OMNI NEWSLETTER ON ACTIVISM,
ACTIONS FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY #8, March 4, 2014. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of
Peace, (#2: June 23, 2011; #3 1-1-2012; #4 April 9,
2012; #5 Nov. 27, 2012; #6, March 24, 2013; #7 Sept. 15, 2013)
My Newsletters cover the
fields of peace, justice, and ecology.
My Blogs are the
newsletters that relate to US empire, militarism, Pentagon, and peacemaking and
peacemakers: War Department/Peace Department.
I am also occasionally filming Short Takes on peacemaking and peacemakers on Community TV, shown
also on my Blog.
My blog: The War
Department and Peace Heroes
Newsletters on Peace,
Justice, and Ecology:
Index:
Most of OMNI’s newsletters
could be filed under ACTIVISM:
Gandhi, MLKJr, nonviolence, et al. etc.
The stories and arguments cover a broad range of striving for world
peace, justice, and environmental preservation. The only restriction is the
rejection of violence. See the
newsletter on Nonviolence.
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry to recreate the world.
Activism Newsletter Nos. 3-7
at end
Contents Activism Newsletter #8
USA
Reich, Where are
the Ruckus Muckrakers?
Start Your Own Petition
Move On/SignOn.org, Avaaz
Demand Progress
Political Action
Join Hands and
Tongue With One of the Thousands
Great Peace
Organizations
FCNL Quaker
Capitol Hill Lobby
Ganz, Farm
Workers’ Movement
Individual
Activists
Notable US Peacemakers
Rock Happy:
Dick, Hank Kaminsky’s “Peace Rock”
Moyers: Dreier,
US Activists
Dreier, The 100 Greatest. . .Social Justice Hall of
Fame (BillMoyers.com)
Reverend Billy (a
Billy in every town?)
WORLD
Dick, Paul Collier: Intergovernmental
Cooperation Declining, Citizen Cooperation Rising
“Three Figures of
Hope”: Nazi Germany,
Papacy, USA
West Bank and Gaza: Qumsiyeh, In Search of the Wisdom
Mexico:
Gottesdiener, zapatista Movement
COME JOIN THE RUCKUS
Robert Reich | Why There's No Outcry
Robert
Reich's Blog ,Reader
Supported News, 26 January 14.
Reich
writes: "Middle incomes are sinking, the ranks of the poor are swelling,
almost all the economic gains are going to the top, and big money is corrupting
our democracy. So why isn’t there more of a ruckus?"
READ MORE
START YOUR OWN PETITION
MOVEON
www.petitions.moveon.org/
Start A Petition Online Using The New MoveOn.org Petition Tool
www.thepetitionsite.com/
1,000's of Free Signatures. Start now.
Promote with our #1 fb network
SIGNON
https://www.facebook.com/SignOn.org
SignOn.org is entirely funded by
small donations from our members. And unlike other petition sites, we never
promote petitions because someone paid us ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoveOn.org
Wikipedia
Anna Galland is the executive director
of MoveOn.org Civic Action and Ilya Sheyman ...On May 16, 2011,
MoveOn.org debuted SignOn.org, a non-profit
hosting ...
https://twitter.com/SignOn
The latest from SignOn.org (@SignOn). SignOn.org is an online organizing
tool launched by MoveOn.org Civic Action as part of our longstanding commitment
to ...
www.netrootsfoundation.org/2012/.../experts-speak-all-about-signon-org...
Oct 25, 2012 - Today, we're digging a
little deeper into MoveOn's petition tool with Steven Biel, the director of SignOn.org. Can you share a little
bit about ...
AVAAZ
www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/
Avaaz Community Petitions site is a new platform
that empowers citizen to launch and win local, national, and global campaigns! ... Start your petition. Sign Up ...
www.avaaz.org/en/petition/about
Community Petitions by Avaaz empowers people with
online tools to help realize the ...people around the world
the power to start and win campaigns at the
local, national, and international levels. ... With the arrival of
Community Petitions, we can all use these
online tools to run our own local, ... Setting Your Petition Goal
Start Your Own Petition. Avaaz's new Community Petitions platform is supporting
thousands to start and win campaigns, at
the local, national, and international ...
AVAAZ
Start Your Own Petition
x
Have an issue you'd like to get support
on? Start your own petition with Avaaz Community Petitions!
THOUSANDS OF ORGANIZATIONS TO RUCKUS
WITH
HERE ARE TWO
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KAMINSKYKASTARTA
PETITION
|
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Paid for by Demand Progress (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized
by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions to Demand Progress are not ...
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Our Mission. Demand Progress works to win
progressive policy ...
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CISPA Is The New SOPA: Help
Kill It. Here's their next move: The ...
|
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Stop Censorship. We teamed up
with SOPA hero Senator Ron ...
|
Demand justice for Aaron:
Support "Aaron's Law" and inquiry into ...
|
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PLEASE DEMONSTRATE YOUR
SUPPORT FOR AARON BY ...
|
URGENT: Congress Wants To Make
Streaming A Felony. Tell ...
|
|
|
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress
Demand Progress is an internet
activist-related 527 organization, specializing in petitions to
help gain traction for legal movements against internet censorship ...
https://twitter.com/demandprogress
The latest from Demand Progress (@demandprogress). Demand Progress is an activism
organization with over one million members which fights for civil ...
https://www.facebook.com/demandprogress
Demand Progress. 13198 likes · 594
talking about this. Demand Progress works to win progressive
policy changes for ordinary people through organizing, ...
LONGTIME RUCKUSEERS, THE INDEFATIGABLE
FCNL FRIENDS COMMITTEE FOR NATIONAL LEGISLATION BY LOBBYING
·
FCNL Policy Statement
The World
We Seek: FCNL Policy Statement
The World We Seek,
FCNL's policy statement, sets forth FCNL's broad objectives for public policy.
The General Committee, or board of governors, revises and updates
the statement on an ongoing basis.Legislative priorities for each Congress are drawn from the
policy statement.
The current policy statement
outlining the world we seek was approved in November 2013. Download the full document,
or read it by section.
Since the early days
of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), God’s spirit has led Friends to
take action in the world. This Spirit has called Friends to recognize the
equality of women and men, challenge hereditary privilege, help end legal
slavery, struggle against oppression and reduce suffering inflicted by violent
conflict. Since 1943, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has
carried on this witness of the Spirit through action on Capitol Hill. Governed
by members of the Religious Society of Friends, FCNL acts in faith to create a
world free from war, a society with equity and justice for all, a community
where every person’s potential may be fulfilled and an earth restored.
Friends have long
found inspiration in George Fox’s invitation to live “in the virtue of that
life and power that [takes] away the occasion of all wars.” We believe that
peace throughout the world is God’s will and is attainable. True security
results from a culture of peace, including a healthy environment, a fair and
sustainable economic life, democratic participation, an educated population,
personal well-being and healthy families. Peace and security can be achieved
only by peaceful means.
Friends’ witness
calls for right relationships among people and between individuals and God.
Governments are instituted, in part, to promote and protect basic human rights.
These are rights, not mere privileges subject to easy denial. Friends
acknowledge the indispensable role of government in safeguarding the integrity
of our society and the essential dignity of all human beings. Citizens have the
responsibility to participate vigorously in making government more responsive,
open and accountable.
"Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these . . . ye have done it unto
me." We believe that God dwells in each human soul, and therefore it is
the birthright of all persons to live a life of dignity with access to the
basic necessities for human growth and development. Accordingly, we believe
that all members of society should take responsibility for each other, not only
to provide the essentials of life but also to ensure an opportunity for
meaningful work and recreation so that each can contribute to society according
to his or her abilities. Society benefits when families and communities make
commitments to care for their members.
We declare that
humankind must respect the ecological integrity and the sacredness of the
natural world. All on this earth are interdependent, and we are strongly
mindful of the call to be wise stewards of what God has provided. Friends’
testimonies have deep relevance to the global environmental crises we see
unfolding around us.
Why
David Sometimes Wins:
Leadership, Organization,
and Strategy in the California
Farm Worker Movement
Marshall Ganz. Oxford
UP, 2013.
Ganz, because of his long leadership role within the
UFW, is unusually well placed as an insider, organizer, and later as a scholar,
to write a moving narrative history of
this remarkable movement.
·
Presents
an original argument that an organization's ability to devise good strategy -
driven by leadership - translates into an ability to take advantage of opportunities
and with it the likelihood of success.
·
The
topics encompassed by the movement - immigration, Mexican-American politics,
the struggles of labor unions, a living wage and benefits for working class
families - still resonate in today's political climate.
|
NOTABLE US ACTIVISTS
GREAT US
PEACEMAKERS
FAYETTEVILLE, AR,
USA
HANK
KAMINSKY’S “PEACE ROCK”
By Dick
Bennett
Hank Kaminsky's "Peace Rock'' (1998)
adorns the hillside back yard of the residence of James Richard (Dick)
Bennett, who commissioned the sculpture in 1997. The sculpture names thirty United States
peacemakers.
The oval sculpture --17 inches wide, 40
inches long, and 19 inches tall-is eloquent in its function. In bold raised
letters at the top the sculpture spells out PEACE, while the names of the
peacemakers, also in raised letters, surround the sides.
Three features of the sculpture deserve
special comment. First. it is shaped and colored dark brown to appear from a
distance as a large stone, to suggest a connection between peace and the
evolving earth and humankind. Second, the letters of PEACE are designed to
contain soil for growing moss and ferns. to suggest the connection between
the ideal of peace and the tranquility of plants, in contrast to the machines
of death machine guns, planes, nuclear bombs. The quest is for peace not only
among humans but between the human-made techno-sphere and the natural
ecosphere. Among the planet's greatest problems perpetual wars, nationalism
imperialism, hunger and malnutrition, the global war between the rich and the
poor, nuclear holocaust--ecological destruction surely ranks high in urgency.
Third, the name\ of the peacemakers are not always immediately discernible
because, in contrast to the Vietnam Memorial Wall's incised clarity for quick
identification, the sculptor wished to involve viewers in the peacemakers
search for peace. The incompleteness of the names Thoreau and Rukeyser share
the subsidence of the letter E, to suggest the perpetual danger of the
collapse of peace into war.
All of the names are inscribed
horizontally to suggest time and the equality of these peacemakers in time.
who are placed in random order up and down, left and right. The sculpture
rests in a setting of flowers. shrubs, and trees. It can be seen on eye-level
from the residence's deck at a distance of 30 feet.
The United States is a war-making nation.
It has fought a dozen wars since 1 94 1, most of them not defensive. (despite
its name-change, the Department of Defense remains the old Department of
War.) It has invaded a dozen countries during the second half of this
century, in violation of international laws and treaties, illegal acts of
aggression against sovereign nations which opposed us, were defined as
"enemies.'. expressed a different ideology, or simply stood in our way
to some national goal (Guatemala,
Dominican Republic, Libya, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Cuba, Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia, Grenada,
Panama, Iraq). The United States glorifies war;
ceremonies and symbols and monuments of warriors pervade national life: and
terrorism comes always some from some other nation or group. From childhood, we
are conditioned to accept aggression and war and the violence essential to
war-making.
Many methods exist for diminishing
nationalistic, conditioned aggression. One is to increase the ethos of peace
and of peacemaker models for our youth by building memorials to peacemakers
in peaceful and beautiful landscapes. Our children know the names of our
warriors, who are celebrated in countless ways. They do not know the names of
our peacemakers. So we must begin at our homes to instill the values of
beauty, peace, and just law by celebrating the peacemakers by naming them.
Just as citizens have always expressed their patriotism by erecting a flag in
their yard, or by setting aside a place in their home to remember loved ones
who served or were killed in war--the home as a war memorial, privately
reinforcing the legitimacy of the war-making nation---, we can also transform
our homes into peace memorials.to honor those who sacrificed for peace and
imagined a peacemaking nation.
John Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of
Architecture argued that architecture, as the art of edifices that
contributes to our "mental health, power, and pleasure." is an
index of a nation’s values. Throughout our history, warriors have
appropriated this domain of public good. But a counter-movement is rising of
beautiful monuments dedicated to peace, especially in landscaped places. We
must know and remember peacemakers, not warmakers and killers, if we are to
have peace. The plastic arts and literature provide us with memory. Ruskin: "it is well to have, not only
what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their
strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life.”
This sculpture is a measure of our
culture's struggle with violence. In
conception, design, and execution. it offers "health, power, and
pleasure.' And it benefits from the
spiritual and sensory power of the landscape, both of` which are to be
discovered by the inquiring visitor. In contrast to the immensely successful
conditioning of` soldiers to kill by the U. S. Army, and the apparently
successful conditioning of the population to be violent by our culture---in
films, television, computer games--. sculpture and place invite non-violent
reflection and behavior.
It is hoped that this private place for
peace will inspire the creation of more private peace memorials. and Iead
outward to more public peace memorials. We should strive to create not only
private places of peace. but also to create peace parks and gardens and
sculptures in our towns, cities and countryside, if we are ever to evolve
into a nation and world dedicated to peaceful rather than Pentagon values.
Biographies of all of the peacemakers
named on Kaminsky's sculpture (except for one) may be found in books by Michael
True: Justice-Seekers, Peacemakers: 32 Portraits in Courage (1985) and
To Construct Peace. 30 More Justice Seekers and Peacemakers (1990).
True has also written An Energy Field More Intense Than War: the
Nonviolent Tradition and American Literature (l995).
A note on heroes. Our genuine heroes are
less well known than the false heroes used to sell products. Our society is
saturated with meretricious celebrities pushing commodities. Celebrity names
sell; celebrity makes money. What kind of person the celebrity is or what
relation the celebrity has to the product sold matters little. But the heroes
listed on Hank Kaminsky's engrossing “Peace Rock” possess authentic identity
as seekers for a peaceful world.
Hank Kaminsky was born April 3, 1939. He is
married to Jo Ann Burton Kaminsky and has two sons. Jesse and Daniel. He was
educated at Queens College (Flushing, NY), the Art Students League, the New
School for Social Research, the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts, and the University
of Arkansas. His most
well known work is the World Peace Prayer fountain on the downtown Square of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Some of his other sculptures
are: "The Miracle of the Double Helix,'' University of Arkansas for
Medical Sciences, Little Rock; a Set of Communion Vessels and Candle Fixtures
for the First United Presbyterian Church, Fayetteville; "Islands in the
Sea" for Temple Shalom, Fayetteville; “Yahrzeit" for Temple B'nai
Israel, Little Rock; and "Eternal Light" and "Words for
Healing" at the Washington Regional hospital in Fayetteville.. His works
have been shown widely in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington,
DC, Birmingham, AL,
and throughout Arkansas.
He has taught widely from Dallas to New York City to Branson, including the position of
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art, University of Arkansas.
Fayetteville.
"Since 1971 I have been working with a technique which I call
'Sand-Matrix Design.'' The latest example of this technique can be seen in
the sculpture series he is working on now called "The Sacred
Ground Project," a collection of concrete sculptures designed for
the garden.
The Peacemakers celebrated on
the sculpture, all from the United
States, are:
Jane Addams(1860-1935),
co-founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
opposed U.S. entering WWI, "one of
the great leaders in the American tradition of nonviolence."
Joan Baez(194I-), human rights
activist, jailed twice for demonstrating against the Vietnam War and U.S. interventions in Southeast
Asia, supported war tax resistance and political prisoners.
Adin Ballou(l803- 1890).
founded the Hopedale Community utopian experiment. significant adherent of
Christian non-resistance and nonviolence, influenced Tolstoy and Gandhi.
Daniel (1921) and Philip
(1923-) Berrigan. leaders of the Catholic non-violent anti-war and
anti-nuclear movement, both often
imprisoned. Philip and his wife, Elizabeth McAlister. founded the resistance
center, Jonah House, and the publication, Year One, and have been active in
Plowshares actions. Daniel has won
many literary prizes for his poetry and play, The Trial of the Catonsville
Nine.
Elise (1920-) and Kenneth
(1910- 1993) Boulding, founders of the International PEACE Research
Association (PRA) and its North American Affiliate, the Consortium on Peace
Research, Education, and
Development (COPRED) he
authored Stable Peace, she Building a Global Civil Culture Randolph Bourne (
I 886-1918), socialist, fervent opponent of U.S. intervention in WWI and the
war-making state.
Elihu Burritt (I8I0-I879).
founded the first International Peace Society (1854). edited the Advocate of
Peace and Universal Brotherhood for the American Peace Society which
anticipated the League of Nations and the World Court.
Cesar Chavez(1917-I923), with
Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers, both committed to
nonviolence.
Noam Chomsky (1928-),
anarchist and socialist opponent of U.S. imperialism and the
military/ndustria/media/university complex
of war-making
Maura (:larke ( 1 ')3 1 -
1980), member of the Maryknoll order, friend to victims of repressive
governments.
murdered by the El Salvadoran military.
Frances Crowe (1919-), Quaker,
anti-war (Vietnam)
and anti-nuclear activist, anti-draft counselor: prisoner, recipient of
awards from Catholic, Protestant, and other groups.
Dorothy Day (1897-1980),
Catholic, war-resister, defender of the poor. civil-disobedient. writer,
founder (1933) of The Catholic Worker, "the most remarkable person in
the history of American Catholicism
Eugene Debs (1855-1926), five
times the Socialist Party's nominee for president of the U.S.. imprisoned for opposing
W.W.I.. defender of the poor, co-founder of the I WW.
David Dellinger (lS,IS-). imprisoned
for conscientious objection during WWII. edited Liberation after the war, a
journal of radical pacifism, co-chair of the New Mobilization committee to
end the war in Vietnam, one of the Chicago 8.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-
1964), communist, chair of International Labor Defense, co-founder of
the ACLU, victim of Red Scares of
1919 and McCarthyism, imprisoned 1955-57: she was the "rebel girl of Joe
Hill's song.
Allen Ginsberg (l925-l 997),
poet, opposed the Vietnam War (the only person on the sculpture not in either
of True's books; a favorite peacemaker of the sculptor).
Martin Luther King, Jr. ( I
929-1968), Baptist minister, advocate of non-violence. writer, orator; leader
of Civil Rights Movement I950s- 1960s, opponent of Vietnam War, prisoner.
Kathy Knight ( 1938-), a
leader of Catholic non-violent peace movement against the Vietnam War.
Meridel LeSueur ( 1900- 1997),
writer, socialist, blacklisted during McCarthy era. opponent of nuclear weapons, feminist.
Denise Levertov (1923- 1997)
opposed the Vietnam War and wrote numerous poems on war and violence.
Mennonites, one of the three
historic peace churches (with Quakers and Brethren), oppose war and killing
as contrary to the gospel.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968),
Trappist monk, urged nonviolent social change among Catholics, edited Breakthrough to Peace and Thomas
Merton on Peace.
Quakers, the Society of
Friends, one of the three historic peace churches, helped develop principle
of conscientious objection, committed to nonviolence.
Muriel Rukeyser (l9l3-1980).
prize-winning poet, imprisoned for opposing Vietnam War draft and nuclear
arms, as president of PEN (international organization of poets, essays, and
novelists) traveled the world to protect imprisoned writers.
Mulford Sibley (1912-1989),
teacher, writer (The Ouiet Battle, 1968, The Obligation to Disobey.
1970). war resister, pacifist.
William Stafford (1914- 1993),
imprisoned in Arkansas
for conscientious objection to WWII, became an award-winning writer and
lifetime war resister.
Lucy Stone (l818-1893),
abolitionist and women's rights activist.
Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862), jailed for "civil disobedient" tax resistance against
the U.S.
invasion of Mexico ( I846), author of “Civil I Disobedience.” one of the most
influential critics of unjust state violence.
Annabel WoIfson (1915-I983)
opposed war, conscription, imperialism.
Howard Zinn (1902-),
historian: SNCC: The New
Abolitionists (1964), A People`s History of the United States
(198O), war protester.
True discusses many other
peacemakers in his two books. For example, he says of Ammon Hennacy
(I893-1970): “the one man revolution." draft resister who served many
years in prison during WWI, arrested 32 times for civil disobedience against
nuclear weapons, war, and capital punishment.
Recommended reading:
Ackerman, Peter, and Jack
Duvall. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. St. Martin’s,
2000.
Adolf, Antony.
Peace: A World History. Polity, 2009.
Commoner, Barry. Making
Peace with the Planet. New York:
Pantheon, 1990.
Gay, Peter. The Cultivation
of Hatred. Vol. III of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. New
York:
Norton, 1993.
Grossman, Dave, Lt. Col. On
Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.
Boston.
Little, Brown, 1997.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace Is
Every Step, the Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York: Bantam.
McKean, John. Places for
Peace, London:
Architects for Peace, 1989.
McSorley, Richard. New
Testament Basis of Peacemaking. Herald, 1985.
Mosse, George, Fallen
Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, New
York: Oxford
UP. 1990.
Polner, Murray and Thomas
Woods, Jr., eds. We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to
Now. Basic Books, 2008.
Sharp, Gene. The
Politics of Nonviolent Action. Porter
Sargent, 1973.
Smith-Christopher, Daniel,
ed. Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious
Traditions. Boston Research
Center, 1998.
Winter, Jay. Sites of
memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995.
Dick Bennett
US ACTIVISTS TODAY
MOYERS & CO.
Peter Dreier on a New
Generation of Activists
October 25, 2013
Historian Peter Dreier shares why he’s optimistic
about America’s
future, including dynamic
grass-roots initiatives around the country and, believe it or not, the
radical politics of Dr. Seuss.
READ
THE TRANSCRIPT
DIG DEEPER
FULL EPISODE
§
Peter Dreier on a New Generation of Activists
RELATED FEATURES
Peter Dreier on a New Generation of Activists
October 25, 2013 [Oct. 27, 2013, AETN]
In his interview
with Bill this week, historian Peter Dreier shares why he’s optimistic about
America’s future, shining a spotlight on grass-roots initiatives around the
country that remind us of our collective capacity to make a real difference.
Dreier, author of The 100 Greatest Americans of the
20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, also explains
why the radical politics of Dr. Seuss, the late children’s book author and
illustrator, is a source of inspiration.
“The message that
Dr. Seuss is sending in his books to young people is to stand up to arbitrary
authority and take back your own life and be a fighter for justice and for
your own integrity,” Dreier tells Bill. “I think that Dr. Seuss would be very
pleased with a lot of the movements today because these are people standing
up to authority and big power and trying to take the country back.”
Interview
Producer: Gina Kim. Editor: Sikay Tang.
BillMoyers.com-Oct 25, 2013
See how it happens in Peter Dreier's most recent book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20thCentury: A
Social Justice Hall of Fame. Peter ...
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Huffington
Post-Oct 5, 2013
Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is the author of The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A
Social Justice Hall of ...
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Anchorage Daily News-Oct 3, 2013
Peter Dreier: Californa city aims to buy
mortgages from banks that .... Metropolitics for the 21st
Century" and "The 100 Greatest Americans of the ...
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Pasadena Star-News-Oct 13, 2013
We had the opportunity recently to hear Occidental
College Professor Peter Dreierdiscuss his book,
“The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th ...
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REVEREND BILLY AND VERA SCROGGINS
Saturday, 01 March 2014 07:53
Why Are the Advocates Trying
to Save the Planet Prosecuted While the Plunderers Walk Free?
REV.
BILLY TALEN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Anti-Fracking
activist Vera Scroggins is under virtual house arrest in PA. (Photo: James Pitarresi)
It
seems every week or so you can hear language borrowed from the War On Terror,
the Salem Witch Hunts and the McCarthy hearings. Some prosecutor is
hurling invective at fossil fuel resisters, who sit in the courtroom with their
pro bono lawyers, staring with the disbelief of newcomers to the evils of the
plunderers of our Earth -- and the collusion of our government with them.
We
know that there are heroes like the Sea Shepherd sailors, the Arctic 30, and
Tim "Bidder 70" DeChristopher. Although some of these activists are
young, we tend to think of them as veterans who are making a stand for the rest
of us. But an increasing movement seems to be building, in which the heroes are
people who might be described as local activists. These are volunteer
citizens who oppose fossil fuel projects near where they live - who resist with
their bodies because they don't have the money to pull the strings in
government like the fossil fuel industry. Something about these under-equipped
protesters is making Big Oil go crazy.
Three
Michigan women - Lisa Leggio, Barbara Carter, and Vicci
Hamlin - chained
themselves to an excavator in the little town of Mason. They were polite in that Midwestern
way throughout their protest of Enbridge, the Canadian firm that leaked 800,000
gallons of oil in their community, and can't seem to clean it up. After the
conviction was read, Judge William Collette, a Republican and former bomber
pilot, marched the ladies - one of them a great-grandmother - straight to jail
from their defense table, despite their intentions to appeal.
Here
we have a signature tactic of fossil fuel injustice. Call it
"overcharging," accusing nonviolent defendants of felonious crimes
that will later be dropped, but meanwhile holding them in prison because the
bail is too high. In this way, the personal turmoil in the families of the
accused is maximized. Also,
this is how the government and its partner corporations cast a pall of guilt on
the innocent, making them look dark and dangerous on the local evening news.
Over-charging
can quickly slide into creative charges that re-write the law. Our American
alphabet soup of security, the DHS, NSA, FBI and TSA - is using a new charge on
banner-droppers in Oklahoma City.
Two activists in the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance are facing charges on
perpetrating a "Bioterrorism Hoax" at the headquarters of extraction
giant Devon Energy. This is a strange charge - that we cannot take an action
that we are entitled to under the Constitution. When some cheap glitter shook
from one of the banners, the police reasoned that this might be chemical
warfare. Stefan Warner and Moriah Stephenson face ten years in prison.
Over-kill
is easy when you're Enbridge and Devon Energy,
companies whose assets are in the $30 to $45 billion range. Behind the front
line of fossil companies are the banks that finance them, such as Bank of
America and Chase, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland. The fossil-fuel-investing
banks are bigger than most countries, with assets measured in the trillions.
When these giants look over the shoulders of prosecutors and see someone
everyone seems to know, who lives over on Elm Street, standing up to them - was
anything more outside their business plan?
Even
with the corrupting consultation of Big Oil, much happens in these courtrooms
that seems unintended. The efforts to cast these home-made activists as dark
assassins often backfires.
Vera
Scroggins lives in a heavily hydrofractured area near the town of Montrose, in northeastern Pennsylvania. She has nonviolently but
flamboyantly opposed the oil companies, even organizing a rally with Yoko Ono
and Sean Lennon. The Cabot Oil and Gas Co., now owns much of property
rights in and around Montrose, with a tangle of difficult-to-understand leases
and easements, as well mineral rights beneath the homes of long-time
citizens. Cabot is so upset with Ms. Scroggins, a 63 year old
grandmother, that they persuaded a judge to issue an injunction that forbids
her from walking anywhere on the 312 square miles around Montrose that Cabot
somehow controls. This puts her under virtual house arrest. After being tailed
by police for a few days, she realized that she couldn't figure out where it
was legal for her to go. She couldn't walk to the pharmacy or her favorite diner.
Scroggins has, surreally, asked the court for a map with legal trails through
her own hometown.
The
more innocent the protesters, the more terrified the billionaire's men.
Grandmother Scroggins was given 24 hours to appear in court, and she came
without a lawyer to represent her. Cabot was ready to lay their trap,
with three lawyers. They exiled her from her own Main Street.
Do
they really believe that will be enough? Doesn't Vera Scroggins
resemble the citizen volunteers who showed up early in the civil rights, the
peace and gender rights movements? Isn't this entrenched power's historical
nightmare - returning again to haunt them? The willingness to risk injury, jail
or worse have made "ordinary people" into legendary figures. And
these folks have kids and grandkids. What if these citizens really listen to
what the scientists are saying, and realize that they nothing to lose but their
loved ones - won't this make them the fiercest warriors of all?
You
can't stop Vera Scroggins, or the Enbridge Three, or the Oklahoma City glitterati. You can't stop the
families who overran the fracking equipment in West
Sussex. You can't stop Bo Webb, the ex-marine in the coal-blasted
mountains of West Virginia.
You can't stop Idle No More, the natives in Canada
and Utah
blocking tar sands equipment from their sacred lands. You can't stop the young UK
activists who climbed EDF Energy's smokestack and stopped those emissions for a
week. You can't stop Grace Cagle from living in the pipeline-blocking
treehouse.
You
can't stop Drew Hutton and the Lock the Gate ranchers in Queensland
and New South Wales.
You can't stop the Grandmothers Knitting Against Gas; or Wahleah Johns and the
Navajo community trying to go solar; or Yvon Raoul in Alberta, playing bagpipes against tar sands;
or the Liberate Tate museum-invaders, trying to pry big oil from the prestige
of fine arts.
The
efforts to save planet Earth are on the rise locally and globally.
There
are too many Vera Scrogginses to chase down, and too many to publicly defame,
and too many to lock up. In the coming years, the irresistible force of the
changing Earth and the supposedly immoveable object of the fossil fuel industry
will have a fight to the death.
Whatever
sort of apocalypse we're in for, the Earth will survive, and in the end I bet
that Vera walks whereever she wants to.
WORLD
PAUL COLLIER, THE PLUNDERED PLANET.
“Yet while the ability of governments to cooperate has declined, the
ability of citizens to coordinate action. . .has increased” (especially via
Internet 234). “It may be that
cooperation at the level of civil society can be a substitute for that between
governments in introducing common responses to global problems” (239).
THREE CHRISTIAN FIGURES OF HOPE:
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER,POPE JOHN XXIII, MURIEL MOORE
Thomas Cahill ends Heretics and
Heroes with three brief profiles of three Christians—a
German Lutheran Protestant, an Italian Catholic, and a U.S. Episcopalian--who
represent some of the best in Christianity.
“Christians must not only ‘bandage the victims under the
wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself.’”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, qtd. By
Thomas Cahill, Heretics and Heroes (307,
referring to Hitler’s Nazis).
Pope John XXIII
believed that “Jesus came to break down barriers [between people]; he died to
proclaim universal brotherhood; the central point of his teaching is
charity—that is, the love that binds all human beings to him. . . .” (308).
Muriel Moore
organized free meals for the poor and treated all the same. “’We are all the same.’ That was Muriel’s credo.” (310).
WEST BANK AND GAZA
COMMON MORALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS by Mazin Qumsiyeh. Sept. 23, 2013
It is very hard sometimes to go on “having joyful
participation in the
sorrows of this world” (The Buddhist motto) when
we witness so much
injustice, so much poverty, so many deaths, and
so much hypocrisy.
The key word and the most difficult is
“participation”. How do we
participate in a meaningful moral way in such a
world? How do we know
if we are doing something to make a difference,
or we are unable to
make a difference? “God grant me the
courage to change the things I
can, patience for those I can’t change, and
wisdom to know the
difference.” How can we find this wisdom
to know. We struggle with
these questions daily because we see so much
destruction, death,
hypocrisy, and stupidity. ….
MEXICO
Laura Gottesdiener | Now You See Me - A Glimpse into the
Zapatista Movement, Two Decades Later
Laura
Gottesdiener, TomDispatch
Gottesdiener
writes: "Thousands are clustered in this muddy field to mark the 20-year
anniversary of January 1, 1994, when an army of impoverished farmers surged out
of the jungle and launched the first post-modern revolution."
READ MORE
Contents of #3
Sending a Petition
Z Magazine January
2012
Yes! Fifteen
Activists
New Book:
Becoming the Leaders We Need
New Book: Save the
Humans?
New Book: Dream of a
Nation
New Documentary on Effects on People of US Capitalism and
Remedies
Occupy Wall Street
Justice for Tomato Field Laborers
Global Rallies for Renewable Energy
Journalistic Dilemma in Reporting Protest
Looking Back
Contents of #4 April 9, 2012
The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World
Civic
Resistance
Strike
Book: Dream
of a Nation
Book: Mobilizing
Book: Collaboration
Mark Ruffalo
John Graham,
Giraffe Project
Nonviolent
Method: Shame
3 Dissenters:
Press, Joya, Jacob George
How to Organize
an Event
Contents of #5 (in roughly chronological order of
subjects)
Franklin
Folsom, the Unemployed Organized
Bollinger and Tran, From Tecumseh to Harvey Milk
Folsom, Peace
March 1986
Film about Brian Willson
Thich Nhat Hanh, Love in Action
Berlowe,
Compassionate Rebel 2002, Anger and Love
Berlowe,
Compassionate Rebel 2
Zinn, Collected
Speeches
Goodman and
Moynihan, Resisters Today
Post-Nov. 6, 2012
Election Movement Building
Amy Goodman
Dreier and Cohen
Contents #6
Anti-War Film
Protest, Social
Change Film: Let Fury Have the Hour
Rights of Disabled
Campaign: Learning Hardball
Critical Thinking
ThisCantBeHappening
Mann, Progressive
Organizing
Split This Rock
Poetry Festival
RESIST: Funding
for Change
Dick’s Recent
Newsletters
Contents #7
September 15, 2013
Tomgram, Solnit: Occupy Anniversary
Dick: Moyers and Co., Successful
Organizing
Sandra Steingraber vs. Epidemic Toxic
Trespass in US
Marshall Ganz, Madeline Janis,
and Rachel Laforest—
Mindful
Occupation Booklet, Successful Organizing
Levine: Get Up, Stand Up Against the Corporations
YES! Magazine. A news magazine of notes
and short articles about pje changers.
Andrew Boyd, A Toolbox for Revolution
Adam Kahane, Power and Love…for Social Change
Alperovitz, What Do? Long-range Organizing for Change.
Michelle Deakin.
UU Social Action Heroes
Salsa: Guide for
Nonprofits
Recent Newsletters Relating to
Activism
3-2 US
Empire
3-1 Liberal/Progressive
3-1 Nuclear Free Pacific and Marshall Islands
2-26 US Westward Imperialism (China surrounded)
2-18 US
Capitalism
END ACTIVISM NEWSLETTER #8
