Michael Lerner

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Rabbi Michael P. Lerner was a member of New American Movement and founder of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health.

According to the Network of Spiritual Progressives website:

Rabbi Lerner has been described by thinkers like Cornel West and Jim Wallis as a contemporary prophet.

He is also editor of our bi-monthly Tikkun Magazine, a full time job, plus the chair of our interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and also rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue which alternates services in Berkeley and San Francisco.

GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee

Circa 1969,Michael Lerner, New Left Forum, Berkeley , was listed as a sponsor of the Socialist Workers Party led GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee .

Seattle Liberation Front

In the period after the formation of the Weather Underground Organization at Flint Fichigan,, Michael Lerner and Weathermen Chip Marshall, Jeff Alan Dowd and Joseph H. Kelly moved to Seattle to form the Seattle Liberation Front to Bring the Revolution to Seattle.” There they recruited Susan Ellen Stern, Roger H. Lippman, Michael Victor Ables, Christopher L. Bakke, Margaret G. Bennett, Bruce E. Crowley, Karen M. Daenzer, Gerald J. Ganley, Kathleen Ann Korvell, Constance J. Misich, Mark Curtis Perry, Suzanne E. Smith, Arthur K. Sata, and John Vanveenendale. A federal grand jury would indict Dowd, Kelly and Stern along with Michael Victor Ables for a February 17, 1970 attack on a federal building.

Early NAM founders

Among the earliest founders of the New American Movement were James Weinstein of Chicago and West Coast radicals including Michael Lerner, formerly of the Seattle Liberation Front, Theirrie Cook, a supporter of the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice and Dan Siegel, former student body president at the University of California, Berkeley.

In June 1971, a pamphlet and other materials calling for a New American Movement national organizing meeting began to be circulated, sponsored by Theirrie Cook, Michael Lerner and Charles "Chip" Marshall, plus Douglas Dowd, Karen Hamilton, Charles Fulwood, Joy Marcus, Roger Hamilton, Dan Siegel, Nina Marina, David Danning, Judy Oringer, Louis Feldhammer and Kathy Johnson - later on the staff of the People's Bi-centennial Commission.

NAM contacts

In the early days of NAM, contacts for the organization included Lynne Shatzkin and Jerry Coffin, NY, Michael Lerner, then working from the Cambridge Policy Studies Institute, a branch from the Institute for Policy Studies, Andy Starr, Philadelphia, Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd, Chicago, Frank Blumer, Seattle, and Jim Williams, by 1975 a co-editor of the Communist Party USA trade union publication, Labor Today.

Early NAM leadership

In 1971, the New American Movement National Interim Committee was composed of:

• Lynn North, Ann Arbor Mich.
• Harry Boyte, Chapel Hill, No. Carolina
• Martha Williams, Wash. DC
• Harold Henderson, Peoria, Ill.
• Marjorie Fields, New York City
• Staughton Lynd, Chicago, Ill
• Diana Adams, Cleveland, Ohio
• Frank Speltz, Davenport Iowa

• Chip Marshall - Field Staff Coordinator –
• Frank Speltz – Coordinator of the national conference

Travelers for NAM:

• Frank Blumer, Northwest
• Michael Lerner, California
• Randy Bregman, Midwest
• Lynn North & Jane Slaughter, South
• Jeremy Rifkin, Northeast
• Chip Marshall, Southwest, Mountain & Plains states

NAM first national conference

The first national meeting of the New American Movement was held in Chicago October 9-11. Up to 75 delegates and observers from 25 cities participated. The meeting laid the basis for a Thanksgiving conference on program in Chicago. The politiçal principles, program, and structure of the organization were discussed;

At the conference, a body mandated a committee to write a shorter version of the original NAM document in a style, adapted to mass distribution. People elected to this committee were:

• Diana Adams (Cleveland, Ohio),
• Jeremy Rifkin (Washington, D;C;),
• Jane Slaughter of the national staff,
• Karen Whitman (Baltimore, Md.),
• Michael Lerner (Berkeley, Calif),
• Alice Lynd (Chicago, Ill),
• Harry Boyte (Chapel Hill, N.C.).

The committee was mandated to have the basic document written by October 23.1971

Democratic Agenda

More than 1,200 people attended the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee initiated Democratic Agenda Conference held November 16-18, 1979, at the International Inn and Metropolitan AM Church in Washington 1 DC. The conference focused on "corporate power'; as the key barrier to "economic and political democracy," concepts many Democratic Agenda participants defined as "socialism.'

The Democratic Agenda meetings attempted to develop anti-corporate alternatives" through influencing the direction of the Democratic Party during the period leading to the July 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York.

Workshops included "Fighting the New Right" - James Farmer, CAPE; Midge Miller, InterChange; Mary Jean Collins, moderator; Dr. Michael Lerner, Institute of Labor and Mental Health.

New American Movement 10th convention

In 1981 Barbara Ehrenreich, Long Island NAM; Michael Lerner, NAM Assoc, founder, Institute for Labor and Mental Health; Richard Healey, Co-Chair, Political Education Commission and Peg Strobel, Co-Chair, Campus Commission spoke at a public plenary entitled Visions of Socialism at the 10th Convention of the New American Movement. The convention was held in a union headquarters in Chicago and ran from July 29 - August 2, 1981.

Lerner also led a workshop entitled Occupational Stress and Class Consciousness

Socialist Scholars Conference

Michael Zweig; Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun; Pamela Brubaker and Larry Rasmussen, Union Theological Seminary were speakers on the Religion and Economic Justice panel at the Tenth Annual Socialist Scholars Conference. The conference was held April 24-26, 1992 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York City.

DSA member

In 1982 the Democratic Socialists of America Feminist commission initiated a publication called "Women Organizing". The August 1982 issue included articles by Barbara Ehrenreich, Kate Ellis, Roberta Lynch, Michael Lerner and Deborah Meier.

In a 1998 list of Democratic Socialists of America aligned publications, Michael Lerner was described as a "DSAer"

DSA-ish Publications

That is, mags which express the range of our politics, from the revolutionary to the left liberal, and including some sympatico Candian and British mags.

Tikkun - The journal of the Jewish left, edited by DSAer Michael Lerner.

Working with Cornel West

Cornel West, Michael Lerner

911 "Truther"

Rabbi Michael Lerner editor, Tikkun Magazine, author, Healing Israel/Palestine ,was one of 100 "prominent Americans" who signed an October 26 2004 statementcirculated by 911Truth.org calling on the U.S. Government to investigate 9/11 as a possible "inside job".

...we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.

Social Policy

For over 30 years, Social Policy has served as "key site for intellectual exchange among progressive academics and activists from across the United States and beyond", including: Frances Fox Piven, Jonathan Kozol, Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Ivan Illich, Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Lerner, Gloria Steinem, and others.

Jewish Alliance for Justice & Peace

As of Jan. 1, 2010, Lerner was a member of the Board Rabbinic Cabinet of the Jewish Alliance for Justice & Peace.

External links

• Jewish Alliance for Justice & Peace website

References

[[Category:Social Policy]