The whole situation around Omar Rivera's cruel death is just sickening to me.

I am a "white collar" working-class mother to two boys who had to contend every day for 3 years that their father and I were winging it without medical insurance. We've been lucky to have found a pro-active, pro-alternative medicine, health care safe haven in our family doctor's practice at the Sidney Hillman Family Practice.

But our health care experience is not common for most New Yorkers. Most people jump from one practice to another in a game of health insurance coverage musical chairs. And those who are too poor to work out any payment scale have to contend with whatever they can get either through an indigents' clinic or whichever emergency room that may attend them.

What's so horrible about Omar's death is that it reminds me of a "so true it hurts" bit in Chris Rock's stand up routine, Bigger and Blacker.

Sobibor was almost the forgotten Nazi Death Camp. It was almost forgotten because the SS themselves tried to eradicate all traces of the camp. The camp had become an embarrassment after nearly half the Jews at the camp rebelled and escaped.

That rebellion happened today in 1943.

Sobibor was one of the actual "Death Camps" where extermination was the primary goal. Most concentration camps focused on working the prisoners to death. The "Death Camps" focused on killing them as fast as they could. There were six death camps, all located in Poland: Aucshwitz II, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. More than 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor alone. Both Treblinka and Sobibor were destroyed thanks to Jewish uprisings.

At 4 PM, Oct. 14th, 1943, rebels led by Alexander (Sasha) Pechersky started killing SS soldiers at Sobibor. The first to die was the camp's deputy commander, killed as he visited the tailor's shop to try on a new uniform. Here is an account of that first blow as told by a survivor:

[Ed. Note]: Promoted.

Hi Betsy,

Wow! You sure have been a busy bee lately.

I just received a copy of the press release you sent yesterday announcing you were traipsing to Brooklyn to blast! Blast! BLAST! conditions (?!?!) at Bushwick Houses.

Let's forget the silly little detail that you scheduled this 'blasting' for ten o'clock in the morning. What I found most intriguing was this little bit of wisdom written by John Collins, your communications guy and I assume signed off by you : That you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore because senior citizens were left stranded until 2am waiting for the elevator to be fixed.

Now ... ahem ... let me get this straight Betsy ...

A 47 year-old Puerto Rican woman died on August 20th due to said broken down elevator --along with the multiple daily little violences she had to contend with living in that building-- but somehow that didn't catch your attention?

An African American woman, also in her 40s, was the sheroe who got Errol Louis and me into that building after being ignored numerous times by 311, NYCHA, your offices, and numerous media outlets around the city ... and yet now you find the time to "blast" about it?

If I were a public advocate, I would assume that one of my principal points of focus would be to help the poor of the city --anywhere, everywhere, regardless of gender, age, race or ethnicity.

Yet ... and yet ... Betsy, are you telling me that all it took was to tell you that some senior citizens were left out in the cold one night, for you to do something about it?

Please Betsy, don't tell me these senior citizens happen also to be white; because that would be the ultimate insult not only to the memory of Lillian Milán, but to her living and very real Puerto Rican husband who is still living in that building.

Seriously Betsy, tell your communications guy that what he is communicating is not just troublesome but unbelievably nasty.

Anyhow, I hope you had fun with the blasting.

Have a great day,
liza

You won't have to miss 24 to catch Chris Owens’ TV show. At least for now.

Owens, a former Democratic Congressional Candidate and son of former Congressman Major Owens, is the host and executive producer of Inside the Congressional Black Caucus (iCBC, the lower case "i" is intentional and part of the show's logo) which was originally to premiere at 9 PM on Monday April 30 on the Black Family (BFC). That's the same time slot as 24, that addictive TV show that glorifies torture.

However, BFC is now being acquired by the Gospel Music Network and will cease programming next week.

But iCBC won't be homeless long. Owens is close to a deal with a cable property owned by one of the world's largest media companies.

Stay tuned for more info.

April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943.

Instead, the Jews of Warsaw gave Hitler a present that he certainly didn’t want: months of armed rebellion that DEFEATED the German army repeatedly and wasn’t completely crushed until October 1943, though major combat operations, to borrow a phrase, were completed around May. Including the periods of more sporadic fighting, this resistance lasted far longer than the German take over of Poland as a whole, which took scarcely one month. It is pointed out in Melvin Konner’s book Unsettled that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, largely fought by Jews but with some Polish uprisings occurring at the same time and inspired by the Jewish uprising, also lasted longer than the time it took Germany to defeat France, though again you have to include the period of more sporadic fighting as well as the main combat.

The uprising was partly inspired by the Socialist Zionist organization Hashomer Hatzair (coincidentally, my mother briefly belonged to this organization in her youth). Insurgency started in January, 1943. By the end of January the Ghetto was actually controlled by two armed Jewish organizations, one led by Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair, and Zivia Lubetkin (who survived the uprising) and the other led by Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum, a former officer in the Polish army. As Passover began on April 19th, Himmler’s birthday present to Hitler also began, with thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian forces attacking the Ghetto. They moved in at 4 a.m. They moved throughout the Ghetto and believed they had occupied it within 4 hours. Then, at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, the insurgents struck with a single captured machine gun, ample small arms fire, and many Molotov cocktails. The Germans were completely routed by the Jewish insurgents by 2 P.M., providing Hitler with a major embarrassment for his birthday.

March is an insane month for the amount of political events you can go to. The proof is in the amount of political heavy hitters DL21C was able to wrangle during that month : Jon Kerry, Wesley Clark, John Tester, John Edwards, Bill Richardson. It is also an insane month for the amount of technology and media conferences you can get invited to, the most important (at least for me) being SXSW --but there's eTech and IDPI as well.

I missed almost all the events involving presidential candidates because of the amount of conferences I was involved in during the month of March. Once I was done with my last one, ARC's national conference on "Facing Race", I was free to enjoy a candidate or two by the end of the month. I wasn't able to make it to the John Edwards event (I was having some fun at a party with Nancy Pelosi).

So 3/26 was Bill Richardson's lucky number.

The City Board of Elections denied Independence Party candidate to replace the late John Lavelle representing Staten Island’s North Shore in the March 27 Special Election Kelvin Alexander’s bid to place his made up Family First line (Not to be confused with Working Families which supports Democratic opponent Matt Titone ) as an additional line on the ballot. The board ruled that 611 of the petition’s 1616 signatures were invalid, leaving him short of the 1100 he needed for that additional line.

Alexander, a Staten Island Democratic County Committee member, is running on the Independence line and potentially turning a potential easy Democratic win into an opportunity for Republican Rose Margarella because the party chose Titone over him. He is undecided if he’ll fight the ruling with the state Supreme Court.

Alexander has accused any challenge of his fabricated party petition as marginalizing minority voters. I find that a stretch since he’s already on the ballot as a better known party’s candidate.

I also need to clarify that I am supporting Titone in this race. I have donated money to Titone, campaigned with Matt and have a Titone sign on my front lawn. There are some comments on the Link TextStaten Island Advance’s SIlive political forum that take out of context my initial backing of Alexander in the Daily Gotham. Although I would have voted for Alexander in the first round of voting at the County Convention had I been allowed to participate, I would have switched to Titone in subsequent rounds. Also for the SIlivers who read my blog, I was not one of the January Committee additions thought loyal to Olivari. I was told I was added in June 2006 and still haven’t been named to the Committee and thus still can not vote in County matters.

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

At a time when I was simultaneously becoming more agnostic/atheist and more Jewish (perhaps in the tradition of Isaac Deutcher who recognized a place within Judaism for non-believing Jews), I quite naturally posed the age old question of just what it means to be a Jew. Parts of my quest to answer this question for myself have become diaries on various blogs. Genetic, cultural, tribal, religious, nationalistic and historical definitions of Judaism all combine into a mish mash that must be confusing to non-Jews but that I have come to see as a very key aspect to Jewish identity. I have come to see this identity crisis as a core part of Judaism that goes back as far as we can trace.

That’s how I think. Immerse in the complexity and maybe even add to that complexity with some paradoxes: atheists can be perfectly good Jews, identity crisis can be a defining feature of identity, etc.

My wife thinks differently than I. And her response to the question of Jewish identity was characteristically terse and to the point:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

Did you know that the vast majority of anti-Semitic libels, including accusations of disloyalty and the infamous blood libel, go all the way back to the Roman Empire. Of course Jews were slaughtered and attacked way before Romans became experts at it, but ancient nations like Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt were simply treating Jews the same way they treated everyone: conquest, slavery, high taxes...

Remember that the very, very first historical reference to "Israel" was an Egyptian boast by Merneptah that the people of Israel had been completely destroyed, leaving no offspring. But this boast was included in a long list of destroyed people.

Romans, as far as history tells us, were the first to villify Jews as they killed them. It was no longer a matter of bullying everyone. Jews were singled out in particular.

Apion (1st century BC) gave us the earliest version of the blood libel. The Roman historian Tacitus gave us the suspicion that Jews could never be loyal to their host nation and hence were always under suspicion. Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch all added to the earliest history of intellectual anti-Semitism.

Natrually the Spanish Inquisition, operating throughout Spanish and Portuguese territories, took anti-Semitism to new lows. Until the 1930's, with all due respect to modern Catholics, Catholics were the most rabid Jew-haters in history. Of course Hitler and the Nazis finally took that title.

Having been raised a liberal Jew, I have a particular view of how people can achieve success in America. I admit it doesn't solve all problems, but what worked for my family and my ethnicity was quite simply political activism (particularly reliably voting) and education.

So, coming from my personal point of view, my annual recommendation for how to celebrate MLK day is with donations to a few good causes that I hope will help solve future problems.

First let me highlight the NAACP National Voter Fund. In 2000, the NAACP initiated a separate Section 501(c)(4) organization, the NAACP National Voter Fund (NVF). NVF's mission is to engage in issue advocacy, educate voters on candidates' stands on civil rights, and increase voter turnout in the African American community through voter education and non-partisan registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. In 2000, NVF led a nationwide effort resulting in an historic increase in African American voter participation, despite well-documented cases of unfair purges and barriers.

The NAACP Voter Fund focuses on voter registration, GOTV and election protection. In my little world view, any group that has high and reliable voter turnout will get political attention. Any group that is known for low voter turnout is likely to be ignored.