There’s some interesting follow-up on the Cindy Sheehan “resignation” (see yesterday’s post). One fellow I corresponded with years ago gave a donation then sent an email urging us not to fall into despair. It’s hard.
Go beyond Democratic Party fronts like MoveOne and you’ll find the most of the peace movement is a ridiculously shoestring operation. Nonviolence.org’s four month “ChipIn” fundraising campaign raised $50 per month but the sacrifice isn’t just short-term – just try applying for a mainstream job with a resume chock full of social change work!
Michael Westmoreland-White over on the Levellers blog talks about “keeping going through the despair”:http://levellers.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/needed-for-long-haul-peacemaking-a-spirituality-of-nonviolence/:
bq. This is a cautionary tale for the rest of us, including myself. Outrage, righteous indignation, anger, public grief, are all valid reactions to war and human rights abuses, but they will get us only so far. They may strain marriages and family life. They may lead to speech and action that is not in the spirit of nonviolence and active peacemaking. And, since imperialist militarism is a system (biblically speaking, a Power), it will resist change for the good. Work for justice and peace over the long haul requires spiritual discipline, requires deep roots in a spirituality of nonviolence, including cultivating the virtue of patience.
Michael’s answer is specifically Christian but I think his advice to step back and attend to the roots of our activism is wise despite one’s motivations.
Sheehan’s retirement didn’t stop her from “talking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now this morning”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/1343232. She talks about cash-starved peace activists and contrasts them with the tens of millions presidential candidates are raising, most of which will go to big media TV networks for ads. Sheehan says we need more than just an antiwar movement:
bq. Like, ending the Vietnam War was major, but people left the movement. It was an antiwar movement. They didn’t stay committed to true and lasting peace. And that’s what we really have to do.
More Cindy Sheehan reading across the blogosphere available via “Google”:http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=cindy+sheehan&btnG=Search+Blogs and “Technorati”:http://technorati.com/tag/cindy+sheehan.
And for those looking for a little good news check out the brand new site for the “Global Network for Nonviolence”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/. I designed it for them as part of my “freelance design work”:http://www.martinkelley.com but it’s been a joy and a lot of fun to be working more closely with a good group of international activists again. Their “nonviolence links”:http://gn-nonviolence.org/links.php page includes sites for some really committed grassroots peacemakers. This long-term peace work may not give us headlines in the New York Times but it’s touched millions over the years. If humanity is ever going to grow into the kind of culture of peace Sheehan dreams of then we’ll need a lot more wonderful projects like these.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ human rights abuses
peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees
November 28, 2005
The UK “News Telegraph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace movement have been worrying about all day: that at least some of the four westerners abducted in iraq over the weekend were members of the “Christian peacemakers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/
bq. A British anti-war activist abducted in iraq was investigating human rights abuses with a group called the Christian peacemakers Team when he was held.
Norman Kember, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a former secretary of the Baptist peace Fellowship in England and a board member of the English Fellowship of Reconciliation. He’s been an outspoken opponent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edition of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about challenging himself to do more:
bq. Now personally it has always worried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peacemaker (by analogy with Bonhoeffer’s
concept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writing, demonstrating about peace is in no
way taking risks like young service men in iraq. I look for excuses why I should not become involved with
CPT or EAPPI. Perhaps the readers will supply mewithwith some?
Here at Nonviolence.org, I’m occassionally chatised for being more concerned about western victims of violence (indeed, how many iraqis were abducted or killed this weekend alone?). It’s a fair charge and an important reminder. But perhaps it is only human nature to worry about those you know. I’ve probably met Norman in passing at one or another international peace gathering; I might well know the three unidentified abductees. I suspect a peace movement veteran like Kember would be the first to tell me that pacifists shouldn’t sit contentedly in middle-class comfy armchairs simply souting slogans or dashing off emails (Quaker Johan Maurer, wrote an “impassioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the reason folks put themselves on the lines for organizations like Christian peacemakers Teams is that they want to do their peace witness among those facing the violence. When the victims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the families of the American military casualties have been telling us. Now, with Kember and the three others missing, our worry is made more real. For better or worse, the peace movement is scanning the headlines from iraq with even more worry tonight.
Our prayers are with Kember, as they are with all the missing and all the victims of this horrible war.
Thirty years later: Kissinger’s war crimes
December 7, 2003
Newly-declassified documents from the U.S. State Department show that former U.S. Secretary of State “Henry Kissinger sanctioned the dirty war in Argentina”:www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101121,00.html in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed.
bq. “Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed,” Mr Kissinger is reported as saying. “I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems, but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better … The human rights problem is a growing one … We want a stable situation. We won’t cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.”
Forgiving away human rights abuses in Latin America was standard U.S. policy in the 1970s. Washington favored strong military power and control over messy unpredictable democracy (a formulation which could be a shorthand definition for post-Nazi _fascism_). After reading this week that the U.S. is wrapping entire iraqi villages in barbed wire, it’s hard not to see us returning to this era. What will declassified documents reveal about today’s White House occupants thirty years from now?