Category: Uncategorized

We’re making some history and you can be part of it. You’ve made it possible; come and enjoy it.

We’re asking people to register for the March 16th Day of Action. It will help us plan our activities and the technology we need.

https://radicalelders.net/day-of-action-march-16/

March 16, Noon to 8:00 pm U.S. Eastern time.

Here’s what’s in store:

Opening Ceremony — Owl, representing the Ramapough Lenape Nation

Safety Net Panel — Alex Lawson, Executive Director, Social Security Works; Evelyn Jones Rich, NYC Municipal Retiree; Ana Malinow, National Single Payer Network; Jose R. Sanchez, Board Chair, National Institute for Latino Policy; Phil Warlick, Labor Leader, Coordination Team – Radical Elders

Triggered Action

Movement Exercise — Choreographer Rosalind Newman

Writing as Activism — Writer, Educator and Radical Elders leader Maritza Arrastia

Dance Performance — CUMBE Center for African & Diaspora Dance

Mapping the Future — workshop led by Makani Themba

Triggered Action

Performance — NYC Labor Chorus; Ted Glick & Solidarity Singers

Mini-Concert — Vibraphonist Kevin Norton and friends

Musical Performance — Luci Murphy and friends

Shout-outs from prominent activists all over the country;

Live broadcasts from various local events and actions by elders in cities nationwide.

Some of our members are planning their own activities: leafletting on some issue or getting together in someone’s house for a group viewing and conversation or…well…whatever you want to do. If that’s the case, let us know at info@radicalelders.net so we can support you and arrange to broadcast a few minutes from your action.

Otherwise, just tune into the Zoom link we’ll be sending out the week before the action and the leave your computer connected to the Zoom. You’ll be linked to the entire day’s activities and can participate whenever you want and can.

Finally, spread the word. Everyone’s invited, whatever age. You belong to other organizations? Invite them. This is an effort every member should be part of.

We’ll be in touch from now on pretty regularly with more information including a half-page leaflet for you to distribute among friends For now, though, we’re just asking that you register.

https://radicalelders.net/day-of-action-march-16/

a statement by Radical Elders

November 2, 2023

Radical Elders adds our voice to the worldwide outcry for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli government’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. The insanity of our imperialist, racial capitalist world continues to explode. We add our voice to the world’s outrage at this most recent eruption, in one of the last settler colonialist struggles. The world must not remain silent to what Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls the “incremental genocide” Israel has been inflicting on Gaza for the last 16 years.

We call for an immediate end to U.S material military support for the government of Israel; an end to the gigantic material support we, as taxpayers, give the Israeli government, which before the current crisis amounted to $10.4 million every day; a bill has been introduced in Congress to send an additional $14.3 billion to Israel.

We call for an end to U.S. political support for Israel’s current escalation of its long war on Gaza, and its 75 year war on the Palestinians.

We demand that our government call on our declared ally IMMEDIATELY to end the criminal shutdown of all food, water, fuel, electricity and medical supplies to Gaza, and demand an IMMEDIATE and complete ceasefire.

Some of our members criticize the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations in their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Other members believe that sometimes people fighting for their freedom have no other option. In all cases, we mourn all deaths, believe that violence is an insane solution to this situation and absolutely reject war as an answer to this crisis.

As a US-based national organization of Radical Elders, united by our mini-program, we take stands on issues directly connected to our mini-program:

Racism and white supremacy: Our mini-program recognizes the importance of supporting struggles against “colonialism and imperialism, and … their enabling forms of oppression such as racism and white supremacy” as well as “the dehumanization of systematically excluded or oppressed populations.”

We oppose the racism structured into the apartheid Israeli state. We believe those structures underlie the settler colonialism that the Palestinians have been resisting since the Nakba. Further, we believe that opposing an ideology of white Jewish supremacy in Israel’s apartheid regime, connects to our struggle against racism in our country, whether it is the many United States police departments who train in Israel and learn how to “mow the lawn” here, or the impunity with which the Israeli regime has functioned in the world. We cannot eradicate the oppression of racism in our country while it flourishes anywhere in our world.

Further, the US government is supporting the racism of the Israeli apartheid regime both ideologically, and materially.

Impact of Militarism on elders: When all resources are cut off and a people are carpet-bombed, as in Gaza, elders are among the highest casualties.

As Radical Elders we have seen time and time again that by funding the military this country’s resources that should be used to provide its citizens with a sustainable productive life and clean renewable energy, are directed toward a criminal militarist foreign policy. We see the impact of that destructive waste of resources throughout the society and, as elders, we feel it particularly.

As our mini-program makes clear, we consider military aid an immoral, destructive scam that channels the resources that should be used to address our own problems and society’s deficiencies, into the hands of the arms industry. We see too many of our compatriots without decent shelter, medical care, and we need our government to pivot from supporting the arms contractors to supporting our citizens and residents. Instead of improving our society, they facilitate the destruction of lives and societies world-wide.

Radical Elders leader Diane Dujon joined our ancestors on May 29, 2023. Diane was an inspiration to us all as she confronted all challenges with clarity, political commitment and enormous warmth and love of people. We in RE will miss her and remain grateful for the opportunity to work with her. This is the leaflet for her life celebration.

This is the video of Radical Elders’ April 15 webinar/conversation on the Disappearing Safety Net

Radical Elders joins so many others in mourning the death and celebrating the remarkable life of Dr. Jeffrey Perry: life-long revolutionary, scholar, analyst and leader of RE.

Jeff joined our ancestors yesterday, September 24, 8:45 am Eastern/U.S. time.

Many of us in RE met Jeff in the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. He later was a postal worker and union organizer/activist in the Post Office while he obtained his degrees including the Doctorate from Columbia University.

During his prolific life, he wrote on a wide variety of subjects but his major theme, the one he constantly returned to, was racism: the folly on which it was based and the importance of centralizing it in all our struggles in this country. He wrote and lectured on that theme extensively and he spoke frequently about it within RE, helping make it one of the principles on which we organize.

We continue that organizing, thinking of him and being inspired by his life of commitment. He will always be “presente” for us!