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… - Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

A movement, even a radical movement, is also an institution with its own set of leaders, power dynamics and hierarchy.

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.

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.