I've been beaten by the LAPD. I lived in Berkeley in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I've been tear gassed and watched police push people backwards off of highway overpasses. I knew and understood many Black Panthers.

I am sick and tired of Kumbaya songs. I am sick and tired of turn-the-other-cheek reactions to current affairs in the US.

But I am also a lawyer, sworn to peaceful methods.

What do I do?

What strikes me is the age old method of ostracism - practiced in ancient Athens, written about in plays like Lysistrata, and rendered into strong force by churches through the practice of excommunication.

We ought to perform civil excommunication on ICE agents - do not sell or rent products to them in stores, do not rent hotel rooms to them, do not fund them, treat them like modern day lepers. Businesses should make it clear that they will never be hired for a job. Do not adopt Jesus' policy of acceptance of them.

Spread their names so that we may cut them off from society.

*pops up for air briefly between amazing beaches and forests and research discussions and constant yelling about satellites and hanging out with friends*

Sending peace!

(Wish me luck on an extremely long first Skytrain/bus commute I've done in over a decade tomorrow morning!)

#ProfSamLectureTour

15 December 1924 | German Jewish woman, Esther Bejarano (nee Löwy), was born in Saarlouis.

In #Auschwitz from April 1943. She played accordion in the women’s orchestra.
She was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. She escaped from an evacuation march.

After the war, she lived in Israel and became a singer before returning to Germany in 1960.

She dedicated the rest of her life to educating people about the Holocaust and fighting xenophobia. She passed away in 2021.