soapbox

So, yesterday ended up busy enough that I didn’t get this posted - which is embarrassing if it’s indicative of priorities, but I won’t ready too much into that.

(a) Anyway, I’m not really sure what I think about having classes cancelled for MLK Day. He was a great man with a greater legacy that certainly deserves a lot of attention, but I (cynically) get the feeling that, for the majority of students here, it just resulted in either “sweet, no class, I can sleep in” or “sweet, I’m going to Killington”.

(b) on Sunday I attended a presentation by a Norwich woman from CPT, talking about her experience in the West Bank - mostly serving as a Western presence so as to limit Israeli settler violence against Palestinians. In light of Monday, one thing she said really jumped out at me: the real key to MLK’s “I have a dream” speech isn’t just his vision of a future of equality and fairness, but that the way towards that is through children. Desegregation wasn’t pretty, but it was only when kids grew up with “the others” and were no longer able to demonize them from afar that we made strides. In the West Bank/Gaza Strip, it was said that the only interaction a non-settler Israeli would have with a Palestinian is at a checkpoint, as a soldier, and vice-versa. Not exactly the best conditions for reconciliation, but also indicative of the course towards improvement.

anyway, back to work, but I had to get that out there.