Torah of Justice
I just published a piece at the Jewish Journal about my experience yesterday at the action at the Hyatt hotel in Los Angeles, called “Putting On My ‘Going to Prison’ Clothes” .
Thursday, after seeing my two children off to Camp Ramah, I came home and I put on my going to prison clothes. This is something I have not thought about in a while. When I was in Grad School near Boston, once or twice a month on a Sunday I would visit Jeff (not his real name) at Walpole State Prison, about an hour or so south of Boston. One of the saddest things about these visits was seeing the children in (what I came to call) their “Sunday going to prison clothes” visiting their fathers.
Thursday, however, I was not going to visit somebody else in prison, I was going to get arrested. I was part of a group of approximately one hundred Rabbis, priests, ministers and workers who sat down in front of the Andaz Hotel on Sunset Blvd. to protest the practices of the Hyatt Hotel.
They also ran a story about the action here.
More information about the struggle of Hyatt workers is available here
And if you are a rabbi or cantor you can sign on to a letter to the Hyatt Corporation in support of the workers here.
Here’s a photo of Rabbi Toba Spitzer being arrested at the Boston Hyatt protest:
http://www.bostonherald.com/galleries/index.php?gallery_id=4082&p=0