Activist Rabbi Discusses Human Rights Issues In Ocean City

OCEAN CITY, NJ — A world renowned peace and justice advocate spoke in Ocean City this weekend for the 25th anniversary of International Human Rights Day. Rabbi Arthur Waskow spoke at the Ocean City Free Public Library less than a week after he was arrested for protesting the Tax Reform Bill. The Ocean City event was presented by the South Jersey chapter of Amnesty International.

Waskow was part of a group of hundreds of people who protested outside the office of each of the 10 Congressmen who voted in favor of the bill in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Dec. 5, he said in a letter to his supporters that was shared with Patch.

“At each office, about 80 to 100 people clogged the corridor and chanted for about 15 minutes before the Capitol Police arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse,” Waskow said. “Then in each place, 10 to a dozen of us refused to move or leave when directed by the Capitol Police and were arrested.”

Waskow — who left pink slips outside the office of Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Meehan saying he would be “fired” in November unless he voted no — said there were two reasons he participated in the protest.
In 2011, he had radiation and chemotherapy treatments to help him combat throat cancer. His treatments were covered by Medicare, but wouldn’t be under the new bill because of “tax cuts that benefit the hyper-wealthy.”

“The result: I would probably have been either impoverished or dead five years ago,” Waskow said. “Multiply me by millions, and multiply that particular lethal element of the Tax Deform by dozens of other analogous provisions, and you get back to the Big Answer.”

The “Big Answer,” he said, is that the tax bill “deforms, distorts and destroys” a spiritual unity he believes connects all people. He said the police arresting him and the other members of his group — about 150 in all — quietly agreed with him, and acted “caring and courteous” with them.

Sunday’s event at the library was sponsored by the South Jersey chapter of Amnesty International.

At the event, he also spoke about climate change, net neutrality, democracy and resistance, according to the Ocean City Gazette. At one point, he suggested that if President Donald Trump fired Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one option could be to have a new presidential election in November, which drew applause from those in attendance.

Mueller has been investigating the ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russians during last year’s presidential election.

Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, was among the founding Fellows of the Institute for Policy Studies. He worked on issues of racism, the nuclear arms race, disarmament, and the Vietnam War. He has written 24 books, and has been arrested over 20 times for actions for peace and justice. He got his PhD in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin in 1963 with a dissertation on "The 1919 Race Riots."

National Human Rights Day was first celebrated on Dec. 10, 1948, to honor the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR was one of the United Nations's first achievements and spells out fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

The attached image of Rabbi Arthur Waskow was provided.