Peace & Justice
Wednesdays, the Peace/Life Center is usually open from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. Bring brown bag lunch. Come by for some coffee or tea or to chat or to see a film or browse through various books and magazines. Beverages will be provided.
OPINION: Vigils to end the Iraq War
By JAMES COSTELLO
On March 19, over 80 people gathered at the corners of J St. and McHenry Avenue in Modesto to vigil and protest the beginning of the sixth year of the Iraq War. Yet, regardless of the political rhetoric from presidential candidates, the end of the war is not in sight.
An incident occurred at the vigil between a Vietnam veteran holding the American flag upside down as a sign of distress, and a recent Iraq War veteran who was offended. Thankfully, in the end, they agreed to peacefully fold up the flag both recognizing that each had a point of view worth expressing and an emotional connection needing exploration. [See the Modesto Bee for the complete story and excellent photos by Adrian Mendoza; http://www.modbee.com/1689/story/244871.html.]
I sometimes ask myself if vigils are worth the effort considering the small turnouts they often produce and the seeming lack of effectiveness they appear to have. This time I was heartened to see such an impressive turnout. More people participating than on most previous vigils indicates a greater public motivation to end the obscene slaughter that is this war.
I need to remind myself of what Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Let’s vigil for justice! Let’s end this war!
Note: Following is a collage of vigil photos, all taken by Paul Rigmaiden, except for the photo taken by Kelly Villalobos of our youngest peace activist, Brenna Esmée Au Miller, at her first vigil at 7 months of age, in the arms of her proud father Lee. Welcome Brenna!
Raising “Tents of Hope” in Modesto for Darfur refugees
By JULIE REUBEN
The Modesto community is invited to a “Paint the Tent Festival” on Saturday, April 12, 2008, at College Avenue Congregational Church, United Church of Christ. This fun, creative, day-long event will be held from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, with 2-hour painting sessions. Individuals and groups will be decorating sections of the canvas tent with images of peace, hope, compassion and global solidarity. Children are welcome!
The purpose of “The Tents of Hope” project is to create awareness about the plight of the Darfuri people and the need for international action by bringing together communities across the country to paint canvas refugee tents with signs of peace and hope. All of the painted tents will be on display at a national event in Washington D.C. in October 2008, as a focal point for education, advocacy and fundraising for humanitarian assistance.
The people of Darfur, in the western part of Sudan, have been suffering from poverty, drought, famine, ethnic violence, and genocide since a bloody conflict began there in early 2003. In the past 5 years, it is estimated that close to half a million people have been killed and over 2 and a half million displaced people are living in refugee camps after the destruction of their villages.
These facts are so overwhelming and discouraging that it is natural to feel hopeless and helpless. But across the country, groups of concerned people are making a difference by joining the “The Tents of Hope” community action project to help the people of Darfur. So far, 100 cities across the U.S. are responding by creating tents that are both unique works of art and a visible expression of the conscience of local communities.
This
year long project began in June 2007, through a partnership between the United
Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the organization
“Dear Sudan.” The founder of “Dear Sudan,” Tim Nonn, spoke about the Sudan
crisis recently at College Avenue Congregational Church (CACC) and was the guest
speaker at Peace Camp, 2006. Other organizations participating in “The Tents of
Hope” include Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief, Unitarian
Universalist Assoc., American Jewish World Service, and many others.
The 25 California cities participating include Bakersfield, Berkeley, Davis, Fremont, Hayward, Los Angeles, Modesto, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco. On April 24, there will be a “Gathering of the Tents” event on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento.
In addition to the “Paint the Tent Festival,” a related overnight youth event called “Displace Me” will be held from Friday, May 2, to Saturday, May 3, at CACC, 1341 College Ave. High school students and young adults will be experiencing the plight of displaced refugees by camping out in cardboard boxes set up around the painted “Tent of Hope.” For more information, please contact Rob Brittain (email: cyc@cacc-ucc.org; phone: 522-7244)
ACTION: Learn more about “The Tents of Hope.” See: http://www.tentsofhope.org/
(email: merlysjbosch@yahoo.com; phone: 522-6451.)
Gandhi of the West Bank
By ROBERT HIRSCHFIELD
Abdullah Abu Rahma is a child of the First Intifada, an orphan of the Second Intifida, and a man central to the rebirth of Palestinian nonviolence on the West Bank.
This thirty-six-year-old high school teacher in Bil’in, a town on the West Bank, organizes weekly nonviolent protests against Israel’s separation wall. Every Friday for the past three years, Palestinians—together with Israeli dissidents and young solidarity activists from overseas—have been climbing the hillside where Israel has erected its fence. Soldiers routinely turn them back with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. Abu Rahma estimates that 800 people have been wounded since the protests began.
But this has not deterred the protestors, who keep coming back. Once they came with a bride and groom in tow who took their marriage vows as resisters of the wall. Another time they taped their mouths shut and on their bodies they had written the names of countries whose governments condone the wall.
Except for periodic stone throwing, reminiscent of the First Intifada, the protest in Bil’in is remarkable for its discipline.
After one Friday protest, featuring a squad of bikers all the way from Tel Aviv, the demonstrators gathered on the floor of Abu Rahma’s house. He managed to slip away from the crowd to a quiet upper room.
He does not draw you in with any magnetism, but his quiet defiance exerts its own power.
What Anne Lamott said of Grace Paley in Traveling Mercies applies to him. She reminds me of a durable desert shrub that the wind just can’t blow over.”
Abu Rahma is quick to point out that the nonviolent resistance at Bil’in is very much in the Palestinian tradition.
“During the ’36 uprising, workers staged a general strike that lasted six months, “ he says.
Then he discusses the First Intifada. “Workers refused to go to their jobs in Israel,” he says. “Students went on strike, In Beit Sahout, people refused to pay taxes to Israel. There was a boycott of Israeli textiles. Nonviolence gave Palestinians a chance to get involved in the resistance in many different ways.”
That has changed now, he laments: “To be part of the Second Intifida, you have to be a part of some militia.”
But not in Bil’in.
Its creativity has proven vexing to the Israelis.
“On May 4, 2005, the Israelis told us that they would uproot our olive trees in the morning,” he says. “We defied them by chaining ourselves to the olive trees, saying to them, ‘If you uproot our olive trees, you must uproot our lives.’ The Israeli press was there. Al Jazeera was there. People woke up in the morning and saw us on television.”
The Israelis arrested Abu Rahma three times after that action. But thanks to campaigns on the Internet and to progressive supporters in the Knesset, he won quick release.
The Bil’in resistance can take credit for one of the few tangible triumphs won by Palestinians fighting the wall. In September 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the wall at Bil’in was inessential to Israel’s security, and the construction of it had to be discontinued. Farmers whose land was seized to build the final, forbidden segment of the barrier would get back their land.
“The ruling meant we achieved our goal of getting the building of the wall stopped,” he says. But it was not a total victory, he explains, because the court decision gives back to the farmers less than half the land the Israelis took to build the wall.
“By continuing to resist, we intend to get the rest back,” he says. “If we hadn’t used nonviolent methods, we wouldn’t have gotten anything back.”
Nonviolence is still met with skepticism by many Palestinians. As a group of women told Amira Hass of Haaretz: “Nonviolent? Do the Israelis recognize such a thing as nonviolence?”
But due in part to Abu Rahma’s efforts, and in part to the horror over the fratricidal bloodletting between Hamas and Fatah, receptivity to nonviolence is on the rise. The leaders of two nonviolent groups, Lucy Nuseibah of MEND (Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy) and Sami Awad of the Holy Land Trust, both claim that they get more requests for nonviolent trainings than they have trainers to go around.
“When I look out my window,” Abu Rahma says, “I see soldiers and the wall, and the trees behind the wall that used to be ours. When harvest time comes, my children say to me, “We don’t want to come with you to the harvest, father. We are afraid of the soldiers.”
His words sadden him. He is silent for a minute or two.
“What Gandhi achieved in his country,” he then says, “I want to achieve in mine.”
Reprinted with permission from The Progressive, March, 2008.
