New Clear Vision

Open Letter to Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times

by Christine Baniewicz

Dear Kenneth,

A cold wind bore down College Avenue in Berkeley last week as I waited in a long line outside of the Rialto Cinema. I shivered. The queue was stuffed with middle-aged patrons for the 7 o’clock showing of a French comedy that got excellent reviews: The cultural event of the year! I was going to see Tears of Gaza instead.

My date was running late and as I drew closer to the ticket counter, the swirling words from your review knocked around inside my brain. Frustrating, poorly executed, graphic, disturbing. Six months ago I lived above the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp, teaching a theatre course to Palestinian actors. My love for those students and their work burns like a blue flame down the center of my chest…

But I don’t live there anymore. Now I live in Oakland, working 40 hours a week at a manufacturing company in San Leandro and when I clock out, I want to see something beautiful, affirming, well-made. Especially when I’m slapping down $10.50 for it at an art-house cinema. (more…)

Celebrations, Resistance, and Us

by Matt Meyer

This week, a project six years in the making — and which many of us hope will have a significant positive impact on US movements for social change — finally shot off the presses. We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America, which I had the honor of co-editing with Mandy Carter and Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, is ready for distribution. In thinking about how this fact needs to be celebrated — in addition to the very real, vital and hard work of coordinating speaking tours, loading and unloading boxes, and paying for printing costs — it is hard sometimes to remember how vital celebration actually is, and how very poor the left can often be about positive thinking. We are so mired in the depressing work of fighting against a seemingly all-powerful empire, and in the tedious work of basic survival (sometimes our own, sometimes our organizations), that our output becomes more negative than is healthy for either of those worthy goals. How then to stay positive while not getting distracted from the struggle?

Two short examples came to mind:

The first is from Africa, from a recent book by Albie Sachs, the former political prisoner, former ANC militant based in Mozambique, who had his arm blown off with damage to one eye when a car bomb intending to kill him exploded one day outside his office-in-exile in Mozambique. (more…)

Add Your Voice to Preserve Cultural and Biological Diversity

by David Swanson

Events in South Korea are putting U.S. and international environmental groups into coalition with antiwar groups, and in rare opposition to one of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth: the military industrial complex.

Normally, this doesn’t happen.  Typically, civil liberties groups oppose the detention and torture and assassination that come with military spending, but not the spending and not the wars.  Typically, anti-poverty and pro-education groups lament the supposed lack of funding, but avoid all mention of our dumping 57% of federal discretionary funds into war preparation and war.  Typically, for environmental groups, our top consumer of oil, producer of superfund sites, and poisoner of the earth is off-limits.  We oppose pollution, but not pollution in the cause of killing people more quickly. (more…)

It’s Not a Dirty Word…

by Jody Williams

HUMAN SECURITY FOR GLOBAL SECURITY: Demilitarization is not a dirty word, nonviolence is not inaction, and building sustainable peace is not for the faint of heart.

The political, social and economic changes we all face are serious.  Some might call the state of the world today chaos.  The ongoing, dramatic changes in technology and communications are other elements adding to uncertainty and the feelings of insecurity that people around the globe are confronting.  No one can predict the future but we can work hard to shape the outcomes.

Clearly there are huge obstacles to creating a world of sustainable peace with justice, equality and an end to impunity.  A world free of militarism, armaments and the arms trade in which human and other resources are focused on meeting the needs of humanity rather than fueling conflicts and war. A world of sustainable development that nurtures our planet instead of continuing to devastate the environment and threaten life on earth.  This will not happen over night.  But worrying about the future is not a strategy for shaping it. (more…)

Soldiers Finding Freedom in Resistance to Senseless Militarism

by David Swanson

One of the most inspiring events at the Veterans For Peace National Convention in Miami was a presentation by several veterans who have refused to participate in war.  Typically, they have done this at the risk of significant time in prison, or worse.  In most cases these resisters avoided doing any time.  Even when they did go behind bars, they did so with a feeling of liberation.

Gerry Condon refused to deploy to Vietnam, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, escaped from Fort Bragg, left the country, and came back campaigning for amnesty.  President Jimmy Carter pardoned resisters as his first act in office.  Condon never “served” a day, in either the military “service” or prison.

Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist refused to fly to Iraq, choosing instead to sit down on the tarmac.  Ben Griffin from VFP’s new chapter in the U.K. refused to participate in our nations’ wars and has been issued a gag order.  He’s not permitted to speak, and yet he speaks so well. Mike Prysner of March Forward and Camilo Mejia of VFP in Miami described their acts of resistance. (more…)

Mourning the Victims and Resisting the Bait-and-Switch

by Robert C. Koehler

“In the end, after he has felt the full force of our justice system, what will be remembered are the good people who were impacted by this tragedy,” President Obama said last week in Aurora, Colorado, after the shootings.

That’s probably not true.

From Charles Whitman up to the present day, the collective American memory preserves the name of the killer . . . the lone psycho, the shadow hero. We’re far too fascinated with violence not to mythologize its perpetrators. And just as we all know (because the media tell us) that there will be a “next war,” we know, oh God, in the deep churnings of the heart, that there will be more murder victims — schoolchildren, college students, shoppers, churchgoers, theatergoers, bystanders. We know because we live in a culture that tolerates and perpetuates violence. (more…)

Making Democracy a Force of History…

by Robert C. Koehler

Beyond the spectacle of the presidential race, the Washington consensus pursues business as usual. This is the season in which I wonder, with an ever-intensifying sense of urgency, what it would take to turn our political system into a democracy.

“And yet the militarization of the United States and the strengthening of the national security complex continues to accelerate,” Tom Engelhardt wrote earlier this month. “The Pentagon is, by now, a world unto itself. . . .”

And as the world’s major powers play a 21st-century version of the “Great Game” to control the resources of the world, the U.S., in contrast with China, writes David Vine, “has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power.” (more…)