S.; there are many ways to live and many belief systems to believe, and they are all of equal value. We must revision and rebuild policies at home and abroad. While we revision international policies as our government polices and bullies the world, we must act locally, we must confront the oppression within our boarders, RACISM, CLASSISM, SEXISM and all other ISMS which create hatred, division, oppression and inaction. We must struggle to strengthen our education system from elementary through the graduate levels. We must strengthen our health care system, providing care for all those in need. While we must support our troops, we must weaken the military machine. While we must support safety in our communities, we must weaken the prison industrial complex which includes prisons of the mind constructed by propaganda in the media, and popular entertainment, movies, magazines and TV as well as propaganda in our education systems and text-books. We must weaken prisons of the mind created by drugs and crime planted into our poor communities.

We shall free our minds of fear and hatred through the vehicle of the arts, through conversation and debate, we must not be afraid to debate with those whom with we disagree. Most disagreements lie within how we think, not what we think. We must bring the arts into education for the purpose of empowerment of voice. We must not only oppose the system, but infiltrate it. Infiltrate the media, the government and big business.  We must not just talk about these actions, but engage in ongoing dialogues and projects as to how to make these accomplishments; if one project fails, we must find another approach. 

While i believe we must actively revision a new unifying sentiment in the U.S., i believe that we must reevaluate the use of the terms “ a new America” and “a new Americanism” as what we mean is a new U.S. and a new patriotism for this country, not a new North and South America. The term “a new Americanism” is only an alternate action of imperialism and U.S. domination; the people of one country defining the ideologies of two continents simply through the power of language. Words are powerful as they manifest not only thought and how thought is packaged; words also package action. Perhaps we need to rename this country as we redefine it along with its patriotism.

i tend to call this nation by the acronym U.S., not USA for this is not the united states of America as the American land mass extends far beyond our boarders with Mexico and Canada. The acronym U.S. spells “us”, and who are “we”?  We are a country full of people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It is not simply our economic wealth as a government entity that makes us the most powerful nation on the planet, it is also our diversity, however, it is not with respect to diversity of thought and belief that our government acts.

{While what i am speaking of is in many ways democracy, no one asked the Iraqi people if a democracy is what they want. It is one belief system of many and it is one born out of western thought. It is time for the west to stop enforcing its values on the rest of the world.}

As part of a movement to redefine this country, we must not reflect the actions of our government, we must be open to all peoples and beliefs, we must not alienate each other or assume that we all agree. We must unite as U.S., “us”, as United States, united states of being, united states of mind. We must unite and we must speak both our similarities and our differences.

We reside in the most powerful nation on the planet, an Empire, perhaps in the process of being strengthened, perhaps an Empire about to fall. As the U.S. government acts violently out of greed i fear that we are moving into an age of increased violence, violence as a method to oppose violence, and fear only creates more violence. It is thus not with fear, but with hope, humility and grace that we must revision a world of peace and our place within it.

To my fellow young adults,

This job falls heavily on our shoulders as we are soon to be the next generation in power and our actions now will greatly effect the next era on this planet.  What future do you want to live in? What do you want to leave behind for your children? What have your parents left you? What of their actions do you value and what do you protest? We must learn from the accomplishments and mistakes of the past and ACT NOW to create a brighter future. As we build a movement, we must ask, “What are we moving, and what is the style of our motion?”  We must not let these questions keep us from mobilizing.

In this time of war, which stimulates fear and anger, we must find peace in ourselves and amongst each other, we must support each other. We must not create conflict in our personal lives, we must not act out of fear and anger as fear and anger only create violence, and i believe that it is the cycles of violence that we need to break. It is through fear that our government controls and dominates the minds and lives of its citizens. We must be stronger than fear; we must act with humility and patience. We must not be frantic but efficient and direct, we must remember to breathe, we must BE hope, we must BE unity, and we must remember that unity does not mean uniformity, but rather the coming together of difference.

i beg you all…UNITE and RE-VISION!

                                     ……..Saria Idana

                                                          2005