Editors' Blogs content
Afghanistan & Iraq: Changing Organizing Tactics
By Elea Mihou Fox
In December, President Obama announced plans to deploy 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. There has been little public outcry in response to this decision. The enormous human, economic, and social costs of continuing and escalating war efforts have largely been ignored.
While many people are vocal about their concerns over the state of the economy, the lack of employment opportunities, and the need for greater healthcare access and reform, few have made the connection between military spending
and social programs. Right now the military gets 57% of the Federal Budget, which means that more than half of our taxes are devoted to war – not the public good.
As unfortunate as this is, our national spending and priorities are not going to change until we build a strong social movement that is capable of forcing reform. The WNY Peace Center is one of the largest locally autonomous peace organizations in the country. If we can develop the right strategies in WNY, we could also serve as a model for a national movement that our country desperately needs. To do this, we must change our approach to antiwar activism, and get back to community organizing.
Public opinion has consistently been against the war in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan for years, yet the peace movement is faced with shrinking numbers and insufficient support. In part, this is because the peace movement has been largely using the same tactics since the Vietnam era and has not fully recognized the nation’s changing social conditions or appealed to the next generation of activists.
We put most of our efforts into public events and demonstrations, and place little emphasis on expanding our organizational capacity or developing new ways to build a strong base of informed and active citizens. The Peace, Justice, and Antiwar Coalition (PJAW), of which the WNY Peace Center is a founding member, has decided to change our tactics. Instead of only promoting and collaborating on demonstrations and public events, we are going to launch a grassroots campaign around Afghanistan. Read more »
Wade Rathke, founder of ACORN, promotes book in Buffalo
By Irene Morrison
Last week, Wade Rathke, the founder of ACORN, came to
At a time when much of the left-leaning and progressive media seems to be too negative (though I don’t disagree that there is plenty to be negative about), Citizen Wealth provides an optimistic but not overly-rosy look at the future of the working class. He maintains that we must reframe an argument that has been driven by ideology on the right rather than facts. A key term in this argument is the concept of wealth, which includes income but also includes home ownership, savings, health insurance, and any other asset that has the potential to create opportunities for family members.
Rathke believes that corporations can be pressed to change business practices not only at through legislation but through negotiations with grassroots organizations as well. Citing several examples with smaller community banks as well as corporations like H & R Block, Rathke highlights successes, primarily at the community level, which organizations like ACORN have won.
Kathy Kelly comes to Buffalo
The WNY Peace Center’s Annual Dinner Keynote Speaker shares decades of experience in nonviolent direct action
By Irene Morrison
It’s not easy to summarize Kathy Kelly’s work; she is anything but an armchair activist. As co-founder and coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV at vcnv.org), Kelly’s version of activism is one of civil disobedience and direct action against violations of national and international law, and she is one of those rare people willing to go to jail for what she believes in. Unlike so many activists who quickly burn out, Kelly is still going strong after decades of work for peace and justice all over the world.
VCNV came out of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end UN/US sanctions in Iraq. Kelly and other members of Voices were in Baghdad during the 2004 invasion, after refusing to leave and hoping that they could still help prevent the war. For their humanitarian aid work, which violated the sanctions, Kelly and others faced jail time, but eventually were fined—but refused to pay—$20,000. Additionally, Kelly and Voices were in Beirut, Lebanon, during the end of the Israel-Hezbollah war, providing humanitarian assistance and reporting. They have also spent time in Pakistan with Swat Valley refugees and in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” assault, bringing back the stories of these people to an American public who would often rather not hear about the consequences of their country’s violent actions.
Kelly first became involved in activism through protesting the reinstatement of draft registration and supporting resistors in 1980, and then through “numerous demonstrations, fasts, delegations, and nonviolent direct actions” directed at ending US intervention in Central America. Then, in August 1988, Kelly participated in “The Missouri Peace Planting,” in which she planted corn on nuclear missile silo sites to draw attention to the use of farm-land for violent, highly destructive purposes.
Kelly was sentenced to one year in prison for her role in the action, of which she served nine months. She also served 3 months for direct actions with the School of the Americas Watch (soaw.org) against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA, a military installation which has trained members of brutal regimes in Latin America in violent suppression tactics, including torture.
When asked about her mission, Kelly explains: “Often, our community agrees that my role should also be that of an itinerant teacher. If other groups invite me to speak, or to offer a retreat or teach in a classroom, we try to arrange our calendar so that I can travel, ideally by train or bus. When we plan a nonviolent direct action, one or more of us often commit civil disobedience, and so I have spent considerable time in courts, jails, and prisons. I’ve also tried to nonviolently resist war by going to war zones and living alongside people who bear the brunt of military attacks.” Read more »
Changing Our Protest Mindset
By Irene Morrison
“Well it’s not like it is in France; you get a million people on the streets there and the French government hides in the basement.”—Anonymous Buffalonian
“New Wave” activists—and many of the old wave—believe that street protests in the US are no longer worth organizing. What exactly, they ask, have protests really done to further whatever cause one is protesting against? And when has the public noticed or cared on any specific issue? It’s not easy to point to a specific example in the US since the Civil Rights movement.
Are people more complacent than they used to be? Maybe, but the real problem does not seem to be that protests have lost their innate ability to be effective. It is the approach organizers take to them that can make them ineffective: the lack of anything new or innovative, an unwillingness to challenge authority, the lack of a clear message, and finally the dependence on mainstream media to spread an already unclear message.
The most recent large protests that Peace Center folks were involved in happened on Wall St; they probably drew 3,000 people in two days of protesting (organizers claimed 10,000, but most people I talked to at the protest didn’t believe that figure). The message was muddled—from ending the wars to bailing out students and workers instead of Wall St fat cats, and we received very minimal press coverage. Rival back-to-back protests further spread the coverage and the message; one protest was more militant than the other (not to mention a lot more fun than the other). And the second day of protesting was scheduled on a Saturday when Wall St wasn’t open, so we were essentially protesting for no more than a few news cameras. Read more »
CodePink recalls the true spirit of Mothers' Day
By Elea Mihou
The spirit of today's Hallmark Mothers' Day has changed drastically from Julia Ward Howe’s vision of Mothers' Day and motherhood as a uniting force for peace. Writing in 1870 after witnessing the brutality of the Civil War, Howe called for a meeting of mothers from North and South to stand together in a refusal to allow their sons commit violence for any reason. This Mother’s Day CodePink Women for Peace called attention to the original purpose of Mother’s Day by holding a Peace Walk from Front Park to the Peace Bridge.
Attendants read Julia Ward Howe’s poem and celebrated motherhood and women’s role in teaching nonviolence to their sons and daughters. Participants also signed letters to local congresswomen and men requesting that they observe the spirit of Mother’s Day by voting against funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, acknowledging the unimaginable suffering of mothers in both countries. Read more »