People on the Way to Occupy D.C.

People from all over the country are heading to Washington, D.C. this week.  A bit further on I discuss meeting with three of them heading across country to Occupy DC.  October 6^th marks the 10^th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.  Ten years ago we were mourning the attacks on New York City, the District of Columbia, and one attack that was thwarted and became a crash site in Pennsylvania.  We had the world on our side, our country was more united than we had been in decades, and our finances were in good shape.

10 years later the American people seem to be awakening to an understanding that they have been lied to, manipulated and bankrupted in order to benefit the wealthy corporate and military interests that used an attack on U.S. soil to corrupt the democratic processes that regulate capitalist maximization of profit at the expense of human needs. 

The unemployed, the outraged, the peaceful have put out and are responding to a call to gather together.   The Wall Street Occupation is getting the attention today, the D.C. occupation will probably get the attention at the end of the week.  The fact that I haven’t heard discussed is that this is happening during the month after the 10 year anniversary of our country was attacked and  the 10 year anniversary

October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.

During the evening of September 29^th  I had the opportunity to talk to Xan, Peter, and Kevyn  as they came through Tucson on a caravan across the southern United States that was stopping in as many places along the way as people want them to talk about the issues or to join in a vigil or protest, or join with the caravan and go to D.C. to join the Human Need Not Corporate Greed occupation  force there.

The three original caravan members, others may have joined along the way by now, are associated with peace groups, Xan and Kevyn identify with CodePINK, and Peter is a member of Veterans for Peace.

Their stay in Tucson included protest with the local peace and justice community at weekly gathering in front of the Federal Building in downtown Tucson at rush hour, a candlelight vigil for DRONE victims in front of the gates of Davis Monthan Air Force Base at sunset,  connection with another weekly vigil  for those migrants who die in the surrounding desert nearly every week of the year in the northern reaches of the Sonoran Desert.  Then with the Theater’s permission the lead Caravan Truck parked in front of the main theater doors with the with the side with  the beautiful mural painted by Phoebe Ackley so that viewers of a privately sponsored viewing of  The Future of Food  organized by the Tucson GMO Free Group  could see that individuals from diverse groups have the same concerns and can spread a message, have impact, and talk to  caravan members about the overlapping goals and agendas of peace and safe food groups. 

The concept of overlapping concerns and goals is a growing theme in U.S. civic action.  Talking heads, such as Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC today noted the amorphous nature of the reasons for the Occupy Wall Street actions in NYC that are spreading to other major cities across the United States.  The October 2011 web site that is the overarching informational site about the occupation of Freedom Plaza in D.C. has a list of 15 Core Issues of the Human Needs Not Corporate Greed actions in D.C.

The events commencing October 6 in D.C. are focused on redirecting war, military and occupation funds back to support of human and environmental needs.  The pledge on the October2011.org states,

"I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day or the days immediately following, for as long as I can, with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America's resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning."

People’s motivations and wellbeing, as well as the ideal of democracy are complex constructs and cannot be condensed into the well-packaged marketing sound bytes easily broadcast by our media that now functions as much from press releases as from investigative journalism.  If the media, even those very few media outlets that are covering the Human Needs movement, does not understand what certainly seems like parts of a mass movement reacting to corporate take over of government functions around the world, well perhaps they will have to revert to old fashioned journalistic practice.

Today through Thursday of this week the CodePINK Caravan will travel through Shreveport, Louisiana - Jackson, Mississippi - Birmingham, Alabama, - Atlanta, Georgia - Charlotte and Henderson, North Carolina on the way to their arrival in Freedom Plaza in D.C.  at 9 a.m. Thursday.  “ Thursday,” as the participants note, “is only the beginning.” 

Xan has kept a blog of her activities at CODEPINK Journals since 2003.  She has made many cross country trips from her home in Berkeley to Washington, D.C. and was instrumental in getting the first on-going, long-term CODEPINK presence from all over the U.S. established in D.C. in 2006 and again in 2007 which lead to over two years of constant action in the Halls of Congress by women who came from every part of the U.S. to stay for a week or a month and focus on actions pertinent to them and the areas of the country from which they came at The Pink House, a cooperatively run house near Capitol Hill. 

A core group of activists and groups have promoted various views of and solutions to the misuse of government. and the peoples wishes and funds,  over the last 10 years.  Without them the current, extremely diverse 99 Percent might not be able to move in synch in what now seems to be a an organic trajectory rather than a single minded group.  Just like the Caravan built on already occurring events in the local community, what is building in the U.S. builds on years, and indeed years of awareness of the growth of greed. This is the stuff of which revolutions are made.  I think the people of the United States had their revolution and now they want it back.  Democracy is powerful and it is far more than a memory to the American People. 

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 I can provide contact information to interested independent journalist bloggers who wish to request an interview with one or more of the caravan participants. 

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Life After Osama

Just some ramblings about week two after almost 10 years. 

Osama was killed.  He was a vile, evil man.  I cannot be as sad as my truly leftist friends would have me be.  This whole experience has reinforced what I know to be true about my political beliefs.  I am a progressive.  I want peace.  And yet,  inside myself, I am glad that the man who loved to kill and dreamed of death is dead.  Yes, I can understand that people have a right to be very upset by the actions of the U.S. in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South and Central America.  The U.S. is not the American people.  Rarely are governments good reflections of the people for whom they act or the principles for which they stand. 

I have to say that while I am not at all happy with how President Obama has snuggled up to the pharmaceutical, insurance, mortgage and banking industries, he has managed to reflect America more powerfully and more accurately than I remember anyone ever doing.  We are our ideals.  He manifests the ideals I was taught to strive toward as a school kid.   I detest war.  I do not condone violating international borders and national sovereignty, but I appreciate that he took responsibility for doing what he ordered.  It seems a lot more honorable than Iran Contra, shadow governments, CIA drug wars, and a host of other things that I have seen my government do and in which they refuse to admit culpability, responsibility, and in many cases instigation. The current administration is carrying on far too many of the repressive, reactionary, anti-democratic programs and practices initiated by the Bush Administration, and I doubt that I will ever be able to keep my mouth shut about those things.  I do not however have the energy to work with negative topics all the time.  I drew from the positive, jester-like boldness of the early organization that was CODEPINK.  We spoke in a way that was difficult to ignore and eventually we seeped into the consciousness of a nation.  I was there in D.C.  when the Illinois delegation of CODEPINKers met with Senator Barack Obama. 

My life as a peace activist of sorts and the death of the man who ultimately was responsible for my becoming a peace activist by creating the coordinated attacks on New York City and our nation's Capitol that created one domino leading to another where I moved across country, met like minded women, and worked to understand that peace has to be worked toward with more furious love than the furious hate that leads us to war.  I will hold that within me until the moment I die.  When I die I will have been no more than a wake on the water.  But I changed the reflection of the world for a moment.  And perhaps someone seeing a bit of a different world in that wake will make more changes.  That is all any of us can do.  I believe in the power of individual and collective action. 

I am tired.  I don't like thinking about war and politics all the time.  I have trouble finding the positive, head over heels, positive and life affirming, and powerful iconography of the early CODEPINK in the bitter rhetoric of the anti-war community today.  Anti- stances are so different from pro- positions.  There is an energetic difference, a qualitative difference, between the differing approaches.  I revel in and marvel at the power of creation, the power of the feminine, the power of affirmation. 

I can't keep myself from noticing the impact of these things;  that is just how I am.   BUT I can moderate the duration and intensity of my actions and reactions to them.   This is what I have come up with in the last many days of reflection since that Sunday night, not quite two weeks ago, and its special announcement from our president:  I need to continue the writing path that I was unfurling before me, some would say making it up as I went along, that I was working on at at my desk when the first plane hit.  Of course the path I'm now walking isn't the same path I would have walked had the towers stood. 

I was working on increasing awareness of a distinct cohort, the last half of Baby Boom Generation, the Late Boomers,  as well as a working on a collection of poetry and a biography of  Gene Stratton-Porter when everything changed.  I contributed regularly to a feminist comedy site focused on the glamour of old Hollywood.   I need to get back to my research and writing that lies beyond the 20th and 21st Century political realm.  A new research area has also developed in the last few years;  I'm working in  the area of Munchausen by Proxy Child Abuse, an ill-named area of factitious medical child abuse. 

And there is a new constellation of events that calls to me in the middle of the night these days.  My eldest daughter, my step-daughter, has given the world and a neighborhood far away from Tucson a beautiful set of twins, my grand-daughters.  My youngest daughter, my biological daughter, has decided she is in love and, come December and graduation from university, will move across the country far from the neighborhood in which she grew up and in which she still resides, to pursue a graduate education and live with her honey, hiking partner, and soul-mate.  From my roof deck in central Tucson at night in the moonlight  I can hear the Goddess speak, "Get your shit together girl, you still have work to do for me.   Now get going and write those books, finish the house remodeling, build the back yard labyrinth and grotto where you can rest in your old age while you compose poetry, watch flowers grow, and receive visitors.  Time's a wasting!"

My time and life are of my own conscious creation.   I will not allow my life to be choreographed by external forces. 

On Realizing I Was Impacted by Terrorism

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the last 12-24 hours of world event news.

The bombing of the Pentagon and WTC Twin Towers changed the course of my life n very significant ways.  While I was initially worried about my step-daughter who was at work a few blocks away from the WTC in NYC.  We heard from her fairly soon after the plane strikes and knew she was ok.  We knew people who worked in the WTC who got out, although we did not know for a while if they were safe but they were.  They worked on the 23rd floor.  But that was it for direct impact on my life. Like most of the nation I was connected to the events of that day primarily through media coverage.

Indirect impact that day was far more significant for me.  My sixth grader was so upset by the attacks that the school called me to ask how I wanted them to proceed with her.   She had visited the WTC the previous month with her dad and knew the place and scale of what was happening in a way that most kids from Tucson could not. 

I had worked for several years as the head of the security section at a major anthropological museum.  I received training in cultural property protection coordinated by the Smithsonian and partially funded by the Getty.  My thoughts were about evacuation routes, responders, and infrastructure and the magnitude of what was transpiring.  Then like everyone else I mourned.  Then I watched the whole world reach out to us and our leadership at that time choose how to react to that embrace of good will.

In October of 2001, a month after the attacks, my husband was contacted by the head of the section at the National Science Foundation, with whom he had a fair amount of contact during the first 15 years of his professional career.  That gentleman told him they were having absolutely no one express interest in starting a rotation the following summer in 2002.  They had slots they could not fill. The NSF brings academic and scientific professionals from various research areas to Arlington, VA  to rotate through the Foundation for a year or two so evaluations of research proposals are headed up by people actively involved in the research area within which the proposal falls.

Unlike most academics, my husband had done a stint in the military after the draft was eliminated and before he finished his education.  We are progressives and we are very patriotic.  We decided it was our duty to help keep part of the cycle of scientific inquiry in our country going after the attacks.  It was the least we could do.  So we uprooted our family over the protests of our preteen daughter, who bemoaned that she would absolutely die if we took her away from her friends, and moved across the country to the Ballston area a couple of miles or so away from the Pentagon in a lovely little neighborhood just off Highway 50.  Our daughter went to school that next year with kids whose parents had been killed in the Pentagon attack.  It was a good year for us in all regards but financial.  We went into debt with the moves and inability to rent our home in Tucson for the whole time, and the extra expense of living in a costly city.  It was life-changing.

I expected surgical strikes and undercover ops would take out the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden within a year or so from the time of the attacks.  I did not expect the vast constriction of our rights as Americans nor did I expect the blatant misdirection of our precious resources and lives in war toward a land, against a people, and despot who had absolutely nothing to do with the heinous attacks on the U.S. on Septemberr 11, 2001.  

Living just outside the Beltway made me aware of politics in, for me, a very new way.  We didn't have a television that year, but we did have internet, radio, and newspapers.  I watched a group of women vigil in front of the Whitehouse, starting in November of 2002, against the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration seemed hell bent on accomplishing no matter what.  I watched huge, absolutely HUGE, anti-war marches in the winter receive practically no news coverage.  I began to join  in those peace marches in February and March of 2003.  I marched with CODEPINK,  in their first march, on International Women's Day, March 8, 2003. 

We had been attacked, our land and people assaulted and killed, I allowed my family's entire life to be upturned so that in some small way terror would not win by disrupting our country's way of life.  I knew there were countless Americans who had made far larger changes to their lives and offered up sacrifices of their lives to serve our country, so I didn't think much about what our little family had done until our administration insulted and in many ways desecrated the memory of all those who died in the attacks on our country and in the initial attacks in Afghanistan by focusing our country's energies and sacrifices in a political and economic vendetta against Iraq.  Wrapping my home in plastic and sealing it with duct tape just isn't my way.  I wrote about it email lists and friends.  I blogged about it a bit.  I had to do more.  My way is to react consciously and purposively.  My father taught me that.  We have civic responsibilities and they are precious. 

Back in Arizona  in April of 2004,  I joined together with a few other women and began to bring the PINK message of peace to Arizona through CODEPINK Women for Peace actions.  I liked the spontaneous, truly grassroots, and positively focused organic,  interconnected nature of the links between individual women that made us respected by the peace and justice community and detested and vilified by the far right wing.   I felt my actions were patriotic and proudly still feel so.  

Since that time, I have had my patriotism questioned, had my life threatened, been called reprehensible names, and had my resolve and heart hardened.   I've given up time with my daughter as she grew up so that I might return to D.C. with other women to press the peace and justice message forward and keep it visible so that no one would forget that our country is about plurality and diverse belief systems working together for democratic principles.    I was removed from Senate Committee meetings on May 17, 2006 when I could not contain myself and shouted out, "Liar" to Rumsfeld as he ended a report to Armed Services Committee.  I helped start the house in D.C. that grew into an "official" Pink House that housed women from around the country for a week or two when they could travel to D.C. in order to let officials know there were and are other views in the country that did not support our men and women being killed and our country being bankrupted and our constitution violated. 

Even when I had briefly moved back to Indiana to take care of my mother so that she might leave this world in her own home of 60 plus years I managed to bring a bit of PINK to Fort Wayne to brighten the peace message that has been a constant in that agrarian and blue collar part of the world through the message of Church of the Brethren, Mennonite and Amish faiths as well as the progressive political community.

It is from this lens through which I have to view the death of Osama bin Laden.  I wasn't filled with joy when I heard the news of his death.  Neither was I sad.  I've become very measured in my response to war.  I am on discussion lists where almost every day I read about the deaths of young children from drone attacks.  I hate war.  I hate violent death.  I hate what we do to each other.  As I wrote in a rather inarticulate post shortly after I learned of bin Laden's death, my husband I opened a bottle of wine and toasted.  The toast was, "May our troops come home soon." 

I was trying to not make my response to this into a political statement.  But everything we do has political impact.  We make political choices in everything we do, even if we do not consciously understand or want to think about that.  I mean that.  The most important thing I have brought into my conscious life since I joined with the efforts of thousands of other women in the U.S. and around the world who work for peace is that every little thing we do, say, or think has consequence. 

Mother's Day is coming this weekend.  It seems like a good time to remember the call of Julia Ward Howe, yes the same person who wrote the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, when she wrote another document in 1870 when she issued her:

Mother's Day Proclamation for Peace

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

This week I will reflect on where I should aim my efforts in the next 10 years.  These last 10 years were not a concrete block of time for me until last night.  I have been putting all my efforts into starting a business these last few months.  Everything somehow changed again in the last couple of days.    This week I will reflect on these past few years and where my next 10 years of effort in this world might be placed.  I need to do this.  Until I sat down this morning to write my reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden that our President announced last night, I didn't really grasp how much my life has been directed by actions and reactions to things that this man set in motion.  I'm pretty sure I met extremists who worked with bin Laden when I worked at the University Library here in Tucson.  I first worked in current periodicals where international newspapers were available.  This was during the time when Al Qaeda in the U.S. was head quartered here.  An islamic cleric was murdered here during that time.  Later when I worked at a museum here I became aware of FBI agents specifically using our buildings for terrorist related training exercises.  More was going on around me in my daily life than I ever dreamed.  These things have impact.  We cannot ever know all the impact single actions may take, but we can know they are vast and immeasurable.

I need a week, I'm giving myself until Mother's Day, to contemplate the past ten years and the next ten years.  What are you doing differently this week?



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I also published this as a member post on the BlogHer network. 

Raul Grijalva's Courage

I wish Raul Grijalva was my Representative in the House. If I live a few feet in another direction he would be. He is a courageous advocate for the people of Southern Arizona. The most recent attack on his office came yesterday in the form of a white powder containing, swastika-covered envelope. This is what you have to live with if you are a progressive in Arizona. The Tea Party has been here for decades in the form of an uneducated, bible (in various absolute word of God varieties) thumping state legislature. The violence advocated by Tea Party talking heads encourages radical fringe terrorist groups to act. Thank heavens the FBI has gotten involved. Local law enforcement has issues.

I've reported on how law abiding protesters are ordered onto private property (recruiting offices) by police and then cited for trespassing and how this clearly shows some sort of collusion between cops and military; how cops here show up at your door and terrify your children with threats about arresting their parents (for political protest.) The connections between some of the police and the militia / freepers / tea party wack jobs seems pretty evident when during lawful calls for assistance are not responded to when American flag waving, military uniform wearing "counter" protesters assault, threaten and attempt to intimidate recruitment center protesters with swarming, shoving and verbal intimidation on the main drag here in Tucson. Death threats against peace groups and threats against businesses that have peace groups meeting in them are a matter of public record. There is a right wing terrorist faction here in southern Arizona that needs to be shut down. I hope the FBI does their job. Nazis and skin heads that attended the Kelly / Giffords debate in support of Jesse Kelly might be a place for them to start.

Brief update

Day 2 and 3 report is coming soon. 


For now: 

10.2.10
Saturday Day:  Umbrellas at the Archives.
                         March and Rally was amazing!  All these groups working together!  
Saturday Night:  Then Alice Walker reading and Furious Dance at Bus Boys and Poets -- Yowza.

10.3.10
Sunday Morning:  BOW$$H training.
Sunday Afternoon:  Umbrella  Action (choreographed) at Eastern Market

Blackwater Makes a Killing Out of Killing

Day 1 of Being a CODEPINKer at One Nation Working Together

October 1 Logistics

12:30 - 3 a.m.
Worked on orienting myself, getting internet installed and working, figuring out my schedules and getting my materials together for the next few days.  Finally crashed around 3 a.m. I'm still very much on west coast time.

Mundane details, but good to know information (especially for women activists of a certain age:

9 a.m. - 2 p.m.Woke up later than I should have -- 6 a.m. AZ time.  9 a.m. here.  Very glad I gave myself a day to orient and do a bit of lobbying.  I transcribed the letter to my Representative and Senators onto my computer -- wrote it by hand on the plane here.  Loaded it onto a flash drive and printed it at the business center in my hotel.  Grabbed a good breakfast.  Got a metro/city map.  Figured out the locations for shuttlebetween hotel to metro.  Got a metro card.  By the time I emerged from the metro at Capital SW stop I was sweating like mad.  We south-westerners forget how much we sweat in the heat because it evaporates instantaneously.   Here when I encounter the humidity that is always present in Washington, D.C.  my body tries to cool itself, sweats, it doesn't evaporate as it usually does when I'm in Tucson and thus my body thinks it isn't cooling off, so it bumps up the process and cranks out even more sweat.  I look like hell and I don't stay sweet smelling very long in this condition either. 

I'm glad I've had a day to adjust to everything.

As I said above, I have letters for all the Rep/Senator types from my part of AZ.  I did manage to deliver my letter to Representative Giffords today around 3.  I wasn't impressed with her staff. 

 Boy Staffer mumbles some sort of a greeting.


Me:  Hi.  I've come to drop off a letter.

Boy Staffer:  Good.  

That was it.  I gave it to him.  No "Oh, where are you from?" or  "Why are you here?"  or "Welcome to D.C. " Nada.  Zilch.  Pretty good mirroring of the way Gabby treats her constituents by her staff. 
I know D.C. is old hat to them, but here I am, a constituent who has come across the country to support working together for progressive reasons, and takes the time to write and drop off a letter, and I'm pretty much ignored.  I was hot & tired and on my way out I told the guy what I thought about how I was treated and even though I vote for Gabby only as the lesser of two evils, I do not feel she represents any of my interests, hears what I tell her in letters, petitions, and the like, nor cares.  Giffords is basically a pro-choice Republican from what I can tell. 

Then I went to a room in the Capitol Visitor's Center to a room Rep.  Raul Grijalva had reserved for use by the PDA.  On Sunday I will go into detail on what John Conyers said when he spoke to maybe 50 or so people from the PDA and associated groups. 

Will also report on the great dinner and orientation session I attended at the CODEPINK Convergence Center this evening.  

But for now I have to sleep, and tomorrow I'm on the ground all day and at Poets and Busboys in the evening.  I will be posting images here, on Flickr, and on Facebook and Twitter until I can write up things later this weekend. 

BRING OUR WAR $$$ HOME!!!

Gonna March, Gonna Dance!

The think I like about women's activism is that it is like a bouncy session on a trampoline.  I visualize it as women standing on a web or net that overlays a map of the country or globe.  As a woman here or there becomes less active and sinks to a less active level, other raise up, and some are just bouncing like mad up to sky in near manic activity.

Women's networks are amazing!

I'm going back to D.C. for a few days, the first time in almost three years, to catch up with all things PINK at the national level and to represent my family and friends in the OneNation March in D.C. on October 2nd.

 

We all do what we can, and I have to tell the current admin that we are demanding the change for which we voted and worked.  Drones are criminal. War is not the answer to anything. Education and jobs and taking care of people are what we need -- NOT corporate and mega-wealthy tax breaks and propping up the military industrial complex.  Jobs from war funding are tainted jobs.

In a way it is sort of sad as I will be missing a great Pink & Green event here in Tucson, more on that later, but I will be reporting back often from D.C. with tweets, posts, pics and more.

I will also be dancing the night away at Poets & Busboys with Alice Walker and CODEPINK supporters.

I'm staying in a hotel and if there are any snorers who don't mind bunking in a double with another snorer (major!) then contact me about rooming.   I get dibs on soaking my feet after a day of marching and dancing though!

 

 

 

One Nation Working Together - call to ACTION

One Nation Working Together For Jobs, Justice and Education for All

Who We Are

We are One Nation, born from many, determined to build a more united America – with jobs, justice and education for all. We are young people, frustrated that society seems willing to spend more locking up our bodies than educating our minds, yet still we find ways to succeed and shine. We are students and newly-returned veterans – persevering in the face of mounting debt – determined not to be the first generation to end up worse off than our parents. We are baby boomers and seniors – who saw hope killed in 1968 and will not let the dream of a united America be taken from us again. We are conservatives and moderates, progressives and liberals, non-believers and people of deep faith, united by escalating assaults on our reason, our environment, and our rights. We are workers of every age, faith, race, sex, nationality, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and ability – who have suffered discrimination but never stopped loving our neighbors, or our nation. We are American Indians and Alaska Natives – citizens of Native nations – who maintain our cultures, protect our sovereignty, and strength America’s economy. We are the new immigrants, raising our children in the torchlight of the Statue of Liberty, while confronting the shadows that are bigotry and mass deportations. We are the native born. We inherited the divided legacies of settlers and American Indians, black slaves and white and Asian indentured servants. And yet, in this moment of shared suffering, we rejoice in newfound friendships and new alliances. We are people who got thrown out – thrown out of our jobs, schools, houses, farms and small businesses – while Wall Street’s wrongdoers got bailed out. We are families who pray every day – for peace and prosperity; for deliverance from foreclosures; for good jobs to come back to urban and rural America. We are unemployed workers – forced to watch hopes for bold action dashed – because some Senators threaten filibusters, and other would-be champions fold in fear. And yet, we are the majority – fueled by hope, not hate. We have the pride, power and determination to keep ourselves – and our country – moving up and out of the valley greed created. And most importantly – from ensuring women are treated fairly at work, to expanding health care coverage for millions– we have been victorious whenever we worked together. We have proven the only thing we need to succeed is each other. And so, on 10-2-10, we come back together – to march.

Why We March

We march for a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. We march for jobs, justice, and education. We march for an economy that works for all. We march for a nation in which each person who wants to work can find a job that pays enough to support a family. We march to create a million new jobs right away, because the national values that got us out of the Great Depression will get us out of the Great Recession. We march to build a world-class public education system, from pre-school to community college and beyond – because our nation must start unleashing the greatness of every child today. We march to end racial profiling and re-segregation– from Arizona to Atlanta. We march to defend the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. We march to advance human rights, civil rights, equal protection, and dignity for all. We march to fix the broken immigration system – because no child should live in fear that her parents will be deported. We march to ensure every worker has a voice at work. We march for green jobs and safe workplaces, so no worker will have to choose between her livelihood and her life. We march for a clean environment, so no child is ever forced to decide between drinking the water or breathing the air and staying healthy. We march to move our nation beyond this moment when a handful of Senators can block urgently needed progress – skewing our national budget towards tax cuts for the wealthy, unjustified military spending and prisons.We march for peace abroad and job creation at home. We march for energy independence, public safety, and public transportation because the nation we want to build most is our own. And on 11-2-10, we will march again – into the voting booths. We will bring our families, our friends, and our neighbors. And once the ballots are counted, we will keep organizing, we will hold our leaders accountable, and we will keep making our dream real. This movement will grow. It will put America back to work, pull America back together, and keep us moving ever forward. Join us. We are One Nation Working Together: For Jobs, For Justice, For Education, For All.

Before and After, Citizens' Arrest, and Dangerous Ignorance

I'm so tired of whiney, ignorant people.

I love my friends like Carrie Newcomer who, bless her peaceful Quaker heart, see good in everyone. And she tries really, really hard to see good even in people you absolutely know she couldn't possibly see anything good in, but you know will never get her to utter a bad word about. I was at her Rhythm and Roots series performance on March 21st in Tucson, and she is an absolutely amazing lyricist and this CD, Before and After, her 12th one on Rounder, is wonderful. There are at least 5 songs on it that I will want to put in my Carrie set on my iTunes to listen to again and again.

I'm digressing here, but speaking of iThingies, I figured out how to do video clips on my iPod and put 'em together in iMovie earlier this month and post it on You Tube. It features CODEPINK Tucson & Bisbee folks talking about the CODEPINK bridge actions on International Women's Day (March 8th) that were done in solidarity with Women for Women. It is by no means great but I was happy to do it and happy to see so many beautiful Pink and Green folks come out in support of building bridges to peace.

Oh and before I get back to bitching about people... I want to thank Jodie Evans and the dedicated Pinkers from the L.A. area who attempted to arrest the war criminal Karl Rove yesterday March 30th, 2010. There are a ton of links on this page to videos of the attempted arrest, interviews with participants, information on war crimes committed by members of the Bush II administration, and the arrest papers they carried with them yesterday that began,

"Arrest Complaint
 
In the matter concerning:

United States of America, plaintiff v. Karl Christian Rove, defendant
 
Under the authority provided private citizens by California Code: 837, you, Karl Christian Rove, are being placed under arrest for high crimes against the people of the United States committed during your role as Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush as well as while serving as a campaign consultant during the U.S. presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. ..."

In Arizona this would be the info you would incorporate in an arrest complaint:

Arizona Code: Title 13 - Criminal Code

Arizona Revised Statutes

§13-3884. Arrest by private person
A private person may make an arrest:
1. When the person to be arrested has in his presence committed a misdemeanor amounting to a breach of the peace, or a felony.
2. When a felony has been in fact committed and he has reasonable ground to believe that the person to be arrested has committed it.

I swear the choreography of the ignorant masses is developed and tested here in Arizona. The Tea Party threats and intimidation tactics have been dealt with here for the past 5 years at least in the form of Freepers (I'm not providing a link on purpose-- no need to give them an assist in their Google rankings.)

I'm actually more than tired of groups trying to step all over my rights with their religion. I believe in tolerance and acceptance as a Christian value, but it really tests my resolve when ignorance is touted and paraded about by gun toting, Bible thumping, power hungry and control thirsty, only a couple degrees removed from domestic terrorism bullies, many of whom are in Congress, who called me anti-American and unpatriotic during the Bush reign of terror. I'm even more perturbed with people who knew the recision of rights and the unconstitutional actions of Bush admin were wrong, but who stood by and even chimed in with the Red White and Blue nonsense that has absolutely nothing to do with the ideals and values that were at the heart of the founding of our country. The U.S. education system has been in decline for decades, and generations have been trained to work as non-thinking wage laborers. We can now see the results. Tea party doofuses doing the work of the corporations and ruling families behind some of these corporations are fighting against the types of government programs that provide medical care for their parents. They are so brainwashed by FOX propaganda blasting out at them from every public Walmart shelf or motel lobby across the country. I'm p.o.ed that people will just blindly follow along... even intelligent conservatives ... even liberals will not step out in public enough to say, "Please turn the channel over to a different station," when assaulted by the Murdoch propaganda machine.

Grrr, grrrr, and double grrrr. This makes me as angry as religious extremists who believe abortion is murder. I don't believe that embryos, zygotes, blastocytes and fetuses are babies. That is my religious belief. Why should one religious belief about a non-viable lump of cells be imposed on others with different religious beliefs. The beginning of life and the matter of soul are purely philosophical definitions that vary so greatly between cultures and religions that we cannot impose these constructs on any one person without violating his or her rights under U.S. law. I can't tell someone to terminate a pregnancy. No one should tell someone she can't.

The intermingling of these two dangerously anti-freedom, anti-selfdetermination whacked out perspectives that seem to combine into something alarmingly like the anti-woman, fundamentalist violence usually attributed to Islamic extremists by "main stream" America. I am no longer going to remain silent about the danger inherent in politically conservative Christianity. Religion and government don't mix well in any democratic state. Fundamentalism in any form is dangerous. Any belief that says, "Only I and those who think like me are in possession of the truth" is evil. "If you meet Buddha on the road..."

Repurposing This Blog: Build Peace

Over the last six months I have given a tremendous amount of thought to starting a new blog that better reflects my current take on "life, the universe and everything" than my build peace blog.   Everytime I would find the perfect domain name for a new venture  and begin to build a new whirling mass of me-ness in cyberspace I'd find that I missed this blog into which I had put so much energy for so many years.   Please allow me to be a bit self-reflective here and a bit self-reflexive too as I deconstruct my thought processes about writing and blogging about inner peace, world peace, paths to peace, tools of peace, tools for peace, and... well you get the idea. 


I have to admit I heaved a huge sigh of relief the evening of the election, Tuesday November 4th, when I gathered with a couple thousand other Tucsonans to watch the returns come in at the University Marriott.  I will never forget standing next to a long retired colleague of my husband who came to the U of A after being booted from the California University system during the highly political days of the free speach civil rights era turbulence of the early 1960s and who helped establish ACLU to this Old West enclave.  As McCain was conceeding defeat I happened to see this man's face as complete and utter joy washed over it.  


At that time I decided that I was going to take a couple days off for R & R.  I ended up taking off six months.   Long story, short version:  I had continuing pain after a bout with the stomach flu and ended up finding out I have Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  After my esteemed scientifically-gifted genius research professor husband (he might read this, lol) looked at the literature, we think that the combination of anti-depressants I've been on for many years could have contributed to the development of this condition as well as my being significantly overweight.   It could relate to the invasive and often toxic medical tests and treatments I underwent as a child.  I never had hepatitis nor am I an alcoholic.

I don't do well with being ill.   It makes me depressed.  I have been working on, and off -- a lot of off, some on -- on a book about my childhood experience on the receiving end of my mother's instability that I have come to realize falls into the range of behavior that has been termed Munchause Syndrome by Proxy.  At least partially due to being "sickly" and kept out of school and shuttled from doctor to doctor when I was little so that it was not uncommon for me to miss up to 100 school days a year during my primary education. 

My journals during the teen years are painful to read but allowed me as a middle-aged adult to see that my isolation during my childhood coupled with being thrust into the socially topsy-turvy, psychedelic and sexually liberated world of the 1970s as a totally naive, socially incompetent, pathologically shy human being were the primary factors that contributed to multiple rapes, exploitation, and emotionally abusive relationships, and less than wise choices that pretty much characterized my teens and young adult life.  

Writing helped save my life time and again when the blank page or screen was the only tool through which I could communicate - even if that communication was basically just me talking to myself.   I became fairly good at this apparently, and the winning of a state-wide writing competition in High School allowed me to win scholarships that made it possible for me to attend college.   Writing continued to be my main communication channel with the world as I wrote essays, exams, reports and post-graduate research reports and theses. 

Then the internet evolved into the web and I reached out through words and found that while I was a social mutant (and mutations can be a very good thing that allow the process of evolution to happen) I was also thinking things and making observations that other people found interesting and sometimes even amusing when I wrote about them.  I was blogging long before a thing called a web log existed.  

Then CODEPINK and I found each other.   This blog, Build Peace, has been the most consistent and meaningful body of my writing to date.   It allowed me to enter the BlogHer community of women's online voices. 

A few days ago I was talking to a Second Life friend about my dilemma of attempting  to shift my peace activism and writing from a broader and more tempered perspective than I had in Build Peace.  She said, "Repurpose the blog."  Initially I thought, "Ugh,  corporate speak. Yuck.  Ptooey."  But then, trying to live the  peace and be the peace I write about, I decided that I can continue writing/blogging about info that helps me build my own peace and share that with others that is the only way peace in our world will ever be built - person to person, one word at a time.... and with my bias showing I will further state that a sustainable peace must be built by women talking to each other and creating the world we want for our children.  

-------------

Words like emergence, energy work, calmness, spiritual, belief, attraction and the like will be far more common here than in the past.  I will talk about my struggle to lose weight, the challenge of shifting to an empty nest at home, and about healing.  Politics will undoubtedly creep in... I've been political since I was about 10, but I will try to mediate my outrage and use  words like Fascist and F**k far less often and perhaps not at all from this time forward.  Maybe I can even get the Huffington Post to end their ban on links to my site in their comments.   Purportedly this is because of profanity.   We'll see.  

Anyway, consider this blog repurposed.  The appearance will change dramatically.  The content may too.    Peace to you all.

AZ Liz found NOT Guilty!!!!

Liz Hourican of CODEPINK Phoenix -and for much of this past year a PINKer based in D.C. bringing Arizona peace messages to our elected officials in D.C. - was found NOT GUILTY today in a D.C. Court.

In Liz's own words from an email sent earlier today:

"The case stemming from the Condi Rice Bloody hands False arrest 10.24.08

after 2 hours of trial i was found not guilty!!!
desiree's case was continued april 2nd 2008"

Read Liz's blog post on the CODEPINK DC site.

Liz is the person who was arrested after being dragged by opposite arm and leg while being pulled from the chair in which she was quietly seated waiting for Condi the War Criminal to speak. She had her face smashed into chairs and door jams breaking her glasses and injuring her. This all stemmed from when Desiree (of Arlington, TX) seized a wide open opportunity to confront Rice with symbolic bloody hands (it was red paint.)

Arizona Liz is an amazing woman!

Now lets focus on sending rational thoughts and energies in the direction of the D.C. court that Desiree (of TX) will appear in on April 2nd.

There must be something about Western women! Woot. Woot.

Liz Hourican, from Phoenix, roughed up and arrested by Capitol Hill police

, Liz Hourican of Phoenix was assaulted and injured by Capitol Hill Police today when the police defied the policy of the House Foreign Relations Committee to escort Citizen Protesters from the room without arrest if they are nonviolently disruptive vocally or written signs.

“The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!” yelled Desiree Fairooz to Condi Rice during the hearing and displayed her hands covered in red paint simulating blood. She was escorted from the room. Four women and one man ended up being arrested. Fairooz was arrested. Then two women who were sitting quietly in the hearing room were forcibly dragged from the room into the hall where they, who had engaged in no provocation, were brutally treated by the police. One of the women, Liz Hourican, had to be take to the hospital. Lori Perdue was also inexplicably dragged from the room and arrested. Medea Benjamin who had no written signs and who had not said anything in the hearing room was asked to leave when she made a peace sign with two fingers, She gathered her stuff and left the room. She was then arrested in the hall as was a gentleman who was vocally challenging the actions of the police as they happened.

You can watch the videos and judge for yourself.

Later in the day the press was given the following information in a statement from Dana, a CODEPINK spokesperson:

"Liz Hourican is now being treated at a local hospital for her injuries. The Deputy Chief of Staff of the House Foreign Relations Committee contacted the Capitol Police later in the day to again relay that their is a policy of that committee to not arrest Citizen protesters but to instead escort them out of the room. The Deputy asked for the CODEPINK members to be released promptly from custody.

For more information please contact Dana Balicki at 202 422 8624 or Gael Murphy at 202 412 6700."

I know Liz. She is a sincere, peaceful person, active in Arizona and Phoenix politics and an incredibly patriotic person who takes her duties and responsibilities as a citizen very seriously. She also is one of the least wimpy folks I know. To hear her crying in pain is horrible enough but to hear the despair in her voice when she is saying "I didn't do anything" is equally as painful for me as I know she believes in justice and truly was aghast at the abuse of justice by the police.

I haven't yet heard how Liz is doing or if she is out of the hospital. I will post again when I find out more.

Newt Gingrich in Second Life

Guest Post by Ana Herzog

Second Life passed another milestone today (Ouch! That sounds painful!) when Newt Gingrich used Capitol Hill SL today to announce his new plan to take over America.


























This photo of Gingrich is courtesy of Liz Link. Used with permission.
























The metaverse becomes more like real life every day.... the buying of Capitol Hill is nothing new in RL, but in SL this use was groundbreaking in that a precedent was set for Free Speech Zones in SL. I am gravely concerned about the creation of and tolerance for the zoning of free speech in RL, but in SL, well that is probably a good precedent. Capitol Hill folks, TROI Timtam and Kiwini Oe and their group that runs the Capitol Hill SL sim gave five of a very limited number of slots for avatars who could be in SL attendance at today's Capitol Hill SL event. Newt spoke to his minions and groupies in Atlanta and Second Life about the future of corporate politics and the emerging metaverse.

Most of the initial part of the speech was filled with him describing the metaverse. It didn't really take all that long to get Newt acclimated to presentation procedure in Second Life (which he repeatedly called Second Voice). I've been told by people in the know that Gingrich likes to drive his own avatar, but there was no evidence of that today. The avie appeared, sat, then stood in exactly the same spot for the duration of the talk.

In the second pic, above, you can see the back of him, the guests who were allowed invites into the sim, and at the very back beyond a virtual fence, invisible at a distance, there were the five lonely protesters.

It sort of honks me off that the sim folks presumed we would grief folks. I take my civic DUTY very seriously, as do other very courageous protesters. That is civic as in civil and civilization.

Anyway, you can see more photos of the event on flickr. i like the Venice Vandal's and Liz Link's photos of the event. But in these I took you can see the basic setup.

I may get around to the content portion of his speech eventually, but first I would like comment on the meta messages broadcast via this event today.

(Isn't In beautiful as she flies in protest?)
























I'm not sure Newt really understands the whole merging of a personally expansive identity into a new and larger self that encompasses an electronic persona that is every bit as real as a corporate face, or the identity one puts on for family as opposed to the one puts on at church or in the supermarket.

Conservatism and corporatism are starting to "get it" as far as understanding the networking abilities that Second Life affords.

It does seem that Newt understands much more of the metaverse and Second Life than most RL politicos do.

This isn't surprising to me. Newt is intelligent. This is the thing that makes him most dangerous. It always has been. Newt took out his Contract on America with the help of Tom DeLay. Newt was major player in the creation of K Street and the corporate coup d'etat that knocked off the last semblance of the representation of the people of the U.S.A. His contract was such a snow job. He promised the conservative Chrisitian right that the contract would help to clean up Congress and America. It carefully tended the seeds of the demise of America that had been sown by Ronnie Raygun. Bush is harvesting that demise.
















The hypocrisy shown by so many of the supposedly moral men who came into power in '94 by lying through their teeth to the American People about what their intentions were has become common knowledge and well documented. The longer serving hypocrits became emboldened. Foley, Craig, Stevens, Vitter, rode in with Newt. Opiate addicted Linbaugh served as a cheerleader. Stevens became the pork barrel king. Just look at this list of Republican scandals -- a major one every week this year. The Culure of Corruption is real and was orchestrated by Newt, Delay, Abramoff.....

So today Newt sang the praises of IBM (Yes the same IBM who allowed certain South American leaders to be tortured to death in their buildings a few decades back...) and the corporatization (is that a word) of SL. And this as the IBM Strike is going on. Oh, the irony... The double speak of Gingrich is scary. I believe he was well aware of the allusion to taking out a Contract on America. His current American Solutions campaign smacks of Dachau and Germany's Solution. He had to be aware of the similarity to Final Solution. This man is a soulless, corrupt maggot. He served divorce papers to his wife as she received chemotherapy for cancer. He told his second wife he wanted to divorce her over the phone at a holiday dinner. What a cowardly little sleeze bag. There is nothing honorable about this man and I am disturbed that so many folks continue to revere him.

Now back to the event itself.




















Here (above) you can see the paltry presence the five allowed protesters made ion the Capitol Lawn But this Cap Hill group's dedication to showing there was dissent is good.

It would have been better if I could have had a banner drop off the Washington Monument but they nixed that.

Guess that is it for now.

So we were left to our rather "normal" protest signs. I had some problems in that I couldn't get the shake fist animation to work so I had a wilted protest sign most of the time. Oh well.

Probably the avie schmoozing after the event had as much impact as the avie attendance at the event. Gingrich just wanted to make a pr statement. We felt compelled to dissent. But as always, talking to people is the key to understanding and a better world.
Here you can see Liz Link and I in real discussion after the event.

Liz from Phoenix arrested at Petraeus hearing today.

Several CODEPINKers were arrested today and many more were removed from the "Betray us" hearings.

The early story coverage can be found here. The CODEPINK press release from before the hearing can be accessed for background on the group and their motivations for action.

Lydia's post on the CODEPINK DC Blog is well worth the read too. Seems they are now refusing entry to Gael. Many courageous women are there to disrupt if necessary -- and those who are carrying on as if this is business as normal after stolen elections, unconstitutional executive branch power grabs, illegal and immoral war that has escalated to all the way to enabling ethnic cleansing have gone from foolish to being criminal.

Hell yes this protestation is right and justified. Thank you CODEPINK! Thank you Ray McGover for yelling out,"SWEAR HIM IN". Betray us Petraeus is a war criminal as his crimes have gone far beyond being a twitchy little puppet. Just following orders doesn't cut it when you are directing a war while knowingl backing a failed tactic masquerading as policy.

According to Lydia, Cindy Sheehan, her sister DeDe, and the Reverand Yearwood were arested in the hall (as they were denied entry) for raising their voices. See the Washington Post article for the "approved for broadcast" version.

I guess the Halls of Congress have lost their status as a free speech "zone." This is one of my biggest causes of outrage. Free Speech "Zones.!!!" When the bleep did the First Amendment become "zoned?"

WAY TO GO, LIZ. Thank YOU for being brave enough to say what the vast majority of the country is thinking. Thanks to Desiree, Mona, Lydia and all the tireless pink souls temporarily "stationed" (voluntarily) in D.C. Special thanks to and request for support of the Rev. Yearwood who undoubtedly got assault charge for being a black man.