Between 1979 and 1987, the Unites States armed, trained, and financially backed the military forces of the government of El Salvador, which over the same period carried out a policy of ongoing, systematic murder against the Salvadoran population. … I am speaking of the systematic murder of over seventy thousand men, women, and children who were noncombatants–journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others. Roughly one percent of El Salvador’s population was destroyed. Also as a direct result of United States actions, another seventy thousand civilians were similarly murdered during the same period by the military government of Guatemala. Finally, and again during the same period, the United States created a force of counterrevolutionaries (the “contras”) to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras … deliberately attacked defenseless civilians, including old people, women, and children.It is true that the United States did not itself carry out the systematic murder in any of these countries. Yet it put the bullets and guns in the hands of the murderers, trained the murderers how to use them, and organized them for that end. The United States might just as well have pulled the triggers of the guns itself. What concerns me is that the people of the United States, like the people of Nazi Germany, allowed their government to do such a thing.From How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America by Douglas Porpora
Iraq body count has documented the violent deaths of 80,000 noncombatants (read: journalists, priests, nuns, teachers, labor organizers, students, political figures, and others) in Iraq during the U.S. unprovoked invasion and ongoing occupation of that nation since 2003.
So here are my questions:
Last week, a couple of middle aged men went to a care home to meet an 85 year old lady called Jean Gambell. Soon afterwards she had a slight stroke, which it was thought may have been brought on by the reunion.
It is hardly surprising. Jean Gambell was meeting her brothers for the first time in 70 - yes that is not a typo, that is SEVENTY - years. As a teenager of 15, Jean had been incarcerated due to mental illness, as a result of her stealing a few small coins. The brothers allege that the coins were found later.
She was then in the system for an entire lifetime, losing contact with her family and by any reakoning completely wasting her life. Enough one would think, to send anyone over the edge of mental instability even if they were sane to start with. Yet the brothers found a frail old lady, who could identify them by name and showed remarkably little bitterness for her lot in life. More here.
Other than being entirely flabbergasted by the whole sorry tale, I would like to know:
Surely we should all be thoroughly ashamed that we live in a world where this could happen.
Posted in Doing Life, Ethics, Forgiveness, Power, What can we do? | 13 Comments »I have been increasingly moved over the past months by the idea of non violent direct action. I was intrigued by a link to a story which Joe included in a comment here about Father Kelly, who has served time in federal prison for “the non violent disarmament of nuclear weapons delivery systems”. More recently, Father Kelly and Father Vitale were arrested outside Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona, while they were taking part in a peaceful protest agaist the U.S. army’s use of toture in interrogation. Father Kelly is associated with Pace e Bene Non Violence service–the spirituality and practice of creative non violence, which runs seminars on creative non violence, among other things.
I have also been intrigued recently by the trident ploughshares campaign. This group of activists believes that the use or threat of the use of nuclear weapons is illegal under international and humanitarian law, and they “have pledged to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful, safe and fully accountable manner”. By fully accountable they mean they are willing to be held legally accountable for their actions. On their front page they boast of 2240 arrests, 520 trials, and 2197 days spent in prison.
As I grow in knowledge of these types of movements, I find myself drawn to them. It feels like they are accomplishing a lot more than … mere blogging can accomplish. I find myself asking myself questions like “Self, what would it look like to get arrested for a cause you believe in?”. And myself answers with more questions like “Well, would that be the immature boy in there thinking it would be kind of kewl to get arrested?” I have these conversations with myself, but as time goes by, I continue to be more drawn to the ideas and actions of organizations like these.
Posted in Non Violence, What can we do? | 3 Comments »Shopping is a drag, and that is not just because of my gender. For example, take our regular food shopping. We believe in co-ops, so we foresake the local equivilent of Walmart and head for a local food shop owned by our regional food co-operative. There is no parking. There isn’t much choice on the shelves.
One of the reasons we buy from a co-operative is that it has a policy of aggressive labelling. They tell me things other supermarkets keep silent about.
We have several things to check. First we engage in active boycotts of some brands, most importantly (and perhaps most ineffectually) the longstanding Nestle boycott. Next we girlcott products we really like - most notably fairtrade labelled products. We then look at other products and weigh up whether the distance travelled justifies their purchase so the breakfast cereal containing chinese strawberries is left behind. Wherever possible, UK or at least local European products are bought.
Clothes shopping is somewhat simpler: as we are disgusted by the behaviour of most clothing brands and on a limited budget, 90% of our clothing comes from charity/thrift stores. We figure that although we can’t be any more sure of the origins of the stuff from thrift stores, at least someone benefits from our purchasing.
Our approach is that although we cannot totally change ourselves overnight, we can make continual improvements. Each year we conduct a family audit where we identify more things we can focus on and change.
In truth, we have a long way to go to reach the goal of personal sustainability. The more you think about it, there more there is to change.
Here are some useful resources:
Food shopping: The LOAF principle
Ethical living: Do-able hints
Clothing: All you never wanted to know about cheap clothing.
Trissa posted some really insightful thoughts as part of the ongoing conversation in another thread. I wanted to repost them at the start of a new thread
I guess what I was trying to say is that most of us who are in a serving profession got there because of idealism. A soldiers idealism is patriotism or wanting to spread freedom (I’m somewhat assuming, somewhat going on what I know from my brother who is in the Airforce). A social worker’s ideal is to help people who are less fortunate. A teacher wants to open their students up the opportunities around them (my mom and sister are teachers). So we run on idealism, but it only gets us so far. A soldier sees death, pain, suffering and sees no positive outcomes. A social worker sees one client after another who’s unwilling to change their life circumstances. The teacher has to deal with unmotivated students and absent parents. Slowly the idealism erodes and one day your ideals seem far away and naive. I think as one sees suffering and pain without relief it’s hard to believe in anything.
So often people in my profession push it aside and don’t think about how what they see affects them. I assume it’s the same as a soldier. If you think about it you might find the last of your idealism slip away and the foundation that once brought about all decisions is gone.
Posted in Blogging, Compassion to Self, What can we do? | 8 Comments »
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The world I would like to leave our children, grandchildren, and for 7 generations beyond
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007You know how you can start searching for something on the internet and then wind up someplace else? Recently, I discovered this video of Bill Clinton annoucing his “wish” at the TED awards. It was on someone’s blog (http://www.matchmine.com/blog/2007/05/03/the-ted-prize).
From the blog,
Bill Clinton won the prize this year, and elected to speak about his attempts to right the non-deeds of his administration in Rwanda.
I was so moved by that statement and Bill’s speech, I had to share it wth others. I ask as you listen and watch the video that you set aside any of your preconceived notions of who Bill Clinton is.
Posted in Activism, Environmentalism, HIV/AIDS, Health Care, Peace, Poverty, What can we do? | 5 Comments »Read the rest of this news item »
What can we do? Two brief ideas, and magic!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007Over this last week I’ve had a couple smallish opportunities to do something smallish and been encouraged in both of them. First of all I finally followed up on a suggestion from Julie Clawson, and bought fair trade sugar from Amazon. We had run out of sugar (probably not a bad thing) and so I though it an ideal time. However, I was feeling a little guilty, because this sugar costs 4 times “normal” sugar, and we are not exactly in brilliant financial straits at this time. My friend Karl (a Mennonite, interestingly), encouraged me in this. He said that I am simply assuming the full fair price of the sugar, instead of outsourcing that full cost to someone else who is actually a lot worse off than me financially. This made me feel good. I also felt stoked when I actually received the box full of 10 one pound boxes of sugar via Amazon. I read the little blurb on the back about the Alter Trade Foundation and their Alter Eco Products, and I felt rather proud of myself.
The other thing I did this last week was inspired by Anna and by something Brian Mclaren said at an event I recently went to. He said that one of the evil results of nationalism is that nobody cares about any place. That is, we think of ourselves as Americans, and thus not as a member of this little neighborhood above Nathan Hale High School. Brian said “Learn your address–not your street address–your environmental address. You live in a watershed. Something is happening in terms of water geographically and environmentally where you live. Check it out on google earth.” This got me to thinking about my particular watershed, and little old Thornton Creek down there and how stuff moves at various rates down into that, and gradually out into Lake Washington, Puget Sound, and the Pacific. And it made me notice litter. So I grabbed a plastic bag when my girls and I walked down to the park next to Thornton Creek, and we picked up litter along the way. My two preschool girls really got into. It became “It’s *my* turn to hold the bag” and “Look, there’s some more garbage–I’ll get it!”. Made me feel really good in lots of ways.
Posted in Activism, Economics, Environmentalism, What can we do? | 3 Comments »
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Cluster Munitions
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007Cluster munitions are larger shells or casings which contain dozens to hundreds of submunitions. They are designed to be dropped from aircraft or launched from artillery, and then the larger casing opens in the air and the submunitions disperse over a wide area, and then explode on impact. The problem is that the submuntions have a relatively huge failure rate (10 to 40+%), so that one ends up with submunitions which have not yet exploded littering the landscape, basically acting as antipersonnel land mines. These can sit dormant for years and years, and for instance in Laos, where the U.S. bombed heavily with cluster munitions in the 60’s and 70’s, every year farmers find and accidentally set them off while tilling the soil to grow food, or children find them while exploring and think they are toys and then get maimed or killed. This is still happening 40 years after they were originally dropped, and the Red Cross estimates that 11,000 civilians have been killed in Laos alone since the end of the war.
Posted in Activism, Legislation, War, What can we do? | 1 Comment »
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Displace Me
Friday, March 30th, 2007Invisible Children is inviting us to imagine for 24 hours what it is like to be displaced for 10 years. On April 28th, tens of thousands of people across the U.S. will gather in 15 cities in mock internally displaced persons camps to show our support for the internally displaced persons in northern Uganda.
Posted in Activism, Videos, War, What can we do? | No Comments »
Is it evil to not vote?
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007I recently had the opportunity to visit a Church of God in Christ Mennonite congregation in California. It was a fascinating and enjoyable experience. The men all sat on the right hand side of the church, they all wore clean, long sleeved, button down shirts and dress pants, and they all had short hair neatly parted on the left and neat, well trimmed beards. The ladies all sat on the left side of the church, and they all wore pretty, modest dresses with long sleeves, high necklines, and similar puffy shoulders. They all had shiny black head coverings which covered the back half of their hair and their neck.
They could sing! No accompaniment–just voices in harmony.
Even after the service, the segregation continued, and I enjoyed a half hour of interesting and open conversation with 3 of the guys. It seemed to me that they enjoyed an experience of very tight community which I have often longed for and never really found. On the other hand, they very much lacked the enormous … freedom/mobility at the individual level which I have very much experienced and sometimes enjoyed. It seemed to me that if one of them awoke one day and realized they *didn’t* any longer believe all the things they have agreed to believe, they would either have to deny their new reality, or else experience a really catastrophic loss of community in their life.
Posted in Activism, What can we do? | 19 Comments »
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