Brooklyn Bedouin

Climate Crisis is REAL.

Climate change is loading the dice for extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy -- and that climate change is driven by the fossil fuel industry. Big Oil, Coal, and Gas profit from polluting our atmosphere and then spend millions to block climate solutions. If there were any poetic justice, this hurricane would be named Hurricane Chevron or Hurricane Exxon, not Hurricane Sandy. (from 350.0rg)

ART BY FAVIANNA

Take Your Time Sandy...

Sandy is coming. 

The house is dark and quiet - doesn't have to be, it just is because it is sunday morning. An incredibly calm morning where the talk shows are talking about women voters, and married voters, and how Romney has the guts to "govern" (even if he never talks about infrastructure at all) all this talk, all this election gibberish and the only thing on people's minds is Sandy. 

She's coming. 

Cameras turn to New York City and the gray descending upon low flood plain areas, the fear coursing up the Hudson and its timeless river valley towns and perched Dutch mansions - the river may swell too, and all the handiwork of millionaires could wash away in an instant. 

My son is crying right now, I think he is remembering the night before he was born. The night Irene slammed into much the same area and spooked New York City into shutting down its subways system. 

A friend in the Bloomberg administration has informed me that "All Hands are On Deck" -  the CIty is in post-blizzard hyper-atention to the minutia of detail.

Climatologists and arm-chair global war-mongerers are preparing their rebuttals and using Sandy as the low hanging fruit. 

Areas that are in love with coal because it is cheap and reliable telling people that they most likely will lose power and some people are bracing by listening to the television ads that tell them to buy generators - because apparently the money we pay to bloated utilities is simply not enough to keep the lights on. 

College students are stocking water, ramen, condoms and beer.

And American business grinds to a halt. over 3000 flights canceled. Stores close, workers take deep sighs and pause. Fathers and mothers are home with their children. Sons and daughters call their mothers and fathers to check in on them. We take a collective "break" a nature (God) induced pause to remember who is actually in control - and it certainly is not us. 

Best case scenario is that no one dies, that nothing is damaged, and that all we will remember of this hurricane event is the extra time we got to spend talking to, or siting with, people we love. 

Take your time Sandy, I think we all need this break right now. 

The Proactive Muslim

"Today, many Muslims in America strike me to be woefully uncomfortable with their minority status, almost as if there was something sinful about it, as if it somehow violated where any Muslim community that enjoyed God’s favor would actually find itself. Even converts ultimately take on aspects of this mentality, which is why it is routinely easier for them to think in terms of bringing back (or bringing over) the glory of Islam than it is of actually producing it."

---- Dr. Sherman A. Jackson

read the rest here

The Southern Idealist

You know something is wrong when young white men feel like the system doesn't work for them. 

I found him smoking one cig after another in front of my building. He smoked Marlboro's and was from "the sticks" a place on 5 acres in rural Virginia, raised on well water, hunted meat, and vegetables grown in his yard. He was rocking a baseball cap backwards and cocked, with shorts and wallabees. 

We talked about NASCAR and the election. He shared with me the excitement of tailgating outside a race and the difference between a short and long track race in terms of strategy. On the topic of the election I I discovered that at 26 he's never voted and doesn't plan on it. He is that white male voter that Romney and Obama are salivating for and yet he has no intention of participating in this election. 

Why?

He says that what we have here in the United States is not a democracy, that it does not reflect the will of the people. He also insists that you cannot trust anyone and that all we have in this world are ourselves. In between puffs he rambled on about the way neighbors are quick to call you out for anything and how the things people in Virginia really care about are guns and that no matter who gets elected anyone who wants to get a gun can get one. 

"Don't matter," he says, "I can take you somewhere right now where you can get a gun for $50 - might have a few bodies on it though, but if you want to get a gun, you can get one no matter who is elected". 

A chef, he was the most animated when he spoke about the factory food system and his preference for locally sourced food of all kinds. "I want to know where my food comes from" he said as he inhaled."none of these jokers running for President are going to fix the mess we are in with food, why would I vote for either of them?"

The Fields of the Exponential Future...

• artificial intelligence and robotics
• nanotechnology
• biotechnology and bioinformatics
• medicine and neuroscience
• networks and computing science
• energy and environmental systems

a new you.

Racism is Alive and Well in America...

The unspoken and unmentioned fact of this election is that it is bringing out white racism  in a profound way. Some people thought we were post-racial. We can say with certainty that racism never died, it is alive and well...

Finally! A Person Running for Office to Get Things Done.

 

Dana Kaplan is running for City Council in New Orleans. She is a stellar "of the people" choice, a friend, and she reminds of that old adage: men run for office to make a name for themselves, women run for office to get things done. I am a little biased. Not only is Dana and old friend but she is also running on a platform which puts, at its center, addressing youth violence through a Ceasefire program which my wife also worked overtime, to get widely adopted by the NYC police department. Despite NYPD's short sightedness it is encouraging to see another city with passionate leaders who see beyond the traditional patriarchal understanding of public safety towards a people-centered, community-driven, quantitative and qualitative approach to decreasing incidents of youth violence. It is time for New Orleans to vote Dana Kaplan in so she can get things done.

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Southern Perspective...

In the South it feels like you have fell off of the Earth's surface and the world is flat, and people wondering where you are look to the edge, peer over, and see nothing but empty space. They eventually stop looking, stop calling, and soon, they forget you ever lived on Earth.

 

Listening to the Wisdom of Young People (@ElmhurstMSA)

I was speaking recently at Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago on the topic of What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet. Towards the end of the discussion I managed to weave in a brief thought on the #MuslimRage phenom with a series of provocative talking points supplied by my better half. I also talked about the presidential debates and offered some thoughts as to how and why Muslims should be heavily involved in the electoral process. 

One of the most insightful comments came from a young student named Rabia, she talked about how Romney seemed to be all about a quick-fire, rapid response, or rather a quick fix. Obama, in contrast, by her analysis, was all about the long-term. Then she made an analogy to the human body: "the body does not like quick fixes."

I sat with that, jotted her comments down, and today reflecting on it have this to say: Romney is about "closing the deal". He appeared like an executive in a culture obsessed with domineering and patriarchal leadership, a culture aching for freedom but dying to have someone tell them how to get it. Romney was superb in executing the quick "fix". He was like a drug and gave the country a momentary high - and maybe even got some people addicted. Obama, is like acupuncture, or auyrvedic medicine. Most of the time the body is like: "nothing is happening" when treatments are applied. But part of the wisdom is the prevention over the cure.  We should be trying to inoculate over the medicate.  Rabia had a good point and also reminded me that we really need to listen to the young people around us more often. They have sharp, on point analysis that is not filtered with our jaded sensibilities. I, for one, am less interested in getting high on a candidate - it is the reason that I was skeptical of Obama-Mania in 2008, and it is the reason that I am skeptical of post-debate Mitt Romney now. 

My Thoughts Before Going to The Bay Area Next Week

What are your thoughts?

Oakland has been described by the NY Times as the last place for Radicals in the United States. Much of the progress in the areas surrounding Oakland seems to have skipped over this City. It is a place of radical ideas and intense cultural movements. The most recent movement has been the rise of the arts and culture scene. In the past 5-7 years the way that Oaklanders and the Bay Area has interacted with and seen the East Bay city has dramatically changed. Tech elites are moving in, people do not leave Oakland to enjoy their nightlife and the hipster crowd is drifting over the Bay Bridge on weekend nights and weekends for an infusion of culture. 

Is it because the rents are low? is it because it is an incredibly diverse city - economical and culturally? It is a mixture of both? 

What about "Maker Culture"? It is an outgrowth of DIY or Do It Yourself culture. People are shifting to learning how to make things using basic materials. Oakland is an epicenter of this culture. With unemployment hovering at around 14.3% there are people creating opportunities all around. Artists and tinkerers have taken over old warehouse spaces and turned them into modern workshops and labs. I visited one such shop where a group of people collectively own a space that houses a wood, metal, glass, shops and also contains a room full of pulleys - they often work and support the local artist community in developing their work and experiment in making and deconstructing things. 

And of course... what about the Muslims? the Bay Area is a center of learning, community, fellowship and activity with an incredibly diverse muslim populaiton. What is it about the Bay that attracts this amazing community?