independent media is the hope in our time there are so many preachers around who attended and careful and michael has never been guilty of either of those and routinely gets him into trouble  both within the jewish community and in the wider community and indeed at times he has been on the receiving end of acts of violence at his home and threats against him and he continues anyway telling the truth boldly and with face and with conviction welcome michael  you they say this is a voice that should be heard but my voice is god so i apologize first of all that the voice is going to be sort of awkward i've been speaking in speaking and speaking  yesterday in the midst of the service shop a service that i was leaving my voice disappeared so i came anyway and beg your indulgence i'm here in part to speak about my book embracing israel palestine and about the struggle that goes on between these two peoples and how to how to change that struggle how to transform that struggle  the book is first of all a history and it's an attempt to tell the history in a particular way and so the first thing i want to say is it's not an objective history because there is no such thing incident ject of history it doesn't exist there's no there's no objective history of anything if we were to do the history of this room for the fest five minutes we would at least have to include as the objective history every thought that went through your mind and every other person's mind here and is so you take the number of people here at least times four of the five minutes right and that's how long it would take to give the objective history of the room if we were to take the the history from eight hundred eighty to where my book ends which is in august of two thousand eleven of the struggle between israel and palestine we would have to take the total number of people living in that area in the time times them the amount of time and that would be many many many centuries so there never is an objective history history every history book that you ever read is a selection from the facts and the issue is always what's your criterion of selectively now mike i have read enough to have been involved in this long enough to be able to write a story with a criterion of selectiv tries to show you that israel is the right just make them and palestinians are the evil other and i can also do the opposite i can write a history that selects out those facts that highlight how palestinians are the righteous victims and israel are the is the evil other i don't do either of those in this book because i have a different criterion of selectivity my creed tearing of selectivity is to try to focus on those facts that lead us to the possibility of reconciliation and peace between the two sides and when i do that it is totally possible for some people to jump up and say as israel partisans you've left out a b and c and others who are palestinian partisans to jump up and say you left out x y and z and you know what they're right they're right because my criterion wasn't to tell the story in such a way as to keep the conflict going my criterion was to tell the story in such a way as to make it possible for you to understand the humanity of people on both sides and it is my fervent belief that the only way and the the major first step towards reconciliation and peace is for people on each side of the struggle to be able to tell the story of the other side with a compassion and a spirit of generosity you get what i mean so so that's what this book does it gives you the tools number one to do to be able to do that to tell the story in a way that you can recognize the humanity of the other now you might wonder why i started eight hundred eighty because there are many people in the world who will say this struggle has been going on for time from time immemorial and and because of that there never be reconciliation between these two sides because they've always been at each other's throats but here's the interesting truth it's not true that's not true what actually is the case is that  power of rome took over constantine took over christianity and it became the dominant religion of europe from that time on almost every year jews face pogroms assaults how homes being burnt or killed thrown out of their neighborhoods women were raped every every every year some place in europe and many years in many places in europe from then right up till the twentieth century and this happened primarily around good friday to two easter when  people would come out of their churches outraged that the jews had done this had killed and killed their jesus of nazareth or killed jesus and but jews were in a very precarious situation in europe for this reason jews were thrown out of britain in twelve fifteen they were thrown out of france in the third in the thirteen hundreds they were thrown out of spain in fourteen ninety two and more and more started to move towards eastern europe where they government wasn't as strong and powerful to be able to throw them out but jews were in and diverse a difficult situation in christian europe for much of the time from the time of constantine until the until and through much of the twentieth least the first half of the twentieth century now many many jews lived in moslem lands in the same period and in the muslim lands jews were not subject to this kind of attack the moslems did not believe that the jews that was really a very good thing for us i remember you know like i coming into this stuff you know like you might think i'm talking about ancient history but when i was in fifth grade in a school where i was the only jewish kid in the school in the new jersey where i was growing up and christmas time came around little dickie holden came up to me and slapped me in the eye and he said you killed christ i went home i said i don't remember doing this so i went to try to explain to my parents i don't know what they're talking about they tried to explain it to me but this was after this was in the one nine hundred fifty s so this is not ancient history that i'm talking about this these stories played an lands they didn't have that story i don't mean to claim that jews were in great shape in those lands the conditions that we lived in were ones of discrimination for sure but the discrimination there was nothing like the murderous angry anger that came out of the christian christianity in christian churches for so long in any event things started to change in eight hundred eighty and why eight hundred eighty said one third i have a solution to the problem we have with jews one third of them must leave the country one third of them must convert to christianity and one third of them should be killed so this was not a very happy moment for the jewish population of eastern europe and i mean some resorted to just praying that it wouldn't happen and may god bless and keep  away from our village if that was one one response but for a lot of jews the fear that that engendered led many jews to leave eastern europe and if you know any jews if you have any friends eastern europeans come here so but in that period from eight hundred eighty to one thousand nine hundred four the vast majority of jews went either to the united states or they went to britain or to france to germany or to australia or to argentina or to south africa and other words they were trying to escape and a small percentage of them went to palestine and went to the land that they understood to be the land of our forefathers and foremothers this was the land that we had once lived and and it was only then we left there when roman imperialism forced us out when the romans had conquered that area and pushed jews out of the area in part because jews were very rebellious the most rebellious group in the ancient world against rome and the reason for that has to do with jewish religion and the fact that the center of jewish religion was the story of the rebellion against pharaoh and the revolutionary consciousness that that generated that there was a force in the universe you dave ave or it's translated in english  that force that made possible the transformation from that which is to that which ought to be and that force in the universe was a revolutionary story and a story that every ruling elite subsequently hated us for because we were telling people that they're not stuck in the reality that they're in so in any event a small percentage of jews went to went to palestine and they went there with a  fantasy or that turned out to be a reality of creating a jewish homeland there and degrading a homeland where the jews could be safe and when they went there they also most of who first came were socialists as they thought they were bringing create a socialist society in palestine now the the people who live there the arabs at that time the period from eight hundred eighty to one nine hundred twenty at the vast majority of arabs were illiterate that is to say they did not read ok and the interest the only source and there was no radio ok this is eight hundred eighty nine hundred twenty there was no radio so  there so for most arabs in the land the information they had came from the mosse and the mosques were controlled by absentee landlords who appointed or helped to appoint the the heads of mosques and the absentee landlords were very very much dedicated to not letting jews come to this to this land for one very strong reason namely that they were afraid that the jews would bring capitalists values to a feudal society ideas about rights and empowerment and democracy that didn't exist in that society now that's one level of the so there was resistance considerable resistance to the jews coming but it wasn't just from the mosque it was also there because the mosque told another story other stories that poked into a reality that was facing the arabs of the time when the first on the on the one hand arabs had a cute memory of the last time a lot of europeans had come to the middle east and that was the crusades and the crusades were what i would ever you've learned about them from the standpoint of the arabs living there a huge dramatic event in which these europeans showed up with a lot of advanced armaments and were able to conquer the the holy land and quote liberate the holy city jerusalem from the hands of the quote infidels namely the muslims who were living there and for two hundred land but this was a huge drama that was very much in the minds of arabs six hundred years later when this next immigration of of of europeans we're coming now you might say six hundred years later why are they still thinking about that and it's certain or more response in america because most of americans don't have a very long historical memory if we can remember thirty or forty years ago it's already a big thing i mean the way that the tea party was able to manipulate the symbol of the tea party for the i exactly opposite point of what the tea party was actually about because nobody knew what the tea party was they had probably had it memorized for you know that test and then it was out of their mind but so you might say gee this is strange that they're holding on to this for such a long time but for it to jews and be strange because we were holding on to that was our homeland for eighteen years so we had a we also had historical memory and this story a memory was reinforced because every day jews would pray three times a day for our zion we were always committed to that as part of our religious practice that we would go back to our land so here comes some early zionists who are saying we want to return to our land and create a homeland for jews there and they were met with hostility and sometimes with violence from the arabs who were living there and say here are the reasons some of the reasons now there was another recent and that is this same period that we're talking about was the time when england france germany italy to some extent russia they were all involved in trying in the struggle of of global colonialism in which they were all interested in dividing up the world amongst themselves often not in a peaceful way that's what led to the first world war with the struggle between all these major colonial powers are trying to divide up africa trying to divide up the middle east trying to divide up the far east including china and india and all of that area so here were the europeans simultaneously dividing up the world and doing it in order to extract the resources and the wealth of those areas to bring them back to the more advanced industrialized societies they weren't doing it out of friendship or to try to help people develop a higher level of economic wellbeing they were doing it to extract the wealth from that from that area so here are these europeans coming and the arabs very often we're seeing the jews who are coming through the framework of global colonialism the crusades and the message that they were getting from the from the mosques that these people are coming in order to throw you out of your land and you shouldn't listen to them and you shouldn't and you should fight against them ok now what i'm trying to tell you is that this resistance that palestinians were that they were yet conceiving of the selves as palestinians only a very few thought in terms of a palestinian national entity they started to develop a national consciousness in relationship to the jews developing a national consciousness but what i'm trying to say to you is that these palestinians are starting to develop where these arabs start to develop resistance the jews you can understand why that happened it wasn't because these were people who were born evil and it wasn't because these were people were who were intrin lly anti semites it was because of this set of conditions that through which they saw the world and which made them feel like they couldn't accept jews coming to their land  know that there are many americans who feel the same way about south americans today they feel that they're going to take over our country that we're going to be a expropriate you know expropriated our language is going to be dominated by another language etc so these fears that americans have today that have led us to treat many many people who come to this land in a very brutal and harsh way so you can understand how that same kind of thing could have happened to arabs dealing with the people they saw through the framework of their go they're going to hurt us they're going to do something to us that's bad and cetera now on the other hand so they did not do what could have been done what should have been done right now by americans reaching out to the new immigrants trying to integrate them into society welcoming them here trying to find a way to make sure that they can feel that this is part of their home as well and treat them with the spirit of generosity the arabs didn't do that towards the jews on the contrary they did they they acted as though they were can we work something out here you remember the jews are coming tiny minority originally a tiny minority of the of the people living in the land at first that the jews are coming and they're feeling this hostility but the jews when they felt this was still a t and this and the violence that they first faced from arabs there they didn't reach out to arabs and say what's wrong can't we work something out here what what isn't there a way that we can you can have what you need and we can have what we need let's figure out a strategy to work together instead most jews responded in the following way these arabs are hostile towards us what's new the glam always hate us the non jews always hate us everyplace we've gone for the past eight hundred years they're hating us so they think to ask is there some basis is there some consciousness to the extent that they asked they heard back your representatives of the colonial powers of europe and we don't want to its colonial powers dominating the middle east from the standpoint of the jews coming the jews were the primary victim of colonialism of european colonialism for the past eight hundred years we have been the ones who are the primary evil other in the eyes of christians not the only ones that you know we know that what christians did to the wicked to women and turning them into witches we know what christians did to pagans and so forth but the primary one the one that was intrinsic to the christian story was jews jews as the evil other so so when we were leaving in eight hundred in eight hundred eighty we were fleeing this these european countries that had tweeted us terribly and what's the reason and they're telling us that we're coming as representatives of the of the tsar that we're coming to help advance the interests of germany or england or france or it i mean it was ludicrous there was no way that we could possibly understand were at least those jews at that time could possibly understand what these arabs were talking about it just seemed like pure propaganda to jews because from our standpoint and really historical experience of us we saw ourselves as the primary victim we were running away from these evil powers not coming to represent them to get what i'm saying so what i'm trying to tell you is that when you start to look at the story in this way a you can see how both sides came to understand the other as as really irrationally negative toward them and as really seeking for reasons that were beyond the comprehension of each community why the other one was coming there or was treating them in a hostile and  arrogant way now and i should say the jews game and yes there was a certain arrogance from europe also european sense that maybe were more advanced than these people and so forth although most of the jews who came were dirt poor they didn't have movement started to develop and that right wing looked at each act of resistance an act of violence and said to the rest of the zionist community you know what these arabs are out to destroy us they have there's no way to talk to them because they are intrinsically violent they hate us for irrational reasons ok and and conversely every act of return violence from the jewish world was perceived by particularly the most right wing elements in the arab community as further proof that these jews weren't coming to live in peace with us they're coming to throw us out and so each side developed a and ultra nationalist discourse in which each side saw the ultranationalists of the other side as proof of their growing belief that there was no way to build peace between the two communities that the only possibility was to throw out the other community or to overcome the other community now this was not the majority p in either community at least in the first forty years of jews coming there and arabs resisting it was not the majority position in either community but hasn't but starting in the particularly after the rebellions that took place against colonialism that were in part directed at the jews because the jews were seen as as agents of the british colonial authorities after the first world war in which britain having won was given the mandate over palestine and had issued the balfour declaration which said majesty's government looks with favor on the creation of jewish homeland in palestine palestinians were saying it's not just this government what right do they have to be telling what the future is of palestine but from the standpoint of international law international law was run on the principle of whatever we won the last war sets the laws they write what's right whatever one the last big war so since the  victors of the first world war were britain and france and the united states how come the united states wasn't involved we were doing the same thing in central america and south america so we had enough land there to handle on our own so we let the other colonial powers take over until the after the second world war in which we then started to play this role in asia and africa as well of trying to take over the mantle of colonialism under a different name but nevertheless ok so here you've got the struggle and and the and arabs responded by rebelling against the british rule but part of their rebellion and involve seeing the jews  nine of jews being killed that gave tremendous energy to and then in the one nine hundred thirty s when suddenly all of europe escalated its hatred of jews and in one nine hundred forty s one out of every three jews on the planet was murdered when out of every three jews was murdered so the trauma that palestinians the arabs and became palestinians had of the past in the crusades and then of this group coming into their land and so forth is suddenly incredibly dwarfed by the experience of jews in which one out of every three jews on the planet is murdered and and jews were particularly those who were living in palestine by this point were particularly angry at arabs who live there because the arabs had convinced the british to not allow any jews to escape from europe to palestine now of course this was true for most countries in the world that most countries didn't open their gates to jews and so jews developed at least the most nationalist use develop the sense that there's nobody in the world is going to be on our side there's nobody there we have to we desperately need a state of our own and an army of our own because when push comes to shove the nations of the world don't care at all about us and so we have to protect ourselves we need a state and so forth but then in the way that the state was created comes a huge catastrophe for the palestinian people hundreds of thousands had left in order to avoid the war but hundreds of thousands of others were forcibly evicted from their homes forcibly  evicted by the israeli army and and after the war most expecting that they would be able to come back and then israel wouldn't let them return to their homes and this thus began what they called the  disaster of palestinian history so here you've got basically two sides and each side has been traumatized and and as a result is suffering from what i call post traumatic stress disorder each side and each side continues to have this post traumatic stress disorder as a shaping element in their consciousness so my first main point is understand that in order to to get this struggle to really understand it you have to reject the notion that there were fundamentally evil people on either side of the struggle i don't mean that there are no evil people i mean take any group of people and you'll find a new rate of goodness in which some have a rather small amount of the goodness in them but but by but to understand the narrative to understand what was going on you don't it's a mistake to ontology eyes to put into into their genes or into their fundamental culture and or their religion or whatever the notion that this side is fundamentally evil and that side is fundamentally good it's not true both sides had a legitimate discourse both sides had legitimate fears legitimate only in the sense that refracted through their own historical experience they were they were almost inevitably going to see the other in the way that they did now i don't mean it never said almost inevitably because there were people on each side who tried to reach out to the others the i know that the names of people like martin buber and the the president of the hebrew university magnus and many others who formed a little group that tried to reach out to palestinians and there were some palestinians who responded but by and large the struggle was increasingly in the hands of the most nationalist elements who were not willing to accept  or see the other and i say willing maybe willing but also could not could not see the other as fundamentally human and fundamentally decent and instead kept on translating  interpret into the behavior of the other through the framework of seeing the other in the most extreme fashion and that proving to them that the other really the only solution was to push the other out of this land so we get to communities that are facing that have ever since had post traumatic stress disorder now the thing about post traumatic stress disorder that's important get is that this is not a psychological category like other psychological categories because many other psychological categories are categories that are based on the assumption that something has happened internally in your has gotten screwed up but post traumatic stress disorder acknowledges that there really was a trauma the drama wasn't something that came out of your internal development and it didn't come out of  bad relationship with your mommy it came out of a real thing that happened and there was a huge trauma that happened to the jewish people and they huge trauma that has happened to the palestinian people and it's and when you get that then the next thing you get about post traumatic stress disorder is that there you can't get people healed by that from that by saying to them the conditions th created the trauma in the first place are no longer here you see so snap out of it it doesn't work if a woman has been raped it's not helpful and certainly is not successful to say to that woman you know i don't know why you're still upset about this the guy who raped years in prison is not going to hurt you anymore so get over your trauma the fact is that you've been raped matter that the circumstance is not there anymore the what post traumatic stress disorder is is that you continue to see the reality in front of you through the framework of the trauma and because you continue see that for that through the framework of the trauma you cannot get people out of it simply by making a rational argument i'm not saying that rational arguments are relevant i'm saying that they are not sufficient they may well be necessary but they're certainly not sufficient so the task that we face now is how do you deal with two people who are facing this kind of trauma so the next against israel or course or strategies against palestine it doesn't help people in fact what it actually does is it it really stimulates the original trauma and makes people feel all the more traumatized because they feel like i was alone when i faced this trauma and now i'm still alone because nobody really understands me and nobody really understands the pain that i've gone through so that's why partly why  book because a significant section of it not all of it but a significant section of it is trying to tell the story in a way that each side and others and here i'm talking to you who are not on either side let imagine who need to be able to tell the story in a way that is compassionate towards each side and not simply bang on one side and saying you're bad you're  now that doesn't mean that in any way i want to excuse acts of terror by by arabs against israelis although as many arabs have told me you know we wouldn't we would never engage terror if there was some kind of equality of power between the two sides in other words if we had an army and we had in the air force and we had a navy we would never engage in  air force they didn't need to do engage in acts of terror acts of terror are usually the acts of the powerless against those whom they perceived to be powerful that doesn't mean that in any way that i want to excuse those acts or say that they are morally ok now conversely i have to also acknowledge that at the in the last forty years for sure israel has been the they actually disproportionate power and it is not the palestinians who are occupying israel it's the israelis are occupying palestinians and it is not that there's anything vaguely like equal power and so in the book i argue for israel taking the first steps and making the first sacrifices for peace because there's a vast inequality of power here fine that's now that's on the ethical level but what i also talk about in this book is that what's right i'm saying it is absolutely right that israel should be that israel should be forced to take the first steps toward reconciliation ethically right but there's a difference between being what's what's ethically right and what's smart let me explain to the difference between being seen at the right and smart they black panther party had this argument a similar kind of argument with martin luther king jr the panther martin luther king jr said we're going to demonstrate nonviolent against segregation and against the racism in the society the black panthers came back and said you know you're really out of touch with the reality of black life you know you must be living in these churches but you don't really know what it's like on the streets because in the center cities of most cities certainly most northern cities were facing an occupation by the police and the police have used power and violence against us for a very long time and they are continuing to use violence against us and the only way we can deal with this is to pick up the gun and fight back and because they will never respond to anything else but the by equal violence because what they do is they come into our cities every day loaded with guns and a laugh at it but people who are living in the center cities get thrown into prison for years and years and years for doing the exact same thing that whitey is doing all over the place and so there is no way to protect ourselves except by picking up the gun now martin luther king jr said the opposite he said no you're wrong we have to speak to the humanity of white people and if you remember that incredible speech in hundred sixty three at the march on washington his speech was not primarily about how evil white people was instead it was about the possibility of a transformed consciousness in which blacks and whites would live together in harmony and painting that picture touched the hearts of many racists or many people who if not hardcore racists were nevertheless people who were willing to go along with an insane i'm not going to support any struggle against racism he spoke to the hearts of the oppressed nesson mandela and and gandhi did the exact same thing thing gates in nonviolent struggles in which they assumed the humanity of the oppressor now and what they said was something like this look if you're an oppressor you're acting impressive way you've got your boot on the on the neck of the oppressed you're you know what you're doing and you're afraid that if you let out off that you're the pressure on their neck that they'll jump up and kill you that they'll jump up and do to you the same things you've been doing to them and what men don't know told people and what gandhi told people what king told people is no we have to yes you're right that there's a reason to be fearful but we have to speak to the goodness of the oppressor we have to accept that amongst the oppressors there are many good and decent people and that that if we can see continually speak to their highest possibilities that they will let go and miracle of miracles that's what happened to some extent in the united states i don't mean to say that racism has been defeated not at all but that there was a a dismantling of the extremes of segregation and it happened very strongly in south africa and it happened in dia as well i don't mean to say that any of these are examples of the perfect societies or that all the problems have gone have been eliminated but the extremes of oppression were eliminated and here i say that this same approach is needed in the middle east except here in both sides since both sides feel that they are the oppressed both sides feel that they are oppressed that both sides have to speak to the humanity of the other side you know at this point you might be thinking gee he started out with some facts and so forth and now this guy sounds like a loon he's thinking that people can change their conscious in some fundamental way and yes this is actually is the thesis that i argue in more detail in the book that it is possible to transform the consciousness of people in a fundamental way it sounds utopian it sounds fanciful until you think about your own experience because most of the people in this room have lived through some of the great it's transformations in consciousness that have happened in human history right in your own lifetime let's start with that fifty five years ago a small group of women in berkeley and in san francisco and in seattle and in and in madison and in and arbor and in  boston cambridge and new york and washington and paris and and in london started to say we don't want to accept patriarchy anymore we want to fight against sexism and overcome patriarchy and most all almost all men and defra lay a very large number of women said to that small handful of women dear do you do you not know anything about history you not know that for the past ten thousand years there has been patriarchy and inequality of power between women and men do you not know that and you think you these handful of people in this women's movement are going to change that and can you show us some place where it can work can you show us a society right now where women and men have equal power and it works and so the women couldn't show that and they they knew that there had been bad sharky for a very long time and they knew that they were a handful of women compared to the number of women in the united states or were in the advanced industrial countries and nevertheless they said they essential y said and i say thank god for those women and they refused to be realistic and because they refused to be realistic they made incredible transformations in the consciousness of people all over the world not just in the advanced industrial societies but now there is feminist consciousness and and willingness to struggle against patriarchy in some of the most macho societies that the world has ever seen women as presidents of south south american countries women as women as leading figures in pakistan ok then and i mean you know that i don't want to go through all of this but an unbelievable transformation i'm not claiming patriarchy is dead i'm not claiming that sexism has been eliminated i'm claiming that the transformations of consciousness that you lived through are amazing and way beyond what those who started believed possible but if they had listened to the realists who were telling them that it's impossible because what a realist is really somebody who says that that which is is all that can be whereas of course somebody believes in god believes that there is something in the universe that makes possible the transformation from that which is to that which ought to be and that what what that is that's got a ok but so the world can be fundamentally transformed now if that isn't another you want another example then the situation of african americans in this country and in south south africa i've mentioned it already but that transformation if somebody had said to you ten years ago you know black eyes going to be president the united states in the next ten years ok vast vast majority not just ten years ago but if you took the polls five years ago the vast majority said it will never happen it will never happen too much racism in the society much less that he's going to be elected and many southern states will vote for him you ok which is what happened ok so it's him it's is that enough about gays and lesbians twenty years ago if anybody had said oh you know what gays and lesbians and get married and they're going to be legally married people are said c'mon be realistic if you if we can get gays and lesbians to the point where they can come out of the closet and not get fired from their jobs that will be terrific but there were others who went and said no we want equal rights and that struggle obviously has not yet been won but the the distance we've gone with the decision that was just made by the u s appeals court last week  it's it was unimaginable at the time so the same thing can and has to happen around a fundamental new way of thinking in relationship to how people achieve security today the dominant world view is one that says that the way to achieve security is through getting power over the other and the only way you can really be secure is to get power over the other and if you have that enough power then you're safe but there's another world view that says that it comes from a different place in our experience this is the worldview that comes from the expects perience of saying from the world view that says like this were thrown into the world by ourselves we find ourselves surrounded by hostile or power seeking others and the only way to protect ourselves is to get power over them before they get power over us and it's this fundamental worldview that leads to the notion that homeland security requires domination control power over the other but that's so that's one fundamental worldview and it's one that most people on the planet have heard and particularly as in the last three hundred years although this worldview has been going on for thousands of years in the last three hundred years they've been it's been greatly celebrated as people have entered into a capitalist societies in which in the world of work there's tremendous reinforcement of this feeling that you're surrounded by selfish others who are only looking out for number one that they will advance themselves that the to the greatest extent they can without regard to the consequences for others but there's another world view that was also in contention for thousands of years and this worldview says something like that the first world view says thrown into the world by yourself surrounded by  ok the second world view says no actually most of us didn't come into the world view by ourselves most of us came into the world view through a mother and this mother gave us a certain level of care and kindness and generosity and love that made it possible for us to survive and if that hadn't happened we wouldn't have survived it all now and from that comes a lot neurosis you want to attribute to your mother that's fine but nevertheless there was a core of loving and care that you got it could have been a father who was playing the mothering role it could have been a somebody who adopted you who played that role but whoever it was you would not have survived without that mothering in the first few years of your life and so out of that has emerged a different kind of a different kind of relationship to the world in which people developed through and they develop religious and spiritual traditions that talked about love as a real force in the world as a force that could make it possible to build a different kind of world based on not on domination but on generosity and caring so that people could be secure in their lives in your life if you built enough loving and caring relationships and even tribes could get along with each other and then eventually even nations could get along with each other and of course there's always the other voice saying now that it's ridiculous it's foolish it'll never happen people been fighting for so long they'll never be friends this is what people said for example in one thousand nine hundred five after the after the  second world war they said france and germany have been fighting for at least the past hundred years killing each other they'll never be allies but today their allies today they worked together how could this happen because there is in every one that other experience so most of us are in a continuum someplace between the worldview of fear and the world view of hope the world view of domination and the world view of love and and generosity where we are on this continuum it's partly a reflection of our own childhood experiences our how much love that continued how much the neurosis undermined the love and later points in our development then what are our life experiences how many times where we with people who seem to recognize us as caring as human beings who could be cared for versus how many times were we taken advantage of manipulated felt like we were being pushed in bad directions and so we became more and more scared or that worldview sounded more and more true similarly what is the teachings of your religion or your idiology doesn't have you could be an atheist but still you hear worldviews that are put forward to you that either reinforced right hand of god or those right envision where the left hand ition which of the vision of fear of the vision of hope and finally there's the question of well where is the social energy because when social energy moves moves more towards fear then the voices of fear that we've all heard start to sound more deep and profound the people the authors the the playwrights the novelist and movies the editorial writers the op ed writers the column the song the people on television who are giving you the fear version of reality they sound very deep and profound but when social energy moves more towards hope then people open up to those stories that they've heard about the possibility of love and caring and generosity and then the people who talk in that way the writers the the authors the columnists the political leaders it's the religious leaders who speak in that way so if you think about it this alternation is really the key to politics it's really to understand politics always ask yourself not just politics and when you go hear a lecture when you go here as a political leader when you go hear a religious leader when you go to a play you're a movie when you watch television show whatever it is always ask yourself is the end result of this television show of this movie of this novel of this this public intellectual this this political leader is the overall effect to reinforce fear or is it to reinforce hope is it to reinforce the notion that we need domination or is a dream for is the notion that we need more love and caring and you can see politics moving from one in one direction and not just politics but the whole cultural apparatus moving in one direction or the other and of course that's made up of millions of individual decisions as well so where you are at any given moment will affect where others are because when i tell you that we've created a new organization called the the network of spiritual progressive now by the way are there any people here in the room who are members of the network is v progressive so a few a few ok so this and our organization is committed to the following we want to new bottom line in the western world and ultimately in the whole world the new bottom line says this that instead of judging any institution or social practice any any corporation any government policy our health system our educational system our legal system or even our personal behavior as rational or a productive or efficient to the extent that they maximize money or power which is the old bottom line we need to also include in this new bottom line to the extent that the that these institutions corporations social practices laws behaviors educational system etc tend to make it mate to move people were to bring out from people or sustain in people their capacity to be loving and caring kind and generous ethically and ecologically sensitive and capable of responding to the universe with all and wonder and radical  is that's a new bottom line it's very different from the existing bottom line and it's calling for a world of caring for each other now as i say at this point you're thinking but that's so impossible so unrealistic and i learned this actually you know when i say to you if you go home tonight and say to your friends you know what i can convince by rabbi lerner that actually we need a new bottom line of lov caring and that i don't want to support politicians anymore who are not going for the highest position of the good but are always being realistic and compromising and narrowing down what they're for to what others have told them  realistic at any given moment and your friend will probably say to you come on and you know everybody is just out for themselves and if you turn to your friend as i hope you will and say you know what i don't believe that about you you're not you're not really just out for yourself so it's not true that everybody is just out for themselves and either my just out for myself i really do care about other people and i care about their well being if you say that your friend is likely to say well that's true about me it's just everybody else ok so i learned there's actually and here i want to give adequate credit to i learned this when i gave a talk like this to two hundred methodists in kansas at a church in kansas and i said i took this talk and people were so excited that they gave me a standing ovation and then then afterwards they came up and said to me but i don't know what ok so i said why won't it work well your ideas are great but the only people who really would agree with this are methodists and kansas i'm so so i said why why would why do you think that and they said well we read the newspapers we even get the new york times here we watch we listen to n p r and we listen to other you know we watch television we see what the people are like on the coasts on the coasts everybody is just out for themselves they're manipulating everybody every television show teaches us that everybody is just manipulating for either money or power or sexual conquest or some way in which they can get power over somebody else and that they are the ones who are the successful ones that's how success is measured we know what those people are like now conversely when i talk about this in san francisco or seattle or los angeles or washington or new york what do they say but we love these ideas but middle america never right this is what keeps it all in place is our certainty that the world based on love and kindness and generosity can never happen the global marshall plan which you can find on the web at spiritual progressive dot org spiritual progressive thought org and is was introduced into congress into this congress by since i was  it's now yeah as a house resolution one hundred fifty seven and so it's not going to pass this term ok it's not going to passage of this particular congress but what i'm saying here is that if you thought well ok what does he mean by generosity then if you read if you go to our website and download it or if you join our network of spiritual progress is we'll send it to you we we have a detailed plan about how this can work we're not talking about a million rating poverty ok we're talking about ending it ok there's a reason for that so i can explain later why it's very different to a milieu right poverty than to end poverty so this is this is part of the strategy of the network of spiritual progressive some part of the reason i've come here tonight is to try to convince you to join our network of spiritual progressive because we are for a world based on love kindness and generosity and that voice needs to be heard in the public arena but as i said most of us the most people in the room at this point are probably thinking well this is crazy it will never happen and it can't happen but that's exactly what held back or prevented some many people from originally supporting the women's movement of them that i have more of the movement of civil rights or the movement of gay liberation and so forth the certainty that we have that everybody else is stuck in selfishness materialism they only care  for themselves so the basic message i want to leave you with tonight and i hope you'll read the book so that the book gives you some grounding because this is a vulgar presentation of a much more sophisticated argument than i can give not only because of my but just because of the time ok this takes a lot of time to think through basic messages don't be realistic don't be realistic whether you've got ten more years on the planet with twenty more years or seventy more years on the planet don't waste your time fighting for things that have been defined as possible and realistic by the people who have power and the people they've elected including our loving wonderful a liberal democrats in the congress who also have come to accept that which is as the current reality as what's realistic instead go for your highest vision of the good go for your highest vision of what kind of world you really want let don't let it be that when you're looking back on your life that you say well what did you do i fought for x y and z because they were the best that could have been achieved at the time and they weren't achieved anyway at least  put your energy into your highest vision so why do i speak in churches and synagogues and mosques because here at least in our tradition there was a part of the religious tradition was something that said love your neighbor as yourself but not only love love your neighbor it also says in the in the torah love the stranger love the other love the other and if there's one thing that is the most frequently repeated mitzvah command in the torah it's this when you come into your land do not oppress the stranger the other remember that you were the stranger or the other in the land of egypt ok this passing on of heard from generation to generation can be stopped it doesn't have to happen that's what it means to believe in god is to believe that there is something that makes it possible to transcend the repetition compulsion the tendency to pass on to others the pain in cruelty that was passed on to us we can stop it but the only way you can stop it is to stop being realistic and to go for your highest of the good if you will do that with us if you will join the network of spiritual progressive so if you will work with us it can happen that we will have a tremendous impact on the discourse in the middle east because what is needed there is for each side to feel that it is not crazy to believe or trust in the possibility of the goodness of the other but it's not going to happen if we who don't face the trauma that the same kinds of traumas that the people there if we are stuck in the world view of domination if we are stuck in the world view of fear and look i know what happened of trace this from the bush years and after two thousand and one and the tremendous fear that that generated until finally people started to wake up and say this war is terrible and then there was this tremendous hope for obama and then unfortunately after obama was elected he went very far away from many of the things he promised and believe me i'm not given not in any way attacking obama i'm simply saying that if you trace the energy that what happened was that people have moved back into cynicism and despair from that from that disillusionment because the moment the people don't live up to their highest vision that everybody else says well of they're just out for themselves if they're being cagey and looking out for what they think is in their best interest rather than fighting for the world the kind of goodness that i really want that i'll do the same thing why should i be the one person on the block who is idealistic when everybody out for themselves you need to build a different kind of consciousness in the society and it's not going to happen from somebody up there it's not going to be a new savior it's not going to be a new incredible political leader it's going to be us east significant network that's fine the message is not join my organization we need to support and so forth but the most important thing i want to say is don't be a realistic spend the rest of your time going for your highest of the good on this planet and that's the way we will heal the middle east thank you i was seventeen years old i was married and ten months after i was married i had a baby girl she was very ill very jaundiced and the doctor told me the o b g y n who had delivered her told me that if i ever had no the child i would die and three months later i was pregnant again and i was absolutely terrified so i went back to him and i said am i pregnant and he said yes and he said i told you not to get pregnant and i said but you didn't tell me not to i thought we were pretty close i mean we had talked about getting married we had talked about babies we had talked about what we would name a child and when i got pregnant and said i'm pregnant everything  changed it was like well who's is it and that was such a shock to me the relationship ended i didn't really understand the implications in the fact that it was illegal so all it was just like i would make this problem go away  until the mid eighteen hundreds abortions were legal and available in the united states both the state and the church permitted abortions if they occurred before quickening when the mother first perceived who had provided abortion and maternity care in their communities for centuries during the second half of the nineteenth century victorian society began to condemn women seeking abortions as selfish in morrow and shirking the duty of motherhood protestant and catholic churches joined the medical establishment in expressing their condemnation meanwhile legislation restricting abortion continued to spread and by the turn of the century both birth control and abortion were illegal in most states if a woman needed medical treatment after a botched abortion she faced a humiliating and dangerous situation even though infected and bleeding she was often required to testify against her husband or lover and the abortionist before she could receive medical care  would have twenty or thirty women comin and bleeding and dying from abortions that they had induced themselves in the cold during a trick was used or they had a friend that had a catheter and they'd leave her in until  for a day or two and she was bleeding and cramping and they'd come in and that's not an exaggeration i think it was true in any major city area in this country in the fift dollars was a lot of money and i worked hard every thing i had that i could get a few pennies for and i eventually got my fifty dollars and i went out to see this woman and she put i think it was a strip of  slippery elm bark and she inserted this my uterus and she said now you go home will swell up and you will have paid and you will probably have some temperature but you will have a miscarriage two days later i had a spring fever and i was in such pain and so i went back out to see this woman and she lived in a sha and she met me at the door and she said told you not to come back and i said i have nowhere else to go and so she cleaned me up and i was so frightened and i was in tears and she put her arms her family like that and she just me up to her chest for a minute and she said honey did you think it was so easy to be a woman i'll never forget that never forget the kindness of that woman even under those terrible circumstances and so she said this time you go she gave me some aspirin she said don't you ever come back again and that was the last i saw of her and i had a roaring favor for about three or four days when i got better and i went back to see my doctor when i got the money for the visit and i told him i said i had something bad and he said well i figured a smart kid like you would figure a way as fit and i looked at and i was alone with this woman and i remember what she looked like really well she was questor it too friendly really and then she told me to go in and that there would be blood but they would be all right but the fact is that i didn't abort i just lead a lot and it was incredibly painful and i got a bad infection and they started looking for a doctor because i just kept bleeding bleeding and not aborted finally they found a doctor he gave me some me dication to make me abort and i aborted at home so that if he were caught he would be able to prove that the process had been initiated before he became involved and he explained that that he wanted to be able to help other women who found themselves in my position and that the only way he could protect himself was that  so that was i i had to do that alone i didn't tell anyone except the father and when i saw his reaction i didn't tell anyone else i just thought well this is my problem and i'll have to deal with it and the only thing i could do was to get an abortion because to have a baby without a husband just was not done i just went to the telephone directory and i looked up obstetricians and gynecologists and i looked for a gynecologist didn't advertise as an obstetrician and i thought maybe he would be sympathetic and it turned out he was there were many physicians who were supportive of abortion who felt it should be available and provided safely for women but they were afraid to do them themselves sometimes the fear was because they they didn't want to be found out or w censured but very often their fear was and rightly i think that as soon as word got out that they were willing to do abortions they would be flooded with requests and even one of the doctors who started off thinking he would do a few abortions and who found himself getting referrals of women from all over the united states was dr curtis boyd in one thousand sixty five he began to do abortions for women referred to him by ministers over the course of the next eight years he did thousands of abortions i began to realize how hesitation just really literally walked up and down the streets i was by myself and i would go from one place to another and they would all be in the same situation they would say nobody's there i know what you're talking about and frightening throughout the years of criminal abortion and are a danger surrounded on wanted pregnancies women drink toxic substances unscrupulous practitioners at that time shotgun marriages were in bogan and they were all these youngsters getting married which never soon saw that that never solved anything and only made the matters worse the marriages never lasted the children suffered and it was a miserable situation and then we went through the period when we were sending girls away to homes for the unwed mothers there were all over the country and they they were expected to work part time and give up their child for adoption and those are bear that was a very sad situation because you would see a young woman come in and she was a school girl she would have to go off to leave home and and everyone knew why and her life was really wrecked socially and academically and everything else and it was the young that really got me saying leave some of these youngsters twelve thirteen fourteen their mothers a bring them in and it was just a horrible thing as public awareness grew about the consequences of illegal abortion lawmakers in clergy joined with the medical establishment in princeton for before in states where therapeutic abortions were printed some doctors were lenient so they could provide more women were safe abortion i heard about these two call with and stand for who went to to you wanna and the pain the illegal abortions the infection of her reproductive organs and it was necessary to do a hysterectomy which render her sterile of course at the same time there was the existence in california law which allowed for medical support with an abortion not on medical grounds namely through a psychiatric channel we would use the channels in order to enable the girl or woman to get a therapeutic abortion or intervene to the i was outraged at the way in which women were being treated whether there was a reaction of the boyfriend or fiance or husband some of these responses were going to turn out some men told the women the if i'd known you were so stupid i would have gone with you in the first place others told the girl that it's her problem she's got the baby he to do with a good number of them just took off just had no response whatsoever so where do women who are desperate to get help did make me recognise that there were many of us out there there who were looking desperately for some place to solve the problem and so i began to listen and get to hear when anybody said that t know you get sensitive to it and you begin to hear things that give you a clue and you pursue it a little bit and find out that somebody that had an abortion and i just got the names of the doctors and i would just give the names a young woman would call on the phone someone i didn't know and would ask for help and that they were feeling so desperate that they were calling strangers i was aware that what i was doing was illegal i guess i think what was going to happen to them was worse than the possibility of what might happen to me people who themselves had had to search for an abortion understood the difficulty in finding one when rest was nineteen he and his girlfriend realized she was pregnant terrified that the press would be the father and going to my a young guy very friendly so when i told and he said find out more about it what do you want to do so forth and i began to ask around about possibilities  for getting an abortion and i talked to her and she didn't want to be a mother either first off there was some mis be gotten effort i don't know where it originated or hard to get some kind of pill abortion abortion they didn't work finally i get the name of someone actually in town in los angeles because willing to do this and get a was approached by a senior professor a woman who had a student freshman and she was pregnant at the time of my sister's death i was tongue in cheek die in childbirth but that didn't make any sense and i was told it was a miscarriage and she bled to death three came to me in bits and pieces over many years even though she was using an i u d for birth control became pregnant the doctor told her that the would probably cause the baby to be deformed but that removing it might cause a miscarriage or wait the risks carefully and decided to have the i u d removed she went back for the scheduled appointment and he said i'm sorry i have consulted with colleagues and i cannot do anything that crude implicate me in an illegal act right now the whole abortion issue is very very hot and very controversial and i just can't  and she said and i'm inclined to believe i will do it myself and i'll tell you what to do i'll tell you how to do it and when you're in the process of miscarriage you can call me if you go to the hospital and then i'll be able to help you without jeopardizing my own position so that was her plan when removing lee are you d didn't cause a miscarriage lola became desperate she sought a way to end the pregnancy herself she stand that again rosalie had been raped by an older man she was afraid that another illegal abortion would lead to the same medical complications as before so she decided to go to a home for unwed mothers and then give the baby up for adoption everyone told me that if i had any sense i would look at the baby i would just let them take it away and i'd never look at the baby but i did i  let them bring the baby to me and i held the baby that was a terrible mistake and then i owed some money for my boarding room and medical and so i stayed for a while and i worked in the nursery to work some money off and that was a very bad mistake because i was just around babies all the time and i wanted to keep the baby and i actually held a baby before they took it  and anybody who would think that a beer great way to solve a problem is just plain take a child who doesn't even know her on mind a seventeen year old young woman and ask her to carry a baby in her body to kill for nine months and then give birth to it and then just give it away like it's like it's nothing very difficult even after forty years to edm it to doing something that was against the law was illegal it's sort of put you in the position of having a criminal past and although you might not feel that what you did was in any way criminal there still the stigma to it it's a relief to be able to talk about it after all these years and say i was human knew that i could lose my medical license i knew that i could go to prison and just as i had to trust these women who came to me not to bring charges against me which could put me in prison they had to trust me to give them good medical care and service and not arm them and that was a scary thing in those days because you didn't always know who you were going to you didn't know what the outcome was was going to be it was frightening for women to come from great distances to a little town in east texas to some doctor they came by bus by train by car and they had to trust that they were going to leave the guy the us mexico border lands are a vast and ecologically distinct region of the north american continent in fact the international border post is some of the most biologically rich lands in the world spanning countless mountain ranges too of north america's four deserts and major river ecosystems some of the plight of wildlife species that call the borderlands home can be found no where else on earth and many of the migrating species of north america cross this line at some point in their life these areas provide important habitat for rare and threatened wildlife species including many federally listed threatened in and dangerous species but these little wild places have been under assault by a border policy that can operate above the law building walls along the border at any cost the border wall does unnecessary and serious harm precious natural areas and disrupts critical wildlife co the sierra club has taken a stand against policies that promote environmental degradation including those that provide for the wantonly destructive border walls it supports rational border policies that allow those on the ground to gain operational control of the border rather than adhering to symbolic mandates to construct the estuary serves as a filtration system for the t one a river valley and provides a rare patch of coastal habitat this internationally recognized issuer and is home to a vast array of migra were created by centuries of a levy all deposits brought by the colorado river many specially adapted plants and animals thrive here but occur in no other place on earth in arizona in new mexico area and these places are called scotland's because they're mountains that rise up out of big flat plans we have been able to get pictures and video of the friend species  twelve or fifteen different its huge one thousand two hundred forty mile southern border along the rio grande texas coast the most miles of binational habitats ranging from the mountains near el paso to the string of pearls network of wildlife refuges along the river the lower rio grande valley is one of the world's top destination for bird watchers and diverse slightly important reason for wildlife all of this diversity that exist out here is really confined to a very small patches of habitat those are mostly kind of preserved within the national wildlife refuge system you've got the lower national wildlife refuge that consists of a number of individual tracks that are strung together kind of connected by the rio grande and those are really the best habitat left you've also got nature conservancy tracks  got on refuge tracks you've got now butterfly park of the world birding center refuges and really the the river is what links all of these together and makes these scattered bits of habitat viable together these borderlands providing important corridors and habitat for north american wildlife from the pacific ocean to the gulf of mexico the significance of these lands and the environmental laws that protect them have been ignored by current u s border policy border walls patrol roads in outposts and other infrastructure pose a substantial threat to the security of ecosystems healthy habitats and diverse and sustainable wildlife populations in the mid one nine hundred ninety s the united states began constructing walls along the us mexico border in places like san diego and el paso the placement of walls in urban areas forced migrants farther and farther into remote wild lands this in forstmann strategy has not reduced the number of undocumented migrants crossing the border it has only shifted where migrants cross resulting in the death of many migrants from exposure and dehydration a shameful consequence of the current border policy we say that the only thing the wall won't stop are people because wildlife migration it's cross border flow of all of these natural systems will be disturbed but people will go over around under the wall border patrol says over and over again that it only slow somebody down by five minutes that's basically a speed bump it's a speed bump that's going to destroy a critical habitat and you know also do tremendous damage to agriculture and eco tourism and the economy of an already very poor area so we're going to spend billions of dollars to slow somebody down for five minutes they do all these impacts build a wall here in san diego county and throughout our history do all these impacts what it's going to do it's not going to stop the immigration problem it's going to move it to another area south hasn't really solved anything migrated off road vehicle patrols create new roads through the back country low level helicopter flights and construction of patrol outposts and wilderness areas and other public lands disturb wildlife the construction of the border wall has resulted in the bisection of formerly vast ecosystems the wall is an impenetrable barrier to a vast array of wildlife and has changed the face of the landscape we have problems with saddam and there are problems with change and wound contour we have problems with respect to driving we have a total engineer operational management of a natural system without consideration for the natural demands of the web that's not going to work what these barrier we were accomplished will be too hot these varied reach region into to population dynamics in the region jag were in the can't make it to the river can't make it to potential mates can't make it to other refuge tracks where they are that they would need to have sufficient hunting  ground there's also the concern that there will be a lot of clearance of vegetation to give them a clear line of sight from the wall to the river in some places the wall is as much as a mile away from the river and and you know there's a lot of concern about what will happen to the backside of that and you know it if that happens you've got really vital riparian habitat and this really vital corridor just completely destroyed and all that work lost some proponents of the wall go as far as stating the wall will have because of environmental impacts by reducing the amount of trash in personal items left behind  people are concerned about the trash in the border short term scale trash can be picked up but long term scale wider curses grew not being able to be restored why left t will not be restored the places where roads are being open and the dancer is going to be blade is not going to be restored nobody is going to restore that vegetation and it's going to take center if i all we get to two half have it that's the way they used to be before you can see france infrastructure west so that on term effects of these infrastructure are way way more important than short term punctual problems how is it that the federal government is able to construct the border wall without considering the range of environmental problems created by the wa in two thousand and five the real i d act was signed into law tucked into this overarching bill section one hundred two gives unprecedented power to a politically appointed official the real i d act gives the secretary of the department of homeland security the power to waive all local state and federal laws in order to construct barriers along the know legal manner in order to resolve our differences since the law was signed in two thousand and five federal laws have been waived on three occasions by the former administration once in san diego to construct the wall near the chief want to history in twice in arizona one way or was issued for a project within the endangered sonoran pronghorn habitat and the other within the federally period national conservation area these two waivers of bedrock environmental protection laws were unprecedented but they were only the beginning on april first two thousand and eight the use of the waiver provided the green light to nearly five hundred miles of infrastructure projects in all four border states this waiver swept aside more than thirty important laws created to protect clean water clean air and wildlife habitat important historical sites and specific wilderness  has built since the the mid one thousand sixty's in a heartbeat can just be dismissed and it's it's it's it's incredible it's an incredible abuse of power and it's an incredible abuse of you know forty years of environmental law even though president obama has pledged to use the powers granted in section one hundred two of the real id with great discretion the bush administration's misuse shows the danger in leaving us now on the books lives ecological health and integrity of our border southwest a number of congressional leaders have recognized the social and ecological destruction created through the construction of border walls they support legislation that will help give border communities and land managers a voice in the process to find initiatives to help heal our damaged borderlands in most important take away the unprecedented power of an appointed official to disregard local state and federal laws these border wall is not the solution he will not stop people from coming in  however its effects on many all other aspects of this region will be devastating it's necessary to address concerns with national security we just think that  a wall in each other off for over one hundred years the sierra club has worked to protect wild places current border policy is undermining many of the laws that protect the land and wildlife and steals the public's ability to participate in making public policy in the last presidential election the american people voted for change here that change should mean that land managers border communities and tribal nations have a say in border policy it should mean rehabilitating damage that has been done as a result a reckless past policy is it should mean allowing experts on the ground to make the decisions necessary to gain operational control of the border rather than allowing politicians to spend billions of dollars on symbolic mandates and real change should mean repealing the unprecedented waiver powers granted in section one zero two of the real i d act contact washington d c and tell them that the wall is not the answer it is a purely symbolic gesture which harms public and private lands wildlife and border communities and has also resulted in the deaths of thousands of migrants let your voice be heard and demand the change that we envisioned put an end to the border independent media is the hope