Experimental Blog #137

Summary of "Loyal to the Sky - Notes from an Activist" by Marisa Handler

Reviews of this book, which was published in 2007, seem to be quite positive. A somewhat negative comment was that the author, Marisa Handler, was too young to write a memoir at only about 30 years of age. However, Marisa Handler writes very well and provides very interesting chapters of her childhood and adolescence in Cape Town, South Africa and California, USA. These chapters are followed by her young adult journeys in Israel, Nepal, and India. All of this writing is vivid and informative.

Sometime in 2002 Marisa begins paid employment as a "full-time National Organizer" for the "Tikkum Community", which involves "building a national campus network of students supporting a progressive middle path to peace in Israel and Palestine..." At the same time, as much as possible, she continues to volunteer in what she describes as the "global justice movement"; most often in the "Code Orange affinity group".

In these few years, until she writes her book, she continues to travel across America. Marisa Handler describes her activity in more detail in San Francisco, where she lives, and Miami, to demonstrate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. She then travels to Ecuador and Peru and writes chapters about, among other things, the affect of globalization on some of the indigenous people in these countries.

Marisa Handler finishes her book with chapters on demonstrations in New York, against the 2004 Republican National Convention, and at Fort Benning, Georgia, against what was formerly called the School of the Americas, or SOA, which was "a combat training school for Latin American soldiers.." Evidently, quite a few of the graduates of this school went on to acquire very bad reputations, and when Marisa Handler went there it had been reorganized and renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation".