On June 13, 2016–right in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections in American history–“an American-born man who’d pledged allegiance to ISIS gunned down 49 people…at a gay nightclub in Orlando.” The Pulse Nightclub shooting was, at […]
The speed with which the COVID-19 pandemic has completely upended and shut down ordinary life in America is both stunning and terrifying.
Celebrating the birthday of a nonprofit you founded doesn’t have the same nostalgia-soaked feeling as your own birthday: rather than the bittersweet recollections of childhood, this celebration has the bracing feel of adulthood.
One may well ask what good standing here.
How does reason answer to madness?
A hot shower can erase the cold but not
the shiver. Is it not better to fast than go hungry?
To write is to argue without evidence that beauty
pervades: the rainforest and the killing field,
sunsets and floods of acid rain on I-95.
We can never atone for the billions
spent on dark dreams
sawed through with ease,
To resist through nonviolence, yes—
I’ll do what the data says is wise.
But to love is another matter:
I may wave the flag, but I am no patriot;
Is it not better to burn what they betray?
This is where we come together,
Not before but after:
The blood already drained,
We refill it;
We never lack for blood to give.
Last week 1,000 Jews and allies
Surrounded ICE Headquarters in protest
Chanting Never Again
Like a shofar sounding pain
From Auschwitz to Gulag to Mount Sinjar
Three Marches have come and gone
Like a public bus come to my street
Before giving up and moving on.
Each time I’ve seen them through windows
Fogged with the steam of my growing rage,