Guhatthaka-suttaniddeso: Upon the Tip of a Needle translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki

  

Life, personhood, pleasure and pain — This is all that's bound together In a single mental event — A moment that quickly takes place. Even the spirits who endure For eighty-four thousand aeons — Even these do not live the same For any two moments of mind. What ceases for one who is dead, Or for one who's still standing here, Are all just the same aggregates — Gone, never to connect again. The states which are vanishing now, And those which will vanish some day, Have characteristics no different Than those which have vanished before. With no production there's no birth; With becoming present, one lives. When grasped with the highest meaning, The world is dead when the mind stops. There's no hoarding what has vanished, No piling up for the future; Those who have been born are standing Like a seed upon a needle. The vanishing of all these states That have become is not welcome, Though dissolving phenomena stand Uncombined from primordial time. From the unseen, [states] come and go, Glimpsed only as they're passing by; Like lightning flashing in the sky — They arise and then pass away

Dear MoveOn member,

 Dear MoveOn member,

Donald Trump takes credit for and often brags about overturning Roe v. Wade. He said with glee last year, "I was able to kill Roe v. Wade."¹ He even publicly thanked the justices who ended the legal right to abortion across the country.²

And yesterday, the Trump-packed Supreme Court appeared poised to go even further, allowing hospitals in states with abortion bans to deny an emergency abortion to a pregnant person in a medical crisis.³

Meanwhile, deadly and extreme abortion bans are on the rise in states across America. In Arizona, Republican officials just resurrected an absolute abortion ban from 1864—during the the Civil War—and 56 years before women had the right to vote. It hasn't been enforced in 160 years. But now, thanks to Trump's role in ending federal protections for abortion rights, it could be, starting on June 8.⁴

Trump did this to America. And the best way to fight back against this outrage is through the 2024 election. Many voters already recognize this. In fact, 1 in 8 voters of all ages say that abortion is the most important issue to them.⁵ These voters are "disproportionately made up of Black voters, Democratic voters, women voters, and the youngest voting bloc—voters ages 18 to 29."⁶

But there's a big problem: So far, young people are less committed to voting this time around than they were before the 2020 election.⁷ And the decline is pronounced among Black voters and women—the same voters who prioritize recent attacks on reproductive rights when deciding which candidates to vote for.⁸

Given that the election is expected to be close and come down to small numbers of voters in key battleground states, if MoveOn volunteers can influence even a small percentage of voters who weren't planning to turn out, their votes could be decisive.

We know that our highly effective get-out-the-vote strategies work. An analysis showed that, in 2022, one strategy—called "vote tripling"—helped to turn out 50,000 people in key states and districts who otherwise might not have voted.

But young voters need more outreach this year than they needed in 2020 or 2022. We also need to sign up new, young voters, including those who are just out of high school, to help convince others their age to head to the polls.

To raise awareness about the importance of volunteering and reaching out to swing-state voters about abortion rights, we're preparing to launch a tour bus—modeled off of our very successful Banned Bookmobile last year—that will go to key congressional districts and states, sign up new election volunteers, and give them the tools to contact young voters, voters of color, and others who will decide this election.

We need to raise $130,000 to launch our pilot program and hit the road. Will you start a $5 monthly donation to help fund our bus to sign up election volunteers and to power our efforts to defeat MAGA from now until Election Day? 

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Mobile efforts like these have a track record of making a splash—and raising awareness.

Last year, our Banned Bookmobile, full of books that the far right banned, toured key cities and towns to raise the visibility of book bans, hand out banned books for free, and bring people together to stop censorship.

Now, MoveOn is giving our Banned Bookmobile concept a facelift—this time, primarily focusing on signing up new election volunteers, while also spreading the message about the importance of voting in the 2024 election at a time when so many Americans have already lost the ability to control their own bodies and, therefore, their own lives.

We need your help to raise $130,000 to launch our pilot program. With your help, we'll go on the road—handing out T-shirts, water bottles, stickers, and other merchandise, signing up new election volunteers en masse, and educating people about the stakes for reproductive freedom in this election.

Will you start a $5 monthly donation to help fund our bus to raise awareness, sign up new election volunteers, and ensure we elect champions of reproductive freedom up and down the ballot?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

We can contact enough young voters to win the election only if we start early—and sign up more volunteers, particularly young people. That's why your help today is so crucial.

Thanks for all you do.

–Mohammad, Alexis, David, Evelyn, and the rest of the team

P.S. Your donation will help test this program, so we can roll it out at scale later this summer. We need to raise $130,000 now to help ...

• cover rental charges for our tour bus,
• buy gas,
• print the postcards that volunteers will write at the van to send to swing-state voters,
• help buy stickers, magnets, pens, and other things to hand out to volunteers and other visitors,
• help wrap the vehicle in an abortion-rights-focused design so people know what we're about when we pull up,
• and more.

Starting early will help us sign up more volunteers, work out the kinks, and get ready to turbocharge our election volunteer and get-out-the vote programs in the summer. We need your help to get going with our pilot now. Are you in?

Will you start a $5 monthly donation to help fund our bus to raise awareness and sign up new election volunteers?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Sources:

1. "Trump: 'I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,'" NBC News, May 17, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/189721?t=8&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

2. "Donald Trump Hails His Supreme Court Picks Behind Abortion Ruling," Newsweek, June 27, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/189722?t=10&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

3. "5 Takeaways From the Supreme Court Arguments on Idaho's Abortion Ban," The New York Times, April 24, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/189723?t=12&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

4. "Arizona Abortion Ban Will Be Enforced Starting June 8," KFF Health News, April 22, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/189724?t=14&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

5. "KFF Health Tracking Poll March 2024: Abortion in the 2024 Election and Beyond," KFF, March 7, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/189725?t=16&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

6. Ibid.

7. "Harvard Youth Poll," Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, Fall 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/189726?t=18&akid=381750%2E38938583%2EV-KZKs

8. Ibid.

Want to support MoveOn's work? The MAGA movement's book bans have forced teachers and librarians across the country to remove books from their shelves and censor what young people can learn. MoveOn is fighting back, including by filling a "Banned Bookmobile" with books that the far right has banned and driving it to key cities and towns to raise the visibility of book bans, hand out banned books for free, and bring people together to stop censorship. To keep up the fight against book bans and the MAGA politicians who support them, we need your help.

Will you start a monthly gift to power and sustain MoveOn's critical work? 

Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

---

PAID FOR BY MOVEON POLITICAL ACTION, https://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. MoveOn Political Action - PO Box 96142, Washington, D.C. 20090-6142.

This email was sent to Tiumothy on April 25, 2024. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. MoveOn's privacy policy was recently updated. To read our new privacy policy, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

 

Harvard’s anti-Israel protest tent camp thwarted by 2 a.m. lawn sprinklers

By 

Social Links forEmily Crane

Published April 25, 2024, 12:29 p.m. ET

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Harvard University’s anti-Israel tent encampment was temporarily thwarted overnight — by a slew of sprinklers going off around 2 a.m.

Dozens of sleeping protesters who were trying to catch some shuteye were disturbed when the sprinklers suddenly turned on in the middle of the Ivy League’s Cambridge campus.

“As protesters spend their first night in the Harvard Yard encampment, the biggest threat to their stay has not come from administrators or Harvard University police officers, but the Yard’s sprinklers,” the Harvard Crimson student-led paper said early Thursday.

The first sprinkler switched on just outside the encampment in Harvard Yard at about 2:30 a.m. as temperatures dipped to 36 degrees.

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Sprinklers disrupted Harvard University’s anti-Israel tent encampment overnight.Loudlabs

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Then, just before 4 a.m., a sprinkler located in the middle of the tents started spraying out water, prompting students to quickly start handing out buckets.

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Netanyahu says ‘horrific’ anti-Israel protests on US campuses ‘have to be stopped’

Campus leaders must show courage and stop radical professors from poisoning young minds: Robert Kraft

“Two more sprinklers turned on at the edge of the encampment near Massachusetts Hall,” the newspaper said in a live blog update at 4:05 a.m.

“The sprinklers began to hit tents on the edge of the camp before protesters rushed over to cover the sprinklers with buckets and sit on them.”

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Dozens of sleeping protesters who were trying to catch some shuteye were disturbed when the sprinklers suddenly turned on in the middle of the Ivy League’s Cambridge campus.Instagram / @harvxrdpsc

More than a dozen tents popped up at the $79,500-a-year college Wednesday after a rally against the university’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.

Trying to stay ahead of planned protests that have already disrupted Columbia and New York University, Harvard locked most gates into its famous yard ahead of classes Monday and limited access to those with school identification.

The school also posted warning signs about setting up tents or tables on campus without permission.

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More than a dozen tents popped up at the $79,500-a-year college Wednesday — despite warnings from Harvard.Loudlabs

As of Thursday, no arrests had been made.

It comes as anti-Israel protests have ratcheted up on college campuses over the past week.

What do you think? Post a comment.

At Columbia, more than 100 demonstrators were cuffed and hauled away when the NYPD was brought in to break up the encampment.

Students at New York University then set up an encampment, which was also torn down and resulted in more than 100 arrests.