Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

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by Micah J. Fleck

Well, this is certainly one way to abide by the ever-growing demand for inclusivity. A new report indicates that some schools are now assigning prom dates in such a creative way that nobody can feel left out or rejected. But heres the twist This tradition predates the politically correct movement, and at least at one of the schools it goes as far back as the 1920s!

According to Time:

Prom season is nigh, which means that the exciting (and at times, bewildering) process of asking someone to the event is imminent. However, a high school in Freeport, Illinois is taking a unique approach to helping their students find prom dates: the lottery system.

According to Illinois WREX, Aquin High School has been using the luck of the draw to help pair off their students for nine decades, with this year being the 91st lottery. Male students draw names of female students in the school library, while girls wait for them in the schools gym. After the names are drawn, a skit is performed to reveal who their dates are.

The lottery system started in 1926, to ensure that all students had a date to prom, but the current students still think its a great tradition.

If the tradition was not induced by the current zeitgeist, and the students themselves are in favor of it, then this is the prime example of how good results can happen without peer pressure.

1926datefreedomFreeportIllinoisinclusivelotteryPromRandomvoluntary

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School Assigns Prom Dates by Lottery So Nobody Feels Rejected - The Libertarian Republic

Its open season on the duopoly.

In the past week, a flood of brands from AT&T to Verizon to Johnson & Johnson have pulled ad campaigns from Google-owned YouTube because they dont want their ads appearing next to objectionable videos. Alongside the Google brouhaha, theres been growing pressure on fellow platform giant Facebook; both have been targets of derision for permitting the distribution of fake news and walling off access to their data.

Its unlikely that brands are only now waking up to the dark corners of the internet. After all, advertising on YouTube has always been a bit of a dice roll. Back in 2011, Digiday reported how Microsoft MSN ads were appearing next to an animation of a guy beating up his girlfriend, while Sprint had an overlay ad on a robot porn video.

But now, everyone has an axe to grind.

For brands, its about leverage against the humongous power of Google, and finally showing it whos boss.

For publishers, its the opportunity to get some power back.

For agencies, its being able to reassure their clients they werent asleep at the wheel and are taking brand safety very, very seriously.

Everyone has ulterior motives, and the finger-pointing among all these groups abounds. On the record, executives all recite their lines of outrage with genuine feeling. On background, many will tell you, in effect, this is all for show.

Nobody on the brand side cares until theyre presented with the facts and someone starts saying something. Brands have for a long time wanted to have their cake and eat it, too: Get a low-cost deal but also a brand-safe environment, said an agency buyer. A senior agency exec echoed, The clients are more worried about being outed than they are about the underlying issue.

Same as it ever was.

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Third force of digital marketing Amid all thisnoise,Verizon and AT&T announced Wednesday they would halt non-search ad spending because of brand safety concerns. The two are out to try and create a third force of marketing power against Google and Facebook. Verizons deal to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion is part of that battle a challenge against the two behemoths which swallowed up 70 percent of the digital advertising in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2016.

EMarketer estimates that Verizon-plus-AOL-plus-Yahoo will sell about $3.7 billion in advertising next year thats more than Microsofts $3.3 billion, but way behind Google and Facebook at $28.8 billion and $12.7 billion, respectively.

Theres no doubt that Google is powerful. But for brands, this is starting to look a lot more like the start of a negotiation platforms have become powerful, but brands still hold a lot of the cards, and they want to play them. The biggest marketer, P&G, has demanded that platforms follow the Media Rating Council standards worldwide and says that just because platforms and publishers havedifferentmeasurement metrics, theres no reason to put up withan excess ofconfusion.Head fakes like privacy concerns and its not designed for mobile are also not to be tolerated, P&G brand chief Marc Pritchard said at a speech at the ANA.

The backlash is happening against a zeitgeist of trutherism around digital advertising: A growing movement that says digital advertising at its core is suspect because of how much fraud and murkiness is in the space.

The drip effect of bad news around digital media and each story feeds on the next and prevailing wisdom starts to make it OK to ask the obvious questions about digital media, said Greg March, CEO of media buying agency Noble People. Whereas a few years ago you mightve had these questions, asking them made you traditional in an environment where being modern, digital, leveraging big data was currency for marketing departments.

In a classic response, one agency exec said brand safety concerns were reason enough for marketers to pull their spending. But the exec, offering to give an honest answer without attribution, added that they were only acting now because of bad press suggesting they were inadvertently supporting things terrible things like terrorism or weapons with their ads.

Google doesnt have your back Agencies have long lived in terror of the screenshot arriving in the morning, with a client demanding to know how exactly their ads ended up on [fill in the blank with something obscene, offensive, or combination of terrible].

Once The Times of London owned by Google enemy Rupert Murdoch, by the way published an expose on YouTube ads, agencieswere eager to come out in front as the brave gatekeepers of brand safety. In a statement, Publicis Media Exchange took a tough stance, saying Google needs to start listening to its customers concerns and adjust behaviors to reestablish trust. PMX said its demanded substantial details by March 24 of how Google will ensure a brand safe environment.

The value of the agency, which has been questioned over the years because places like Google tell clients they dont need agencies, has now come back to haunt them, the most recently aforementioned agency exec said. The agency job was always to protect our clients and Google as well as other media owners dont like that, so they want us out of the way. Now clients see that we can actually help to protect them.

The recent news certainly lends credibility to our story, which is that Google does not have your back, said another agency buyer. These companies are trying to sell you something.

Agencies need to share in the blame for using programmatic to drive big-scale buys against cookied audiences, though, said Jonathan Mendez, founder and CEO of Yieldbot, an ad-tech company that lets advertisers buy display ads via search-style keywords and yes, competes with Google.

There is a groundswell of concern from brands about the lack of transparency about where exactly their ads are running that started last year, Mendez said. Its made worse by programmatic buyers and DSPs that are not prepared technically or do not have the desire to share impression level URL data. Brands are spending too much in digital now not to be paying attention to this level of detail. The flip side to this is that brands will have to pay more for higher quality digital inventory and they need to ask themselves if they are prepared to do that.

One publishing sales veteran put it more cynically and perhaps truthfully: The uproar is from the agencies: Crap, we now have to work instead of just blindly placing buys with Google and going to dinners and concerts.'

Publishersat the gate Among media companies, too, opportunism is knocking. The duopolys dominance has been a particular sore spot for publishers, which are left to fight over the digital ad scraps that dont go to Facebook and Google, and which get scant revenue in exchange for the content they distribute to platforms generally. No wonder, then, that publishers are eager to leverage the situation. Theyre getting beaten, and beaten badly, and the chance to pile on Google is just too good to pass up.

Lets not forget this all began with thestory published by News Corp, which has long needled Google. News Corp quickly circulated CEO Robert Thomsonsciting Times of London reports to obliquely criticize Google and Facebook. It is all very circular.

Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal, who downgraded Googles parent Alphabet on Monday because of brand safety issues in the U.K., noted that many of the media outlets reporting about the debacle there are themselves entities that have been hurt by the Google dominance. Wieser said he expects those publishers will be all too happy to highlight future brand safety failings, negatively impacting brands.

Jim Bankoff, chairman and CEO of Vox Media, has been out pitching Vox Medias Concert premium ad marketplace with NBCU and Cond Nast. We see this as an opportunity, he said. No doubt many of his peers are out telling the same story.

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Opportunism knocks: Marketers and media take on Google - Digiday

Des Moines will be spending Independence Day with Alexander Hamilton. Independence Day 2018, that is. Wochit

The musical life story of acclaimed husband-and-wife duo Emilio and Gloria Estefan, "On Your Feet!" takes theatergoers behind the scenes of the couples real-life story.(Photo: Matthew Murphy/Special to the Register)

The year 2016 will go down in history for myriad reasons, the election of Donald Trump, the Cubbies breaking a centurylong curse and the deaths of giants like Prince, Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer, among them.

But for a segment of pop culture-obsessives, 2016 will forever be known as the year of Hamilton. While the show technically premiered in 2015, last year was when the rap musical about Americas first treasury secretary really took the theater world by storm and even managed to seep its way into the mainstream zeitgeist.

Des Moines residents will get their shot to see Hamilton from June 27-July 15, 2018, a fact that has dominated local airwaves this week. But there are plenty of other exciting new productions and beloved classics coming to the capital city in the 2017-18 season.

SPRING ARTS PREVIEW: Your guide to more than 50 events in central Iowa

Never seen a Shakespeare play? Now is the time. Arent familiar with Stephen Sondheim? Check out Company. Just saw the Les Miserables movie? The Broadway production, which will hit Des Moines soon, is better.

The Register broke down the 2017-18 seasons from a trio of local companies Des Moines Performing Arts, the Des Moines Community Playhouse and the Iowa Stage Theater Company, the newly formed troupe that combines local favorites, StageWest Theatre Company and the Repertory Theater of Iowa and organized their shows based on what sort of person might appreciate each one.

The national tour of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" will play at the Des Moines Civic Center as part of the Willis Broadway Series during the 2017-2018 season.

"Something Rotten!" takes theatergoers to the 1590s, where the storys protagonists are working on the future of theater by creating the worlds first musical.(Photo: Jeremy Daniel/Special to the Register)

Something Rotten, a musical comedy in line with Spamalot, is set in the Renaissance era and tells the fictional story of the writers of the first musical. Brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom are desperate to write a hit play, but they keep getting outdone by William Shakespeare until a fortune teller shows them a future featuring actors not just reciting words, but also singing and dancing. Codpieces, corsets and one-liners abound!

(Photo: Special to the Register)

In addition to the fantastic stand-ups playing Hoyt Sherman and the Funny Bone, the Prairie Meadows Temple Comedy Series will feature returning favorites, Dixies Tupperware Party, which combines Tupperware giveaways with heartfelt, funny tales, and Defending the Caveman, which takes a whimsical look at the way men and women relate. The comedy series lineup also features One Funny Mother, in which comedienne Dena Blizzard shares humorous stories of motherhood, and The Second City: Look Both Ways Before Talking, a new show from the touring arm of Chicagos famous improv club Second City.

"The Color Purple" heads to Des Moines after winning the 2016 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival.(Photo: Matthew Murphy/Special to the Register)

The 2017-18 season includes an impressive array of shows about or featuring people of color. The Color Purple, a musical based on the film of the same name, comes direct from Broadway and tells the deeply moving story of Celie, a black woman trying to make it in the American South in the early 1900s.

The logo for Ragtime the musical.(Photo: Special to the Register)

Another musical, Ragtime, is set at the turn of the 20th century and follows three groups of Americans African-Americans in Harlem, upper-class whites and Eastern European immigrants all trying to make it in an ever-changing country.

A scene from "On Your Feet!"(Photo: Matthew Murphy/Special to the Register)

The Hispanic experience will also be highlighted this season in works like On Your Feet, a high-octane jukebox musical based on the lives of Emilio and Gloria Estefan. This musical takes audience members behind the music and inside the real story of this groundbreaking couple as it traces their humble beginnings in Cuba, their fame in America and the tragedy that threatened to take it all away.

Two of the Des Moines Performing Arts dance series shows, Momix: Opus Cactus and Ballet Hispanico, will also describe and analyze Latin lines and forms through their movement-based productions.

The Ballet Hispanico company.(Photo: Ballet Hispanico/Special to the Register)

If the success of La La Landis any indication, people love stories about show business. The musical A Chorus Line takes place during an audition and tells the backstories of 17 performers, outlining how they all came to be trying out for a role in a Broadway chorus line.

Set far from Southern California, The Flick, a Pulitzer-winning play by Annie Baker, focuses on the joys and struggles of three movie theater ushers who dream of better, more fulfilling lives.

Both the Des Moines Playhouse and the Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield Family Series are mounting some of the most cherished childrens titles, as well as fresh and engaging new performances directed at kids. But there are also plenty of shows for the person who never grew all the way up.

The Little Mermaid, a song-and-dance staging of the Disney classic, follows Ariel, the mermaid who gives up her voice for a chance to find love on the shore.

The Queen's Cartoonists will perform in Des Moines next season.(Photo: The Queen's Cartoonists/Special to the Register)

Adults can also let their inner child out with the Queens Cartoonists, a group of jazz musicians who play music from cartoons. In between tunes from cult classics and beloved animated favorites, the Queens Cartoonists will share personal stories and sync newer works with video projections.

High drama marks many of the shows in the 2017-18 seasons. The Humans, the 2016 Tony winner for best play, follows the Blake family as they celebrate Thanksgiving and lay bare all their hopes, dreams, fears and mistakes.

The Christians tells of a church family torn apart when their lead pastor decides he doesnt believe in hell anymore, while Misery, the play version of the similarly titled movie and book, describes an author who at first believes he was saved by a crazed fan, but who slowly begins to realize he may be trapped in her twisted version of family.

(Photo: Special to the Press-Citizen)

Finally, Company, the famous Sondheim musical, explores despair and happiness through vignettes of friends and family loosely tied together around the main characters birthday celebration.

Sometimes you just want something you know. This season, classic musicals abound with both Chicago, the time-honored tale of love and betrayal in the jazz age, and Les Miserables, a musical about friendship and yearning set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, return to Des Moines.

Also, Iowan Meredith Willsons much loved The Music Man returns with the story of a flimflam man whose deceptive ways are in danger of being forever changed by a prim and proper librarian.

Sometimes you just want something you know but with fewer songs. Shakespeares classic Romeo & Juliet will be the featured performance for the 2017 edition of Shakespeare on the Lawn at Salisbury House and Gardens. And American master playwright Arthur Miller appears on the upcoming seasons lineup with A View From the Bridge, which tells the stories of the inhabitants of an Italian American neighborhood in New York.

In operation for almost four decades, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago is known to perform works that attempt to explain life and all its joys and pitfalls through movement.(Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography/Special to the Register)

For those who want prototypical modern dance, the Civic Center welcomes back Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. In operation for almost four decades, Hubbard Street is known to perform works that attempt to explain life and all its joys and pitfalls through movement.

Per usual, the holidays will be well marked by Des Moines local theater companies. The classic A Christmas Carol, which follows Ebenezer Scrooge as he is visited by ghosts who help him see the error in his ways, will be mounted. As will A Little House Christmas, which features characters from the Laura Ingalls Wilder series in a story set around the Yuletide season.

Waitress tells the story of a woman working to summon the strength to build her own life.(Photo: Joan Marcus/Special to the Register)

The future is female in three productions set to hit the stage in 2017-18. With a score by pop star Sara Bareilles, Waitress tells the story of Jenna, a small-town waitress and expert pie maker who must summon all her strength to find a way out of her loveless marriage and seemingly dead-end life.

Rapture, Blister, Burn, a comedic and consciousness-raising play, centers on four women, all representing different generations and life experiences, and their afternoon drinking session which turns into a dissection of how life has or hasnt changed for women since the 1970s.

In a world premiere, Choices by Des Moines playwright Karen Schaeffer will follow a recent widow whose friends set her up on dates during which hijinks and shenanigans ensue.

(Photo: Steve McNicholas/Special to the Register)

Outside of the Civic Centers dance series and the wonderful productions staged by Ballet Des Moines, this season features a few additional nonverbal productions. For adults, theres Stomp, the percussion show that took the world by storm in the 1990s. Using everyday objects like matchboxes, wooden poles and garbage can lids, this returning favorite features updated routines.

For children or children at heart Shh! We Have a Plan and Tetris both tell stories through music and mime only. Shh! follows a group of zany characters as they attempt to capture a bird perched high in a tree, while in Tetris, a dance quartetuses movement to explore how people connect to one another.

Find out more about these productions at DesMoinesPerformingArts.org, DMPlayhouse.com and IowaStage.org.

Dont let your cultural exploration stop with this list! Many local theater and dance companies, including the Iowa State Center, have yet to release their season lineup, meaning even more exciting productions will hit central Iowa in the upcoming year.

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Not into 'Hamilton'? Here are the other shows hitting Des Moines next season. - DesMoinesRegister.com

Fox Searchlight Pictureshas set theBattle of the Sexes release date for September 22, 2017.The film stars Emma Stone (La La Land,Birdman, The Help), Steve Carell (Foxcatcher, The Big Short), and Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas, Chasing Mavericks) along with Sarah Silverman (Masters of Sex,I Smile Back), Alan Cumming (The Good Wife, X-Men 2), Andrea Riseborough (Birdman), Eric Christian Olsen (CSI: Los Angeles), Natalie Morales (The Grinder), Austin Stowell (Bridge of Spies, Whiplash), Wallace Langham (Ruby Sparks, Little Miss Sunshine), Jessica McNamee (Last Days of Summer), Mickey Sumner (The End of the Tour) and Bill Pullman (The Equalizer).

Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, creators of the Oscar-winning Little Miss Sunshine and indie favorite Ruby Sparks, have turned their attention to a period in 1970s America that presaged a cultural tsunami.

The electrifying 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was billed as the Battle of the Sexes and became the most watched televised sports event of all time. The match caught the zeitgeist and sparked a global conversation on gender equality, spurring on the feminist movement. Trapped in the media glare, King and Riggs were on opposites sides of a binary argument, but off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. With a supportive husband urging her to fight the Establishment for equal pay, the fiercely private King was also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, while Riggs gambled his legacy and reputation in a bid to relive the glories of his past. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis courts and animated the discussions between men and women in bedrooms and boardrooms around the world.

The film is being produced by Cloud Eight Films Christian Colson and Decibel Films Danny Boyle, along with Robert Graf, with a screenplay by Academy Award-winning Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, The Full Monty). Boyle and Colson are the team behind Academy Award-winning and nominated films such as Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours and Steve Jobs. Producer Robert Graf previously collaborated with the directors on Ruby Sparks and worked on such projects such as Hail, Caesar! and No Country For Old Men.

Joining Dayton and Faris on the film is longtime collaborator Pamela Martin, who edited both Little Miss Sunshine andRuby Sparks and who received an Oscar nomination for her work on The Fighter. New to the team are director of photography Linus Sandgren, known for his cinematography on Joy and American Hustle; Oscar and BAFTA nominated production designer Judy Becker (American Hustle, Carol); and Oscar Award-winning costume designer Mary Zophres (True Grit, Catch Me If You Can).

Co-head of Production David Greenbaum and Vice President of Production DanTram Nguyen are overseeing the project for Fox Searchlight Pictures.

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Battle of the Sexes release date set for September - ComingSoon.net

By Lisa Daffy

Think Forrest Gump. Now take away the bus stop bench and the box of chocolates. Amp up his IQ by a few dozen points. Triple his output of words per minute. Put him in front of a wall ablaze with graffiti art, darken his skin a few shades, add a hip-hop soundtrack from Run-D.M.C. circa 1982. Youre getting close.

Like the fictitious Gump, Michael Holman is blessed with a lifelong knack for being at the epicenter of cultural upheaval. Im that zeitgeist that seems, through no fault of my own, to always be where things are. Whether it was growing up as a military brat and traveling through Europe in the 1960s, being in New York for the birth of hip-hop and punk rock, Ive always been in the right place at the right time.

Friday evening, March 24, Mr. Holman will share some of those experiences in a world-preview performance of his new multimedia spoken word production, Confessions of a Subculturalist, at the Southampton Arts Center.

This is about me sharing this crazy, eclectic variety life that Ive been lucky to live, he said. Its hard to talk about this without sounding full of myself, but I guess thats the nature of this beast. Ive always been in the right place at the right time. And I think my spoken word performance reflects that in an emotional way. It tells the story of an artist growing up, and all the influences that made me what I am.

Renowned as an artist, writer, musician, hip-hop impresario and filmmaker, Mr. Holman, 61, has been collecting material for this show his entire life. Born in San Francisco, he spent his early childhood on U.S. Army bases in Europe, where, he noted, it was a really important time to be a world citizen. It wasnt long after World War II, there was peace and prosperity throughout Europe, and Im a child of a military officer, which was like being a child of the centurions in an empire.

My fathers career afforded us this incredibly expansive lifeculturally, historically, geographically and socio-politicallybecause we lived in so many different places in such a short period of time.

Being the family of an army officer put us in the center of a growing political, anti-establishment movementnamely, the anti-war protests. All this stuff is feeding into my young mind. Its the time of the civil rights movement, and being a young black kid growing up in Europe, seeing what was going on in the U.S. from afar, that was a mind-blower.

In Europe at that time, he said, black people were kind of new and exotic, and came along with the package of being a savior from the Germans.

In 1966, Mr. Holmans father was deployed to Vietnam while the rest of the family returned stateside. It was a bit of a culture shock. It was the dawn of the baby boomers, the go-go 60s, the explosion in pop culture and pop music. It was a highly charged time, leading up to 68, which could arguably be a really important time in human evolution, in terms of human awareness.

Rock and roll was a vehicle that helped transform so many things. The protests; it was the voice in many ways of the youth movement that changed so much. We eat differently because of all that happened in California in the 60s. It changed the way we look at food, at politics, the way we dress, the way we thought of other people. Rock and roll was the soundtrack that accompanied those changes.

Fast-forward through the 1970s. Hip-hop and Michael Holman were both coming into their own. He was in San Francisco for the Summer of Love, lived in Los Angeles when glam-rock hit the pop scene, and moved east to New York just in time for this new performance art form to hit the public consciousness.

Along with the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mr. Holman formed an art noise rock band, Gray, that performed at iconic venues like the Mudd Club and CBGB in New York, and The ICA in London. He later co-wrote the screenplay for the 1996 biopic Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel.

What happened in the 1980s with hip-hop was not dissimilar to what happened in the 60s with rock and roll, he said. While rock and roll was a soundtrack and cultural touchstone for the huge baby boomer population in the 60s, Mr. Holman said hip-hop gave cultural integrity to a new generation of kids.

Hip-hop was the next step. Where R&R was middle class, disaffected and disillusioned white suburban kids who embraced rock and roll and used it to change their lives into something more expansive, hip-hop became culturenot just music, but dance, art forms, performance.

It started in the south Bronx, and what they created was a movement. They created a disco scene in the parks for these middle school kids who were too young and too impoverished to go downtown to the discos. They were the avant-garde of the hip-hop culture. You had all these DJs looking to entertain somebody with their disco tracks and their mom and dads old recordssoul, funk, noveltythat they were playing for these kids. It grew and grew, and lent voice to working-class and poor ethnic kids, black and brown kids, and as time went on, kids all over the world.

For all these kids, hip-hop delivered something to them the same way The Doors and Jimi Hendrix had delivered something a generation before. It was a political voice that spoke to them and made it easy for the kids themselves to embrace this culture, and practice this culture in a way suburban white kids couldnt do.

It was far easier to start writing rhymes and make a name for yourself as a rapper in the 80s than it was to start a band in the 60s because the tools were easier to acquire. All you needed were two turntables and a microphone. Kids everywhere picked it up, and they rapped about their problems and their dissatisfaction. Hip-hop is massive. Hip-hop softened the ground for Obama. My speculation is theres going to be a hip-hop politician soon.

This wont be the artists first time performing in Southampton. A little more than 10 years ago, he displayed some of his paintings at the Parrish Art Museum, and accompanied that show with a spoken word performance. Several of his paintings feature deconstructed pieces of a Confederate flag.

I have all kinds of reasons for doing those pieces, he explained. Even as a black man, Im a son of the Confederacy, and there were Confederate soldiers in my family. There were some 10,000 black soldiers who fought on the Confederate side.

My work is all about unpacking American history. History is not what we think it is. Its not binary. History is very messy.

Mr. Holman said he decided to revive his show when the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, acquired his archives last year. I have a lot of dance footage, and my archives are up there with Martha Grahams and Mikhail Baryshnikovs. Im really proud that my work is next to theirs. At the moment the library acquired my archives, I knew that I would dust off my spoken word thing and incorporate the archives into it.

After opening in Southampton, Mr. Holman will bring the show to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on April 20.

Michael Holman will perform Confessions of a Subculturalist on Friday, March 24, at 7 p.m. at Southampton Arts Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton. Admission is $10. For tickets, visit confessionsofasubculturalist.bpt.me.

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Michael Holman Presents 'Confessions Of A Subculturalist' At Southampton Arts Center - 27east.com

The question is whether Zionism can make room for a trulyinclusive equality.

Hundreds take part in a Womens March protest outside the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, January 21, 2017. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90

In a recent New York Times op-edDoes Feminism have Room for Zionists?Emily Shire, who identifies as a feminist and a Zionist, argues that her belief in Israels right to exist as a Jewish state should not be at odds with her feminism.

According to Shire, women who seekto be included in the womens protests against the current U.S. administration should not have to face a critical of Israel litmus test. She takes issue with theStrikes platform, which specifically calls for the decolonization of Palestine, but which doesnt mention the myriad other injustices inflicted on women across the world.

But Shire herself brings up her own Zionism. She states her relationship to Israel shouldnt be a factor for the womens protest, while simultaneously demanding a space for it Zionism being a giant, pertinent caveat. In doing so, Shireis ironically subjecting women active in the movement to her own litmus test.

Shire is asking thewrong question. It is not whether feminism has room for Zionists, but whether Zionism has room for equal rights. Zionisms manifestation as a political system operating for almost 69 years now has thus far proven it does not have that room. The State of Israel was founded as a safe haven for Jews and is premised on privileging Jews over all others. It is not a country for all its citizens over 20 percent of whom are not Jewish at all but for all Jewish people (and increasingly, onlycertain kinds of Jewsto boot).

Shire gives the impression that she hasnt sat down to consider how Palestinian womens rights, in Israel and in the occupied territories, are systematically affected by Israels very raison dtre. (The fact that they are also trampled within Palestinian society does not absolve Israel of responsibility). Instead she insists on Israels right to exist as a Jewish state. But if onedoes not define what that should mean for Palestinians, oneis evading the core issue. So far, it has de facto meant Israel has had the right to exist as a system of supremacy of one group over another.

Palestinian students chant slogans during a rally to show solidarity with Palestinians clashing with the Israeli troops in the West Bank and Jerusalem, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 14, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90)

I also support the right of Jews to self-determination. But as a Jewish ethno-nationalist state, Israel cannot uphold equal rights. That is a fact. So the question then, is, can a Jewish state exist that doesnt systematically violate basic human rights?

Im not sure. With the right intentions, probably. Its a worthy and challenging question one that American and Israeli Jews were grappling with to an extent during the period surrounding Israels establishment. What should a Jewish state look like? How can it function as a democracy?

This is an important debate about nationalism and civic democracy, but it is primarily an intra-Jewish issue and has nothing to do with the current wave of feminism in the U.S. It is not the job of Palestinian-American feminist Linda Sarsourto make Zionist women feel more comfortable about the contradictions they are facing. If anything, considering Israels track record, it is up to Zionist women to take efforts to assure non-Zionist feminists of their commitment to equal rights.

All forms of violence and oppression against women should be opposed. The International Womens Strike platform could have mentioned all forms of oppression against women not just Israel; that only Israel was mentioned is part of the zeitgeist. It cannot be seen in isolation from the context in which Israel oversees the longest-standing military occupation in modern history, while simultaneously being thelargest beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid, acting with near total impunity and with no end in sight.

Linda Sarsour speaks at a panel on Islamophobia at the Festival of Faiths, Louisville, United States, May 19, 2016.

As an Israeli Jew who actively opposes Israels system of rule and supports Palestinian human rights, I may not agree with every tactic employed by the Palestinian resistance movement. But who am I to tell them how to resist their own oppression? As Linda Sarsour said in her interview inThe Nationresponding to Shires piece feminism is a movement and BDS is a tactic. If you dont support BDS, you can choose to not take part in it, but proactively opposing BDS because it is an alienating tactic for a Zionist is misguided.

In the age of Trump, in which the current feminist forces are operating, many liberal American Jews are finding themselves increasingly pushed into a corner, forced to choose between their liberalism and their support for Israel; between the motto never again to Jews and never again to anyone.

Jews, of course, have the right to equality, self-determination and dignity, like all other human beings. No one in the feminist movement has denied this. But as long as Israel, in its current construction, continues to be a fundamentally un-progressive entity that is incompatible with equality, Zionists in the feminist camp are going to continue to feel rightly uncomfortable.

A longer version of this article first appeared on March 19, 2017 in Haaretz.

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The question isn't whether feminism has room for Zionism - +972 Magazine

Its beingblamed in some quartersfor the slow pace of socio-economic transformation inAfricas biggest economy.

As respected commentator Barney Mthombothi provocativelyasked: Worlds best constitution, you say? Pity people cant eat it...

Not even 48 hours later, and with exquisite timing, the Constitutional Court provided at least one of the many available answers when itdemandedthat the Minister for Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini, and one of her most senior officials, file affidavits by 3pm that very afternoon. The court instructed them to explain why they had failed to respect deadlines it had set in a case concerning welfare grants toaround 17 millionof the countrys poorest people.

Later that day, at exactly 11 minutes past the appointed hour, attorneys representing the minister were seenrunning into the court. The powerful symbolism of representatives of the executive branch of government scurrying to respect the highest court of the land and, thereby, the rule of law should not be ignored. It provides ample evidence that judicial independence is a strong suit in an otherwise rapidly-depreciating hand.

The grant payments case

The details of the welfare payments concern the governance of the welfare state that South Africas ruling African National Congress (ANC) has built up over the past two decades. Its a remarkable achievement, and one that has helped secure the ANCs electoral prowess in winning five national elections in a row since 1994 never with less than 62% of the popular vote.

With an unemployment rate (under the wider definition)of 35%and sluggish economic growth, the social security safety net is vital for preserving social stability and protecting a large segment of the population from destitution.

Yet it has been thrown into jeopardy by the apparent pig-headedness of a minister who is politically protected because of her position aspresident of the ANC Womens League. The league is not only an ardent and loyal supporter of South Africas beleaguered president but an influential part of the electoral college that will decide who will succeed Jacob Zuma in December.

The government agency responsible for social security payments the South African Social Security (SASSA) is a part of Dlaminis department. Several years ago it contracted unlawfully said the Constitutional Court in 2013 the task of administering the welfare payments to a private company,Cash Paymaster Services (CPS). The ruling prompted inevitable and understandable suspicion that corruption lies behind the crisis.

The Constitutional Courthad orderedthat the contract should be re-tendered in line with public finance management law by 1 April 2017. For almost a year Dlamini dragged her feet, apparently determined to manufacture a crisis that would give the government and the court no choice but accept an extension of the CPS contract or risk millions of welfare beneficiaries not getting their social security payments on time.

This week the Constitutional Court has once again being asked to play a supervisory role, in ensuring that the government does what it is required to do in service of its people and in accordance with its constitutional obligations. Itruledthat the CPS contract be extended for 12 months, but with strict conditions.

The court also said Dlamini had until March 31 to show why she should not pay the costs of the application from her own pocket.

This is just one of a legion of cases in which the Court has stepped in to protect vulnerable people and to perform what former deputy chiefJustice Dikgang Mosenekecalls itstransformative role.

The Constitutional Court and social justice

In the early 2000s the courtendedthe Mbeki administrations irrational approach to HIV-AIDS treatment. The ruling is regarded as an extraordinary, path-breaking case study in how to advance socioeconomic justice through law by legal academics around the world.

In theGrootboomcase the court found that the governments lack of emergency shelter programme for homeless people caught in the face of a nasty Cape winter was also unreasonable. Since then every sphere of government has a Grootboom line item in its annual budget. Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people have been given safe haven as a result.

Through various cases the countrys legal order and its statute book has been rewritten over the past 20 years. It is unrecognisable from the dark days of apartheid.

Lawson Naidoo, the director of theCouncil for the Advancement of the South African Constitutionargues that South Africas constitution is at the heart of all this change because it sets the parameters and guides the path towards a better, more equal, as well as free and open society.

Why, then, is South Africas constitution, which turned 21 last month, coming under attack and who is it that is leading the charge?

What lies behind the attacks

The two parts of the question are important because they are interdependent.

Some members of the student protest movement have asserted that the constitution is a neo-colonial construct imposed on South Africa. Other nationalists, such as Mzwanele Jimmy Manyi, a prolific defender of Zuma and member of the leadership of the Black Business Council, haveattackedthe Constitution for being anti-transformation.

The Constitutional settlement of the mid-1990s is widely recognised as being the product of political struggle but also political compromise.

For some, the implication here is that the compromise has tied the hands of the democratic post-1994 government, constraining it from pursuing a more radical approach to transforming society and the economy.

The first difficulty with this contention is that the final constitution was written after the founding democratic election in 1994 by a democratically elected Constitutional Assembly in the following two years.

The second is that this constitution-writing process was accompanied by a remarkably extensive and expensive exercise inpublic participation. Because of this the legitimacy of the constitution itself was, until recently, not seriously questioned.

So the test for any critic of the constitution is surely this: how exactly has the constitution prevented the government from doing more? And precisely which provision has been a constraint and why?

Take land reform, an increasingly important as well as emotive part of the political landscape in South Africa. Constitutional critics regularly insist that section 25 of the constitution imposes a willing buyer, willing seller obligation.

In fact, it does no such thing. On the contrary, it provides a framework for government-led expropriation for a public purpose or in the public interest, subject to compensation determined on a just and equitable basis.

Section 25 has also provided important protection for tenants and those living in informal settlements against harsh treatment or arbitrary eviction by landlords.

Victim of the zeitgeist

Its important to note that, in general, most of the attacks on the constitution come from the populist, nationalist rightwing faction of the ANC, not from progressive forces inside and outside the ruling party. For those who are intent on capturing the state as quickly as possible, the constitution simply gets in the way. For them it is an inconvenience that inhibits the prosecution of their own venal interests, not a strategic asset for the country.

In other words, the Constitution is an unavoidable victim of the political zeitgeist. Its therefore potentially collateral damage to vicious power struggles currently consuming both the ANC and the government.

However, this analysis is not to deny that the Constitution is, and should be, a site of authentic contestation. Did we talk enough about land? Moseneke asked law students at the University of Cape Town last week. No. But we reached a starting point compromise in section 25. We cant have millions of South Africans as unlawful occupiers of the land of their birth.

A constitution should have a dynamic quality; it is not a tablet of stone. So serious argument and debate about amendment is appropriate and necessary to sustain its legitimacy and ward off populist scapegoating.

Of course you cant eat a constitution. But, as time and again South Africas constitution has proved - not least this week with the SASSA judgment it can help ensure that the poorest citizens can eat. Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, it can ensure that their government does not lose sight of their everyday needs and its responsibility to serve them.

Richard Calland: Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Cape Town

This article was first published in The Conversation

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Why South Africa's Constitution is under attack - Times LIVE

Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times 11:05 p.m. ET March 18, 2017

Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Rosalee in the TV series Underground. The show on WGN is one of many projects telling the story of how the railroad helped 30,000 to 100,000 (of the millions of enslaved blacks) to escape to Canada.(Photo: Steve Dietl/Sony)

When WGN Americas drama Underground debuted last winter, it seemed like a cultural outlier. Stories from the Underground Railroad had long been relegated to nonfiction or the broad and simplistic brushstrokes of childrens books. Even as stories about the horrors of oppression (12 Years a Slave) and the civil rights movement (42, Selma, All the Way) entered the mainstream, the Underground Railroad remained overlooked.

Lately, however, slaves flight to freedom has became a jumping off point for an array of creative endeavors. A few weeks after Underground, with its soundtrack curated by executive producer John Legend, came Barbara Hamblys mystery novel, Drinking Gourd, and Robert Morgans escape saga, Chasing the North Star. Last summer Ben Winters counterfactual noir novel, Underground Airlines, hit bestseller lists; then came Colson Whiteheads The Underground Railroad, the years National Book Award winner for fiction.

Underground executive producer John Legend also curated the series soundtrack.(Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP-Getty Images)

In the fall, the surreal and subversive Underground Railroad Game opened to rapturous reviews off-Broadway. (The New York Times called it in-all-ways sensational.) Set in the present, the play depicts two teachers, one white and one black, stumbling along the treacherous path of educating children about slavery and racial oppression.

The topic hasnt been explored enough so Im not surprised people are finding new and different angles, says Underground co-creator Joe Pokaski.

The exterior of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitors Center in Church Creek, Md.(Photo: Brian Witte/Associated Press)

This month brings a new season of Underground, the opening of the National Park Services Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Cambridge, Md., and Through Darkness to Light, a photographic essay of the Underground Railroad by Jeanine Michna-Bales. The Underground River, a novel by Martha Conway, hits in June, and Viola Davis is developing a Tubman film for HBO.

Academy Award winner Viola Davis is developing a series on the Underground Railroad for HBO.(Photo: Paul Buck/EPA)

The Underground Railroad came at a time when our country was so polarized that there was no understanding on either side so the fascination with it now might be because were back in that situation, says Michna-Bales, adding that the movement also blurred lines, bringing together white and black, and people from different religions and socioeconomic groups, while also giving women previously unheard of roles in public life. Her pictures aim to provide a first-person perspective on what a slave would have seen on the long and dangerous journey north.

Many more slaves actually attempted escape without the aid of the Underground Railroad, at least initially. The phrase Underground Railroad first appeared around 1839 but slaves had, naturally, been trying to escape since the implementation of this horrific institution. Many initially tried for Mexico or the Caribbean. Historians estimate that the railroad helped 30,000 to 100,000 (of the millions of enslaved blacks) to escape to Canada. But for the most part the railroad really ventured only about 100 miles into the South, so the first season of the TV series and Morgans novel also explore the experience of slaves running without outside help.

Underground co-creator Misha Green puts all these new works in the larger context of publishers and producers recognizing the value artistically and commercially in stories about minorities, from the Roots remake to Oscar best-picture winner Moonlight. She points particularly to ones with characters seizing control of their own narrative, whether thats Straight Outta Compton or Hidden Figures. Indeed, last year also begat a movie (Birth of a Nation) and a play (Nathan Alan Davis Nat Turner in Jerusalem) about Turners slave uprising.

Author Morgan, a professor at Cornell University, says the trends roots stretch back decades.

Fiction is the way we learn about others, he says, pointing to waves of groups laying down their markers, from Southern writers in the 1930s to Jewish writers in the decades after World War II. The original Roots was the building block and writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and August Wilson then paved the way, he says, so that these Underground Railroad stories are a natural evolution.

I think its a good thing any time people are interested in history, says Eric Foner, a leading scholar of 19th century America, whose 2015 book, Gateway to Freedom, focused on the Underground Railroad. Foner understands artists taking liberties with the facts, and he admires Whiteheads fantastical creation of an actual railroad that runs underground. Its fantasy but Whitehead also gives a kaleidoscope of black history. Its very informed.

Most of the current projects began a few years ago, so Green says the zeitgeist partially reflects the rise of the tea party and birther movement followed by the spate of police shootings and the birth of Black Lives Matter.

These stories, like police brutality, have always existed but now the public might finally be primed and open to step outside its own orthodoxy and turn its gaze to them, adds Underground Railroad Game co-writer and costar Jennifer Kidwell.

Even as these stories make history more accessible to mainstream audiences, theyre refusing to whitewash the grim realities, striving instead to demolish the traditional narrative. This is not your grandfathers history that helps paint a rosier picture of historical atrocities, says Scott Sheppard, co-writer and costar of Underground Railroad Game, which will tour to as-yet-undetermined destinations in late 2017 and 2018.

We often use narratives as balms to sooth our concerns and fears about where we are now, Sheppard adds. The number of escaped slaves is minuscule compared to the systematic destruction of the millions of lives throughout slaverys history, so we want to remove that layer of romanticism and make everyone question their beliefs and values in as destabilizing a way as possible.

Underground may be slickly produced adventure TV yet one main character after another gets recaptured or killed. In Drinking Gourd, protagonist Benjamin January, a thoughtful and well-educated free black man, reflects on how he has come to hate virtually every white person, especially after learning the white abolitionist he encounters rapes the girls he helps to freedom. Whiteheads and Winters novels are even darker.

Underground Airlines takes place in the present but imagines a world that had no Civil War, where slavery was only gradually abolished and where it still thrives in four Southern states. Im hoping the book is a reminder of the presence of the past in our lives, says Winters, who connects a nation built on slavery to the institutionalized racism that persisted through Reconstruction and Jim Crow and that continues today. My alternative history isnt alternative enough.

Underground Railroad Game also ties the sins of Americas past squarely to the present day.

Our play explores the myths of the white savior and of romanticized American history, Kidwell says. We just happened to set it against the Underground Railroad.

That is a recurring theme in interviews with the writers, especially those who are white.

Its important that these stories are not, Oh, these nice white people are helping these poor black slaves get away and are instead about free blacks and slaves taking agency, Hambly says.

In Winters novel, the idea of whites as nobles rescuing the helpless is derisively called the Mockingbird mentality, in reference to Harper Lees Atticus Finch.

We are not just telling a black story, Winters says. Slavery is a story about white America; its about the role that people who looked like me played and still play in oppressing people who look different. The effects of and resistance to that oppression and the lasting legacy are a foundation of who we are as a people.

Although these works were all conceived before Donald Trumps election, the current climate will influence the audiences perceptions. I reread my own book in November and it read differently, says Conway, whose book is about a Northern white woman dipping her toe in the water of activism. Its about how people change and how she went from being a bystander to a participant.

They will resonate differently, says musician Legend, who not only served as music curator and executive producer on Underground but also plays Frederick Douglass this season. We have a president who doesnt know anything about American history or black history, and people are starting to realize how important it is to understand our history so we can fight back.

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Underground Railroad inspires a wave of books, plays, TV - Detroit Free Press

Sex trafficking and an art exhibition may seem like an incongruous pairing.

In May, though, the Patan Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Nepal, will host The True Stories Project, presented by Art Works for Change, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, in collaboration with the Siddhartha Foundation, based in Kathmandu. The exhibition aims to address the disturbing and often below-the-radar problem of the trafficking of girls as sex slaves.

This is a human rights issue and a womens issue, said Randy Jayne Rosenberg, executive director and chief curator of Art Works for Change. Its an uncomfortable, powerful art exhibition. And its a way to raise awareness on this serious global problem of abuse and exploitation of children.

Although Rosenbergs group has been around for 10 years, the work it does has probably never been more relevant. In addition to the project on sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls, her organization works on projects that focus on biodiversity and the importance of nature; shelter in response to climate change; ethics; and the extinction of animal species.

When we started Art Works for Change, there werent a lot of content-driven or thematic shows, Rosenberg said. There was this impression that those types of exhibitions sacrificed the art for the theme, and the art may not be museum-quality.

That has changed significantly. Today, theres a lot of great work with artists addressing critical issues of our time, Rosenberg added. There are social situations in the world that are deeply affecting people. Our goal is to use art that is engaging emotionally and intellectually to inspire viewers to be agents of change.

In recent years, museums have been making a greater effort to have a voice in social activism and respond to pressing problems of the day. The big question is when and how art museums should take a public position and try to effect change, or at least initiate a community discussion on a topic.

Many museum specialists are guarded about their public relationship with contentious social issues and have usually refrained from taking a stand. To do so could close them off to potential audiences who might sense bias, or put their institutions at risk of being identified by potential donors as supporting politically offensive viewpoints.

Still, Jen Mergel, senior curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, said: My job as a curator is to make decisions about what to include, or what to show and what not to, and who to represent in our galleries for our public, and I see that as a political decision. The role of the museum is to present art, prompt dialogue.

In February the Museum of Fine Arts began exhibiting a rotation of posters from its collection by the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist activist artists group, whose members have always been anonymous. Collaborating since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls offer commentary on gender and racial discrimination in the art world, but also make observations on topics like homelessness. Their imagery and commentary originally appeared as advertisements, signs, placards and fliers for buses and bulletin boards.

Eight posters from the museums 88-piece portfolio have gone on view as part of the exhibition Political Intent. Mergels favorite is an enlarged print of a dollar bill with a dotted line marking off about one-third. The text below is: Women in America earn only two-thirds of what men do. Women artists earn only one-third of what men artists do.

Mergel said: You cant un-see it. Its not just the condition of women artists, but women across the country. To me, artists like the Guerrilla Girls are putting an idea forward that is timely and urgent, manifestations that really speak to the zeitgeist of the time.

New museum-sponsored activism is showcasing art not just in museum settings, but also on the streets.

The community becomes part of the process, part of the storytelling, said Rosenberg of Art Works for Change in Oakland. When we bring a show to a museum, we look for community-based partners, or ask museums to play that role in the outreach and utilize what activist groups already exist in the community. Were not an activist group. We are an arts group.

In Philadelphia, the Barnes Foundation is showcasing how more than 50 international artists engage with communities in Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flanerie, through May 22. The artists works touch on such issues as gentrification, gender politics, globalization, racism and homelessness.

Person of the Crowd also includes a series of performances on the citys streets by artists like Sanford Biggers, an interdisciplinary artist based in Harlem, New York, who works in film, video, sculpture and music, and Tania Bruguera, a Cuban performance artist. Billboards and street poster projects by artists are also part of the exhibition and entertainment.

Man Bartlett, a New York-based multidisciplinary artist, is recording the street performances throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting people to share their opinions of city life via social media, using the hashtag #personofthecrowd.

Bartlett is also working alongside Philadelphia-area teenagers to create videos documenting their experiences, inspired by visits to the citys public spaces. The evolving work is available on the projects website, personofthecrowd.org, and projected inside the Annenberg Court of the Barnes Foundation.

One challenge for museums in calibrating their social activism is the patina of elitism that clings to them.

We, of course, are aware of the perception of institutions like museums as being elite and not for all audiences, Mergel said. I personally believe were already acting on this. The partnerships we reach out to in our community are already bringing a more diverse audience into the galleries.

Mergel described an archival pigment print of a transgender woman, CeCe McDonald, made by Andrea Bowers, an artist based in Los Angeles. In 2012 McDonald was sentenced to 41 months in a mens prison in Minnesota for manslaughter. Called Trans Liberation: Building a Movement, its an arresting photograph, nearly 8 feet high by 5 feet wide, which was acquired by the museum last June.

What we put on view does matter, Mergel said. Bowers uses this image to raise awareness of the social discrimination against transgender women. Amazing conversations between our museum visitors happen just in front of CeCe. If the image can make someone see something more discerningly, and with curiosity, instead of phobia that translates into our social lives. And that makes me feel very hopeful.

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New Message at Some Museums: Don't Just Look. Do. - NRToday.com

Women who identify with Zionism are free to participate in the feminist protest movement. But, rightly, it's a space in which supporters of a Jewish ethno-nationalist state should feel uncomfortable.

In a recent New York Times opedDoes Feminism have Room for Zionists?Emily Shire, who identifies as a feminist and a Zionist, argues that her belief in Israels right to exist as a Jewish state should not be at odds with her feminism. She suggests that women who sought to be included in the International Womens Strike and in the women's protests against the current U.S. administration more generally should not have to face a 'critical of Israel' litmus test. She takes issue with theStrike's platform, which specifically calls for the decolonization of Palestine, but which doesn't mention the myriad other injustices inflicted on women across the world.

But Shire herself brings up her own Zionism. She states her relationship to Israel shouldnt be a factor for the women's protest while simultaneously demanding a space for it - Zionism being a giant, pertinent caveat. Ironically, Shire is subjecting women active in the movement to her own litmus test.

The op-ed asks the wrong question. It is not whether feminism has room for Zionists but whether Zionism has room for equal rights.

Zionisms manifestation as a political system operating for almost 69 years now has thus far proven it does not have that room. The State of Israel was founded as a safe haven for Jews and is premised on privileging Jews over all others. It is not a country for all its citizens over 20 percent of whom are not Jewish at all - but for all Jewish people (and increasingly, onlycertain kinds of Jewsto boot).

Shire gives the impression that she hasnt sat down to consider how Palestinian womens rights, in Israel and in the occupied territories, are systematically affected by Israels very raison detre. (The fact that they are also trampled within Palestinian society does not absolve Israel of responsibility). Instead she insists on Israels right to exist as a Jewish state. But if you don't define what that should mean for Palestinians, you are evading the core issue. So far, it has de facto meant Israel has had the right to exist as a system of supremacy of one group over another.

I also support the right of Jews to self-determination. But as a Jewish ethno-nationalist state, Israel cannot uphold equal rights. That is a fact. So the question then, is, can a Jewish state exist that doesnt systematically violate basic human rights?

Im not sure. Its a worthy and challenging question - one that American and Israeli Jews were grappling with to an extent during the period surrounding Israels establishment but it quickly vanished. What should a Jewish state look like? How can it function as a democracy?

This is an important debate about nationalism and civic democracy, but it is primarily an intra-Jewish issue and has nothing to do with the current wave of feminism in the U.S. It is not Linda Sarsours job to make Zionist women feel more comfortable about the contradictions they are facing. If anything, considering Israels track record, it is up to Zionist women to take efforts to assure non-Zionist feminists of their commitment to equal rights.

I agree that all forms of violence and oppression against women should be called out and opposed. The International Womens Strike platform could have mentioned all forms of oppression against women, not just Israel. That only Israel was mentioned is part of the zeitgeist. It cannot be seen in isolation from the context in which Israel oversees the longest-standing military occupation in history and is simultaneously the largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid, acting with near total impunity and with no end in sight.

As an Israeli Jew who actively opposes Israels system of rule and supports Palestinian human rights, I may not agree with every tactic employed by the Palestinian resistance movement. But who am I to tell them how to resist their own oppression? As Linda Sarsour said in her interview inThe Nationresponding to Shires piece feminism is a movement and BDS is a tactic. If you dont support BDS, you can choose to not take part in it, but proactively opposing BDS because it is an alienating tactic for a Zionist is misguided.

Shire states that she draws a "hard line" atRasmea Odeh.Her argument about Odehs illegitimacy as a convicted terrorist is highly problematic. It not only overlooks the role of Israels military courts as judge, jury and executioner of the stateless Palestinians tried in them, but also the fact that Israelis in the military and the government themselves engage in acts of terror - and have never been tried. Israel's own founders engaged in acts of Zionist terror against British and Arab targets and then went on to become prime ministers. While I dont think Odeh is the best choice as the Strike's poster woman, calling her out without holding Israelis to the same standard is one-sided.

In the age of Trump, in which the current feminist forces are operating, many liberal American Jews are finding themselves increasingly pushed into a corner, forced to choose between their liberalism and their support for Israel; between the motto never again to Jews and never again to anyone.

Jews, of course, have the right to equality, self-determination and dignity, like all other human beings. No one in the feminist movement not Rasmeah Odeh or Linda Sarsour or anyone else has denied this. But as long as Israel, in its current construction, continues to be a fundamentally unprogressive entity that is incompatible with equality, Zionists in the feminist camp are going to continue to feel rightly uncomfortable.

Mairav Zonszein is an independent journalist and translator. She blogs at+972 Magazine. Follow her on Twitter: @MairavZ

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Linda Sarsour Doesn't Need to Make Zionist Women Feel Comfortable - Haaretz