 July/August 2003
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. |
SHORT TAKES Maxine Hong Kingston author of The Woman Warrior, China Men,
Tripmaster Monkey, Oct. 15 Protect Our Libraries & Bookstores The Library Friends Network, now forming under the auspices of Friends Committee on National Legislation, will focus on issues related to post-9/11 encroachments on libraries’ & bookstores’ capacity to protect, preserve, & advance the civil liberties of their patrons & customers. The network will share the latest updates in civil liberties developments, help with research on civil liberties, & coordinate with other organizations working to protect the right to read, write, & publish (like the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center). www.fcnl.org/listserv/quaker_issues.php
On the check-out desk at Santa Cruz public library, beside the usual signs asking people to keep quiet and to return their books on time, there is what might be called a sign of the times. “Warning: although Santa Cruz public library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the federal USA Patriot Act records of books you obtain from this library may be obtained by federal agents,” it reads. “Questions about this policy should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft.” In the unlikely event that a library patron in this traditionally liberal Californian town ever got the chance to speak to Ashcroft, they would discover that agencies such as the FBI and CIA now have the powers to obtain the library records of any individual government investigators claim is connected to an investigation into spying or terrorism. Unlike traditional search warrants, this new power does not require officers to have evidence of any crime, nor provide evidence to a court that their target is suspected of one. Nor are library staff allowed to tell targeted individuals that they are being investigated. The law, known as Section 215, is one of a raft of anti-terrorism measures passed by Congress in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks. Like many provisions in the Patriot Act, Section 215 was little noticed when it first came on the statute books, but over the past few months librarians and bookshops have begun a quiet but determined revolt against its powers. “Obviously we’re aware of the federal government’s obligation to protect the American people from terrorism, but we are also aware of our obligations to protect the freedom of both the people who use the library and our staff,” said Anne Turner, the director of libraries in Santa Cruz. “It’s a balancing act, but our library board has decided that individual freedoms are the most precious of all—I mean, that’s the difference between a country like the United States and a country like Iraq. We have the right to free speech, to information, to privacy.” Turner said the signs, placed in 10 local libraries, were meant as a warning to customers that their privacy was under threat and as a means of starting a debate. “In Santa Cruz not everybody is a hippy radical, but I think it would be fair to say that the response has been one of unanimous outrage. Particularly pernicious is the idea that library staff are not allowed to tell those people targeted by the FBI about what is happening.” So far, she has received no requests from the FBI for information, although a recent study reported that government agents had visited 85 academic libraries seeking information under the new laws. Section 215—which also applies to bookshops—is the target of a Bill introduced into Congress by the independent congressman Bernie Saunders, who is seeking an amendment requiring government investigators to produce evidence of a crime before being allowed to look at a person’s library or book-buying records. The Department of Justice has declined to comment on how many times it has invoked Section 215, but it defends the general principle behind it. In a recently published letter to a US senator, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bryant said Americans who borrowed library books automatically surrendered their right to privacy. A spokesman said last week that Bryant was simply pointing out that anyone who voluntarily gave information to libraries and bookshops should not be surprised if others learnt about it. The legislation was a threat only to those who might have something to feel guilty about, the spokesman claimed. —Lawrence Donegan, Santa Cruz, CA, The Observer, March 16, 2003
John Nichols and Robert McChesney are the co-authors of Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (Seven Stories Press), and co-founders of Free Press, a media reform network at www.mediareform.net. For the full article of which this is a brief excerpt, look for “Whose Media?” on that site. The FCC did not listen to the American people, but the Senate Commerce Committee did. Prodded by thousands of e-mails, letters, and petitions from Americans angered by the June 2 decision of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules, the Senate Commerce Committee voted on June 19 to restore the rules and to change the commission’s behind-closed-doors, special-interest-driven way of doing business. This was accomplished with solid support from Democrats and key Republicans on the committee. Describing the FCC rules changes as “dangerous to media diversity in this country,” Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson summed up the sentiments of many members of the committee when she said, “I would like the FCC to start all over.” After June 2, more than 300,000 Americans contacted members of Congress to urge a reversal of the rule changes. Will the Congress take the rest of the steps that are necessary? That depends as much on the people as it does on their representatives. The fight will be difficult in the Senate, and more difficult in the House. But if the remarkable coalition that has come together to fight these rule changes keeps up the pressure, the story that the FCC wrote on June 2 may yet be rewritten by the American people and their Congress. What Constitutes Genocide From page 57 in “A Problem from Hell.” The following is a direct quote: After a bruising year of drafting battles, the [UN]1948 Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide settled on
a definition of genocide as any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, or religious
group, as such: For a party to be found guilty of perpetrating this new crime of genocide, it had to (1) carry out one of the aforementioned acts, (2) with the intent to destroy all or part of (3) one of the groups protected. The law did not require the extermination of an entire group, only acts committed with the intent to destroy a substantial part. If the perpetrator did not target a national, ethnic, or religious group as such, then killings would constitute mass homicide, not genocide. [Note: Not until 38 years later in Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1986) was this convention ratified by the United States.]
Dale Berry, Grants NM What I need is more psychological and philosophical clarity in order to better envision and live that life with the power to take away the occasion for war, to paraphrase George Fox.
Rethinking Globalization: Teaching For Justice in an Unjust World, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson; (Rethinking Schools, 2002). Available on-line at www.rethinkingschools.org/rg, or from Rethinking Schools, 1001 E. Keefe Ave., Milwaukee WI 53212; 800/669-4192 Maureen Heffern Ponicki is coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s Democratizing the Global Economy Project. This review was originally published in Youth & Militarism On-line, a monthly newsletter of the American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org). “This book is an argument for the necessity of holding, in our minds and in our classrooms, the big global picture,” write the editors of this compelling collection of prose, poetry, and teaching exercises. The book aims to “alert students to global injustice, to seek explanations, and to encourage activism.” Rethinking Globalization offers a wealth of background readings, lesson plans, role-plays, simulations, student handouts, interviews, cartoons, poems, and resource lists. There are a multitude of concrete activities for upper elementary and high school students, although the book would be very useful for teacher in-services, college courses, and adult education. Activities are designed so that they can be adapted for each teacher’s needs and student’s age-level. The editors wisely suggest that issues abroad be connected to those at home, such as the sweatshops found in the US versus those abroad. Bill Bigelow, a high school teacher in Portland, Oregon, starts off his lesson plan on Third World Debt by lending one student (the leader) $5 who is then told that she or he can go to the vending machine and buy as much candy as the $5 will allow. When the student leaves, the rest of the class is ordered to get out their money and pay the teacher back since their leader owes him $5. It is ideas like this one which give the book its real richness. Teachers are encouraged to start with the issue that will serve as the best entrance point for their particular class. The editors note that child labor is what often “pricks our students’ consciences most acutely.” There is a comprehensive resource section that not only offers the usual list of videos, books, organizations, journals, and curricula; but it also offers a spectacular list of songs and fiction—as well as moving poetry that is sprinkled throughout the book. Rethinking Globalization: Teaching For Justice in an Unjust World offers both concrete tools for building awareness and the spark for taking action.
Walking the Choctaw Road: Stories from Red People Memory, Tim Tingle; $16.95 hb; 152 pp, w/archival photographs; published by Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Ave, El Paso TX 79901; 915/838-1625; order from Consortium Book Sales, 800/283-3572 An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey, Robert Meeropol; $25.95 hb; 273 pp; a personal and political memoir by one of the sons of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg; Meeropol founded the Rosenberg Fund for the Children of Political Prisoners; St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Ave, New York NY 10010; www.stmartins.com Making Peace: Healing a Violent World, Carolyn McConnell & Sarah Ruth van Gelder, eds.; $7.50 pb; 92 pp; peace isn’t just the absence of violence—a prison inmate, a divorced parent, a pastor, a diplomat, a farmer, & others tell stories of creating peace; from the pages of Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures; Positive Futures Network, POB 10818, Bainbridge Island WA 98110-0818; 206/842-0216; www.yesmagazine.org Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi; $17.95 hb; 153 pp; a graphic novel of a girl’s coming of age in Iran during the 1980s; Pantheon Books, www.pantheonbooks.com Echoes in Hemlock Gorge: An American Sequence for the New Millennium, Douglas Worth; $12.95 pb; 100 pp; “Inspired by early morning walks at the dawn of the new millennium, Douglas Worth’s seventh volume of poems ranges back through history to the 1600s, ‘when people and nature/were more closely interwoven/an unbroken web,’ in an evolving attempt ‘to hold America’s past/up to its present/in some healing way for its future’—Howard Zinn; order from Higganum Hill Books, POB 666, Higganum CT 06441-0666 Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day—How We are Harmed, How We Can Heal, Kaethe Weingarten; 384 pp; $24.95 pb; Dr. Weingarten identifies & defines the problem of Common Shock—the physical & psychological responses triggered in all of us when we witness violence—& gives us practical everyday solutions that we can use right away; published by Dutton; www.commonshock.com War Talk, Arundhati Roy; $12 pb, $40 hb; the internationally acclaimed author of The God of Small Things confronts democracy & dissent, racism & empire, & war & peace in this collection of her most recent essays; also new from South End Press, Pirates & Emperors, Old & New: International Terrorism in the Real World, Noam Chomsky; Global AIDS: Myths & Facts, Tools for Fighting the AIDS Pandemic, Alexander Irwin, Joyce Millen, & Dorothy Fallows; Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare, Vijay Prashad; SEP, 7 Brookline St #1, Cambridge MA 02139-4146 White Men Challenging Racism: 35 Personal Stories, Cooper Thompson, Emmet Schaefer, Harry Brod, eds.; Duke University Press; a collection of first-person narratives chronicling the compelling experiences of 35 white men whose efforts to combat racism & fight for social justice are central to their lives; all authors’ royalties go directly to fund anti-racist work; DUP, POB 90660, Durham NC 27708-0660; www.whitemenchallengingracism.com Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit &
Justice, Mab Segrest; $22 pb, $60 hb; 320 pp; Rutgers University
Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Ave, Piscataway NJ 08854; 800/446-9323 Direct Action, Luke Hauser; a historical novel based on anti-nuclear protests in the early 1980s; includes 35-page organizing handbook & over 200 photos & images of nonviolent direct action; published by GroundWork, 349 Church St, San Francisco CA 94114; 415/255-7623; www.groundworknews.org New from the AFSC Video Library Penny Adams is a socal worker who volunteers weekly at the AFSC Video Library. The AFSC video library continues to collect recent videos on Iraq and Afghanistan, but if you are looking beyond these borders, here are three videos of interest. Yankee Go Home - South Korea (15 minutes). A fast-paced CBS “60 Minutes” program that examines the increasing South Korean hostility toward US policies and the 37,000 US troops stationed there. Interviews by Tom Simon highlight how some South Koreans long for unification with North Korea, and how Bush is feared more than the North Korean president. The young people interviewed have no memory of the Korean War. Settlements (30 Minutes). Bill Moyers program features various perspectives on the West Bank settlements: the map, the constrictive daily life, and attitudes in Israel. A journalist interviews Brooklyn, NY settlers in the West Bank of 200 people who justify their “Biblical” right to be there. “Refusniks” in the Israeli army proclaim their mission of occupation and defense as immoral, and there is coverage of Israeli demonstrations against the West Bank settlers. Mark Kessler, an author, discusses the political fall-out of the settlement policy, and the reasons for the failure of the Oslo Peace Process. And lest we forget the home front, here is a video that is important
and deeply troubling: To see the other 1000 programs available for you to borrow, go to our web page: www.afsc.org/resources/video-film.htm To borrow a video call 617-497-5273. Requested doantions range from $2 per day to $15 plus shipping for public showings. 
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