Waged by* the Israeli government. Word limit made me choose a conceptually unclear preposition.

Creativity, humor, joy all over the projects, despite the somber content

All words that speak to me as an academic as I teach the entrenched inequalities of race - and sex and nation and class.

I was delighted at our National Spiritual Assembly's insistence on meeting this moment with critical honesty.

We cannot suppress or ignore our history or the reality of injustice. We need to confront the moment with "honesty" and "truthful discourse." We need to listen and "truly heart" from "those who have directly suffered."

It is critical to understand our present reality and how we got here so that we can move forward and this capacity should manifest itself in our schools, the media, and other civic arenas as well as in our work and personal relations."

…An essential element of the process will be honest and truthful discourse about the road we have taken to where we are now. We must, for example, build the capacity to truly hear and acknowledge the voices of those who have directly suffered from the effects of racial prejudice.

It implies social innovations more profound than anything we have yet achieved and it requires the participation of Americans of every race, creed, and background. For only through such inclusive participation can we achieve unity.

This awareness creates the moral imperative to act and to view all aspects of our personal social and institutional lives through the lens of justice.

"it is time to remember who we Americans aspire to be as a people. This moment beckons us to a renewed commitment to realize the ideal of e pluribus unum; out of many; one; the very aspiration upon which America was founded. It is not enough simply to believe in our hearts that we are all equal.

In a growing moment of hostility toward all things racially inclusive - #DEI, critical race theory, "diversity," and many more other metonymies for racial inclusion - a few points from his speech yesterday stood out.

As a boy in the segregated south, his family hosted #Baha’i devotionals w/ Black friends and neighbors. He's recounted in an interview of one evening where his family & friends had to turn the lights off & rest on the floor when white locals, upset at this interracial gathering, threatened violence

Kenneth Bowers, a long-serving member of the Assembly, knows personally the effects of social injustice.

Here’s our current NSA, elected yesterday. Bowers if fourth on the left.