February 2005

Peace & Justice

2005 Peace Essay Contest

Without belittling the courage with which [people] have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which [people]... have lived. The stories of past courage... can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each must look into his [or her] own soul.

— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Profiles in Courage

Personal courage is the theme of the 2005 Peace Essay Contest. Each of us is faced with taking unpopular or controversial stands. Practicing listening to one's conscience and acting on one's convictions are important skills for character building.

Sponsored by the Modesto Peace/Life Center, the 19th annual Peace Essay Contest is open to 5th - 12th grade students living or attending school in Stanislaus County.

For the 2005 Peace Essay Contest flyer, contact the Modesto Peace/Life Center, 529-5750 or peaceessay@juno.com

2004 Peace Essay Contest Committee: Margaret Barker, Indira Clark, Pam Franklin, Elaine Gorman, Suzanne Meyer, Deborah Roberts, and Sandy Sample.

Peace Camp 2005 

Mark your calendar for Peace Camp: June 24-26. For 21 years the Modesto Peace/Life Center has hosted a weekend in the High Sierra for people of all ages with good fellowship, lively discussions, the best camp food imaginable. Relaxing, refreshing, even invigorating. 

ACTION: To help plan, phone Ken Schroeder at 526-2303.

UN releases grim report on Bethlehem

Produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the report, “Costs of Conflict: The Changing Face of Bethlehem, December 2004,” paints a picture of life in Bethlehem as nightmarish and hopeless.

Some of the particularly horrifying statistics are:

1. Bethlehem is surrounded by approximately 78 physical obstacles.

2. The formerly thriving business district in Northern Bethlehem near Rachel’s Tomb saw 72 of its 80 businesses close from June 2002 to October 2004.

3. The number of available hotel rooms occupied in Bethlehem from January to September 2004 averaged 2.4%.

4. In 2000, the average number of tourist buses entering Bethlehem was 2,742 per month. In 2004, the monthly average was 138.

5. 9.3% of the Christian population (2,071 individuals in 357 families) of Bethlehem has emigrated out of the city since September 2000

The report states: “Once a bustling cultural and spiritual centre hosting tourists and pilgrims from around the world, Bethlehem has become an isolated town, with boarded up shops and abandoned development projects.”

Find the complete report at www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2004/ocha-opt-20dec.pdf

Eyes Wide Open

By CYNTHIA FOWLER and LILLIAN HENEGAR

California has lost more soldiers during the Iraq War than any other state. Of the 1,361 American soldiers who have died since the US invaded Iraq nearly two years ago, 157 of those lives lost have been Californians. Regrettably, the estimates for civilian deaths in Iraq are inexact and range from 15,339 recorded deaths to a projected 100,000 deaths detailed in a recent Lancet article

To help us contemplate this loss, the Sacramento Friends Meeting (Quakers) along with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is bringing the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit to California’s capitol, from March 29-31, 2005.

This exhibit can open dialogue, provide a place to honor and grieve the dead, and help us deal with a very divisive issue. Because a truly community-wide experience is envisioned, other churches and organizations have been invited to join as co-sponsors; already five have done so.

Created by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), this exhibit has come to be known as the “Boots Exhibit”. Its focal point is a memorial consisting of over 1000 pairs of military boots tagged with the name of each American soldier who has died in the Iraq war. But Eyes Wide Open is much more than that. It is a multi-media, multi-sensory journey through the words, images and sounds of the war. It speaks to us about the costs of war on all sides and presents an important opportunity to dialogue on a divisive and heart-rending issue.

What would Martin Luther King do?

By RUBEN VILLALOBOS

I Am

I am a person with fears and desires.
I am wondering when the world is going to end.
I hear a fist slamming against the door.
I see my dreams turning into reality.
I want my name (RAYA) to be remembered.
I am a person with fears and desires.
I pretend I can never die.
I feel my heart beating when I am scared.
I touch the clouds in my dreams.
I worry how will I die.
I cry when I see animals mistreated.
I am a person with fears and desires.
I understand that death comes to us all.
I say all Mexicans should be treated the same.
I dream of my future family.
I try to stay on the right side of the tracks.
I hope my choices are the right ones.
I AM A PERSON WITH FEARS AND DESIRES.
— Andres Raya, from his eighth-grade composition "The All Most Life Story."

A week before the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, 19 year-old Andres Raya killed a police officer and seriously injured another, before he himself was shot dead by officers in his hometown of Ceres, California.

Over the last week, we have learned a lot about Andres. We learned that he was a marine who served with distinction, home on leave from Iraq. We learned that while he was never directly engaged in battle, he saw with his own eyes the horrors of urban warfare. We learned that he drove the same humvees that so frequently have been ambushed. In fact, he saw a fellow soldier injured in an attack on a humvee in his convoy. There have been reports that he served in Fallujah, and other reports that he didn’t. His family and friends reported that he had nightmares that kept him up at night, and that he “didn’t want to go back to murder in Iraq.” We learned that he might have had ties to gangs, though his friends and family say that he merely associated with friends from his neighborhood. And those of us who saw the horrific tape learned how a well-trained marine kills a police officer responding to danger.

We are in the middle of a war that has so far killed 1365 American soldiers, likely tens of thousands of Iraqis, and now Sergeant Howard Stevenson and Corporal Andres Raya.

In the wake of this westside war zone in my own backyard, I looked for answers to help me deal with this unimaginable act. The answer came in an email from my mother, who shares a birthday with The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To borrow a phrase of MLK’s, my mother brought me into the “incandescence” of Dr. King’s message. In 1967, MLK delivered a speech, entitled Beyond Vietnam, to the Organization of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The speech is one of Dr. King’s most deliberate diatribes.*

MLK’s message: As people of conscience, we must speak out and put an end to this war! We must speak out every chance we get, and not be silenced by fear, paralyzed by patriotism, or immobilized by indifference.

The words of MLK concerning the war in Vietnam so clearly apply to Iraq, that they embody the saying of the philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” All of these quotes are from MLK’s speech “Beyond Vietnam”

• On Apathy: “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.” 

• On Soldiers of Color: “It became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” 

• On the Havoc We Wreak: “They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury.”

• On the Madness of War: “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and a brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak of those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

So how would MLK respond to the tragic deaths this past week? He would probably tell us to stop telling the kids from the Camp in Ceres that their salvation lays in killing Iraqis. He would probably tell us to educate our youth instead of giving them a gun. And he would probably tell us that violence begets violence.

R.I.P., Andres, que en paz descanse.

Read the text at www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm, or listen to the speech at www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/politicalspeeches/mlkagainstvietnam.mp3

Originally published online at: www.nebursworld.blogspot.com

IRAQ: hidden U.S. prisons

By CLIFF KINDY

On January 4, Sheila Provencher and Cliff Kindy met with Haji Ali in central Baghdad. Ali is a staff person for Victims of American Occupation Prison Association and says he is the person in the famous picture from Abu Ghraib Prison showing a hooded detainee standing on a stool with electrical wires attached to his body. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has met several times with members of this group because of their direct connection to Iraqi detainees.

Haji Ali told the CPTers that military base detention facilities hold detainees for long periods to cover up how many detainees the Multinational Forces (MNF) are actually holding. Some media report that the detainee population has doubled since the U.S. assault on Fallujah in November 2004, but the number is impossible to confirm because the prisoners are not in the “official” prisons like Abu Ghraib and Bucca. He also mentioned a glass factory in Ramadi, near Fallujah, that was being used as a detention facility.

Ali then shared a map, dated July 2004, that located U.S. prisons scattered across Iraq. It identifies eighteen prisons, though Multinational Forces (MNF) usually refer only to Abu Ghraib and Bucca Camp, and, sometimes, Camp Cropper, at the Baghdad International Airport. The map identifies these three and notes that they, along with one other prison, have interrogation sections operated by intelligence units.

The map identifies two other prisons as “temporary holding facilities.” Another in Mosul is a youth and children facility. One in Erbil is a women’s prison.

“Many detainees are in prison are there based on false information,” Ali said. The International Red Cross reported last year that the U.S. holds 70 - 90% of Iraqi detainees without cause. With secret prisons and unknown numbers of Iraqi detainees, human rights groups have difficulty monitoring U.S. treatment of Iraqi detainees.

Haji Ali said that his organization has contacts with all kinds of people, even those in the resistance. “U.S. prisons are the best training grounds for the resistance,” he said. “Prisoners feel hopeless when they are mistreated. Will this treatment make U.S. citizens feel safe in Iraq or the Middle East? Kuwait has been the strongest ally of the U.S., but the people there reject the U.S. The United States is fighting terrorism and pushing people into being enemies.”

Haji Ali concluded that, “U.S. human rights organizations and U.S. people must intervene to end the suffering of Iraqis.”

Peace is. . .

BY JEAN ZARU

We talk about peace. We have conferences. But, if we are not inwardly transformed, if we still seek power and position, if we are motivated by greed, if we are nationalistic, if we are bound by dogmas and beliefs for which we are willing to die and to destroy others, we cannot have peace in the world.

And what is peace? Do we perceive it as simply the absence of conflict? Conflict is an inevitable fact of daily life — internal, interpersonal, inter-group and international conflict. Peace consists in dealing creatively with this inevitable conflict. Peace is a process of working to resolve conflicts in such a way that both sides win. Increased harmony as the outcome of conflict and conflict resolution produces real peace.

We greet one another with peace. We pray for peace. We are called to be peacemakers. We are told the mission of the Saviour is to be a deliverer of peace.

• Peace is a state of respect, co-operation and well-being.

• Peace is the presence of social justice.

• Peace is the absence of war, poverty and hunger.

• Peace is the freedom from sickness and disease. It is employment and health.

• Peace is hope for our future and the future of all God’s children and all God’s world.

• Peace is when we have no fear to assemble, to worship, to work, to publish and to say the truth, even to the powerful.

• Peace is Salaam, well being for all, equality and respect for human rights.

• Peace is when everybody feels at home and accepted, without barriers based on age, class, sex, race, religion or nationality.

• Peace is a sense of unity and relationship that compels one to work for justice and equality.

• Peace is action that is dynamic and positive.

• Peace is that fragile harmony that carries with it the experience of struggle, the endurance of suffering and the strength of love.

Enroll your mayor in the Abolition Now!

By MONIKA SZYMURSKA

Abolition 2000 Outreach Coordinator

2005 is the 60th anniversary of the atomic bomb first use. Plans are underway to mark the occasion with a global effort to create a nuclear-free world. The Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagaski have organized the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons and are enrolling Mayors all over the world to join the call for negotiations to begin in 2005 on a treaty for the total elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020.

Abolition 2000, a network in over 90 countries, has launched a global Campaign, Abolition Now! calling on people all over the world to enroll their Mayors and petition their Heads of State to come to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference (NPT) at the UN on May 2, 2005 with their plans for nuclear disarmament. 

The U.S. anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has joined Abolition Now! to plan for a massive demonstration in New York’s Central Park on May 1, 2005, the day before government officials begin the month-long conference to review the future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“Until there is more than a vague commitment to do the planning necessary to eliminate nuclear weapons, all our efforts at non-proliferation will be seen as simply reinforcing a global double-standard,” said Aaron Tovish, manager of the Mayor’s for Peace Campaign. Over 600 mayors – including more than 60 from the United States – have joined the campaign.

ACTION: Urge your mayor to support the call for a safer world free of nuclear weapons, visit www.AbolitionNow.org