The Advocate

(Bell Hooks Unscripted, by Apanaki Temitayo) "Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist." ― By bell hooks. Take note and take care.

(Artist and title unknown) "There is no real difference for users between a platform that has no policies against hate speech, incitement, and disinformation, and one which has such policies but does not enforce them." —V. Judah Khaykin. Take note and take care.

 *CONTENT NOTICE/TRIGGER WARNING: this post discussed racist police violence and contains links to images/videos of that content.* (“Stop Police Brutality” by Icy and Sot) On November 21, at around 11:10 AM, an unnamed SLPD officer tased an innocent and mentally ill member of our city's unsheltered community in another act of police brutality in our city. This happened within less than 30 seconds from when the officer first made contact with the victim. The officer was ostensibly responding to a complaint from a local business, the Downtown McDonald's, about an allegation of someone "acting crazy" and "throwing punches." However, no one was hurt. No property was destroyed. No one was armed. There was no reason or basis to assume the victim posed a danger to themselves or others. Even worse, despite assertions to the contrary by SLPD, the officer did not engage in deescalation or crisis intervention tactics. There is no evidence that the CATT program was call...

( James Goldcrown’s mural #lovewall) "Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love." — Khalil Gibran, The Prophet Take note and take care.

( Attribution )   "Your life has been one long thread of hurt. Now, what will you mend with that thread?" — Paraphrase of @sagescrittore Sorry for the delay in posting! Take note and take care.

Signal boosting to amplify this incredible opportunity: "My name is Nguyen Pham, and earlier this year, I created the Mensa Foundation's first-ever Progress Pride Scholarship to lift and center marginalized students at the intersection of BIPOC and LGBTQ.   The Progress Pride Scholarship has just officially launched, and I'm spreading the word to drum up interest in the application.  Up for grabs are two $10k college scholarships -- the Foundation's largest scholarship awards ever -- for those who identify as BIPOC and LGBTQ and who have a demonstrated record of positive service to the BIPOC and LGBTQ communities.   An essay is all that's required up front, due January 15, 2022.  Open to all U.S. university students.  Awardee(s) will be selected in early 2022 and will then need to furnish a résumé/CV.   To help with promotion, I've assembled an info page at https://progresspride.org/ as well as an e-flier, included below and attached as a forwardable image....

A recent article from Shaila Dewan at the NY Times lays out some compelling complexities of nuance around policing, reimagining public safety, and the true costs of both. Rather than summarize, I have embedded the poignant points below. For the TL;DR version, the basic finding is that sometimes police can potentially help a little bit, but the costs are far more than the cheaper and greater gains from funding communities instead of more cops, and it's better from a moral and ethical standpoint. "With shootings and homicides surging in many cities, calls to redirect money to policing are rising. But evidence that hiring more officers is the best way to reduce crime is mixed: Beefing up a police force can help, but the effects are modest and far from certain. Those who study the question say any declines in crime have to be weighed against the downsides of adding more police officers, including negative interactions with the public, police violence and further erosion of public...

(Golden Tears, by Annie Marie Zimmerman) "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love." — Washington Irving

In perhaps one of the most glaring examples of hypocrisy, the people who have sworn an oath to protect and serve refuse to comply with it whenever it hurts their feelings. Indeed, the history of cops' resistance to following the very rules they're charged with enforcing is infamous . But since the COVID-19 pandemic, these temper tantrums have highlighted how truly dangerous they are, from refusing mask mandates to protesting against vaccination requirements that demonstrably increase public health and safety. This is even happening here in San Leandro as the police officers' union utilizes scare tactics to pressure the city council and the city manager away from enacting mandates to protect people from COVID-19, including the very officers themselves! (More officers died from COVID-19 this year and last year than anything else.) Read this story from NBC News by Matthew Guariglia, historian of race, policing and state power, for a particularly illuminating perspective on ...

( Maya and the Three poster ) "If it is to be, it is up to me." — William Johnsen. Take note and take care.

(Broken Fingaz, a Jewish mural with Yiddish lettering, Warsaw, Poland, circa 2014) This is my last post in this series, and there's a good reason for that. In Judaism, letters also have a numerical value. Aleph is 1, Bet is 2, etc. The letter Chet is 8 and the letter Yud is 10, giving us the number 18 and the word "chai" for life. 18 plus 18 is 36, which is known as a "double chai." It's an auspicious and lucky number, the perfect way to complete this. Over the course of my various posts, I've highlighted the following: Middot: Hebrew for values, personal characteristics, traits, or virtues, but literally means measure or norms. Tikkun middot is personal self-growth through this process of cultivating moral traits. See the 48 list . Mitzvah: a commandment, one of 613 mitzvot, but also generally means a good deed with a focus on actions over thoughts or intentions. Hashkafa: the Hebrew term for worldview and guiding philosophy, your ideology. It's a p...

Thank you to everyone who came out in solidarity with neighbors, students, public health advocates, and local leaders across San Leandro to push for ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and similar products in our community!   We had thirty-one (31) speakers who shared public comment at the Rules Committee in support of ending the sale of menthol cigarettes, including representation from: 16 residents, 7 San Leandro youth (one of whom got permission to step out of class to give public comment!), 5 San Leandro-based community-based organizations, and 11 public health/coalition partners.   Because of your voices, the City Council’s Rules Committee unanimously voted to direct city staff to move forward with drafting a Tobacco Retail License (TRL) ordinance update that ends the sale of menthol cigarettes with a January 2023 implementation date. This draft is expected to return directly to the full City Council in January 2022. At that January meeting, discussion can happen regard...

CRT "is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies." "The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others." "A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas." In San Leandro, we saw that in its choice to be a segregated sundown town with virulently racist redlining practices whose effects exist even today. "Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blin...

(Art by Ashvin Harrison) “Are you happy?” “In all honesty? No. But I am curious – I am curious in my sadness, and I am curious in my joy. I am everseeking, everfeeling. I am in awe of the beautiful moments life gives us, and I am in awe of the difficult ones. I am transfixed by grief, by growth. It is all so stunning, so rich, and I will never convince myself that I cannot be somber, cannot be hurt, cannot be overjoyed. I want to feel it all – I don’t want to cover it up or numb it. So no, I am not happy. I am open, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” ― Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete Take note and take care.

(Art by Karl Bodek and Kurt Conrad Löw, One Spring, 1941) Davka : There is no exact translation, but it can mean all of these things — of course, fuck, well shit, specifically, precisely, because, unexpectedly, just to spite, despite everything, whaddayaknow, of course, just my luck, Murphy’s law, even, damn, despite expectations to the contrary, a slightly amused or ironic feeling of "wouldn't you know it?", "of all things," "of all people,” definitely, exactly as stated, just to annoy, just to be contrary, just to piss me off, on purpose, to antagonize, willfully, spitefully, a paradox, actually, necessarily, like, “in your face,” an attitude of apathetic indifference, uncaring of consequences. It’s an ubiquitous word, a linguistic gestalt of overlapping meanings meandering across denotations and connotations like a tardigrade rolly polly honey badger badass. When all other words have failed, davka will do just fine. Take note and take care.

"Blewish, an animated short film based on true events about a Black and Jewish boy named Ezra, is premiering at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival! Writer and director Ezra Edmond hopes that Blewish will be watched alongside children who can see themselves represented in the character's journey to find belonging. Once you purchase a screening ticket, you will have from November 5 to November 14 to watch." As a parent in an interracial interfaith family with two Blewish daughters, this is the kind of content I love to see and want to see more of. As we know, representation matters and it's especially crucial to highlight the voices of those from historically marginalized communities - including those already within historically marginalized communities! Particularly when we explore them from the perspective of children. Those are the stories that captivate, that capture our imaginations while introducing us to a wider world we may never have known ...

SWAI, the San Leandro White Antiracism Initiative (pronounced "sway") is having our next meeting on Wednesday, November 3, from 7:30 to 9:00 PM. This month's topic is reimagining public safety and mental health response. We will be having presentations from Justice for Steven Taylor, Unity in the Community, SLATE, and April Showers. Contact SWAI@googlegroups.com to join and get the Zoom link!

(Art by Jason Edmiston) "The monsters were never // under my bed. // Because the monsters // were inside my head. // I fear no monsters, // for no monsters I see. // Because all this time // the monster has been me." — Nikita Gill Happy Halloween! Take note and take care.

( Art by Bluelela ) Gimel Zayin Yud : GZY is an acronym for gam zeh ya'avor, which means "this too shall pass / and this, too, shall pass away." There are many stories of its origin, but this is my favorite:  "One day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah Ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, “Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me.” “If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty,” replied Benaiah, “I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special?” “It has magic powers,” answered the king. “If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy.” Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility. Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. He was about to give up when he decided to take a walk in one of the poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant...

(Art by Jonathan Horowitz) "I get along best with people I don't need to explain things to. Unfortunately for me, I tend to work almost exclusively with people who need some explaining." — paraphrase of Kat Blaque Take note and take care.

(Art by Robert Deninno) Kavod Habriyot : human honor and dignity. A concept for how we interpret and apply Jewish laws and rules where we uplift the inherent value and worth of a person over anything else. It is another principle that allows a Jew to violate religious requirements in pursuit of a higher good that is similar to pikuach nefesh (saving a life). For instance, when Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak is challenged by Rabbi Yohanan, the brother of his good friend Mar. The story goes that a corpse was found in the city of Derokera, and Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak permitted carrying it to a karmelit (a semi-public domain into which carrying on Shabbat only involves a minor transgression). Notably, "Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak was a renowned scholar who later became head of the Babylonian Academy in Pumbeditha. But as we are taught elsewhere, his primary scholarly achievements involved not innovating new legal positions, but accurately preserving and sharing the Torah teachings that he had recei...

It has been 18 months since Steven Taylor was murdered by former San Leandro Police Officer Jason Fletcher in less than 40 seconds from when he arrived on scene. It has been 18 months since still active SLPD Officer Stefan Overton was an accessory to the crime, tasing Steven even after he had already been shot. It has been 18 months since the ongoing racism and inequity within San Leandro was laid bare in a way that was impossible to ignore or deny. A judge in the proceedings recently denied Fletcher's motion to dismiss the case.  However, Fletcher didn't bother to appear in court, letting his attorney, Michael Rains of the Oakland Riders police corruption scandal , to bloviate on his behalf. Among the notable remarks were these:  "Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon asked why Fletcher did not wait for his backup since Taylor allegedly posed no immediate threat to anyone when Fletcher arrived at the Walmart at 15555 Hesperian Blvd. on April 18, 2020." ...

(Art by Takashi Murakami, Japan Supernatural: Vertiginous After Staring at the Empty World Too Intensely, I Found Myself Trapped in the Realm of Lurking Ghosts and Monsters, 2019) "Some people will never like you because your spirit irritates their demons."  —  Denzel Washington Take note and take care.

Devekut : literally means dedication but traditionally refers to cleaving to God. In ancient Hebrew, to cleave is to become close, to join with, to adhere, to abide fast together, to follow. In religious Judaism and in academia, it's most commonly associated with the philosophical and mystical understanding of cleaving or attaching oneself to God in all areas of life. It can also refer to a deep, trance-like meditative state attained during prayer, Torah study, or when performing the 613 mitzvot. While it's particularly associated with the Jewish mystical tradition, in modern Israeli Hebrew, it's also often a synonym for dedication towards a particular goal. Devekut is that moment of silence when your mind is completely open, listening to your spirit harmonize with the world around you. It can appear as a sudden flash or a quiet realization, and all your misconceptions fall away until the only thing that remains is a feeling of pure connection with whatever you choose to fo...

SWAI, the San Leandro White Antiracism Initiative (pronounced "sway") is having our next meeting on Wednesday, October 20, from 7:30 to 9:00 PM. We will be having a presentation from Neighbors for Racial Justice (N4RJ). Contact SWAI@googlegroups.com to join and get the Zoom link. Blurb by N4RJ — Confronting Racist Profiling: Committing to Safer Communities is a 90-minute presentation given by one person of color and one white person. This includes a facilitated dialogue. Learn how our conditioned racist beliefs undermine public safety efforts and drive profiling that brings devastating harm to our neighbors of color, especially those who are Black. The presentation includes personal storytelling and actions to confront racist profiling in your community. The content was created by Neighbors for Racial Justice under the guidance of a Black, women-led council.  About SWAI — We are a group of neighbors, organizers, and allies committed to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusio...

Do you care about public health? Is improving sustainability and resiliency important to you? Are you interested in stopping the flow of poisonous tobacco products into youth, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities? Then here's your opportunity to help educate San Leandro residents about how they can take action to end the sale of menthol cigarettes in our city! The event is on Saturday, October 16, 9:30 AM to 12:00 Noon. RSVP here for the meet-up location. It's a door-to-door precinct walk. Training is provided. Friends and family welcome! Contact actobaccofree@gmail.com for information.   Here's the official blurb The Alameda County Tobacco Control Coalition is requesting help and support as San Leandro considers strengthening their Tobacco Retail Licensing (TRL) ordinance in the coming months, including ending the sale of menthol tobacco products in the city. Surrounding cities have since ended the sale of menthol and all flavored tobacco, making San Leandro the go-to city to bu...

From the folks at the Sogorea Te' Land Trust : "We celebrate the strength, resilience, and beauty of our ancestors and relatives today and every day. Wherever you are, If you are not on your own ancestral lands,  learn more about the history of where you are, reflect on your own role in colonialism and structural inequality, do something to heal historical harms, and support your local Indigenous-led land work." Take note and take care. Art by Fernando Marti.

From the folks at SLATE , San Leandro for Accountability, Transparency, and Equity: "On October 16 and 21, the city of San Leandro will be giving the public a chance to share their feedback and ask any questions about community police oversight in San Leandro. Please attend one of the meetings and remind the city that we need a police oversight board that: 1. Is completely independent from the police department and fairly represents the community. 2. Has the power to review police policy. We hope to remind the city the importance of fair and transparent investigations of police misconduct.  Hop on one of the meetings to learn more about what the city is recommending and ensure that your voice is heard!" Learn more about these forums here. The virtual community forums will cover the following topics: background on police oversight; possible structures and elements of a police oversight model for San Leandro; as well as opportunities for public feedback and questions. The foru...