Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor is the last Jewish Republican in Congress, but he was just beaten in the primary by Tea Party candidate Dave Brat. As a result, some Jews (and some Goys) have been schvitzing over the lack of Jewish representation in the GOP. Minority representation in the Republican party is one concern, regardless of how disingenuous that concern is among Republicans. Another concern that carries some actual weight in the GOP is that American relations with Israel could be strained. The discussion is posed as though Cantor himself is some sort firewall between American support of and disregard for Israel. While I am Jewish and I do care about Israel, I know that Jerusalem isn’t going to be affected by Cantor being gone. At all.

First, the Republican party is going to be just as pro-Israel as it was before. According to the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of Republicans already sympathize more with Israel than with Palestine. Among conservative Republicans, the statistic is even higher at 75 percent. Only seven percent of the GOP would support Palestine over Israel, while the rest said “neither” (nine percent) or “both” (16 percent). Republicans have their reasons for supporting Israel. Well, they have the one reason: the Muslim Middle East is still a bad thing in the eyes of Republicans; as recently as the last midterm election, Pew revealed how Republicans were one of three main groups to view Islam “unfavorably.” The other two groups were the elderly and less-educated people.

It’s not like the GOP is trying to support a demographic in their constituent base. Again, a Pew study shows the political leanings of different Jewish denominations. Only Orthodox Jews have a majority that identifies with the Republican party. All others identify as or at least lean Democratic: Conservative Jews at 64 percent, Reform Jews at 77 percent, and no denomination at 75 percent. On the whole, 70 percent of Jews favor Democrats. Republicans will continue to support Israel fiercely, not because Jews support the GOP, but because of the state’s position as a counterweight against the Muslim Middle East.

When considering the president’s stance, it’s even more evident that Israel’s fate won’t be affected by Cantor’s defeat. In a piece from Bloomberg, Jeffery Goldberg writes about an interview he conducted with Obama. ” Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy…Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I’ve ever heard him.” The president’s policies on Israeli-relations, as detailed by Goldberg, seem to be some of his strongest and most balanced policies ever. Obama is quoted saying, “I’ve said directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu he has an opportunity to solidify, to lock in, a democratic, Jewish state of Israel that is at peace with its neighbors and…has an opportunity also to take advantage of a potential realignment of interests in the region, as many of the Arab countries see a common threat in Iran.” It’s a mitzvah we have someone in office who can deal with the complexities of an alliance, and not be sorry about being straight with our friends.

Constructively criticizing one another is an essential part of friendship. And what does pro-Israel mean, anyway? In the long run, would the state be better off struggling with its own Arab citizens and belligerent neighbors? Or, isn’t it more likely that Israel’s future will be secure if Jerusalem negotiates with Palestinians? The difference between being a mensch and a shmendrick here isn’t about dogmatism and hostility toward Palestine. Being powerful and pro-Israel means looking down the road and understanding that a peaceful compromise is the greatest possible outcome. It would be enough if we had a president who even acknowledged this, but Obama and Kerry have been actively seeking this goal, too. Dayenu, am I right?

With Cantor gone, no, there won’t be any Congressional Republican Jews. But between the conservative funding of everyone’s least favorite chosen person Sheldon Adelson,a Republican party that’s consistently defensive of Israel, and a president who may be taking the most level-headed approach to the matter in U.S. history, our relationship with Jerusalem will remain solid. We’ll remain the shmeer to their bagel, they the capers to our lox. Still, it’s amazing to me that people care so much about the lack of Jews in the Republican party when it seems as though the Republican party cares so little about Jews. The conservative pro-Israel stance is based on defining Jews against the rest of the Middle East. Should I kvetch that American political parties actually bring Jews into the national conversation? Maybe not. But it may be less insulting to ignore Jews than to use us as a means to end. 

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Jake Ephros (@JakeEphros)

Featured image courtesy of [Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kevin J. Steinberg via Wikipedia]

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Cantor Defeated in Primary, Israel Will Be Just Fine appeared first on Law Street.

I’ve had trouble with the Redskins name ever since I was in elementary school. I never understood why the mascot of a professional football team was just a man with some feathers on his head. You would think that if a seven-year-old kid can see the wrong in naming a team “Redskins,” then adults would too. But sadly many of them do not. So to help get my point across, for the rest of this article I will refer to them as the R*dskins.

Daniel Snyder, owner of the R*dskins since 1999, has been pressured to change the name of the team by fans, politicians, and various advocacy groups who feel that the name is derogatory to Native Americans. In May 2013, in response to a question regarding the team’s name, Snyder told USA Today, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER – you can use caps.”

Seriously?

I get that you’re from Maryland Mr.Snyder, I am too. And I get that you are a die-hard R*dskins fan, though I am not. But can you seriously not see the racism behind the name of your team?

You are literally taking a whole group of people and turning them into caricatures, and when asked to just think about changing the name to something less offensive, your response is always a loud and clear.

Now, my issue with the name of the R*dskins is not just with Daniel Snyder, it goes a lot deeper than that. My issue runs with the players, the fans, the coaches, the media, and the NFL. Any and all these people could take a stand against Snyder and the R*dskins organization and possibly make a change. But who cares about Native Americans right? We only came to their country, took their land, killed their people, and made it ours. Then to rub salt in the wounds we took a stereotypical image of a Native American and made it a mascot alongside the likes of  falcons, jaguars, ravens, bears, rams, and a ton of other animals. Is that what you see Native Americans as, R*dskins fans? Animals?

You should be ashamed

I’ve been having this argument for years and years, and I have heard the same arguments as to why the R*dskins are a nice, genuine, wholesome team who are just misunderstood. I’ve heard the, “It’s been like that for so long, it would be weird to change the name now,” excuse. Well…

Slavery was normal in America for more than 200 years. People thought it would be “weird” if we gave Black people in America the same rights as White people. Laws change, social systems crumble, but universal truths are constant. What is true and right is true and right for all.

So often when I’m having this argument I say, “What if the team was called ‘Washington Blackskins’ with a Black person wearing a do-rag?” The person is often quiet for a very long moment before replying, “It’s not the same.”

How? How is it not the exact same thing? So what is racist for Black people isn’t racist for Native Americans? That in itself sounds racist to me, and whenever someone says that to me I just simply…

spazz out.

What’s funny to me is that most R*dskins fans are Black, and you would think that they would be more sensitive to racial slurs. I am willing to bet all the money in my bank account that if the team were called the “Washington Blackskins,” there would be a march on Washington, Black religious leaders and other Black activist would be holding press conferences, and a social media campaign with a witty hash tag would be in full effect. Since the slur isn’t directed at the Black community, we don’t really seem to care.

whatever right?

To Snyder, the NFL, and all of the team’s fans, the name isn’t racist. They see it as an entity to be proud of. They’ve watched R*dskins “heroes” such as Joe Gibbs, Sean Taylor, Clinton Portis, and many more, give a good chunk of their lives to this organization. Well I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, R*dskins fans: these guys are not heroes. In fact, they played an essential part in the continuing racism that plagues America today. Also, the original owner of the team, George Marshall, was a loud and proud bigot. He was the last owner in the NFL to integrate his team, and only did so because he was forced to do so by the federal government. “We’ll start signing Negroes, when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing Whites,” Marshall once said. This is the history that makes R*dskins fans proud?

I wish i could roll my eyes further into my head.

Just because you think it isn’t offensive doesn’t mean that it actually isn’t. In fact, many Native Americans do find the name to be incredibly insulting.

• Oneida Nation has encouraged Americans to lobby the NFL in support of the name change at www.changethemascot.org.
• A group of Native Americans sued the team back in 2013 arguing against the team’s trademark rights to the name. Trademarks that are deemed racist are illegal under U.S. federal law.
• The 2,000-man protest at the 1992 Super Bowl consisted of members from various tribes (Chippewa, Sioux, Winnebago, Choctaw).
•  Hundreds protested at the home stadium in Landover, Md. on Thanksgiving day 2013.
• The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) issued a video last year that consists of leaders from seven different tribes calling for the name to be changed, and released a new and even more powerful video showing everything that American Indians are, R*dskin not being one of them.

Thankfully they are not competely alone in their fight to get the R*dskins to change their name. There have been numerous politicians, former athletes, and plain old citizens who have helped in the conflict.

• President Barack Obama said, “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizable group of people, I’d think about changing it.”
• DC Mayor Vincent Gray said that if the team wanted to relocate from Maryland to DC they would have to consider changing their name.
• Fifty senators sent a letter to the NFL (really just Roger Goodell) saying that the NFL needs to change the name.

“The NFL can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur,” the letter reads. “We urge the NFL to formally support a name change for the Washington football team…We urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports.”

thank you… its about damn time

Native Americans aren’t cartoons. They aren’t caricatures, or mascots. They are people like you and me, and deserve to be treated with a lot more respect than we have given them over the past hundred years. Their voice may be small in America, but it can still be clearly heard, and as long as one Native American is offended by the word, I think it’s worth discussing what can be done to fix that.

So, I’m going to help out you R*dskins fans a little bit since I don’t hold grudges. Instead of the R*dskins, you could call yourselves the Pigskins! The name still has the same syllables as the original name, it’s a lot less racist, and pigs are super cute and super smart. You could even have RG3 race a pig across the field to start every game or something.

HTTP- Hail To The Pigskins!

That was just a suggestion off the top of my head, you could change it to literally anything and it would probably be better than the R*dskins. Just please for the love of god change that racist name.

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Trevor Smith

Featured image courtesy of [Keith Allison via Flickr]

Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith is a homegrown DMVer studying Journalism and Graphic Design at American University. Upon graduating he has hopes to work for the US State Department so that he can travel, learn, and make money at the same time. Contact Trevor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post It’s Past Time to Change the Racist Redskins Name. Why Aren’t You Angry? appeared first on Law Street.

SPECIAL REPORT from The F Word! PEN America liked me so much on Tuesday that they invited me to cover another event last night. So all you Law Street readers get to listen to the melodious sound of my voice an extra time this week. Lucky you.

Anyway! Together with independent researchers at the FDR Group, PEN published a report this week titled Chilling Effects, which found that writers in the U.S. are self-censoring in response to reports of widespread NSA surveillance. Thanks for scaring the crap out of all of us, Edward Snowden!

According to the report, 85% of surveyed writers are actively worrying about government surveillance, and are watching what they say as a result. Twenty-eight percent have reigned in or eliminated their use of social media, 24% have purposely avoided discussing certain topics via phone or email, and 16% have avoided writing or speaking about sensitive subjects. PEN writers report taking surveillance for granted—they simply assume they’re being monitored—and they’re choosing their words wisely so as to avoid harm.

Thanks PEN America!

Folks, this is what censorship looks like.

And it’s real. As a follow-up to Chilling Effects’ publication, PEN hosted a panel discussion last night in conjunction with the ACLU and the Fordham University School of Law. It was, to put it mildly, chilling.

The panel consisted of four men, all of whom had varying levels of expertise on the NSA and government surveillance. They each addressed the audience with separate, 15-minute presentations. If you want to hear them speak for themselves, you can view the live feed here.

Join us live! http://t.co/6fuvleyjLc #WTHarm pic.twitter.com/ATjoqF3uhg

— PENamerican (@PENamerican) November 15, 2013

But really, who needs to watch an hour and a half video when you’ve got me to recap it for you?

The panelists gave us an incredible look into the world of surveillance, from a historical overview of the NSA’s beginnings, right down to their personal experiences with harassment and persecution. According to James Bamford—the only guy who wore a business suit—the NSA got its start in a Manhattan townhouse back in the 1920s. As a top-secret government agency created to assist the World War I effort, this pre-NSA got a copy of every telegram that went in or out of the country.

That’s a lot of paper.

Fast forward to present day and the NSA isn’t just courting the phone or telegram companies—they’ve got software providers in their back pocket. Not to mention, the technological realities of cloud computing and social media mean the NSA doesn’t really have to ask. As fellow panelist and tech-guru Bruce Schneier remarked last night, “We are all leaving digital footprints throughout our lives,” and they’re anyone’s to follow.

Bruce Schneier – aging hippie extraordinaire. Courtesy of Terry Robinson via Flickr.

So what really happens when the NSA follows our tracks? Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American playwright and novelist, knows firsthand—he lived in Chile during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Dorfman went into exile abroad shortly after Pinochet took office, but was allowed to return in 1983, before the regime’s fall. His poignant description of the Chile he came back to illustrated the fears he had for the future of the U.S.

“People had learned to suspect everyone and everything,” he said, describing friends who had once been open and outspoken as having transformed into guarded strangers. “Chile had become synonymous with silence.”

Indeed, when Dorfman had to dictate a dissenting op-ed over the phone, he was plagued with fear. He described experiencing a panic attack, worrying that the Chilean secret police would arrest and harm his family after eavesdropping on his conversation.

Ariel Dorfman — total bad ass. Courtesy of Robin Kirk via Flickr.

Thankfully, those fears never came true, but American journalist Glenn Greenwald hasn’t been so lucky.  Greenwald is the (in)famous reporter who broke the Edward Snowden leaks, and he spoke on the panel via Skype—an irony he made note of, as the video-calling software is owned by Microsoft, one of the NSA’s most loyal information suppliers.

But there were no other options. A resident of Rio de Janeiro, Greenwald can’t return to the U.S. for fear of being arrested for his NSA coverage. In fact, he’s not travelling at all—and for good reason. This past August, Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained for nine hours by officials at Heathrow Airport in London. They ultimately let him go, but confiscated his electronics first, claiming to be concerned that he was involved in terrorism and espionage.

Essentially, Greenwald and Dorfman are living proof of the fact that government surveillance is scary as shit. And that’s not just because of dystopian what-if scenarios, where all of us paranoiacs predict a turn towards the terror of Pinochet’s Chile.

It’s because, as Greenwald put it, if you want to challenge the powers that be, “the ability to communicate in private is an absolute prerequisite of that.” Without it, we’re incapable of engaging in dissent.

“The minute you know you’re being watched, the less free you become,” Greenwald said.

He’s right, and the crowd agreed. One audience member, J.L. White, stood up to suggest that we seriously consider impeaching President Obama. And after exacerbating the war in Afghanistan, using drones to kill American citizens, and pumping up the NSA’s surveillance efforts, no one in the room disagreed with her.

“What Bush did, Obama put on steroids,” said Bamford, validating White’s point.

But it’s not a hopeless situation. Dorfman expressed optimism, even as he sees alarming parallels between the Obama administration and Pinochet’s.

“They’re going to screw it up,” he said, reminding us that despite all of the surveillance, the government has still been wrong about important events. No one saw the Arab Spring coming, or the Boston Marathon bombing. At the end of the day, our wardens are laughably incompetent.

And while they blunder about, trying to consolidate all the minutiae of our digital lives into something useful, there are tons of people fighting back.

Ben Doernberg is one of them. Another Brooklyn resident, Ben quit his full-time job to organize for Restore the Fourth, a national coalition of grassroots activists agitating against government surveillance. I approached him after the panel, as he stood near the exit, recruiting people to join him in the good fight.

“I just want people to not fall into the trap of just learning more is all you have to do,” he said of the night’s event. “You have to actually do something.”

Will we? It’s hard to tell. With writers self-censoring, journalists and whistleblowers living in exile, and civilians cowering under the fear of terrorism, it’s easy to see how the surveillance state could continue growing.

But Ariel Dorfman, always looking on the bright side, sees hope.

“Fear is contagious, but so is courage,” he said, urging everyone in the room to take a stand.

So what will you do? Tell us in the comments! (Just remember, the government’s watching.)

—

Featured image courtesy of [Truthout.org via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post YOU’RE BEING WATCHED RIGHT NOW: Here’s What To Do About It appeared first on Law Street.