Last week, the fantastic artist and writer Molly Crabapple released her new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country. In this riveting tome, she recounts the story of the Jewish Labor Bund, a European socialist organization that ran from the late 1800s thru WWII. The Bund was committed to the full flowering of socialist solidarity alongside a rich Jewish cultural life and exchange, while keeping their feet firmly planted in the countries where they lived rather than embarking on a colonial project in some new far-flung place. The book is fantastic and you should get it if you can (it is on it’s 4th printing AS WE SPEAK!).
However, I bring this up today not just to shill this amazing book, but to share something beautiful that Molly said about it. In this very thorough interview Molly gave on The Majority Report, she ended by saying,.“Even thought they had lost their country and their families and their milieu — even though they had lost that — they still planted the seeds for their own rediscovery.” A few days later, I saw Molly conversation with Naomi Klein, and in that chat she spoke of how she and other young creative, Jewish, anti-Zionist activists are not just living the legacy of The Bund;rather, she sees them as “not dinosaur fossils” but true comrades.
What does our work mean if we think of our labors in arcs of centuries rather than fiscal quarters? How can we plant seeds along the way so future comrades can find us, speak with us, cultivate and harvest what we could only dream?
Here are the links:
1) Midwest hunger services group closes 80 locations
For over 20 years, Ruby’s Pantry in (already-beleaguered!) Minnesota provided food and household necessities at 80 sites across the state. These items were distributed to people in need for low and no cost — with no questions asked. The groceries were primarily sourced using corporate donation of surplus and excess items. Rising fuel, insurance, truck repairs, and lease costs crippled the organization and forced the abrupt shutdown.
2) Alaska’s only LGBTQ+ nonprofit health clinic to close
Medicaid delays, a rise in rents, and and an increasingly transphobic political climate has forced Identity, Inc to announce that it will cease operations in mid-May. Founded in 1977 as the Alaskan Gay Community Center, Identity later merged with Full Spectrum Health clinic. Its main goal was to empower and advance healthcare for the LGBTQ+ community
3) Anti-Palestine bullies force closure of Australian anti-abuse foundation
In 2018, former Australian of the Year Grace Tame founded her charity to raise awareness for and agitate against abuse. As the survivor of childhood abuse, she formed the charity to help reshape national conversations around child safety. However, when Tame became outspoken against Israel’s genocide, she came under rising attacks, forcing the dissolution of her 5 year-old organization.
4) 25% of US universities facing threat of shutdown
It’s a crisis whose magnitude has been overshadowed by political and culture-war attacks on higher education and is propelled by the simple law of supply and demand after a long decline in the number of Americans who are going to college.
“We have too many seats. We have too many classrooms,” Peter Stokes, a managing director at Huron, said of U.S. colleges and universities. “So over the coming five to 10 years, this shakeout is going to take place.”
NPR news covers the crisis that is befalling so many of America’s centers of higher learning.
5) Hundreds fired, hundreds more stranded by shelter shutter
Sunstone Way operated several shelters across the Portland, Oregon area. However, an employee lawsuit and other unnamed business concerns lead to the abrupt announcement that is would be spinning down. In an area that already suffers from notable poverty and street homelessness, the closure also threatens put its 175 employees out of work.
6) California River charity celebrates decades and departs
For nearly 50 years, Brenda Adelman worked to raise awareness and advocate for the health of Northern California’s Russian River.through her organization The Russian River Watershed Protection Committee. At age 86, she is retiring, shutting down the organization, and sharing the legacy of her work with newer environmental groups.
Adelman admits that the end of the organization had much to do with her team, stating, “I have to say that in our older years we have put most of our energy into writing comment letters, going to meetings and studying documents. Our board was not particularly interested in raising money and I was focused on the work and most of the time didn’t get paid.”
7) Empowering Virginia Arts Org Draws Its Final Breath
A lynch-pin of the local arts scene, Art 180 became known for its innovative programming and empowerment of Richmond youth through classes, workshops, paid internships and educational programs over the past 27 years. It also operates Atlas, a community arts hub and gallery and has functioned as a creative community space for local kids in need. Six years of “financial strain and shifts in funding” made it increasingly difficult to sustain the group. .
8) The Last Days of the Longest UK Squat
St Agnes Place in South London was the site of London’s longest ever running squat as well as the site of the London Rastafarian Community Centre and the Rasta Temple.. It was comprised of a row of 22 Victorian terrace houses and provided shelter for thousands of people between 1969 and 2007. This Huck Magazine article profiles a new book that chronicles the stirring words and images from the last years of the community.
9) Arts Organizations Don’t Need to Last Forever
“An organization that existed for fifteen years and changed lives and then ended with intention is a success story with a final chapter. The field needs people willing to write that chapter. It also needs the rest of us to stop treating it as an obituary and start treating it as what it actually is: evidence that the mission was real, the work was done, and the people involved had the courage to let go when it was time.”
Excellent words by Emil J. Kang on his Substack, The Reprise. Emil is a cultural strategist and institutional advisor working at the intersection of the arts, philanthropy, education.
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