Apr 14 2008
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Apr 13 2008
The Dalai Lama addressed thousands today. I narrowly missed getting a free ticket but did manage to run into an old friend I hadn’t seen in a decade as I left Qwest Field. The area was ultra-high security but there was a steady rush to get inside to hear him. I did manage to get a free poster (like in the photo above) from the public library.
He said:
“Many problem essentially are own creation; therefore logically, we must have the ability to eliminate this problem. It is our own interest and responsibility to make this century should be century of dialogue.”
He said the 20th century has become like “century of bloodshed,” and suggested the elimination all nuclear weapons.
“So firstly, on action level, whenever we face problem, different interest, disagreement, the realistic method is nonviolent dialogue. That’s the only way. If you use force in order to solve one problem, it often create lots of unexpected side effect … Nonviolence not just mere absence of violence, nonviolence means facing problem with real determination, vision, wider perspective.”
Apr 10 2008
WARNING: Fund-raising appeal ahead.
When a handful of people decided to launch the Iraq Moratorium to take on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, we knew it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
We knew we’d be outmanned, outgunned and outspent by those whose interest seems to be to keep this nation at war.
But we didn’t realize that the Pentagon would spend as much on the war every five seconds as the Iraq Moratorium spends in a year to try to stop it.
We’ve done a lot with very little money. Since September, more than 800 events, from Vermont to California, from Florida to Washington state, have joined under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella to call for an end to the war and occupation. Tens of thousands have taken individual action as well on the Third Friday of each month.
But we really need your financial help to keep this national grassroots movement alive and growing.
The magnitude of what we’re up against really hit us with recent reports of the war’s cost — $5,000 a second! That’s more than double what we spend in a month.
Apr 09 2008
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
The spontaneous demonstrations by monks in March seem to have triggered demonstrations across the world in support of religious freedom and autonomy for Tibet.
We’ve been treated to huge street demonstrations in London, Paris, and San Francisco. To extinguishing the torch in Paris. To Chinese security pushing around Sebastian Coe, who was a fantastic runner in his prime. To mountain climbers hanging flags on the Golden Gate Bridge. To demonstrations in Lhasa. To news items about the struggles of Tibet. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
But if Tibet is to be saved, and I truly hope that it will be despite fifty years of Chinese domination and oppression, if it is to be preserved in a form we can recognize as Tibetan, it seems only right that it should be saved by what are essentially Tibetan, nonviolent means.
My simple proposal has two items:
1. Please send some $$ to International Campaign For Tibet. This is the Internet so large donations aren’t required. If you give $5 or $10, and millions join you, it will help in a dramatic way. You don’t need to strain to help. Anyone can help. There is no minimum amount.
2. Please sit quietly (eyes open or closed). Then, non-denominationally and/or theistically and/or untheistically, however you are most comfortable, inhale the suffering and oppression of all of the Tibetans, and then exhale out in place of their suffering and oppression, strong love and healing to all involved in the conflict, including the Chinese government. Repeat this over and over until you are finished. This is called “tonglen” and is a wonderful and powerful practice for making peace. When you are finished with doing tonglen– you don’t need to do it for hours, minutes with a clear focus will work just fine– you may conclude by saying the following:
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be well.
May all beings be safe,
And may any merit from this practice go to the ocean of merit created by the Buddhas for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.
This is a road to saving Tibet. May Tibet be free.
Apr 08 2008
Another good idea undoubtedly doomed to fail, but worth the effort to try:
Military Families Speak Out is challenging U.S. Senators — starting with two named Obama and Clinton — to filibuster and stop President Bush’s request for more money for the Iraq war and occupation, another $102-billion.
Democrats aren’t even talking about saying no.
The Democrats’ plan appears to be to load up the bill with more domestic spending, rather than trying to stop the war spending. They want to add money for everything from storm-damaged national parks to local law enforcement grants to trying to use nuclear fusion to produce energy, CQ reports.
Instead of trying to stop the war, they’ve written Bush a letter, politely suggesting that he should change his strategy and plans. Right. That’ll be happening any day now, no doubt.
Military Families Speak Out has a simple idea: Stop the war by refusing to fund it. That, you may recall, is how we finally got out of Vietnam.
They start by quoting Obama and Clinton, then ask them a simple question:
“Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year – now.” — Sen. Barack Obama, September 12, 2007
“Our message to the president is clear. It is time to begin ending this war — not next year, not next month — but today.” — Sen. Hillary Clinton, July 10, 2007
On the campaign trail, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both say that the war in Iraq needs to end. Military Families Speak Out has one question for them: what are they doing now as sitting United States Senators, to bring our loved ones home from Iraq?
Apr 06 2008
I was born at the tail end of 1951. My father was a soldier who served in WWII and Korea. His brother came back from Korea so psychologically devastated that he never recovered. He lived nearly fifty of his seventy years haunted by the horror of what he witnessed in the Korean War. He was not alone. Every war produces more casualties than are accounted for in the body counts. My uncle died just a few years ago but it was the Korean War that killed him.
Apr 04 2008
The Peace Sign turned 50 years old today, April 4th, 2008. It was introduced at a British rally to ban nuclear bombs on April 4, 1958. Gerald Holtom, a graphic artist, had a simple idea: “I drew myself . . . a man in despair . . . put a circle around it to represent the world.” The Wikipedia adds that the symbol is “representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad.”
Apr 04 2008
Dr. King at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967
“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Iraq. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours…“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood…
“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate…
“We must find new ways to speak for peace in Iraq and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”
–April 4 is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. It is also the anniversary of the speech he gave a year before his death, entitled “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence.” This is taken from that speech. I have taken the liberty of changing only the name of the country.
Read or listen to the whole speech here.
Mar 30 2008
We’ve become embarrassed to speak of it, but love is what it’s all about: love of country, justice, peace, humanity…and love of one’s fellow Americans – one’s fellow protesters. In contemplating my most recent experience demonstrating against the war in Washington DC, that’s what comes to me, the overwhelming love I feel for those who care enough to stand up and be counted.
My son Daniel and I flew out of Atlanta late on Tuesday, the 18th so I could get in a full day of work. As we approached our hotel in DC my phone rang. It was Victory Coffee. She explained that she had brought a friend and that they’d be in McPherson Square at 7:30 in the morning. Daniel and I settled in to try and get a good night’s rest but could hardly sleep for the anticipation.
The alarm went off at 6:00 AM. I got up, showered, and jumped into my best protest Levis with my gen-u-ine Ben Masel ‘Impeach Cheney First’ button and my ‘No Blood for Oil’ button and then fiddled with cameras and batteries and whatnot while Daniel got himself ready. I carefully laid out the IGTNT flyers and bags that snackdoodle had mailed me the previous week. I had promised to find people to hand these out at the protest as a way of honoring America’s dead in the Iraq war. I got the flyers divided into roughly equal stacks, placed them in the bags, stacked them neatly on top of the TeeVee and promptly went off without them. We were in McPherson Square by the time I realized my mistake.
Mar 22 2008
This is the story of the vigil that refused to die — or at least refused to be snowed under. Friday was a horrendous day in Milwaukee as Spring arrived with a huge snowfall that may end up being more than a foot (it’s still falling as I write this.) This was the noon report:
Nearly five inches of snow has fallen this morning at General Mitchell International as a winter storm warning remains in effect, keeping police and firefighters busy with multiple accidents reported on local streets and highways.
“Boy it’s bad outside,” said Milwaukee Battalion 1 Fire Chief Steven Gleisner, who was making rounds to the firehouses in his battalion this morning. “I almost spun out in a 4-wheel drive vehicle, a 6,000 pound Chevy Suburban, and I’m having a tough time getting around. I’ve never done that in a four-wheel drive vehicle. I’m like, ‘No. I’m heading home. Plus, the visibility is lousy.”
He suggested others do the same.”If folks don’t have to go out today, I wouldn’t go out,” he said.
It just got worse as the day went on. Side streets were nearly impassible, buses were running late if at all, the airport eventually closed. Many churches even canceled Good Friday services. So organizers of a 5 p.m. Iraq Moratorium vigil, a monthly action held on downtown’s busiest corner, conferred during the afternoon. Should the show go on? Your humble scribe, having ventured out once in his lightweight car, really didn’t want to do it again. However, having written a rather macho online essay earlier in the day, about how weather doesn’t stop Wisconsinites from stopping the war, staying home didn’t seem like an option.
In mid-afternoon, Peace Action’s George Martin said he planned to show up with signs, flags and paraphernalia, since some people were bound to show up no matter what. But he called about 4 p.m. to say the event was off. Let’s be honest; I breathed a sigh of relief. I could stay home with a clear conscience, although I might have to eat a little crow about that blog.
But, I looked out at 4:30 p.m. and, although the snow was still falling heavily, our street had miraculously been plowed. So, staying only on a few main arterial streets, I managed to make it to the site of the alleged vigil. There, at Water Street and Wisconsin Avenue, four young people huddled on the corner. One had a rolled-up sign, so it seemed plausible they were there to protest the war, not catch a bus. That turned out to be the case. I told them the vigil was canceled, and asked if they’d at least stay long enough for me to haul a brand new Iraq Moratorium banner out of my car and take a photo. Once there was a banner and a few more people showed up with their own signs, everyone decided to stay for the scheduled hour-long vigil. We ended up with 10 people.
So Milwaukee’s record is intact. Seven vigils in the seven months since the Iraq Moratorium began in September. Although this was the smallest turnout ever, it may have been the most satisfying one to be a part of. The people in these photos are winter soldiers, indeed.
Reports from other actions are beginning to trickle in from around the country. Read them, or post your own accounts of what you did, at IraqMoratorium.org
Mar 21 2008
It’s Iraq Moratorium day, so of course it’s snowing heavily here in Wisconsin, where more than a dozen outside vigils are planned.
There is already several inches on the ground in Milwaukee, and it is still coming down heavily. By our 5 p.m. downtown vigil tonight there could be a foot of the stuff.
But those who can get there will be there, just as they have been during the winter when temperatures and wind chills were sub-zero. (Pictured are folks in Whitewater, WI at their February Moratorium vigil.)
Why?
I have to wonder myself sometimes. Why do we persist, when other public events are being canceled left and right?
The easiest answer is that people are committed to ending this senseless, bloody war — and they want to demonstrate their commitment.
Last week, Iraq Veterans Against the War held Winter Soldier hearings, to testify about what life is like on the ground, and what our troops are being asked to do in the name of “freedom.”
Winter Soldier, modeled after the 1971 Vietnam Winter Soldier hearings, takes its name from these words of Thomas Paine, written during the terrible winter of Valley Forge:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
So, maybe the weather today is just testing whether we are “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” or are really committed.
I’ve talked myself into it: I’ll be there tonight, whatever the weather.
Whether you’re battling the snow or basking on the beach, please join us in doing something today to show your opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq.
Wear a button or an armband. Write a letter. Send an email. Donate to a peace group. Whatever. But do something. You’ll find ideas for individual action and a list of group events at IraqMoratorium.org
Be a winter soldier.
Mar 20 2008
They’ll discuss it in Detroit.
They’ll write letters in Cornwall, Ct.
They’ll march in Duluth, rally in White Plains, and vigil in Cincinnati.
And they’ve been getting arrested in San Francisco.
Friday is Iraq Moratorium #7, and people across the country are marking it in dozens of different ways, from rallies, marches, protests, vigils to individual actions to call for an end to the war and occupation.
There’s even been a bit of civil disobedience by people willing to make arrest to make their point.
It all fits (as long as it’s non-violent) under the umbrella of the Iraq Moratorium, a loosely-knit national grassroots movement to end the war and bring the troops home.