MARYLAND UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE, INC. NEWSLETTER

Fall 2002                   VOLUME 13                     NUMBER 3

 

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

 

MUPJ C.B. Highlights……………………... 1

18th  Annual Peace Conference……………1

Tribute to Paul Wellstone…..………..……..1

Self Evident by  Ani DiFranco……….……..2

Pledge of Resistance …………..…………..3

Human Rights Dinner ………………...……3

Recipe for Making Peace…..………………4

Cherokee Philosophy…….…………………4

Renewable Energy in DC..…………………4

Congress.Org………….….…………………5

Fair Trade Chocolate…….…………………5

Collateral Damage………..…………………5

Irradiated Produce Regulatoin……………..6

No Greater Threat…….….…………………6

Amnesty International Statement…….……6

 

Note: All opinions expressed in this publication are those solely of their authors and do not necessarily reflect those of MUPJ and/or its members.  Many thanks to Carol Solomon, Ron Solomon, and Paulette Hammond for helping with this issue.

  

This issue of the MUPJ Newsletter is dedicated to all of the victims of 9-11, those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the fields of Pennsylvania, Afghanistan, Pakistan…to those EMS workers who fought so mightily to save the survivors, to those incredibly courageous members of Congress who stood up to the Administration and said ”no” to the war on Iraq…and finally, an apology to the rest of the world for what our government is doing to them, in the name of “the war on terrorism” but “not in our name.”

 

Highlights of Fall

Coordinating Body Meeting

  The Fall Maryland United for Peace and Justice Coordinating Body Meeting was held on Saturday, September 21, at Ron and Carol Solomon’s.

  Present were: Carol Solomon, Bert Donn, Tony Langbehn, Chuck Frascati, Ron Solomon, Paulette Hammond, Michael Rhodes (guest speaker)

  The agenda was approved with several additions: Under New Business: Elections, Military Toxics, and Spirit House (Tony).

 The minutes of the June15 meeting were reviewed. Tony asked if all the monetary disbursements had been made. Chuck replied that they had.

Financial Reports

  MUPJ, Inc.: Chuck reported that we have about $3465 in our account.

  Institute for Positive Action: Carol reported that we have  $791.26 in this account.

  Peace Conferences:

   2001: we lost about $500

   2002: we lost about $150

Details to follow.  Attendance has slowly dropped from a high of 125 to about 80. However, co-sponsorships have remained high. 

 Speaker: Michael Rhodes, who is with DAWN (D.C. Area Anti-war Network) www.dawndc.net and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) www.endthewar.org  spoke about their activities and the day of action, Saturday, October 26 demonstration in D.C. We agreed to endorse the march.  Ron will let them know.  Bert will send a telegram to Bush opposing the war.  Carol remarked that opposing the war is not unpatriotic.

Committee Reports                                                                

    Peace Essay 2003: One idea we came up with was “Survivors of  Violence.”  Any more ideas?

    Peace Conference 2003: We set the date for Saturday, May 17th.  Paulette will obtain a venue in Columbia.  HOCOFOLA will be principal cosponsor. [See report, following.]

    Newsletter: Fall: [Here it is!]

    Membership: Ron reported that these are trickling in. He noted that Lora Burgess now has two children (a boy and a girl.) Congratulations, Lora!

 Caucus Reports

   Prince George’s County : Bert reported that they continue to hold community forums with Southern Maryland Ending Discrimination.  October 9th is the next one.  Greenbelt is holding Peace Month from the middle of October to the middle of November.  They are still involved in conflict resolution activities.

   MoCo County: Tony mentioned the Brahma Kumaris Center, which is active in teaching meditation.  They also feature activities with the UN and Dennis Kucinich.

   Baltimore Area: There will be a 7th District Candidate’s Forum.  Involved in demos such as: WTO & Women in Black Peace Path on 9-11 along 12 miles of Charles Street (over 1000 people participated).

Unfinished Business

Legislative Issues:

Health Care for All: KKT supports their resolutions, Ehrlich opposes. UHCAN sent a “single payer” questionnaire to all candidates, Ron has the responses, for those that are interested.

Public Protest Pledge; we endorsed Family Relief Act, a national bill for emergency funding

New Business

Elections: We discussed the upcoming elections.

Spirit House: We agreed to donate $25 to them.  They have an arts approach to peace and justice issues. Contact info: SpiritHousedc@aol.com, Ruby Well Sales, The Jonathon Daniels & Samuel Younge Forum for Justice, 737 1/2 8th St., NE, Washington, D.C. 20003

Other donations: $20 each to Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) Erik Gustafson, the Center for Hunger and Poverty, the Center for Poverty Solutions, Baltimore.  Ron will give contact info to Chuck.

Next meeting:

Date: Saturday, December 14, 2002

Time: 10 am to 12 PM
Place: Ruth Bronstein’s, Broadmeade, 13801 York Road, Cockeysvile. Directions to follow, or look at www.mapquest.com

 

 

18th Annual Maryland Peace and Justice Conference

 

The 18th Annual Peace & Justice Conference will be held on May 17, 2003, at Christ Episcopal Church, Oakland Mills & Dobbin Roads, Columbia, MD  SAVE THE DATE!!

The format will be as in former years, with a keynote speaker or panel discussion starting off the day.  Networking sessions will be held next, centering around the topics of Peace, Justice (Human Rights), the Environment, and Youth.  A Plenary session following the networking will allow people to share ideas and information.  A wonderful vegetarian lunch will be served (our specialty!), followed by the presentation of the winners of the Benjamin Peace Awards.  Two series of workshops will be given around topical issues. A MUPJ annual meeting, with elections of officers for the next year, will close the day.

  This year we are pleased to have Howard County Friends of Latin America (HOCOFOLA) co-sponsor and work with us to organize the conference.  If anyone else is interested, or has ideas about workshops, please contact Paulette Hammond at 410-747-3811, or: phamm001@earthlink,net 

 

 

Tribute to Paul Wellstone

by Gary Kohls gkohls@cpinternet.com

  Peace Friends, I just got back from a moving tribute to one of the last true legislative friends of the downtrodden and oppressed, Paul Wellstone, who, as you all know by now, died in a plane crash, with his beloved wife Sheila and his daughter and several of his staff workers, near Eveleth, MN, an hour north of Duluth.

  Wellstone, gleefully regarded as a mortal enemy by the National Rifle Association, anti-environmental groups, anti-choice groups, the Bush administration, Big Business, the Pentagon, and the warmongers, the gunrunners and right-wing conservatives everywhere, was in a tight race for his third term in the US Senate against the GOP's Norm Coleman, hand-picked, heavily subsidized, and campaigned for by the shadowy bunch surrounding Cheney.

  Wellstone was a true friend of the little people and us idealists and it showed tonight. The Mitchell Auditorium on the campus of Duluth's College of St. Scholastica, was packed, on very short notice, with a diverse and sorrowful group of people, including progressive Jews, progressive Christians, feminists, labor union members, Native Americans, people of color, veterans, the young and the old.

  It was naturally a sad event. A lot of tears were shed, a lot of hugs shared, but songs were sung and wonderful tributes were given to this great man, regarded (and generally respected) even by conservatives as a rare person of conscience. Rabbi Michael Lerner, of Tikkun magazine, said

earlier in his email tribute to Paul that the diminutive Wellstone was "a mensch among a Senate filled with mice."

  It occurred to me that the loss to the peace-seeking world could have an impact similar to the 1995 murder, by a right-wing extremist, of Israel's peacemaker Itzshak Rabin. That assassination led to the demoralization and retreat of the Israeli peace effort and the rise to power of the right-wing Likud Party, ultimately leading to the military-imposed atrocities that Sharon and company, with the blessings of the Cheney/Bush administration, are perpetrating against so many innocent Palestinian civilians.

  But there was something this evening that told me that maybe the demise of Wellstone's idealist agenda isn't a foregone conclusion. For tonight, there was a palpable energy that emerged that said to us: "Don't stop now, carry on with the program."

  Paul would surely have said: "Don't mourn too long for Sheila and me, there's a lot of work to be done; so get off your duffs and get on with it." He would have reminded us: "There are impoverished people out there who can't speak for themselves. They still need your voices, so keep on speaking out against their oppressors, and crank up the decibel level for me a bit!"

  After the event, there was a lot of talk about not giving up. The rumor that the Democratic Farmer Labor party might be drafting Walter Mondale to take Wellstone's place on the ticket was received with excitement - a highly probable winning strategy. [Unfortunately, Mondale ran and lost.]

  There was also a lot of talk among the politically astute that whatever the cause of the crash, sabotage or pure accident, the anti-progressive attack ads against Wellstone could backfire big-time against all the GOP candidates in Minnesota and lead to the defeat of many conservatives here and elsewhere.

  So there continues to be reasons for hope for those of us who see the serious threats against democracy from the extremist right-wing, the Christian Fundamentalists, the corporate exploiters and the militarists both here and abroad. We progressives have to keep on keeping on, keep on courageously speaking truth to power and take every opportunity to alert those in the "undecided" groups in the middle of the road that the death of this liberal patriotic hero must be taken as another warning sign of the impending corporate/military complex takeover of our government and the possible demise of democracy as we know it.

  So, starting tomorrow, I encourage everybody, with your friends and neighbors, to get out to the world-wide anti-war, anti-fascist rallies downtown and don't be ashamed of your idealism - flaunt it. Paul would be PeaceFriends, I just got back from a moving tribute to one of the last true legislative friends of the downtrodden and oppressed, Paul Wellstone, who, as you all know by now, died in a plane crash, with his beloved wife Sheila and his daughter and several of his staff workers, near Eveleth, MN, an hour north of Duluth.

 

 


Here it is folks, Ani DiFranco’s poem “Self Evident” in its entirety (http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/poem.asp)
 
yes, 
us people are just poems 
we're 90% metaphor 
with a leanness of meaning 
approaching hyper-distillation 
and once upon a time 
we were moonshine 
rushing down the throat of a giraffe 
yes, rushing down the long hallway 
despite what the p.a. announcement says 
yes, rushing down the long stairs 
with the whiskey of eternity 
fermented and distilled 
to eighteen minutes 
burning down our throats 
down the hall 
down the stairs 
in a building so tall 
that it will always be there 
yes, it's part of a pair 
there on the bow of noah's ark 
the most prestigious couple 
just kickin back parked 
against a perfectly blue sky 
on a morning beatific 
in its indian summer breeze 
on the day that america 
fell to its knees 
after strutting around for a century 
without saying thank you 
or please 
 
and the shock was subsonic 
and the smoke was deafening 
between the setup and the punch line 
cuz we were all on time for work that day 
we all boarded that plane for to fly 
and then while the fires were raging 
we all climbed up on the windowsill 
and then we all held hands 
and jumped into the sky 
 
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast 
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed 
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar 
looked more like war than anything i've seen so far 
so far 
so far 
so fierce and ingenious 
a poetic specter so far gone 
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling 
over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on 
and i'll tell you what, while we're at it 
you can keep the pentagon 
keep the propaganda 
keep each and every tv 
that's been trying to convince me 
to participate 
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution 
perpetuate retribution 
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution 
is still hanging in the air 
and there's ash on our shoes 
and there's ash in our hair 
and there's a fine silt on every mantle 
from hell's kitchen to brooklyn 
and the streets are full of stories 
sudden twists and near misses 
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters 
with tales of narrowly averted disasters 
and the whiskey is flowin 
like never before 
as all over the country 
folks just shake their heads 
and pour 
 
so here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine 
afghanistan 
iraq 
 
el salvador 
 
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation 
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore 
 
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors 
who daily provide women with a choice 
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city 
just to listen to a young woman's voice 
 
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now 
awaiting the executioner's guillotine 
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads 
to find peace in the form of a dream 
 
cuz take away our playstations 
and we are a third world nation 
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son 
who stole the oval office and that phony election 
i mean 
it don't take a weatherman 
to look around and see the weather 
jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks 
and boy did he ever 
 
and we hold these truths to be self evident: 
#1 george w. bush is not president 
#2 america is not a true democracy 
#3 the media is not fooling me 
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation 
i've got no room for a lie so verbose 
i'm looking out over my whole human family 
and i'm raising my glass in a toast 
 
here's to our last drink of fossil fuels 
let us vow to get off of this sauce 
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes 
and find that train ticket we lost 
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river 
and peeked into all the backyards 
and the laundry was waving 
the graffiti was teasing us 
from brick walls and bridges 
we were rolling over ridges 
through valleys 
under stars 
i dream of touring like duke ellington 
in my own railroad car 
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches 
in a grand station aglow with grace 
and then standing out on the platform 
and feeling the air on my face 
 
give back the night its distant whistle 
give the darkness back its soul 
give the big oil companies the finger finally 
and relearn how to rock-n-roll 
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there 
so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets 
and clear the air 
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand 
of someone else's desert 
put it back in its pants 
and quit the hypocritical chants of 
freedom forever 
 
cuz when one lone phone rang 
in two thousand and one 
at ten after nine 
on nine one one 
which is the number we all called 
when that lone phone rang right off the wall 
right off our desk and down the long hall 
down the long stairs 
in a building so tall 
that the whole world turned 
just to watch it fall 
 
and while we're at it 
remember the first time around? 
the bomb? 
the ryder truck? 
the parking garage? 
the princess that didn't even feel the pea? 
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D? 
 
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design 
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?! 
 
it was a joke, of course 
it was a joke 
at the time 
and that was just a few years ago 
so let the record show 
that the FBI was all over that case 
that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face 
and scoping that scene 
religiously 
the CIA 
or is it KGB? 
committing countless crimes against humanity 
with this kind of eventuality 
as its excuse 
for abuse after expensive abuse 
and it didn't have a clue 
look, another window to see through 
way up here 
on the 104th floor 
look 
another key 
another door 
10% literal 
90% metaphor 
3000 some poems disguised as people 
on an almost too perfect day 
should be more than pawns 
in some asshole's passion play 
so now it's your job 
and it's my job 
to make it that way 
to make sure they didn't die in vain 
sshhhhhh.... 
baby listen

hear the train?

 

 

Pledge of Resistance

  Statement by Meg Bartlett EMT-D, emergency medical worker on 9/11, Ground Zero for Peace

  We, a group of 9/11 Ground Zero rescue workers, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- Because we feel we have a responsibility to those we could not save and to those who call us heroes to do everything in our power to make sure that no one, ever again, experiences such horror, here or abroad.

  We, a group of people who ran for our lives on 9/11, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance --  Because we know that we are not the first or only people to run so fast and run so hard all the while knowing that if the buildings don't kill us surely our shattered hearts will.

  We, a group of people who watched as mothers and fathers jumped to their death, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- Because we believe it is unpatriotic to care only for American families. We believe that there is no competition in grief, we know first hand that gut-wrenching loneliness is so powerful that it translates into every language.

  We, a group of 9/11 uniformed public servants, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- Because we resent our President telling us how we represent the best America has to offer while simultaneously with holding funding for our medical treatment. As soon as we are told how thankful he is for all we have done, how proud he is of our bravery, our efforts and suffering are used as the excuse for further violence. Please know that we do not want to be repaid with vengeance and we will not allow it to be perpetrated on our behalf.

  We, a group of people who searched hour after hour for survivors fueled only on hope and adrenaline, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance - Because we are tired. We are tired of being told that if we do not hurry and get back to "normal" that we are letting the terrorist win. While such a simplification of terror insults us, if the game must be played.

  Let us remind you, the terrorists have already won. Not just because we lost so many dear lives, but because the terror of September 11th has actually made people in this country so frightened that they have stopped thinking. Terror makes well-meaning people so scared and so tired that it becomes easier for them to believe what the media and the government tell them, than to trust their own thinking.

  We have become so frightened that we have convinced ourselves that racial profiling "just makes good sense." But of course, it is inhuman. We understand that when fear this intense is used in place of thought we become so defensive that we will set out to kill others before they kill us.

  We, a group of people celebrated for our bravery, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- Because we are scared. We have seen the loss of life that results when two planes crash into two buildings. We have witnessed enough to understand that a nuclear attack would look a lot like Ground Zero --- only it would span for miles -- and the effects would linger for years. We are so scared that we become physically ill with the anticipation of another attack. However we do not believe that war will make us safer.

  We, a group of people have the work experience and skills that would benefit the US Armed Forces, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- for self-preservation. We are made up of laborers, people of color, and recent immigrants. Given our nations' racist and classist military history, our male colleagues will be amongst the first to be recruited for the War on Terror. We have already lost far too many of our coworkers. We are a shattered community but we will not let the rest of our good men be treated as disposables.

  We, a group who gave our best on our nation's worst day, take this pledge of nonviolent resistance- Because we are courageous, resourceful and compassionate, and we know that this world is full of people exactly like us. We are a world of smart, creative, thoughtful, kind-hearted people. And there is simply no reason we cannot build a just and peaceful world.

  And finally, we, a group of 9/11 Ground Zero rescue workers -- Take this pledge of nonviolent resistance -- Simply because we are rescue workers. We do not choose to save only the victims who look like us, share our faith, or were born in our county. Instead we faithfully attempt to save the lives of any one who needs us. Given this, it doesn't make sense that we support the creation of any more causalities here or abroad.

 Not In Our Name, New York National Office:  www.notinourname.net

 

 

Fifth Annual

Human Rights Potluck Dinner

 

Saturday, December 7, 6:30–9:00 p.m.  Free and open to the public.

6:30 Pot Luck Dinner (Bring a dish)

7:30 Speakers, Questions & Answers

Florence Bain Senior Center

5470 Ruth Keeton Way

Columbia, Maryland 21044

For more information call: 410-381-4899 (Leslie) or 410-465-0987 (Bob)

 

 

TERRORISM: State Sponsored Terror and Torture. Its Effects on Civil Society.

 

SPEAKERS include:

*       William Blum

*       Edith Manrique