National Days, Weeks, Months II

NATIONAL DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS II

DAYS THAT PROMOTE THE US WARFARE STATE: US Nationalism-Exceptionalism-Jingoism-Corporations-Military Complex

OMNI’s National DAYS project is one more series of actions building a CULTURE OF PEACE in NWA.  Because a public and their leaders are formed in numerous ways, including institutions, we must change them too.  A way to change society derives from changing people’s behavior, which will then change thinking patterns.  Changing what people do is one way to change their behavior and therefore their thinking, and ultimately to change society.   Thus instead of celebrating Patriot Day for 9/11, empire,  revenge, domination, wars, and domestic and foreign McCarthyism, we celebrate Peaceful Tomorrows: international law, reconciliation, diplomacy, cooperation, assistance, amity.    

OMNI’s Culture of Peace program (derived from the UN, and shared with Peaceful Tomorrows, the AFSC and FCNL, and surely all peace organizations) offers an alternative, and a plan.  It is long-range, and it is multifarious, but it is nonetheless clear, composed of critiques of the structures of violence and of specific alternatives to the pervasive warfare state.   In 2009 when you look around Fayetteville you will see all the old conditionings and reinforcements of the US National Security Corporate State, but you will also see peace, justice, and ecology counter-values in hundreds of new activities in city, county, and university.  

 And of course if we do nothing the militarists and totalitarians will win.   So we are affirming DAYS that support nonviolent peace, compassion, social and economic justice, human rights, and the environment, and offering alternatives to Days that do not (instead of the genocide of Columbus Day, we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day).  Join OMNI and choose DAYS for peaceful tomorrows.

Dick Bennett

OMNI has Presented Critiques of These Structures of the US Security State:

Flag Day

4^th of July

Memorial Day

Mother’s Day (Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers’ Day of Peace)

National Day of Prayer

Patriot Day (Peaceful Tomorrows)

Pearl Harbor Day

Thanksgiving

VE Day

VJ Day

Veterans Day

Examples:

Memorial Day

We have published two newsletters on Memorial Day, formerly Decoration Day.  Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May to remember members of the armed forces killed in war. 

(Veterans Day, formerly, Armistice Day: Nov. 11, a legal holiday in the US in commemoration of the end of WWI and in honor of veterans of the armed forces.)

CONTENTS OF #2

Veterans for Peace, Arlington West

American Friends Service Committee

US Media and US Wars

War Resisters League Military Expenditures Pie Chart

Historians Against the Wars:  Afghanistan

Veterans for Peace 2009

OMNI Memorial Day Newsletter 2009

Patriot Day

Officially commemorates the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers and initiating the “War on Terrorism.”   We have redefined the Day as “Peaceful Tomorrows” after the organization by that name.

In 2009 we reported on the ACLU’s efforts to curtail the USA “Patriot” Act; presented an essay on the 9-11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which opposed the vengeful invasion of Afghanistan; listed books about 9-11; and more.  Here’s the Table of

Contents

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Schurz, Patriotism

Klein, Shock Doctrine

Johnson, Liquidate the Empire

Blum, Anti-Empire

Bill Williams, Peaceful Tomorrows

Nancy Goliff, Peaceful Tomorrows