anne's dispatches from sydney

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I'm here in San Francisco still, listening to The Waifs (an old album- shelter me) on my computer, drinking beer at Marty and Amy's place near the beach on 44th Avenue. I met Marty and Amy at SoS in Melbourne 2004, and it was crazy that the first activist event I attended in the US (the STARC fundraising training) had them in the small group.

I went to the University of California Berkeley today, was excited- It kind of had an air of nostalgia about it, because of the radical history- (shown in movie 'Berkeley in the 60's' and that Nina Simone song young, gifted and black that goes 'Id like to dedicate this song to all the black students at Berkeley')... I soon found myself the library (one room with a very sophisticated bookish atmosphere where I sat on a nicely upholstered seat, reading Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby with an air of deliberateness). [what's so good about Coupland's style?- Most other fiction writers make me totally restless and bored- Ever since high school, I've been like a troublesome child in regards to fiction- maybe I gained ADD after finishing primary school- Maybe it's cos I am proud and try to read lots of 'high literature' that doesn't really relate to everyday life].

I wandered through the student union building and bought a copy of the magazine Tikkun, an interfaith/jewish progressive magazine. Almost every article was so insightful, especially two on Catholicism, I felt like getting out the highlighter. They are setting up a very needed 'network of spiritual progressives'... look on their website and see... There was one article that was a bit controversial- (that was probabaly published for the sake of healthy debate)- about the environmental credentials of the Zionist Jewish National Fund, that buys up land in Syria and Jordon etc and plants trees there. (A speaker at Sydney Uni, Uri Davis, gave a presentation on the problematic status of this fund in dispossessing Palestinians). The article was advocating greater representative involvement in the World Zionist Organisation by progressives. This only would seem to make the org more legit... I need to learn a lot more about zionism, because it is something that obviously stirs up a lot of emotion among most Jewish people, hence is a very deep-rooted and powerful concept. (random comment...I guess the christian tradition represents a departure from the zionist tradition of the 'chosen people' because it allowed people to be 'chosen' not from a matrilineal line of Jewish heritage, but rather from their commitment to 'god' and to a faith journey.)

final conclusions:

I'm actually glad I did not study at Berkeley. The only 'activists' I talked to were not real organisers- the first people asked me for money for their group that is trying to stop a chemical plant, and the second person had to run off to a class! What kind of activist is that? I would gladly be late to a class to talk about politics to an interested person! That is why I am always late to class at home! Anyways will write again soon.

posted by: anneinchaosland at 04:53 | link | comments |

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