Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice & Environment
Minutes: Monthly Meeting Nov 16 ,2022 via zoom
Land Acknowledgement
Working Group Reports
Watertown Faces Climate Change is celebrating the passage of the Fair Share Amendment which will make funds available for transportation to move away from fossil fuels. Many will be attending an upcoming conference held by 350 Mass to identify legislative and other priorities for the year ahead. They hope to soon be able to offer hybrid meetings thanks to equipment purchased by WCPJE.
The Pigsgusset Initiative is starting to plan for next year’s Indigeneous People s Day Celebration after a very successful launch this year. They are aslo participating in the National Day of Morning at Plymouth Plantation.
Friends of Bees in addition to working on town gardens, is looking into and next steps toward designation as a Bee City. They are planning a winter sowing workshop. Native bees need native plants and native plants’ seeds normally need to lie on the ground all winter prior to germinating. Winter sowing replicates these natural conditions.
Watertown Community for Black Lives has been looking at the ideas of indigenality and race. Upcoming discussions will be around the topic of their role in a largely white community. They continue to hold monthly vigil on second Tuesdays.
The Refugee Support Group has been busy with their big YoYo Ma fundraiser which provides the resources to help to refugee families.
Peace and Common Security continues to hold weekly vigils on Sundays under the banner of Support Ukraine Negotiation Not Escalation. Susan Nye felt that justice for Palestinians who are denied many of their rights does not get the wider consideration it deserves among progressives and in response organized the following program .
Why it is not anti-semitic to criticize Israel on Palestinian Rights moderated by Abby Yanow
Presenters Elsa Auerbach and Eve Spangler are both children of survivors and refugees from Hitler’s Germany raised in the United States under the shadow of the Holocaust. Aware of the horrors suffered by their families, the conditions that enabled it and fearful that the abyss could open up again at any moment. Both came to a “Never Again for Anyone” as a motivating force. They recognize their own struggle as relevant to the struggle of Palestinians who since 1948 were forced off their land when Israel was formed with Jewish people by law having more rights and protections. Separate laws for Jews and Palestinians is well documented. This ideology fundamentally puts the safety of one group over another and privileges Jews over other inhabitants. The similarities to Nazis and the White Supremacy are many.
Given the growing boldness and number of antisemitic voices, it is important to distinguish between legitimate and principled criticism of Israel and from criticism that is motivated or creates ill will toward Jews. The definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is flawed. The definition itself lacks specific criteria and provides no legal standard to effectively identify antisemitism but comes with many examples that equate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, this definition is gaining a lot of endorsements from organizations and institutions who want to do the right thing. Israel is a political state. Criticizing is not of who they are, but of what they are doing.
An alternative, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which has been endorsed by more than 200 scholars of antisemitism, offers a definition invoking universal principals and placing antisemitism in the context of racism and systemic oppression. As stated by one of the presenters, “One does not have to be anti-Jewish to support Palestinians’ right to safety, you just have to be human”.
The meeting was attended by over 70 people. Despite incidents meant to disrupt the conversation, a serious and responsive Q & A addressed many of the concerns raised by attendees hostile to the topic.
Respectfully submitted, Deborah Peterson