Aug 31 2008
A delegation from the national Veterans for Peace convention, taking place in nearby Bloomington, joined the core group of walkers for the last 2.7-mile segment of the trek, which began in Chicago in mid-July.
Members of Code Pink and the Sisters of St. Joseph greeted the walkers and hosted a celebration at St. Joseph Church to mark the end of the journey.
Aug 25 2008
Witness Against War, a walk from Chicago to St. Paul to promote non-violence and an end to the war is Iraq, is in its final week.
Dan Pearson, the one who dreamed it up, scouted and planned the route, and coordinates much of the logistics, calls it “a totally worthwhile endeavor.” He and Kathy Kelly are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, the Chicago-based group that organized and sponsors the walk.
The drive from Milwaukee, where I had last walked with them, to Pepin, WI, on the Mississippi River, to rejoin them, took five hours. It had taken the walkers five weeks.
As they started Saturday’s trek from Pepin to Maiden Rock, along one of the most spectacularly scenic stretches of river in the country, they had covered 420 miles. When they reach St. Paul this weekend, in time for the Republican national convention, they will have walked nearly 500 miles.
There are 10 walkers on Saturday, including Marie Kovecsi, who joined the group in Winona, MN to spend a week walking with them before returning to start another school year as a teacher of deaf and blind students, and me. The rest are part of the core group who left Chicago in mid-July and have walked most or all of the way. Most days they are joined by local activists who walk with them for a day or two, but there are none on Saturday in this sparsely-populated area.
Aug 14 2008
Friday marks the 12th month, the end of a year, for the Iraq Moratorium.
Since last September, it has united people holding more than 1,200 events and actions in 41 states and 240 communities, from one end of the country to the other.
But it hasn’t stopped the war. Should we give up now?
The Iraq Moratorium folks don’t think so. In fact, they’ve renewed their commitment to ending the war and occupation, and have made some improvements in the operation. You’ll find a new website, with a new address, www.IraqMoratorium.com, and even a new logo to go with the new look.
It’s a simple concept. It asks people to interrupt their daily routines on the Third Friday of every month and take some action, individually or with a group, to end the war and occupation. It encourages locally organized, grassroots actions to move more of the silent majority who say they oppose the war to do something to end it.
The national Moratorium doesn’t try to tell people what action to take. It offers a wide variety of options, from wearing a button or armband to taking part in a demonstration, and many things in between. The important thing is that people do something.
The national website acts as a clearinghouse for information, collecting and posting events planned by local organizers and reports, photos and videos afterward. It also offers some tips and tools for organizers to use.
It’s almost an exaggeration to call it a shoestring operation. It operates on virtually no money with a volunteer crew. (Disclosure: I’m part of the volunteer core group that tries to keep it growing.)
Given its almost non-existent resources and media blackout of antiwar actions, it’s first year record is somewhat remarkable. There have been more than 1,200 actions in 41 states and 240 communities since the Moratorium began in September 2007. No one really knows how many individuals also observe the Moratorium in some way on the Third Friday of the month, but it’s a significant number.
As Iraq Moratorium #12 approaches, think about one thing, big or small, that you can do to help. If nothing else, a donation would be gratefully accepted — and you don’t have to wait until August 15.
Whatever it is, please do something.
Aug 11 2008
Witness Against War, a 450-mile walk from Chicago to St. Paul for the Republican convention, reached a Wisconsin Army base on Sunday, and 13 walkers were arrested when they tried to enter the base to interact with soldiers there.
Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, who organized the walk, was held on an oustanding 10-year-old warrant for civil disobedience at Project ELF in northern Wisconsin. The others were released and the walk continues today.
This report is from Jeff Leys, one of the walkers who was arrested:
Sunday, August 10, began with breakfast at the home of Dick and Violet, our hosts. We arrived at Tunnel City, our starting point that day, at 9:30 a.m., in time to meet with Sheriff Pederson to discuss the day’s walk. We explained that we intended to walk on the shoulder of the road facing traffic, as required by state traffic laws. He explained that he’d met with his officers and with officers of the Wisconsin State Highway Patrol that morning. Their intent was to ensure that the walk was able to proceed safely, and not to interfere with the walk’s progress. Indeed State Patrol and County Sheriff patrol cars accompanied the walk as it processed from Tunnel City to the edge of Fort McCoy and onward. One patrol officer turned on his vehicles flashing red and blue lights to slow traffic down along the highway (with a speed limit of 55 miles per hour and a fairly narrow shoulder), keeping a health distance form the front of the walk and backing up on an even pace with the walk.
We began walking at about 9:45 a.m. The first question mark of the day arrived three miles into the walk. At that point Highway 21, on which we were walking, enters Fort McCoy with a yellow sign informing motorists that they are “Entering a Military Area.” We were relatively certain we’d be able to proceed without any difficulty since we’d received a letter from Colonel Daniel Culver of the base advising us that normally the only time the base law enforcement would get involved along Highway 21 is if the operations of the base were being interfered with. Since we were walking on the shoulder, we were relatively certain we’d be fine. Yet, the question mark remained: would there be a change in the base’s position now that the walk had arrived? Would we be met by Fort McCoy security determined to prevent us from crossing the base?
The answer was “No”. Fort McCoy’s command would not block the progress of the walk. We would keep on walking forward, never turning back.
Aug 08 2008
In the spirit, perhaps, of the Vietnam war protesters (pictured) who attempted to levitate the Pentagon in 1967, activists in Springfield, Mass. will observe the Iraq Moratorium on Friday, Aug. 15, by encircling the federal building there.
They’ll gather at 4 p.m. for a short rally, then will encircle the building and hold hands around it. The theme for the day is “Dont Invade Iran.” They are calling the action “Hands Around the Federal Building,” and say that car pools are coming from other cities. “we need 350 people to make this work. We are confident we will have that,” they say on the Moratorium blog.
That’s just one of dozens of events happening across the country, which are listed on the new, improved Moratorium website. There are always more that don’t get posted, or that only surface after the fact. If you are planning a local action and don’t see it on the list, email the information so it can be posted and others can find out about it and join you.
The list keeps growing. This month, two Wisconsin communities, Rice Lake and Waupaca, will have their first Iraq Moratorium actions.
The Iraq Moratorium is a simple concept. It asks people to interrupt their daily routines on the Third Friday of every month and take some action, individually or with a group, to end the war and occupation.
The national Moratorium doesn’t try to tell people what action to take. It offers a wide variety of options, from wearing a button or armband to taking part in a demonstration, and many things in between. The important thing is that people do something.
The national website acts as a clearinghouse for information, collecting and posting events planned by local organizers and reports, photos and videos afterward. It also offers some tips and tools for organizers to use.
It’s almost an exaggeration to call it a shoestring operation. It operates on virtually no money with a volunteer crew. (Disclosure: I’m part of the volunteer core group that tries to keep it growing.)
Given its almost non-existent resources and media blackout of antiwar actions, it’s first year record is somewhat remarkable. There have been more than 1,200 actions in 41 states and 240 communities since the Moratorium began in September 2007. No one really knows how many individuals also observe the Moratorium in some way on the Third Friday of the month, but it’s a significant number.
As Iraq Moratorium #12 approaches, think about one thing, big or small, that you can do to help. If nothing else, a donation would be gratefully accepted — and you don’t have to wait until August 15.
Whatever it is, please do something.
Aug 06 2008
As the Iraq Moratorium prepares for its 12th monthly observance on August 15 — the Third Friday of the month, as always — it’s made some changes to get ready for its second year.
You’ll find a new website, with a new address, www.IraqMoratorium.com, and even a new logo to go with the new look.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the determination to end the senseless war and occupation of Iraq, by encouraging locally organized, grassroots actions to move more of the silent majority who say they oppose the war to do something to end it.
It’s a simple concept. It asks people to interrupt their daily routines on the Third Friday of every month and take some action, individually or with a group, to end the war and occupation.
The national Moratorium doesn’t try to tell people what action to take. It offers a wide variety of options, from wearing a button or armband to taking part in a demonstration, and many things in between. The important thing is that people do something.
The national website acts as a clearinghouse for information, collecting and posting events planned by local organizers and reports, photos and videos afterward. It also offers some tips and tools for organizers to use.
It’s almost an exaggeration to call it a shoestring operation. It operates on virtually no money with a volunteer crew. (Disclosure: I’m part of the volunteer core group that tries to keep it growing.)
Given its almost non-existent resources and media blackout of antiwar actions, it’s first year record is somewhat remarkable. There have been more than 1,200 actions in 41 states and 240 communities since the Moratorium began in September 2007. No one really knows how many individuals also observe the Moratorium in some way on the Third Friday of the month, but it’s a significant number.
As Iraq Moratorium #12 approaches, think about one thing, big or small, that you can do to help. If nothing else, a donation would be gratefully accepted — and you don’t have to wait until August 15.
Whatever it is, please do something.
Aug 05 2008
Like many of you, I came to blogging as a way of fighting back. Before I found this avenue through which I could channel my dissent, I felt powerless to do anything about the outrages being visited upon our nation and virtually all the rest of the world by our own intractable and illegitimate government.
People often question what good it does to rant into the ether. We hear it all the time right here. ‘Preaching to the choir dude.’ But time has proven that we in the blogosphere are a force to be reckoned with. The pols and the pundits would be ignoring us otherwise…just like they used to.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Jul 30 2008
“Have those people who support this war ever been at the receiving end of a bomb? Do they know what war is? War is: your house is gone, no water, no electricity, your roads are blown up and….your family is dead.”
The conversation started not about war, but about Peace.
We had just come from a planning meeting to discuss planning the plans for a “Peace Event.”
I am usually restless, squirming in my chair, at peace meetings.
This night was a particular challenge, as a decision needed to be made as to whether this event was going to be about ‘Creating peace within ourselves, as a way to greater peace’ or ‘peacefully demonstrating against our military culture’.
It was a lively discussion, no decision was reached.
It was the conversation afterwards during dinner that resonated.
D.F., my 87y/o WWII veteran friend, knows struggle; WWII, the Labor Movement, Civil Rights, he has been around.
Over dinner he puzzled, “Have those who support this war ever been at the receiving end of a bomb? Do they know what war is? War is: your house is gone, no water, no electricity, your roads are blown up and….your family is dead.”
He wasn’t looking for an answer more stating reality for those of us who did not truly know war….which was everyone at the table besides him. After a complicated meeting about Peace I think he didn’t want us to lose sight of why we were doing it.
“Sometimes people use the call to inner peace as a reason not to take action against injustice, let’s not do that,” he added.
Later he suggested, “We don’t really know how to act together as a society. The Cold War scared people, taught them to shut up, not question or challenge government, and look where it has gotten us.”
Then he went on to ask/state, “How do you hold your candidate accountable when he falters in a way that improves his candidacy and does not give ammunition to his opponent?”
We did not come up with a concrete answer to this question over chopped steak (his) and a veggie reuben (mine).
As we left he smiled at me, wonderful lines of wisdom creasing his face. “Call tomorrow and we’ll work on the unanswered question,” he said with a wink.
What is the point of this diary? I am not sure, it is my first on this site. I am just happy to share some insights from a wise old friend with anyone willing to listen.
Jul 30 2008
A few weeks ago, Wisconsin peace activists successfully challenged the Army’s use of a “Virtual Army Experience” game, aimed at recruiting young people, at a lakefront music festival. As reported then, the festival asked the Army to shut down the game, which offered a chance to shoot at life-sized human targets from a Humvee, replace it with something less offensive, and set an age limit of 17 to participate.
Now comes the charge that by targeting young teenagers the Army is actually violating international law:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has found that Army use of the game, and its recruiting practice in general, violate international law. In May, the ACLU published a report that found the armed services “regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment. Department of Defense instruction to recruiters, the US military’s collection of information of hundreds of thousands of 16-year-olds, and military training corps for children as young as 11 reveal that students are targeted for recruitment as early as possible.By exposing children under 17 to military recruitment, the United States military violates the Optional Protocol.” The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified by the Senate in December 2002, protects the rights of children under 16 from military recruitment and deployment to war. The US subsequently entered a binding declaration that raised the minimum age to 17, meaning any recruitment activity targeted at those under 17 years old is not allowed in the United States.
Before complaints from Peace Action-Wisconsin, Veterans for Peace and others, recruiters at Summerfest were allowing teens as young as 13 to “play” the “game” and collecting their personal information, for recruiting purposes, before issuing them a card that gave them access to the tent with the Humvee, machine guns and lifesize targets moving on a big screen. The Army first raised the age at Summerfest, but ended up shutting down the game and replacing it with a tamer offering with stationary targets and no Humvee.
By the time the Army’s exhibit opened at a Duluth air show, the Army had raised the age limit to 17. Here’s a link to a report from Yahoo gaming news on protests over the game in Milwaukee and Duluth, and a report from a Duluth area activist.
Jul 25 2008
(Cross posted from DailyKos)
The Dhammapada teaches
Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
While most of us understand the logic of this approach in theory, it far too rarely spills over into practice.
The world is becoming an increasingly scary place. Torture and extraordinary rendition are being committed by the United States government, and through other governments’ forces as proxies. Mercenary armies such as the infamous Blackwater are on the rise and already operating within the United States, marking potentially the most horrifying trend in the commercialization of violence. Blackwater is even slated to begin involvement with the enforcement of prohibition, making the “War on Drugs” moniker seem increasingly ominous. Prohibition itself is a travesty of epic proportion that has lead to the incarceration of staggering numbers of non-violent citizens, caused suffering throughout the world, and halted virtually all progress in fascinating avenues of research that bear the promise of more effective medical treatments as well as breakthroughs in understanding of the brain. The U.S. Military now has a presence in nearly every country in the world, and there are countless cases of injustices committed by soldiers against innocent members of the local populations. Our healthcare system is in shambles leaving the demographic most in need of the wealth we possess struggling to afford a standard of care that should be guaranteed to all U.S. citizens. Don Siegelman, and so many others, have been wrongfully persecuted on an ideological basis while the crooks doing the persecution have thus far avoided being brought to justice. Despite refusing to serve a subpoena pertaining to the Siegelman case, Karl Rove remains a free man. George Bush has issued more signing statements than all prior presidents combined in mockery of American ideals of justice and balance of power. Pondering these things can be pretty overwhelming to say the least.
Its easy to get angry when contemplating the state of the world we live in. One could argue that anger plays an important, even necessary, role in the cycle of change. While I do believe that stoking the flames of our moral outrage plays a indispensable role in that it is a powerful impetus for beginning to work in earnest for change, we must all remember that anger is an emotion of limited utility valuable only when properly channeled and devastating when not. Anger can be one of the greatest enemies of reason. Actions born from even the most righteous sense of moral outrage so often have calamitous results. It is my argument that rather than acting out of anger, it is our duty as people of conscience to constantly strive to act compassionately. If we truly wish to change the world for the better, we must transmute our anger into compassion.
First let us consider that as bad as the state of the world appears, it has been worse. Overall violence is experiencing a sharp decline on a global scale. As much as we as a species are doing wrong, we’re clearly doing something right. During the early periods of human history when anarchism and tribalism were the primary forms of social organization, there were powerful evolutionary and cultural imperatives to establish restrictive categories of who is and is not deserving of compassionate and altruistic action. Establishing an “us vs them” mentality proved to be a highly effective survival strategy in the perilous and unforgiving natural world. However with the maturation of the goals of human society, what was once a vital tool for survival has become a blight on the flower of our civilization. Nevertheless evolution has equipped us with tools necessary to progress beyond our current limitations and bring into realization the ultimate goal of a society based on reason and compassion. Contemporaneous to the development of our tendency to divide the world into “us vs them” was the development of our immense potential for compassion to those we consider to be within our group. Thus I feel the solution is ultimately fairly simple: we must all work towards recognition of the inherent unity of the human family. This is of course far more simple in theory than in practice, but as reflected by trends in the decline of violence, this process of boundary dissolution has already begun.
Now the question becomes, how do we consciously expand our circle of compassion, and perhaps, more importantly, how do we encourage others to do so as well? Fortunately encouraging others to expand their circle of compassion may be as simple as nurturing our own compassion. In Tibet the Buddha’s teachings are traditionally called the lions roar, for just as the lions roar awakens the other animals of the jungle, spreading and, more importantly, practicing teachings of compassion and mindfulness gradually awaken the closed hearts of beings throughout the world. The most fundamental step in cultivating compassion is to simply learn to smile more. Religious traditions from the Christians, to the Buddhists, to the Taoists, to the Hindus have long known that simply smiling more throughout the day leads to a more joyous experience of living and more pleasant interactions with other people. In fact medical science has recently caught up and discovered that even the physical act of smiling improves mood. We can take this basic knowledge and extrapolate it further to expand our practice of compassion. Be more polite to people you encounter throughout the day, don’t take the services of other people for granted because they are profiting from providing them, be more willing to offer your time and energy to others, and so forth. Once the habit of practicing these small deeds of recognition of the inherent value of other people has been ingrained in your daily life, I am confident you will be amazed by the sense of mental peace and clarity that develops as a result. The hardest and most important habit to cultivate is embracing those with ideas that you find offensive. We must recognize that humans have an extraordinary capacity for unconditional love, even if it is deeply buried under a haze of ignorance and conditioning. It is far more productive to forgive people for their ignorance and try to transfer your understanding to them in a non-hostile way than to take offense and respond in anger, further expanding the rift of misunderstanding. As a final suggestion for the practice of cultivating compassion, even a few minutes a day of loving-kindness meditation in a quiet place with minimal distraction can provide immeasurable benefits.
In closing, fighting fire with fire is a futile gesture. If we wish to ensure that the culture of violence that has plagued humanity since time immemorial does not regain its foothold, we must practice small acts of compassion in our daily life, spread our wisdom through conversation and blogging, and participate in peaceful activism. As compassionate ideals begin to take root, the fear that has so long been exploited by those with greed for power will begin to wither and die, and we can finally achieve the desired fruit of our fore fathers and leave a peaceful world full of opportunity for posterity.
Jul 22 2008
In some ways, much of Kathy Kelly’s adult life has been a walk against war. So it was completely in character for her to be walking through Milwaukee Monday, on a 450-mile trek to St. Paul and the Republican national convention.
Kelly, (left) a high school and community college teacher, has repeatedly risked her life and her freedom as an advocate for non-violence. She is now affiliated with Voices for Creative Nonviolence, based in her hometown of Chicago, which organized Witness Against War now making its way across Wisconsin.
A three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work , Kelly is a longtime pacifist who refuses to pay war taxes. She’s served prison time for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites and for crossing the line as part of an ongoing effort to close the School of the Americas, an Army military combat training school at Fort Benning, GA.
She helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign which brought medicine and toys to Iraq in open violation of UN/US sanctions against Iraq. Voices in the Wilderness organized 70 delegations to visit Iraq in the period between 1996 and the beginning of “Shock and Awe” warfare in 2003. Kelly has been to Iraq 24 times since January 1996, when the campaign began.
In October 2002, Voices in the Wilderness declared their intent to remain in Baghdad, alongside Iraqi civilians, throughout a war they still hoped they could prevent. Kelly and the team stayed in Baghdad throughout the bombardment and invasion and maintained a household in Baghdad until March, 2004. During 2007, she spent five months in Amman, Jordan, living amongst Iraqis who’ve fled their homes and are seeking resettlement.
