DiaryOfAPeace and Justice Activist

How Not To Be A Hypocrite

2012-01-22T09:47:00.000Z

This entry begins with a jellyfish because they appear to be simple creatures but are actually complex, in addition to being lovely to look at. They, like all sea creatures, are also at tremendous risk because of the actions of humans including overfishing, pollution and of course, climate change. Learn more here http://www.sheddaquarium.org/specialexhibit/conservation.html

We humans also appear to be simple creatures, especially during political campaigns, when both the candidates and the issues are reduced to caricatures, or to quote Wikipedia (saved for the moment from SOPA) ; "a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person, animal or object to create an easily identifiable visual likeness." Anyone who veers from this essence is called a hypocrite. For instance, those (including myself) who support Occupy Wall Street http://occupywallst.org/ but are part of the fortunate few, aka "the1%, " are accused of slumming somehow-or not having the right to participate in the discussion. Wall Street and its allies quickly came up with a series of stereotypes of both the Occupiers and their backers- you can do your own research on this, since spending more than a few minutes on their sites is fairly boring and predictable.

To be sure, (thanks to the http://www.theopedproject.org/ for reminding me to acknowledge another side of things), those of us who live in the world of the 1% and even parts of the 99% of Americans whose incomes have stagnated but who still have jobs, have benefited from some of the practices we now decry - among them the rise in importance of the stock market in our retirement and pension funds, the housing bubble, and the increase in goods and services which are now produced and provided by those who live elsewhere.

But why is it wrong to question the status quo just because it may have helped us in the past? I learned a valuable lesson this past fall from a wonderful activist and teacher, Mia Henry of the Chicago Freedom School. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mia-henry/0/124/214 She taught me that we each inhabit three selves when it comes to social justice. One is the self which has oppressed others, the second is the self who has been oppressed, the third is the self who steps outside of the first self and stands up for those who are currently being oppressed, but may not have the means to fight for themselves. Instead of seeing someone who has privilege as a hypocrite for participating in Occupy Wall Street or questioning the motives of the billionaires running for President as Republicans; try seeing that person as someone who can step outside of themselves for a moment and think about other people. Instead of using "Obamacare" as an epithet- try it as a noun and a verb- "Obama Cares!" Instead of pretending that increasing taxes for the wealthy is class warfare- try seeing it as a reality check on how we can fund the things our country and our people need: jobs, repairs to infrastructure, and a future for every child who sits in a classroom right now, wondering what good an education will do them if they can't find employment.

Finally, instead of seeing a jellyfish as a simple blob of protoplasm which might sting you, see it as a mysterious, amazing companion on planet earth and think of it as a reminder not to be a hypocrite.

Occupying the Arts: A response to Anthony Tommasini

2012-01-02T22:00:00.001Z

NWA writers Delores Tolliver and Mildred King Jordan listen as Donna Nunn reads from the Journal of Ordinary Thought

Anthony Tommasini has a thoughtful essay this week about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the arts, which nonetheless, like much of the commentary about OWS, misses the point. While attending a free classical music concert at the Julliard School in New York, he writes, "As I listened to these students sing, I thought about the issues of economic inequality that the Occupy Wall Street protestors have moved to the center of political discourse." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/arts/music/balcony-seats-can-help-economic-inequalities-in-arts.html?_r=1&ref=music

After describing several protests at arts events in New York City (including an ironic demonstration at the Metropolitan Opera featuring "Satyagraha" a work that explores the life of Gandhi where the composer, Philip Glass, spoke to the protesting crowd directly), Mr. Tommasini states: "...it was easier to understand the issues that the Occupy Wall Street protestors care about than what policies they were seeking in relation to the arts. " He goes on to acknowledge that "classical music, like other performing arts, has long depended on the 1 percent." His primary argument is that audiences don't have to be Wall Street fat cats to participate in and enjoy the arts, especially classical music and that art is "also a political statement, a kind of rally for humanity."

As a former classical musician, I agree that all of the arts have the capacity to speak to our common humanity, and that art can draw attention to issues of social justice and its champions such as Gandhi even when those issues and individuals are being ignored or derided. At the same time, I am disappointed that Mr. Tommasini seems completely unaware of a new study by Holly Sidford, "Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change," published and researched by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy ( you can find a free pdf of the report here http://www.ncrp.org/index.php?option=com_ixxocart&Itemid=41&p=product&id=65&parent=12 ) which points out that

"the majority of arts funding from foundations supports large institutions with budgets greater than $5 million. Such organizations, which comprise less than 2 percent of the universe of arts and cultural non profits, receive more than half of the sector's total revenue. " (bolding mine) These institutions focus primarily on Western European art forms, and their programs serve audiences that are predominantly white and upper income. She further notes: Only 10 percent of grant dollars made with a primary or secondary purpose of supporting the arts explicitly benefit underserved communities, including lower-income populations, communities of color and other disadvantaged groups. "

Not only does classical music receive foundation support; but as Tommasini notes, it also gets considerable funding (in NYC anyway) from David H. Koch, the same billionaire who funded the allegedly grassroots Tea Party and is now funding the PACs of Republican candidates http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/mitt-romney-super-pac-raises-12-million_n_914553.html

While some of the arts are surviving with the assistance of foundations and billionaires, (graciously providing free seats to the masses), many of us who work with artists and the arts are watching access and opportunity being decimated by budget cuts and drops in funding. Last month, the Neighborhood Writing Alliance www.jot.org, (for which I am a volunteer) was told by the Chicago Public Library, which generously provides meeting space to a number of our writing groups, that we could not sign up for space in January due to cuts in staffing and hours. The Hall Branch Library, where my group normally convenes every Monday, has been providing space and opportunity for writers since 1932 on the Southside of Chicago. Funded by Chicago philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, Hall was not only led by Chicago's first African-American librarian, Vivian G. Harsh, http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/IllinoisWomen/files/MI/htm1/MI000011.html but beginning in the 30s, served as a home, meeting place and research center for a number of world renowned African American writers including Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Mildred King Jordan reads from "I Am Here" as fellow writers James Rushing, Doris Arrington and Delores Tolliver follow along

Hall Branch writers Barbara Sims, Sharon Warner and Donna Nunn listen as Jeanette Moton reads from "I Am Here"

These photos are of the Hall Branch NWA group reading in the library's community meeting room which displays an exhibit from its 75th anniversary including photos of many of the literary luminaries who have spent time there.

The policies which Mr. Koch and his fellow fat cat funders support are designed to cause further cuts in city, state, and federal budgets which will of course lead to more libraries closing, less access for those who most depend on public support for the arts, and to fewer and fewer people, except for the wealthy, "occupying" the seats at the arts. Governmental policy has a direct connection to who can and will be in those seats. My wish for the New Year is that Mr. Tommasini, along with average citizens, will open their eyes to the direct impact that policy has on participation, not only in the arts, but in the good life that all Americans dream of for their fellow citizens.

For more on this, read Arlene Goldbard's excellent column "Equity in Cultural Funding:Let Them Bake Pies http://arlenegoldbard.com/2011/12/10/equity-in-cultural-funding-let-them-bake-pies/.

Personhood for Mothers

2011-12-14T17:15:00.000Z

I was relieved that the so called personhood amendment failed in Mississippi recently but am concerned at how many states (and members of Congress) are still planning to try to enact this misguided attempt to protect babies. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/personhood-amendments-state-map First of all, a fertilized egg is simply that, a fertilized egg- it is not a baby, it is not a viable "person," it is the potential for a person. Anyone who knows anything about biology is aware that some fertilized eggs do not become full term babies. The definition of a miscarriage is that a nonviable embryo or fetus is spontaneously expelled from the womb. Are the "personhood" folks planning to add to the misery of mothers who miscarry by charging them with murder?

Meanwhile, it is discouraging that the same people who want to claim that every fertilized egg is a child ignore the needs and current situation of the people who need personhood the most; mothers. An article in today's NY Times by Sabrina Tavernise http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/us/child-care-subsidies-drop-when-families-need-them-most.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper notes:

"With states under pressure to cut their budgets and federal stimulus money gone, low-income working parents are facing a paradox. Just when they have to work longer hours to make ends meet, they are losing access to the thing they need most to stay on the job: a government subsidy that helps pay for child care. This subsidy, a mix of federal and state funds that reimburses child care providers on behalf of families is critical to the lives of poor women. "

The reality is that many of the people who are losing support for child care are women. Tavernise recounts this story, " One mother on a waiting list in Virginia said her 11-year old daughter rode around in a city bus after school, watched over by the driver, who is the girl's grandmother, until the mother got off work. "NY Times December 14, 2011

Where is the outrage on the part of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and Rick Santorum over the lack of child care for working mothers and safety for their children who are already born? (They have signed a "personhood pledge" ) Let's give them another pledge to sign:

I ___________ pledge to support mothers and their children. I proclaim that every mother and child deserves affordable health care, protection from pollution in the water and air, affordable fresh food, safety from violence, and the same respect I claim to show to all living things.

If elected President, I will work to advance state and federal laws and amendments that recognize the unalienable right to life of all mothers, and to the best of my knowledge, I will only appoint federal judges and relevant officials who will uphold and enforce state and federal laws recognizing that all mothers are persons with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

PreOccupied

2011-11-19T21:24:00.000Z

As a lifelong activist, I've been preoccupied with the Occupy movement along with much of the rest of the country. I've primarily interacted with Occupy Chicago http://occupychi.org/ although there are local Occupy movements near me in Indiana and several friends and fellow activists have helped to organize them. Residual residence in the "Village of the Sick" (which I've finally left!) has meant my participation has been limited to a couple of quick visits in person, and dropping off anti-war signs, hand warmers and bagels. Two reactions come to mind; it's difficult to know which is more important but I'll start with my reaction to the press and pundit coverage.

The media began with its usual corporate response to anything not created to make money; cynicism tinged curiosity. Were these just the usual "scruffy subjects?" The Wall Street Journal and its allies (aka FOX new) have never really moved away from this line of thinking- focused on allegedly "dirty, disruptive, troublemakers-" they (helped by the online "whisper down the lane" game of sharing bad news about others) settled on supposed prejudice (anti Semitism "proven" with one random sign), exaggerated violence, and pretended ignorance of the issues. The mainstream media actually committed journalism and went out to talk to the protestors, finding that many of them had poignant stories to tell and those without personal stories were there to represent those who couldn't afford to leave their low paying jobs to protest.

Occupy Chicago holds daily education sessions (and anyone can sign up to speak to the group-unlike many of their critics, Occupy is open to all ideas) along with a General Assembly (complete with minutes) every evening. Rather than the alleged "aimless chaos" portrayed by so many pundits, Occupy has actually had a military-like (but non violent) organization nearly from the start. They even have a mission statement:

“Occupy Chicago is here to fight corporate abuse of American democracy in solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world.”

along with an inventory of books and supplies, and 20 committees including outreach, security, legal and education.

As Occupy Chicago notes: "Our message to those who question our ability to persevere is: You can’t evict an idea whose time has come. The Occupation will continue!"

My second reaction is in response to the goal of continuing the discussion and creating real action. Once I get the opportunity to participate in a general assembly and an education session, I hope (along with some fellow activists) to pass on our experience at organizing for social change. Most of the great movements for social justice have been birthed in protest-but the way they have been transformed into actual change has been primarily first through legislation and then through cultural responses to law.

Take the women's movement, it began with women demanding the right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention, but took decades of effort (and protest) before finally becoming law in 1920. Even after women got the vote, it took many more decades (and in terms of equal pay the work continues) for women to achieve respect in the workplace. In two short months, the Occupy Movement has changed the national conversation from a preoccupation with the debt ceiling to daily discussions of how banks, corporations, and the government have abused our democratic system and capitalism to favor the 1%. Whether you are in the top percent, the 99% or the middle, very few people except the radical Republicans running for President and Tea Party members supporting them think it's right that people are losing their jobs and homes due to gambling by the wealthy. Changing the actual behavior of our country will take more than protest, it will take law and enforcement of law. As we head towards a Presidential election year, this is the time for Occupy to become preoccupied with the next steps. I know I am. The photo at the top of this entry is from the Boulder City Historical Association's exhibit http://www.bcmha.org/ about the folks who built the Hoover Dam. Then, as now, people were out of work, but as the man's sign states; they don't want charity, they want a job.

Village of the Sick Part Two

2011-09-16T21:47:00.000+01:00

For just over 6 weeks, I have been traveling in the "Village of the Sick" (see my previous post about Paul Stoller's memoir on having cancer to learn more about this term). Four weeks is nothing in the Village of the Sick, but time, along with many other things, is different when you're there. Time in the village of the sick is both lengthened and shortened; It's easy to lose track of it when you're there, which is one reason hospital nurses often note the date on the white board in a patient's room. Given that one of the questions asked of you when an ambulance or paramedics come to a scene is "what day is it?" it's important to keep a sense of time to show you still have your wits about you. Once you start on the route of 3-4 hour medical tests, it’s easy to forget what day it is since you’re either preparing for the test or recovering.

Along with losing time, I've been reminded of several other important aspects of the village of the sick, which illustrate the ongoing social justice issues in this country and the world. They are fear and pain, patient advocacy, medical narratives and communication, and health care workers.

Fear and pain are something all creatures endure- not limited to humans; they are something we live with from birth to our last breath. I’m sure there are those who would argue that new babies don’t experience fear but who knows? Pain is also controversial- but if you’ve watched a newborn get her tiny foot stuck for a jaundice test as I have, there’s not much to doubt here. All that being said, it’s hard when you’re in the village of the sick, to know which is worse, the fear or the pain.

Western doctors and nurses have improved our ability to talk about pain with the numbered scale (complete with smiley/frown faces) but we don’t have a similar chart (I sense an invention in the works) for fear. I began my odyssey to the village of the sick with a 2 AM bout of severe abdominal pain. There have been studies about when pain worsens but I haven’t found a good one to cite. My husband and I tried to walk my pain off by paying a late night visit to our beehives but even the distraction of bees “sitting” on their front porch in the moonlight wasn’t enough, so we headed to the emergency room of our local hospital

My pain has proven hard to diagnose- after walking the halls of the ER from 3am-6am trying to use Lamaze breathing technique to deal with what had crept up to a 9+on the pain scale, I welcomed the morphine drip and the CT scan. Groggily I received the news that I had an inflamed small intestine and a small umbilical hernia (which turned out to be nothing). I was given antibiotics both orally and in a prescription and sent home. The ride home was pretty awful- the pain and now nausea came on to the point where I considered trying to jump out of the car. Fortunately I had also been given anti nausea meds, which ended the scary carsickness.

My regular doctor saw me that Monday- in spite of having faxed permission to the hospital, they had not released my records to her- so she did an exam but had to guess what they had found on the CT test and blood tests. She suspected a food borne bacteria as I was the 3^rd or 4^th patient of the week with stomach issues- and on the radio we heard of a salmonella outbreak in ground turkey. After a round of unhappy conversation with the hospital, she finally got my records the next day.

At the end of the week, after a course of two antibiotics, I was in less pain (down to a 2 or 3) but still not “normal.” It was uncomfortable to eat and the beginning of my current ongoing symptom had showed up, namely the feeling of being 2 months pregnant. I began referring to my condition as “the alien baby”, because it felt (feels) as if there is something under my rib cage pushing my ribs out and by the end of the day pushing my abdomen as well

This is the kind of symptom that leads to the second part of the aforementioned issues: fear. When you have something that no one can explain, that gets worse when you eat, drive, wear clothing or pretty much do anything except lay still (and even then sometimes makes itself known) it is scary. After 6 weeks of CT scan, a colonoscopy, a barium swallow test (which was interesting if not fun- you get to see all of your intestines moved apart with a small paddle) and an upper GI test- here’s what I know: I don’t have Crohn’s disease, I don’t seem to have an infection anymore (and the idea that I had an infection is based on the aforementioned CT scan –my intestine no longer appears to be inflamed) I have gorgeous color photos of my entire gastrointestinal system which from the tests appears to be entirely healthy and quite lovely (if you’re into that sort of thing) and I apparently don’t have several other diseases of the stomach and intestines.

So what’s wrong? No one can tell me. I have harbored (and been sustained in this by both an over reading of Web MD, Mayo Clinic’s website the odd patient blog (those get either weird or scary pretty quickly) along with comments by well meaning friends and friends of friends)*

· Fears of cancer,

· Parasites,

· Unnamed and unidentified bacteria

· Strange tropical diseases

· And in my worse moments some kind of mental breakdown which is manifesting itself as the alien baby.

My last visit with the doctor produced a muttering from him that medicine is “an art, not a science “ which as a humanist, I can live with, but as a patient isn’t entirely satisfactory and a partial conclusion that I have “irritable bowel syndrome” which like attention deficit disorder and borderline personality disorder is one of those pronouncements doctors, psychologists and others make when they can’t really explain what is wrong with someone’s mind, body or behavior. Syndrome sounds like a medical diagnosis but it’s not- it just means an ongoing problem with a variety of symptoms and an equal variety of guesses as to treatments and cures.

The only good thing about an extended stay in the Village of the Sick is that you get tired of being afraid and return to concentrating on learning to live with your “condition.” I have become my own science experiment, this week I learned that cheese is no longer my friend (along with lettuce) but for some reason, the alien can tolerate chocolate quite well. (That may be due to my threats of going for an exorcism soon)

I know this is all TMI (too much information) but writing has helped me cope with both the fear and the pain. My next essay will turn to patient advocacy, medical narratives and communication and health care workers. If you’ve read this far and have suggestions for me, feel free to email me or comment on the blog. Now that I’ve entered the experimental phase, I’m willing to consider alternative treatments and ready to hear about others’ journeys to the Village of the Sick.

*See Urban Legends, “friends of friends”

In the Village of the Sick

2011-08-02T14:29:00.000+01:00

I have entered the "village of the sick" to quote a wonderful anthropologist, Paul Stoller, who wrote a memoir Stranger in the Village of the Sick: A Memoir of Cancer, Sorcery, and Healing, about having cancer and his work in Niger studying the culture of sorcerers.

Here's a summary but hope you'll buy the book! http://www.enotes.com/stranger-village-sick-salem/stranger-village-sick and here's Paul's bio http://www.wcupa.edu/_academics/sch_cas.ant/profiles/paulstoller.asp. In a small world, six degrees of separation story, Paul teaches at West Chester University in Pennsylvania where my mother taught for a number of years.

Paul taught a thoughtful and engaging class in ethnographic memoirs at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon a few years ago that I was lucky enough to attend. (I've been working on my ethnographic memoir about cultural identity ever since-fear of being boring has so far kept it in the draft stages) In his work in Niger, Stoller learned about the concepts of the "village of the healthy " and the "village of the sick."

Spending time last year (and intermittently for several years before) with my friend, Judy, as she was dying of liver disease, I'm familiar in a slightly distant way, with the village of the sick in the US. Now I must first say, that Judy's and my village of the sick is the privileged one: where you have health insurance, funds to cover the co-pays, family and loved ones who support you, and hospitals and doctors with access to the most up to date treatment possible. Today's NY Times lead story notes that in Somalia, "more than 500,000 children are verging on starvation" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Joining the village of the sick with a somewhat unexplained, but apparently potentially serious, stomach infection this weekend reminded me of just what too many Americans, not to mention people around the world are up against: the frustrations of trying to get information about what's wrong with you, having a disease (for instance, cancer) that isn't immediately apparent so that you look ok even when you feel crappy, and even with the Internet's dazzling array of data bases, finding out just enough to make you more anxious than less.

I can't do anything for the children dying in Somalia except ask you to watch this video and then donate to Unicef http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e1NAR51klU but I can ask you to contribute in my name to NW Indiana Team in Training for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society here http://pages.teamintraining.org/in/cider11/seleuterio in honor of those who are struggling with leukemia and lymphoma including my friend Cecelia Wagner's niece who is 11 and in remission. I'm pretty confident I'll be back in the village of the healthy soon, but hope that all of us will remember those in the village of the sick- especially the politicians in DC who are congratulating themselves on a national budget that takes even more resources away from those in the most need.

Down but not out

2011-08-01T13:06:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted for a while because I've been training for a 100 mile bike ride to raise funds and awareness about Leukemia and Lymphoma http://www.teamintraining.org/ Normally I'm somewhat wary of the cause based sports events-too many of them spend a huge amount on administration and marketing and not enough on the cause itself, but a friend's niece has leukemia and I was looking for a challenge, and TNT's events have a pretty good rate of spending on research and treatment so a couple of months ago, I jumped in. Like the Progressive movement in the US, this weekend found me down, but not out. I ended up in the emergency room with a hernia/infection that means I'll be off the bike for a week. Meanwhile, I figured it's a good time to recount both my experience and my frustrations with the direction this country is heading.

One of the ways team members raise funds are "bucket shakes." You may have seen these at a stoplight, someone (usually the Knights of Columbus) holds out a plastic bucket and in return for your pennies, nickels and dimes, you get a tootsie roll. Our team was given permission to do a shake at the local fireworks store over the 4th of July. With the temperature already at 90 degrees I stood in front of my bike and shook the bucket to customers spending hundreds of dollars on stuff to blow up. Some ignored me, others smiled, but didn't donate, but the most poignant was the man who said, "my friends lost their 10 year old to cancer last year, here's $10 and it's ridiculous that this is the way we raise money for childhood cancer research in this country. " I agree with him- those of us who want to make the world a better place are out begging-and those who only want to protect the wealthy and the corporate are smashing the US budget. Paul Krugman will explain it to you here in his essay, "The President Surrenders: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Just when I was feeling most down about both my physical setback and the country's future, I heard an NPR interview with Van Jones http://vanjones.net/ yesterday. Jones who is a community organizer from California who launched Green for All http://www.greenforall.org/splash whose mission is" to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty" and the Color of Change, designed to "strengthen Black America's political voice"http://colorofchange.org/about/. For his troubles, this got Jones labeled a "communist" by Fox, Glenn Beck and other bomb throwers from the right and they successfully bullied the White House into dropping Jones as an advisor to the President on green jobs. That bullying has continued and the President, sadly, has continued to allow himself and the DNC to give in to what even the Republicans are now calling "the mad hobbits" of the Tea Party. Nonetheless, Jones and other Progressives, while down, are not out and they have created a movement called the "American Dream Movement" http://www.npr.org/2011/07/31/138867706/former-obama-adviser-brews-a-different-tea-party. Instead of stewing, Jones and others are responding and if you are reading this, I hope you will check out the American Dream Movement. If we don't push back, the mad hobbits will continue to dominate the press, the politicians, and the people. To paraphrase the old saying, "don't get mad, get going," and join here http://www.rebuildthedream.com/

American Hero(ines)

2011-06-29T17:04:00.000+01:00

In honor of our nation's upcoming birthday I want to celebrate two American heroes-actually one heroine and one hero. I'll start locally, with Indiana State Representative Shelli VanDenburgh who spoke at a gathering of women at NW Indiana civil rights activist and labor historian, Ruth Needleman's house recently. Women in Indiana are very concerned about the defunding of Indiana Planned Parenthood by state legislators and Governor Mitch Daniels as well as the impact of recent legislative rules which will severely impact public education. http://www.ppin.org/

Shelli described to us the impact of her vote in support for Planned Parenthood and it moved us to tears. Hate mail was sent to her house, including a mailing which her young son opened, accusing her of personally killing babies. Shelli told us that she had tried to prepare her son who is in grade school for the impact of her vote by explaining abortion to him in terms of the health of mothers and as a medical decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not by others. When he went to school the day after the mailing, two of his classmates told him his mom was a "baby killer." "No, he said, your moms just are misinformed."

Daniels, who decided not to run for President, wanted to protect his wife and daughters from the inevitable questions they would get about the fact that his wife divorced him and left him for another man, later returning and remarrying him. Daniels apparently believes his wife and daughters have the right to privacy and respect, but he has denied this right to thousands of Hoosier women who are now left with few options for contraception, testing for ovarian cancer, and yes, in a few rare cases, abortion. A federal judge has ruled the Indiana law is illegal, but in spite of the fact that Indiana, like the rest of the country, has an unemployment rate of over 8% and higher in many counties, Daniels and his Attorney General will be spending Hoosier tax dollars to fight the ruling instead of using the funds for schools, public works, and job creation.

On the national scene, Jose Antonio Vargas, "came out" this week as an undocumented immigrant in the NY Times Magazine on Sunday. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?_r=1&src=tp Vargas, who was sent as a child by his mother from the Philippines to live with his grandparents in America, describes how he has worked to become a successful journalist in spite of having to hide his status. He says,

"There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own."

It is time for Americans to claim their own, to pass the Dream Act http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/DREAM/#support, and to find a way to acknowledge that children who have grown up as Americans are Americans and to make them legal citizens. For too long we have ignored the words on the Statue of Liberty,

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

How can we, the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of immigrants, and yes, in some cases, slaves, and in others, Native Americans, but all descendants of people who wanted something better for their children than poverty, racism, and fear; how can we deny the right to live openly to these children and now grown ups? In honor of our nation's birthday, please go to the link http://action.dickdurbin.com/p/salsa/web/tellafriend/public/?tell_a_friend_KEY=188&tag=e06042011_taf and support the Dream Act!

Bees and Government

2011-05-29T01:28:00.000+01:00

I woke up thinking about bees and government this morning. As a brand new beekeeper I have joined the ranks of those who are students of natural systems. As a former government worker, I have been dismayed at the continued onslaught of propaganda, slander and out -and-out lies about both the role of government and the practices of government in our country. As a citizen, I am struck by how much we don't think about government until disaster strikes, and then how quickly we ask "where's the government?"

Bees, like humans, need a certain amount of structure to live effectively and efficiently. They need a place that is safe from predators and the weather, clean water, and pollen . Like humans, they are genetically programmed to reproduce, (but only the queen lays eggs), and to protect their own. Like many humans, if you basically leave them alone, they are quite peaceful- when you install a new hive, you really don’t need protective gear because the bees are incredibly gentle. We were able to pick bees off one another and put them in the hive when they first arrived.

As we've watched disasters unfold around the country and the world this year, it's been clear that government, like bee keepers, can provide structure, safety and respite, but only with the support, and yes, taxes of its people. (or in the case of beekeepers, an investment in a hive, a few tools, and bees). We're being told that support programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, are too expensive but at the same time, that war, which is only destructive in nature, is something we can continue to afford. Ironically, the same Republican governors who want to eliminate most government, quickly change their minds in the face of devastating tornadoes and floods.

While I was musing about bees and government, I heard a wonderful program on National Public Radio (yet another partially government funded service under threat of elimination) about the science of how bees look for a new hive, including a description of the dance they do when they find the best place. Thomas Seeley, a biologist at Cornell, and author of "Honeybee Democracy," gave a wonderful interview about how bees work together. You can listen to the interview and hear violinist, Mazz Swift -Camlet play an interpretation of their dance here:

www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/24/136391522/natures-secret-why-honey-bees-are-better-politicians-than-humans

Reporter Robert Krulwich notes: "This is how bees vote: they dancing themselves into consensus."

Thousands of Americans are looking for new homes; whether in Joplin, Missouri because of the horrible tornadoes which hit them recently or in other places where they have lost their homes because of deregulation of housing funding. You can help those in Missouri here http://www.uwheartmo.org

Meanwhile, the next time you hear someone slam the government, argue that millionaires shouldn't pay taxes, or denounce government workers, think about the bees. Let's hope we can dance ourselves into consensus in the next election - a consensus that recognizes we are all in this together.

Putting our money where our mouths are: Protecting Mothers

2011-05-08T16:39:00.000+01:00

Nicholas Kristoff's column today reminds us of the absolute evil of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel's ( and Republicans nationally) decision to forcibly eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/opinion/08kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Kristoff writes" Here’s a Mother’s Day thought: There’s a way to save many of the world’s 350,000 women who die in childbirth each year. But it’s very controversial, for it’s called family planning."

Family planning, not abortion, is the main work of Planned Parenthood, along with maternal health care, and screening for cancer. Daniels and other Republicans know this, but facts no longer matter to the Republican party. Daniels is poised to come in as the GOP's "White Knight" (and there's no accident he's a white knight either, because racism is a component of the contemporary GOP party along with its step-child, the Tea Party ), the seemingly rational alternative to Donald Trump, Michelle Bachman, and the rest of the pack. If Daniels and the rest of them really cared about babies, they would protect their mothers. Notice you never see a word about mothers in the ranting about Planned Parenthood-not their health, not their well being, not the physical, emotional and economic demands that parenthood brings, first to the mother.

Today on Mother's Day, Republicans will mouth the usual platitudes about the sanctity of mothers- but tomorrow, they will be back to business as usual, a business that eliminates funding for social services, for health care, for education, and yes, for family planning. If you really love your mother, do everything in your power to identify candidates who care about mothers, register people to vote, get them to the polls, and then hold candidates and elected officials' feet to the fire when they do things which attack mothers.

Meanwhile, Happy Mother's Day to my mother (pictured here with me and my daughter Sarah) and all mothers.

Lost and Found-Suadade

2011-05-04T13:34:00.000+01:00

I've been experiencing suadade lately, and am thinking about how many people around the world are experiencing it too. Suadade is a Portuguese concept, meaning " a deep longing for someone or someplace" and it is part of the legacy left to me by my Vovoa, or a vo as they say in the Azores. Folklorists divide culture into categories; one of these is material culture such as houses, furniture, and artifacts; another category includes oral traditions such as songs, names, and stories. A series of things brought this deep longing on for me this spring; selling the house where I raised my children, seeing the house where my grandmother was raised (the view from that house is the photo above), having the house next door to my current house razed by a new owner. None of these are in any way a personal tragedy such as is being experienced by those across the South whose homes were flattened, carried away, or partially destroyed in the fleet of tornadoes which ravaged their region last week. Nor is it in any way comparable to the experience of refugees worldwide who are fleeing repressive regimes, war, and ethnic violence.

Unlike all of those people, I still have the shoeboxes and albums of photos of my kids, husband, parents, siblings, cousins, friends and events that marked rites of passage in their lives and mine. Unlike storm and war victims, I still have the afghan my Vovoa knitted for me in college, its bright yellow and orange a comfort on dark days. Unlike them, I have the serious and silly things which mark a life; buttons and ribbons from awards and campaigns long forgotten, locks of hair from my children's first haircuts and inked handprints from their first school days, a few stuffed animals and toys that I just can't give away.

Like them, however, I am still experiencing that almost inexpressible sense of loss, which has to do with your visual landscape being changed forever, and with the longing you have when a loved one is no longer there in your daily life. Seeing my Vovoa's house made me miss her so much more, even though it's been over 30 years since she died, it seems like yesterday. Knowing my children's house is now someone else's children's home is both comforting and oddly discomforting-I guess it's the realization that my kids can never go "home" again in a literal sense, although I hope they know that there will always be a home with me for them. Losing the house next door (and the stately trees) has been a strange experience-it's the visual change which is stunning.

So all of this is just to express my empathy for those who are going through suadade this week and to be glad for the woman who has been helping them find a tiny bit of their past https://www.facebook.com/PicturesandDocumentsfoundafterAprilTornadoes?ref=ts&sk=wall which may make it easier to face their future.

From the other side of the ocean

2011-04-25T17:14:00.001+01:00

It's been a whirlwind week, attending the SIEF http://www.siefhome.org/conference "People Making Places" which involved folklorists, cultural geographers, anthropologists, ethnographers, and others exploring how people "make places" through folklore, tradition, writing, language, and a variety of other ways and how place is being impacted by climate change, gentrification, world economies, and other large and small man made actions. At the conference, I learned about the Portuguese in my father's homeplace of New England answering census takers who asked "what race are you?" The Portuguese speakers, having been told not to say "Hispanic/Latino" by NGO's and other groups who want the Portuguese counted uniquely, ended up saying "some other race." This rung true to me, as having a name like "Eleuterio" and yet looking "white," I have long felt I must be "some other race,"- not entirely white but not brown or black or yellow. Lisbon is the site of much creative resistance, a theme currently under exploration by the Neighborhood Writing Alliance www.jot.org where I volunteer weekly with adults to write, read, discuss and eventually publish their personal experiences. Several huge buildings in Lisbon are covered with enormous murals (see Big Oil Drinking up the Earth above) and political graffiti is everywhere, including on the island of San Miguel in the Azores where I have now traveled.

Last week was global, this week has been local, exploring my grandparents roots in the Azores. I was able thanks to the kindness of strangers, to find my cousins (3 times removed) and through them, my cousin (twice removed) who still owns the stone house where my grandmother was born in Punta Garca, San Miguel. The house retains the ancient stone oven used for baking bread, as well as the wood bracketed adobe type ceiling. My cousin, Mario, still grows the pineapples which were the family's business in my grandmother's time. Although the town has the feel of an old old place, with steep narrow lanes twisting around sharp corners, and men riding on horses, the people of Punta Garca are on Facebook and linked to the world. Even the church where my grandmother (and her grandmother) were baptized over 100 years ago has its own facebook page! The questions which were raised at the SIEF conference and remain to be answered, are how with these amazing links we have today, we can find a way to save the planet so our grandchildren can also return to the ancient roots of their families. How can we prevent islands like Sao Miguel from being washed away when the oceans rise? How can other places, like the Azores, find a way to turn ancient occupations such as whaling into an economic method of sustaining their daily lives while preserving the pristine oceans that made them possible in the first place?

Glass Ceiling stories part two

2011-03-27T21:19:00.000+01:00

I wrote this morning's post in response to something I never mentioned; a story in the NY Times Sunday Styles section on Washington's New Brat Pack Masters Media. The Times' Sunday Styles Section, which I confess I think of as a place to find what used to be called "women's issues" ie, style, fashion, romance, gossip and of course, advice- all those things you find in "women's magazines (and of course, today in "men's magazines" as well, but more carefully disguised) has morphed in recent years into a "metrosexual" piece, where you're as likely to see articles written by and about men. (not that there's anything wrong with it, but men get so much coverage - is nothing sacred?)

The Brat Pack article is authored by Shridhar Pappu, who thanks to Google, I now know is a guy who went to Northwestern and is about 35 years old (I'm being lazy I didn't look for a bio just added up stuff I found) . What set me off on writing about glass ceilings was yet another article about up and coming young white guys. Now I'm the mother of three up and coming young white guys (one of whom hosted Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas' birthday party Friday night in Las Vegas) so far be it for me to dismiss all up and coming young white guys. But the power exerted by these whippersnappers and the glowing compliments in the article ticked me off. (And I would love to hear from Mr. Pappu about whether he has found any glass ceilings for Asian American men) My young, up and coming daughter lives in the same half trendy/half gentrifying part of DC that these guys "work" in- and I know that she is making a lot less and getting far less attention than these self- described "brats" in spite of the fact that her work is focused on making life better for thousands of young people around the world.

The other two articles on the front page of Styles are by a journalism professor (Katie Rolphe) whose mother "wanted to be a writer but because being a writer seemed so implausible for a young woman graduating from college in the late 50s, ...(she)wanted to sleep with a writer." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/fashion/27Cultural.html?_r=1&ref=katieroiphe

Ms. Rophe points out that while some things have improved, (you can think about being a writer if you're female in America) as she points out, "...if you go to a Paris Review Party...you will still find the young male novelist, exquisitely confident, in his plaid shirt and glasses, just back from Buenos Aires, maybe, and the girls who eagerly orbit him. So there is still a certain amount of accommodating, affirming female energy circling the male editors and writers; a certain male radiance to be fed off of and deferred to and seduced. " Need I say more about glass ceilings?

The other front page styles article is about Tim Ferriss, another young man who's made a career which is all about him. (you can find it on the same pages as above) A young friend and I were talking about how to get ahead recently, and she noted that she didn't want "to be a weasal. " Urban Dictionary (which needs an editor) says a weasal is "some pathetic type that always tries to (SIC) hard and always fails in his/her quest in life." But I think my friend meant the kind of person who weasals their way into things, not caring who he (or she) steps on.

So this is the other part of the glass ceiling discussion, are women just not weasly enough? Is that why we're still making less than men, still not being promoted, and last, but not least, being ignored (unless as my first post stated, we're celebrities, actresses or famous wives?) (and yes, I did mention a famous celebrity in connection with my own up and coming young white guy but what's a mother to do?)

Why the glass ceiling is stil there and what you (yes you!) can do about it-white men need not apply

2011-03-27T19:45:00.001+01:00

A few years ago, I wrote an essay on "Glass Ceiling Stories" for the Encyclopedia of Womens' Folklore and Folklife http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?id=54859. Having proposed glass ceiling stories as a topic, I was somewhat bemused to discover that no folklorist (or for that matter, historians, ethnographers or other professionals in related fields) had (or has) collected and published glass ceiling stories. A quick search today reveals a wide range of the term "glass ceiling" and some creative reactions: check out this video:

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/2079/Glass-Ceiling---Stories-on-Human-Rights

and there are (as there were when I wrote my essay in 2007) books and articles about how to break the glass ceiling. For example.Jo Haigh, a British entrepruener, published Tales From the Ceiling: A Survival Guide for Women In Business http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780749929572 which from reading the reviews is similar to the many works I read in doing research for my essay: advice for how to deal with glass ceiling issues, but not actual collected stories about hitting the ceiling.

One book I missed is Breaking The Glass Ceiling: The Stories of Three Caribbean Nurses by Jocyelyn Hezekiah published in 2001 in the West Indies (all hail the power of the internet which has expanded exponentially since 2007.) There are as well, frequent articles about women who have broken one of more aspects of the glass ceiling: Geraldine Ferraro passed away this week having made an impact on many of us by being the first female candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States from a major party.

Go to http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/candidates_vice1880.htm to see the surprising number of women who have been candidates for Vice President, not only in the US but worldwide. One of the aspects of the glass ceiling (not only for women, but men of color) is that those who begin to crack it are usually held up as the exception, not the rule. So you'll hear a lot about Geraldine Ferraro but nothing about the many women from smaller political parties who have run. ( checking the NY Times today showcases another barrier to breaking that ceiling; the press and the public is much more ready to read about female actresses, celebrities, and wives of famous men than they are about women in their own right if the category doesn't fit the stereotype.

So Elizabeth Taylor has a front page story in the NY Times Week in Review and Madonna made page 2's weekly summing up of important stories (her charity collapsed) but Ferraro is confined to the obituary page. Finally, look at the cracks in the press and on news shows (not to mention Comedy Central and NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me) about the fact that Obama was advised by women to bomb Libya. (and that's the so -called liberal press- I can live without FOX's take on it).

So how do I know the glass ceiling is still there? Well, let's look at the statistics:

In 2008, women were still earning only 77% of men's salaries in the United States.African American women were only earning 64% and Hispanic women only 52%

The United States ranks 60th in the world for women in positions of political leadership
Source http://www.catalystlead.com/womensleadership.html

So let's get to the good part- what can you do about it?

Check out the Op- Ed project http://www.theopedproject.org/ If there are more female voices in opinion pages, we might get less of the bias in the writing and reporting. The Huffington Post (led by a woman) only had 24% of its articles written by women in 2010.
Run for office and check out Emily's List http://emilyslist.org/splash/signup/splash01/
Send me your glass ceiling stories (Sueeleu@gmail.com) If I get at least 20 stories, I'll submit a proposal to a publisher for a book.

Here's mine to get you started: I went to work for a large Midwestern science museum in 1988. I had a Master's Degree with an emphasis in Museum Studies and had worked as a curator, researcher and educator at three other museums, plus had researched and developed programs for a large urban arts education organization. In 1989, I was promoted to Manager of the artifact Collections and Registrar. It was a great job, but I was still considered to be a mid- level manager. My last boss came from the corporate field, had no museum experience and was at least 10 years younger than me, but he was a man. I was told to "teach him how to do museum work." I asked to be promoted to the senior level staff but was denied. This treatment was part of the reason I decided to leave the job (family issues were a major part as well). Like many women, when I hit the glass ceiling, I didn't fight back, I left.

So please send me your stories, register to vote, (and then vote!) run as a candidate, and write an op-ed piece. (and check out my essay in the book, you'll learn that there are stained glass ceilings, glass ceilings that impact men, and glass walls!

Caving In To Bullies

2011-03-14T13:57:00.001Z

We have had a spate of caving in to bullies and it is no wonder that Governor Scott Walker, Governor Mitch Daniels, Muammar Qaddafi, Republicans who hate public radio (along with Planned Parenthood, poor people, unions, women, and pretty much anyone who doesn't have a bunch of money already) and the Tea Party figure it's just a matter of time that they will prevail. Yes, I'm comparing Mitch Daniels and Scott Walker to Qaddafi. They haven't strafed the people of Indiana or Wisconsin with air strikes (yet) but they have done nearly the same amount of damage to the rights of unions to organize and bargain collectively, to the lives of people with physical and mental disabilities, to public education, and to the environment in the case of "My Man Mitch." Daniels' appointment of Tom Easterly, whose main experience for the job consisted of helping corporations find loopholes in getting permits for oil, gas and water plants has helped to continue to decimate the quality of the air and water in Indiana and its economy as well. You don't have to believe me, check out Forbes Magazine's rating of the greenest and least green states:http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/16/environment-energy-vermont-biz-beltway-cx_bw_mm_1017greenstates.html Indiana has a 9.1 unemployment rating and ranks 38 worst in the nation for health but the pundits who have been celebrating Danie's fiscal skills seem unaware of that.

David Brooks recently called President Obama "a realist" because he has continually moved away from the changes he promised when running for office in terms of ending the wars in Afghanistan, pushing for real reform in the way Congress does business, and changing the politics of the powerful. To me, this isn't being a "realist," it's caving in to bullies. NPR caved this week, too, after the same wet behind the ears videographer who went after Acorn and Planned Parenthood, James O'Keefe posted a carefully edited, misleading video of NPR's top fundraiser, who promptly resigned along with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller. http://www.npr.org/2011/03/14/134525412/Segments-Of-NPR-Gotcha-Video-Taken-Out-Of-Context Next the State Department caved, firing PJ Crowley because he had the nerve to call the mistreatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning "stupid." Manning who is being charged with leaking to WikiLeaks has been held without clothing as if he was in some despot's prison. So much for "innocent until proven guilty." It's worse than stupid, it's criminal.

At a time when people who have so much to lose in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere have the courage to stand up to bullies, why is it so difficult for Americans in leadership positions to live up to their promises and just say "back off" when the bullies come calling? One reason I can think of is the failure of those of us who believe in progressive change to get out the vote. All the protest marches in the world won't matter if we can't get people to the ballot box when it matters.

Love Letter to Frank Rich

2011-03-13T16:15:00.001Z

My favorite NY Times Op-Ed columnist, Frank Rich, is moving to New York Magazine. I first began reading Rich when he was the Times' drama critic, in fact he was the reason I began to read the Arts and Leisure Section. I suspect that there are many of us who grew up reading the NY Times ( middle class, east coasters living north of Baltimore) who skimmed the paper well into our late 30s. These days, I read the entire thing, even the Business section which often has technology news I don't find elsewhere. A major argument in my mind for continuing to read on paper rather than on-line are the discoveries you make exploring with your fingers instead of just your fingertips. While doing a google search can lead you to new worlds, new information and even new "friends," there is something about the physicality of paper and the experience of print that can't be replicated.

So back to Frank Rich. 17 years ago, as he describes in his final column: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13rich.html?_r=1&ref=frankrich "Confessions of A Recovering Op-Ed Columnist," he moved from the Arts to the Op-Ed page. His column has been my refuge through the long terrible Bush years and the not -so great Clinton years as well, and he has often echoed my thoughts on President Obama's lurch away from "change and hope" towards accommodating the right and the often spineless Congressional Democrats as well as despairing the crazy quilt of Republicans, Tea Partiers, media zealots like Beck and Limbaugh and of course the Big SP whose name has mercifully been less frequently in the press, although I almost miss her, given the media's new obsession with Charlie Sheen. It's hard to describe just why I love Frank Rich, but among the reasons are his ability to as he puts it today , "to look for a narrative in the many competing dramas unfolding on the national stage." As a folklorist who looks at culture through narratives of story, song, material objects, belief, foodways, holidays, and other material and intangible aspects, I am drawn to anyone who can tell a good story. While Rich and I share what would be called a "liberal bias" (something I'm proud to claim since according to Merriam Webster, liberal means "marked by generosity") we haven't always agreed, but when we disagree, his carefully constructed arguments make me think. These days, there are just too few media pundits who make you think. Rachel Maddow, Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman, and when she's not being snarky, Maureen Dowd are the ones who come to mind as thoughtful. I differ from my left wing friends on Keith Olbermann, too often he ranted just as thoughtlessly as any Fox news crank, and I had stopped watching him even before MSNBC let him go.

We will miss you Frank Rich, but I guess I can add one more magazine subscription to the pile (Mother Jones, The New Yorker, More, Harper's, and the Nation) even if this will convince the folks at the Gary Indiana Post Office that I really am an east coast left wing snob. (Paranoid? Maybe so, but since they routinely hold on to the New Yorker for an extra 3-4 days, I actually think they are fellow lefties) Meanwhile, perhaps the NY Times would like to host my column? They have a deficit of women op-ed writers, something they noted recently in an article on the lack of women writers for Wikipedia:

"According to the OpEd Project (http://www.theopedproject.org/ ) an organization based in New York that monitors the gender breakdown of contributors to “public thought-leadership forums,” a participation rate of roughly 85-to-15 percent, men to women, is common — whether members of Congress, or writers on The New York Times and Washington Post Op-Ed pages". (large type mine)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html

Yes, and some day, pigs will fly. Meanwhile, check out Frank Rich, he's worth the time.

The Secret of Why Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood

2011-03-09T16:27:00.000Z

I have finally figured out why Republicans hate Planned Parenthood http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49609.html , especially Hoosier, Mike Pence. He claims that he's a "Christian, conservative and Republican, in that order," but his Christianity stops at the door when it comes to making sure that women who don't have the $174,000 annual income of the Pence family

(yes, you read that correctly, your tax dollars are paying Pence over $150,000 a year to distort the truth)

get pre-natal counseling, medical care, and in less than 3% of Planned Parenthood's annual procedures, abortions. His Christianity also can't imagine the life of a girl who's been raped or sexually abused, or of a woman whose life will end if an unplanned pregnancy goes through, leaving her other children motherless. And his Christianity certainly can't imagine that women would need access to basic gynecological care and contraception. Why? Well read on:

It's because when men like Pence think about women's gynecological needs, they can't remember anything else. How do I know this? Well, thanks to Maureen Dowd's NY Times column today: "Sexy Ruses to Stop Forgetting To Remember." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/opinion/09dowd.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd Apparently what Dowd calls, "the path to the memory palace," is related to thinking about mammaries. Memory coach Ed Cooke taught Joshua Foer how to be a memory master by using tricks Dowd explains : "The basis of memory techniques is that the brain remembers visual imagery better than numbers, and erotic, exotic and exciting imagery best. " She quotes Foer," When forming images, it helps to have a dirty mind." ..."Evolution has programmed our brains to find two things particularly interesting, and therefore memorable: jokes and sex-and especially, it seems, jokes about sex." You can read her column to find out how to remember things- it may be gender related, the example Ed give Josh would have me forgetting the cottage cheese and wondering where the swimming pool was... but that may just be me.

Anyway, I have realized that when Pence and his fellow neo-cons think about Planned Parenthood, instead of visualizing clean, safe, well lit clinics where women have privacy and get medical information that can often save their lives; they immediately find their brains consumed with images of breasts and well, you know, the rest of it. So let's work on helping Republicans and Pence find something else to think about- maybe the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe the tax cuts for the wealthy they fought so hard for only a few months ago before they got deficit dementia?

And maybe their wives could give them a copy of Joshua Foer's new book or would that just send them back after Planned Parenthood?

Rusell W. Peterson Environmental Hero

2011-02-27T13:07:00.002Z

Russell W. Peterson died this week at the age of 94. Along with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Chief Sitting Bull, and my parents, Russell Peterson was the reason I became an activist at the age of 16 in 1968. A Republican Governor who helped develop nylon and polyester fiber and yarn as a DuPont chemist, Peterson may seem to be in odd company with an angry black man, an African American activist, a Catholic Democrat, and a legendary Native American warrior, but his biography (which I only learned by reading his obituary) has parallels to my parents, and his decision to become an environmentalist and essentially save the coastline of Delaware, makes him a hero in my book, along with those more famous heroes I mentioned at the beginning.

Peterson ran for governor of Delaware when I was a young idealist, and his campaign was the first time I worked for a candidate on my own, creating hand made posters, attending rallies, and going door to door. (I have a brief memory of wearing “We’re for Peterson” sashes with our mini skirts but it may just be a result of not remembering the 60s with complete clarity.) While my mother was a lifelong Democrat who had inculcated participation in us (we helped with “teas” for candidates and she was active in the League Of Women Voters), my dad was a mugwump, a socially liberal fiscal conservative who did not self identify with any political party. He was also, like Peterson, a research chemist at DuPont, and that may have influenced my impression of Peterson as a good guy, but I don’t remember my parents pushing me in any way to get involved in the campaign. Even at that young age, I recognized a person with integrity and passion, and wanted to help get them into a position of power. Perhaps because his (and my first) campaign was successful, it also gave me the courage to keep being active in political campaigns even as my candidates didn’t make it. (beginning with George McGovern, the list is fairly long-Barack Obama being a final recent success)

Peterson won, but for only one term, yet he moved on to become the President of the National Audubon Society and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality. The NY Times obituary provides more detail on this amazing man:

“As governor, his first act was to order the National Guard to withdraw from Wilmington where it had been since riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968. Mr. Peterson said the troops had bred “fear and suspicion and hate” among black people. “ He also “appointed the first blacks to the Delaware State Police and eased restrictions on abortion…” “Under his insistent leadership, Delaware in 1972 became the last state to outlaw the punishment of flogging.”

“Mr. Peterson pushed Audubon well beyond its traditional mission of protecting wildlife into newer environmental battles like population control, energy policy, and curing toxic chemicals. He hired more scientist, established an environmental curriculum for elementary schools and recruited Ted Turner to finance a film series,” The World of Audubon,” which used narrators like Robert Redford.”

(NY Times: R. W. Peterson, 94, Dies: Leader on Environment, 2/24/11)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/politics/24peterson.html

As a young man, “he worked as a dishwasher in the chemistry laboratory of the University of Wisconsin to pay his tuition.” My parents also attended school in the Midwest, my mother typed for a priest to supplement her scholarship to Michigan State in Biology (this was in 1947, a pretty rare time for a girl from a one room schoolhouse in rural Michigan to get a science scholarship) and my dad went to graduate school in chemistry at MSU having learned English at the age of 6 having grown up in the Portuguese ghetto in New Bedford, MA. My mother also taught me to love nature, basically by shoving me and my three (and later five) brothers and sisters out the door in the morning to go to the creek to play and then in junior high, sending all of us to summer camp on the Chesapeake Bay. Like Peterson, my parents love birds (a favorite pastime when I visit is checking the bird feeders in the yard), although they may not have matched his record of identifying 1,000 birds. Peterson eventually became a Democrat. (I’ve only worked for independents and Democrats ever since, although if I could find a decent Republican, I’d work for her/him.) Jimmy Carter stated;

“ Every time something wonderful has happened when I was president and since then in the field of environmental quality in this country or on a global basis, Russ Peterson has been intimately involved in it. “

As a writing workshop leader for the Neighborhood Writing Alliance (www.jot.org), we have recently been examining the topic of “creative resistance through the arts.” It’s a tough topic in some ways, because we often separate art from activism, but as someone who took to poster board at a young age in support of a man with a vision, I’m becoming more aware of just how creative resistance can lead to lifelong work to make the world a better place. While I honestly did not know what happened to Russ Peterson after I graduated and he finished up as Governor (I vaguely knew he did something environmentally related- it was the 70s and I was young!) I now think he was the spark, along with the first Earth Day which I attended in 1970, which led me to be a lifelong environmental activist. My work is nothing on the level of his, but I did help develop a curriculum on recycling for school kids in Oak Park; have battled oil companies who want to pollute waterways (he took on Shell, I took on BP), and have, in my own small way worked for population control and protection of birds (ok, I have four kids, but I’m a lifelong supporter of Planned Parenthood). This year, I was humbled to receive an environmental award, along with my husband, Tom Sourlis from the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation (LEAF).

In Russell Peterson’s honor, I’m going to establish an internship at LEAF, named the Russ Peterson Award to help young environmentalists learn how to use the law to protect the air, water, and land for a future generation. It’s the least I can do.

Look for the Union Label

2011-02-21T15:55:00.001Z

(Donatilda Pimental Eleuterio, my vovoa (Portuguese for grandmother) is pictured above with her beloved dog)

The 2010's have already been a historic decade and they've barely just begun. Worldwide economic crisis, protests around the globe and above all, change, will be the terms our grandchildren and great grandchildren will learn about this time period in future Wikipedia (or whatever has replaced it) articles and history books. (Ok there won't be history books, history Nooks?)

The mainstream media (MSM) coverage of protests in Wisconsin has focused on Governor Scott Walker versus the state public employee unions, including teachers, and like most MSM stories, the two sides have been reduced to a Governor who claims he is trying to be fiscally responsible and unions and their allies who are in the streets of the Badger state protesting Walker's plan to end collective bargaining rights. As the granddaughter of a garment worker, I have long had a deep empathy for union workers. When the song, "Look for the Union Label" came out in the 1970s, I found myself singing along. After all, I knew the ILGUWA label from my grandmother's work in New Bedford, home to thousands of Portuguese and other ethnic immigrants who came for the same reason immigrants come today, for a better life.

"Look for the union label
when you are buying that coat, dress or blouse.

Remember somewhere our union's sewing,
our wages going to feed the kids, and run the house.

We work hard, but who's complaining?
Thanks to the I.L.G. we're paying our way!

So always look for the union label,
it says we're able to make it in the U.S.A.!

A song by Paula Green, music by Malcolm Dodds ©1975, UNITE
Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
(formerly International Ladies' Garment Workers Union)

At the same time, I will admit, as I did to my much more conservative brother in law, Chuck, this weekend, that my membership in two unions over the years eroded some of my support for a certain type of union. Let me say that again, a certain type of union. In the 1990s, I returned to the life of a school teacher and joined the local union in Cicero. The union steward was a feisty, loud, assertive woman who constantly said, "it's all about the kids," while she and the other union leaders forbid all discussion when we were meeting about union issues. We almost struck over a ludicrously small amount of pay increase and when (as a not so young new teacher) I tried to argue for just dealing with the reality of a school district with working class families who couldn't at that time afford higher school taxes, I was shut down immediately.

While openly admitting that some union leaders are jerks, let me remind anyone who has never taught what public school teaching meant then, and even more, now. At the high school level, (at least in non- wealthy school districts) you see 125 students a day. You are expected not only to teach them the basic school curriculum, but to prepare them for standardized tests which will rank not only them, but these days, you individually as a teacher, and your school. You are also expected to know which ones have family problems, which ones might have weapons, which ones can be moved to do their work by gentle prodding, and which ones need a phone call to whichever relative has a working phone. In any given day, you may have a student who is physically and/or mentally ill, who has made it to high school without being able to read at grade level, who has a dysfunctional family member, or just a family member who has lost their job. You are also expected to keep an eye out for dress infractions (in the wealthier schools) and gang clothing, colors, or hair styles in many more schools than you might think. Even in the "best" school districts (the ones whose parents make the kind of salary Scott Walker makes) there are drug and alcohol issues, teen pregnancies, parental problems, and just the basic ups and downs of teenagers, especially when in large groups.

On the subject of unions, today's NY Times has a story http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/nyregion/21triangle.html about the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911. One hundred and forty-six garment workers died in this terrible fire because the factory owners had locked the doors. Michael Hirsch, a historian, has finally been able to identify the last six workers who were killed through diligent research. Take a look at their photos and remind yourself that 100 years ago, you could lock an American worker in a factory (the owners, who fled to the roof, were acquitted by a jury but eventually had to pay $75 per life lost) even though you knew the dangers.

The reason labor unions became important for garment workers like my grandmother, as well as teachers, police, and yes, even state workers, was that they offered workers the opportunity to bargain as a group, collectively, for fair treatment and wages. There have been many cases where union leaders have not focused on the basic needs of their workers, but have instead used the power of the union for their own good. However, this behavior is not limited to union leaders.

As I wrote last week, Wisconsin's Senate Majority Leader, Scott Fitzgerald, and his brother, Assembly Leader, Jeff Fitzgerald's father, Steve Fitzgerald, was named to a $105,678 state funded job last week. The Fitzgeralds claim there was no involvement on their part. Sure, and the badger is not Wisconsin's state animal.

Paul Krugman's NY Times column today sums up why we need unions and collective bargaining.

He says: "In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions. But Mr. Walker isn't interested in making a deal. Partly that's because he doesn't want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he's been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers' ability to bargain. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?scp=1&sq=Wisconsin%20Power%20play&st=Search

When you hear unions being denigrated, think about life for those who are not in unions: Walmart workers who have had to sue to be treated decently, poultry and meat processing workers who develop terrible injuries so we can have cheap chicken and beef, and hotel maids and housekeepers. Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and think again about not needing unions. And then, look for the union label.

http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/nickelanddimed.htm

Beating ambulance drivers in Bahrain, funds for NASCAR but not for health care for women-and life in the red states

2011-02-19T14:23:00.000Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/opinion/19kristof.html

It's been a pretty rough week unless you're the father of Wisconsin's Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald or a NASCAR race driver sponsored with US tax dollars. Yes, you read that right, John Boehner claims "we're broke," but his minion, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, (R NJ) doesn't think it's a problem that Americans are paying to sponsor NASCAR drivers through the Defense Department.

Gail Collins alerts us to this in her column today, "Sacred Cows, Angry Birds."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/opinion/19collins.html?src=twrhp She also points out that in Wisconsin where teachers, parents, and state workers are dismayed at the draconian cuts being made by Governor (The Axe) Walker, Fitzgerald and his brother just gave their father a tax-payer supported new job salaried at $105,678 annually.

Meanwhile in Bahrain, where your tax dollars are funding the rest stop for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet at $19 million for last year, and as NPR just reported, US funded tanks are being used against peaceful protesters; Nicholas Kristof writes today of" ambulance drivers being beaten by the army and police for attempting to rescue the dead and injured, and some had been warned that they would be executed if they tried again to help the protesters."

So we don't have money for Planned Parenthood to give medical care to women, for the EPA to enforce clean air and water regulations, or for public radio and television. But we can continue to arm dictators even as they beat, shoot, and kill their own people. In the red states, Wisconsin can afford to enrich the family members of Republicans and here in Indiana, the legislature and Governor Mitch Daniels are doing what they can to end funding for public education and make it constitutionally illegal for gay people to marry.

The GIrl (Without) The Dragon Tattoo-Helena Carnes Jeffries- a fighter for justice

2011-02-14T15:52:00.000Z

http://www.wbez.org/story/budget-cuts/dear-chicago-don%E2%80%99t-forget-mentally-ill

This morning I heard the compelling voice of Helena Carnes Jeffries, a member of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance www.jot.org on WBEZ Chicago's "Eight Forty Eight" program as part of their Dear Chicago Series http://chicagopublicmedia.org/content/elections-2011-dear-chicago . Even if you live elsewhere, you've probably heard a lot about the race for Mayor in Chicago, especially about the front- running candidate, Rahm Emanuel. (Formerly known as President Obama's White House Chief of Staff)

What you may not have heard much about are the issues facing Chicago's next mayor. One huge issue is the impact of state and federal budget cuts which affect social service programs like the mental health support Helena poignantly describes in her piece. You see, Helena is like the Lisbeth Salandar, one of the main protagonists of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in several important ways. Like Lisbeth, Helena was subjected to childhood sexual abuse. Also like her, Helena was left with mental health issues as a result of this abuse. I haven't asked Helena about tattoos but even without them, like Lisbeth, she is brave, funny, dark haired and not afraid to seek justice even at the expense of her own comfort level.

I know Helena because I'm a volunteer with the Neighborhood Writing Alliance which provides free, weekly writing workshops for adults around the city of Chicago and publishes the writing from these workshops in the award-winning Journal of Ordinary Thought and on our blog. Helena is a writer at our group at the Bezazian Branch of the Chicago Public Library.

Helena points out in her audio piece that cuts to the safety net have meant that those who need mental health support are once again being relegated to their own resources, which are often under resourced and strained with all the same pressures as everyone these days who has been impacted by the economic downturn; job loss, food insecurity, housing loss, etc.

In 1975, I moved to Chicago to serve as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) at Thresholds http://www.thresholds.org/ which promises "bright futures for people with mental illness. " At that time, people with mental health issues spent most of their lives locked in draconian hospitals, heavily drugged, and treated pretty much like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Due to changes in law, hundreds of clients were being released from these hospitals in the 70s, and our mission was to help them learn everyday living skills and transition into a regular life. I helped to create and run a halfway house for ex-mental patients. The work was long and at times, difficult, but for people like Helena, it was life changing. As Helena points out, the cuts in state and federal budgets (and the RNC is advocating these cuts right this minute) are going to result in more people being forced to live on the street and /or to struggle on their own.

Please listen to her piece, and then call your elected representatives and demand an end to the cuts to these programs. (By the way, they also want to cut AmeriCorps, the descendant of VISTA) The Republicans like to call them "entitlement" programs. Well yes, I believe our citizens are entitled to health care, including mental health care. To me, that's what "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is all about.

Friends with benefits-Instead of cutting Amtrak, EPA, the arts- let's cut billions for weapons

2011-02-12T13:51:00.003Z

First, I want to join millions around the world in celebrating the true democratic movement in Egypt. Without weapons, without violence, and with poetry and joy, ordinary Egyptians have changed their government from an autocratic dictator.

The photo below is from a story by Curtis M. Wong in the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/egypt-celebrationsphotos_n_821992.html#238712 (I can't get links to work on blogger but want to make sure to credit the photo)

What happens next is up to them.

Meanwhile, I hope that Americans will demand that our elected representatives, including the President, examine the billions in military weapons and aid we send to the Middle East, not only to Egypt (1.3 billion a year) but to Israel (3 billion a year). If you go past the headlines, you will notice a constant murmuring from both official representatives of Israel and from their supporters in Congress and the White House. The murmur is a just above a whispered refrain about the Muslim Brotherhood, about the "dangers" of democracy in Egypt for Israel, and about what a "good friend" Mubarak has been.

Israel is one of the US's "friends with benefits." In addition to the official 3 billion, we provide a variety of services to Israel, and only occasionally ask for anything in return. When we do, for instance, asking politely that Israel stop building settlements on Palestinian land, we are rebuffed. If American do more than ask politely, they are accused of anti-Semitism in the shrillest tones possible. I have joined J Street (http://www.jstreet.org/) which promotes being both pro-peace and pro-Israel, because it is one of the few organizations which is trying to bridge the gap between being a friend and being an enabler.

We (yes, you and me through our tax dollars) have supported Mubarak for years without asking for anything except kindness to Israel. Meanwhile, as you may have noticed, Mubarak's people have lived in poverty and repression. America can no longer afford to have these friends with benefits who mistreat their people, and who thumb their noses at us. We can no longer afford to pour BILLIONS into countries which have sham democracies and/or repress others while our own people are losing their homes and jobs. For less than what we have sent to Egypt for weapons annually, we could save the cuts Republicans want to make to the National Endowment for the Arts, Humanities, and Public Broadcasting. NEA and NEH fund hundreds of jobs around the country and bring economic gain to their communities.

For half of what we give Israel in military aid, we could save the cuts to Amtrak (climate change anyone?) the Republicans have proposed. Again, for half of what we give Israel, we could save the EPA, which the RNC wants to cut but at the same time keep 4 billion of your taxes going to oil company subsidies. The wealthiest corporations in America need your tax money so they can keep drilling wells like the mess in the Gulf.

( See Americans for the Arts http://www.artsusa.org/information_services/research/services/economic_impact/default.asp to see the number of jobs created by the arts in every state. )

Please call Congress this week and ask that we stop giving our tax dollars to friends with benefits who do not have your best interest at heart.
See Rachel Maddow for a chart of proposed cuts

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/21/5893349-on-the-list-of-gop-spending-cuts-amtrak-public-broadcasting-and-mohair
Truth about cuts to EPA and billions to Oil companies
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/gop

i confess- the Catholic Church App

2011-02-09T15:21:00.000Z

As a recovering Catholic,(according to Wikipedia, "not to be confused with a lapsed Catholic") I was amused, but not stunned by the new iPhone app, i Confess (honest, that's the name)

For just under $2 (Catholics love a bargain) you can download the Ten Commandments customized by age and even occupation for your own personal and private confession. See Maureen Dowd's summary in the NY Times for the somewhat appalling questions and answers.

Hint: the app's interpretation of the Roman Catholic Version of the Sixth Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery) (Jews, Reformed Christians and Orthodox Christians consider this the 7th commandment)

asks if you've been guilty of any homosexual activity.

But let's get on to my new i phone App- The Catholic Church App. Here are the questions for the Church and I'm offering them for free! If the Catholic Church downloads this app, I'll throw in a short history of the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.

1) Have you been guilty of hiding the sexual abuse of children by your priests?
2) Have you been guilty of treating women like second class citizens, forbidding them to use birth control and then punishing them if they resort to abortion after the 15th child is conceived and their husband has run off with his secretary?
3) Have you been guilty of claiming to be pro-life but remained silent in the face of genocide and war?
4) Have you been guilty of claiming homosexuality is a sin, but ignored the pedophiles among your priests?
5) Have you been guilty of collecting millions of dollars for the Vatican while your congregants live in poverty?

I'll stop at five but invite my readers to join in.

this is what democracy looks like

2011-01-28T23:23:00.000Z

There's a chant those of us in the peace movement often use when we march in the streets- "tell me what democracy looks like?" "This is what democracy looks like!"

Those in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere are marching in the streets, and many of them are marching peacefully. To me, this is what democracy looks like. Like most of the issues affecting the world today, the reasons for protesting, the reactions of the West, and the reactions of those of us who believe in non violence are all a complicated mix, but poverty and repression are at the bottom of what's going on in Egypt.

Mother Jones has a great explanation of some of the basics, and notes that according to the Economist (no left wing view, trust me) "Egypt ranks 138th of out 167 countries on their Democracy Index. (Thanks Daily Kos for pointing to this)

"As in Pakistan, American tax dollars (1.3 BILLION a year since 1981) have helped to fund leaders who restrict freedom, but receive support from the US under the case of fighting terrorism. While the Republicans in Congress clamor to cut Medicare, education, and the National Endowment for the Arts, they are silent on the billions going to governments which are repressive and dictatorial. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

glass ceilings, walls, houses

2011-01-26T21:41:00.000Z

Missed a couple of days posting for A River of Stones due to catching yet another winter cough, but have been thinking about glass ceilings. This was prompted in part by reading an essay titled "Books As Bombs" by Louis Menand
in the New Yorker about a new book examining "The Feminine Mystique"by Betty Friedan. A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz. Coontz,( who was interviewed today on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross) combines oral history interviews with a historical review of the Feminine Mystique.

Menand's essay riled me up because it's a very privileged, white male take on a number of books which rattled American culture in the 60s including Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Michael Harrington's The Other America,, and Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed.. Menand repeats criticism of Betty Friedan that she ignored non white and working class women, but he ignores books like The Autobiography of Malcom X (1965) which I read as a young teenager and which changed my life and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee which I read in 1970 at the age of 18 just as the 60s closed out. He also repeats nasty comments about Friedan from her family, implying that she hated men. He concludes by stating" These are books whose significance exceeds anything they actually said. For many people, it doesn’t even matter what they said or why they were written. What matters is that, when the world turned, they were there.

I disagree, what these books and others said, and were written matters tremendously, and in the case of glass ceilings, it still matters.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/01/24/110124crbo_books_menand#ixzz1CB8pHe00

A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay for the Encylopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife on "Glass Ceiling Stories." It turns out that many women (and members of minorities) know or tell glass ceiling stories, but no-one has officially collected them.(there are even "stained glass ceiling stories" about the ministry) Even so, an official Glass Ceiling Commission was established in 1991 (yes, not that long ago! ) and resulted in Title II of the Civil Rights Act which was designed to "ensure equal access and equal opportunity." There have been many advancements in those goals- we have seen women and minorities be given more access and more opportunity- but those ceilings, walls, and houses still stand in some ways.

If you are a feminist, you have to explain that you don't "hate men, " just because some radical feminists in the past have taken that stance. If you are a feminist, you often find yourself saying, "I'm not a radical feminist, but...." If you believe in affirmative action, even when you yourself have been passed over because you weren't the right color, you have to prepare to hear how badly white men have been treated by affirmative action. If you still make less then men do, you are not expected to complain about it, because, after all, you have access- it must be your fault if you're not earning the same amount.

These days, with many white men finding themselves out of work,being downsized, feeling marginalized, the fear and anger they feel at the economic situation of the country as a whole, is often expressed towards those triumphs of the Glass Ceiling Commission (which by the way was started by a conservative,Senator Robert Dole!)

I don't have a grand conclusion for this posting- I'm interested in collecting glass ceiling stories for a possible book, but I'm also interested in how Betty Friedan's work still resonates today. Listen to the interview on Fresh Air with Stephanie Coontz- she makes some poignant points about how as a girl of the 60s, she was given opportunities and encouragement by her father which he witheld from her mother. I was very lucky to have a mother who not only read "The Feminine Mystique" but a father who encouraged my mother to go back to school in the 60s and get her PhD, in spite of the fact that they had five kids (and then another while my mother was working on her thesis). Unlike Stephanie Coontz's, my parents figured out a way to help my mother live up to her potential as a scientist and as a mom.(I made dinner for the family daily, starting at age 12-like many kids in non affluent families today, we were expected to help out) I thank Betty Friedan for helping spark that change in my family, and in many others. Maybe what we need today is a Betty Freidan who can help those who are struggling with job loss, housing foreclosures, and yes, discrimination, see a way to a brighter future, whether they are women or men, white or a person of color, young or old.

Is it possible for an environmentalist to love her trash can? Yes-read on

2011-01-22T22:22:00.000Z

Am home sick (again!) with bronchitis but realized I really should find our black trash can which we left on the parkway Tuesday when we left for a trip . We live in a suburban/rural/urban area where there are no alleys, and the custom (rule I guess) is to put your trash and recycling bins next to the road at the end of your driveway.

As a former member of the Solid Waste Commission of Oak Park (a title I wore proudly even though it sounds like something from a Monty Python skit), I have spent the last 40 years trying to reduce,recycle and re-use instead of creating trash. I attended the first Earth Day in Philadelphia in 1970 as an 18 year old who was appalled to see Cleveland's Cuyahoga River in flames from the oil slick on its surface on television the year before. When I moved to Chicago in the mid-70s, I biked my recycling to Ken Dunne's Resource Center on the southside (http://www.resourcecenterchicago.org/index.html) and I'm pretty hard core when it comes to trying to save the planet.

But like many of my fellow environmentalists, even with a healthy compost pile, two recycling bins (for some reason we have yet to get our cities and towns to make the recycling bins larger than trash cans and I still read print newspapers), a vow to buy less and re-use more, I still end up with trash (along with my husband who has a small business on site). We have the typical (See photo) large black trash can which I'm sure he bought (I would have bought a smaller one) at least 6 years ago, and possibly 10).

We usually do not fill the trash can and have at times, been able to only put it out every other week- but this week it was full since our beloved dog, Jasmine, has bladder cancer and a problem with urine control. I managed to find pee pads made of 100% recycled materials (Simple Solution Eco Care training pads) (thank you PetCo for offering recycled pads) (yes- I could use cloth but washing and drying and cleaning up that much stuff would mean I'd have to stop working and am guessing the water and energy levels would even out)Also, as a mom who had once had three kids in diapers(and yes I used birth control-my body just really wanted to make babies), I'm pretty good at estimating this kind of thing- I used cloth diapers when my kids were babies and had a diaper service- job creation and sanity.

So back to the trash can- this trash can survived a rare (unheard of) tornado which ripped through our town in 2008, right down the road in front of our house, upooting a huge pine tree in our yard, and bending the street signs across the street down to the ground. The trash can (it was a Tuesday-trash day) survived and was standing neatly at the end of the driveway still with its lid on in spite of destruction all around. So I fell in love- I mean how many objects in your life survive a tornado, keep their lids on, and continue to be useful? I meant to take a picture but there was just too much going on, including no electricity for a week.

This afternoon, I walked down our driveway (which is a quarter mile slant up the original edge of Lake Michigan- we live on a sand ridge which thousands of years ago was full of fish-and couldn't find the trash can, finally discovering it at the end of the neighbor's yard, crushed. I think I can push out the dent, but it's probably never going to stand upright again.

Apparently while we were gone, it must have blown into the road-someone kindly took it out of the roadway (probably swearing at us) and hopefully it didn't cause an accident (the speed limit is 30mph but it's violated so often, the local cops spend their early evenings in the parking lot across the street waiting for speeders).

I've written Rubbermaid, hoping for a coupon (maybe a free trash can?) which could be half the size of the old one. Like many other loves, this one wasn't forever, but it was true, and I'm trying to think of a way to turn the old trash can into a piece of yard art-or at least a place to keep bird seed.

Underground Vegas-save the planet?

2011-01-21T21:04:00.000Z

The images for today's post are from my underground tour of Vegas- partially led by my friend Christina, a folklorist who has done radio shows, public programming, and fieldwork on the occupations of Las Vegas. Some of the photos are of things not very underground- the Buddhist shrine at Caesar's Palace is in plain site if you take a minute to walk away from the strip with its girlie show promoters slapping small burlesque images at you (they can't touch you or talk to you, so they use little promotional cards and slap them together like a fan to get your attention) -you find yourself at a traditional Buddhist shrine complete with a sand vestibule for candles (unlike in Asia, this sand has "Caesar's "profile stamped in it) The lovely dress was on display at Emergency Arts, a collaborative coffeehouse/gallery/artists studio space in an old emergency medical building and is made of re-purposed materials as are many of the art pieces and clothing designs for sale there. The Chinese "terra cotta" warriors at Bellagio are made from carrot seeds and walnut shells-another form of recycling if done correctly, in this case for Chinese New Years.Finally, the Neon Boneyard, is a collection of historic neon signs (yes there is such a thing) which have been saved and placed in a museum in old Las Vegas.

It's hard to feel much hope for saving the planet in Vegas- a place that Christina explained once had its own underground aquifers, thus the name "Las Vegas" or "the meadows" in English. Those have sadly, been exhausted, used up for irrigating not only food crops but the enormous fountains at the various casinos, the grass in tiny front yards (which happily the city now pays homeowners to get rid of their grass and replace it with xeriscaping)but at the same time, if Americans and international tourists can learn about the Terra Cotta Warriors, Buddhist shrines, and recycled clothing in Vegas- why not learn about climate change there too?

Escute- Listen! Guns and concrete part 2

2011-01-20T16:08:00.001Z

So a quick stone observed yesterday- I was in the elevator yesterday and several men clearly here for the gun show got in. They were wearing lightweight vests, not really hunting vests but uniforms clearly designed to look like hunting vests. It was early so I considered, and then discarded, the idea of talking to them about the assault weapons ban in Congress. The one right in front of me was probably in his 30's close to my oldest son's age and his shirt collar was folded half under his vest. I had to resist fixing it for him-once a mother, always a mother, and I thought about how that simple act of caring could either offend or charm someone.

I've been considering getting a tattoo for some time now of an ear or the Portuguese word, "escute" for "listen." As a folklorist, I'm trained to listen, but I always worry I don't listen enough, and as an activist, it's difficult for me to listen to "the opposition" especially when I feel they are deliberately lying. The issue of gun control has been harmed by lying but also by the fact that it is difficult for each side to hear the other-there really is a middle between the sides- people who don't have a problem with guns used for hunting (a folkloristic activity) or even for target shooting-but rather, with guns, weapons, and bullets designed only for klling humans. The NRA has effectively silenced this middle group with a constant barrage of money and propaganda- but I have a hope that maybe, in light of not only Tucson, but the shooting of a child in California this week when a gun went off in a school, the shootings that take place nearly every week in urban centers, the murders of those who are not in the media's attention might finally persuade Congress to "listen" and do the right thing;ban assault weapons.

Guns or Concrete

2011-01-18T23:12:00.000Z

The River of Stones project is "Encouraging the world to write small stones (short observational pieces) as a path towards engaging with ourselves and others. Find our main blog at www.ariverofstones.blogspot.com. Find our blogzine at www.ahandfulofstones.com. Fiona & Kaspa"

Like a few of the other participants, I have had difficulty writing small stones, they continue to be boulders of words, tumbling like an avalanche. But I am so grateful to fiona and Kaspa for getting me (and so many others writing daily)

Today's boulder is from an elevator conversation- I"m in LasVegas with my husband who is attending the annual "World of Concrete" a tradeshow full of building materials and the people who sell and use them. Building is generally a positive act- although I am an anti sprawl proponent-(and Vegas is just one example of American sprawl), there's still something optimistic about the act of building.

In the elevator a woman said, "are you here for guns or concrete?" We had already learned from our taxi driver that there is also a gun convention here this week. I said, "well after the shooting in Arizona, I'd hope they'd give it a rest." He had no idea what I was talking about-a reminder that there are many people in America, who in spite of the plethora of televisions, computers, cell phones, radio and yes, newspapers, do not keep up with the news. When we have "national conversations" about gun control, or immigration, or health care reform, these folks are relying on word of mouth, just as their ancestors did back in ancient villages. It's one reason it's so easy to spread urban legends as true- if you get your information only from people you know or what you hear on the street-you have a limited basis for making decisions. We told the taxi driver what had happened- and his reaction was that the shooter should have been shot. I pointed out that if more shooting had taken place, more people probably would have been killed-and that the reason he was able to kill and injure so many people was because he had an assault weapon. I hope that today's snippet of news and opinion might remain with him- but my fear is he will just become one more proponent of more guns.

I replied to the question, "guns or concrete?" with "concrete"- and said, after what happened in Arizona, I'd hardly be here for guns. She mumbled something - I have a feeling she was here for guns. In spite of two somewhat dispiriting conversations today, there is more good news. Senator Richard Lugar, one of my representatives, has come out in favor of a ban on assault weapons. Senator Lugar and I frequently disagree, but he, like the right kind of building at the right time, can be a messenger of hope- he led the work to pass the Start Treaty with Russia in December and he has now applied the same principle to life in the United States- more weapons only encourage more weapons or as Ghandi said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Love and pain

2011-01-16T15:41:00.011Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/fashion/16Modern.html?scp=2&sq=modern%20love&st=cse
"Modern Love: When A Former Life Beckons"

One of my favorite things to do on Sunday is to read the Modern Love essay in the NY Times Style Section. This week's is about love and pain, and how we learn more about each of those as we grow older. Shonna Milliken Humphrey, a young, 37 year old writer, writes about being 22, getting a tattoo, and being in such a hurry to live that she didn't notice the physical pain. Fifteen years later, she decides to get another tattoo:

"I thought about my 22 year old self on my 37th birthday after listening to Marianne Faithfull sing Shel Silverstein's words about the insanity of white suburban bedrooms in white suburban towns. Fearing my own eventual Lucy Jordan moment, the worst fate I could imagine-a structured, sterile, prescribed existence guided by words like "appropriate"- I decided to get a new tattoo. Or rather, I decided to reclaim my old one.

As someone who has relocated to a white suburban town for love, I can relate to Shonna in spite of our age difference. At 58, I am still trying to avoid a "sterile, prescribed existence." The good news for Shonna and all of us, is that as women, it is much easier now for us to avoid that existence, Mad Men fantasies on television notwithstanding, thanks to not only the Internet but to the civil rights movement, women's liberation, and all those other movements which are still causing such unrest among those who would drag us back to the signing of the Constitution. Frankly it is harder for men of color to avoid a prescribed existence than for women, especially white women. But that's another essay.

Shonna is stunned by how much the new tattoo hurts, she says, "I breathed and then I breathed more, enduring the kind of sharp, mean and intense pain that had been impossible for me to feel in my 20s. I cried, acutely aware that only now was I capable of feeling this pain, and remembering my young recklessness. If this current pain was so intense, what I wondered might I be vulnerable to feeling after another 15 years that I can't yet imagine at 37?"

Like Shonna, I was reckless in my youth,unlike her, there was more than a little pain involved. At 23, I came down with Hepatitis B and nearly died. No-one knows how I got it but theories included a lack of sanitation at the camp I'd been a counselor at, or dirty glasses in bars.(I was never a big drinker, but I did go out drinking at that age. The liver specialist told me everything your mother told you about drinking out of someone else's glass was true.)

Just as I recovered in June, I went canoeing with some colleagues from my job and the guys rented the canoes, but didn't want to pay extra for life jackets. As a former lifeguard,canoe instructor, and camp counselor, I knew better but assumed (recklessly) that 29 years olds knew better than me whether this was dangerous. We were not paddling in white water, but a local river which was usually tame. This time, however, it was higher than normal because of spring rains and my colleague and her husband weren't very good paddlers, so we switched boats. Her husband was wearing heavy clothes and boots (which we had protested to no avail) and he refused to stay low in the boat-we hit a submerged log and the canoe flipped, throwing us into the rushing water. I was busily getting the paddles and boat (I had taught white water the summer before) when I realized he was upstream from me and panicking. I yelled, "get on your back"and tried to swim to him, but the water was sweeping me downstream. The other two boats came around the bend, and I yelled, "he's drowning" but they didn't (and couldn't) react fast enough- just as in a movie, he bobbed up and down three times, and then disappeared. I swam to the shore and tried to run to him, but the shore was full of chin high bramble bushes-by the time I got to where he had been, he was gone. It took a rescue team a week to find him, and every day for that week, I went with them to show them where to look. The day they found him, I wasn't with them-which in some ways allowed me to push down the guilt and pain I felt. A year later, it hit me and I went through a severe depression- but at that age, with a few rounds of counseling, I was able to move on. It's not that I didn't feel pain, it's that like Shonna, it was more of a burning sensation than a deep wounding.

At 36, just about the age Shonna is now, I felt deep pain when my husband, who I thought was my best friend, betrayed me. Now the mother of four children under the age of 10, the pain I felt was almost unbearable-not only my own, but my children's. I nearly took my life, but again, got counseling and two years later, fell in love with the man of my dreams, who is now my husband and who helped to raise my four kids in spite of being a lifelong bachelor. We lived in two states,and only got married last year, living what my parents referred to as "an alternative life style."

I'm six years older than Shonna's imagined 52, and I can tell her that what you are vulnerable to feeling at that age is indeed, deeper and at the same time, more familiar from the pain or loss you feel in your 30s.

As I've written before, this summer I lost my best friend of 36 years-our friendship lasting just shy of Shonna's current age. I sat by Judy's bedside this summer and watched her transformed from the feisty, beautiful, breast cancer survivor, liver transplant survivor, amateur actress, dog lover I had known since we met in 6th grade to someone who was breathing and living only with the aid of a jungle of tubes and machines, who could no longer respond when I played her favorite music, who kept her enormous big blue eyes only open in panic and fear, and who was, frankly, no longer Judy. Her passing, was not the easy cinematic death we hope for, but a final, hard thrashing. (Her husband witnessed this and told me)

Counseling has helped, but at this age, pain is something not only familiar, but for those of us who flee that sterile prescribed existence, it is in a way, something we seek out,because if you refuse to live in a gated community, if you put yourself out there in the messy mix of life, you will see pain on a daily basis, mostly not yours, but others: Homeless men and women curled up in sleeping bags in doorways, each of them someone's son or daughter, and pushed over the edge by a variety of circumstances: veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan war who have chosen to speak out for peace and been shunned by their families, or others who are so injured that they can barely speak at all; people who are facing foreclosure, not because they were greedy, but because the value of their house was inflated by the go go economy and now they've been laid off and can't afford their mortgage- the list goes on -and it is easy to be overwhelmed by it all. But with love, not only of family, but friends, and just the knowledge of strangers who do the right thing, who work for peace and justice on a daily basis, these painful realities are leavened, not erased like an old tattoo, but morphed into a new image- like the day lily Shonna decided to get layered over her old little star.

This week, my brother came to visit and attend the national "Abolish the Death Penalty Conference" in Chicago. This same week, the Illinois legislature voted to abolish the death penalty. The pain for all those who have been unjustly accused, killed by the state in too many cases, and who are still sitting in jail, is something I cannot imagine-but I find at mid-life, it's more important that we take action to alleviate the pain and suffering of others, than focus on the pain we ourselves might feel.The joy those of us who oppose the death penalty, not to mention the families of those unjustly sentenced to death cannot erase pain but can transform it into something beautiful.

LIfe saving

2011-01-15T14:38:00.004Z

As we continue to try to absorb and then make sense (as if senseless violence can make sense) of the shootings in Arizona, my ears have been attuned to any good news to relieve the suffering of those in Arizona and our nation. Today's good news is that Christina Green's (the little girl who was killed in Tucson) family donated some of her organs to a little girl in Boston. According to www.Organdonor.gov, there are over 110,000 Americans waiting for an organ. For last year, only a little over 12,088 organs had been donated as of October, 2010. In spite of state and national campaigns, DonateLife.net states that while 90% of Americans know about the need, only 30% have taken steps to list themselves as an organ donor. The photo in this entry is my dear friend, Judy Hammond and her beloved dog, Rufus. Judy became ill with an auto immune disorder in 2002, the year we both turned 50. She was fortunate enough to receive a liver transplant in 2006, and was able to live another four years until this past summer, when she passed away after a hard fought battle. If you want to do something to honor Congresswoman Giffords, and Christina Green, please sign up this week to be an organ donor. It takes a minute, but could save someone's life.

And now for something completely different-GOOD NEWS

2011-01-14T22:41:00.004Z

Today's small stone is good news about the way the web not only connects but makes the formerly impossible possible- coming up to MLK Day, I think how happy this would have made Dr. King. I'm a member of a group on Linked In, called "Board Source"" -for non profit Board members and staff. Today there is a link to an article (I would link but blogger doesn't seem to show my links even when I put them in) about a group of international folks who are helping small businesses and non profits in Queensland, Australia which have been ravaged by floods. We have an old friend from there and have spent several wonderful trips so I have been sorrowed to see the devastation, and as usual, feeling helpless. But there's a way to help -there's a Facebook group- Queensland (QLD) Floods- Donate Your Time." Quote from the article by Sarah MacDonald is below: I've sent her an email volunteering to help with grant research and writing next week for non profits affected by the flood. Hope if you're reading this- you'll volunteer too.

The virtual business community is rallying together using social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to coordinate donations of time for flood affected small businesses in Queensland.

Ingrid Bayer, from My Online VA Service in Taree NSW, said, “We’re all watching, with mounting horror, the devastation being brought upon Queensland. Many affected people are small business owners who may have lost their home offices and business premises in the rising flood waters. Being small and micro business owners ourselves, we can only imagine how disastrous it must be to lose not only their homes, cars and personal possessions, but also their livelihoods and income as well."

“The Virtual Assistant community can help these businesses get back on their feet with tasks like remote phone answering, administration, client relationship work, website work, marketing tasks – the list is as endless as our imaginations,” said Mrs Bayer.

Ingrid Bayer has teamed up with Jodie Hodges from Coffs Harbour based Virtually Organised to set up a Facebook community group “QLD Floods – Donate Your Time” and are using the social media platform to spread the word and coordinate group donations of time from other Virtual Assistants throughout Australia and even overseas.

Connecting the dots or snowflakes

2011-01-13T13:16:00.004Z

I missed posting yesterday since I was on the road all day but wanted to write about how winter can be so enjoyable if you are in the right moment-I came home to a snowy wonderland, highlighted by the christmas lights still up on our Harry Lauder's Walking Stick bush.(See photo) The Walking Stick is an amazing plant, its branches are gnarled and twisted like curlicues and its glory is this time of year when the leaves are gone. So much of life is about being at the right place at the right time (or conversely the wrong time at the wrong place. Winter when you are homeless, poor, or just lonely is a dreaded place and time of year. Winter when you have enough to eat, a roof over your head and friends/family is lovely.

Today's post is about connecting the dots- the blogosphere, facebook, pundits and even some of my own family members are quickly claiming there is no connection between Sarah Palin's exhortations to "lock and load" and "bear arms, " the violent language of many of the Tea Party's candidates, and the rhetoric of the NRA ("if guns are banned, only criminals will have guns, etc etc) and the calculated decision by a young troubled man in Arizona to attend a political rally armed to the teeth but I don't agree. There is a connection -and between the daily barrage of violent imagery we have all become inured to on television, the internet, and even billboards. While I still have to leave the room or shut my eyes when watching movies with violent scenes, including movies I really like such as "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", I am sure that after hundreds, let's be honest, probably thousands or millions of images of someone being shot, even the most peaceful person loses their internal shock at seeing violence. There has been a lot of research: about the impact of violent imagery on children with the conclusion that it depends on the context of the person exposed- but you don't have to have a PhD in psychology to realize that Jared Loughner was clearly impacted not only by the rhetoric of the right, and by the completely irresponsible lack of gun control in Arizona, but also by being encouraged to think of violence as "normal" which dominates American popular culture.

danger to self and others

2011-01-11T13:01:00.002Z

I've been thinking of how the small stones project

reminds us that something small can be of great importance. The press (somewhat predictably) has focused on Jared Loughner's "difference"'his perceived wackiness, inappropriate behavior, etc- and the stone I want to focus on today is the gap between our recognition that someone has a problem, especially a mental health problem, and our attitude that it might be the responsibility of everyone in that person's community to get them help. Loughner's community college instructor yesterday in an interview made it clear he felt that getting Loughner kicked out of the school and told not to come back unless he got help, was an appropriate response to someone who had put fear into the minds of both the instructor and his students.But there was no follow up. Loughner clearly was a danger to himself and others- the status needed for an adult, even a young adult, to get help whether they want it or not- and yet- his family, the community, and all of us- just want him to go away- rather than looking hard at the combination of small stones- loose gun laws, hate speech, violent rhetoric and imagery (and yes- Sarah Palin, I'm talking to you) and finally mental illness which led to this tragic event.

wily coyotes

2011-01-11T01:46:00.002Z

Today's small stone is taking a break from the shock of the weekend events in Arizona and looking closer to home-yesterday morning, my dog, Jasmine, who almost never barks, started to bark and when I looked outside I saw one of the coyotes who has been hanging around the last year or so. I now think there are at least two because this one was not red like the one who stared Jasmine and I down a few weeks ago-and he looked more slender. I chirped at him (her?) and he/she just kept going up the driveway and towards what's left of the woods behind us. We (selfishly, I know) had a big wooded lot just two houses over which was undeveloped and a home for deer. Last year, whoever owns it (this being the suburbs, neither they nor we have gone over to say "hi" which I guess now that I think of it, I'm a bit ashamed about) built a big wood and stone house, not quite a McMansion, but big enough by bungalow standards and with the requisite (in this area) 2-3 car garage. We no longer see deer traveling through- although there are plenty of rabbits, hawks and squirrels- and now the coyotes- there's also a fox (who I haven't seen) who lives under the deck of Tom's studio (the studio is what used to be the maiden aunts' house according to the daughter of the family who used to own this farm). There's something visceral about seeing a coyote in your yard-they seem more like cats than dogs- giving you that look that cats give you when they're looking at you but not really looking at you-the same look that little kids sometimes give adults who stare at them too much in the grocery store. Their wariness also reminds me of cats- they don't act afraid, the way a dog might- it's more of a "what are you looking at" wary. Some people worry about them eating cats (we have a 20 year old who is an indoor/outdoor cat but he's both so scrawny and so smart, I can't imagine a coyote catching him. So for now, we're all co-existing-and doing a lot better at that than I can say for my fellow humans.

stoning

2011-01-09T13:09:00.003Z

My first thought today was, that in light of the tragic shooting yesterday in Arizona, that I wouldn't be able to think of a "small stone," but only a boulder, which is how my heart feels, weighted by a boulder of sorrow for the families of those killed, for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who is fighting for her life, and for the minds of those like the 22 year old shooter who have been corrupted by hate and hypocrisy.

But then I realized that small stones can be combined to create an avalanche.
Let's begin with Sarah Palin, whose fundraisers put a target on Gabrielle Giffords. A real "mama grizzly" protects her family, not by attacking others, but by teaching them right and wrong.Then consider that a 9 year old child was murdered yesterday-and the so-called Congressional "pro-lifers" will be silent on this loss of life, because they don't want to lose their "A" rating from the NRA. They will claim the killer was unstable, an aberration. However, listen to the Arizona sheriff:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous," he said. "And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry." (From Huffington Post )

I went on Facebook this morning to look for gun control groups and was shocked to discover the tragic number of pro gun groups" including " gun owners against Obama"-these are more small stones-people who feel they must link their guns to their political beliefs.

This nation was appalled last year when a young woman in Iran faced death by stoning ( but what is the difference between this ancient form of violence against women and contemporary gun owners like Sarah Palin who put crosshairs on the faces of elected representatives? There is no difference-and it is time for those who are tired of the violence, the heated rhetoric of the Tea Party and others, and the hatred of our President to stand up for peace and justice-to say we will not be cowed or bowed. The Democrat who ran for Senator in Indiana this year, Brad Ellsworth could not see the discrepancy between his position as a pro-lifer and his "A" rating from the NRA. But it is time to say, you cannot have an A from the NRA and call yourself pro-life- there is nothing pro-life about assault weapons. There is nothing pro-life about encouraging people to bring guns to work- there is nothing pro-life about teaching people to express their anger and frustration with violence.

54 people were murdered in Gary Indiana this past year by guns-and except for the local paper and their families, their deaths were be covered by the news media. Why? because they were primarily African American and poor. And that is the other stone in this river of sorrow-gun violence has been tolerated because most of its victims are minorities and poor, it is only when someone the media can recognize as one of its own is injured or killed that a true outcry appears-and I take no pleasure in predicting that this will be a major news story until the Tea Party and the Republicans find some new bone to throw the press to distract it.

Pay attention

2011-01-08T14:45:00.007Z

Today's small stone is from the concept of paying attention to small things- similar to the canaries in the coal mine I wrote about earlier this week. This morning, my dog, Jasmine, and our cat, Peaches are both on alert, Jasmine, who almost never barks, is barking at something unseen and unheard-probably the red brown coyote who appeared earlier this winter (we live in a small oasis of woods amidst the suburban sprawl and urban industry of nw Indiana) and the cat is watchful at the window.

The coyote, like so many of the creatures driven closer and closer to settled areas by the relentless development of rural, wooded and wetlands areas (something I had hoped would be stopped or at least slowed by the economic downturn, yes selfishly, but at the same time, how many more shopping malls do we need?) boldly stood near our porch, staring me and the dog down. Built more like a dog than a wolf, I think he might have been one of those genetic mixes identified by biologists (check out Project Coyote http://www.projectcoyote.org/newsreleases/news_eastern.html) and easily weighing at least 40 pounds, he was a reminder that evolution continues, all evidence from the tea party and weeping John Boehner to the contrary.

It has become more and more difficult to pay attention to small things as we bury ourselves in data, fake news, false promises, and fear. The small stones project is a great way to remind us to pay attention-I read a funny, dystopian, and ultimately scary book last night, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart which takes place in the near future. I'll write more this week on the small things in the book which are a reminder that we need to pay attention as our civil liberties, our resolve as a nation and our minds seem to be slipping into a huge vacum.

January 6 and 7 posts- holiday rituals and epiphanies

2011-01-07T17:07:00.008Z

Still home sick (both really and metaphorically) so am combining yesterday's and today's posts. Yesterday was the Epiphany in Christian tradition or Little Christmas in Ireland, a tradition I adopted when the kids were little. In the New Testament it's the day the magi, or wise men saw Christ- thus giving them the "epiphany" that the savior was born-we have adopted the word in English to mean a sudden realization- a perfect word for the small stones project. At some point when the kids were little, I found out it was called "Little Christmas or Women's Christmas" in Ireland-since they are all just slightly more than half Irish, I adopted this as a day when they would get an extra present-perhaps something that we couldn't find until after Christmas, some years, if one of them got too many presents, I'd "even it out"for the other ones on Little Christmas- even now that they are adults, and long gone by January 6th, I still often set aside little gifts for them- things I've heard them say they wanted and saw, it's a sentimental ritual just for me, really, one more way for me to accept the "empty nest", without acknowledging it. (googling it turns out that Women's Christmas was the day the Irish women in some counties went out and celebrated and the men stayed home and took care of the kids-wish I'd known that years ago!)

Among the small stones I've noticed these last two days are those holiday rituals we create which are completely unofficial- when do you take down the Christmas tree, the holiday cards, the decorations (most of which are really not religiously based, except for the creche in my case, and for other folks, any holiday decoration?)- Typically I would wait till the 6th to take down the tree, but I did it early this year, since last Sunday was sunny, I watched the Bears football game (another ritual which has replaced religion for many americans) something I never normally do by myself but Tom had gone to visit his uncle, and I had begun to come down with this bug) and carefully packing up the ornaments was soothing since I missed the kids.(the Bears lost, proving my personal superstition that if I do watch a whole game they won't win)

Today I took the holiday cards down, again carefully, thinking of each friend as I looked them over, packing them up to send to a friend, Allison who's in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and can use them for arts projects. And just as I was writing this, a letter from her came, which brightened my day. While we zoom into the paperless (still allegedly) society with i pads, cell phones, instant messages, and facebook, those slight pieces of paper have so much power which has not been replicated in my case, anyway-Allison's envelope has the "Punte Gil Gonzalez" pictured on a stamp along with "correros" "Atlantic '96 which celebrates the runners in the Atlanta Olympics, and her letter reminds me that while it's gray and cold here, it's sunny and hot in Nicaragua.

Writing a holiday letter is another ritual I've adopted (and one I made fun of growing up in the suburbs)-it's turned into a way of journaling the year and has some of the discipline of haiku (and ok I'll admit it, twitter) since even your best friends don't want to read more than a two page letter which is all about you and yours (I break them up with photos to reduce the imagined chore of reading them).

The best one i received this year was from my friend Joan who used photos of her actual year and gave them great adventure captions so she was bringing relief supplies around the world in a small plane instead of flying over rural Wisconsin. Might be a new holiday ritual, use photographs from your year to describe what your inner Walter Mitty (look it up) self would have done during the last year.

rings (january 5th post)

2011-01-06T16:43:00.004Z

This is yesterday's post- I've come down with bronchitis and "wrote" in my head but couldn't make it to the computer. My "mother's ring" is missing, it's a small gold ring with the birthstones of my four kids, my birthstone, and as Tom said when he gave it to me, the gold wrapped around the stones symbolizing his love for us. I know it's in the house, and it slipped off somewhere, yet to be discovered. What I want to write about is those familiar things that are almost invisible but we know immediately when they are missing- as a folklorist, I see traditions as among the "things" that fit this category. When you've worn a ring for 20 years, you don't have to see your finger to know it's not there- you feel it first, the way you feel the loss of a friend, or a family pet. It's an ache- a longing- the Portuguese have a word for this- suadade- and I swear that tendency is in my genes, passed down by a Vovoa (grandmother) who sang fados, Portuguese blues which are full of lost and longing, and a father who taught me it was ok to cry tears of sorrow and joy, even for a man. I wish that I could believe the tears of John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, were the tears of a real man, and not a phony, not crocodile tears. As he prepares to attempt to decimate the health care bill which promised aid for those with pre- existing conditions, for young people who are trying to find work in a terrible economy, and for those who don't have the benefits of the US congress, I don't believe those are tears of compassion but of self -righteousness. But back to rings- ancient symbols of eternity-and missing something- my kids and I have struggled this last year through separation anxiety (mine) -and there is an odd sense I have today that not being able to find my mother's ring, and learning to ignore that itchy empty finger, is a lesson in letting go...

Canaries in the coal mine

2011-01-04T16:53:00.005Z

My small stone for today is about birds. I'm home, sick with the flu, and am watching the birds picking at the supposedly squirrel proof feeders which have been decimated by the squirrels-they've spent weeks eating the plastic so that now the seed oozes out. One of the stories in today's NY Times is about a large group of red winged blackbirds who fell from the sky, seemingly for no reason in Arkansas on New Year's Eve. It's funny when you hear "black birds" you think of the child's nursery rhyme, (or at least if you are folklorist under the influence of nyquil, you do) "Sing a Song of Sixpence"- Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie, when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing, wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king..."But when you think of red winged blackbirds, you see the beautiful red and gold wing pictured in the Times story and it's so much sadder to think of them dying (and not miraculously singing). (The image pictured here is from birdcollectingblog.blogspot.com)

The Christian Science Monitor notes that the die off revives superstitions about birds serving as omens, especially black birds, and combined with (this is my theory) our ancient predilection for beliefs around the New Year (making resolutions, doing things for luck) you have a perfect storm of nervous reaction. As the Monitor article goes on however, it addresses my not- so- small stone, but more of a boulder of an observation. Let's hear it from a scientist:

"If the Beebe bird rain portends anything, says Arkansas state ornithologist Karen Rowe, it would be the broad but gradual decline of native bird populations around the US. "That's more worrying than this individual event involving a species that's very common," she says."

In addition to the birds dying obviously in Arkansas, we have the much more ominous and scary fact that Canadian tar sands are being pillaged for oil daily by BP and other oil companies and as the arboreal forest is destroyed, so is the habitat for thousands of birds. My plastic bird feeders, are of course, made from oil, so there is a perfect storm of irony here.

Water and Sky

2011-01-03T21:05:00.002Z

This is my small stone for today. Am perched in my office , 16 stories above the ground on the shore of Lake Michigan. Looking north, the water and the sky are exactly the same color, the palest of blues, almost white, there is an imperceptible line of blue at the horizon, but it's easy to skip over it, like a stone over water, right into the sky.

A River of Stones

2011-01-02T22:54:00.003Z

I'm going to participate in A River of Stones call to make a small observation every day of January http://ariverofstones.blogspot.com/

I'm one day behind so here's what I observed yesterday, January 1. I was down with the flu, reading "Life" by Keith Richards and I observed that while he is a very good and funny writer, his innate sexism comes through not only in his writing about women, using terms like "bitch" instead of "woman" or even "girl" but also in the lack of attention he pays to some of the amazing women he has played music with, recorded with, and been I dare to say, influenced by. Given that he began as a wanna be Chicago blues musician, growing up in 40s London, it's not a shock by any means. When I went dancing with my then boyfriend at Theresa's Blues Club on the Southside of Chicago in 1976, the men would ask him, not me, if they could dance with me.

Nonetheless, I've taken it on myself to help publicize the many wonderful women who have made music with and for the Rolling Stones. Today's amazing woman is Merry Clayton who've you've heard a million times if you've listened to "Gimme Shelter" Watch and listen here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCyTqnizcvI

(Something very perfect about using the Rolling Stones to start off my participation in A River of Stones!)

Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-10-30T22:28:00.003+01:00

For me this photo says it all, in case you can't read the sign, it says "Hug a Muslim!" The rally to "restore sanity "was huge, loud, crazy and at the same time, the opposite of everything covered daily by the press, especially when it comes to politics. There was no anger, there was no hating, no yelling, and very little complaining in spite of the fact that for most of the attendees, the sound from the stage was impossible to understand, even when you got close to the jumbo screens, and most people couldn't see the screens either. The one part I could hear was the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner, " like many of the signs and clothing, a clear proof of the patriotic spirit of this event. In spite of many years of unhappiness with my government, I still get a little glow of love for my country every time I come to DC and I think that may have been true for many of the attendees. The signs were creative (see more photos on my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/12182990@N08/), the crowd was diverse in every sense from babies to seniors, every race, every ethnicity,every age. My most fervant wish is that everyone who is eligible to vote who attended today has either voted or will vote on Tuesday.

Dialing for Dollars and Mugwumps

2010-06-26T14:30:00.006+01:00

I got a phone call this week from a Democratic Senator (Senator X) whose name I will not reveal so that just in case someone actually reads this and is a hater, they don't use it to attack him because I'd like to be frank. Let's just say he's a good guy, which I know because I googled him before I returned his phone call. He's been speaking up against the power of corporations like BP to pillage the environment and get away with it- among other things. He called me because we donated a significantly to Barack Obama's campaign which landed us on a list of potential big donors to the Democrats. It's been interesting to be on that list, since my other half is a lifelong "mugwump" a term I learned from my father, which he told me meant, "your mug is on one side of the fence and your wump is on the other side." I interpreted that to mean being socially liberal and fiscally conservative which applies both to my husband and my dad. According to Wikipedia, the term goes back to 1832, "the jocular word mugwump, noted as early as 1832, is from Algonquian (Natick) mugquomp, "important person, kingpin" (from mugumquomp, "war leader")[1] implying that they were "sanctimonious" or "holier-than-thou,"[2] in holding themselves aloof from party politics." Historically, the Mugwumps were Republicans who supported Grover Cleveland for President in 1884. They also apparently were often described as New Englanders, which does apply to my dad. (Of course he was not around in 1884) They were despised by party loyalists but were idealists who opposed corruption. (Can anyone say "Green Party or Dennis Kucinich?")? The term has fallen into disuse but I'm on a campaign to revive it.

Now back to my phone call: The DSCC is following the guidelines that those of us who help raise money for causes know well- make it personal and specific, don't rely on print and email solicitations, follow up and be gracious. They have been wooing us ever since Barack won the election and my husband has been bemused when he's not annoyed, finally explaining to several of the callers that he is not a Democrat. He's not only a mugwump, but ferociously independent, not as crazy as the tea partiers, (sorry I do think they are crazy-they seem unable to grasp the concept of good government versus no government and don't mind using the tax payer supported roads, meat and food inspection, FAA, educational system (and even the ones who homeschool, send their kids to private school, or don't have kids have benefited from public education) and FDA approved medicines, medical procedures, etc but have some fantasy world where all this happens courtesy of the private sector); so not crazy like that but very frustrated with political cronyism, lobbying, and corruption; not to mention the waste of lives and funds on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that's him and while I sometimes call myself a lifelong Democrat (although I have bolted a few times and voted for independents and even a Republican or two) I have the high principles of a mugwump and have been very disappointed in both the President and the Congressional Democrats at their lack of spine and willingness to cave to Republicans and corporate types alike.

I spared Senator X this diatribe but when he invited me to a fundraising event this week in return for a donation of dollars to meet Candidate Brad Ellsworth I had to tell him of my issues with Rep. Ellsworth, to wit, his "A" rating from the NRA and his opposition to choice for women. Senator X listened politely and pointed out that Dan Coats who is Ellsworth's opponent (there's a tea party guy too but no-one thinks he will win) was hardly a good alternative. I agreed and said, yes, I will vote for Ellsworth but that's probably going to be the limit of my involvement. Senator X then asked if I wouldn't like to support someone closer to my belief system (my words, not his) like Barbara Boxer and I said "probably" so he promised to email me additional "opportunities." While I deeply wish the DSCC would be able to elect candidates without dialing for dollars, I know the realities of our political system. At the same time, I find it frustrating that the DSCC and the DNC and the President's OFA folks all just don't get it- they continue to expect progressives to not only hold their noses and vote for Blue Dogs like Ellsworth but to also pony up money without getting any serious attention to our issues. Yes, health care passed, and there are more women in government and more significantly, Obama restored funding to the UN Population Fund, which provides prenatal health care to desperately poor women around the world. But at the same time, we have no real change in the policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan (and if you honestly think this Administration and its Pentagon allies are really going to leave Iraq next year, I have a bridge to sell you) the drones continue to kill innocents in Pakistan, the Israel lobby continues to hold sway in DC, the NRA was allowed an escape clause in campaign finance reform (which makes me so ill I can't even find the words to describe my disgust), teachers are being laid off while bankers and BP reap in profits, etc. with just a few slaps on the wrist.

So DSCC and Senator X, please do keep calling. Our relationship reminds me of junior high and high school suitors, I'm not ready to date you but at least when you call I get a couple of minutes to remind you of the promises you made and broke and you get to sweet talk me with thoughts of Barbara Boxer and the few Senators who actually vote their conscience. For the time being, I'm joining my dad and my husband on the fence-as a mugwump. You can call me "sanctimonious" but I call it being principled.

The Great Unknowns

2010-05-31T18:31:00.001+01:00

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/31/opinion/20100531opartpoole.html?hp
Here's my response to this graphic by Robert Poole about counting US military dead- we'll see if NY Times will pubish

As the sister of a Navy officer, I appreciate Robert Poole's graphic (The Great Unknowns) and comment that we are able to account for our military killed in war but the graphic and the statistics only told half the story. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the number of civilians killed continues to rise and our press and some of our military refuse to acknowledge the tragic specifics of those deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates that 96,394-105,130 civilians have been killed in Iraq (including from roadside bombs ) since 2003. General Stanley McChrystal has acknowledged "“Because of CivCas [civilian casualties], I think we have just about eroded our credibility here in Afghanistan," but the war continues. American Friends Service Committee notes on its website that we don't even know the numbers in Afghanistan. Estimates of civilians killed by American drone attacks since 2004 range from 830-1,210 but again America is not keeping official count. Those who claim to "respect life" are silent about the lives being taken every day by these wars, lives of babies, children, women and men who have the misfortune to live in an area where they become part of the "great unknowns." Please ask Congress to support Alan Grayson' The War is Making You Poor" Act which would acknowledge the costs in both dollars and lives of war.

Blaming the Government for BP oil spill-blame the victim

2010-05-01T14:38:00.002+01:00

Today's NY Times adopts the posture of the tea party, blaming the government for not responding to the BP (stands for Big Polluter) oil spill
"BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act"
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and ERIC LIPTON
As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast and officials
assailed BP America's response, a government agency also
said the flow from a seabed oil well could grow much larger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/us/01gulf.html?th&emc=th-

here's my response to the Times

I am extremely disappointed at the slant of the Times' coverage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf-which implies both in today's sub headline (5/1/10) "US officials skipped chances to act" and the content "It may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company, " that somehow it's the government we should blame for this disaster. Let's review the facts: According to the AP: "BP downplayed the possibility of this type of spill in 2009"; BP designed the drilling project, and BP is reaping record profits from this and other projects around the country, including its Canadian tar sand oil refinery up the street from my house in Indiana. The eleven workers who died were killed solely due to BP's mismanagement. The destruction of the environment and damage to the economy of the Gulf region is the fault of BP, a company which does everything it can to avoid taking safety and security measures and then wants taxpayer dollars to clean up its messes. Those of us who live in NW Indiana have seen this first hand and the disaster to the ecology of northwest Canada is already taking place, unreported except by environmental groups. The Times should place the blame where it belongs; in the corporate offices of BP and other oil companies who continue to support our irrational desire for cheap oil and gas.

The Myth of Evan Bayh

2010-02-21T16:08:00.001Z

Evan Bayh's essay in today's NY Times ("Why I'm Leaving the Senate" proves two things: quitters do win and the press is willing to believe any myth politicians create. Senator Bayh got three columns (along with a fan letter from Lincoln Chafee) for quitting, not for actually doing anything for his constituents, not for helping to pass health care reform, or for ending the costly futile wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or for passing a jobs bill, but for quitting. In his essay, Senator Bayh pines for the days "when members of Congress from both parties, along with their families, would routinely visit our home for dinner of the holidays." When your father is a Senator, it's easy to get visits from Congress. As a constituent of Evan Bayh, I literally had to get arrested just to ensure that the Senator would come back to Indiana to listen to voters concerns about the loss of life and profligate spending on the Iraq War. Senator Bayh also ignores his own role this year in making sure that nothing happened in Congress-he huddled with Olympia Snow and Joe Lieberman instead of pushing for health insurance reform, he called Democrats "elitist" for trying to make sure that poor people have access to health care, and his office answered questions on his stand on a range of issues from climate change policy to the war in Afghanistan with the statement that "Senator Bayh never discloses his position on pending legislation." Now that he's quitting, Evan Bayh can't stop disclosing his positions. Unfortunately, none of them have anything to do with actually passing legislation to help the people of Indiana or the United States. It's all about him.

Guerillas and geniuses

2010-01-23T12:27:00.003Z

This is not so much about social justice (although I'll get that in) as it is about ways of learning and teaching, treatment of consumers, and my own troubles with my computer . I've called myself a "guerilla" computer user for years- like the fighting kind of guerrillas, I've used irregular and unconventional methods to learn how to use computers, I started using the term because I essentially learned "underground"-actually in true folk pedagogy-from person to person, mostly orally (or visually). At various jobs I would take the required computer courses; I spent 4 tortured hours once,( on my employer's dime) supposedly learning excel but mostly listening to a 4 hour commercial for taking more computer classes from the same company-we didn't even have computers in front of us. This experience reinforced my determination to only learn what I thought I needed to know, when I needed to know it about computers and mostly underground from other users.
Several years ago, my kids convinced me to become a Mac user-one of the successful marketing techniques of Apple is that you self identify as a mac or a pc-their clever commercials have reinforced this-but the truth is Mac users tend to be artists, educators, designers-people who think of themselves as "off the grid" a bit (at the same time of course being totally needy about the grid and act like guerillas. I had used a mac in a previous job, in fact we had an early apple in the 80s, so it didn't take much to persuade me to switch. There are many good things about Apple's products- you don't get viruses, they have easy to use icons, you don't get completely foreign phrases when something doesn't work the way you do with pcs (or did-they have cleaned up their act too). One of the not so good things is the way they run the so-called "genius" bar. As they have successfully marketed to more and more users, the pressure to keep their "geniuses" on a short leash has increased-and a wonderful program called "one to one" has now been curtailed unless you buy a new computer. There are many things you can learn from technical support on the phone-even when you get someone named "Sam" who in spite of learning to say he's in Sioux City, somehow speaks too quickly and too obviously in ESL to keep you from banging your hand (or head) down in frustration and cultural bias. There's nothing to make you act more like an ugly American than spending time on the phone with a technical support person who's not in America. But with computer problems, I am one of those people who needs to see the person who is helping me- so I make the trek to the "genius bar" in Chicago-one of the many things Apple has not dealt with (they don't have to, they're "apple" ) is that many of their customers are not located in major urban cities.

After spending portions of three days during the last week at the genius bar in Chicago-I have some suggestions for Apple: 1) if you're going to call someone a genius, teach them they also need to be able to communicate to the non genius client (AKA YOUR CUSTOMER) what they are doing- the "geniuses' tend to act like high priests-they perform various mysterious actions without talking to you-and if you try to find out what they are doing (especially after an hour of sitting at their feet (ok-on a stool across from them) they get very offended-as a "guerilla' mac user, I know how to perform a few basic things to try to solve problems- I can actually go into the hard drive and do a first aid "repair disk permissions" all by myself- so when I see the tech (sorry, genius) doing that, it's aggravating, since I've already done it myself. 2) when I've already bought your software, associated products like external hard drives, and your product-you should not try to sell me more products, software, hard drives until you've made an effort to explain why my product, software, hard drive didn't work in the first place 3)Apple needs to give their staff the time and respect to work with customers instead of giving them unrealistic time expectations which makes them even less likely to explain what they are doing since they are supposed to solve every problem in 15 minutes. Boomers, especially, need tender loving care when it comes to machinery- and given the economy, we are most likely going to be funding the purchases of your products, not only for ourselves but for our 20 and 30 something kids who are not getting the big paying jobs their high priced education promised them-in fact they may well be trying to be hired as "geniuses" by Apple. So try giving both your geniuses and your guerrilla users a break- if you want customer loyalty, treat us like customers, not like the faithful who are expected to just keep their wallets open and their mouths shut. Otherwise, they (we) will find computers and companies that do a better job.

MLK Day thoughts Limbo Land

2010-01-18T12:27:00.004Z

Today is Martin Luther King's Birthday I haven't written in this diary since August, frankly because I was in limbo. Many of those of us who supported Barack Obama's campaign and stood together cheering one year ago tomorrow as he was sworn in as the 44th President have been dismayed, especially during the last six months. We are accused today of being "starry eyed "(see Joan Walsh's thoughtful but "blame the victim" post in Salon (www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/01/17/obama_movement?source=newsletter) and missing the truth that Barack Obama was and is, to quote Walsh "a solid centrist corporate Democrat."

So ok, yes, we were starry eyed-you have to be starry eyed to be in your fifties. driving up to Chicago for days on end to make phone calls to voters around the country, (which I ,like the little kid in the movie "By the People" who cheerfully explains who Obama is, did ,no offense kid, but when you have other responsibilities and you're doing the same thing, it's not so cute, it's crazy making); then walking door to door in NW Indiana for days on end convincing skeptical Hoosiers that it would be safe to vote for a man who's name they couldn't pronounce, and finally spending more days on the phone and in person managing the get out the vote work; all the time dealing with crazed Hillary supporters, skeptical fellow peace activists, blatantly racist gun nuts, etc etc.

At the same time, I was there in person for six of Barack Obama's speeches, as a volunteer working side by side with the Secret Service in a rusting steel mill in Indiana; as a paying supporter at the Democratic Women's Leadership Meeting in Chicago; and four days before Election Day in Columbia, Missouri where I not only heard the speech but got back to my motel room to find Candidate Obama was sleeping on the floor above me and watched him greet kids in their pjs the next morning as he struggled with the imminent death of his grandmother) On each of those occasions, I not only listened, but wrote down the words he spoke, and they were not the words of a "solid centrist corporate Democrat"- they were the words of a progressive-who promised specifics, not just change- who argued for social justice, who championed using intelligence instead of war, and who answered the questions of a weeping steel worker's daughter about health care with compassion. I was also there when a younger Barack Obama told peace activists in Chicago that the war in Iraq was wrong.

So I find myself in limbo, on the one hand, disgusted by the free lunch given to bankers, by the escalation of the failed war in Afghanistan, by the give aways to health insurance companies and to joe lieberman and by the retention of the Patriot Act, the secret prisons, and the willingness to take away civil liberties by a President who promised change and encouraged on the other hand, by the same President who has restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund which protects thousands of women's lives around the globe through pre and post natal care; by a President who nominated a wise woman Latina to the Supreme Court, and by a President whose family and cabinet has focused on health issues and education for low income children.

Limbo is just where the professional politicians want us- until it's time for the next election. Like abused women, they count on us to be sweet talked back home to vote for them with a few flowers, some candy, some magic phrases-and meanwhile they want us to just shut up. In honor of Dr. King, I'm refusing to be a blamed victim; it's not the fault of progressives that corporate interests drove the agenda this last year-but it is our job to fight for change, the change which was promised to us on a freezing cold day a year ago.

Action has always been my way out of limbo-many years ago, I was told by a wise counselor that you can't change other people's behavior, but you can change yours. It may take me a few months to figure out what I can do to effect change-but I think if progressives change their behavior from passive to active, they can make a difference.

Meanwhile President Obama seems to be coming out of a long sleep- Joan Walsh quotes him repeating the following at a sermon this weekend-perhaps Dr. King's ghost has been visiting him and I am hopeful that we can all get out of limbo land.

"So, yes, we're passing through a hard winter. It's the hardest in some time. But let's always remember that, as a people, the American people, we've weathered some hard winters before. This country was founded during some harsh winters. The fishermen, the laborers, the craftsmen who made camp at Valley Forge -- they weathered a hard winter. The slaves and the freedmen who rode an underground railroad, seeking the light of justice under the cover of night -- they weathered a hard winter. The seamstress whose feet were tired, the pastor whose voice echoes through the ages -- they weathered some hard winters. It was for them, as it is for us, difficult, in the dead of winter, to sometimes see spring coming. They, too, sometimes felt their hopes deflate. And yet, each season, the frost melts, the cold recedes, the sun reappears. So it was for earlier generations and so it will be for us."

Angry mobs

2009-08-04T12:46:00.002+01:00

Watching the endless coverage of the same angry mobs at Health Care town hall meetings raises two questions for me. The first selfishly perhaps, is why does the press give a few misinformed screamers so much coverage when they completely ignored thousands and thousands of peace marchers both before the Iraq war started and for the long five years of the Bush administration's mismanagement details of which continue to flow out slowly like air from a balloon. Secondly, what are these people really afraid of? They are clearly afraid- not just angry but terrified. I think they are partially afraid of President Obama, whipped into their frenzy of fear by lies from right wing bloggers, radio, and television=especially Fox "news" but also by the so called mainstream media which defines "balance" as always having a conservative on call.
I did a little research- these folks are partially being whipped up by "Hands Off My Health Care" sponsored by "The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest" which states:" "The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Advance (CMPI Advance) is a nonprofit, non-partisan 501c4 organization promoting innovative solutions that advance medical progress, reduce health disparities, extend life and make healthcare more affordable, preventive and patient-centered. CMPI provides the public, policymakers and the media a reliable source of independent scientific analysis on issues ranging from personalized medicine, food and drug safety, health care reform and comparative effectiveness." Founded by Dr. Robert Goldberg (who is not a medical doctor but has a PhD ) of the Manhattan Institute- this group has learned from Obama's campaign-they are on Facebook, Twitter, and the "Honored guests" of the Manhattan Institute include Clarence Thomas, Dick Cheney, and George Bush. "Dr" Goldberg is apparently afraid of drug companies, health insurance companies and hospitals losing their access to billions of dollars of profit, but he is successfully whipping up a frenzy using misinformation. Why isn't the press doing this research? And back to my question- what are the mobs attending these town hall meetings afraid of?

Peeps For Peace Finding Joy in a Time of Sorrow

2009-03-15T12:40:00.004Z

I haven't written much since the New Year partly because I've begun using facebook and flicker as a kind of journal, partly because so much of the news each day has been overwhelming; millions of jobs lost in the United States, thousands of people facing foreclosure, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza dragging on -one million Iraqis are estimated to have been killed yet American politicians and citizens really think that war has been "won." Every week I hear of someone else who has lost their job-young people, middle aged people, people of every color and educational attainment- journalist Stephen Kinser at Northwestern to writers from the Neighborhood Writing Alliance. These photos represent an attempt to find some joy in this time of sorrow- the clouds are a reflection of the sun shining through at a blue hole on Abaco Island, Bahamas where we volunteered for Earth Watch and where fossils of a new specimen of crocodile have been found. http://www.friendsoftheenvironment.org/sawmillsinkfossi.html The blue hole is one of those amazing joys of nature; a deep hole in the middle of a sandy pine woods where fresh water sits on top of salt water. The work of Friends of the Environment and the Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Organisation http://www.bahamaswhales.org/ gave me joy as well-they are working to preserve the amazing environment for both people and sea creatures. The banner celebrating Barack Obama in Chicago is a reminder of how much things have changed; a city known for racism is celebrating its "almost" native son's achievement in becoming President of the United States. The photo of Margreat Sam in her kitchen in North Dakota is another joy- Margreat is a traditional artist I've been working with through the North Dakota Council on the Arts who will soon become an artist in residence, bringing her joy in south Indian classical dance and her skilled use of mehindi, painting with henna on the hands to students in North Dakota. And last but not least, CodePINK continues to work for peace -our latest campaign is sending pink marshmallow "peeps" to Bob Herbert at the NY Times http://apps.facebook.com/causes/236092?m=91e6b129, Mr. Herbert wrote a great column about the dangers in continuing to try to use military force in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of using other means but then said : "Much of the country can work itself up to a high pitch of outrage because a banker or an automobile executive flies on a private jet. But we’ll send young men and women by the thousands off to repeated excursions through the hell of combat — three tours, four tours or more — without raising so much as a peep of protest." CodePINK and others are letting Mr. Herbert know we've been doing more than "peep" for six long years now. Hope you will send some "peeps of protest" to Mr. Herbert as well.

Countdown to Withdrawal from Iraq

2009-02-08T20:35:00.002Z

I've been feeling very low lately about the terrible loss of jobs, health insurance, houses and security for so many Americans. Other than fulminating on Facebook about my own (allegedly) Democratic Senator, Evan Bayh, whose office told me last week it wasn't the Senator's policy to reveal his position on upcoming legislation to constituents (we only pay his salary after all), and about the fact that he was one of the so called "gang of 14" "bipartisan Senators who huddled in a closet to trash the stimulus (this group has decided to stick it to President Obama by emphasizing they are bi-partisan- aka, a bunch of Republicans, Joe Lieberman (I can't think of printable words for his identification), I can't think of what to do to help. While I have watched my IRA shrink (and since I've always worked for non profits, it was never terribly large anyway) I am in the category of being relatively safe from this economic downturn. For many of us, being in that category produces guilt not pleasure. The only thing that helps is to take action, and American Friends Service Committee has started something you can take action with too. It's a Countdown to Withdrawal in Iraq- there's a face book group, and a pledge

Whereas

During his campaign, President Obama promised to end the Iraq war in 16 months
16 months from the inception of his presidency is May 20, 2010
We believe that ending the war in Iraq does not mean heightening the conflict in Afghanistan
We pledge to unite our efforts to help President Obama keep his promise by

Contacting our legislators and the Obama administration on the 20th day of every month from now until May 20, 2010, or the end of the Iraq war.
Organizing and attending vigils and other events in order to further our purpose
Spreading the word about bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan

National Call IN Free the Uighurs in Guantanamo

2009-02-04T17:44:00.003Z

Today I'm just posting an action which will take just a minute but is really important- 17 Uighurs (ethnic Muslims from China) were sold by bounty hunters and have been cleared by the military but are still being held at Guantanamo- see below for what to do.

Call President Obama and Attorney General Holder and tell them:
1. You support the Executive Order to Shut Down Guantanamo.

2. You request that, as a first and immediate step, the Obama administration should drop the Bush administration's appeal of Judge Urbina's order to release the 17 Uighurs into the United States.

White House: 202-456-1111
Attorney General: 202-353-1555
The Uighurs are members of an intensely persecuted minority in western China and were sold to U.S. forces by bounty hunters. Most of them were cleared by the military of any offense in 2003. In September 2008, the U.S. government formally acknowledged that none of them is an enemy combatant. At present, all three branches of the government have acknowledged that the Uighurs should be released. All 17 have been exonerated by both military and habeas courts, and members of Congress have called for their release to the only place they can go: the United States.

Holding that their continued imprisonment was unlawful, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled in October 2008 that they should be present in his court for release into the United States with appropriate conditions. Detailed arrangements to welcome and support the seventeen men had by then been made by religious and refugee organizations. Further commitment of support has been provided by the Uighur community of well established U.S. citizens in the D.C. area.

THE CURRENT PROBLEM

The Bush administration appealed Judge Urbina's ruling to prevent any release into the U.S. "on their watch." But there was not then, and is not now, any legal basis, any security condition, much less any moral or humane reason, for extending the baseless imprisonment of the Uighurs even a day longer.

-

WHY RELEASE THEM IN THE U.S.?

It is not surprising that some of the men still held at Guantanamo would be treated with extreme suspicion if they were returned to their home nations-persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, even executed. Alternative homes for men persistently described for years as "the worst of the worst" have understandably been very difficult to find.

While publicly alleging that it was eager to find suitable places to take in prisoners cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay, the Bush Administration kept suggesting behind the scenes that they were very dangerous persons. No wonder no nation stepped forward to receive them! Moreover, the Chinese Government has forcefully pressured nations strong and weak to deny refuge to these prisoners, who were already vigorously persecuted in China before their detention. So it is exceedingly unlikely that any nation other than the U.S. will accept them.

For the U.S. to welcome these wrongfully detained persons will set an important precedent in this nation and present a significant example for the rest of the world; other nations would then be much more likely to accept prisoners against whom no evidence of wrong-doing has been presented after years of confinement.

"It is in the interests of the United States that the executive branch conduct a prompt and thorough review of the circumstances of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo..."

PLEASE CALL TODAY to urge the immediate release of the Uighurs in accord with Judge Urbina's ruling - in particular by urging the Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder to dismiss the appeal and vacate the stay preventing the settlement of the Uighurs in the U.S. Call the White House at 202.456.1111 and Attorney General Holder 202.353.1555 right now.

These national call-in days are being organized by a coalition of human rights, and peace & justice groups, including Witness Against Torture, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, Defending Dissent Foundation, United for Peace & Justice, Network of Spiritual Progressives, Pax Christi USA, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, The Constitution Project, Peace Action, Washington Peace Center, War Resisters League, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, Afterdowningstreet, World Can't Wait, School of the Americas Watch, Granny Peace Brigade, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, CodePink, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Pace Bene Nonviolence Center and others.

CodePINK visiting Gaza Valentine peace project

2009-02-03T20:50:00.009Z

In this time of winter where I live, after the joy of the election and inauguration, it's easy to become convinced again that creating change isn't as easy as we hoped; that even though so much has been accomplished not only in electing Barack Obama but in his early actions, (closing Guantanamo, restoring US funding to global agencies which help women plan their pregnancies and their families,proposing a stimulus plan that includes green jobs and projects) there is so much still to do; and with the snow flying, and daily tallies of job loss, one feels like Hercules pushing a globe full of problems up a steep hill.

Two things this week have given me hope again; one is the news that CodePink's Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright are at the border with Gaza (more about that in a minute); the other is a global peace project I'm personally participating in as both a member of CodePINK, Women for Peace and as a volunteer for the Neighborhood Writing Alliance in Chicago. Go to www.valentinepeaceproject.org.index) to learn more about this international project which is quite simple; it involves giving away poems or other writing attached to flowers to encourage people to work for peace. We will be doing this in Chicago and many others will participate around the world. Medea and Ann are meeting with Palestinian aid groups as well as launching a call to action for International Women's Day on March 8 to dedicate it to the women of Gaza. CodePINK and partners are raising funds and will deliver it to women in Gaza in March. They are also calling on Special Envoy George Mitchell to visit Gaza as well which so far he has refused to do.

You can read about their trip at http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2009/02/medea-reports-from-the-border-of-gaza/

Keeping Promises for Peace and Social Justice

2009-01-25T18:26:00.003Z

Lori Perdue, veteran and Hoosier Peace activist at the CodePINK Women for Peace Pink House in DC

An Au Bon Pain worker in DC asking the President to keep his promises for Peace

Three young sisters from the south asking the President to keep pledges for Peace

MLK Service Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Library Food Drive, Soup Kitchen and Coat donation, Washington DC

These are just a few images from the last week- I'm changing my Diary to Diary of a Peace and Social Justice Activist-as we say in the streets, "no justice, no peace!" We are seeing the beginnings of justice in America with the President's actions of his few days-promising to close Guantanamo, ending torture and the military tribunals. You can send your thanks by going to www.aclu.org/advocacy (look for Thank Obama) .

Pink ribbons for Obama

2009-01-20T09:37:00.003Z

I spent yesterday in downtown Washington DC which feels like a national festival this week-people from all over the country and the world are here to celebrate and there is a palpable joy even among the homeless whose blankets guard their doorways while their owners are asking for spare change. The only group which I encountered who didn't share this hopeful attitude were the die hards at the anti war rally in DuPont circle yesterday-they are rightfully and righteously angry at the horrors perpetrated in our name (Americans) on innocent and guilty alike by the Bush administration-protesting torture, war crimes, and lies, and they are not optimistic about our new President elect. The opportunity for symbolic vengeance presented itself with a giant blow up balloon of soon to be (thank God) ex-President Bush where you could "throw your shoes at Bush." As a friend said, somehow, it seems appropriate for Iraqis (and many other nationalities, sadly) to throw their shoes at Bush, the ultimate insult in Iraq-but since it is not our culture, it seems just like a carnival game here, and many were throwing shoes in that manner-the media ate it up- there aren't many signs of protest here in the Capitol this week-and the media loves a fight, no matter the cause.
Meanwhile, CodePINK, Women for Peace gave out pink ribbons, asking President Obama to keep his promises for peace. As we tied ribbons on fingers and wrists, we asked folks to hold a sign asking the new President to keep peace promises-and many were delighted to do so. (see photos on Flicker Code Pink) As I traveled around the city, I asked for the peace promise and even on the metro, as soon as I explained the cause to one person, others held up their wrists and asked for ribbons. I represented CodePINK at a Martin Luther King day of service action at MLK Jr. Library where Food for America was holding a food drive, soup kitchen and coat distribution. Both donors and recipients were mostly African American and I have to say that the difference between the dour attitude at the Shoes at Bush rally and the warm smiles and hugs at the MLK rally reminded me of Michael McPhearson (Veterans for Peace)'s words at Camp Hope last week- "this is a new president and we need new tactics." CodePINK, to its credit, is mostly using new tactics this week- the CodePINK "Yes we CanCan" dancers came up on stage and did a wonderful cancan dance in ruffled skirts at the anti war anti torture rally- and the crowd wanted more. (They also performed last night outside some of the balls, but I had retreated back to VA to rest)- I so hope the leaders of the peace movement will pay attention to the needs of a weary and worried nation- and use hope instead of hate as a mantra for this new President.

warisnotworking

2009-01-11T16:35:00.001Z

warisnotworking
Originally uploaded by lilyliberty

War is Not the Answer

"Talk, Don't Shoot " from an Israeli veteran

2009-01-11T15:48:00.004Z

Today's NY Times Sunday Magazine has an interview with Ari Folkman, whose film "Walz With Bashir" has just come out. Here's what an Israeli veteran turned film maker says: "I think you should always ask yourself: has everything been done to prevent the conflict?

Talk, don't shoot. Talk. " (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine )

He also says, "Israelis are divided, definitely, but I think you hear too much of the louder voices that always justify any kind of act of aggression. But there is a very big crowd of people who are fed up with war. I can't understand the word "war" anyhow. ...I can't understand people killing each other for a piece of land. " (Ari Folkman, "The Peacemaker", p. 11, NY Times Magazine)

This week, the American Congress (including I am sad to say, my US rep, Peter Visclosky) justified Israel's attacks on Gaza as "self defense." Well, NOT IN MY NAME! I am reminded of the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet and want to say "a plague on both your houses," but the truth remains that innocents are being slaughtered in Gaza daily. We are told that Hamas is cynically using civilians as shields, but how is it not cynical that Israel stepped up this war in the waning days of the Bush administration? How is it not cynical to deny food, water and medicine to victims? How is any of this "pro-life?"

Where are the demands to save the lives of babies in Gaza from the pro-life movement? Where is the outrage, the giant billboards on the prairies of the midwest, the bumper stickers on the cars of evangelicals? Go down the street from me and you'll see examples of all of this when it comes to the issue of abortion, but war which kills living human beings, fully formed children who according to a report on NPR this morning are being left dead for dogs to eat in Gaza- that doesn't rally the churched, the sanctimonious, the so called pro-lifers. They are silent and complicit in this murder. Once again, those of us who believe "talk, don't shoot" are in the streets, on the street corners, writing our letters, making our phone calls, crying our tears. And once again-those we have supported with our votes, our money, our time; are ignoring our calls. How is this "change we can believe in?" When is our new President going to step up and show us real leadership? The children in Gaza cannot afford to wait until January 20th.

Camp Hope- Week One desperately seeking Barack Obama

2009-01-09T13:32:00.006Z

Two years ago, I heard Barack Obama speak at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations about Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article in 2007 in Foreign Affairs, Obama "called the Bush administration's response to 9/11 'conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions.' (www.cfr.org) That is the Barack Obama those of us in the peace movement campaigned for, supported with our time and money, and voted for this fall. During the last few weeks, a different Barack Obama has seemed to emerge. This Barack Obama has selected supporters of the Iraq war as Secretary of State, Defense, and other key positions. This Barack Obama seems to be reverting to what he himself has called "conventional thinking."

In Chicago, two blocks away from the Obama's southside home, Voices for Creative Non Violence and a number of Chicago and regional peace and justice groups have created Camp Hope. Launched on a chilly New Year's Day last week, Camp Hope has as its mission supporting the new President Elect by "counting down to change" and encouraging him to be the Barack Obama who called for change. In the areas of science policy, education, and the environment, the signs are that President Elect Obama intends to make good on his pledges. By calling for increased troops in Afghanistan, however, our new President is dismaying many experts who warn that Afghanistan could become this generation's Vietnam.

This week, Bob Herbert quoted Andrew Bacevich in Newsweek, "Afghanistan will be a sinkhole...consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U. S. government can afford to waste. Herbert also quotes Michael Gordon: "Afghanistan presents a unique set of problems: a rural-based insurgency, an enemy sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, the chronic weakness of the Afghan government, a thriving narcotics trade, poorly developed infrastructure, and forbidding terrain." Herbert goes on to reality check the current situation " The U.S. military is worn out from years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The troops are stressed from multiple deployments. Equipment is in disrepair. Budgets are beyond strained. Sending thousands of additional men and women (some to die, some to be horribly wounded ) on a fool's errand in the rural, mountainous guerilla paradise of Afghanistan would be madness." (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06herbert.html)

Last night at a forum called "Abandoning War", Colonel Ann Wright, who retired from the US Army and the State Department as a protest of the invasion of Iraq, Michael McPhearson, Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, and Stephen Kinzer, a journalist who has covered more than 50 countries called for a counter narrative to the new administration's story on Afghanistan. This story posits that an Iraq like "surge" will solve the problems in Afghanistan.

Even more alarming, yesterday, President Elect Obama announced his choice for Deputy Secretary of Defense, William J. Lynn, " an executive and lobbyist at the defense contractor, Raytheon" (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/washington/09petraeus.html) The counter narrative must be that putting defense contractors into the top levels of government will not lead to the "change we need." Deploying thousands more troops to the mountains of Afghanistan will not lead to "the change we need." We have seen this story before, many of us now in the peace movement were in grade school when another Democratic president inherited a war- JFK. We spent our teen years watching thousands of Americans and Vietnamese die while the government kept telling us that it was making progress. That war ended with a country in ruins and thousands of our veterans disabled and distressed. It seems necessary to also remind the President Elect, that he and we were right when we opposed the invasion of Iraq. We said, "let the inspectors complete their work," and we were called naive. Why is it not naive to believe that defense contractors will see the solution for Afghanistan to be in troop deployments and military hardware? We are desperately seeking the Obama who believes that "war is not the answer."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me

2008-12-21T13:56:00.003Z

On January 20th, Barack Obama will become the nation's next president. There is much to rejoice in this fact; the child of a single mother, our first African-American president, a man who has committed himself in word and deed to community service and who inspired thousands of Americans of every age, class and color to come together and work for his election. Those of us who have worked equally hard for peace, an end to the Iraq war and for social justice for all are being told to "hush," when we raise our voices and ask for just a little respect, to quote Aretha Franklin who will be singing at the inauguration. The pundits dismiss us as "left wing bloggers" cheerfully ignoring the fact that the left wing is the wing which had faith in Barack Obama from the beginning. While the so called center and the non-existent (apparently since no one ever mentions it) right wing of the Democratic party were swooning over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, we were sitting in offices making phone calls to convince voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina to vote for Barack. When Barack was being attacked for his pastor's sermons, we were volunteering at campaign events and writing letters to the editor in his defense. Now that the election has been won, the peace movement remains the uninvited guest-and along with the peace movement, women who believe in choice and our brothers and sisters who are gay, are not only uninvited, but being disrespected by Barack's choice of Rick Warren. Pastor Warren has never been pregnant or had to confront the lifelong impact of pregnancy, childbirth and raising children for women who lack access to proper contraception or have been raped or abused. While he is praised for being a so called moderate evangelical, he is apparently unaware that maternal deaths are on the rise around the world, (especially in Afghanistan) partially due to the lack of good health care denied to them by the Bush administration's ban on financial support for the United Nations Population fund. Paster Warren is also comfortable dismissing the civil rights of gay people to be joined in marriage and raise their children in legitimate circumstances. So President Elect Obama, please listen to these words from Aretha and keep in mind, "all we're asking for is just a little respect."

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Take care...TCB

"I get tired, keep on tryin', you're runnin' out of foolin', And I ain't lyin', when you come home, or you might walk in, And find out I'm gone, I got to have (just a little bit) A little respect."

Scott Simon and NPR plan to continue as the "fox" radio network

2008-11-29T14:36:00.003Z

Two elements this morning on NPR "news" morning edition forced me to realize that NPR and especially its host, Scott Simon, have no intention of returning to the moderate stance I used to expect from NPR. First he had Republican apologist, Juan Williams, analyze the situation in Mumbai which turned into a cheerleading session by Williams about how the "Bush administration has prevented a terrorist attack in America" (no evidence needed and no attention to the fact that we didn't have a terrorist attack for the 200 years before the Bush administration took over) . Then Simon sonorously quoted the Bible as proof that "some people are just evil" in order to establish that we shouldn't bother figuring out the motive of the terrorists who attacked in Mumbai because to do that is to "become an apologist". So instead of analysis we got a bible lesson from NPR and instead of noting that the fact that the US has been attacking Pakistan for the last month (called "raids" not attacks) (more than 100 people killed according to the BBC) which might have provoked the attacks in India, Scott and Williams were content to blather on about how great the Bush administration is and to make sure to claim that only the "left wing bloggers" were upset about Obama's appointments of Republicans and Clintonites. So yes, I am a "left wing blogger" but perhaps Simon and Williams could be induced to remember that the "left wing bloggers' and Barack Obama were against the Iraq war in the first place, and we were right. Figuring out the motive of the attacks in Mumbai does not apologize for these criminal actions, but it might help prevent future attacks . What a shame that NPR has given up on being a source for serious news and analysis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7728650.stm

Whose President Is He Anyway?

2008-11-16T15:32:00.006Z

For the last month, (and longer for some of us) activists in the peace movement have put our energies into the election of

Barack Obama. Even those who were skeptical of real change happening with a mainstream supported candidate, put their skepticism aside and went door to door, state to state, asking people to vote, to make their voices heard. They did, and "we" won! but in all the post-election analysis, in all the pontificating about expectations of the President Elect, I have seen (or heard) exactly one comment about the peace movement's goals; today in the NY Times, in an article by Peter Baker titled, "Whose President Is He Anyway?" Baker notes that "everyone wants to claim Mr. Obama these days." Baker goes on to quote Tom Andrews, the national director of "Win Without War" "there's going to be enormous pressure on him to produce, to meet those expectations," and then to note "among those exerting that pressure will be Mr. Andrew's fellow opponents of the Iraq war."

CodePINK, United for Peace and Justice and Voices for Creative Non-violence have already begun strategy meetings and planned actions to exert that pressure- Camp Hope, Countdown to Change will begin in Mr. Obama's hometown neighborhood in Chicago on January 1 and conclude on Martin Luther King's birthday, the day before Mr. Obama's inauguration and CodePINK is throwing a peace ball and has declared "the war is so over." But it's not, and I

have found myself feeling a bit of melancholy- some of it is the sadness that autumn brings to those of us who love the sun; some of it comes from the hard knowledge that while Barack Obama is "our president" he is already being assaulted by forces with much louder voices than the peace movement.

It seems very logical to me that taking the Pentagon's $658 billion budget for 2008 and dividing it into money needed for green jobs (Obama's plan calls for $210 billion ; Van Jones, President of Green for All calls for $33 billion over 5 years)

national health insurance (Obama's plan $50 billion a year) ; and reforms in education (Obama's plan $1 billion) still leaves nearly $400 billion to be divided among the Pentagon and the rest of the US budget. Green jobs will help address environmental issues which is the other area that badly needs reform. Since the champions of capitalism keep claiming that it is still the best way, they should come up with the funding for the $700 billion of our tax money which has already been pledged to bail out Wall Street, the insurance industry, banks and perhaps the auto industry. As someone who has spent her entire career working for non profits, I find it rather astounding that for-profits can demand to be bailed out without being regulated; and depressing that rather than ending the war; the front pages of the newspapers and the blogs, and the lead stories on television and radio are all about money while the issue of ending the war has slid into obscurity. In order for Barack Obama to be "our president" Tom Andrews is right, we will have to keep the pressure on. But for right now, this activist is going to rake leaves, hoping that exposing the still green grass will give her the courage and optimism to keep pushing for peace.

One Nation Indivisible or divided by hate?

2008-10-13T10:24:00.003+01:00

It's been one of those months- too many things going on, letters to the editor taking precedence over blogging (although I did make the Huffington Post in an off the bus piece) registering voters, catching up on work, etc etc. but I had to write today. This weekend I attended the Women for Obama /Women's Leadership Forum in Chicago where 1,500 women gathered to hear about green jobs,economic security, affordable health care, ending the war in Iraq, saving the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and restoring America in the eyes of the world in foreign policy. As was the case at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I saw the America Barack Obama described in 2004 at his speech at the DNC;one America, not a blue or red America but the one we talk about in the Pledge of Allegiance; "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." That Pledge was first used today, Columbus Day, 116 years ago.

At Obama events, I hear and see the pledge made real: people from all classes, of all colors,of all beliefs and faiths, and those who question belief and faith; men and women, all ages from babies to the elderly using walkers, self described Republicans and Independents, Democrats, and Green Party members; community organizers and investment bankers; peace and justice activists and people who have never even written a letter to the editor all in one place, speaking in one voice about hope and change.

This last week we have seen another America; one that is united only by fear and hatred; fear of losing what they have or what they think they have; hatred of anyone who is different from them; wearing flag ties but disrespecting what the flag stands for; calling themselves Christians but showing a face that Christ would turn away from; using the word "terrorist" as code word for someone they want to kill; and drinking in lies promulgated by John McCain and Sarah Palin as if they are the gospel truth. While Republicans are screaming about Obama being on the Annenberg Challenge Board with Bill Ayers, a group devoted to funding education projects, they ignore McCain's membership on the board of the US Council for World Freedom which was affiliated with anti-semites, racists and extremists (according to the Anti Defamation League) and involved with the Iran Contra scandal. So let's compare those two Americas again; one has a reformed former radical who committed violence when Obama was 8 years old, served time in prison and is now an esteemed college professor; the other has members who supported the Contras who tried to overthrow a legitimate government using American taxpayer dollars, (and drug money) killing hundreds of innocent civilians in Nicaragua.

Obama, who lives his Christianity and doesn't just talk about it, turns the other cheek while John McCain "approves this message" of sinister lies and false implications. It is time for Americans who believe in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance; to act, peacefully, but forcefully. Write the networks and their advertisers when you see false campaign ads; talk to your neighbors about the truth; and ask every person you meet if they have voted yet. We need to follow Obama's example and be peaceful even when we are dismayed by the violent rhetoric of the McCain campaign but we also need to stand up for the other America; the one that is indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

It's all about me/you/us/

2008-09-21T00:00:00.003+01:00

I haven't written for 10 days partly because I was racing around (as usual-too many causes, too little time) partly because NW Indiana and Chicago (and Galveston, Texas, Ohio, etc etc) was hit with record breaking weather last weekend- 8 inches of water and our second round of "100 year floods" in the region meaning that it took an extra 1-2 hours to get anywhere and another 1-2 hours to get back (but this is not a whine-there are so many families from the midwest to the southwest who have been left homeless, a little time issue is nothing) and partly because I've been trying to figure out next steps as an activist.

With the economic disaster that hit the us and the rest of the globe this week, it's hard to know what to focus on: the connection between the failing economy and the billions of dollars we're spending in Iraq? the connection between the greedy gamblers who are being rescued with taxpayer's hard earned money and those same gamblers' funding of the Bush administration and their cronies? the obscene amount of money being spent on attack ads, lies, urban legends, etc etc while children in America can't get basic health care, their parents can't afford their mortgages or rent, and the environment is being polluted with Hummers, SUV's, and yes, all of my/yours/our driving, wasting electricity, water, etc . while non polluting wind farms can't get a tax break? ( I know that last one doesn't necessarily flow, that's why I haven't written in a week) So here's the best I can come up with

A Free Hug - if you're reading this, consider yourself hugged. The photo for this post was taken in Denver during the DNC Convention- the back of the sign said, "Support Gay Marriage" it was great- because it was such a sweet way to get the point across. The belly dancer was entertaining the kids with the sign and the whole scene was so representative of the joy you felt on the streets that week-a joy that everyone was at the table- not just the cronies, the kingmakers, the wall street titans, some of them were probably there too but so was a lot of America. It helps to remember this during this time of screaming headlines, shouting commentators, and streaming webnews- more than we can handle a lot of the time. So take a breath, and as Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune said last week, "take a walk" , and give someone a hug-after all, they're free.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

2008-09-09T10:56:00.002+01:00

Like most of the public and the press, I have been distracted by the nomination of Sarah Palin, a uniquely unqualified candidate for the office of Vice President. Also like many women who have worked so hard for equality and justice, I have struggled with how to discuss this "September Surprise" since frankly I was waiting for the Republicans to drop a bomb of a different sort (which sadly, they have, in Pakistan this week, killing at least 13 children at a school) . All those pro-lifers who were loudly proclaiming their devotion to unborn babies last week are nowhere to be found when children are killed using American taxpayer dollars. We can hope Charlie Gibson, the only journalist who the Republicans trust to interview their fragile cadidate (I'm still waiting to hear how she will handle Putin and other crusty world leaders since she can't even be trusted to go on "the View" by herself), will ask Governor Palin about the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan which is now spilling over to western Pakistan while we all fuss about who is watching baby Trig and whether her teenaged pregnant single mom daughter, Bristol, should get married or not.

No-one, including the Governor and her autograph signing snowmobile racing husband, Todd, seem to be worrying about son Track, who will be deployed to Iraq this fall. Track looked fairly worried at the RNC convention, perhaps, unlike his parents, he has read about the continuing violence in Iraq. Ryan Thomas, aged 22, of Battle Creek, MI died this week along with Sgt. Kenneth Mayne, aged 29, of Fort Benning GA in Baghdad when "their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device" (www.icasualties.org/oif) This raises American deaths in Iraq to 4,155 but almost no-one is counting except the families who get that terrible knock on the door.

I don't want to end this on a gloomy note, so hope you have noticed the two photos at the top. One is of Nina, Kathy, Lorri and I at a veterans memorial in St Paul which reminds us that one of the teachings of Jesus was that peacemakers are blessed. I am a latte drinking liberal, but I also happen to be someone who tries to follow the teachings of Jesus and other religious leaders who promoted peace. The other photo includes our amazing host in St. Paul, Rita (and her husband not pictured) who were willing to put themselves on the line so that we could exercise our Constitutional right to free speech. Thanks Rita!

A tale of two cities, Denver and St. Paul

2008-09-06T14:13:00.003+01:00

Having spent the last two weeks visiting and being an participant/observer in two American cities where history was being made; my overwhelming impression is that Denver was the center of hope for a better future while St. Paul was the center of fear of losing privilege.

(see the photos above of a joyful traveler on her way to Barack Obama's speech and yours truly at the speech)

St. Paul greeted peace activists with battering rams and warrants that included puppet making materials and squads of police equipped (thanks to Homeland security money, that's your tax dollars, folks) with riot gear, percussion grenades (we heard some of them-it's a terrifying sound), humvees equipped with cameras, etc. (see the photo I've uploaded of police behind our CodePink line in St. Paul)

Denver greeted peace activists with a cage (it's sadly true) but with a much smaller police presence, no battering rams in the middle of the night, and almost no violence on the part of either police or activists (although one of our young CodePinkers was smashed in the mouth with a baton as she attempted to take a photo-the ACLU is helping with that case). St. Paul not only had the cages and barbed wire surrounding the Excel center but police from all over the country (I personally saw police from Arizona and DC).

Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

Martin Luther King said, "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence, toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love." (1963 speech)

Denver (for the most part) met activists and delegates with love; St. Paul met activists with hate; look at the results and it tells you a lot.

RNC_1548.jpg Fear in St Paul

2008-09-06T14:12:00.001+01:00

RNC_1548.jpg
Originally uploaded by codepinkhq

While the press has focused too much on the anarchists (and not enough on the police provacateurs who urged them on), the impression I was left with in St Paul was fear

CODEPINK Dissent is Patriotic

2008-09-06T13:54:00.001+01:00

CODEPINK
Originally uploaded by NewsHour

This is our group (I'm in the black t shirt to the left of the banner, wearing a pink crown that says "I Miss America" before we were surrounded by police

capt.6073fdabdeb3433287600ad64886cfa1.republican_convention___mntg141.jpg

2008-09-05T18:21:00.001+01:00

capt.6073fdabdeb3433287600ad64886cfa1.republican_convention___mntg141.jpg
Originally uploaded by codepinkhq

Jodie Evans stands up for Peace -gee those Republicans don't look very peaceful

Wrap up of the RNC ribbons for peace

2008-09-05T17:33:00.002+01:00

Well it was an intense 5 days, and as always, the media portrayal of the facts on the ground has ranged from accurate (thanks Gary Post Tribune and "embedded" reporter, Andy Grimm (www..post-trib.com/news/1144562,rncprotest.article) to slander ( a You Tube blogger posted a video of us "singing against America;" if he listened (or could read) he would have learned we were singing of how much we love America to highly unrepresentative (Chicago Tribune's focus on those arrested which included journalists instead of the thousands who marched peacefully) to non -existent.

We spent Wednesday singing and marching for peace (Women Say No to War)dressed in our "I Miss America" best; sashes, pink shiny heels, crowns, etc. We walked from the center of downtown to a fenced off plaza at 6th and Market, singing "We are marching for a peaceful world," accompanied by a phalanx of heavily armed police, young St. Paul residents in flannel shirts and t-shirts, curious delegates, and others who mostly cheered and thanked us for handing them "Make Bridges, Not Enemies" and "Make Out, Not War" stickers. As we walked back towards the MSNBC center, the police surrounded us in riot gear; being a bit of a chicken, I was watching as a second line of police started to encircle us and moved to the edge of the crowd.

(tip to those of you who want to be non wounded peace activists, always keep your eye on the police-they usually will give you lots of warning before arresting you; but if there are folks in the crowd without legal training/who deliberately want to provoke the police/or are undercover police posing as anarchists (or all of the above); then things can get out of hand quickly.

Four of our number, Desiree Fairooz, Toby Blome, Kit Siemen, and Nancy Mancias responded to the metal fence (which was basically set up to prohibit free speech (you were only guaranteed free speech in caged areas of St. Paul) by committing civil disobedience and crawling under the fence. The police pulled them through (perhaps they support free speech too?!) and then arrested them. All four were released later in the day and only charged with misdemeanors. Read a wonderful essay on the issue of free speech: "Outside the RNC: showing free Speech to a Chinese Student" by Reva Rasmussen in the Minneapolis Post: www.minnpost.com/community_voices/2008/09/03/3296/outside_the_rnc_showing_free_speech_to_a_chinese_student

and please read journalist Amy Goodman's article "Why We Were Falsely Arrested at the Republican Convention" in the Salt Lake Tribune (www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10385797 for some eye opening comment on what happened to free speech in St. Paul, and if you are outraged, please call St. Paul Mayor, Chris Coleman 651-266 8510 (and ask him to let peace activists (not "protestors" -thanks Rita!) who were unlawfully arrested out of jail.

and for a little more about those anarchists (some of whom aren't old enough to vote and barely old enough to drive) read: www.codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/08/the-fbi-agent-the retired-colonel-and-the anarchists/

After Desiree, Toby, Kit and Nancy were arrested, we regrouped and Medea called for a moment of silence for the American military who have died in Iraq, for the Iraqi citizens who have been killed in the war, and for all who have died because of the misguided policies of the Bush administration;I was moved to tears, along with many others, too many of us have spent days and weeks of our time the last 5 years trying to prevent and then end this war and when we think of those whose lives could have been saved (and others who could have remained in the states instead of being terribly wounded both physically and mentally) it makes us weep. Lorie Perdue, an Army veteran and CodePINK activist from Indiana, and one of my heroes, began to sing the First Amendment (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibx125ZaPtk (or google "singing first amendment code pink" on You tube) (I'm the blond hair you see briefly in the video)

We then marched back to the MSNBC center where Chris Matthews told Medea he agreed with us (he yelled this to her over the crowd-he was doing photo ops with fans).

Before the arrests, we wove pink ribbons into the fence surrounding the plaza-it was a very quiet moment and gave us a sense of doing something concrete to beautify the ugliness of restricting free speech in Minnesota.

NBC Hides Protests Inside McCain Speech

2008-09-05T05:37:00.001+01:00

NBC Hides Protests Inside McCain Speech
Originally uploaded by brian.glanz

This is one of our brave brothers from Iraq Vets Against the War showing the truth during John McCain's pandering puff piece tonight- McCain voted against additional health benefits for veterans.

Sarah Palin's the wrong choice for women

2008-09-05T05:30:00.001+01:00

_DSC7570
Originally uploaded by codepinkhq

Here's Nina and yours truly letting the RNC know Sarah Palin's not women's choice. (and not the choice of many men either!)

Code Pink Marches on the RNC

2008-09-05T05:21:00.001+01:00

Code Pink Marches on the RNC
Originally uploaded by The UpTake

Here are two of my fellow "beauty constestants" "I Miss Clean Air" and "I Miss Democracy"

2008 RNC Protest March

2008-09-05T05:11:00.001+01:00

2008 RNC Protest March
Originally uploaded by Kevin D. Hendricks

I messed up my cd drive (sigh) but here's a photo of me wearing "I Miss America" at the peace march in St Paul this week. I still Miss America! She wasn't anywhere to be found in the speeches from the last two days at the RNC

Day Two St. Paul RNC Don't Believe Everything You See on TV

2008-09-03T13:36:00.005+01:00

Yesterday (Tuesday) was a long day for residents of St. Paul and for those of us who are here to peacefully demonstrate our concerns about the state of the country. We began our day at the Black Dog Cafe, near the banks of the Mississippi River. CodePINK staffers were assessing the situation, and beginning their work day. As much as some folks may think that peace activists just dress up in funny clothes and carry handmade signs (and yes, there is a grain of truth in that stereotype), groups like CodePINK, Women for Peace and United for Peace and Justice actually treat their activism as work; holding meetings, writing the equivalent of memos and making phone calls to colleagues before they hit the streets, the halls of Congress, or the blogosphere on the Internet. Our NW Indiana group helped set up the CodePINK "store;" another aspect of activism is raising funds which is mostly done through sales of t-shirts and other merchandise. As a non-profit, CodePINK has the same struggles of all non profits-trying to change the world with almost no money. Since I had spent the previous day wearing a giant puppet head (photos to come), I elected to have a cup of coffee and a wonderful conversation with a local artist, Tacomba Tyrone Aiken, who was completing a canvas at the coffee shop because as he explained, the light was better than at his nearby studio. It turned out we had a lot in common, both of us are interested in exploring the issue of cultural identity, both are of mixed heritage, and both find that people judge us by our cover (our skin color, hair, etc. instead of exploring who we are as humans). Tacomba was distressed by the violence in the streets on Labor Day-he himself had been stopped by the police (driving while Black) three times the night before. As a parent, like myself, he was frustrated with the young anarchists incomprehension of the stupidity of using violence as a protest tactic. He mentioned that he knew St. Paul's Mayor, Chris Coleman and police chief, so I asked if I could introduce him to Medea Benjamin, one of the co-founders of Code Pink. He agreed and we made the introductions; it is my hope that Coleman and the Police Chief will meet with groups like CodePINK to discuss how to keep the violence from distorting the message of peace we want to deliver and from impacting St. Paul's residents as it has for the last two days. As I noted yesterday, the official violence which took place over the weekend as innocent people's houses were raided has unfortunately given the anarchists the impression that violence is the way to go.

We went outside to have lunch at one point and I encountered three young women dressed in black and mufti, (with red crosses made of sparkly duct tape on their backs) one with safety goggles around her neck and a tattooed blue line drawn on her face. I knelt down and said, "look I'm making an assumption on the way you are dressed, but I hope you will deliver the message that violence is distracting from 7 years of efforts by thousands of us to end the war in Iraq." They gave me cool looks and one said, "look we are medics but even if we were talking to anarchists, it's not up to me to tell people how to protest." This made me angry (which of course, meant I started crying because when I'm really mad, I cry) and I said, "look, I realize that there may be some provacateurs stirring up trouble, and that the corporate media is fixated on violence, but damn it (or words to that effect) I have draft age kids and a brother in the military and we need to stop the war. " I went back to my table, and one of the girls came over and handed me a business card from the North Star Health Collective First Aid and Wellness Center. She said, "look we offer care to everyone, including massage." I guess she figured a massage would calm me down (which it probably would). I guess they are a legitimate clinic- they promise "physical and emotional health care at the RNC" from 9am to 9pm and have a 24 hour phone (800-71 -Yogurt- cute!) and perhaps I will check them out, but the fact remains that I got the distinct impression that at least one of them has no clue what damage the violence is doing to the message so many of us hoped to bring to St. Paul this week.

Day 1 at the RNC , LABOR DAY

2008-09-02T14:25:00.005+01:00

Thousands of us marched peacefully from St. Paul Minnesota's beautiful Capitol today to the Excel Center "Free Speech" cages and back without incident. What made the 7 minutes of television coverage last night on the local St Paul/Minneapolis Channel 5 station was a small group of anarchists who deliberately provoked a confrontation with the police. The press acted as if this was new (and to be fair, I guess it is new to St Paul) and gave this bad behavior the majority of its "protest" coverage. One has to wonder at the motives of all involved;beginning with the FBI and the Ramsey County sheriffs's department who raided innocent citizens' apartments with battering rams on Saturday. The warrants, according to a local ACLU representative who spoke at our legal training session Sunday night, included "puppet making materials." So while the FBI was focused on the "Food Not Bombs" group, a group which redistributes donated excess food (Americans throw away $100 billion dollars of food away each year) to peace groups and the homeless; a small group of disaffected youth not only planned but carried out violent destruction, smashing windows, throwing spikes in the roadway (according to a St Paul bus dispatcher we spoke to) and giving a bad name to all protestors. Official violence on the part of the Minnesota county officials and the FBI was met with unofficial violence on the part of a minority and mass Non-Violence on the part of the majority.

Meanwhile, Americans of every age, class and color rallied on the steps of the St. Paul Capitol to denounce war and the use of torture and to call on our elected officials to rebuild the infrastructure of our towns and cities. Many of us had gone to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to volunteer after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and we know firsthand the results of ignoring the needs of our own people while spending $4,000 a year on the Iraq war. While Republican leaders flew to the Gulf coast for photo ops in the face of Hurricane Gustaf, thousands of us called on our government to do the right thing in the first place, instead of after the fact. John McCain is trying to erase the factual memory of his birthday celebration with George Bush while Katrina upturned the lives of residents of the Gulf. His pick of Sarah Palin, a woman who believes in shooting animals from planes for sport, is a clear message of how little he thinks of women; choosing a woman Vice Presidential the way he would choose a suit as window dressing instead of substance.

I spent the day wearing an enormous and elegantly designed puppet, "I Miss America," one of four "beauty constestants" ("I Miss America, I Miss Justice, I Miss Democracy and I Miss Clean Air") created at a St Paul puppet place (I don't want to use the name since apparently puppet making materials, ie, papier mache, cloth and tape are now considered weapons by the US government) in collaboration with CodePINK, Women for Peace. Wearing a puppet for peace may seem silly to some but Code PINK's philosophy is that we can win more support for peace by using color, theater and humor than by being grim and offensive (see anarchists). My view of the parade was through gauzy linen but what I could see included hundreds of folks cheering and waving. Before the parade began, I was subjected to a patdown by a police officer, I couldn't see him, through the gauze and I wondered why someone kept pulling on my puppet's arm-when my friends finally told me it was a police officer, I invited him to check the puppet out from the inside-so he could see it was just me, some foam, a wooden frame, and a lot of cloth. He was very nice and while it was odd to be patted down wearing a giant puppet head, I was willing to be cooperative, something the local press also failed to notice. At this convention, I am again wearing many hats (mom, peace activist, citizen, and Miss Democracy) and am inspired by the love of country I saw among the "protestors" in spite of the day's disappointing focus by the press on the few who chose violence.

Video of the puppet preparation is at www.blinkx.com/video/minneapolis-startribune-video-of-codepink-rnc-preparation/8xF-QEfx5baUZU0c9pbefQ

article in the Gary Post Tribune www.post-trib.com/news/1129114.rcnvets.article

Freedom isn't free or is it? and other ironies of life in BushAmerica

2008-08-31T11:18:00.003+01:00

Yesterday as I recovered from the drama and hope of the DNC and PDA conventions and prepared with fellow CodePINKers for our upcoming trip to St. Paul to protest at the RNC convention, I got a call about raids on peace activists in Minnesota. Here's an excerpt from a letter from one of those raided:

"We wait until the last person gets out. He's a twenty year old who the cops have accused of stealing his own backpack...now it's morning. I wake up to the news that the cops have been raiding houses where activists are staying, bursting in with the same bogus warrant and arresting people, including a four year old child. They've arrested people at the Food Not Bombs house-a group dedicated to feeding protestors and the homeless. They've arrested others, presumably just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time....Let me be perfectly clear here-all of us here are planning nonviolent protests against an administration which is responsible for immense violence, bombs that have destroyed whole countries, and (caused) hundreds of thousands of deaths. This is the American that eight years of the Bush administration have brought us, a place where dissent is no longer tolerated, where pre-emptive strikes have become the strategy of choice for those who hold power where anyone can be accused of "bombmaking" or "terrorism" on no evidence whatsoever in order to deter dissent. Please stand with us because it could be your home they are raiding next. Call the Mayors of St Paul and Minneapolis-651 266 8510 (St Paul) Mayor Chris Coleman; 612 673 3000 (Mayor RT Rybak). "

We're not intimidated but we are dismayed that this is what our country's so called leaders think is the way to deal with dissent, acting like Nazi storm troopers and attacking folks who feed the hungry. Many times when we hold vigils or peace marches, we hear "freedom isn't free" shouted at us. Well no, "freedom isn't free," but shouldn't it be more than an empty slogan used as an excuse to attack other countries? Shouldn't our freedom encourage us to work for the greater good instead of for making a buck off the shattered lives of our veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and the deaths and destruction we have waged on the people in those countries? Shouldn't our freedom inspire us to act on the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

When did Liberty to speak truth to power become so dangerous that the Mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis would permit their citizens to be attacked in their own homes by armed police with dubious warrants (which they refused to make public to the press). I personally do not condone throwing urine at anyone (allegedly buckets of urine were confiscated at one of the houses) but several of the groups raided had no plans to throw anything at anyone; Food Not Bombs, is a non violent group which distributes food for crying out loud. If you are reading this, I hope you will take action and call the Minnesota mayors-you might point out to them that painting all protestors with the same brush is exactly what dictators like Saddam Hussein do.

DNC Convention Day 4 The Speech

2008-08-29T16:26:00.003+01:00

Continued wearing my multiple hats (Obama supporter, CodePINK woman for peace, American voter, etc) yesterday which was not only historic, but amazing. Kathi (my sister) and I took time to grab a sandwich before taking the Denver RTD light rail train to Invesco field for Barack Obama's speech. (Denver has excellent public transportation- Chicago could take a lesson) We arrived to find thousands of people in a line that was already a mile long at 2pm-we finally got into the stadium around 3:30 but the wait was worth it-we met so many wonderful people in line, Mary Lou (I think!) the lovely woman pictured above who is from Colorado Springs and had a community ticket. She loved CodePINK"s "Make Out Not War" campaign and puckered up for peace for the camera. There were local campaign volunteers from Denver, folks in business suits, delegates in red white and blue gear, babies in strollers, people with casts on their legs or in wheelchairs, generation x'ers, little kids, and seniors of every color and class. Once each person got over the shock of the length of the line, everyone was cheerful, patient, and polite. Entrepreneurs sold buttons, t-shirts, and jewelry emblazoned with "Obama-Biden", caricatures of Bush and McCain (my favorite was "January '09 End of An Error"), and photos of the Obama family and heroes of the civil rights movement such as Dr. Martin Luther King. We were greeted by young volunteers registering voters, free water, and of course several security checks. My pink cowboy hat earned me an interview with Channel 7 Denver and a Norwegian television station (so let your Norwegian friends know to look for Code Pink!) about why I was coming to the speech. I saw many many folks sporting "Make Out Not War" stickers so kudos to CodePINK for getting the word out. (www.codepinkaction.org)

One of the things we've learned over the years is that getting the peace message out takes the same kind of strategies used by marketers: repetition, arresting visuals and colors, standing out from the crowd and something that grabs attention and keeps it. Wearing a pink cowboy hat has gotten me stares from some folks (I have to admit the Democrats seem to be fairly staid when it comes to dress) but once they get past the stare, they often engage in thoughtful conversation. The same thing goes for the press- I was featured yesterday in the Gary Post Tribune's article on anti-war activists from NW Indiana at the DNC (www.post-trib.com/news/1131864,demeleuterio.article). I might have been interviewed anyway, but the cowboy hat gave reporter John Byrne a "hook" for his story. I do want to say that this is a tricky strategy-we CodePINKers like to go for the full drama: pink hats, wigs, sunglasses, dresses, sashes, shoes, socks, etc and while this helps us present a unified look (basically a "peace uniform") and it's fun, there are times when I've realized if you look too "out there" folks won't take you seriously. So yesterday I wore my Obama shirt, white capri pants (white for peace) and black sandals with a little heel (no birkenstocks for this activist) along with the aforementioned cowboy hat and a blue/pink/purple scarf from Cambodia (purple being the color we're hoping for as red states turn blue).

A youth drum corps and volunteers registering voters greeted us as we entered the stadium-it was both incongruous and wonderful to see one of America's football shrines transformed into an activist's dream; Stevie Wonder performing "Signed, Sealed and Delivered" with Americans of every color and class singing along, African-American activist and Congressman John Lewis reminding us that "On this day 45 years ago, a son of America, a citizen of the world, a peaceful warrior, Martin Luther King Jr., stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said, "I have a dream today, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream." Rep. Lewis went on to say "He(Dr. King) recalled that, "when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, " they issued a call for justice. And they founded our democracy on a mandate for freedom, equality and human dignity." There's too much more to write, but then the moment came, Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech. I know that many of my fellow peace activists are frustrated that Senator Obama has moved right on some of the issues of war and peace and that the anti war movement is often muzzled by both the press and politicians (see my earlier blogs)-but I believe with all my heart that Barack Obama will lead this country back to the nation we learn about in elementary school - a place which welcomes all, or to quote poet Emma Lazarus whose words rest at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp besides the golden door.

Senator Obama told us, "You have shown what history teaches us-that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it-because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. America, this is one of those moments. "

So my fellow activists, let's bring change to Washington, lets continue to insist on new leadership and if it doesn't lead, then let's push those leaders to make peace or get out of town.

peace to all of you

Delegates for Peace

2008-08-28T13:29:00.007+01:00

Haven't finished describing Day 2 of the DNC but here's a recap of Day 3. We attended a strategy session by the Obama/DNC campaign which was excellent and gave me the chance to ask the following question:

"Respecting the fact that Senator Obama felt he needed to make his case to evangelical voters and to David Plouffe's comment that the Obama campaign needs to retain the enthusiasm of its base of supporters, when will we see the campaign speaking directly to us (peace activists) since the majority of Americans don't support the war, making them all peace supporters?" The crowd (donors to the DNC and Obama) burst into applause.

Plouffe didn't really answer my question, instead he pointed out John McCain's lack of credibility on the war and Senator Obama's ability to see the problems with the war and pledge to bring the troops home. While I was frustrated that Plouffe sidestepped the question of speaking directly to peace voters, I had the satisfaction of knowing that Howard Dean, Plouffe, Penny Pritzker and Valerie Jarrett (head of the DNC, Obama campaign manager, fundraising chair, and top advisor from Chicago respectively) heard the question and perhaps will realize that among the donors to Obama and the DNC, peace activists are still waiting to see the campaign work more directly with them as it has with a much smaller cohort of voters, namely, evangelicals.

I then made my way to the Progressive Democrats of America session where Rep. Jim McGovern (MA) was doing an amazing job of discussing economic justice (sadly I was only able to hear part of the session). I checked in at CodePINK's table and collected more "Make Out, Not War" stickers (which have been very popular with young folks all over Denver) and Delegates for Peace buttons, stickers, and fans to take to the DNC convention. Code Pink's strategy today was to encourage DNC delegates to be "Delegates for Peace."

Here's the Delegate for Peace pledge:

"I am a delegate for PEACE, now is the time to stand up for true peace and security-to demand that our government reverse military quagmires in the name of the war on terrorism;liberate us from the oil companies' polluting agenda and begin a serious offensive for conservation, efficiency and renewable energy;promote good jobs at living wages instead of pursuing cheap labor abroad;and transfer war funds to health care, clean energy and anti-poverty efforts at home and abroad."

In order to get to the convention in time for the roll call vote nominating Barack Obama, I took a bicycle rickshaw driven by a very nice guy named Andy. As we got near the Convention center (named after an American soft drink), two CodePINKers saw my Code Pink cowboy hat and shirt and waved us down-they were trying to get to the CodePINK banner drop (it's not easy to navigate the fences, police barricades, etc to get to the "free speech" cages)- we squeezed in together and I explained my multiple hats at the DNC .(peace activist, Obama supporter, voter) I got out to go into to the convention and Andy drove them on to the banner drop.

It feels strange not to be "in the streets" this time, but as I wrote on Monday, I'm wearing multiple hats here, as are many folks in Denver. As my sister says, "you have to pick your battles" and my battle this week is to focus the attention of regular DNC party members and the DNC on the terrible tragedy that is taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan and back home as hundreds of veterans return from war with post traumatic stress, emotional and physical wounds, and the memory of the loss of their comrades (and the lives of many innocent Iraqis) fresh in their minds. It's not that the DNC or the Obama campaign doesn't "get it"-they do, last night's events at the convention included a speech by an Iraq vet (actually, several, including Tammy Duckworth from Illinois), and a video about veterans which showed the images of flag covered coffins, mourning soldiers and families, and veterans in wheelchairs which have been censored by the Bush administration.

In addition, Melissa Etheridge played a set of peace songs backed by a huge visual of the Constitution of the United States (see photo above). It's just that the DNC and the Obama campaign, up to this point. have been too content to use the war as an issue for the election instead of forcing George Bush's hand and ending funding for the war now. None of us who want the troops home think that the the war can end on a dime (although a dime would be a lot cheaper than what is being spent to wage the war)-but we also know that as long as there are billions of dollars being made available to George Bush and his war profiteering cronies, the war will continue.

Inside and Outside the DNC-Day Two-Part One

2008-08-27T13:40:00.007+01:00

We continued our inside/outside visit to the DNC convention today(Tuesday) by starting at the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Progressive Central conference located in the beautiful Central Presbyterian Church. In contrast to the "official" DNC events, we did not have to go through metal detectors, security checks, etc. and as registrants we received cloth "goody bags" labeled "Healthcare NOT Warfare" which included a cd of "Stealing America: Vote by Vote," (haven't had a chance to watch that yet); a Citizen's Guide to Voting, "Count My Vote" published by Steven Rosenfeld (AlterNet Books) which is a really well designed guide to state by state rules on voting, guides to registering voters, student voting, and a nationwide voting resource guide;an IMPEACH Bush & Cheney bumper sticker and a copy of The Nation's convention issue on Barack Obama as well as "YES!" a magazine on "Building a Just and Sustainable World's Guide to Purple America, How to Break Through Red-Blue Politics."

The Nation's Conversation Series began with John Nichols doing a great job of moderating a discussion of "Out of Iraq" with Rep. Jim McDermott (Washington state) and activist Tom Hayden. It was an inspiring session (partially, I admit because McDermott and Hayden said many of the same things I've been saying for the past 7 years about Iraq and the US response to 9-11, namely that the attacks on 9-11 were criminal and called for a response to crime instead of endless war which has ignored the actual perpetrators of the crime (Osama bin Laden still being at large) and caused more terrorism and more danger to the US (I'm paraphrasing here):

Nichols asked a series of serious thoughtful questions: (you can see the live stream at blog.pdamerica.org ) about how we can bring an end to the war (Hayden noted that Democrats must keep this issue on the front burner-he said, "if Democrats only focus on lunch bucket issues (the economy, etc) they will be handing the management of the war to the Republicans who have already indicated they are inclined to add Iran to the list of countries we would attack and who have a vested interest in keeping huge amounts of taxpayer dollars tied up in defense spending (again paraphrasing his remarks) . Hayden also did a great job of explaining why Barack Obama is the candidate who can and will make a difference concerning the war-he noted that if Obama is so inexperienced (as the Right claims) why was he perceptive enough to see that going to war against Iraq was a bad idea from the start; all those folks who cheerleaded the war now have 20/20 hindsight (including Hillary Clinton) but if they had paid attention to the intelligence we did have instead of the intelligence they thought they had (to paraphrase Rumsfeld) they might have done the right thing instead of giving George Bush a greenlight to go to war. Rep. McDermott did an equally excellent job of explaining why peace takes time-as a veteran himself, he reminded us that the Vietnam war took over 10 years to end-he also encouraged us to remember that the only way to move Congress is to keep pushing.

There's much more to tell but we have to get back out in the streets and in the convention hall- I will note that I wore my sequined pink Vote for Peace cowboy hat to the convention hall which earned me an interview after Hillary Clinton's speech with a tv crew (was too tired and there was too much of a crowd for me to see which TV station) -I also had an interview with a Gary (IN) Post-Tribune reporter, John Byrne-who is covering anti war Hoosiers here at the convention. Quick notes: we tried to get into the Daily Show taping (at U of Denver) and didn't make it but enroute ran into Hooping for Peace where we met two fabulous Code Pinkers (spaced on their names but will get that today) and a young woman who is running a Hula Hoop arts program for two days to keep the issue of ending the war on students and others minds (and raising funds for Iraq refugees)- ok-got to go -more later

CodePINK at the DNC inside and outside

2008-08-26T11:29:00.006+01:00

Denver, Colorado Am here wearing multiple hats (actually wearing my pink cowboy hat) which I think is a more accurate description of most activists including my fellow CodePINKers.

Monday's edition of the Boulder based Daily Camera (www.dailycamera.com) is headlined "DNC Dissent Debuts" and features the local chapter of CodePINK, Women for Peace as well as a description of yesterday's march in the streets of Denver. The article is an unusually fair and detailed description of the frustration many of us feel with the Democratic Party's leaders concerning their lack of focus on ending the war in Iraq. It also details the heavy police presence here, which I imagine is shocking and intimidating to activists who unlike those of us from big cities like Chicago, may not have gotten sadly familiar with the Ninja Turtle like appearance of police these days. I haven't seen the "cages" set up for protestors yet- but there is something ironic about a country which has claimed to be exporting democracy caging those who actually practice free speech. Notice my photo of the CodePINK camp at Denver's Mercury Cafe-somehow, pink bicycles and banners with "Make Love Not War" hardly seem worthy of the high tech weaponry carried by the Denver police.

But back to those multiple hats: anti war or as I prefer to say, peace activists, are usually portrayed as radical, out of the mainstream, anarchists who don't represent the majority of Americans. The truth is that these days, nearly 70% of Americans oppose the Iraq war, don't feel it should have been waged in the first place and want to see the troops home and taxpayer dollars focused on solving problems in the US. In 2007, over 40% of income tax dollars went to military spending while education received just over 4 %. We're spending $4,681 per household on the war which is draining our economy and helping to create the crisis that so many families are feeling as gas, food, and housing, not to mention health insurance, prices rise daily.

I'm in Denver as a peace activist, but also as a strong supporter of Senator Barack Obama who wants to see him and the DNC make good on the promises which led to Democratic victories in 2006. I'll be reporting from both inside and outside the convention this week, so look for the pink cowboy hat with "VOTE PEACE" on it.

So back to those hats

losing my mind or is Congress losing theirs

2008-07-10T19:50:00.003+01:00

So while we in the peace movement have convinced the American people that the Iraq war is a bad idea which needs to end (and the Iraqi government has now called for a time table for withdrawal) the US congress under the leadership of so called Democrats is setting in motion the possibility of another war- this time by setting up legislation which would call for an illegal blockade of Iran. Our own military (yet again) has said this is a bad idea-MSNBC quoted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen as saying " This is a very unstable part of the world and I don't need it to be more unstable," but Indiana's US Senator Evan Bayh and US Rep. Peter Visclosky apparently aren't worried about giving the Bush administration everything it needs to start a third war. Senate Bill 580 and House Resolution 362

(www.globalresearch.ca/index.) has been endorsed by AIPAC.

I've called Congress and so should you but it's not clear Congress has any idea of what a bad idea this is. Daily Kos bloggers and others claim it's not going to lead to war- but this is the Administration whose point man, Karl Rove, today ignored a Congressional subpoena and refused to testify today.

Being really proud of your country

2008-06-29T12:40:00.003+01:00

Michelle Obama has taken a lot of flak for saying "for the first time in my life, I am really proud of my country." The "really" gets left out in the right wing attacks, the casual repetitions by pundits, by those who just don't get it. Like Michelle Obama, I am also feeling really proud of my country for the first time. This is a country which has allowed my mother to go from a one room rural school house to a graduate degree in biology and my dad from not speaking English as the child of immigrants to becoming a prize winning chemist. More importantly, this is also a country in which my parents were able to raise six children who include two teachers, a lawyer, a head injury specialist, a real estate title specialist and a Navy officer all of whom have raised sixteen children between them. At the same time in my half century, I have been in schools where teachers had to bring not only their own chalk and paper but toilet paper for the students. I have seen racism, sexism, social injustice and war and the assassination of three of my country's leaders all before I was 18 . I have met folks who did all the right things and still didn't know where their next meal was coming from. I have seen the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath with my own eyes and witnessed the broken hearts of families in the Ninth ward who lost everything through no fault of their own and with almost no assistance from their government. I have stood with mothers and fathers whose children have been killed in Iraq and then been dismissed for wondering why as the truths about the lies which led to war roll out daily on the screen and in the papers. I have asked why our government isn't protecting the safety of our air and water from corporate polluters and been jeered at by the very officials who are supposed to protect that air and water.

But yesterday I was really proud of my country-because thanks to Barack Obama's campaign, I sat in my living room and saw hope on the faces of 25 people- grandmothers, mothers, fathers, single folks, 70 years old to 22 years old, teachers, nurses, and others-black, white, asian, hispanic, and jewish-who volunteered to spend their Saturday afternoon planning how to help their fellow Americans register to vote and who want to see change in the country they love.

Democrats support war and breaking the Constitution re FISA bill

2008-06-20T13:49:00.002+01:00

The only people who showed any courage and belief in the Constitution are the five Supreme Court Justices who voted that prisoners in Guantanomo Prison have the rights to habeus corpus. Congress once again has rolled over and given the Bush Administration everything it wants, 162 billion in war funding, no timetable on bringing troops home and cynically given themselves cover by including flood relief for the midwest and GI benefits- so the soldiers who aren't killed in Iraq and don't have severe injuries and/or severe post traumatic stress disorder will be able to go to college-and it's just too bad for the ones who are killed, severely wounded, or so distressed pyschologically they can't go to school or work. Meanwhile, Democrats also gave the Bush administration cover for the laws it has broken using warrantless wiretapping under FISA-So why bother to vote for Democrats? They wimp out under pressure, they are willing to use the war as a campaign issue instead of being honorable and putting timetables on Iraq-they make great speeches and then turn around and bail when it really matters.

Some references
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/20/01617/3397

Olberman
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#25274098

Be A Man for Peace on Memorial Day

2008-05-25T16:55:00.006+01:00

John McCain's latest attempt to silence Barack Obama this week came after Obama criticized McCain for failing to support Congress's bill which would provide educational benefits for veterans who have served at least three years.
McCain mocked Obama saying "And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did…"

Obama then responded: “He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama – it’s about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention. Senator Webb’s bipartisan bill will do this, and the bill that John McCain supports would not. These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people.”

Even my significant other, who was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam era (he served his country as a VISTA Volunteer building migrant worker housing) thinks that service in a uniform trumps all. Therefore he and many men are intimidated by John McCain and other veterans to the point where they are easily silenced by those in uniform.

I think it's time we call for a stop to intimidation by uniform and ask our men and boys to "be a man for peace." As someone who has worked for peace for 40 years, I continue to be amazed and dismayed by how easily peace is dismissed, and war is used as an excuse for anything and everything-in this case, denying our veterans the opportunity to get the education they are seduced with in the first place by recruiters. Over and over again, pundits and politicians state, "we are in a time of war" these days as if it's the 1940s and Germany and Japan are poised to arrive on our beachheads. We are not in a time of war except for the fact that our government is occupying a sovereign nation against the wishes of its citizens.

The Pentagon doesn't even have the gumption to be embarrassed about its doublespeak:

“The last thing we want to do is create a situation in which we are losing our men and women who we have worked so hard to train,” said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Does Mr. Morrell have a clue that we are losing our men and women every day to death, injury, and post traumatic stress disorder? 4,082 US. service men and women have died in Iraq.30329 have been wounded (based on military official numbers)
Source http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

Suicides of veterans are on the rise, but somehow death, injury and suicide don't count as losses to the Pentagon while giving veterans the chance to go to school is called a "loss."

Maybe if more of our veterans went to school instead of being dragged through stop loss and other tricks of the Bush Administration and the Pentagon back to iraq and afghanistan, we would be forced as a nation to become peacemakers instead of war makers. That would be a genuine accomplishment of Memorial Day instead of another round of parades and speeches made to honor the dead while the living struggle just to get by.

Trying to stop war through elections

2008-05-12T15:12:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted for a month and a half because I was devoting my time to working as a volunteer for Barack Obama's campaign for President. Many peace activists shun the political process because they are unhappy with the slow pace of change, with what they see as unacceptable compromises by politicians and because they often say that "all politicians are the same." I have always worked both in the streets and within the political system because I don't think you can effect change unless you (or an elected representative that you worked for) are at the table when the big decisions (funding, peace vs. war,etc) are being made. Working as a volunteer to make recycling village wide in Oak Park a number of years ago taught me that all causes need a combination of carrots and sticks- too many sticks and people refuse to change- too many carrots and they don't feel they need to change.
We the people seem to have very few carrots or sticks to use on our elected representatives when it comes to the Iraq war. We elected a Democratic Congress who promised change and yet this week they are getting ready to yet again fully fund the Iraq war - there has been an attempt to use a stick or too on President Bush but nothing serious enough to bring the troops home or to send a message to the Iraqis that the United States is going to focus on reconstruction instead of war. My own elected US representative, Pete Visclosky along with his Democratic colleague, Senator Evan Bayh continue to use the cloak of "protecting the troops" while voting for funding which puts the troops in harm's way. Somehow sending young men and women into a protracted battle with a citizenry that wants the United States to leave doesn't seem like protection. My other Senator, Richard Lugar, sends me letters stating that the war has been in error and yet he cheerfully continues to provide the funds to make the mistake worse.
I believe the only way to end the war is to change all of our elected representatives-so I will be working only for those who promise to end the war.

silenced in America

2008-03-29T08:22:00.003Z

Listening to BBC on the radio, I heard about a group of young Tibeten monks who turned a Chinese press propaganda visit on its head this week. The Chinese government wanted to convince the western press that all was well in Tibet. These young monks broke into tears and denounced the lying of the government officials.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=3da79f810a5ac29a3e1f5571205bcdb9b919f4a7

As the Tibetans are being silenced in China, we in America are more effectively silenced by the mainstream media. For over 5 years we have called on our government not to rush to war in Iraq, then not to continue an illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq- thousands of us have held vigils weekly in our towns and cities, visited our elected representatives, marched in the streets, been arrested for civil disobedience, written letters to the editor, and in the case of CodePink Women for Peace, disrupted show hearings at Congress. All of this has rated a few photos, a sprinkling of coverage on television, and general dismissal by the mainstream media. We have effectively been silenced. Yes, the majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq (66%) but http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SypeZjeOrY4 Dick Cheney's response on the record is "so"

Was there outrage at this? No The Vice President of America feels comfortable telling the press on camera that he doesn't care what the American public thinks and there is no reaction, except for some public laughter.

Press decries fake blood ignores real blood

2008-03-24T14:50:00.003Z

Yesterday, six brave young men and women went to Easter Sunday mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and stood up to call on Cardinal George to denounce the war in Iraq. They were arrested and treated roughly by police.
Local press decried the "tainting" (Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-easter-protest) of the Easter Sunday event-because the peace activists used fake blood to make their point that as the Iraq war enters its sixth year, calling for peace is not enough, and that so called leaders like Cardinal George should put action behind their words.

Meanwhile, the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/business/media/24press.html?scp=1&sq=coverage+of+iraq+media&st=nyt)reported today that press coverage of the Iraq war has dropped precipitously-mysteriously along with the daily propoganda by not only the Bush adminsitration but its alies in the press and in Congress, notably Senator John McCain, that the "surge is working"-the so called "success" of the surge ignore the reality that hundreds more Iraqis and American troops continue to be wounded and killed, the number of US military dead has reached 4,000, press coverage has dropped in part because it isn't safe for reporters to be based in Iraq and our own military, Admiral Fallon among them, are silenced when they don't toe the Bush party line.

Why is the press so upset about fake blood while real blood continues to flow in Iraq?

fairy tales told by the clintons watch the video

2008-01-15T08:27:00.001Z

Clinton defenders have mounted a 24-7 defense of their attacks on Barack Obama's war record (with NPR's complete compliance- Hillary got 7 minutes of Juan Williams analysis on Sunday and Obama got less than 30 seconds) but watch the video for yourself
http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/01/clinton_fairy_tale.html
and read Keli Goff

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080114/cm_huffpost/081410 who is one of the few people I've read or heard who points out that the Clintons began the full frontal (and nobody knows how to do a full frontal than Bill Clinton) attack this week on Obama and then have been screaming shock at the "racial politics" ever since. The NY Times actually pointed out that Hillary voted, not for Chuck Hegel's legislation which would have held Bush to only attacking Iraq if there was proof of weapons of mass destruction but for the weaker version of the bill which gave Bush Congressional support for a "pre emptive " attack
http://199.125.75.56/primaryblog/clintons_war_vote_continued

Attacking Obama does not hide the fact that the Clintons have been supporting the Iraq war from the beginning, that she has voted for every spending bill on Iraq, and that rather than focusing on bringing the troops home and ending the war, Hillary Clinton has given the press and the politicians cover for ignoring the war by starting a nasty fight against Obama. Shame on her and her husband.

peace voters are we chopped liver?

2008-01-06T14:12:00.000Z

Woke up to NPR eagerly interviewing a representative of the "Evangelicals of America" about the potential vote for Huckabee among evangelicals in New Hampshire. According to serious researchers, about 30-35% of Americans consider themselves evangelicals http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining_evangelicalism.html- this percentage includes African Americans, who while 60% consider themselves "born again, " may be more liberal regarding government policies such as civil rights and health insurance than whites. According to Voters for Peace http://www.votersforpeace.us/launch/pressrelease.html, at least 20% of Americans strongly agree with supporting candidates who will bring a speedy end to the war. Last spring, they "released a new poll showing that 45.9 percent of registered voters at least somewhat agree with such a pledge, with 20.1 percent saying that they strongly agree with it. The pledge tested was:
“I will not vote for or support any candidate for President or Congress who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign.”
Even among Republicans, 25.7 percent at least somewhat agree, with 5.5 percent saying they strongly agree. And among Independents, the fastest-growing group of voters, 59.2 percent agree, with 25.3 percent saying they strongly agree.
The poll of 856 registered voters was conducted by telephone March 9 to 13, 2006, by respected survey firm ICR Survey Research of Media, Pa., which also polls for ABC News and The Washington Post. The margin of error is +/- 3.35%. "
So if at least a quarter of registered voters support peace, why wasn't there a representative of peace voters being interviewed on NPR this morning? I think there are two reasons: first, the press has decided that Iraq is not a front burner issue with voters. Secondly, the peace movement itself tends to discount elections and voting as a way to make change-even with the stunning vote last fall for congress-and who can blame us when those we elected turned right around and continued to fund the war?
Nevertheless-we need to demand to be counted, not only by the candidates-who in the Democrat's case, at least continue to mention the war as one of the major policy changes they will enact-but in the case of the press-Groups like Voters for Peace should be at the forefront of every anti war pro peace campaign this year-and groups like Code Pink and Veterans for Peace need to make sure that happens.