Who are the radicals?

The huge stink coming from New Orleans isn't post-Katrina clean up, unfortunately. Its all about this kid- James O'Keefe (the third).

His brazen, and I do admit very savvy, techniques are all the rage. Yet, looking at how Conservatives made him into a celebrity over night was quite alarming. The establishment, conservative that is, seems so quick to jump on board with anything and everything, even when it defies wisdom. In a tell tale conservative fashion the apple hasnt fallen from the tree.

You would wonder if conservatives ever learned any lessons from Watergate. From O'keefe's antics it seems they are all to willing to accept anyone willing to do the dirty work and all to ready to kick'em off the station wagon.

All the bravado about laws and the Constitution, our American principles and values- seem fake. They seem like a facade a sham. Concocted to present one self as "holier then thou art!" On the one hand Conservatives prop up this rhetoric and on the other you have them touting and propping up the next generation of "fixing up the system" Joe Plumbers. When faced with his pants down, O'keefe's father says about his son, "wouldn't break the law. He would know better than that". Yes, much like a sheep would know better then consorting with the wolf?

Conservatives fall back on the same thing- lie, lie, lie. But look, liberals aren't all too innocent either. The fact is O'keefe is coming from a system where audacity and extremism were necessary to get his point across. I remember at UCSD Conservatives would have a bake sale where the prices for their baked goods were based on your age, your race, your class. I remember a conservative group brought out pictures of aborted fetuses to line the Library Walk at UCSD to prove the point that a fetus is a living being. I remember the conservative sleazy magazine "The Koala" constantly running absurd headlines and stories.

This was a personal club, a club for individuals who felt that the university environment was "too liberal" and they had to create their space and get their message across- to build their perspective and bring out the closet conservatives.

How different would that be from Gay rights activists seeking to create a center on campus? Or, creating a space for multiracial students? Granted the practices and fashion conservatives went about doing things are questionable- but part of the problem with people who had issues with what conservatives on campus, was that it left them speechless, meaning they couldnt effectively respond to the absurdity. So their tactics worked.

Conservatives got their 1. message across, 2. got exposure and 3. quite possibly built mechanisms to undermine any effort to challenge them in the future through recruitment and undermining of accepted liberal norms/culture/arguments by making them seem trivial.

It was only a matter of time when college conservative activists would leave college and need to find something to do with the skills they acquired, so there shouldn't be this gasp when O'Keefe and his minions took their activist cause and applied it too the real world. Yet there was.

Working in the non-profit sector, along with many partner non-profits and, also, having just done a non-profit board of governance training- these Okeefian tactics brought up a healthy discussion on internal policy, programming, marketing, social media etc. Beyond that, like in college, everyone was left speechless.

What gets me all worked up though is, why? Why are these activists in the liberal world so shocked? You have absolutely no grounds too be. In fact, liberal activists have been pioneering the very tactics that Okeefe and his conservative minions have been implementing- they are just doing it in a way that incorporates technology.

A while back during Obama's campaign I was introduced to Saul Alinsky. There was some article on Obama's community organizing and how Alinksy pioneered the methods that Obama and other liberal activists were pounding the ground with. I made a mental note and moved on.

However, with Okeefe's new antics in New Orleans I have a new found interest in Alinsky. NYT reported in "High Jinks to Handcuff for Landrieu Provacateur" about the history of the four, including O'keefe, arrested in New Orleans. According too the report

They studied leftist activism of years past as their prototype, looking to the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who laid the framework for grass-roots activism in the ’60s, as well as those of gay rights and even Communist groups.

and

The group’s other main tactic, which Mr. O’Keefe has said was inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” Mr. Alinsky’s manifesto for left-wing organizing, was to caricature liberal political and social values by carrying them to outlandish extremes.

That made all the connections. I never read or heard about Alinsky while I was in college. I took a quick survey of those liberal activist friends from college I could get in touch with to ask if they had ever heard of Saul Alinsky or gotten any sort of training for liberal activists. Each one- about five- said "no" to the first and on the second "yes". The training though was nothing of note. In fact, it sounded so mundane and useless, it seemed the training was more for having an excuse to have a conference and kick it with cool kids from across the country.

What's ironic is that the Conservatives were learning from and applying practices that the very groups they detested developed, but I guess imitation, in this sense, is the best form of "suck on this, you commie sympathizer!"

So then its clear to me that the liberals who pioneered and applied the techniques that Alinsky developed have long lost touch with that history.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, will the liberal activists embrace Alinsky, again? Will they apply his teachings to immigration, health care, prison reform?

That answer will require a certain type of activist, unfortunately, liberals are not faced with the situation conservatives are- they are not marginalized or disaffected, they are not ideologically vacant or distracted, and worse, they are not a majority- the conservatives have a lot more motivating them then do liberals. In fact, liberals are to busy dicing up theories rather then actually pursuing actions. That was visible over last summers rallies against health care and tea parties.

So since I analyzed the situation, there is nothing further I have left to share with you, and I am definitely not interested in a solution to the liberal dilemma, and now I am going to put Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" on my Amazon books to buy list.

Might as well drink the cool aid everyone else at the party is drinking from.

When Nothing is Left to be Said, then what use is a blogpost?

I have not blogged for a while. Five weeks, six, may have passed, yet, blogging just didn't seem to matter all too much.

These weeks have been spent in quite contemplations. Moments of solitude, like pearls, strung along next to each other- happy moments, to recount in the future, when things are not altogether happy, of what the good times feel like. Something to look forward too in the future when things are grim because of an existential crisis.

Its like Superman or Batman, its like Moses or Muhammad. No different to me because they all had their caves, their temples of solitude, their places of self reflection and discovery- they communed and found strength in character and direction. They all had their man-caves, in which to find seclusion. I needed my seclusion, my way away from the world, from responsibilities, from you.

I am not ready to blog- to share my thoughts in particular- but I am compelled too because I had an intellectual meltdown this week.

I am still waiting to see some change.

My politics is quite clear- independent, progressive and principled. I disgustingly switched parties to vote for Obama, knowing full well that "change" was just rhetoric. I see no changes.

Chris Matthews brazenly swore- "I forgot he was black"- intimating further that Obama has gone a long way to "heal racial divides".

But I look back to Obama's first year and ask myself what precisely has this President done, has he done anything to "heal racial divides" let along "bring about changes"?

Spending so much time alone with my thoughts I reflected on how cynical and pessimistic I had become toward everything. Spending time with my kid cousins further made me realize how "hope" to be become a nauseating means of picking between the "least of two horrible things".

To my darling progressive friends- as well as Muslims- I am still waiting to see some changes, given the man some time. But in Tupacs words "Come on come on, I see no changes, wake up in the morning and I ask myself is life worth living, should I blast myself?"

And yes, there are millions of Americans who face that dilemma- not suicide- but the choice between death or living life in a system that has left them broken. I recently saw a young high school friends facebook status quoting George Carlin, "its called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

In a way I feel I would believe the change if I could see the coins falling into some hat, but we just got this fuzzy inclination of what the hat should look like.

Getting ran over by a train, it hurts.

I had the immense pleasure of meeting Howard Zinn, and getting a signed copy of "Peoples History". Next to my Grandfathers 3rd or 2nd (trying to still figure it out) edition of "The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary" by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Howard Zinn's signed "People's History" is my prized book.

I agree with the notion that Zinn was a polemicist. He acknowledges that himself. He had no use for what had been told a million times before, and was interested in examining that which had been told from a different perspective- an alternative perspective.

There are times when I sit down and read and novel and wonder only if the author could write from the antagonists point of view. Or what if Sherlock Holmes himself told his story rather then Watson chronicling them?

So then why not of history? We accept that there are always two sides of any story, so why not the history we canonize and sanctify?

A friend noted on the passing of Zinn, "A world without Zinn, is a world without Zen".

The aim of Zen is to seek that "inner-Buddha" (in secular terms- that enlightened moral, self-respecting, good natured being that is at peace with the world, those around them and working toward making the world a better place) through meditation and mindfulness of daily experiences. Such a existence, according to Zen practices, allows for new insights and perspectives on life.

Zen practice is immensely anti-theory, anti-prescriptive, anti-philosophical and iconoclastic. Zen emphasizes "practice" rather then "rhetoric" to reach enlightenment. Ultimately, Buddha reached enlightenment not through good speech but rather through the act of meditation. Zen teachings heavily influenced Taoism which has the idea of ying yang (two oppositional forces).

Zinn's passing is the end of that balancing of two oppositional forces. Zinn lead a life of humility; a life of labor; a life of service; and a life of meditation- I would venture to say that he had a life filled with gratitude. His inner reflection on his involvement with WWII lead him toward a life devoted to presenting an oppositional perspective to what the majority accepted. He spoke out to give historical relevance to those who had none. He stood strong to his principles and acted upon them so as not to make them hollow rhetorical flusters.

In Professors Zinn's last published essay in The Nation, he reflected on Obama's first year saying “I’ve been searching hard for a highlight...I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

And Zinn from his death bed runs over, with a train, what little hope I had in making Obama into something more then "the first Black President".

Falling off the crazy cliff, it hurts too.

Then today comes word of Salinger's death. The man who was, like pre-punk before things even become post-punk; who was EMO before EMO even became a hair trend.

People say that he guardered his privacy fiercely. Which is all well, however, I believe he despised moral/social criticism, as well as America's cognitive dissonance. Imagine to have a book that was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools, in the United States.

Catcher in the Rye, was a book that reflected my teenage angst, rebellious nature toward adulthood/adults, isolation due to the transitional stage of life and my own personal experiences of being an immigrant, disgruntled and most importantly anti-social norms (wanting/rejecting cultural imposition, expectations of what is proper and not proper the usual).

The book is said to influence bands that I grew up with- Third Eye Blind, Green Day, the Offspring- movies like The Dead Poets Society and Donnie Darko.

Yet coming to terms with adulthood is not limited to teenage experiences. Reflecting from my own recent sabbatical, I find that midlife crises are just exactly that- coming to terms with adulthood. Post-Graduate, young professional life- its all about coming to terms with "adulthood". That sense of aimlessness, isolation, feeling disgruntled, pessimistic and cynical aren't just fleeting fancies of adolescence. Rather they persist through one's life, shape experiences and force us to deal with the "wisdom" adulthood has brought to us in contrast to the simple, plain principles we have come to idealize.

With Salinger, Holden Caufield has died too. Holden was the quintisential Peter Pan, keeping watch over kids put under his charge from falling off the cliff as they played in a rye field.

Andrew Delbanco, director of American Studies at Columbia University said in an NPR article, "Everybody carries with them the impulse to say no. [It's] the dissident impulse that is powerful in American culture and literature" an impulse that made Salinger protagonist Holden such a powerful draw too readers.

The NPR article goes on to say "Delbanco traces that impulse from America's first immigrants through Emerson and Thoreau to the Beat writers who were Salinger's contemporaries. He says Salinger empathized with young people as outsiders, and romanticized their straightforward, "non-phoney" impulses."

Salinger while living his seclusive life remained stuck in perpetual adolescence. The death of Salinger, reminds us to reflect on Holden over the years. Holden, like so many of his contemporaries would grow up, compromise and come to terms with the world. Holden himself fell off the very cliff he was charged to watch over and protect them from falling of. Holden as I know him died with Salinger.

Painful as it may be, and falling off of a crazy cliff can be very painful, the end result is the realization of the world around me. It is what it is. I can sit back and enjoy the ride. Or can I?

Facing the end of my twenties, and heading into the drudgery that is my thirties, that is an important question I find myself reflecting on. Zinn and Salinger both contributed a part of themselves to the man I have come to see, importantly respect. While death is death in my view the only thing one can not avoid, it was important to take a moment and reflect on their passing because of the significance each one had in my development.

Rest in peace, and Zinn, give Said and Micheal a warm hello from us!

Husband Abuse?

Cassians Spirituality

The Desert Monks of Egypt followed a three-step path to mysticism. The first level was called the "Purgatio" during which the young monk struggled through prayer and ascetic practices to gain control of "the flesh" - specifically gluttony, lust, and the desire for possessions. During this period, the young monk was to learn that any strength he had to resist these desires (grace) came directly from the Holy Spirit. At the end of the "Purgatio," or in Greek "Catharsis" a period that often took many years, the monk had learned to trust peacefully in the Lord for all his needs. As the monk underwent this period of purging, he identified with Christ's temptation in the desert (Matthew 4:1–11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).

At this point the "Illuminatio" or in Greek "theoria" commenced. During this period the monk learned the paths to holiness revealed in the Gospel. During the "Illuminatio" many monks took in visitors and students, and tended the poor as much as their meager resources allowed. They identified strongly with Christ when he taught the Sermon on the Mount, recounted in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. The monk continued his life of humility in the Spirit of God; his stoic acceptance of suffering often made him the only man capable of taking on heroic or difficult responsibilities for the local Christian community. Many monks died never having moved past this period.

The final stage was the "Unitio," or in Greek "theosis" a period when the soul of the monk and the Spirit of God bonded together in a union often described as the marriage of the Song of Solomon (also called the "Song of Songs," or the "Canticle of Canticles"). Elderly monks often fled into the deep desert or into remote forests to find the solitude and peace that this level of mystical awareness demanded. In this, the monk identified with the transfigured Christ, who after his resurrection was often hidden from his disciples. Ascetics who achieve this level of ascetic enlightenment are referred to as Schema.

Modern Application of Cassian's Theology

Even modern thinkers are beholden to John Cassian's thinking, although perhaps in ways the saint would not have expected. Michel Foucault was fascinated by the rigorous way Cassian defined and struggled against the "flesh." Perhaps because of investigations like these, Cassian's thought and writings are enjoying a recent popularity even in non-religious circles.

A Common Vision- John Cassian and al-Ghazali's Correlative Conceptions of the Spiritual Life

Staying Neutral the Swiss Way of Life

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Youth Empowerment- Defining American Muslim Identity

As the calender year draws to an end I was reflecting back on what exactly it was that I did the past twelve months. Sadly, when I look back I feel like I haven't accomplished anything. Then I look at the case files of hundreds of clients who have called me to discuss their incidents. I look at the meetings I have gone too on my calender regarding all sorts of things from the mundane to the uber important. I look at the event materials I have from all the projects that delivered something of substance at its close, that gives me a sense of accomplishment. But I still feel a void of not having done enough.

All of that changes when I hear the voices of students I have gotten to know, mentor, supervise and interact with and all of what I do becomes relevant. Here's what I am talking about:

The One You Love

Thanks Adelito for sharing this:

The Celebration of Life

Again another Eid al-Adha. I love this Eid so much. Its great this year because the majority of my extended family in the US is here in California! I love being able to spend time with my younger cousins and getting to know them. I plan on taking the siblings to watch "New Moon" since it is Ameechi's turn to pick a movie we get to sit through the tween-fest. Then tomorrow i hope to go to the circus thats in town with cousins. While its going to be fun and exciting, there is a reminder for myself in this Eid al-Adha.

The sacrifice that comes at its end is by far the most relevant for me. I think death is something that modern society shrinks away from. We do things to focus so much on "life" and the "living", which is important, but I observe that we do it to the deteriment to ourselves because we make "death" is made into something "pretty"- flowers, traditions and customs and all other outward practices meant for the people still living. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, I just feel selfish for sitting there doing these things to console myself.

I feel that way becuase life is not just this short snippet of time here in this reality, but rather part of the larger existence. Creation is ongoing as God tells us in the Quran, even in death, which is followed by judgement and life after-death we continue to "exist".

What I am trying to say is that this Eid celebration is a reminder for myself of how fragile life is, and that I need to make greater effort to live a "prophetic life". When Muslims go to follow the steps of Abraham by sacrificing an animal, that ritual is a direct reminder of life, death and the afterlife. Muslims take the life of an animal. What could be more meaningful reminder too how fleeting life is then watching that sacrificial animal die. Then to take that blessed meat for distribution to the poor, family and friends and for one's family, to consume it, considering that in modern life we all just go and purchase "meat" at the store or at resturants to consume without ever thinking about where and how it came there, allows things to be contexualized.

Unfortunately this year I won't be going out for this practice, instead I just donated money to have a sacrifice done in my name for some one in need in Africa. Though I am not seeing that "live and in living color" this year, I have had numerous oppurtunities this past year to reflect on "life and death". I had to attend funerals, memorials and visit the graveyard to pray for those buried there. Even my friend Motti had a near death experience in Islamabad, Pakistan where he was working for the UN food distribution center that was targeted by suicide bombers that signified how people live without security or safety, yet they live in defiance of it.

Like the past years, death continues to lurk in my peripheral vision. I might just be overly sensitive to dying and maybe thats why the impression is so marked in my thoughts. I might even go as far as saying that I fear death, so its a bit overwhelming to deal with it so frequently. That is the challenge, so I must challenge myself to face it and deal with it- thats the part about living a more "prophetic life".

There is No Way Through

Mind wrapping.