Children’s March for Kindness – December 11

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New York City Parents are organizing The Children’s March for Kindness + Kids Speak Out on December 11th at 12:30 pm in Central Park in NYC.
childrens-march-for kindness_Dec 11 2016

The purpose of this event is to empower children who have been upset by the recent election by enabling them to experience the positive change that they can make in their world when they stand up and speak out for their values in community.

The March will be followed by a Kids Speak Out, where children will speak from the bandshell stage on their thoughts and feelings about this election. We will also have a musical performance with Broadway singers, a children’s choir performance, sing-alongs, a reading by children’s author RJ Palacio from her award-winning novel Wonder, and distribution of Be Kind postcards that the children can write on and send to Donald Trump.

We want kids of all ages to be part of this March + Speak Out, with teens taking active roles, including serving as Marshals at the parade.

We need your participation and support! Please help us with our outreach by distributing the attached flyers [ EnglishSpanishArabic ] throughout your communities, schools, parent groups, political clubs, religious institutions, etc. We also need volunteers to help on the day of the March! Please contact us at: kidsmarch2016@gmail.com 

We need help funding the March and Kids Speak Out! We are trying to keep our costs as low as possible – the majority of expenses are due to renting the sound system and obtaining permits and insurance. If you would like to make a donation you can do so here: https://www.gofundme.com/kids-speak-out-march

We hope to see many of you on Sunday December 11th at 12:30 pm in Central Park, marching together with our children, and demonstrating the values of inclusion, kindness, diversity, curiosity, and openness that are the true bedrock of our city and country.

In solidarity,
Rachel Lavine

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On Being That Kind of Liberal…Rachel Lavine

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That Kind of Liberal

Eleanor Roosevelt Biography by Blanche Weisen Cooke

Yet another political blog?!  Why, you might ask.

The answer is that I could not find any other voices that fully speak from my perspective as a pragmatic liberal, a lesbian mother and wife, longtime grassroots Democratic party, and feminist and environmental activist.  So following the advice of a revered political leader, I decided to be the change that I seek.

The name of this blog is derived from speeches given in New York by two eminent liberals. Franklin D. Roosevelt first described himself as “that kind of liberal” during a speech to the New York State Democratic Convention in 1936:

The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative ... In the words of the great essayist, “The voice of great events is proclaiming to us. Reform if you would preserve.” I am that kind of conservative because I am that kind of liberal.

And John F. Kennedy later defined what a “Liberal” was and was not, while proudly claiming that identity when accepting the 1960 Presidential Nomination of the New York State Liberal Party:

If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But, if by a “Liberal,” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties – someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say that I’m a “Liberal.”

FDR  – and Eleanor Roosevelt – and JFK were all that kind of liberal. They answered the voice of great events. They made bold structural change. They understood the mechanics of real power. They saw the lives and needs of middle class Americans and the poor, of political minorities and the socially disenfranchised. They had a clear understanding of the individual propensity for self-interest and self-deception, as well as the human capacity to transcend the smallness of the self and to support a social good that benefits more than oneself.

And yes, sometimes they over-valued the end game, redefined as necessary what was in fact only politically strategic, stalled and temporized when they should have acted and demanded. Sometimes what they saw as absolute political limitations were only self-imposed ones. They were imperfect, sometimes egregiously wrong but they tried: that kind of liberal.

The focus of this blog is mostly local and specific, and enumerates my own immediate – and varied – interests: New York City and State politics, LGBT rights and community, boys and schools, Israel and the calumny of pink washing, food and environmental politics, feminism and parenting, the need for radically fairer economic and social structures. Sometimes the blog will stray and wander, grazing other, lighter subjects. Like myself, this blog is evolving.

I hope that this blog will become a place where people can engage in thoughtful and challenging conversation. I welcome discussion and debate. I respect – and often admire – the passion animating deeply held opinions, and support robust dissent or disagreement. However, I reserve the unilateral right to remove posts that I find offensive or obnoxious for any reason. Name calling and mean spiritedness debilitate good conversation, and usually mask a weak or incoherent argument.

Thank you.

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