#louis brandeis

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

Louis Brandeis (in 1941)

[Guillaume Gris]

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Walking by the court house in Dedham, MA the other night, I started thinking about Sacco & Vanzetti again, and their infamous, shameful trial in the same building where—despite a mountain of evidence and worldwide protests in their favor—they were found guilty and subsequently executed in 1927.

Woody Guthrie wrote an entire album about it, and if you've never heard the folk legend sing the town name Dedham ("we're stuck here in this dark Dedham jail"), you can remedy that here.

At the time, a Supreme Court justice owned a second home in Dedham, just a few yards away from the jail in question. Louis Brandeis, appointed by Woodrow Wilson, was a Supreme Court Justice of the United States from 1916 to 1939. A good summary of Brandeis, and why he was controversial, came from a fellow justice and went like this: "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible … [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court."

Brandeis adored Dedham, telling his brother, "Dedham is a spring of eternal youth for me. I feel newly made and ready to deny the existence of these gray hairs." I didn't know it until recently, but I walk by this house once a week on my hometown walk-route with my friend Julia. 195 Village Ave.

Louis Brandeis's wife, Alice Goldmark Brandeis, was perhaps even more progressive than her husband, well known as a vocal proponent of women's rights and labor causes. During the trial of Sacco & Vanzetti, she permitted Sacco's family to stay in their Dedham home to make visits to the jail easier. And get a kleenex ready, because one detail related to that you simply must know is: "Sacco's seven-year-old son, Dante, would sometimes stand on the sidewalk outside the jail and play catch with his father by throwing a ball over the wall." Additionally, Alice made a significant donation to their defense fund.

The entire case is fascinating, multi-faceted, full of twists and turns and potential evidence tampering by law enforcement, and in that way (and only that way), it is similar to what's being tried there right now. Officer Albert Hamilton tried to walk out of the court room with Sacco's gun, only to be stopped at the last moment by the judge. Post-trial, police Captain Van Amburgh took Sacco and Vanzetti's guns and bullets home, where they stayed until 1960 (!) until the Boston Globe uncovered the scandal. If you're curious, I recommend reading Tragedy in Dedham by Francis Russell.

They were found guilty. Worldwide protests erupted. Bombs were mailed. 20,000 gathered at Boston Common. Pleas for clemency abounded.

"Sacco and Vanzetti’s lawyers, rebuffed by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, aimed at convincing a justice to issue a temporary stay of execution until the U.S. Supreme Court could fully review whether the two men had received a fair trial. ...Louis Brandeis, another progressive justice, recused himself from the case, because his wife, Alice, had made a significant donation to Sacco and Vanzetti’s defense fund." — SCOUTSblog

This is all to say, hey, how about that? Recusing yourself from an issue because of your wife's strong, public opinions on the matter? Justice Alito and Thomas wouldn't be worthy of cleaning Brandeis's toilet.

[famousborntoday]

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

Link: Louis Brandeis

[famousdeaths]

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

Link: Louis Brandeis

[bennettmarko]

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

- Louis Brandeis

[linusjf]

Brian K. Blackden: Justice and privacy

“Justice: To seek it, one must be willing to give up the right to privacy, as nothing more private will become more public.” —Brian K. Blackden.

[brieucgwalder]

Warhol: ten portraits

It was a somewhat disappointing expo in Paris, last September. “Gertrude Stein and Picasso” at the Musée du Luxembourg, at the back of the Palais du Luxembourg where the French Senate is housed. I’d been “had” before in the same place. Only a couple of rooms with “non-essential” works. For the price of a ticket to Orsay. Oh well. Curators have to justify their wages I guess. Then came the Biiig…

[argaman01]

So I guess just being Jewish is controversial.

by Emma Riva

Andy Warhol painted Mao, machine guns and Marilyn Monroe, but the public was scandalized in 1980 when he painted Jews.

The New York Times claimed that Warhol’s “Ten Portraits of Jews in the Twentieth Century” “reek[ed] of commercialism, and their contribution to art is nil,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer called the portraits “Jewploitation.”

But this month, Andy Warhol Museum Chief Curator Aaron Levi Garvey, a Jewish curator and historian originally from New York, installed them at the museum.

“I never understood calling these portraits commercial or vapid,” Garvey said. “What of Warhol’s work isn’t commercial? He worked with the idea of what an icon is.”

The 10 Jewish subjects that Warhol, art dealer Ronald Feldman and JCC of Greater Washington Gallery Director Susan Morgenstein selected in 1980 were actress Sarah Bernhardt; United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis; philosopher Martin Buber; physicist Albert Einstein; psychologist Sigmund Freud; comedians the Marx Brothers; Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir; songwriter George Gershwin; and writers Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein.

The installation at the Warhol, Garvey said, was initially conceived as a gesture of solidarity coinciding with the five-year commemoration of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

Then the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 happened.

Fear of controversy over highlighting Jews during a period of escalating violence and brutality in Israel — as well as personal antisemitic threats that Garvey said were made against him via email and voicemail — could have caused the Jewish curator to postpone or cancel the exhibit. But he’s no stranger to anti-Jewish hate and decided to go through with the installation.

“People used to carve swastikas into my desk when I was in high school, and I experienced major antisemitism in college,” he said. “I want viewers of ‘Ten Portraits’ to learn and be open to dialogue.”

The portraits share a room on the fourth floor of the Warhol with Keith Haring’s “Untitled (Elephant)” — a literal elephant in the room alongside a figurative one, Garvey noted.

In the lineup of Warhol’s “Jewish geniuses,” as the artist nicknamed them, the views and figures represented are complex. Kafka abandoned Judaism. Bernhardt hid her Jewish identity. Stein supported the Vichy government of France, an actively anti-Jewish regime. Einstein is quoted as saying: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state” in a 1938 speech entitled “Our Debt to Zionism,” even though he was offered the position of president of Israel.

One of the many things that makes “Ten Portraits” so timely and provocative is that it asks viewers to consider what being a Jewish icon means. All the portraits are of Ashkenazi Jews and speak to a certain image of Jewish identity. However, rather than Jacob Riis-esque tenement photography or depictions of Jewish suffering and tragedy, Warhol highlighted Jewish exceptionalism in the arts, government and sciences.

“I want viewers to think about all of these people in multitudes, in a non-linear fashion,” Garvey said. “It’s about Jewish exceptionalism but in a multitude of ways. All of the subjects contain multitudes. In the wall text, I put that Martin Buber was a Zionist philosopher. Someone told me I couldn’t say that, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s what he was,’” Garvey recalled.

Garvey said that the museum’s internal response to the installation has been mixed, including various complaints that misidentified Garvey’s ethnicity and some inflammatory antisemitic remarks. But nonetheless, Garvey and Warhol Director Patrick Moore co-signed an exhibition statement calling for peace and solidarity.

[aunti-christ-ine]

[galerymod]

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Louis D. Brandeis

As long as injustice exists, resistance is the duty of every humanistically socialized person, because it is the only way to ensure that history changes for the better.

mod

[bostonwalks]

[victorinoxghoul]

TEHEE

leave my house little man

[waiting-eyez]

If we desire respect for the law, We must first make the law respectable.

(Louis D Brandeis)

[filosofablogger]

Just HOW Did We Get Here??? Ask Thom ...

The following article by Thom Hartmann is lengthy, but I believe worth taking the time to read.  Mr. Hartmann very accurately pinpoints how we have become, in essence, a nation ruled by the obscenely wealthy.  I tried, in the interest of brevity, to edit this piece, to cut out some parts, but in the long run I felt everything he said was necessary to our understanding.  I do hope you’ll take the…

[bouncinghedgehog]

[postersbykeith]