5/28/2024
My Dear Friend & President, JRB,
I am most grateful for the quiet that has ensued with the departure of the puppies. I have needed my full power of concentration to discern how to communicate to my students why we are holding class today even though the graduate union has elected to strike. Today’s work stoppage is aimed at UCD, where the administration has been accommodating to the encampment that has been on our quad for weeks.
I spent the last 40 minutes reading Thoreau (HDT). For the first time in my life, I read the entirety of “Civil Disobedience” with its explanation for why HDT chose to spend a night in jail rather than pay his taxes. The line that stood out to me was, “I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”
Would my tax resistance help you to see that WINTA?
My magical moment of the AM came from reading the abstract of a piece by Taiwanese philosopher, Ten-Herng LAI , who suggested “Civil disobedience is reliable by being costly, & costly primarily by being punished. Civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force.” I was excited to find someone writing about democracy & the need to public displays of dissent written in Chinese. It was an answer to my prayer to communicate with my international students about civil disobedience.
I wish I had more time to write about a) Melissa Gates’ latest efforts to make the world a better place, b) the New Humanitarian, which is producing fact-based journalism from the heart of conflicts & disasters & c) Bill Walton’s thoughts about “practice(ing) of noncooperation with the existing government.”
I will take a moment to express my chagrin over the plight of the Rohingya in Burma who are facing abuse at the hands of the AA at a time when neighbouring states are closing their borders & providing few rights to asylum seekers.
I hope you have a restorative day after your flurry of activity this weekend.
BYBS,
