Steve Earle Show

Steve Earle was outstanding! Lots of good stories, lots of political sermonizing, songs by Townes mixed with old and new favorites by Steve. Besides being a crackerjack (don't you like that word - "crackerjack"?) songwriter and musician, as well as a most engaging performer, there is so much that he gets right --

• nonviolence
• labor unions
• immigration
• human rights
• energy (you don't burn food -- i.e. corn -- for fuel when there are people going hungry and there's no such thing as "clean coal")
• rich vs. poor

-- and he considers it his responsibility to speak out. During the 8 years of Bush/Cheney, I went to concerts sometimes looking for a word of hope, inspiration, or galvanization. I was usually disappointed by artists who chose to play it safe -- even Arlo Guthrie, for goodness' sake, didn't utter a peep about the Iraq war! Steve is one of a handful of performers makes it his stock and trade, and he does it so well.

High points of the evening? Pancho & Lefty, Good-bye, Jerusalem, Lungs, City of Immigrants … During the encore he announced that he became a first-time grandpa a few days ago and played Little Rock & Roller. (If my kids had been there, they would have checked at that point to see if I was crying. I plead the 5th.)

It was a most satisfying show, and we were in good company with friends Alice and Rob. Here is a list of tour dates, if you're inclined to try to see it. I'd recommend it.

In Memorium: Linda Farley

By John Nichols, writing in Madison's Capital Times:

Dr. Linda Farley did not live to see her dream -- the establishment of a universal health care plan that would provide quality care to all Americans -- come to fruition.

But the Verona physician who sought to heal a broken health care system survived long enough to see the first outlines of what she hoped would be a fundamental reform take shape.

Farley died Tuesday morning, on the very day that press reports indicated President Barack Obama would demand that Congress enact sweeping changes in the health care system before the end of the year, changes that reportedly will include a public option that reformers hope will lead to the establishment of a national health care plan like those now operating in most developed nations.

Farley, an ardent champion of a single-payer health care system run by the government as a public good rather than by for-profit insurers, would have loved to have been a part of the coming debate.

And she would have joined it as she did all others -- for peace, for economic and social justice, for civil liberties, for the environment -- with a rare and remarkable combination of urgency, warmth and good humor.

"I know we have a lot of work to do, so many barriers, so many challenges, so many powerful foes," she told me a few weeks ago, at another rally on another night when a woman of 80 who was battling cancer might have been excused for staying home. "But we've got to do it, so what's the point of getting frustrated. After all, we're right."

Farley, almost always in tandem with her husband and fellow physician, Dr. Eugene Farley, redefined health care activism in Madison and Wisconsin over the past several decades. Bringing lifetimes of medical experience and the calm, cheerful demeanors of the family physicians of another era -- when doctors had the time and the wherewithal to get to know, and love, their patients -- the Farleys made the case for fundamental reform in human terms.

At community forums, in church basements and union halls, on the stage before thousands at BobFest, the Farleys created a constituency for single-payer health care, and they changed the politics of the region. After Gene Farley toyed with a congressional run in 1996 on a health-care reform platform, a young state representative named Tammy Baldwin took up the mantle in 1998 and got elected in large part because she championed single-payer.

Baldwin adored the Farleys, and they her. A few years ago, the congresswoman nominated Linda Farley to be honored as part of the National Library of Medicine's "Local Legends" program. Baldwin, who is no slouch in this department, hailed her nominee as Wisconsin's "passionate crusader for health care reform."

But that didn't stop the intrepid Farley from lobbying the congresswoman, as she did every other official. And when the politicians fell a little short, she kindly -- but firmly -- prodded them. And they listened.

They listened because Farley knew of what she spoke.

Inspired as a teenager growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y., by novels about doctors who cared for the rural poor in Appalachia, she decided to become a physician.

Farley put herself through college and medical school working as a nurse's aide.

It was tough, but she was smart and determined. And she was cheered on by a fellow student, a young fellow named Gene Farley, who eventually convinced her that he shared her dedication to serving those who most needed, but could least afford, care.

Together, they worked at great teaching hospitals and inner-city clinics, on their own rural practice and in neighborhood health centers in big cities. They trained nurses in Jamaica and doctors in Madison. And when she retired, Linda Farley kept on caring for folks for free, making the rounds of local clinics and donating her services.

Farley "credited her two years in the mid-1950s on the northeastern Arizona Navajo Reservation as transforming her attitude and approach to medicine," recalls her biography at the National Library of Medicine. "Fifty miles from the nearest paved road, she and Gene lived in a small trailer and ran an outpatient clinic, providing medical care to the surrounding Navajo community, and also evaluating ambulatory treatment of tuberculosis using a then-new drug."

The experience on the reservation was a powerful one for the Farleys. In fact, several weeks ago, to celebrate her 80th birthday, Farley returned with Gene and her children and grandchildren to Many Farms, Ariz., which is on the reservation. Gene said Linda delighted spending time with patients she had cared for more than 50 years ago.

Another major influence for the couple was their work at Meharry Medical School in Nashville, Tenn., -- the country's largest private, comprehensive historically black institution for educating health professionals and scientists -- where they established a faculty development program.

At the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Linda Farley served as an assistant professor of Family Medicine, and it was in this role that she received a great deal of regional and national recognition, earning the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Task Force Appreciation Award in 1993, the Wisconsin State Medical Society Physician Citizen of the Year in 1995 and the American Academy of Family Physicians Presidents Award in 2001.

But the awards and honors were never more than cause for an awkward smile from an instinctively modest woman. Her many friends saw that smile once more this spring, when the Democratic Party of Wisconsin -- of which she was a loyal if frequently prodding member -- honored her and her dear friend, former state Rep. Midge Miller, for their decades of leadership and activism. Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Joe Wineke got it right Tuesday when he said that "Linda Farley was a beloved member of the Democratic Party who embodied our commitment to health care reform. Linda devoted her career in medicine and politics to helping the medically underserved and advocating for real health care reform."

While she accepted the honors -- especially if they helped advance the cause of health-care reform -- Farley got excited about caring for people, especially when she was volunteering at the South Madison Health & Family Center-Harambee and other free and low cost clinics.

She delighted in her children and grandchildren, and in her husband, Gene, who survives her. She enjoyed the Madison Quaker Meeting, and the hundreds of friendships and projects that came from it and her involvement with local peace and justice groups.

And Farley positively glowed when she was campaigning for single-payer health care, as a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, the activist group that she helped build into an organization with more than 16,000 physician members. "It's my passion," she would say.

Farley once said that "I'd like to be remembered as a good family doctor who really cared for people."

But she always added that "really caring" required doctors to do more than just give shots and write prescriptions. "We have to be active," she said. "We have to take our experience, our knowledge, and use it to shape a better health care system."

And so she did.

Gene and Linda are two of the loveliest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. It seems to me that a fitting tribute to Linda would be to put single-payer health care at the forefront of the struggle for social justice, and make her dream a reality.

In Memorium -- Better Late Than Never

Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine. They don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!”

I don't pretend to be up on all the news about everything, but the fact that the May 23 death of Utah Phillips did not cross my radar screen until today is unusual indeed. I hope that it doesn't mean that his death went mostly unnoticed in the progressive news world. It shouldn't have. Phillips was a true dyed-in-the-wool liberal, the old-style kind, who believed in populist movements, workers' rights, and the power of song to bring about social change. Amy Goodman wrote a lovely tribute to the man. Read it here. Read his obituary here.

Anyway, another of the good ones is gone. I was going to wish him R.I.P., but something tells me that he wouldn't want that. So I'll just say that I'll miss you, Utah, and I'll do my best to keep carrying the banner. We need your message now, more than ever.

Where do I stand?

Thanks to the lovely and talented FranIAm for posting a link to The Political Compass test. Thanks, without a doubt, to my mom for instilling in me such a deep-seated mistrust of authority and people of wealth that my political compass looks like this:
As I've gotten older, for my own peace of mind, I've begun to see the wisdom of going with the flow and not fighting all the time. For example, at work I've become more of a -gasp - team player. However, this should confirm that there are no worries that I'm crossing over to the Dark Side anytime soon!

A Life Writ Large

Today I received an email from a long-time, dear friend telling me that his father had died a week ago. Art Rybeck was not famous. He was not a celebrity ... or was he? If you have some time, watch the videos here -- an award winning documentary made by his daughter-in-law, to find out the measure of this man.





Martin Luther King Day often leads me (and other like-minded people) to wonder, "Where are today's leaders?" The lives of people like Art Rybeck, people whose moral compasses point true North, are one answer to that question. The role models are right here, among us. You don't have to be an orator or command an army. A significant difference is made every day at the grass roots level.

(I am also grateful to Art for his role in producing the incredible Rybeck clan, whom I have loved for so many years!)

The Prophet Reconsidered

The Martin Luther King holiday. As a teacher, I struggle with it every year. How do I teach about this man in a way that doesn't reduce who he was to being a statue, frozen in time? How do I teach about what he gave his life for, without boiling it down to meaningless words like "freedom" or the obligatory writing "I have a dream that ..."? How do I (to crib a phrase from Teaching Tolerance, a publication you should know about if you don't) put the movement back into teaching about the Civil Rights Movement? And make it appropriate for kindergartners?

Today the War Times sent me a link to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Prophet Reconsidered, by Christopher Phelps. This is exactly what I've been seeking, a clear eyed look at the activist King was becoming at the time of his death.

We forget so much. We forget that he was hanging by a thread in 1968 at the time of his death, whose 40th anniversary we will mark in April. We forget that his moral authority had frayed, leaving his fund raising in free fall. We forget that in his final years, he faced not only a rising "white backlash" — the media term for white obduracy in the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods, North as well as South — but resentment from establishment liberals who thought he had executed too radical a turn by opposing a Democratic president and the Vietnam War. We forget that although blacks still looked to him more than any other leader, he was increasingly viewed with cynicism by young militants who derided him as "De Lawd" and thought his nonviolence too tepid for the times. We forget that police agencies from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to military intelligence viewed him as a dangerous subversive, listened in on his conversations, and spread both true and false rumors about him in a concerted campaign to discredit him. We forget that between major addresses he was prone to depression, afflicted by insomnia so severe that he slept only a few hours each night, even when popping sleeping pills. We forget that his close associates were concerned by his anxiety and fatigue, and taken aback by his fixation on his own mortality. We forget the critics who accused him of harboring a "Messiah complex."

By all rights, though, we ought to remember. We are surrounded by constant reminders of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Statues, monuments, and postage stamps bear his likeness, highways and boulevards his name. He has become a national icon. Television ads sample his voice. Presidential candidates invoke the "fierce urgency of now." Ubiquity has come, however, at a price. The nonviolent revolutionary who upended conventional society and sought to induce tension has become an anodyne symbol of progress. The disappointed prophet who spoke toward the end of his life of America as a nightmare is remembered only for his 1963 dream. Once widely reviled, King has become an almost obligatory object of reverence. Even conservatives genuflect before his memory. While dismantling affirmative action, a policy King advocated, they cite King's aspiration that Americans be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. King is a totem: safe, universal, unobjectionable. He is as remote and mythical to schoolchildren as any other figure in the national pantheon stretching back to the founding fathers. His inner turmoil, his public failures, his vocal critics, left and right, have all faded from view, replaced by a fable in which a nation awakens gently to his self-evident dream.

This pattern is not wholly lamentable. It may even be necessary. Had the long campaign waged by Coretta Scott King after his murder not succeeded, had she and her husband's closest associates not surmounted strong resistance and achieved a national day named for him, there might be no annual federal commemoration of the life of any African-American. There might be no occasion for the nation to reflect upon the merit of the dismantling of overt racism in law, public accommodations, and education, as well as the securing of voting rights for all citizens, regardless of race. These accomplishments — understood by King himself as gigantic steps forward — merit our commemoration.

But the ceremonial gloss now overlaid upon Martin Luther King Jr. causes problems. By rendering him immaculate and incontrovertible, sanctification has, paradoxically, left him vulnerable. Cynicism is too easily the reaction when revelations occur about, say, King's sexual escapades or collegiate plagiarism. But King's heroism and place in history never depended on a halo of saintly purity. Brilliant, flawed, controversial, talented, King — as he was first to observe — was always a sinner.

I am inspired to seek out the books Phelps cites in his essay. And I remind myself, that it is not as important how I celebrate this one day with my students, but what I model for them each and every day.

Hollywood Heartthrobs for Kucinich

Yay for Aragorn, a.k.a. Viggo Mortensen!

He flew into New Hampshire to campaign for Dennis Kucinich, gave Sean Hannity what for, and spoke out for impeachment.

At the height of LOTR madness, I thought maybe I could win points with my teen-aged daughter with the impressive revelation that I had seen Viggo Mortensen's unborn child. We had gone to a club to see the band X, fronted by Exene, who was quite pregnant with ... Viggo's child! Cinderbelle was unimpressed. (Kids! I don't know what's wrong with these kids today.)

10 Candles

My friend Madeline is in the Peace Corps in Lesotho. From time to time she emails a public letter, updating her loved ones about her life there. I was so moved by her most recent letter, which I received this morning, exactly when I needed it. I am sure she won't mind my publishing it here:

Candles on my Christmas Tree
Public Letter from Madeline U. in Lesotho, Africa (Dec 2007)

Those of you who've spent Christmas with me may remember I love lit candles on a live evergreen. Here in Lesotho , we're in the midst of summer, and I'm enjoying my second year of a no-commercials / no-pressures-to-buy-anything / no-Xmas-carols-in-shopping malls / no rush-around Christmas. Just the hot sun, farmers plowing with oxen, afternoon winds impregnating dust devils, and fields of aloe and wild flowers.

So my candles will be metaphorical ones – 10 candles on my Christmas tree of 2007:

Candle 1: Lit to celebrate my one year anniversary here. A decision to let go of the fast, rich life -- trading it for a slower, poorer one. Poverty is mean. Poverty wears me down, and it destroys the lives of my neighbors. But I am richer for living amidst struggling Basotho villagers, able to see how simple things mean a great deal, and how complex things intertwine to keep us in a mire of destitution. Most people in this world make the same amount of money per year as do the villagers in Mt. Moorosi . In one mere year, I've grown closer to the realities of people whose earth I share.

Candle 2: Lit for this sad and special year in my family. My brother Dave has been living with a fast growing brain tumor. From this great distance, as I see my sisters Susan and Kate, my brother Will, my mom Barbara, my cousins Donna and Annelle, and many friends and family gather around Dave to support him, I am awed at the strength and love that endures in my immediate family. Thanks to the Peace Corps, I was able to fly home in April 2007 to visit Dave, to say the hardest word in all the languages I've ever studied – good-bye, for now, dearest brother.

Candle 3: Lit for health. Who would have known that two years in the Peace Corps would be the best thing in 30 years for my own health? I climb mountains, eat simple meals, don't stress out with multi-tasking. I have time for everything – reading, visiting, travel. I'm rich in health, wealthy in time, prosperous with sunsets and moonrises, and a millionaire in children who love nothing better than coming into my rondavel to read books or draw with crayons.

Candle 4: Lit to salute the mountains of Lesotho . I traveled a few days ago to Lesotho 's southernmost national park, Sethlabathebe, to visit fellow Volunteer Lizbeth. When I saw the setting of her village, I recognized it from the fantasy I'd had before I got here – the dreams I'd had before I was assigned to dusty, dirty Mt. Moorosi. From her tiny rondavel, Lizbeth looks down upon valleys so deep that mountain peaks rise out of the pool of hovering clouds. I've walked miles and miles of mountain paths this year, visiting remote little schools and sites of other Volunteers. Lesotho 's beauty is awesome.

Candle 5: Lit in admiration for Lesotho 's care of its orphans. With just about the most orphans of any nation on earth, poor little Lesotho has somehow absorbed them – in the bosoms and modest huts of grandmas and aunts and neighbors. Lesotho has few orphanages. For these little people, some sleeping on city streets, all without secure futures, all without the love and identity of parents, please light a candle as well.

Candle 6: Lit for Dintle. This candle sputters a bit, and it's the reason I haven't written for awhile, trying to spare YOU from the horrors of Quthing Hospital. So despite it not being holiday material, let me be honest with you (you are strong enough) to tell you that in the last two months, 14 year old Dintle has been diagnosed as HIV-positive (raped when she was 10 years old), and has an acute case of meningitis. She has shriveled to a mere skeleton, hospitalized for over 45 days now. I fought my way into Maseru once when it turned out the hospital didn't have her blood type, and I traveled in again a month later when the hospital ran out of medicine and her survival hung by a thread.
Nurses in the hospital are so overworked they disappear entirely from wards. When I walk in, looking fresh (and white), neglected patients call to me to adjust their casts or empty bed pans. Dintle can't feed herself – so if I or one of her family members isn't there, she doesn't eat. She has bed sores on her butt and on her ear. She's lost muscle and any ability to move. Seeing the rapid deterioration of a normal, healthy, laughing teen is a knife to my heart.
Helping to keep this candle lit for me is a newly-arrived Peace Corps Volunteer named Jason (Sesotho name – Mokhaele, "son of a chief"). He's been my savior, helping me pay bus transport for Dintle's sister, cousin, and grandmother to make the long trip to the hospital, helping deliver medicines, sometimes just coming in on his own and feeding little Dintle in the twilight hours. You have to love someone like this!
And may the light of this sputtering candle also shine on the hospital's doctors from India – totally overworked – and the Clinton Foundation nurses, who make a real difference, wading into the sea of HIV/AIDS patients. I have new respect for anyone who works in health care – a field reserved for the strong of heart.

Candle 7: Lit for love and loss. When I filled in the Peace Corps application, I didn't factor in long-distance grief. It think it has mostly to do with my age. If we live to be older than 50, we have an increasing number of losses to bear, losses whose pain is as deep as the love was tall. The path of this year has been taken sharp turns as I've heard unexpectedly of the loss of dear friends ~ Mary B., who left a legacy of Dodgeville activism and laughter around her kitchen table. My cousin Doug U., a tower of strength and a deep canyon of reflection. Twinkling-eyed Sven, my fiddling, Swedish host father. No news of dearest Karen T., who shared my years in Japan with such flare. And others…. Grief is hard; grief alone is harder.

Candle 8: Lit for learning. As I look out through my open windows at the upside-down constellations in the starry sky, my mind reels with the mysteries of being a human on this planet. Can we solve problems that we create? Why not? As I fall asleep, I ponder global economics, world peace, village solutions. I wonder what sustains greed, rape, neglect of children. I wonder if I am truly strong enough to pursue a career in international development. Is hope naïve? Is optimism merited? How brilliant the Millennium Development Goals – modest solutions to staggering problems, if only each nation would do its small part. How often I've longed for a cup of good coffee and a conversation with you, dear friend.

Candle 9: Lit for you and those you love, for all your challenges, for all the great things that have happened to you this year. A great hug if you've written me a letter or e-mail, and total understanding if you've been too busy to. That "busyness" -- so American! A national treasure –many things to do. Enjoy the opportunities!

Candle 10: Lit for us, for all of us who share the planet. Who yearn for simple things like a fresh salad, a day of sunshine, a garden of flowers, a child's sweet hug. May we cherish these, support one another, and look with optimism toward a new year.

Madeline

Enemy Combatant

This article warmed me to the cockles of my heart (whatever "the cockles of my heart" are. They're warm.) Lucy Nehrenz, on the occasion of her 103rd birthday, says:

The war is "just plain nuts" and a "big waste of money," she says. As for Bush, he is without the question the worst president we've ever had, she says - well, the worst since Herbert Hoover anyway.

Does she fear death?

Not at all, Nehrenz says, because she's convinced the next world will be much more pleasant - and far less violent - than this one.

Actually, she does have a last wish she hopes will be fulfilled: to still be alive on Nov. 4, 2008, when a new president is elected.

"I don't care if it's a man or a woman, just as long as the person's a Democrat and we can get back to normal life again," she says. "But, oh, the country's such a mess I feel sorry for the person, too."

If I live to be 103, I sure hope I'll be as smart and feisty.

Just Say No To Military Recruiters In High Schools

This article appeared in our local evening paper on September 21. TAME, a counter-recruitment organization, is active in all of our city high schools. One of the things they do is inform parents of the need to "opt out" of having their children's records handed over to the military for recruitment purposes (one of the lovely provisions of No Child Left Behind.) And their efforts are paying off:

This year, 2,232 of about 8,000 Madison high school students withheld their names from military recruiters. [That's more than 1/4, for you mathematically challenged readers.] Four years ago, less than 500 students opted out.

What's happening on the counter-recruitment scene in your community?

Bring Them Home, Pete Seeger

This afternoon I went to see the documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. Pete Seeger has long been a hero of mine. He is a folk music icon, but how many people know what he sacrificed when he stood up to Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the fifties? For seventeen years, Pete was banned from the airwaves in the U.S., both radio and television, because he told HUAC that his politics were none of their business. Seventeen years. Yet he is a man who harbors no bitterness towards his persecutors, but speaks only of love, peace, and understanding.

During the years when Pete was blacklisted, he made his living doing school programs. I was extremely moved by the footage of him singing with children. He preaches a gospel, if you will, of community singing. This is something I have been doing with my students for a few years now, and it is very near and dear to my heart. Listening to Pete talk about it was a huge affirmation of my work.

I wept through a good half of the film. I wept with nostalgia, I wept in celebration of this life writ large, and I wept for the state of our country now.

If there was one thing wrong with the film, it is that it plays things a little too safe. There are allusions to what is happening today, but nobody overtly connects any dots. Natalie Mains is featured talking about Pete's blacklisting, but she makes nary a peep about her own. Bruce Springsteen warns that fascism could come again, not acknowledging that it is HERE and NOW. Pete's environmental work on the Hudson River is highlighted, but nothing about the environmental disasters we are facing as the world warms up. Footage of Vietnam, but no mention of Iraq. I found that disappointing and frustrating.

It was also disquieting when many of the people talked about him in the past tense, as if he was already dead. He is still very much alive.

But critiques aside, this is a film that is well worth seeing if you get the chance.

And I'll end by telling you what I tell my students: Sing. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't or shouldn't. There is power in singing, and that power belongs to all of us, not just the Pete Seegers of the world. (And Pete would be the first person to tell you that.) So often these days, we surrender the music to someone else, to the professionals, and we go around plugged in to our iPods or Walkmen. I tell my students that music is participatory, not a consumer product, and that their voices are an instrument that they always have with them wherever they are. I also tell them that that is the most important lesson they'll learn from me, more important than reading, writing or math. (Take that NCLB!)

Peace.

The General We'd Like To Hear From, Come September …

I found this astounding piece in the latest issue of The Funny Times. Maybe you've seen it before. I hadn't.

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

"I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket …

"It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism …

"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

~From a 1933 speech by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

CINDY SHEEHAN ROCKS

Cindy has more integrity in a fingernail paring than most of Congress put together.
And don't tell anyone, but Chris Matthews is a wienie.

Nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize

But, of course!
Please go here to sign a petition asking the American Friends Service Committee to nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize. I can't think of another individual who has done more over the course of a lifetime (and in Pete's case it's a long one) to further the cause of peace.

You don't have to be a Quaker to sign the petition.

Angelic Troublemaker 3

Before Al Gore became synonymous with global warming, Barry Commoner was warning the public about the delicate condition of planet Earth. Long associated with the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, Dr. Commoner has for decades been agitating to restore ecological balance to the biosphere, whether by outlawing nuclear testing or spreading the practice of recycling. Time magazine once nicknamed him “the Paul Revere of the environmental movement.” (read the whole interview)

I cast my first ever vote for president for Barry Commoner in 1980.

Robert Fisk, again

I've posted before about the journalist Robert Fisk. He has a new book out, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, which my friend Poodle Doc says is remarkable. Here is Fisk in a nutshell, in an article posted today on Common Dreams. And more. He is one of the smartest journalists around, by far. In fact, he's one of just a handful worthy of the job title.

Greg Palast, another fine investigative reporter, has more along the same lines. We would not be teetering on the brink of fascism (and I believe we are) if the Fourth Estate had been doing its job.

(At our house, we have adopted a Palast-coined term: "Clown meat" for food from Mickey D's. Isn't it great?)

Pete Seeger

Now here's a movie that I want to see.

Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea

A Book Report by Suzy
I read this book.
It is really good.
You should read it too.

Mark Kurlansky is an author who takes subjects which are either so esoteric or so ubiquitous as to seem inconsequential, and presents them in such a way as to make it clear that not only are they of consequence, but intimately related to and interwoven with our lives. In the past he has written about cod, salt, and the Basque people. Nonviolence offers a panoramic history of civilization, and how in the context of the many wars the concept of nonviolence has been marginalized and painted as a failure. (Indeed there is not a single language in the world that has a specific word for "nonviolence.") Kurlansky argues that war as a technique for problem solving is the real failure, and that those in power are desperately threatened by nonviolence because it is so effective. He makes the excellent and oft-ignored point that the practice of pacifism and the practice of nonviolence are very distinct from one another. This book is thought-provoking and inspiring. At the end, Kurlansky lists the twenty-five lessons. A wonderful and important book!

The Twenty-five Lessons

1. There is no proactive word for nonviolence.
2. Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.
3. Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.
4. Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.
5. A rebel can be de-fanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.
6. Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
7. A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
8. People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.
9. A conflict between a violent and a nonviolent force is a moral argument. If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, the violent side has won.
10. The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power.
11. The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
12. The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
13. It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails.
14. All debate momentarily ends with an "enforced silence" once the first shots are fired.
15. A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.
16. Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
17. Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.
18. People motivated by fear do not act well.
19. While it is perfectly feasible to convince a group of people faced with brutal repression to rise up in a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance.
20. Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military.
21. Once you start the business of killing, you just get "deeper and deeper" without limits.
22. Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation -- which is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails.
23. Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
24. The miracle is that despite all of society's promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
25. The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

As always, if you wish to purchase this book please do so through your local and independent bookseller. If they are unable to get it for you, you can get it here or you can find just about anything at Powells. (Why not Amazon? Do you like giving your money to union-busting Republican contributors? Me neither.)

So it goes.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

This quote hangs on the wall of an examining room in the clinic I go to. I love it. If my clinic were a subsidiary of the RAMJAC Corporation, it wouldn't be allowed. So it goes.

I'll miss you, Kurt Vonnegut.

Emma's Revolution

I had the pleasure of hearing one of my favorite musical acts, Emma's Revolution, at a house concert last night. In addition to being great songwriters and musicians, this duo -- Pat Humphries and Sandy O. -- are unflinching champions of peace and social justice. Plus, they are just genuinely nice people. (They won my heart forever when, the morning after I first saw them in concert we saw them shopping in our local food co-op, and they recognized my young daughter from the night before and made a point of coming over to say hi to her. That kind of caring makes a big impression on me.)

On what must be a grueling schedule, they criss-cross the country doing concerts coast to coast. They are at every big peace demonstration in D.C. as well as going to the School of the Americas demonstration each year. I highly recommend them if they come to a venue near you.

They have a new album called Roots, Rock and Revolution. I'm partial to one from a few years back called One x 1,000,000 = Change. Check them out here.