From the editor's desk

"The poor got a little poorer, the rich got a lot richer, and the large group in the middle emerged slightly worse off than when the decade began" (New York Times, 8/31/01). Thus spoke the ‘newspaper of record.’ They’ve done an analysis of census data from the last decade. The findings are not a surprise to people at the bottom, holding down several minimum-wage jobs, nevertheless unable to meet their families’ needs.

AFSC and Susan Starr of the Applied Research Center both put the issue in religious terms—a crisis of conscience for a rich nation apparently indifferent to those without power. The US will test its commitment to the poor this fall as Congress debates reauthorization of ‘welfare reform’ legislation. It’s time for us to speak up, and Professor Diana Pearce gives us a powerful tool to reframe that debate with her Self Sufficiency Standard. If you ask if the welfare rolls are down and numbers of the employed are up, the answer is yes; but if you ask if earned income is enough to live on, you get a very different answer. A sober lesson that Washington needs to hear.

So this Peacework starts off talking about human welfare in the US. As we move on to tackle Genoa and globalization, welfare is still the question: Whose? We’ve brought you some first-hand reports because the mainstream media passed over deeply troubling, systemic police violence. We also offer useful thinking about next steps for the pro-democracy movement. From Seattle to Prague to Quebec to Genoa, protesters have demanded a place at the table. "What do the protesters want?" ask the pundits; they go on to answer their own question with a dismissive "The kids can’t say." We disagree. For one thing, it’s not just kids, although young people certainly have led the way. For another, there is a lot of critical thinking about tactics, purposes, and scenarios for change. Herewith a sample.
Questions about globalization and welfare converge in outer space. Close reading of the texts from the US Space Command yield chilling insight into its ultimate goal—absolute US domination, made necessary by the widening gap between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, which is exacerbated by corporate globalization. Protection, of course, has a high price tag, leaving little for human rights and social programs, domestic or international. We offer a sample of actions and the address of ‘command central’—The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, that is spearheading the International Day of Protest to Stop Militarization of Space, Oct. 13.

We remember standing in a vigil during the Gulf War when a man approached the line and asked "What about the Kurds?" What indeed? Well, nothing, actually. Funny thing about Kurds: If they’re in Iraq, we champion them; if they have the misfortune to live in Turkey, they’ve got a problem. Our correspondent Agneta Norberg recounts what she has been learning. It’s difficult reading.

Water in Turkey figures in Norberg’s account; water in Iraq is the subject of the lead article in this month’s Progressive. The US deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water supply infrastructure during the Gulf War; sanctions have prevented repairs, with predictable results. This is why people are fasting right now at the UN. You can support them by sending donations to the AFSC/FOR/Pax Christi Campaign of Conscience for the People of Iraq (1501 Cherry St. Philadelphia, PA 19102). The first shipment of aid under this campaign, sent without government permission and in defiance of murderous regulations, consisted of a water filtration system.

What else? Colombia where corporate globalization in the guise of the Andean Regional Initiative works a dangerous, infectious havoc. Jim Harney, old El Salvador hand, recognizes war on the poor when he sees it.

Colin Powell is not going to South Africa for the World Conference on Racism. The US—still stuck in its ‘American Dilemma,’ unable to conceive of what could possibly absolve us from our defining crime of slavery and the present-day institutional racism that is its legacy—seems to be afraid. Our other reason for not sending a high-level delegation is that there promises to be talk about Palestine and Israel. We bring you a report on Israel’s assassination policy from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights.

Eudora Welty died last month. We honor her by printing a brief passage from a story she wrote in the heat of one night after Medgar Evers’ assassination. Welty spoke of "the unease, the ambiguities, the sickness, and desperation of those days in Mississippi." Funny how well that described our feelings as we opened up the morning paper today.

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