Soon I'll post my response to the Acclaimed Young Writer's critique of a political approach to literature. In the meantime, here are some links relevant to what's really pressing on my mind these days, the genocidal Israeli/U.S. assault on Gaza.
Poets for Gaza
Friday, January 16, 7 p.m. at the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South in New York City: join poets Roger Bonair-Agard, Marty McConnell, Vaimoana Niumeitolu, Tahani Salah, Remi Kanazi and Urban Word NYC youth poets for a night of stimulating and invigorating spoken word. More poets to be announced! All proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit the people of Gaza directly through the registered 501c3 organization, United Palestinian Appeal. Spread the word and bring your friends! For more information, contact: Remi Kanazi at remroum@gmail.com
Queers Without Borders is a blog, or I guess a kind of blog of blogs by progressive LGBT people, that I recently learned of, which features a number of items regarding support for Palestine.
While I have managed to get back to writing as per my new year's pledge, and am currently revising a short story having to do with Jews and Palestinians, I've also been doing some other writing, including a statement by Jews in support of Palestine and against Zionism. When and if that goes public I'll post the links. In the meantime, though, I'm very happy to have learned of the existence of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Such a grouping is very much needed to break the monopoly of Israel's supporters and apologists who claim to speak for all Jews. Speaking of which, yesterday I took part in another NYC protest of the Israeli war against Gaza. This was again a big demonstration, at least 15,000. We gathered in Times Square for a rally, then marched to the Time Warner Center and rallied there to protest CNN's disgustingly one-side pro-Israel coverage.
Finally, turning for a moment away from the subject of Gaza, here's an editorial in Workers World newspaper about the selection of reactionary pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at President Obama's inaguration. Full disclosure: I wrote it.
