Post your own comments online at the end of each article or email letters@indypendent.org.
PIGEONHOLING ART
Response to “A Look at Art and Public Pedagogy in New York City” June 2:
One of the problematic areas is that many of these groups keep one foot in the art world, and with their other foot, they are invested in and exploring education and the facets within education they have chosen (architecture, sociology, writing, etc). I’m sure they wouldn’t mind leaving the art world behind, so why don’t they? They could develop their program in a way where they wouldn’t need to listen to all the criticism of how this is or isn’t art and whether it’s affecting enough social change by offering real/tangible outcomes. Shall we ask painters how much social change their effect with their work? I think the proof of their importance is plain and simple — they are finding ways to change people’s perspectives on obligatory schooling.
—Eric
ONE-SIDED NEWS
Response to “Palestine Solidarity: One Woman’s Journey,” June 2:
I am an Israeli citizen living in New York for over a year now. I will start by stating that I cannot tolerate loss of innocent lives. The situation in the area I was born in is very grave. People of different cultures are using force against each other to try and control each other. What angers me is that this article has many facts about Palestinian casualties and suffering, but has no facts about Jewish casualties and suffering. I call that bad press.
News are supposed to be as objective as possible, yet this article sees just one side of the equation. Just like Debbie Mardon woke up to see how her country’s foreign policies help support 9/11, she should wake up to see the Israeli side as well. She seems like a classic western radical — for years living with her eyes covered, and then waking up one day and throwing out the baby with the water. I denounce one-sidedness, no matter who is doing it. Please open your eyes and give all the facts. Fox News does not do that, but neither do you. So that puts you in the same boat as them.
—Edo Ceder
COMMUNITY REPORTBACK
Response to “Activists Recount Events on the Mavi Marmara,” IndyBlog June 18:
Thank you for covering the event. It was great to see so many people, not just Palestinians and Muslims, coming out to support these speakers.
—Jonathan
Comments
Edo Ceder, you write: 'News are supposed to be as objective as possible...'
As a senior dutch journalist of 62 years old I can tell you this is an old mistake you make. A journalist can never be 'objective.' In cases of grave injustice a human being must morally take the side of the oppressed. Israel has become a rogue state that acts as if it is above the law. As a radio-journalist I have seen in front of my own eyes how Israeli sharpshooters killed Palestinian children.
I think Howard Zinn was absolutely right when he stated the following:
“From the start of my teaching and writing, I had no illusions about “objectivity,” if that meant avoiding a point of view. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or any one telling a story) was forced to choose, from an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.”
“There is an insistence, among certain educators and politicians in the United States, that students must learn facts. I am reminded of the character in Charles Dickens’s book Hard Times, Gradgrind, who admonishes a younger teacher: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.”
“But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world–by a teacher, a writer, anyone–is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts are not important and so they are omitted from the presentation.”
From Voices of a People’s History of the Untied States, Introduction, p.25, edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.
One can never accept terror from a state, even the 'Jewish state' is not entitled to commit terror.
stan van houcke
amsterdam
the netherlands
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