 October 2001
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Voices ...And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards. ...Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy--which entails disagreement, which promotes candor--has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be. --Susan Sontag,"The Talk of the Town," The New Yorker, 9/24/01 ---- Americans now have two men to fear deeply: Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. One is an Islamic fundamentalist, the other a Christian fundamentalist. One has declared a holy war against the West; the other declared a crusade against Islamic terrorism. Both purport to speak on behalf of God, Bush even attempted to usurp the Lord's role in bringing "infinite justice." One blows up innocent victims in New York City; the other continues the death of innocent Iraqis through sanctions. Both use cynical agitprop to bolster their position. Both are driven by certitude, arrogance and a rush to violence cruelly indifferent to the damage it causes the non-culpable. But only one of these men says he speaks for us. Therefore, whatever responsibility (and it is not slight) that we have for the provenance and acts of bin Laden (or whoever attacked us) we have far more for those of Bush. Hiding under the covers of national unity will not exculpate us. --from the Progessive Review, 9/21, <www.prorev.com/indexa.htm> ---- A Letter from Parents Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez's son Greg is one of the Trade Center victims. Dear President Bush: Our son is one of the victims of Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center. We read about your response in the last few days and about the resolutions from both Houses, giving you undefined power to respond to the terror attacks. Your response to this attach does not make us feel better about our son's death. It makes us feel worse. It makes us feel that our government is using our son's memory as a justification to cause suffering for other sons and parents in other lands. It is not the first time that a person in your position has been given unlimited power and came to regret it. This is not the time for empty gestures to make us feel better. It is not the time to act like bullies. We urge you to think about how our governement can develop peaceful, rational solutions to terrorism, solutions that do not sink us to the inhuman level of terrorists.
Sincerely, Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez ---- You can no more win a war than win an earthquake. --Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress in 1916 ---- A Widow's Call for Courage Excerpted from a longer letter by Amber Amundson in the Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2001. My husband, Craig Scott Amundson, of the US Army lost his life in the line of duty at the Pentagon on Sept. 11. I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation's leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband. Your words and imminent acts of revenge only amplify our family's suffering, deny us the dignity of remembering our loved one in a way that would have made him proud, and mock his vision of America as a peacemaker in the world community. Craig would not have wanted a violent response to avenge his death. And I cannot see how good can come out of it. I call on our national leaders to find the courage to respond to this incomprehensible tragedy by breaking the cycle of violence. I call on them to marshal this great nation's skills and resources to lead a worldwide dialogue on freedom from terror and hate. ---- Mike's Message to George Bush (9/13/01)...Back in May, you gave the Taliban in Afghanistan $48 million dollars of our tax money. No free nation on earth would give them a cent, but you gave them a gift of $48 million because they said they had "banned all drugs." Because your drug war was more important than the actual war the Taliban had inflicted on its own people, you helped to fund the regime who had given refuge to the very man you now say is responsible for killing my friend on that plane and for killing the friends of families of thousands and thousands of people. How dare you talk about more killing now! Shame! Shame! Shame! Explain your actions in support of the Taliban! Tell us why your father and his partner Mr. Reagan trained Mr. bin Laden in how to be a terrorist! Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives. Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam while claiming to be "on duty" in the Air National Guard. Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And now you are asking for "unity" so you can start another one? Do not insult me or my country like this! Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly world ...
Yours, Michael Moore ---- In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used. In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness. And then we turn; for it is a turning that we have prepared; and act. The time of the turning may be very long. It may hardly exist.
--Muriel Rukeyser, 1949 The Life of Poetry,
reissued by Paris Press, Ashfield MA (1996) |
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