WNPJ Weblog

Why the Torture Photos Should Be Released - A Call to Vote No on War Funding Bill: Todd E. Dennis

2009-06-08T13:54:00.001-07:00

Recently Senators Lieberman and Graham authored a horrendous addition to the 2009 War Supplemental bill. Their addition says "a photograph that was taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States" will not become public if "the disclosure of that photograph would endanger—
(A) citizens of the United States; or
(B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States." The photograph has to be certified "endgangering" by the SecDef in consultation with the Chair of the JCS.

The New York Times recently ran an op-ed saying that Obama is right in calling for torture photos to not be released. The author, Philip Gourevitch, is also the co- author with Errol Morris of a book titiled: The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, in which he interviews the military members who served at Abu Grhraib but says at the end that no photos are in the book because they can be found elsewhere. To support his op-ed he says, "They are mistaken. Just as it was a public service to release the Abu Ghraib photographs five years ago, Mr. Obama is right today to say we don't need more of them.

The president claims that a new round of images of prisoner abuse flashing around the globe would enflame America's enemies and endanger our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. There's no doubt about it: the policies that the photographs depict have already done terrible damage to America's cause.

But there's another critical consideration. Releasing additional photographs would not be telling us anything that we don't already know. We don't need to see a picture to know that American interrogators used waterboarding — a crime our military has prosecuted as torture for more than a century — when we can see former Vice President Dick Cheney taking credit for having people waterboarded."

What Gourevitch, Morris, and Obama fail to comprehend is that we must show our military members and society at large what is unacceptable not by separating out a few bad apples as Bush called them. Obama has committed similar mistakes in saying that "what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals" when describing the torture. According to Edward Tick, the author of War and the Soul, we "must expose atrocities as soon as possible to curb troops from giving free rein to their primal impulses."… "Most offenders in these modern massacres (My Lai, No Gun Ri, Abu Ghraib) have been ordinary people, not sadists or psychopaths." They are simply a product of their situation, what Rober Jay Lifton calls an "atrocity-producing situation." Tick continues "When fear, threat, violence, loss, proximity to death, moral confusion, alienation, disbelief, immersion in horror, power, and control over others, and sheer exhaustion coincide long enough - and when the enemy has been sufficiently dehumanized – we are in an atrocity-producing situation." This situation allows normal people, not bad apples, not a small number of individuals, our brothers and sisters in the military to descend into horrific action sometimes condoned by their superiors. By singling out supposed bad apples, the behavior is not properly condoned. To prevent future actions we must show what has been done and reinforce that this is unacceptable behavior from a bad situation that can be committed by any person who is thrust into such a situation. To prevent them from committing it we must open our soul to the brutality and commit to showing that it is unacceptable no matter how bad of a position someone may be placed in.

The same New York Times op-ed shows those committing and documenting their acts thought it to be wrong but were never told it was wrong. "What were the pictures for? "Just to show what was going on," Ms. Harman said. To say, "Look, I have proof, you can't deny it." Sometimes she and her fellow guards posed alongside their abused wards, but most of her photos from Abu Ghraib have a purely documentary quality — solitary prisoners, stripped and manacled in their cells, stretched over bed frames or forced to balance on a box. Cpl. Charles Graner, the M.P. in charge of the night shift on the intelligence block that fall, also took photographs. And Corporal Graner, too, spoke of his snapshots as a form of "proof." He showed the pictures to his superior officers, medics, lawyers.

Later, he told Army investigators how he had routinely beat up prisoners for interrogators, or kept them up all night, making them crawl naked back and forth across the floor. "Was all this stuff wrong?" he said. "Yeah." But his point was that it was no secret. He kept getting praised for his work."

In reading Tick's book it is clear that as a nation if we are to reconcile our conscience we must acknowledge wrongdoing and talk about it instead of hiding it and placing blame on individuals. By adding such a ridiculous earmark to the war funding bill, Sen. Lieberman and Graham are harming our nation. The request by the ACLU for the photos asks for the investigative files for the photos not just the photo itself deflating Gourevitch's argument that "Photographs cannot show us a chain of command, or Washington decision making. Photographs cannot tell stories. They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute; it demands investigation and interpretation." There is an old saying that the truth shall set us free. If we are truly a beacon of what the world should be we should release torture photos and work for peace and prosperity instead of just talking about it while doing the complete opposite.

There are many other reasons to oppose the 2009 War Supplemental, but including legislation banning the release of torture photos is important enough by itself to call for a vote against it.

Todd E. Dennis is a U.S. Submarine Service veteran, a board member of the Clarence Kailin Chapter of Veterans For Peace and the President of the Madison Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He is currently an outreach staff member at the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire.

David Giffey: My grandfather, boy soldier

2009-05-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

Each year Memorial Day brings forth speeches, editorials, essays, poems, songs, and other attempts by survivors and non-participants to comprehend and justify war. The libraries of war songs and stories grow over time in inverse proportion to our collective memory of the harsh realities of death, destruction, and disruption that are the essence of war.

Fading memories seem unable to bear what really happened.

Was that true for my grandfather? I can only speculate, born 15 years, as I was, after grandpa died in 1926. His first name was Herman. Information about him is limited but compelling, as collected by my brother, our family’s faithful historian.

Grandpa’s obituary, published under the headline “Veteran is Buried Tues.,” tells many stories. He died in 1926 at a son’s house in the Town of Springvale, Fond du Lac County, five weeks after suffering a stroke on his way home from the national Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) convention. He was 77.

What was the GAR? Grandpa’s obituary didn’t describe the GAR, a very political fraternal organization of veterans of the Union Army who served in the Civil War. The GAR, similar to mainstream veterans’ groups today, was so influential after its founding in 1866, one year after the Civil War ended, that no Republican was nominated to the presidency without GAR endorsement until 1908.

The obituary continues: “The deceased was born in a log cabin in Oct. 22, 1849 near West Bend.” Wait a minute! If he was born in 1849, how could he have been a Union soldier?
In the next paragraph we learn: “Mr. Giffey’s service in the war was twice refused because of his youth. The first time he enlisted he got to Milwaukee and the second time he was returned from St. Louis. Finally, at the age of 14, he was accepted as a drummer boy. He celebrated his 15th birthday at Appomattox Courthouse (Virginia), where he was on duty. He was a member of Co. I, 17th Wisconsin Volunteers. He participated in Sherman’s march to the sea, and was imprisoned in the Libby prison (Richmond, Virginia) for two months. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the battle of Wilcox Ridge. This wound caused him to limp the rest of his life, and he carried a cane during his last years.”

My brother’s research indicates that our great-grandmother signed a consent form stipulating that her son was 17 years old when, in fact, he wasn’t even 15. She probably received $200 or $300 as a “substitute fee” paid by a conscripted person prosperous enough to pay the fee and avoid military service. That fee could be compared to deferments enjoyed by college students during the Vietnam War. Wealth and military service have long been incompatible.

What could motivate a teenager to so eagerly march off to probable death? Did Herman see himself as freeing the slaves? I doubt it. Probably, as my brother suggested, he was tired of milking cows and the Union army needed bodies.

One hundred years after my grandfather was discharged from service, I was drafted and sent to Vietnam. In the 43 years since I returned from that war, I’ve puzzled over my motives as well. A burning desire to sacrifice myself in order to “keep America free” never entered my thoughts. America wasn’t endangered, as we have learned, by that civil war in Southeast Asia. I went to war under orders. The fact that my name isn’t among the 1.3 million Americans killed outright in wars since 1775 is a matter of pure luck. So, while my heart is emptied at Memorial Day each year at the thought of loved ones grieving for their lost soldiers, I can’t restrain myself from asking: Why war?

With that question in mind, we embarked on another walk last Saturday along part of Highway 14. It was the 140th time since the beginning of the current war in Iraq six years ago that I’ve walked along the road carrying a sign saying “Peace.” The day was pleasant, calm and cloudless. Most people passing by ignored us. A few waved and gave us the peace sign. Fewer still were hostile and gave us half of the peace sign.

Two days later during Memorial Day programs in two River Valley schools I listened to the solemn recitation of hundreds of names of local veterans now dead. The roll calls were long and growing longer.

I’ve heard the term “Nobody wants war” while observing citizens near and far embrace war after war. And I’ve also observed, with wonder, how the word “peace” elicits angry responses. If I could talk to my grandfather, I’d tell him that I think war isn’t inevitable, that peace is attainable and not just another story.

David Giffey is a member of WNPJ member group Veterans for Peace Chapter 25 in Madison. This article was originally published in the Home News, Spring Green, Wisconsin.

The Afghanistan tragedy: Life expectancy of 44

2009-05-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

By Abdul Malik Mujahid

According to the CIA World Factbook, an Afghan’s life expectancy is merely 44 years.

That's 20 to 30 years less than neighboring Pakistan and all other surrounding countries. It is just one result of the ongoing devastation in that country.

The war in Afghanistan did not start in 2001 with the US invasion. It began 30 years ago in December 1979, when the former Soviet Union invaded the country. The human toll of the conflict is staggering: more than a million Afghans have been killed and 3 million maimed.

Five million (one third of the pre-war population) were forced to leave their country and became refugees. There are still 3.1 million Afghan refugees today, making up 27 per cent of the global refugee population. Most of them live in Pakistan. Another two million Afghans were displaced within the country. In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan.

Most Afghans alive today have seen nothing but war.

Daily life in Afghanistan is miserable. Only six percent have electricity in a country which gets as cold as Chicago in winter. Even in Kabul, the country's capital, electricity comes for only a few hours a day. Traditional wood heating is difficult since not much wood is left in Afghanistan after 30 years of wars and forest devastation. Over 1,000 people died because of cold weather last year.

“About two million state school students do not have access to safe drinking water and about 75 percent of these schools in Afghanistan do not have safe sanitation facilities”, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

There is no law and order in most of Afghanistan. Government barely exists in Kabul. Former warlords are the leaders. That is demonstrated by the fact that “Afghanistan is the world’s largest cultivator and supplier of opium (93 percent of the global opiates market). According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime...” (link). A British daily paper actually reported that “the four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government.”

The Taliban, which has lost its legitimacy due to its brutality, are sometimes remembered by Afghans as those who brought peace to Afghanistan.

Women continue to be the number one victims of the country's 30 years of warfare. According to Malalai Joya, an elected member of the Afghan Parliament and outspoken critic of warlords and war criminals in the government, “the propaganda to the world about liberating Afghanistan and women and fighting against terrorists are lies.” In her speech accepting a human rights award in London, she said:

Our nation is still living under the shadow of war, crimes and brutalities of the fundamentalists, and women are the primary and silent sacrifice of this situation. Justice doesn't exist in Afghanistan. Every sector of life in Afghanistan today is a tragedy, from women's rights to security, law and order and domination of a drug mafia.

Almost two generations of Afghan children have grown up seeing nothing but war, bombing, homelessness and hunger. They are an easy target for those who want to play Afghans against each other, through money, drugs and guns.

Afghanistan was almost self-sufficient in food before the Soviet invasion in 1979. The leftist government had instituted many economic and social reforms. But the Soviets went in for the bait set up by the US to take revenge for the Vietnam War, as bragged about by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor.

That was the beginning of the Afghan tragedy 30 years ago. Since then, the country has not seen a day of peace except for the brief brutal peace of Taliban era.

America trained, financed and equipped Afghan refugees to become Mujahideen to kill the Communist Soviets. Along the way, we created a cadre of fighters, including Osama bin Laden. Then, we supported and financed the Taliban and now we are trying to kill them as well.

In seven years of US occupation of Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai and American influence have remained limited to Kabul and a few other smaller areas. Now it is not just the Americans, NATO and Pakistan which are playing their cards, but India, Russia and Iran also have increased embassy staff and active participation in carving a realm of power in Afghanistan.

If the British Empire in the 19th century could not succeed in occupying Afghanistan despite close to a century of war on and off, and the Soviets failed to do the same during the twentieth century, we cannot win either. Isn't it about time that we Americans in the 21st century rethink the “good war” in Afghanistan? After seven years of going nowhere, it is surely time for a new strategy.
Consider this: if the Soviets, with 120,000 troops at any given time (500,000 total) could not do it, how can we with only 60,000? An increase of 20,000 to 30,000 American soldiers is unlikely to achieve military victory.

And the Soviet Union was just across the border from Afghanistan, not tens of thousands of miles away as America is.

In Iraq which is half of the size of Afghanistan, the U.S. had more than 150,000 troops plus 190,000 contractors, killing one million people and destroying the whole infrastructure of the country.

Afghanistan has 16 percent more people than Iraq. It has a far more challenging military environment because two-thirds of Afghanistan is mountainous terrain suitable for guerrilla warfare unlike the flat plains of Iraq.

Most Afghans have been raised accustomed to war and hardship during the last three decades, unlike the comparatively more urbanized Iraqis.

That is the reason the outgoing commander of NATO-ISAF, General Dan McNeill, publicly requested anywhere between 100,000 and 400,000 more troops for the fight in Afghanistan.

President Obama has been right to pursue diplomacy with countries like Iran and for extending a hand to the Muslim world. However, he is dangerously wrong for pursuing the military path in Afghanistan. It is one that will only exacerbate terrorism, as well as further destroy a nation crippled by thirty years of war. It will lead to the deaths of more American soldiers. And I have no doubt that it will further lower the life expectancy of Afghans, those who continue to suffer the most.

(Abdul Malik Mujahid is a Pakistani-American. He is an Imam in Chicago, President of Sound Vision, and serves as the vice chair for a Council for a Parliament of World Religions. Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence asked me to share this with readers.)

Americans have duty to speak out against government wrongs

2009-04-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay by De Pere High School junior Meghan Monahan earned honorable mention and $250 among 31,000 entries in the “Being An American” contest sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonprofit educational organization based near Washington, D.C. Monahan’s sponsoring teacher, Kelli Schneider, received a matching cash prize. To participate, students were asked to share their thoughts on American citizenship by answering the following question: "What civic value do you believe is most essential to being an American?"

Guest column: Americans have duty to speak out against government wrongs
Green Bay Gazette By Meghan Monahan • Guest Commentary • April 26, 2009

American. Just this one word describes a citizen of the United States, but what this word alone doesn't show is the complexity of America, the different cultures and races that all reside in this giant melting pot.

There are many things that unite us, but there is one unique virtue that is the most American of all and that has played a part in our nation's history since our conception: disobedience.

It may seem odd that a defining element of any country is the frequent practice of defying the government by its citizens. But in America, its people have taken that idea of standing up to the status quo and for what they as individuals think is right and used it to better their nation.

Disobedience against an establishment that is wrong has been a theme in American history since the beginning. Perhaps the greatest example of rebellion is a document, without which we may never have become our own nation — the Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson.

In the world's "greatest editorial," Jefferson frequently goes back to the idea that a country has the right to rebel against a regime that refuses them freedom. One of the most famous quotes from the declaration was the treasonous idea "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive… It is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

Jefferson, himself, was the prime example of a citizen rebelling against his country. But right after he wrote these words instructing people to throw off an oppressive regime, he also had a cautionary warning: "Government long established should not be thrown ... for light reason … But when a long train of abuses."

Jefferson did not want anarchy and believed only when America was truly unjust should a citizen threaten upheaval. In fact, as a politician, and as later a president, he believed in total loyalty to his country.

But it seems that Jefferson's first statement of rebelling against an unjust system has become so engrained into the American psyche that that is how we've come to describe an American hero: someone who stands against the status quo to better the lives of others.

There have been many characters in history who have fought for freedom and tried to "abolish" an unjust system, but I feel I should mention one that stands out in particular for me, Susan B. Anthony. She and the suffragettes yelled for the right to vote, and didn't stop until they had achieved their goal.

Even though Anthony is now considered a great American role model, during the more than 45 years that she campaigned for the right for women to vote, she was mocked for her views. But even though her own government was against her, she soldiered on and didn't care about the societal norms of the day. All she wanted was her voice and the voices of millions of other women heard.

Unfortunately, she would not live to see the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920. Although she died 14 years earlier, she did make it happen, and that is the definition of a true American — someone who feels so strongly their country is wrong that they are willing to disobey their government to do what they think is right.

Loyalty and rebellion were both themes of the Declaration of Independence, and these two seemingly contradictions are evident in modern times. After Sept. 11, 2001, the nation came together in unwavering support of their president and country, demonstrating America's deep patriotism. But soon the nation was torn over an unpopular war.

Those who opposed the war and protested were called "unpatriotic." But really they weren't. Anyone who stands up to what they think is wrong in their country is simply following the example set by our forefathers — that to love one's country is to "alter" it, to make sure it always lives up to the ideals it was founded on. I, like my fellow Americans, have a civic obligation to defy my government if I believe they are doing wrong.

I can personally do what all Americans should do and pay attention to the state of the world and always speak up when the government is wrong, yet always take to heart the sacrifices my forbearers made so I could be free, and thus it is my duty to fight as hard as I can to make sure my descendants have all the rights promised in Mr. Jefferson's document.

Todd Dennis: Board backs general discharge for Iraq war resister and IVAW member Matthis Chiroux

2009-04-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

On Saturday I penned this op-ed which never ran in my local paper about GI Resistance, my planned trip to St. Louis for Matthis Chiroux’s discharge hearing and why war resisters of an illegal war should be supported instead of punished. (For more on Matthis and his refusal of an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up see his website)

So Monday I made the six hour trip from Madison to St. Louis. Illinois is a long state with lots of corn fields and not much to look at. Nearing St. Louis I saw a homemade billboard announcing a Mother Jones memorial. Having not remembered this when i went to St. Louis for the 2007 VFP/IVAW convention. So I scribed a note to look it up online and see if I should stop on the way back. I will be writing about my visit to her grave and those of murdered coal miners who were striking tomorrow.

Upon arrival in St. Louis I went to the Veterans for Peace national office to find out where I would be staying. I was unable to visit during the convention so it was nice to see the house that they have converted into office space. After checking some email we went to the airport to pick up Marjorie Cohn who is the President of the National Lawyers Guild and has a new book out called Rules of Disengagement describing ways military members have refused deployment and providing ways that others can help end the illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After that we went to a reception with members of a local organization, Instead of War, where Marjorie discussed her book and we waited for Matthis and others to arrive. After greeting Matthis, eating some dinner, and discussed his case and the next day. Finally we separated for the night and I went with some folks from the local Catholic Worker house to stay with them.

Tuesday morning we got ready and headed down to the general area of the hearing since there was no sign for 1 Reserve Way since it is just an entrance to the gated base area and has a sign stating what is there. We arrived around 830 when the hearing was scheduled to start and parked in a nearby lot and went to stand witness in support of Matthis at the gates. Shortly after arriving others began to arrive.

About 35 of us were there to support Matthis with his brave decision to request a hearing on his discharge and his conviction that he refuse call-up to participate in an illegal war and to show why the war is illegal. The night before we were told that the hearing was supposed to be open to the public according to regulation 15-6. Others had attempted individually to get in the gate to the hearing but were told it was closed to the public. So we all walked to the gate with five willing to risk arrest in the lead and the rest of us behind. Upon arrival an ICE officer and the private security guards, who knew one of those risking arrest by name, said that he wasn’t told by the Public Affairs official, Lt. Col. Maria Quon, that anyone was allowed into the hearing. After back and forth and calling the NLG people inside three people were allowed to go inside.

The hearing ended around 230 in the afternoon and it was recommenced that Matthis be given a general discharge under honorable conditions. This is the same that the military tried to give him and stop him from challenging the legality of the war so this is a big victory.

That evening Veterans for Peace and Instead of War set up a Winter Soldier event where three IVAW members discussed their military experiences.

Duane Linton of the Central Illinois chapter started off by discussing one of his experiences in Iraq: “
In the aftermath, I am roundly criticized by everyone from the squad- to the battalion-level echelons of my chain of command because I worked on the casualty without gloves. I defended this action by standing up for the value of my patient’s life, but my objections were brushed aside. The life of an Iraqi citizen is openly deemed less important than that of an American soldier.

Later, an in-depth investigation reveals that the men we shot were all farmers who thought we were trying to steal the crops they were moving. A misunderstanding. That’s all it was. I wonder if that matters to Aziz while he walks around with a cane for the rest of his life.

and of his return from Iraq and his dealing with depression and PTSD: I returned home to find the cork working its way out of the bottle. I had panic attacks, outbreaks of blinding anger, and a battle with alcoholism and addiction to Percocet. I overcame these things through personal struggle.

Neither the Army nor any other government agency ever once lifted a finger to try to help me, placing the blame either on me or ‘post-deployment readjustment.’ They said it would go away in a few months and offered me no advice or treatment for the intervening time. They were wrong.

Jacob Crawford followed with an analysis of the neoliberal economic policies placed in Iraq by the Bush administration officials sent to Iraq and how it has affected their economy and how they have resisted the policies.

Finally Matthis finished speaking with the media and talked about the day. He first described what was recommended for his discharge status as General under honorable conditions. He followed up in explaining his basis for refusing orders, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which all military members take an oath to support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. It states: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.. Since the invasion of Iraq was a unilateral war of aggression it violates the UN Charter which is one of the Treaties mention and thus violates the U.S. Constitution making deployment party to committing a crime. Crimes cannot be won or lost only stopped which is why we need to withdraw all foreign forces from Iraq so that the Iraqi people are given self-determination.

In the trial they asked him what if he was activated but kept in St. Louis to which he responded that he would still be complicit in the crime. Marjorie Cohn later came into the trial and discussed the illegalities of the war. His mom followed her as a character witness and described Matthis as a nice person who was trying to do right. In the closing arguments the prosecution claimed that Matthis was doing this to become famous and get media attention. Media attention yes so that other military members have an example to follow and refuse to fight in wars of aggression. Become famous no, protesting doesn’t make you rich and famous, it makes you poor but you are dedicated to what you believe in. His defense stated that he was reminded of watching Muhammad Ali refusing to fight in Vietnam and standing for his principles. The defense’s father was a two time Vietnam veteran who supported Ali and called him honorable for standing up for what he believed in. He ended by saying that Matthis was here to let them know the truth about his convictions and not just to get paperwork for a discharge and that we need a world where people of conscience can stand up for what they believe in. During the hearing Matthis was able to put a copy of Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan and Warrior Writers on the record so now any Army member refusing service can cite these as precedent and reference.
While waiting during the deliberation everyone present discussed their thoughts on what would happen. His JAG lawyer thought they would screw him for doing this because if they didn’t they would be giving the green light for everyone to resist.

He went on to discuss his military experience describing boot camp as a dehumanization experience which leads military members to dehumanize others in the future such as a war time situation or when soliciting prostitutes and degrading women.

You can read his experience here.

He also discussed how he became to be in the military: "I confessed that upon graduating high-school, I was kicked out of my house and did move into a tent in the woods near the center of town, and that shortly after, I did sell a small amount of psychedelic mushrooms I had gathered from a cow field to a few friends and to my step-brother for food money. My step brother returned home to be caught by my father under the influence and did inform him that I was the source.

As a result, I was brought into the courthouse, specifically before my probation officer, where I first met Sgt. Whitetree, the man who would put me in the Army. I was threatened with serious prosecution, though the state had no physical evidence against me. I was told I could be looking at 10 to 20 years in “big boy pound you in the ass prison,” as Sgt. Whitetree put it, or I could enlist for a term in the Army.

While I believed I could beat the charges, I saw myself as a young man with very few options by design. I agreed to enlist, but I spent the weekend in jail anyway.

It almost felt like home sweet home at that point. I’d been on that same block so many times before, and this time, I was staring into a system that I at least thought could surely be no worse than where I was coming from. I was mistaken.

Before I was released from custody Monday morning, the Judge presiding in Lee County, Judge Richard Lane, willfully back-dated my release from probation 30 days so that I could proceed directly to the recruiting station and sign my butt into the Army.

After signing initial papers and attaining waivers for my juvenile marijuana conviction, and before heading to MEPS for the first time, Sgt. Whitetree bought me a system flushing drink so that I would not test positive for marijuana on my initial drug test to get into the Army. At every step it was made totally clear to me that should I choose not to enlist in the military, I would face charges stemming from the incident with my step-brother.

What happened to me was illegal, and I am not alone. I am living proof we do not have an all-volunteer Army, and I’ve met countless throughout my time in the military that could tell similar to identical tales. And if not forced by the police, then because they saw themselves on a destructive path and were in fact seeking a way out similar to me. Or those who really just wanted to go to college, which should be a basic human right for all anyway. Or those with mouths to feed other than their own. Or those who just never knew any other way. Or those who were lied to and told they would serve freedom and justice."

Todd Dennis: Following Conscience Should Not Be Punished, Deserves Support

2009-04-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Op-ed submission to my local paper, The Leader Telegram. They never published it...

In Saturday’s paper you ran an AP article saying that Army Reserve member Kristoffer Walker who went AWOL had “received his punishment” as though he was due punishment for following his conscience. This train of thought leads to people blindly following orders which we learned from the Nuremberg trials is not how military personnel should act. His punishment shows that the U.S. military condemns the act of not blindly following orders which is wrong. After his superiors failed to advance his request for a transfer out of Iraq, Kristoffer made the difficult choice to follow his conscience.

By doing so, Kristoffer showed that he had considered the actions he would be taking by redeploying in support an illegal and immoral war of aggression which has been condemned by just war theory. His act of conscience was not the first and will not be the last as the U.S. seems committed to occupy Iraq and deny the Iraqi people self-determination until 2012 if not longer. Kristoffer joins a group of military members and veterans who say that we must act as our conscience directs and not blindly commit acts.

As a former military member, whose conscience was deeply troubled when the invasion and occupation of Iraq began near the end of my military service, I support Kristoffer and others like Matthis Chiroux. When I was in the military there were no public refusals to deploy and I felt alone to be contemplating such issues. Kristoffer is not alone today as there are thousands who have gone AWOL, deserted, or otherwise followed their conscience in opposition to this illegal occupation. In support of Matthis, I am attending his court martial for refusing an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up from the Army last year in St. Louis on Tuesday and I urge others to support our military members who are strong enough to follow their conscience.

Todd E. Dennis
U.S. Navy 1997-2003
Eleva, WI

Bill Christofferson: Wisconsin nuke shut down again

2009-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Darn, just when the nuclear industry is busy reassuring us that nukes are the wave of the future, one of the state's three reactors is shut down -- again -- for safety reasons.

Journal Sentinel report:

"I wouldn't classify it as an emergency situation," spokesman Mark Kanz said of the problem, "but it is something we did need to get taken care of right away."

That tends to be the case when you're dealing with highly radioactive uranium. You don't want to put it off.

Here's the report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which had to be notified because of "a condition that significantly degrades plant safety."

You won't hear this from the pro-nukers trying to change the state law that has prevented any new reactors from being built here, but this shutdown is simply one more in a long series of problems and shutdowns that have plagued both Kewanuee and Point Beach. Point Beach, in fact, has had two of the four highest safety warnings ever issued by the NRC.

There are better, cheaper and safer ways to combat global warming than nuclear power.

Bill Christofferson is Co-chair of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. This report originally appeared in the blog Uppity Wisconsin.

Todd Dennis: Outline for Speech at April 4th Rally in Madison

2009-04-07T12:21:00.001-07:00

At the request of Steve, I posted the rough outline of my speech for the MAPC event in Madison below with references to my quotes and numbers.

Photo by Dennis Coyier

One year before he was killed, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Forty-three years later we would be wise to recall his words, living in a country that spends over 50% of the budget on military spending according to the War Resisters League budget pie chart.

4973, 4973, 4973, 4973 what is that number? That is the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also over 400 civilian contractor deaths in Iraq and an untold number in Afghanistan, not including the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

What does it mean to be a veteran?
Since October 2001 over 1.8 million military members have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, nearly 20 per cent of them have Post Traumatic Stress. Only about half of those who seek treatment from the VA receive adequate care for Post Traumatic Stress according to a RAND Corporation study.

Recently the news has focused on the nationwide unemployment being at its highest level in 25 years at 8.5%. However, veteran unemployment is around 11.2%.

What does it mean to be Iraqi?
According to a recent ABC poll, barely over a third think the election of Barack Obama will help their country, read the whole report here (pdf). Access to electricity, clean water, and medical care still are big concerns for a majority of Iraq's citizens.

From the President's recent budget summary (in italics), with some questions:

The line between economic policy and foreign policy is now very hard to draw.

When has this line been clear? The U.S. waited to enter WWII until it was attacked while U.S. businesses like IBM and Coca-Cola (Fanta) profited in Germany, shunned those who fought against the fascist regime in Spain, and has consistently used the Carter Doctrine to justify military intervention for the past 30 years.
He wants to improve the medical treatment of wounded servicemembers.

DOD will fully implement a comprehensive TBI registry including a single point of responsibility to track incidents and recovery. The military will expand the number of mental health professionals with deployed units to better channel medical attention to those who need help quickly.

The Budget expands the mental health screening and treatment services offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and focuses on reaching veterans in rural areas. The VA also will increase the number of Vet Centers and mobile health clinics to expand access to mental health screening and treatment in rural areas. In addition, new funding ensures that veterans and their families are informed of these resources and are encouraged to pursue needed care.

Through improved electronic medical records, VA will more efficiently retrieve active duty health records from DOD and enable all VA care sites to access the records of veterans needing care.

Why is the budget not calling for electronic records which will automatically enter a veteran into the VA system upon discharge from the military and automatic intake appointments to ensure that they are taken care of and don't have to go out of their way to get into the VA system and prove that they need help because of the situation(s) they were exposed to?
This Budget supports VA's prompt, accurate, and efficient implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill-providing unprecedented levels of educational assistance to the men and women who have served our country through active military duty.

Will this fall be like most falls, where veterans have to wait months to get their GI Bill payments? I have heard from numerous veterans who had to take out loans to pay bills, buy books, and not end up on the street because the GI Bill payments they were supposed to receive took over three months to arrive. I had to wait months to get my first payments when I started college. The testimony for the Veterans Affairs portion of the budget aired in the middle of the night and none of the veterans organizations questioned if the government was doing enough to ensure that payments were received.

Where is the change that we were promised on the campaign trail?

Yesterday it was announced that another 10,000 troops are most likely going to Afghanistan, after an additional 4,000 was announced last week. That means that Obama will be sending not 17,000 not 21,000 but 31,000 troops to Afghanistan within a year, the majority of which before any drawdown of troops levels from Iraq. These troops are being deployed into what numerous scholarly articles have described as a situation that cannot be won militarily and those same articles have called for a reduction in troop numbers combined with humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people who have suffered through seven and a half years of occupation. Of the 4,000 troops, two units were mentioned as being involved in that deployment, the 10^th Mountain Division based out of Fort Drum, NY and the 82^nd Airborne Division based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The 10^th Mountain is the most heavily deployed unit in the U.S. military and the 82^nd Airborne is not far behind having participated in the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq and numerous other deployments since 2001.

We are here today to say that this abuse of the military, the continued wars of aggression, and the increase in military deployments are not the change that the citizens of the United States of America asked for. We need to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and take care of them when they return. We must also support the Afghan and Iraqi people with reparations to rebuild their war-torn countries as they see fit.

Christina spoke first and outlined IVAW and what we stand for:

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent.

From its inception, IVAW has called for:

Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;

Reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and

Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.

Our membership includes recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.

IVAW's strategy is to mobilize the military community to withdraw its support for the war and occupation in Iraq. Therefore, IVAW is leading the movement of veterans and GIs who are working to bring the troops home now.

Today, IVAW members are in 48 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and on numerous bases overseas, including Iraq. IVAW has chapters around the country and in Canada. IVAW members educate the public about the realities of the Iraq war by speaking in communities and to the media about their experiences. Members also dialogue with youth in classrooms about the realities of military service. IVAW supports all those resisting the war, including Conscientious Objectors and others facing military prosecution for their refusal to fight. IVAW advocates for full funding for the Veterans Administration, and full quality health treatment (including mental health) and benefits for veterans when they return from duty.

OUR TROOPS AND IRAQIS ARE STILL DYING: An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement fromIraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause. Continue reading on ivaw.org

IVAW Attends First Iraqi Labor Conference - Iraqi Unions Announce New Confederation

: In solidarity with the Iraqi people and our goal of helping them attain self-determination, two members of IVAW recently attended the first International Labour conference ever held in Iraq. The conference, held on March 13-14 in Erbil in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, drew more than 200 delegates from unions and federations across Iraq and solidarity delegations from the U.S., the United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and Iran. You can read more about this on our website IVAW.org.

Todd Dennis is a U.S. Submarine Service veteran, a board member of the Clarence Kailin Chapter of Veterans For Peace and the President of the Madison Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, will be receiving a B.S. in Physics in May.

Don Timmeran: The Sparrow Sings March 2009

2009-03-24T12:19:00.000-07:00

Wally Nelson, a long-time war tax resister, once said, "What would you do if someone came to your door with a cup in hand asking for a contribution to help buy guns to kill a group of people they didn't like?" Yet millions of Americans do this each year by allowing the government to take their hard-earned money and give it to the military to kill those whom the government does not like. In fact, this year they will give 54% of each tax dollar or $1,449 billion to the military. (War Resisters League) Only 46% of each dollar will go toward education, health, the environment, housing, general government funds, etc.

The U.S. accounts for 48% of the world's total military spending, more than the next 45 countries combined, and is the number one exporter of weapons to countries that use these to kill or maim their own citizens. Israel, which for the last 37 yrs. has occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and has committed numerous human rights violations toward the Palestinians; is the number one receiver of these weapons. More U.S. aid goes to Israel than any other country, even though Israel's per capita income is as high as many in European countries. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. The recent budget request includes $2.775 billion in military aid for Israel.

In the past 8 years the U.S. military spending more than doubled from $333 billion to a staggering $700 billion when the cost of war is added. The U.S. continues to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq and will probably end up spending the same in Afghanistan since the President has decided to send 17,000 more troops there. Only 0.15% of the U.S. GNP goes toward assisting the most needy in the world. Americans on average give 15 cents a day in gov. assistance to the world's poor while they spend an average of 60 cents a day on soft drinks and $1,000 on the military.

Roberta and I cannot, in conscience, give any money to the military because it causes wars, suffering, torture, bloodshed, disease, pollution, destruction of property and crops, mutilation, waste and impoverishment throughout the world. For this reason we continue to live below the taxable poverty level. If we have any extra money it goes to those who lack the basics of life. It is estimated that as many as 24,000 people in the world die each day because they do not have the means to survive. Also, the 3% federal excise tax you pay on your phone bill also goes the military. Would it not be better to use that 3% instead in assisting those lacking health care in the U.S. and the world?

As long as Americans voluntarily hand over their money to the government to be used for the military they will be controlled by the military and suffer a lack of their basic needs. Change will come when Americans decide not to cooperate with what Dorothy Day once described as "a dirty rotten system." When the cup is passed again for a contribution to buy weapons and train our young to kill please explain that you have better ways of using your money. It is time to say NO to the sacred cow, the U.S. military, and say YES to the often neglected poor and destitute!

---Don Timmerman don2roberta@yahoo.com

Todd Dennis:March 19th - A Day For Action

2009-03-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

Originally published here...

We have now entered the seventh year of the occupation of Iraq. Many people feel the war is over and nothing is to be done. This is far from the truth of the situation surrounding us today.

About six years ago, I was being interviewed for a Quality Assurance Supervisor certification by my boat's (USS Santa Fe – SSN-763) Captain. The backdrop to our interview was a picture from the San Francisco demonstrations where a sign was made saying We Support Our Troops Who Shoot Their Officers and the officers in the wardroom joking about not giving me a gun. As someone who was silently opposed to the invasion of Iraq during my military service and was slowly becoming a pacifist, I felt this comment was inappropriate since I could never commit such an act. Just as we began the interview, the clip from Michael Moore's acceptance speech aired where he talks about living in fictitious times with a war based on lies and deception aired. Today these words which were not widely accepted ring true as we the U.S. is currently engaged in occupying two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, with no plan for empowering the peoples of these countries with self-determination and control of their future beyond the continuing occupation.

Many may feel that talking about the past is not necessary at this point in history, after all we have the first minority president, the occupation of Iraq is ending (maybe), enlistment numbers are increasing due to the faltering economy, and there are many other issues facing this nation. However, we must reflect on the past and ask how we got to where we are today.

Past promises have been made and broken so we must step up and make the current promises come to fruition. A few months before leaving the military, I was told that the mission was accomplished in Iraq and that major combat operations were over. After the war began, I was frantically researching how to avoid supporting an occupation that I felt was unjust. I learned of a Marine who refused to deploy during the first Gulf War in 1991 from a base that was just a couple miles from where I lived in Hawaii at the time. Luckily because the war was declared over, I didn't have to make the same sacrifice that Jeff Paterson did and refuse to deploy with my submarine since our deployment was pushed back later into 2003. I was able to complete my enlistment and leave the military behind with no worry of being recalled like the over 58,000 who have been subjected to stop-loss and been sent to war after their enlistment ended. Now we hear that after over seven years, this program will be phased out, by the end of 2011 just as with the troop withdrawal there is plenty of time for this plan to change unless we demand that it end. We were told that Obama would end the occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home; since he has taken office he has instead shirked off this plan and instead is saying that up to 50,000 U.S. military members will be occupying Iraq until some unknown date . He has also escalated the occupation of Afghanistan with an additional 17,000 U.S. troops with no known plan for their use at a time when NATO countries are being asked to commit 4,000 more troops but few countries stepping forward to continue this occupation .

If we continue to sit back and allow military intervention be the plan for foreign policy and the refusal of self-determination for occupied countries we will continue to live as a country at war. We must take action to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. We must also take action to prevent U.S. aid from causing unnecessary death and suffering as we have seen with the aggressive behavior of Israel over the past years, including the use of banned munitions during the recent siege of Gaza

There are many ways to get involved. This weekend the ANSWER coalition is holding marches in DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on March 21st and there are other demonstrations around the country to mark the somber day called the anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There will be an event at Civic Square/Clas Park in Milwaukee on Saturday. On April, 4th to mark the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Riverside Church, United For Peace and Justice is holding a march in New York City, with local demonstrations planned in many communities like Madison.

It is clear as Obama as said himself that,

"I have always said that I don't think that the LGBT community should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down."

We must build a movement to demand an end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and take heed from past warnings about militarism from Eisenhower's Farewell Address,

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist…. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

and Dr. King at Riverside Church,

"War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations…. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate."

Today we can substitute terrorism for communism and military aggression and occupation for atomic weapons. We must work to end militarism in all its forms in addition to ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

March 19th can be a day of reflection on the past but it must also be a day that we take action to move our demands forward to create the world we wish to see.

Todd Dennis:IVAW-Madison thanks concert attendees and silent auction donors for a successful fundraiser

2009-03-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Joan Baez Concert Benefits IVAW-Madison

True Endeavors, a local promoter that we have worked with in the past to table at local music shows, set up the event and arranged for IVAW-Madison to be the benefactor of $1 for each ticket sold for the Joan Baez concert on Saturday. We were chosen from a list of local non-profits by Baez. Thanks to each of the 810 people who purchased a ticket and attended the show and thanks to True Endeavors for suggesting IVAW as a benefactor.

IVAW-Madison also thanks all of those who helped us hold up a silent auction at the event. Thanks to donations from the following businesses, authors, and artists we were also able to raise an additional $800:

Aaron Glantz: Signed copies of The War Comes Home and Winter Soldier:Iraq & Afghanistan

Capitol City Tattoo: Gift Certificate

Center for Media and Democracy, especially John, Judith and Sheldon: Signed copies of The Best War Ever and Weapons of Mass Deception

Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream: Gift Certificates

Community Pharmacy: Gift Basket

Ear Wax Record Shop: Gift Certificate

Escape Java Joint & Art Gallery: Gift Certificates, being a host for chapter meetings and host for the planning of Madison Winter Soldier

Fair Trade Coffeehouse: Gift Certificates

Film Wisconsin and Scott Robbe: Gift Bag

Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier: Gift Certificate

Mother Jones: Year Subscription

Just Coffee Cooperative: Bags of Coffee, Gift Bag, and Tea

Lazy Jane’s: Gift Certificates

Joan Baez: Signed CDs

Kilmark & Associates: Financial Assesment

La Rocca’s Restaurant & Pizzeria: Gift Certificate

Lakeside Printing Cooperative: Fliers to hand out at concert, IVAW informational brochures,...

Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse: Gift Certificates

Northwood Farm: Gift Certificates for organic beef at their Farmer's Market Stand

Pfister Hotel and Scott Robbe for setting it up: Weekend for two in a luxury room with a Champagne basket

Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative: Gift Certificate

SERRV International: Haitian Handcarved Riverstone Mother and Child

SNAP Fitness: Three Month Membership

Songs for Our Soldiers: a CD to give to each winner in the silent auction

Stephanie Rearick: Signed CDs

Stu Levitan: Signed copy of Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History

Sundance Cinema: Movie Passes

The Dardanelles: Gift Certificate

The Progressive: Year Subscription

During the current troubling economic times it was difficult to be turned away from many other local businesses that were unable to donate towards the silent auction so we are especially grateful to those that could help us out. If you visit any of these businesses please thank them for supporting our work through their donation to our silent auction.

Bill Christofferson: Are more nukes coming to Wisconsin?

2009-03-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

An unusual closed hearing on nuclear power -- closed in the sense that only invited speakers will get to talk -- has been scheduled by two legislative committees for Thursday, March 12.

At first glance, it looks like one more stop in the railroad job that seems to be barreling down on Wisconsin, with the aim of making it easier to build new nuke plants here. There are some consumer and environmental advocates on the list, but they are outnumbered.

It's conveniently scheduled for Two Rivers, away from the population centers, so only the dedicated few will attend. If you possibly can, consider attending to show that you oppose any easing of the laws.

Two Rivers is best known as the home of one of the state's troubled nuclear power plants, Point Beach, which always seems to be under repair. Maybe the committees will get a tour and "briefing about how safe it all is.

There is a full court press on -- excuse the mixed metaphors -- to ease the restrictions on nuclear plants in the state, which have been in place since 1983. One thing that has not changed since 1983 is the lack of a solution to the question of how to safely dispose of high level nuclear waste, although the plants produce more of it every day.

An easing of what has been a de facto moratorium on nuclear plant construction has been proposed as part of a package of changes endorsed by the governor's task force on climate change, which is now drafting legislation based on its report. Even the environmental and consumer advocates on the task force supported the change, as a tradeoff to get some of the other things they wanted in the package.

The Citizens Utility Board and Clean Wisconsin, who are on the witness list, both took part in the task force, as did Forrest Ceel, the union rep who will testify. The "Greenpeace" person listed is one who has switched sides and now favors nukes, which explains why he was invited.

You have to wonder: What time does this train get to Peoria? The railroad job is building up quite a head of steam.

Physicians for Social Responsibility and others hope to rally a group of "Clean Energy Advocates" outside with signs supporting sustainable energy over nuclear reactors for electricity production.
Activists who can be there to support our current state statute can contact Steve Books, email address books24u [at] aol [dot] com. Or just show up. We'll have much more to say on this subject later.

INFORMATIONAL HEARING

Senate Committee on Commerce, Utilities, Energy, and Rail

The committees will hold an informational hearing on the following items at the time specified below:

Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:30 PM
Council Chambers, Two Rivers City Hall
1717 East Park Street
Two Rivers, WI 54241

This will be a joint hearing with Assembly Committee on Energy and Utilities. The Committee will take testimony from the following invited speakers only.

Public Service Commission (PSC)A representative from the PSC will testify to the committees regarding nuclear power in Wisconsin.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)A representative of the NRC will testify regarding nuclear power in the United States.

Dr. Patrick Moore. Dr. Moore is the Chairman and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit Strategies. He is also the Co-Chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASE). Dr. Moore was a founding member of Greenpeace.

Frank Jablonski. Mr. Jablonski is a founding partner of the Progressive Law Group, LLC.

Charlie Higley. Mr. Higley is the Executive Director of the Citizens Utility Board (CUB).

Katie Nekola. Ms. Nekola is the Energy Program Director for Clean Wisconsin.

Dominion Resources. Dominion operates the Kewaunee Power Station in Carlton, WI. A representative from Dominion resources will testify regarding their operations in Wisconsin.

Forrest Ceel. Mr. Ceel is the Assistant Business Manager / President of IBEW Local #2150.

Mark Buss. Mr. Buss is the Business Manager for Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 400.

Sr. Sally Ann Brickner: Fighting Poverty to Build Peace

2009-03-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

“Fighting Poverty to Build Peace”[i] - A Call to Action
by Sr. Sally Ann Brickner

For the World Day of Prayer for Peace, January 1, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI’s message, “Fighting Poverty to Build Peace,” drew attention to the ways that poverty creates social instability and thus threatens peace. He recalled the words of John Paul II that poverty often contributes to conflicts which, in turn, fuel greater poverty. Pope Benedict XVI defined poverty not only as material deprivation but also as marginalization and affective or moral underdevelopment. Considering the fundamental teaching of Christianity, he said that “Every form of externally imposed poverty has at its root a lack of respect for the transcendent dignity of the human person.” (Article 2) Therefore, as members of God’s family, our primary vocation is to care for the least among us.

Our Holy Father described various critical conditions in the world - pandemic diseases, child poverty, and especially the immensity of military expenditures that divert resources from development projects within the poorest nations. He quoted Pope Paul VI who said in Populorum Progressio that “the new name for peace is development.” To be successful, such programs must include at every stage those who are mired in poverty. They know their needs, their culture, and the strategies that will work best.

For Christians, the Holy Father’s message is a call in this New Year to recommit to the Gospel mandate of a “preferential option for the poor.” Two important initiatives of the past addressed the scourge of global poverty. In the 1990s when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were extracting extraordinarily high interest payments from poor countries, the Jubilee 2000 Movement was launched in Great Britain and spread across the globe. The Movement interceded for debt forgiveness and loan restructuring for some highly indebted countries. Another movement was begun by Pax Christi International. Called “Bread Not Stones,” the campaign promoted nuclear, conventional and domestic disarmament so that resources could be directed toward humanitarian assistance. Participation in these two programs was a means of helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting global poverty in half by 2015. So, we might ask, what progress has been made through the movements?

Though some highly indebted countries have benefited through debt forgiveness, the need still exists for many others. Jubilee 2000 has been renamed Jubilee USA Network.[ii] It’s most recent report states that thirty countries are poorer and more indebted than some of those that have had debts forgiven or their payments restructured. So Jubilee USA Network has launched a new campaign called What’s on your heart? People are asked to again study the issues and to write to Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner about addressing the unsustainable debt and economic injustice that impedes the world’s poorest peoples – the bottom billion – from making progress on the ladder of development.

What about disarmament? According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditures have increased by 45% since 1998 to over $1.3 trillion - $202 for each person in the world! In 2007, the USA’s military spending accounted for 45% of the world’s total.[iii] Furthermore, the United States leads all countries in the sale of conventional arms with Israel ranked as the number one recipient of our military aid. (The weapons that the Israelis use in Gaza have most likely been manufactured in the United States.) Many disarmament campaigns exist, including the banning of cluster bombs (the USA has refused to sign this international treaty).[iv] At the United Nations, Franciscans International focuses on disarmament, particularly on small arms and landmines. FI reports that small arms are increasingly available and their use leads to the death of a half million people each year. Landmines cause the deaths of 15-20,000 people each year and maim many more – mostly civilians.[v] Disarmament continues to be an urgent need so that resources can be redirected to humanitarian assistance in ways that minimize the insecurity that stems from poverty.

A new administration took office in the USA on January 20th, presenting new opportunities for change. We can (and must) fight poverty by working with President Obama to forge a new direction in domestic and foreign policy. As he said in his acceptance speech in Chicago’s Grant Park on November 4, 2008, “This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.”[vi] Thus Gandhi’s challenge to us remains: if we wish to see poverty, which he called the worst form of violence, cut in half by 2015, we must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Sr. Sally Ann Brickner

Contact for the WNPJ member group: St. Norbert College Peace and Justice CenterAddress: 100 Grant St., DePere WI 54115Phone: 920-403-3881E-Mail:mailto:pjc@snc.edu
[i] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20081208_xlii-world-day-peace_en.html
[ii] http://www.jubileeusa.org/
[iii] http://www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_trends.html
[iv] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/03/cluster-bomb-treaty-oslo
[v] http://www.franciscansinternational.org/issues/disarm.php
[vi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl135

John Kinsman: Nation's food system nearly broke

2009-03-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

The Capital Times
2/26/2009 12:30 pm

As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their communities.

The government's response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all levels -- from food production to financial markets -- contribute greatly to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in Mozambique in October.

Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business? As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers' purchasing power kept up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers' share is below 40 percent.

"Free trade" and other regressive agricultural policies have decimated farms. We are now a food deficit nation dependent on food imports, often of questionable quality.

Our food system is nearly broke, which is almost as serious as our country's financial meltdown. With fair farm policies, farmers would get fair prices that would not require higher consumers prices. The Canadian dairy pricing system is the best example that proves fair farmer prices can and often do bring lower consumer prices and a healthier rural economy. In addition, excessive middleman profits are taking advantage of both consumers and producers.

As more farmers face bankruptcy, we all face a food emergency. European farmers speak from thousands of years of experience on the importance of family farms when they warn us, "Any time a country neglects its family farm base and allows it to become financially bankrupt, the entire economy of that country will soon collapse. It may take generations to rebuild the farm economy and that of the country."

Despite the magnitude of this food emergency, the "farm crisis" does not appear in headlines, so politicians are not compelled to provide political or financial assistance to something that would likely fail to bring votes. As farmers, we are now only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and have little power to expose and prevent our demise. However, our urban and rural friends could be vital voices and advocates.

Bailing out the financial giants will not solve the financial crisis in the country, but the right policies and stimulus dollars could prevent a severe food crisis by saving farmers and workers. Furthermore, farm income dollars remain in and multiply at least two to four times in the local economy.

Family farmers have proposed fair food and farm policies that can be implemented at a fraction of the present multibillion-dollar policies destroying us. As the Treasury Department develops plans to distribute the bailout funds, the National Family Farm Coalition and others urge it to require banks receiving funds to treat their borrowers fairly by providing debt restructuring as an alternate to home or farm foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Concerned citizens can call the White House, 202-456-1111, or your members of Congress, 202-224-3121, to urge them to support policies that enable farmers to earn a fair market price; request an emergency milk price at $17.50 per hundred weight; provide price stability through government grain reserves and effective supply management; support the TRADE Act to be reintroduced in Congress; increase direct and guaranteed loans to family farmers; and ensure that the food we raise can be marketed to local schools and institutions, providing a better food supply at a fair price. We need these immediate changes in our food and farm policy.

John Kinsman, a dairy farmer from La Valle, is president of Family Farm Defenders, based in Madison.

Steve Burns: Stopping the bankers "Plan B"

2009-02-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin's Kewaunee nuclear plant produces a good profit for its Virginia-based owner, Dominion Energy, but if things were to go terribly wrong at Kewaunee, causing dangerous radioactive contamination in the nearby city of Green Bay, it won't be Dominion picking up the tab. That job would go to you and me, as U.S. taxpayers, under the Price-Andersen Act, which makes the federal government the insurer of last resort for all U.S. nuclear plants. There's nothing at all unusual about this relationship - it's simply business-as-usual for modern capitalism, where profits are privatized and losses are socialized.

Now that the equivalent of a nuclear meltdown has hit the world financial system, the same Wall Street players who reaped billions when the home-mortgage-backed-securities bubble was on the upswing expect business-as-usual to socialize their losses and deliver to them a full, publicly-funded bailout. There's still a chance that we can disrupt their plans, saving ourselves and future generations trillions of dollars, if we educate ourselves about the roots of the crisis and the deceptive means that will be used to sell a taxpayer-funded bailout.

First, some background: The largest banks in the country, themselves the products of a wave of merger-mania that began under the Clinton administration, hold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgage-backed securities. Each security represents thousands of home mortgages sliced and diced in the Wall Street Cuisinart until a single investor can hold a stake in millions of homes, and a single home can be owned by hundreds of investors. Because an ever-increasing number of the home mortgages on which they are based are now in default, some of these securities are literally worthless, and they are all certainly worth much less than their face value. The banks holding the securities aren't willing to sell them for their true value on the open market because each sale would require the bank making the sale to correct its books to reflect the dramatic loss in value of these securities. After more than a few losing sales like this, it would be clear that these banks are essentially insolvent. Just to give a sense of how far the bankers are from facing reality, the lowest price than any bank has offered to potential buyers of mortgage-backed securities is 75 cents on the dollar, and private investors are willing to offer only 25 to 45 cents on the dollar. It's not hard to figure out whose estimate is more likely to reflect the true value of the paper the banks are holding.

And so it's Uncle Sam to the rescue. Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan, introduced in September of 2008, was to have the government buy the toxic paper from the banks, taking the losses off of the banks' books and onto the public balance sheet, potentially increasing the Federal deficit by trillions of dollars. As outrageous as this plan was, Paulson was able to blackmail Congress into handing over $700 billion for it. But this paltry sum is only a small downpayment on the trillions that would be needed for a full bailout, and the firestorm of public and Congressional opposition that resulted made it impossible for Paulson to proceed with the direct-purchase plan with the money he had obtained from Congress, and made further requests of this sort untenable.

And so it's Obama Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner to the rescue, with a Plan B that presents just enough of a difference in appearance from Paulson's Plan A to possibly (or hopefully, if you're a banker) confuse and deflect public opposition. Geithner has been close-mouthed about his plan - his testimony to Congress about the plan was literally "I'll get back to you in a few weeks" - but enough details of the Geithner plan have already leaked into the financial press to give us a good sense of the soaking that the taxpayers are in for. Instead of the direct Federal purchase of bad bank assets that got Paulson in so much trouble, Geithner proposes a "public-private partnership" in which the government would loan investors up to 95% of the full face value of the bank's toxic mortgage-backed securities, and then guarantee the purchasers - the same hedge funds and private-equity firms that got us into this mess - against any potential losses. Geithner's loan guarantees would have the effect of increasing the price that private investors would be willing to pay the banks, but at a huge cost to the public, if the securities turn out to be worth less than the banks claim they're worth - a virtual certainty, at this point.

Just as the controversy about Paulson's direct-purchase plan led Geithner to propose a more indirect approach involving loans and loan guarantees, the nearly-successful Congressional effort to kill the Paulson plan will lead Geithner to do everything in his power to cut Congress out of the loop. In this, the United States Constitution presents a complication, with its requirement that "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law." Geithner will bypass this quaint eighteenth-century provision by using the Federal Reserve as his source of funds. As a recent New York Times report has it, "the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money," will be Geithner's source for much of the $2.5 trillion he now estimates he will need. No Congressional debate needed, no filibusters to contend with, Geithner will simply rely on, as the same Times report puts it, "the Fed's ability to create money, in effect, out of thin air. "

OK, enough background. What do we do about it?

De-mystify the language. Geithner and the bankers will attempt to use technical language to confuse and intimidate us. Don't let them. When you hear "public-private partnership", say, "private profits and public losses." When you hear "loan guarantee", say "gift to the bankers and private investors." When you hear, "Congress doesn't need to appropriate money for this, because the Federal Reserve is taking care of it," say, "We will all pay for this in devalued currency."

There is an answer - it's called the FDIC. The Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation was created more than seventy years ago to deal with the task of remaking insolvent banks. This same agency recently dealt with the insolvent IndyMac bank, by liquidating its assets and firing its management. IndyMac's FDIC-insured depositors didn't lose a dime. IndyMac's much wealthier shareholders were wiped out. If you were a banker, or a bank shareholder, which approach would you prefer, the Paulson/Geithner approach or the FDIC approach? The answer to that question should be obvious. As MIT economist Simon Johnson explained to Bill Moyers:

We have no problem in this country shutting down small banks. In fact, the FDIC is world class at shutting down and managing the handover of deposits, for example, from small banks. They managed IndyMac, the closure of IndyMac, beautifully. People didn't lose touch with their money for even a moment. But they can't do it to big banks, because they don't have the political power. Nobody has the political will to do it.

So you need to take an FDIC-type process. You scale it up. You say, "You haven't raised the capital privately. The government is taking over your bank. You guys are out of business. Your bonuses are wiped out. Your golden parachutes are gone." Okay? Because the bank has failed.

You know enough about economics to stop this. As Professor Johnson's quote above makes clear, the reason our government is headed towards the vastly more expensive Paulson/Geithner approach is not because it's the best approach economically, but because the Big Four banks are extremely powerful politically. Geithner and the bankers are counting on the intimidating power of econo-speak to convince us to "leave this to the experts." That's the worst thing we could do.

Break up the Big Four. Your local bank didn't get itself into trouble trading mortgage-backed securities. Small banks originated the home loans, but the toxic securities that precipitated this crisis were created and traded among a handful of big Wall Street banks. Just four mega-banks (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup and Wells Fargo) will now be the recipients of the vast bulk of our money, if the Geithner/Paulson plan goes through. And what have they done with the billions of dollars our government has already given them? They're using it to buy the small, local banks that invested wisely and stayed out of the mortgage-backed securities game, as a way of improving their balance sheets. This is going in exactly the wrong direction. The Big Four don't need to get even bigger, they need to be broken up. Think of the proper response to the banking crisis as "Roosevelt plus Roosevelt" : Franklin Roosevelt (FDIC-style liquidation and reorganization) and Teddy Roosevelt (aggressive trust-busting.) As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has said, "If it's too big to fail, it's too big to exist."

Put Congress back in the loop. Having the best alternative plan in the world won't help us if all the decisions are being made in closed-door meetings between the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and a handful of bankers. Geithner is going with a Fed-financed approach precisely because he wants to sidetrack any popular opposition that could potentially stop his multi-trillion-dollar gift to the bankers. Call your Congressional representative and demand that they call for a Congressionally-authorized, FDIC-style reorganization and breakup of the biggest banks.

Don't lose hope. As bad as the Geithner plan is, one can only imagine how much worse the Paulson plan would have been if there had been no popular opposition. We've been successful in forcing the bankers off of their preferred "Plan A" and on to their "Plan B." How much farther (and farther up the alphabet) can we push them? With each step, the losses to the bankers and their cronies will be greater, and the cost to you and future generations will be proportionately less. Think about it: how often do you get to save a few trillion dollars with a few hours of phone calls and neighborhood organizing?

More Resources:
For the best hour you're ever going to hear on the roots of the banking crisis, I recommend This American Life's Giant Pool of Money.

Steve Burns: Why Harry Reid loves the filibuster

2009-02-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

Like most Americans, my understanding of the filibuster was - until a few years ago - based entirely on the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In the film, the filibuster was portrayed as a means by which a single Senator, by speaking for hours on end and refusing to yield the floor, could bring the entire Senate to a standstill.

Oh, if only real life were like the movies. In practice, the filibuster - especially in recent years - has become a gentleman's agreement in which the minority party - when it's Republican - need only threaten a filibuster to kill legislation it objects to or to force significant concessions from the majority party - when it's Democratic.

The filibuster is one of the Standing Rules of the Senate, instituted by the leadership of the Senate - effectively the leadership of the majority party - at the beginning of each Senate term. After the 2004 elections, when Republicans still held a majority in the Senate, the Republican Senate leadership threatened to eliminate the filibuster. This was met with strong objections by the then-minority Democrats, who claimed the filibuster was the very foundation-stone of our democracy, even though our founding fathers strangely omitted any mention of it in the constitution. The filibuster, they said, was an important check on the power of the majority and a vital protection of minority rights. The controversy was settled by an agreement to keep the filibuster in place, in return for a promise by certain "Moderate" Democrats (including then-Democrat Joseph Lieberman) that they would join with Senate Republicans to break any threatened Democratic filibusters.

After Democrats retook the Senate in the 2006, Republicans, now the minority, filibustered frequently, under a tacit agreement with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid that they would never actually be required to go through exertions of Mr. Smith's Senator Jefferson Smith. No thermos of hot coffee and wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches for them, Republican leaders merely needed to utter the word "filibuster" and Reid would quickly drop any proposed legislation that didn't have a guarantee of 60 votes. This exercise became so routine that newspapers began to omit mention of the filibuster entirely, simply reporting that a piece of legislation failed because it didn't have the "60 votes needed for passage." An inattentive reader might be forgiven for thinking the Constitution had been quietly amended to require a three-fifths majority for passage of legislation in the Senate.

Why do the two parties have such differing levels of commitment to the filibuster? Republicans, when in the majority, are willing to discard it entirely, and agree to keep it only on the condition that it never be used, while Democrats cling stubbornly to the filibuster, even when it appears to ensure the defeat of their legislative program. Why?

Although Senate Democrats would claim that this difference merely reflects a greater commitment on their part to the principle of minority rights, it's important to understand that Senate Democrats gain significant benefits from the filibuster that have nothing to do with elevated principles.

Since 2006, the fundamental problem faced by House and Senate Democrats has been one of rising expectations, as the base of their party - which helped ensure their regaining control of both houses of Congress - came to make greater and greater demands of them. An end to the war in Iraq, universal health care, more money for schools, greater protections for the environment and quicker action to combat climate change were all grassroots demands that Congressional Democrats had to contend with. If the House and Senate Democratic leadership actually shared these goals, they would welcome this grassroots pressure as a means of strengthening their hand against other, more conservative Democrats and Republicans. But the leadership of the Democratic Party is actually quite far to the right of the mass of voters who put Democrats in power. How then can elected Democrats hold on to power, while also dampening the expectations of their party's base?

One answer is the filibuster. It places Senate Democrats in the enviable position of enjoying all the perks of being the majority party - like committee chairmanships and an increased ability to bring home the bacon - with none of the responsibilities that would normally accompany majority party status. "Want more money for Head Start? Sorry, we'd just love to do that, but those nasty Republicans won't let us - the filibuster, you know," is the standard Democratic refrain.

The filibuster also provides a useful tool to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which must periodically go to those same Democratic voters in search of (admittedly small) campaign contributions. "Sure, we've got 58 Democrats in the Senate now, but if we could only get 60... why, then you'd really see something!" Until the next election, that is, when Democrats once again fall just short of the desired 60. "Darn! Well, there's always next time..."

If the filibuster such a useful tool for disciplining your party's base, why didn't the Republicans have the same attachment to it when they were in power? The answer is that the Republicans simply don't have the same yawning chasm between the views of their party's leadership and the views of the people who put them in power. Look through the Republican agenda of more tax cuts, more war, less environmental regulation and social-welfare spending and more repressive measures against women in need of an abortion: can you find a single point where the average Republican elected official is in strong disagreement with the average Republican voter? And so, when Republicans take power, they simply drive straight ahead for their maximum program, with no need to hide behind the minority party as an excuse for inaction.

What's a progressive voter to do? The first step, I think, is to correctly understand the problem, which is that Harry Reid's goals are not your goals. He's not trying to win the things you want, only to be thwarted by an antiquated and unnecessary rule. He's not "spineless", and "afraid to stand up to the Republicans." He's not lacking in the smarts needed to out-maneuver the Republicans. Any man who is capable of maneuvering his way to being one of the three most powerful people in Washington is plenty smart.

The second step should be to start asking questions, like: "Why was Harry Reid, conservative Democrat, chosen to replace Tom Daschle, conservative Democrat, as Senate Democratic leader?" And, "Why, if it were necessary to replace Reid, would his replacement be much more likely to be Evan Bayh or Ben Nelson than Russ Feingold?"

Now that Democrats hold power in Washington (no matter how much they disclaim that power) it's more important than ever that progressives have a clear understanding of the Democratic Party, what it really stands for, what it can be made to do, and what it cannot be made to do. Not falling for Harry Reid's "But we've got to get to 60 votes!" theatrics would be a good first step in that direction.

Steve Burns: "Bombing had the opposite effect" - a brief history of an "obvious" idea

2009-01-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

A report in the Jan. 23 New York Times on efforts by residents of Gaza to reconstruct tunnels from Gaza to Egypt includes this passage:

Israel has contended that the bombing is a way to drive a wedge between the people and Hamas, but it seems to be having precisely the opposite effect. A tunnel manager in his 30s named Mahmoud said he had felt closer to Hamas since the war, because, however flawed, Hamas was the one group that stood up to Israeli aggression.

Where else have we seen this seemingly perverse response to violence? Google the phrase "bombing had the opposite effect" and you get this:

Hitler's intention was to break the morale of the British people so that they would pressure Churchill into negotiating. However, the bombing had the opposite effect, bringing the English people together to face a common enemy. Encouraged by Churchill's frequent public appearances and radio speeches, the people became determined to hold out indefinitely against the Nazi onslaught

And this, from an eyewitness to NATO's efforts to depose Serbian strongman Slobodan Milisevic through aerial bombing:

I could feel the mood out in the villages – right in Milosevic’s heartland – was that they had turned against him, yet as soon as the bombing began, even my friends who hated Milosevic were going to the bridges being bombing wearing targets and yelling, ‘Bomb me!’ If I had thought the only way to get rid of Milosevic was bombing, I would have supported it. But the bombing had the opposite effect, and it wasn’t necessary anyway.”

And this:
Rather than scare the fledgling civil rights movement into silence, as the Klan wanted, the bombing had the opposite effect.

That last quote is from a report on the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young African-American girls who were attending Sunday school.

My intent here isn't to compare the Israeli military to the Nazis or the Klan (although such comparisons become harder to avoid as Israel escalates the level of violence it uses against the Palestinians.) Rather, my intent is to compare the people under the bombs - to compare the people of Palestine with the people of London, and with the people of Serbia, and with African-Americans living in the south during the civil rights movement.

By now, it should be obvious that people who are subjected to collective punishment respond by setting aside whatever questions they may have about their own leadership and rallying to that same leadership, as their only means of getting back at the people attacking them (George W. Bush, a Supreme-Court-selected President loathed by at least half the country the day before 9/11, was himself a beneficiary of this effect.)

But, if this is obvious to you and me, why isn't it obvious to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, or to the Generals in charge of NATO? I can think of several possible explanations. First, having invested billions in the machinery of aerial bombardment, those in power can't accept the idea that all of this machinery is useless, or even counterproductive. Second, those in power think, "I know that we would respond to heroically to attacks that are intended to break our will, but they are not like us. Not being fully human, the people under our bombs won't respond the way humans typically do in such circumstances." And finally, the most sinister explanation of all: those in power know very well that bombing will have the "opposite effect", but that's the effect they're looking for. In Israel's case, Olmert may want the Palestinian people to rally to Hamas, because Hamas provides a convenient enemy with which to justify continued Israeli efforts to appropriate Palestinian land.

One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe this last explanation. Wars often involve a symbiotic relationship between warring parties, where each attack by the enemy helps to solidify the leadership's hold on its own people. Just as Al Qaeda's attack was a political windfall for George W. Bush, Bush's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was of benefit to Al Qaeda, helping it to recruit new members to the cause, and to spread its organization around the world. No outright collusion is necessary, each side simply vows to "continue the struggle" - heroically, of course.

And, while I've emphasized the wrongheadedness of those in power, we shouldn't let the public off the hook for its instinctive "rally behind the leadership" tendencies. By now, it should be crystal clear that rallying behind George Bush was exactly the wrong response to the 9/11 attacks. Isn't it possible that rallying behind Hamas - or behind Milosevic - is also the wrong response?

In any population, there seems to be a relatively small percentage of people who are immune to the "rally behind the leadership" response. A Pew Research Center poll taken two days after the 9/11 attacks showed President Bush with an 80% approval rating and only 9% disapproval. That 9% (which most Americans today would probably claim to have been a part of) may hold the key to breaking the endless cycles of violence that we find ourselves in. And we desperately need to find a way to inject the idea that "bombing has the opposite effect" into the discussion before the bombs start falling.

Northwoods Peace Initiative: Thoughts on Inauguration Day

2009-01-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Peacemakers,

So the torch has passed and no one can deny that today is truly an historic occasion. I wish for a moment I could accept the hope that a new day has dawned and the national nightmare is truly over. The decades of working for the common good that Barb and I have traveled actually began in Chicago influenced by many of the same circles that helped shape Barak Obama. The Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE) trained many of us who became pastors, educators, and community organizers in the neighborhoods of Chicago. We went about our work with the understanding, in the words of a former professor of ours, "that we can't know God unless we are doing justice." That phrase and the class in which it was spoken (The Biblical View of Oppression) absolutely shaped who Barb and I have become over the years. While it is a long way from the neighborhoods of Chicago to promoting nonviolence, community, and sustainable living in the wilds of northern Wisconsin our mission has never altered. If we can abandon fear and learn to share the common wealth, the world can truly learn to live as one. This is where I retreat from the celebration on the television in our sun room to the bidding of my cyber task master in the cave of an office we have on the north side of the house. The facts on the ground require an ongoing reality check so we don't get blinded by our wishful thinking.

As I watch the pomp and circumstance I cannot get Gaza out of my mind. My visit there in 2003 haunts me as does my trips to Iraq during the sanctions period. My dear friends and fellow travelers Kathy Kelly, Barbara Lubin, and Caoimhe (Kwee va) Butterly are in Gaza now distributing aid, lending support, and filing almost daily reports. My experience of both Gaza and Iraq was that of siege warfare where the attackers surround the besieged, cutting off supply lines so poverty and lack of essential services (medical, sanitation, fuel, electricity) slowly kill the targeted population in an attempt to force capitulation. It is not uncommon to hear people in this situation exclaim how they would rather be bombed and get it over with than to go on watching the suffering and death of the most vulnerable among them-namely children and the elderly. While the House and Senate almost unanimously back Israel's disproportionate assault on people living in one of the most broken, densely populated locations on the planet they fail to see that decisions they have been making for decades have broken the US economy creating conditions that the head of the IMF warns may provoke massive, global unrest even in the "advanced economies". Here in the US local municipalities are preparing military solutions to deal with the chaos of collapse from within. It is all too reminiscent of the decline of so many historic empires.

The popular misconception is that turning over the calendar gives us a new start. We can heave a sigh of relief, set 2008 squarely behind us, and proclaim, "we're not going to do that again!!" In the meantime corporate bankruptcies; housing foreclosures; collapse in non-residential construction, global shipping, and exports; black hole bailouts, and unemployment figures continue to accelerate. The news from Great Britain is even worse because they don't have the luxury of owning the world's reserve currency to give them an unfair advantage. And you seriously don't even want to hear about Zimbabwe. The markets cannot be trusted because of the lack of transparency by the Fed and the US unemployment rate may be as high as 17.5% which makes the military the employer of last resort for many young (and older) Americans. If you get tired of hearing this stuff from your favorite pessimist consider this report from Fortune Magazine from eight of the markets "sharpest thinkers" President Obama can't even begin to level with the American people about what they are facing because the markets demand confidence to be able to work and if people really faced up to the truth of it all they may start rioting in the streets.

I guess I would feel better about the euphoria of the millions who see this as the dawning of a new age if President Obama hadn't deferred to Dick Cheney's comments about 9/11. If you will remember, Cheney's response after the attacks was, "the American way of life is not negotiable." Obama's take on the theme was,"we will not apologize for our way of life." It is precisely our "way of life" that must change if we are to rejoin the global community and become one of many nations looking to a common future instead of the dominant nation consuming more than our fair share of everything under the sun. It is our "way of life" that has looted the past of stored (fossil fuels) primary productivity ( the sum total of energy that strikes the earth on a given day captured by plants during photosynthesis) and equally robbed the future by running up debts that our children and grandchildren will NEVER be able to pay back. All so we can have more stuff than anyone could ever have imagined they would have. This is what must change. And this is what will change whether we like it or not. The only promise I am looking for from the new Administration and Congress is honesty about how our "way of life" is about to become more in line with what the rest of the world experiences. That is the challenge that US citizens must begin to acknowledge. It is not a call to deprivation as much as it is a call to modesty and sustainability. Hope is not wishful thinking for happy endings. Hope is rolling up ones sleeves and getting down to the hard work of building a new tomorrow in spite of the odds that we may not succeed. Our first grandchild arrives next spring so despair or retreat is not an option. It doesn't get any more personal than that. Our hope is that we are up to the task of change regardless of the outcome.

Best regards,
Mike and Barb
anathoth@lakeland.ws
Northwoods Peace Initiative

Steve Burns: Recovering our memory of Dr. King

2009-01-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

A powerful memory of Martin Luther King, long suppressed, came out of hiding on Monday night, at the 24th annual Dane County – City of Madison King celebration.

In the past, I’ve been critical of these events, because the memory of King that is often presented is one that is de-politicized, de-radicalized, and even de-racialized. Speakers have emphasized community service over collective political action, and the message to the Black community has been one of personal responsibility and self-help, an approach I’d summarize as “Dr. King wants you to stay in school.”

I think the man who once called the United States government the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” would probably have something else to say to Black youth besides “Stay in school,” but this idea was seldom hinted at.

But all that changed on Monday night. After seven years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was startled to hear a speaker at our City-County Martin Luther King Jr. observance note that Martin Luther King was strongly opposed to the Vietnam war. For the first time, I heard a speaker refer to King’s opposition to the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” The speaker was Rev. Trinette V. McCray of Milwaukee, president of the American Baptist Churches, and the memory of King that she brought forth was a memory of a political activist, a man who could be passionately angry at his own country, who went beyond demanding personal responsibility from African-Americans to demand justice from the larger society. And, like King, Rev. McCray did not shrink from making audacious demands of our country, insisting that our nation set the goal of “eliminating poverty in our lifetime.”

Why the welcome change in tone? Credit should go to Rev. McCray, of course, but I also wonder if the present moment doesn’t inspire us all to more powerful memories of the real Dr. King. The past thirty years, a bleak time for those who hoped for justice, have been a time for the retrenchment and downsizing of dreams. King made demands on the conscience of our nation, and after Reagan, Clinton and Bush, African-Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the conscience of our nation was dead, or at least deaf. And a message of self-help is the logical response to a society that has made it clear that no other help will be forthcoming.

To have called for “eliminating poverty in our lifetime” when we were still in the depths of the dark days of Bush would have seemed like lunacy. Does it seem so today? A little less so, I think.

First, there’s the possibility of racial reconciliation offered by Obama’s election. As Rev. McCray put it, ”When Iowa happened, we knew then…When that state, with its predominantly white population, handed Barack Obama his first primary victory, we could strongly sense then that something much bigger than what we had ever seen before was at hand." Racism has always been a powerful tool for those who have tried to kill Federal anti-poverty programs in the past; perhaps it’s a less potent tool today.

Our calamitous economic situation is another inspiration for thinking big. When the banks on Wall Street needed money, hundreds of billions of dollars were “found”, in an instant. For years, those who work against poverty have been told “Sorry, but there’s no money.” Paradoxically, at a time of economic collapse, we’ve discovered that there is money – if those in power want there to be money – and that’s a lesson the working poor of our country won’t forget soon.

President Obama has received credit for a new spirit of hopefulness in our country today. But, on Monday night, I saw a new aspect of the “Obama phenomenon.” That community leaders like Rev. McCray might see, in Obama’s election, an inspiration for making new demands on our society, and that we all might be more likely to believe that those demands could be met – well, that’s where I’ll be getting my hope from in the days to come.

Todd Dennis:Does the world support violence as a response in Gaza?

2009-01-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

As the death toll continues to rise, currently put at over 700 dead Palestinians and ten Israelis (seven IDF members), during Israel’s offensive in Gaza we are only left with stories contending that Israel has a right to defend itself and that Gaza provoked the attacks by violating the ceasefire agreement. As Steve pointed out earlier in the week, Israel has even produced graphs which mislead people about the number of attacks launched from Gaza into Israel, even removing the older and easier to understand graph. However as in most conflicts we are led to believe that there is only one side of two that you can be on, support Israel and its right to defend itself or support Gaza and Hamas’ right to attack Israel and use violence against the invading forces. Little is heard about the peace movement whether it be in Israel, Palestine or in the U.S. Many groups exist and they have been calling for a cease fire and a resumption of the peace talks to end the ongoing crisis. So just who are these groups and what are they saying?

Courage to Refuse (CTR) was founded in 2002 during the Second Intifada by members of the IDF Reserve who refuse to serve in the occupied territories but will serve in Israel and support efforts to defend Israel. For the first time CTR has called on Israeli military members to refuse to take part in the artillery shooting and the air strikes targeting Gaza’s civilian neighborhoods. They make this call because of the illegal and immoral killing of civilians that is occurring. For more information on Courage to Refuse check out their website here.

Combatants for Peace was formed jointly by Palestinians and Israelis, who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. Combatants for Peace member Chen Alon recently appeared on the Erev Hadash program on Israeli Channel 1 TV, on January 6, 2009, during the 10th day of the battles in Gaza. Unfortunately the video doesn’t have subtitles.

Gush Shalom was formed in 1993 as an independent peace organization independent of political parties. They participated in a demonstration of some ten thousand protesters from all over Israel marched in Tel-Aviv in a massive demonstration against the war. All four lanes of Ibn Gvirol St., one of the city's main throughfares, were packed full of demonstrators who marched the two kilometres from the Rabin Square to the Cinemateque, chanting and waving banners all the way. However you probably have not heard of this demonstration since it was not covered in the media. The only outlet I could find with coverage was a copy of Gush Shalom’s story on the protests in Worker’s Liberty from the UK.

Veterans for Peace was formed in 1985 and who goal is the abolishment of war. They released a statement saying they do not take the side of any government, but rather take the side of all people in the region who are victims of the most recent outbreak of violence raging between Palestine and Israel.

With these and many other organizations (UFPJ, Stop the War Coalition (UK), International Action Center, …) are calling for an end to the violence in Gaza why are we only told that most Israeli’s support the attacks? In a BBC article, the pro-war voices are double those who are opposed to the attacks but you would have to read the story and not just the headline, “Israelis back Gaza action - for now” to learn that. CNN has a story on the IDF launching a youtube and twitter account calling it a portrayal of the IDF's “humane action and operational success in operation ‘Cast Lead’.” These videos of course will not show the courageous acts of those resisting the ground war such as Huwaida Arraf, of International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who in this video tries to get IDF soldiers to stop firing on civilians. ISM has created a petition of Israelis who call for an end to the violence which is critical of Israeli press for promoting the war like the other media outlets above have and not allowing the voices of those critical to the war to be heard.

The recent violence in Gaza and Israel reminds us that violence is indeed a descending spiral and it only leads to the very thing it seeks to destroy. Taking sides leads us down this spiral and the complex situation cannot be solved but by casting off the hatred, with Israeli and Palestinians rehumanizing their purported enemy, so that a peaceful and long term solution can occur. Just as Combatants for Peace have done, violence by both sides must be rejected so that a just solution can be created.

Todd Dennis is an Outreach Staff member at the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Feingold calls for a ceasefire...in the Congo

2009-01-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

A review of press releases and statements on the websites of Wisconsin Representatives and Senators finds not a single public statement on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, despite the fact that the Israel is the recipient of three billion dollars a year in taxpayer-funded U.S. military aid.

Although Wisconsin representatives understandably focused many of their recent statements and press releases on the current economic crisis and other issues closer to home, our Congressional delegation has not been reluctant to speak out on other foreign policy issues. Senator Russ Feingold, for example, recently highlighted his efforts to call for a cease-fire in the civil war in the Congo – a conflict that the U.S. is not spending billions of dollars to support. A call to Senator Feingold’s Washington office today confirmed that Feingold has issued no statements on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, and the Senator’s staff person was unaware of any plans to issue a statement in the future.

If any of our representatives think that Israel is justified in an attack that has resulted in more than 500 deaths and the bombing of a UN-sponsored school, they should say so. If, on the other hand, they disagree with the Israeli attack, now is the time to speak up. But it is shameful for our elected officials to continue their silence while hundreds of people die under a barrage of U.S.-supplied bombs.

Steve Burns is Program Coordinator for the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

Steve Burns: Adventures in Obfuscation

2009-01-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

The term "information warfare" has been used frequently by Bush administration officials who argue that 21st-century warriors must consider the internet as a key battlefield in the struggle for public opinion. But how does one fight an "information war"? The Israeli Foreign Ministry shows us how.

First, consider the graph below, featured on the Foreign Ministry's website, showing the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past year:

The period from July to October corresponds to an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas. This truce period was honored by Hamas, as the graph clearly indicates. Perhaps too clearly, because the graph above, after being linked to by blogs critical of the Israeli attack on Gaza, has been replaced by this graph:

The underlying data - numbers of rockets fired - are the same, but take out your magnifying glass and observe how the height of the bar for October (1 rocket fired) is now equal to the height of the bar for November (126 rockets fired).

And what happened in November? A November 5 New York Times article, "Israeli Strike Is First in Gaza Since Start of Cease-Fire" reported, “An Israeli security force had entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel and fought with Hamas gunmen”, after which “Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza.” That was November 4. The rocket attacks resumed immediately afterwards. This chain of events is supported by Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories:

Hamas is blamed for the breakdown of the truce by its supposed unwillingness to renew it, and by the alleged increased incidence of rocket attacks. But the reality is more clouded. There was no substantial rocket fire from Gaza during the ceasefire until Israel launched an attack last November 4th directed at what it claimed were Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing several Palestinians. It was at this point that rocket fire from Gaza intensified.

Of course, the game of “They started it!” is always played on morally shifty ground, since each side can always conveniently start the clock ticking at the most recent act of aggression by the other side. But in this case, the facts seem pretty clear: there was a cessation of rocket attacks for four months, this was not reciprocated by Israel, which did nothing during the period to lift the blockade on Gaza, until early November, when Israel resumed armed attacks, followed by a resumption of rocket fire. For a moment, the Israeli Foreign Ministry allowed information to leak out to the public that confirmed this chain of events, at least until they were able to fire up their "fog machine of war."

Steve Burns: The religion of violence

2008-12-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

In an April 2006 New Yorker report on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran, journalist Seymour Hersh quotes a former Bush administration official who explained the thinking behind such an attack: "A sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." The same official added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

I had the same "What are they smoking?" reaction, and you probably did too. Isn't it obvious that aerial bombardment doesn't weaken the public's support of their leaders, but rather strengthens it? Did the British people respond to the Nazi blitz by overthrowing Winston Churchill? Did the American people respond to the 9/11 attacks by forcing George W. Bush from office? Yet these patently obvious lessons of history are lost on the two most powerful men on the planet, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Bush and Cheney aren't the only ones infected with a near-religious belief in the effectiveness of violence in general, and airpower in particular. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak described the bombardment of Gaza that Israel has begun this week as an "all-out war against Hamas," as if the attacks won't strengthen Hamas' credibility with the Palestinian people as the strongest opponent of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. UPDATE: Haim Ramon, the deputy to Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister told the Times of London on Monday that, “The goal of the operation is to topple Hamas."

Just to understand how counterproductive the Israeli attacks on Gaza will be, just consider the context. In Palestine, there is a power struggle between the Fatah party, represented by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which still retains control over Palestinian land in the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls Gaza after winning a majority of seats in parliament in the 2006 election. Israel - and the U.S. - support Fatah and aim to weaken and even destroy Hamas. Yet, in response to protests in the West Bank against the Israeli attacks, Fatah's President Abbas sent baton-wielding police against Palestinian protesters as part of an effort to "coordinate security" with Israel. When the attacks are over, which party will command the greatest loyalty from the Palestinian people? And if the answer to that question is obvious to you, why isn't it obvious to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert?

But Olmert's belief - or Bush and Cheney's belief - in the effectiveness of force is not open to rational analysis, and stands in the face of all evidence to the contrary. It really is an article of faith, as firmly rooted as the Vatican's belief in Galileo's time that the Sun orbits the Earth. Possessing massive arsenals which they have squandered billions on, they simply must believe that all this hardware is good for something.

Combined with their faith in the power of force is a faith in the power of humiliation. Recall that earlier quote from Seymour Hersh: "A sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership..." Yes, the demonstration of our power will humiliate our opponents and, once humiliated, what choice will they have but to submit to our will? This thinking was in evidence at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where humiliation was a common component of interrogations. In Errol Morris' brilliant film about Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure, he interviews one experienced interrogator who was shocked to find that an Iraqi General he had been been interrogating over a period of several days had been subjected to the humiliation of having his eyebrows shaved off. "I never got any information out of him after that," the interrogator said. The guards at Abu Ghraib never considered the possibility that humiliation might increase a prisoner's resistance rather than decrease it.

So, to our diagnosis of the power-mad, let's add in a willful blindness to the possibility of resistance. The U.S. leadership never expected the Iraqi people to resist the U.S. occupation, Israel never expected Hezbollah to mount an effective resistance to its 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and so on. These men, the most powerful men in the world, are apparently unable to ask themselves this simple question: "How would I respond? How would I feel if my country was invaded? If fighter jets destroyed my home and killed my children? If I was imprisoned without charge, stripped naked, and tortured?" There's really only one possible explanation for this blindness, and it's the inability to see one's opponents, even the populace of a entire country, as human. "They" won't respond as "we" would, because they are something less than us.

How widespread is this willful blindness and quasi-religious faith in the effectiveness of violence? I can't speak for other countries, but here in the U.S. it infects all levels of our media and foreign-policy elite. These elites accuse those of us who advocate for nonviolent solutions of being naive, of failing to understand the world's hard realities. But who is more naive, more cut off from reality, than the person who believes in the universal effectiveness of violence?

Bill Christofferson: Giving the gift of peace

2008-12-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

So you say it's below zero out there, and your garage door's frozen shut, and you don't know if your car will start anyway, and even if it does, shopping malls make you so tense and irritable you want to sit down in the aisle and cry, and you don't even have the slightest idea what to get anybody for a gift anyway, and time is running out?

Is that what's troubling you, Bunky?

Well, be troubled no more.

If you're reading this you're already at your computer, so just relax and take care of your holiday shopping needs in the next few minutes.

Consider giving the gift of peace.

With just a few clicks here and there, you can relieve your holiday stress, help make the world a better place, and encourage those who are working every day for peace and justice. Make a contribution in the name of your friends and relatives, and give them a card telling them what you've done.

Aunt Peg doesn't really need one more scarf, and Brother Joe won't be heartbroken if he doesn't get his usual box of golf balls. Really.

There is an endless list of good causes, of course. You no doubt have some favorites. But in case you're coming up empty on ideas, here are links to a few of mine:

Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. A statewide organization with 167 member groups ( listed here), working to end the war as well as on prison reform, immigration, and environmental justice. (Disclosure: I am the co-chair this year.)

Peace Action-Wisconsin, Milwaukee-based, fighting the good fight since 1977 when it was known as Mobilization for Survival.

Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE), working to end firearms violence. (I'm on the board,)

And on the national scene:

Iraq Moratorium. It urges people to act on the Third Friday of every month to end the war and occupation. It's a growing national grassroots movement that operates on a shoestring. (Disclosure: I am part of the national core committee.)

Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a Chicago-based group which did the walk for peace across Wisconsin to the GOP convention in St. Paul, and which will sponsor Camp Hope Jan. 1-19 in Barack Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood to remind him of his progressive agenda. Good people, great cause.

United for Peace and Justice. The nation's largest antiwar coalition, with 1,400 member organizations.

Veterans for Peace. From the website: Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.

Iraq Veterans Against the War. Our most recent group of combat veterans have come to the forefront of the movement to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their courage and commitment are remarkable.

Granted, it won't work for everyone. Uncle Fred, who's still fuming over the fact that That One was elected president, may not want a membership to the Wilderness Society, Greenpeace or the ACLU.

In those cases, consider a charitable but non-political organization, perhaps one working to alleviate hunger or homelessness. There is no shortage of local and national organizations that do good work and are hit by bad economic times just like everyone else.

Here's a site with a list of 100 major charities, just to get you thinking. I'm not recommending you give through this site; chances are a direct donation will help those charities more. But this is a good list to get you started.

And it sure beats crying in the mall.

Have a great holiday season.

Bill Christofferson is co-chair of WNPJ.

Bill Christofferson: Camp Hope to remind Obama of his progressive promises

2008-12-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the Chicago-based group that staged a 500-mile Witness Against War walk to the Republican convention in St. Paul, will sponsor a presence from Jan. 1-19, in President-elect Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. It's called “Camp Hope: Countdown To Change.”

It's called Camp Hope because organizers

earnestly hope his presidency will signal the dawning of long-needed progressive change in the United States.

The 19 days of activities are designed to help build popular momentum behind the progressive goals of President Obama’s campaign -- and, one suspects, to remind him of those commitments.

It's what the left should be doing right now. Instead of assuming the worst about Obama, and giving up on him before he even takes office, progressives should spend their energy giving him and the new Congress the political base and cover they need to pursue a progressive agenda.

We know the forces of darkness will be pushing hard in the other direction. A show of support for progressive policies can help offset that provide a brace for Democratic backbones that are in danger of softening at the slightest pushback from the right.

The Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, with 165 member organizations, has endorsed Camp Hope. There's talk of a bus trip from Madison for one weekend.

Camp Hope's agenda is ambitious. It asks Obama to take executive action on eight critical issues upon becoming President: war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan; housing, full employment, immigration, the environment, health care, nuclear weapons, and torture. The "asks" are designed to be actions which President-elect Obama could take on his own initiative and parallel commitments he made in his campaign for President.

Complete information on Camp Hope, and the specific "asks" of the campaign, is available at the website: CampHope2009.org

Camp Hope opens on January 1 at 1 p.m. at Drexel Square Park, at the intersection of E. Hyde Park Blvd and S. Drexel Ave in Chicago. In addition to daily vigils, community forums related to the "asks" are planned by a number of organizations joining Voices for Creative Nonviolence in sponsoring Camp Hope.

The program so far:

Jan 1, 8am - 6pm Camp Hope Kickoff in Hyde Park

Jan 2, 7-8:30pm Health Care Forum with Dr. Quentin Young

Jan 3, 7-8pm Emancipation Proclamation Pageant- Hyde Park Union Church

Jan 7 6:30-8:30pm Evening discussion on withdrawal of troops from Iraq

Jan 8 7-8:30pm Presentation by Michael McPherson of Veterans for Peace

Jan 9 7-8:30pm Premiere Showing of "War Against the Family"

Jan 10 7-8:30pm Myths and Realities about U.S. War in Afghanistan -A Presentation by Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid

Jan 11 7-9pm Witness Against Torture Forum: From Guantanamo to Streets of Chicago

Jan 15 7-8:30pm Immigration Reform and Workers Rights

Jan 16 7-8:30pm Blackwater Worldwide In Illinois and Beyond: The Dangers of Outsourcing Our Security

Jan 17 10am-noon co-Justice Collaborative- Morning Presentation

Jan 18 8am-6pm Closing of Camp Hope with Candlelight Vigil- Sending off of Caravan to DC

Jan 19 8am-6pm Vigil at the Federal Building to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday

Bill Christofferson is co-chair of WNPJ. This commentary was originally published at the blog Uppity Wisconsin.