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Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

87 quotes

“1. ACKNOWLEDGE CHAOS. 2. EXPERIMENT. 3. TO POLARIZE OR NOT TO POLARIZE 4. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMOR 5. LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO BRIDGE CHASMS 6. DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE STRENGTH OF SUBGROUPS 7. WELCOME THE ENERGY AND COURAGE OF THE YOUNG 8. PAY ATTENTION TO PSYCHOLOGY 9. LOOK TO EXPAND PEOPLE'S SENSE OF POSSIBILITY”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anti-communism has been the U.S.'s powerful pro-war tool since 1945.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need to talk among ourselves about mistakes, assumptions and new possibilities. We need to be thinking more long range, not to get caught so off guard, so responsive/reactive. We need above all to acknowledge that neither this war nor the state of the world itself is as we knew it. We are confused. Only by admitting our confusion can we begin to build something new.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Malcolm X and Dr. King were probably both murdered because each in his own political development was isolating the racist, moneyed, ruling elite. This sort of polarization retains its sharp edge, but positions most people firmly on our side. In other words, radical politics is not about being hipper than our parents or neighbors. It is about enlarging the circle. It is about being inclusive of practically everyone except those few on top. How do we enlarge our circle? We begin close to home.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humor empowers the disempowered”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Learning a language stretches a long way to help create trust, to strengthen our ability to communicate and to understand another people. It also signals willingness to give up centrality.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A movement, even a radical movement, is also an institution with its own set of leaders, power dynamics and hierarchy.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of the bravest political work in this country and around the world has happened because people often too young to grasp their own mortality stick their necks out. The job of the rest of us is to rise to the occasion of their bravery. The young inspire the middle-aged and old with courage, and they project our vision where it belongs, into the future.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“history is shaped by people operating as people do, making choices with their consciousness limited by material reality and by their perceptions of material reality. This means by their perceptions of possibility too. Simply put, if people don't think change is possible, they won't try.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Few have written about the joy of political life, the sense of comradeship and achievement. As activists we need to believe in vision and imagination; communicate a sense of possibility. Bleakness is not the whole story, and escape is not the only alternative. Change is possible.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“second-wave feminism produced a bevy of writers determined not to abandon the public world to men, or to devalue the private world usually inhabited by women.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War reduces things to a very simple level. Maybe this is why patriarchy likes war: the simplicity of it. The longing for good guys and bad guys, the goal-directed win-or-lose male adventure-and of course for this country it's almost always been win.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the writer must value-the small life, the daily life, the significance of the individual consciousness and experience-are exactly what war violates.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We cannot be dutiful and creative at the same moment. This doesn't mean the alternatives are either a slavish political correctness or total inattention to political issues and consequences.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“consider that your ultimate goal may not be quantitative.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems to me to be fully alive is to seek justice. Otherwise, what's the point?...Why should anyone read a book by someone who doesn't care about justice?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The common Jewish practice is to name our experience differently from those with whom we might share it. Jews say anti-semitism, not racism against Jews; Jews say Zionism, not nationalism for Jews. We cling to the term Holocaust as ours only, anxious about whether other genocides deserve the name. All this separate naming makes it harder to identify and analyze commonality and difference.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Diasporism joins those who see borders as lines to cross. Who seek the memory or possibility or value of motion, fluidity, and multiple vision.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I name this ideology and practice Diasporism as a deliberate counter to Zionism. Zionism/Jewish nationalism is one choice Jews make, but not”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I posit a Jewish identity that embraces diversity and resists a closed circle. My hope is to join a debate about home, diversity, and justice.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most stories of the holocaust, like most other stories, have been told by and about men. I don't reject them for this, they are Jewish and mine. But as a woman, I need to know about the women, and that many Jews fought back, as they could, Jewish women among them. To fortify myself, I collect names and as much information as I can find. About women who fought inside the camps. Say their names...I read about Krysia Frimer, whose brother was a resistance fighter but he forbade her to join because it was too dangerous yet she was killed first. I mourn all the women deprived of the night to fight back, who were not thereby saved; and all the women whose names have not survived, who took messages food weapons in and out of the ghetto, who whored to the soldiers leaders cops for somebody's life freedom food information, who kept themselves and their children alive. Those were Jewish women. I come from women who fought like that.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Soon we would get our first TV, so my mother (and I) could watch the McCarthy hearings. I knew the whole fate of humanity hinged on these hearings, as surely as I knew the Rosenbergs had been good people, like my parents, with children the same age as my sister and me. I knew government people, like McCarthy, had killed the Rosenbergs, and I was terrified, but it literally did not occur to me that real people, people I might meet, people who had children and went to work, hated the Rosenbergs, thought they should die. Nor did it occur to me that there were people who thought unions were bad, people who did not know you never cross a picket line, did not know prejudice was wrong and stupid.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jewish experience in the US, isolated from the experience of Jews around the world, seems fairly rosy. But Jews are an international people, and the nature of Jewish identity, oppression, fear and danger derive from and connect to experiences outside this country...Wars between the US and other countries have always been fought in other countries; most people in the US live in an extraordinarily protected context. Not only is our country vast and populous and proud of an isolationist spirit (often masking an imperialist reality); but, in addition, the strictly limited immigration during the middle portion of this century has restricted most Americans' knowledge about war, persecution, torture, the experience of refugees. Most Americans seem to believe ourselves peculiarly unaffected by what goes on in the rest of the world.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are up against a failure of Americans to take seriously the pitch Jewhating attained so quickly in Europe in the thirties, for example, because Americans think Europe and the thirties so far away. They know about evil Germans, sheeplike Jews, and heroic Americans, but are not taught to see the war against the Jews as a culmination to centuries of Jewhating. Americans are told lies about the base of Nazism, so that we imagine Jewhating goes with a lack of education: working-class people are-as with white racism in this country-blamed. We are not told of the doctors and doctorates trained in Europe's finest universities. For most Americans the Holocaust blurs safely, almost pleasantly, with other terrible events of the past, like Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages. Nor have most Americans paid much attention to the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union, or Argentina, or Ethiopia, unless an ideological point is to be scored against these nations.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“an assumption deeply integral to capitalism has been absorbed by all of us, since it is reflected in so much of what we see. I have called this the Scarcity Theory, not enough to go around: not enough love, not enough time, not enough appointments at the foodstamps office, not enough food stamps, not enough money, not enough seats on the subway. It's pervasive. We learn mistrust of each other, bone deep: everything is skin off somebody's nose...in the short run, certain things are scarce. To what causes do I apply my limited "free" time? Where do I donate "extra" money? What books do I read, what issues do I follow and become knowledgeable about? Where will my passion be deep and informed, able to make connections and inspire others, and where will it be superficial, giving lip service only? The women's movement has only in the last few years and under considerable pressure begun to face its own racism; class is still addressed in the most minimal ways. Meanwhile, international crises-apartheid in South Africa, intervention in Nicaragua, torture and repression in Salvador and Guatemala-compel attention.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who call resistance to assimilation a luxury might do well to think about calling "sexual preference" a luxury, or reproductive rights, or access to education or creative expression. None of these is bread, but "Bread and Roses" was a demand voiced by Rose Schneiderman, a union organizer and a Jew. What are the roses? As Jews we need our peoplehood, our culture, history, languages, music, calendar, tradition, literature... We need these things because they are beautiful and ours, and because the point of struggle is not bare survival but lives full of possibility. But Rose Schneiderman's metaphor flounders. Our culture is not a rose, it is our backbone.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But guilt itself, as a motivating factor, is rooted in a way of thinking which does not promote change...in order to change you have to be willing to expose yourself-at least to yourself-and observe and examine and understand. This takes time, patience, and a respect for process. Guilt prompts a longing to purge all impure impulses quickly, get it over and done with once and for all...how does any sane person react after a while to fear, guilt? Is this a way to build a movement?...Only recognition of a common goal, the possibilities and I want to say-the joys of solidarity will inspire women who don't feel guilty to join another struggle as their own.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must remember: what is beautiful is the resistance, and that people can-and must-resist from their own authentic place in the world. we must reach out to Israelis fighting for peace, civil rights, and feminism without secretly feeling the Palestinians are more beautiful, because more besieged. One of the hardest acts of self-love for American radical Jews is to identify in this with Israelis, and I have come to believe it is a crucial stretch, for the alternative is denial of the Jewish connection. It is from this solid, self-knowing place that we can work towards peace and justice in the Middle East.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Used well, education, choice, even comfort, can strengthen people, individually and collectively. As for money-let me say the dirty word—nothing gets done without it. The question is, what do we do with our education, our choice, privilege, skills, experience, passion for justice: our power. Don't racism and anti-Semitism make you sick? Doesn't hatred scare you? Don't you feel at least a little desperate about the way things are going unless something intervenes? I think Jews need to gather our power, make it visible, and use it right. I'm sick of the more conservative wing of the Jewish community speaking for all of us. Everyone knows that Jews are all over progressive movements, what I've come to think of as the political diaspora. Maybe our task is to ingather the Jews, just a little, into a new civil and human rights coalition, in which we are present and visible as Jews. It means being proud of our collective strength, confident that we can use it right. Someone will always call us pushy. Isn't it time to really push?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's also a hard time to be talking about the abuses of capitalism, when it seems that so many people living under communism have rejected it, or tried to. Even allowing for lies and misperceptions, the American left is going through something as massively disruptive to our way of describing and envisioning the world as were the fifties' exposés of Stalinism on one hand, and persecutions by McCarthy on the other. I know that some of us who came to adulthood calling Lyndon Baines Johnson a fascist have a perspective problem, one which Reagan and Bush have helped us address. But we have not yet dealt, even theoretically, with the re-emergence in Europe and the former Soviet Union of toxic nationalism, nor with the dazzling speed with which internationalization of capital is matched by internationalization of labor: "guest workers" in Germany, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia; "illegals" in the U.S. What do national boundaries or national identity mean at this century's end?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is a classic? Is a classic a book that stays in print? Who decides what stays in print, what gets remaindered, what makes it into paperback, onto the supermarket displays, back into hardbound collected works? Alice Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was out of print for seven years. It didn't change. By what mechanism is it now available in paperback? Pat Parker's Movement In Black is out of print, as is Barbara Deming's work. How might their work come back to us? By their deaths? "Discovery" by an influential critic? In fact, much of the work of Aphra Behn, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Angelina Weld Grimké, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, H.D., and others, was out of print or hard to come by prior to the second wave of feminism (and who knew that all of these women loved women!) Is this work classic now, but not then? Can we only talk about classics after a suitable passage of time?”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're all thinking about this. The intifada, and the cooperation between the peace camp Israelis and Palestinians, especially the women; Tienanmen Square. The bizarre events of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, remind us of a basic, forgotten principle: vast unity across broad lines can challenge the very core of power. (The rise in ethnic chauvinism also reminds us-as do graveyard desecrations in Western Europe; if you can't find a live Jew, defile a dead one-of the longevity of anti-Semitism). The possibilities of breakthrough in South Africa contribute to our sense that what seemed frozen, impossible to budge, is not impervious to change.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I talk about the long haul I'm talking partly about emulating those wonderful grownups of my childhood: the old Jewish left, some of the most energetic, caring, committed people I've ever met, who through the McCarthy period, which was my childhood, right up through the present never stopped fighting, or stopped and started again, over and over. That is one kind of long haul, how to go on being an activist. And even in a world where almost nothing seemed possible, even then I'd just as soon emulate the women and men I grew up around who refused to stop fighting; because, after all, you never know unless you try.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we need the vision that inspires us forward. The couple, the nuclear family as the unit of survival, will not do. The single-issue movement will not do. The single-people struggle will not win. We are up against one of the most powerful, impenetrable machines of human history, our government. I am talking, ultimately, not only about preserving women's choice, or fighting hate, or even about peace between Israel and Palestine, but about massive transformation of society. This is what I had forgotten. This is the vision we need to hang on to. The old activists of my childhood who were my models-now I become them, and so do you. We are the only adults. No one will do it for us.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New movements are created by and create new forms: unions/walkabouts, which became strikes; civil rights/sit-ins; women's liberation/consciousness-raising groups. The most interesting new political forms, using the term loosely, of the past couple of years have been the lively disobedience of ACT UP and QUEER NATION, the campus rebellions opposing tuition increases and in support of multicultural agendas and-from the war-the Military Families Support Network and the GI Resistance. We need to learn from the most politically bold and creative among us. (We also need to offer concrete solidarity and support to those we learn from, lest learning from mean ripping off.)”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should be nosing around our neighborhoods, communities and cities, our workplaces, schools and children's schools for issues which are compelling in themselves and which provide opportunities for developing leadership, skills, militancy and growth. There is no dearth of issues. How much hunger, how many homeless and jobless, how much depleted ozone, how much fouled water, how many oil spills, how much rape, battering and other hate crimes, how many schools closed or lacking books, how much cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis and other devastating disease....and I am only talking about the richest, most privileged nation in the world. How we fight, how we enlarge our circle of fighters, will determine our ability to build collective power sufficient to turn things around. Or we are lost.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This book departs from several assumptions with the explicit intent of changing them. That all Jews came from Eastern Europe and spoke Yiddish. That Jewishness is only religion; that secular Judaism is a contradiction in terms; that real Jews are born Jewish. That calling (all) Jews "white" explains anything. That calling (all) Jews people of color explains anything. That American Jews and African Americans used to be best friends and are now enemies. That Jews and Arabs were always enemies and could never be friends. That life in the diaspora has always been a vale of tears that all Jews aspire to escape. I write this book to overturn these assumptions, but also to strengthen the identity and practice of Jewish antiracism, including the often buried strand of economic justice. To heighten understanding among Jews of diverse backgrounds/cultures/ethnicities that we need each other in part because of our differences. To help Jews grasp that those Jews who are cultural minorities within a hegemonic Ashkenazi community are often best equipped to help the Jewish world reckon with our multiculturality, and to know that this multiculturality is an enormous asset when it comes to combating racism and anti-semitism and to building social justice coalitions. I name this identity and practice of Jewish anti-racism Diasporism.”
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source