Thank you all. You know who you are.
On the night of November 9 and 10, 1938 – 70 years ago today – a state-sponsored pogrom (riot, incursion) killed 92 German Jews and saw somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 Jews arrested.
Synagogues were burned. Jewish-owned shops were vandalized or destroyed. There was so much glass they called it (), the night of broken glass.
It brought to a head five years of increasingly restrictive anti-Semitic laws, and offered only a hint of what was to come in the ensuing years.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is doing a this year.
If, by the way, you haven't been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, next time you're in DC, give yourself four hours there, and a couple hours of recovery time.
that does me in.
From the time we're young, Jewish people are taught about the Holocaust. We see movies. We read books. We hear from survivors – though even people who lived long, healthy lives after the Holocaust are dying off now.
We take it personally, even all these years later. Working for a weekly newspaper about six years ago, I was sent to cover a school event that featured children of Holocaust victims and children of Holocaust perpetrators sitting on a panel, talking primarily about forgiveness. I sat in the back of the auditorium and pretty much bawled for an hour and a half.
We are taught to never forget. If you forget, it could happen again.
And so the world puts on its blinders, and makes sure that Jews don't ever have to live through genocide again.
We forget about the six million gypsies, homosexuals and others who died during the Holocaust. In the U.S., we're systematically denying the latter group rights (that's the first step, by the way). We didn't believe anything was happening in Rwanda in 1994. We did so little about Darfur. We're certainly not in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right now.
I'm not naive enough to believe we can all just get along and that's that. But when we see genocide, why are we sitting still?
In case you missed it, the U.S. elected Barack Obama to the office of the presidency on Tuesday.
It didn't really surprise anybody. Even Karl Rove predicted he would win in a landslide.
Obama is African-American, and if you're not up on your U.S. history, please leave right now, go to the library, and educate yourself.
During the primary season, it became clear that the Democratic Party was going to make some history. It was either going to put a woman at the top of the ticket, or it was going to put an African-American at the top of the ticket.
Some people – including some close to me – said that they would vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary because they were worried there were people in the country who would vote for the Republican candidate (we later found out that would be John McCain) solely because they wouldn't vote for Obama because of his race.
My response? These people wouldn't vote for Clinton because of her sex. Also, they would probably vote Republican even if John McCain were the Democratic candidate.
Once Obama and McCain were nominated by their respective parties, race became all but a non-issue. McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, certainly couldn't use race as an issue, at least not overtly. Same for the mainstream media, even if they were to endorse McCain/Palin (which very few of them did).
But once Obama got elected, people all over the world – including in the U.S. – started reacting positively at the fact we had elected a black man to the presidency.
Black voters interviewed by members of the press – particularly older ones, who had lived through depression-era segregation all the way up through the civil rights movement of the 1960s and '70s – celebrated. Some said for the first time.
McCain, in his concession speech, brought race into the picture.
Media pundits declared the dead.
It feels like this election was never about race, but the reason for that is we have an economic crisis and two wars on our hands. Mitch reminds us that Obama's victory in the U.S. He's right, of course. It just means race in this campaign.
There's still a lot of work to do, and it's not only racism that needs eradicating in the U.S.
Several states added constitutional amendments making gay marriage illegal. One state added an amendment – presumably aimed at gay couples – making it illegal for unmarried couples to adopt children.
Women still make less money than men for equal work – I've seen numbers that say women's salaries come in about 75% to 84% of men's salaries.
Some reading for you:
» The Housewife of the Revolution asks, " to eliminate inequality?" Me: Doing the best I can to not use the privilege that comes with being a straight, white male.
» Keep it Trill wants to know how people in California could say Yes We Can to Obama, but by passing Proposition 8.
» Here's one I found most illuminating, though: Jasmyne Cannick, a black lesbian, was out campaigning in force in California, but didn't feel the need to talk about Prop 8 at all, feeling a struggle she felt personally by a primarily white No On 8 movement.
You may have heard, but the U.S. is electing a president (and 435 U.S. representatives, and 30-odd senators, along with countless statewide and local officials) Tuesday, Nov. 4.
That's tomorrow, if you live stateside.
Not every state is fully compliant with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) – New York falls into the "not compliant" category – and we're expecting at least some trouble, though hopefully it won't be as widespread as some people think it could be.
If you're in New York, by the way, you're probably using one of those lever machines. If you're not familiar with how they work, watch the video above.
, via the standard (), has set up some ways to for citizens to police the election.
If you run into minor issues (long lines, people holding signs too close to a polling place entrance), use a #votereport hashtag. Also add a #ZIPcode hashtag to be entered as a location. Check out the , including a map of where reports are coming in from.
If you have major troubles – people blocking entrances, not being allowed to vote, not being allowed to fill out a provisional ballot, that sort of thing – get involved. You can call them at (866) OUR-VOTE (687-8683). On Twitter, use a #EPxx hashtag, where xx is your two-letter state abbreviation. Throw in a #ZIPcode for good measure. And let #votereport know, too.
What it comes down to is, the more information that's out there, the better. The more people know you plan to exercise your right to vote, the better.
EP has a ( - ).
I've also set up some hashtags for local folks. If you're writing about the election in Central New York, use a #votecny hashtag to get into the mix on .
The bottom line is, we're having an election tomorrow. This stuff's important, people.