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- Havdalah #13: Bills, Flyering, and the Mirror
Havdalah #13: Bills, Flyering, and the Mirror
23 Adar I, 5784 / March 2, 2024
White Rose RI
March 02, 2024
Hello, all, and welcome to Havdalah #13.
Between the Leap Year and the time change next week, hopefully we all know when and where we are. I, personally, am not looking forward to losing an hour of sleep, but it is a herald of increasing sunlight and growing warmth as we slowly leave the dark months.
And hopefully that sunlight will help us to see clearly, and the warmth will give us the energy to choose wisely. Our Sidebar this week comes from a guest and former member of Never Again Rhode Island who unfortunately moved to Texas, Nate, with a ruthless reflection on the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. And in FashWatch we continue to report on our local far-right ecosystem.
Children are still starving in Gaza; refugees are still being refused at the border; people are still going hungry on our streets. Doomscrolling doesn’t help anyone; tweeting isn’t action. Figure out what you can do, and do it, whatever that is.
Goodnight, and mind how you go —
Katherine
The Health Care Provider Shield Act
Summary: This bill precludes any individual from interfering with another's access to transgender and reproductive health care services.
Our position: FOR / IN SUPPORT OF
Current Status: In committee
Note: All times and locations given below are accurate as of the writing of this newsletter, but the RI Legislature is prone to changing time and locations of hearings with little notice. Go to this Bill Lookup Page to double check the bill status and meeting information before you go. Put the bill number (no H, no S) in the Bills input field and hit Enter for the most up to date information.
How to Submit Written Testimony:
Due: Tuesday, March 5, 4:00pm
Write a short statement, 1-3 paragraphs, explaining why you support the bills.
Include your name, the bill number (S2262 / H7577), and your viewpoint (FOR).
Email written testimony to:
Be aware that written testimony submitted to any committee is considered public and will be posted to and will be accessible on the General Assembly website.
How to Give In-Person Testimony:
Attend one of the committee meetings:
The House Committee on Judiciary meeting, Tuesday, March 5, at the Rise of the House (usually around 5:00pm) in the House Lounge at the State House
Or the Senate Committee on Judiciary meeting, Thursday, March 7, at the Rise of the Senate (usually around 5:00pm) in room 313 at the State House
Note: Rise of the House or the Senate is when the full House or Senate finishes meeting together and breaks into separate committee meetings.
When you arrive and/or during the meeting, you will receive instructions on when and how you can give testimony. Don’t be afraid to poke someone who looks like they know what they’re doing and ask.
Be prepared to share a brief statement about why you support these bills. Include your name, the bill number (S2262 for the Senate or H7577 for the House), and your viewpoint (FOR).
For more in-depth coverage of these bills, read Steve Ahlquist’s article on the Shield Act.
Medical Ethics Defense Act
Bill Number: S2423
Summary: This bill would allow medical professionals to refuse to provide types of care or perform specific procedures on the basis of “conscience” and would classify as “discrimination” any consequences or backlash the medical personnel may experience in response to this refusal.
Our position: AGAINST / IN OPPOSITION TO
Current Status: In committee
Note: All times and locations given below are accurate as of the writing of this newsletter, but the RI Legislature is prone to changing time and locations of hearings with little notice. Go to this Bill Lookup Page to double check the bill status and meeting information before you go. Put the bill number (no H, no S) in the Bills input field and hit Enter for the most up to date information.
How to Submit Written Testimony:
Due: Tuesday, March 5, 4:00pm
Write a short statement, 1-3 paragraphs, explaining why you oppose the bill.
Include your name, the bill number (S2423), and your viewpoint (AGAINST).
Email written testimony to:
Be aware that written testimony submitted to any committee is considered public and will be posted to and will be accessible on the General Assembly website.
How to Give In-Person Testimony:
Attend the Senate Committee on Judiciary meeting, Tuesday, March 5, at the Rise of the Senate (usually around 5:00pm) in room 313 at the State House
When you arrive and/or during the meeting, you will receive instructions on when and how you can give testimony. Don’t be afraid to poke someone who looks like they know what they’re doing and ask.
Be prepared to share a brief statement about why you oppose this bill. Include your name, the bill number (S2423), and your viewpoint (AGAINST).
Help for an Elderly Long-Time DARE Member
DARE has a very active, long-time member who is elderly and in need of a generator to power and heat her home. She has been making do through this winter but is in need of a more sustainable way to live in her home. There hasn't been electricity in her home in months, and she needs a way to charge her phone and plug in her refrigerator, along with her heater. She has donated her time, knowledge, food, and energy to our community through her organizing with DARE time after time. Now it's our turn to return the favor.
Jewish Voice for Peace Weekly Flyering at the Train Station
When: Every Wednesday, 5:00pm-6:00pm
Where: Providence Train Station, 100 Gaspee Street, Providence, RI 02903
JVP RI invites all to join them in their efforts to spread the word about their work and simple actions people can take to demand an end to the genocide in Palestine. They meet on the Statehouse side of the train station.
Weekly Kaddish on Michael Van Leesten Pedestrian Bridge
When: Every Sunday, 1:00pm-1:30pm
Where: Michael Van Leesten Pedestrian Bridge, Providence, RI 02903
Jewish Voice for Peace RI and allies will be hosting a weekly gathering on Sundays to recite the Mourners Kaddish and communally grieve the Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military. You need not be Jewish to attend; all are welcome to participate.
Family March for Palestine Art Build
When: Sunday, March 10, 2:00pm-6:00pm
Where: DARE, 340 Lockwood Street, Providence, RI 02907
Join SURJ RI and DARE on the Global Day of Action for Palestine for an art build to prepare for the upcoming Family March for Palestine! Gather together with snacks and music to paint signs that send a message loud and clear: “Stop arming genocide.”
Children are welcome and encouraged to join!
There will be materials available and some planned imagery for folks to work on; additional supplies and creativity are also welcome.
Power Half-Hours for Gaza
When: every day, Monday through Friday, 3:00pm EST
Where: online
Jewish Voice for Peace is holding Power Half-Hours for Gaza every day — join us as we channel our fury and sorrow into collective action to stop genocide.
The same link will work every day.
Continuing Actions for Palestine
The siege of Gaza has continued and intensified. Palestinians are in desperate need of water, fuel, medical supplies, and more; however, this aid has been locked up at the border and prevented from entering into Palestine. Please contact your representatives to call on them to work for a ceasefire and to get aid into Gaza.
This toolkit has a variety of links, including call scripts, groups accepting donations, phone banks, petitions, and more:
Telecom services in Gaza are periodically being disrupted. This makes knowledge of what is happening there very difficult to get and to verify. Various social media websites — including and especially Twitter — while vitally necessary in getting ordinary voices heard, have also been full of dis- and misinformation of people deliberately trying to cause trouble. Especially now, be aware of who is sharing information and why they’re doing it.
Al Jazeera reporting has continued to be the most accurate and reliable so far:
Maple Thanksgiving Online Event
When: Saturday, March 9, 10:00am-2:00pm
Where: the Tomaquag Museum’s YouTube Live (link will be posted on the Maple Thanksgiving event page)
The event will include a cooking demo with Chef Charles Hankinson (Narragansett/Micmac), a maple tapping film & community discussion with Tomaquag’s IEC Team, and a Children’s Story Hour.
Charles Hankinson, Narragansett/Micmac, is a catering chef for The Kraft Group. The Rhode Island resident graduated from Johnson & Wales University in 1994 from a 4-year culinary arts program. Since that time he has worked as a chef throughout the United States in casinos, tribal head-start programs, and federal detention centers. He was instrumental in the designs for the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s meal-site kitchen, a facility that serves tribal elders. His passion is to represent Indigenous culture in all spaces, breaking down barriers for other Indigenous peoples to empower all to excellence.
Nate (he / him)
On May 4, 2022, when deaths in the United States from COVID-19 surpassed 1 million, I spent the day answering emails. I do not remember the content or thrust of these emails, which is a good indicator of their importance relative to the events unfolding in the world around me. Something worth noticing, and I did notice.
A dissonance between what was happening and what I was doing. No, more accurately between what I was doing and what I felt I should be doing.
As I was performing the dance of Everything Is Normal for my workplace, another person who lives in my head was screaming, tearing at the walls, begging for all of us to dash our keyboards to the floor and do any and everything we had to do to save even one more life than we would have lost. The moral self, that I imagine of myself when I look in the mirror. But that person did not do any of those things. I did not do any of those things. I performed the dance.
Before ending his own life in an act of self-immolative protest, a young man named Aaron Bushnell sent a statement explaining what he was about to do.
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?
The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
And I have been. My moral self has been screaming this in my ear since October 7th, 2023, since May 4th, 2022, since May 25th, 2020. You’re doing it now. You’re doing it now. You’re doing it now. Words that have echoed uselessly in my head for years spurred this young man to the most extreme action a person can take. Before the day is out, I learn that he is the second to take his life in this way during this war alone.
For Bushnell, the gap between the mirror self and the physical self could be reconciled in flames. It is not an act I could ever celebrate even as I hold the weight of its impact. As Kelly Hayes observed: "We weren't meant to live this way, and they weren't meant to die this way."
By most accounts, the civilian death toll in Gaza has exceeded 29,000 if not 30,000 at time of writing, with the Israeli military poised to inflict more death through starvation and disease. What I would do while my country is perpetrating a genocide is what I am doing now.
Seeing the police point a gun at Bushnell’s smoldering body is an image that contains manifold lessons. That we would be fools to believe that our bodies are less disposable to the ruling class simply because they are located in the United States. That you can put everything on the line and never know if it will be enough. That people living under missiles and bullets and starvation don’t have a choice of what they risk, but we do.
I wish Aaron Bushnell had chosen to live, because only living hands can take apart the death machine that steers the world. I write to you from North Texas, where many pieces of the death machine are designed and made. Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, has a headquarters 35 minutes away, in Fort Worth. Lockheed Martin has one as well, only a further 10 minutes down the road. The death machine is built and maintained right in my backyard, and I’m answering emails.
My one true romantic belief that I allow myself is that life—its complexity, its beauty, its menace, its desire—is more powerful than the death machine that steers the world. But the only way I can make that true, the only way we can, is by using our lives to make it true. The people in Gaza weren’t given a choice of what to risk, but by unearned providence I have been. Perhaps you have been given that choice as well.
In looking at the unthinkable, I feel the call, ten thousand times louder than any voice whispering in my ear. If one man’s death can light a fire that is impossible to ignore, what light could we conjure with a dozen people determined to prove that life is sacred? A hundred? A thousand? The only way I can hope to be one of them is to tear myself away from the self who never did what I always imagined I would do. The moral self that I see in the mirror is an illusion. Only my hands on this side of the mirror are real.
Needledrop: “Forming Up/Unto Stone We Are”, Nicholas Britell (Andor Soundtrack)
PINE goes mask-off (but blurs out their faces); NSC-131’s astroturfed war cry
On Saturday, February 24th, Nationalist Social Club-131 (under the banner of PINE, the “People's Initiative of New England”) made pilgrimages across Rhode Island to a selection of sites, continuing their campaign of propagandizing in favor of a white ethnostate.
The Valley Breeze and ABC6 News reported on the events, although both incorrectly framed PINE as an affiliate or “offshoot” of NSC-131; as previously mentioned in “FashWatch” columns from past issues, PINE is NSC’s (clumsy) attempt at astroturfing Diet Nazi platforms. The Breeze piece featured a picture from PINE’s social media in which the faces of all members were blurred “to avoid being identified and harassed,” which is way too sympathetic to fucking Nazis.
Two days later, on February 26th, the group posted a new screed on the PINE Substack: “The Massachusetts Situation”. We will not be linking it here, nor will we be quoting the post at length.
In summary: the diatribe is full of historical revisionism, whining about “invasions”, barely veiled regret about Massachusetts fighting the Civil War on what NSC feels is the wrong side, and an overall grating sanctimoniousness that does little to persuade anyone who isn’t already gung-ho on the idea of an ethnostate. There’s no point dissecting any of this — I have better things to do with my time than write a deep dive on the Revolutionary War to debunk lies easily vetted through Wikipedia, and you have better things to do than read it.
What I will quote is the post’s parting salvo:
“We are a civilized and kind people, and we understand what struggle is like, but what is ours is ours and our people are getting that sentiment across in a plethora of ways. It is the People's Initiatives' role as the true representation and vanguard of New Englanders' interests to articulate this sentiment as directly and coherently as possible. We will work to address this current phenomenon [immigration] in all of its forms and will continue to garner a popular movement of New England Nationalists to again secure what is rightfully ours. We still have enough time for this to be done peacefully, but we must act.” [emphasis mine]
It seems that NSC has realized that there’s no point pretending that there’s no connection between them and their little propaganda outlet — PINE has gone mask off. This is an unambiguous call for war.
These men, who are neither “civilized” nor “kind”, know full well that New England will not secede from the United States, let alone become a white ethnostate without vehement and decisive consequences not only from the federal government, but also from other New Englanders. Their goal is not only unattainable, but without violence, it is impossible.
They’re perfectly aware of this.
It’s not that there isn’t “enough time” for this takeover to happen peacefully — it will never happen peacefully. The final sentences of PINE’s tedious little manifesto are a signal, both to us and to their sympathizers.
To their comrades, they’re saying: ready your weapons. The time is nearing. Be prepared.
To their enemies, they’re saying: we’re giving you a chance to surrender. It will only hurt for a moment. Make this easy for us, and we’ll make it easy for you.
They will say later, when they (again) resort to violence: we gave you a chance. You didn’t take it. You forced our hand.
They are being unequivocally clear both in their demands and in their threats. Believe them, but do not fear them.
To paraphrase Robert Evans: the Nazis don’t get to decide whether they win. They don’t make the final call — we do. Their victory is incumbent upon our consenting to it.
There will never be a time for a peaceful ethnic cleansing of New England. But there is still enough time for Nazis to peacefully go away. Let that be our warning to them in kind.
