American activist (1945–2018)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (September 9, 1945 – July 10, 2018) was a Jewish American essayist, poet, academic, and political activist against racism and for economic and social justice who lived in the USA.
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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.
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.)
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.
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
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.
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.
Sometimes I say this myself, like a mantra: WE ARE THE ONLY ADULTS. This enrages and frightens me. What it means to me is no one will do our work for us. No one can show us the way, or make good on our errors. If the Jewish people need spiritual and political redirection-and we do-if the planet needs saving, and the U.S. needs to spin on its axis, we'd better get busy. No one will do it for us.
Progressive Jewishness is about that strand of Jewish tradition which heads toward justice. It must include all the other liberation struggles. Its root is compassion; its assumption, that domination is not only wrong but unnecessary. Progressive Jewishness approaches the world with an ethical imperative and a Marxist slant on constant transformation. Always something needs doing. The world is not a fixed entity but constantly changing, and as progressive Jews our work is to help shape these changes.