[Peace-discuss] Bend the Arc Pity Party on pages of News-Gazette

[David Green]

Articles and letters from the past couple of weeks, concluding with my own
from today.

*BEND THE ARC*

*Expert in hate groups gets call: Teacher to lead event on white
nationalism*

By LYNDSAY JONES

CHAMPAIGN — High school English teacher Nora Flanagan is aware that being a
“Nazi expert” is a “weird thing to be an expert on.”

But that’s what will bring her to Champaign’s Sinai Temple Thursday
evening, where she’s slated to lead a workshop titled “ Confronting White
Nationalism in Schools.” It’s the second in a series of local Bend the Arc
events aimed at fostering “safety through solidarity, meaning an attack on
a targeted group is an attack on all of us,” said the organization’s Terry
Maher.

“As we were doing our research on the problem of white nationalism
nationally, we realized students as young as 11 were being targeted,” she
said. “We thought that before Champaign- Urbana becomes the next in line,
we ought to do something about white nationalism in the schools.”

*They invited Flanagan to come down from Chicago to lead the workshop,
aimed at helping school staff, family members and community members
identify and respond to signs of white nationalism or white supremacist
recruitment or support in young adults.*

Flanagan grew up in a part of Chicago that had “a lot of intense race
issues in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” when she observed hate-group
recruitment efforts early on.

She also grew up in “the Chicago punk scene,” where she observed and echoed
anti-racist politics in action, then carried those principles into her
teaching education at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

But it wasn’t until she began work with an organization “researching how
hate groups use music to recruit young people” that her work went to
another level.

 “I spent a lot of time in the ugliest parts of the internet,” she said.
“That was when I saw there were suggestions for kids on how to bring their
politics to school — there were literally articles like ‘Here are five ways
to be visible as white nationalist at your school.’” Eventually, she would
co-author a guide to preventing such recruitment — the same one being
presented Thursday — but at first, she was quiet about the knowledge she’d
been accumulating.

When things happened in her school, she observed administrators choose one
of two options: “They either under-reacted or over-reacted,” she said.
“They would either dismiss it as an issue, or when it was irrefutable,
become excessively punitive. Neither addresses what is going on.”

The toolkit she’ll discuss Thursday is designed to prevent either option
and help users engage everyone involved — not just a child or student.

“Everybody needs to be talking to everybody else because it’s a community
issue,” she said. “One of the most dangerous things right now is these
seemingly- minor incidents — like throwing up the sieg heil sign in the
cafeteria and then dealing with the student who did it — but unless every
kid who saw it knows that it was handled thoughtfully, then it wasn’t
handled.

“The goal is to help people respond more holistically in a way that’s going
to help not just the community, but the kid in question.”

After mass shootings in Gilroy, Calif., and El Paso, Texas — in which both
gunmen espoused white supremacist ideology — Flanagan said she’s received
more calls from people hoping to book speeches.

“I keep forgetting school is in three weeks,” she said. “This could be my
full-time job now: there is enough of a need for people to have these
conversations that I could do this full-time.”

Local members of Bend the Arc weren’t necessarily planning to have Flanagan
be the featured speaker for their second series, but they, too, were
motivated by the most recent string of mass shootings and the racist
ideology behind them.

“It’s domestic terrorism,” Maher said. “It’s horrifying. That is why we
want to educate people: so they recognize the signs. We don’t want
Champaign-Urbana to be next on the list. We can arm ourselves with
knowledge and this is the way to do it.”

*ANTI-SEMITISM: Jewish group pushes Davis to condemn Trump*

By PAUL WOOD

CHAMPAIGN — A progressive Jewish organization rallied outside U.S. Rep.
Rodney Davis’s office Friday to demand that the Taylorville Republican
speak out about the president’s statement that Jews who vote for Democrats
are disloyal to the country. Later, Davis did, through a spokesman.

Main speaker Diane Ore of Champaign said the group Bend the Arc asked Davis
to denounce Donald Trump for the statement that says such voting “shows
either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Linda Yoakum, congressional aide to U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, left, speaks
with Marci Adelston-Schafer of Bend the Arc outside the Taylorville
Republican’s Champaign office Friday.

“Well, I’m a proud Jew and here’s what I know,” said Ore, the chairwoman of
Bend The Arc CU. “Claiming Jews are disloyal — that we are not full
Americans — is a centuries-old anti-Semitic trope designed to isolate and
endanger Jewish people.”

Hours later, Davis’ spokeswoman Ashley Phelps responded to the protesters.

“Congressman Davis has urged the president to tone down the rhetoric, tweet
less and govern more,” she said.

“At the same time, this is the same group who organized a protest outside
our Open Government Night, where one person had a sign that mocked the
congressman being shot at, and inside many shouted that they agree with
Bernie Sanders that Republican policies kill people. Congressman Davis
continues to encourage both sides to tone down the rhetoric.”

A dozen demonstrators were at the noon rally speaking out at the
president’s words. “In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being
very disloyal to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,”
Trump told reporters in a different statement Wednesday, “and only weak
people would say anything other than that.”

Ore said she’s concerned that repeating such comments motivates mass
shootings.

“Beginning with Charlottesville, when Donald Trump said there were very
fine people on both sides, Rodney Davis kept silent,” she said.

She said Davis should speak out about Trump, “not for his tweeting
practice, but for making our democratic home feel more like Nazi Germany
than the United States of America, to which we have always pledged and will
always pledge our allegiance, regardless of its leadership.”

“We demand that you support common sense gun laws that will remove the
murder weapons from the hands of our assailants,” she added.

She said that Jews in his district deserve all the rights of his
constituents.

Bend The Arc member Terry Maher agreed with Ore that white nationalists are
a particular concern.

Anti-Semitism “has been going on since Biblical times. White nationalists
are part of this history, and the danger is all over the country, including
here.”

As an example, she referred to an outdoors menorah statue on the University
of Illinois campus that was vandalized three times in 10 months in recent
years.

“This isn’t hijinks,” Maher said.

*GOP needs to put end to hate speech*

I am Jewish. I grew up in New York City, where I lived in a Jewish
neighborhood and almost everyone I knew was also a Jew.

After I married, I lived for 40 years in northern Delaware, and have now
lived in Champaign-Urbana for 12 years, and in both places, most of the
people I’ve known aren’t Jewish.

I’ve never felt afraid in any of these places, until recently — and
especially in the last few days when Donald Trump made, and continues to
make, his remarks about Jewish loyalty. Now I am very afraid and would feel
the same way in both of the places I have lived before.

Hate speech did not originate with Donald Trump, but he adds to it and
doesn’t condemn it in others, which encourages more of it.

We have seen in El Paso and other places that his words filter down to
people and increase their motivation for their violent actions.

Rodney Davis and all the other Republicans who don’t speak up about the
president’s remarks are complicit in the violence that follows.

Since shortly after the Holocaust, Jews have been saying Never Again, and
some groups have recently adopted the statement Never Again is Now. It is
now, Champaign-Urbana; it is now America.

Republicans need to stop pretending this is not happening and take measures
to put an end to hate speech, all the way to the top, or we might find that
Champaign- Urbana is the new Poway or the new Pittsburgh.

JOYCE FRANSCISO Champaign



*Trump’s words no laughing matter*

I had the occasion today to call Congressman Rodney Davis’ Decatur office
(no one answered in Champaign). I wanted to voice my concern about the
president’s recent tweets questioning in the most extreme ways the loyalty
of American Jews. I wanted to know if Davis had made any statements about
the tweets or, at least, in support of his Jewish constituents.

After the part-time staffer told me any statement would have been in the
newspaper (there have been none), I explained that my concern as a Jewish
American was that Trump’s words were dangerous and were the very words used
for millenia to incite violence and murder upon Jews. She laughed at me.
She told me African Americans, Muslims, all sorts of groups say the same
thing. She kept chuckling as she took down my concerns.

This is no laughing matter. When the president of the United States uses
the same antisemitic tropes used throughout the 19th and 20th century
(France, Germany, Russia, etc.) and all the way back to the time of the
Pharaohs (read the Book of Exodus), then yes, Jewish Americans have good
reason to fear that Trump’s words will be heard and acted upon by the same
white nationalists who killed Jews in Pittsburgh and Poway. It is no
laughing matter.

Therefore, I eagerly hope a statement of total support for the Jewish
Americans in his district will be forthcoming from Davis. So far, his
silence has been deafening. To be silent is to be complicit.

TERRY MAHER Champaign



*Trump continues reckless behavior *

Donald Trump’s conflation of the words “Jew” and “disloyal,” however
intended, is the latest outrage that we have, unfortunately, come to expect
from our reckless president.

The president’s comment that for a Jew to vote for a Democrat is an act of
“disloyalty” to the state of Israel suggests that Jews are, by definition,
“loyal” to the state of Israel and not to America.

If that were simply a careless remark made by a deeply ignorant person, it
would be bad enough. The fact that that man is the president of the United
States is more evidence that he is the most irresponsible president ever to
occupy the Oval Office.

Is the president aware of how many rivers of Jewish blood have been spilled
from time immemorial on the basis of the libel that Jews are fundamentally
“disloyal” to whatever country they reside in because of their religion and
their support of Jews everywhere?

Finally, our punditry class is fond of endlessly debating the questions:
“Is Trump an anti-Semite?” “Is Trump a racist?” “Is Trump a white
nationalist?” My answer to these questions is clearly “no.”

To ascribe a coherent belief system, beyond the impulse “will this accrue
to my bottom line?”, to the president, assumes a certain level of thought
that he is clearly not capable of.

The key question should be, do his words and actions encourage the
anti-Semites, the racists and the white nationalists in our midst? The
answer to that question is clearly “yes!”

PAUL WEICHSEL Champaign



*Concerns voiced about Bend the Arc *

This responds to the recent article regarding the local chapter of the
Jewish “progressive” group Bend the Arc, which claims, in its efforts to
support migrants, to be opposing alleged “white nationalism” in our
community. Regrettably, I find Bend the Arc, at national and local levels,
politically repellent on any number of counts that go beyond self-righteous
proclamations claiming to represent the moral legacy of Judaism and Jews.
At a general level, they wash their hands of concerns about U.S.
imperialism, which represents the basis for the migrant crisis they claim
to address.

They pointedly avoid addressing the convolutedly perverse relationships
among “white nationalism” and Jewish nationalism (Zionism), the racist
manifestations of which have pervaded Jewish-American institutions (and
academia) for over a half-century.

Concretely, they demonize Donald Trump while avoiding criticism of his (and
their own) rabid support for Israeli occupation and apartheid, support
shared by the leadership of both parties.

Indeed, they are unaware that the notion of a “great replacement” of white
people is partly rooted in the Islamophobic views of a Jewish-European
woman, Bat Ye’or: a fake historian, rabid conspiracy theorist and author of
“Eurabia” (2005).

They are unaware that her views are rooted in her previous Zionist
propaganda regarding the historical status of Jews in the Arab and Muslim
worlds, propaganda weaponized to retroactively justify the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians.

The transparent agenda of Bend the Arc is to support whomever the
Democratic Party nominates, however Zionist, militarist or imperialist. As
“progress,” that simply won’t do.

DAVID GREEN Champaign
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