"Clowns' Country" mural by orphaned children from Maria's Children




What Really Makes our Nation Strong
Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland)

by Garrison Keillor

Growing up in the '50s, we imagined our country defended by guided missiles poised in bunkers, jet fighters on the tarmac and pilots in the ready room prepared to scramble, a colonel with a black briefcase sitting in the hall outside the president's bedroom, but Sept. 11 gave us a clearer picture. We have a vast array of hardware, a multitude of colonels, a lot of bureaucratic confusion, and a nation vulnerable to attack.

The Federal Aviation Administration has now acknowledged that the third of the four planes seized by the 19 men with box cutters had already hit the Pentagon before the FAA finally called there to say there was a problem. The FAA lied to the 9/11 commission about this, then took two years to ascertain the facts - a 51-minute gap in defense - and released the finding on the Friday before Labor Day, an excellent burial site for bad news.

So America is not the secure fortress we grew up imagining. Perhaps it never was. What protects us is what has protected us for 230 years: our magnificent isolation. After the disasters of the 20th century, Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on either side, so if the president turns out to be a shallow, jingoistic fool with a small, rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on.

It's hard for Americans to visualize the collapse of our country. It's as unthinkable as one's own demise. Europeans are different: They've seen disaster, even the British. They know it was a near thing back in 1940. My old Danish mother-in-law remembered the occupation clearly 40 years later and was teary-eyed when she talked about it. Francis Scott Key certainly could envision the demise of the United States in 1814 when he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry. Abraham Lincoln was haunted by the thought. We are not, apparently, though five years ago we saw a shadow.

We really are one people at heart. We all believe that when thousands of people are trapped in the Superdome without food or water, it is the duty of government, the federal government if necessary, to come to their rescue and to restore them to the civil mean and not abandon them to fate. Right there is the basis of liberalism. Conservatives tried to introduce a new idea - it's your fault if you get caught in a storm - and this idea was rejected by nine out of 10 people once they saw the pictures. The issue is whether we care about people who don't get on television.

Last week, I sat and listened to a roomful of parents talk about their battles with public schools in behalf of their children who suffer from dyslexia, or apraxia, or ADD, or some other disability - sagas of ferocious parental love vs. stonewall bureaucracy in the quest for basic, needful things - and how some of them had uprooted their families and moved to Minnesota so their children could attend better schools. You couldn't tell if those parents were Republicans or Democrats. They simply were prepared to move mountains so their kids could have a chance. So are we all.

And that's the mission of politics: to give our kids as good a chance as we had. They say that liberals have run out of new ideas - it's like saying that Christians have run out of new ideas. Maybe the old doctrine of grace is good enough.

I don't get much hope from Democrats these days, a timid and skittish bunch, slow to learn, unable to sing the hymns and express the steady optimism that is at the heart of the heart of the country. I get no hope at all from Republicans, whose policies seem predicated on the Second Coming occurring in the very near future.

If Jesus does not descend through the clouds to take them directly to paradise, and do it now, they are going to have to answer to the rest of us.

Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun
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Power to the Peaceful

I plan to be there and will report on my experience. For more info go to www.powertothepeaceful.org





Click on poster to enlarge.

Antiwar Activist Often Gets Confused With Hippie.

Protesting the Cambodian Invasion, 1972 ©1999 Ken Light

I was a child of the 60's. A hippie, freak, head whatever term you used. I was also a part of the antiwar movement. The movement was much more than against the war, but was a movement towards social and political justice. Black power, feminism, workers' rights, the American Indian Movement, Brown Power, gay rights, anti-imperialism, communal living, co-operative economics, collective decision making...... were all a part of the movement. SDS, of which I was a member, recognized this. We spent much time organizing and attending teach-ins, at which we educated and were educated about these issues and their inter-connectedness. Many people think of the movement of the 60's as free love, turn on, tune in and drop out. Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll. This was a part of it as we sought to build an alternative culture. But it was not all of it by any means. I lived in both poles of the counter-culture and am concerned, as I was then, that we realize we need both - a resistance to the injustices forced upon us by the ruling elite and a building and nurturing of a new world based on Peace, Love, Justice and Liberty.

Peace,

SpringWind

Debunking the '60s with Ayers and Dohrn
By Laura S. Washington

"One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance."

They are storied and iconic, America's Numero Uno radical couple. In the '60s, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were activists and leaders in Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. Dohrn, now 64, and Ayers, 61, played starring roles as Vietnam War dissenters. When their protests turned violent, they became fugitives from the law.

Forty years later, they are still in the game. I recently invited them to dinner at Yoshi's Cafe in Chicago's Boys Town. The national convention of Students for a Democratic Society was coming to Chi-Town. So what do these longtime Hyde Parkers think about those good old days, when radicals were radicals and the movement was muscular?

"The 'good old days' is a funny way to think about the left," said Dohrn.

Ayers picked it up. "One of the things that sits very heavy on the progressive impulses today, and young people in particular, is the myth that there was a golden age in resistance, that the '60s was where it was really at."

Today Dohrn is a scholar and director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. Ayers serves as a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They visit college campuses around the nation, where, Ayers says, "We spend a fair amount of time debunking the received wisdom of the '60s."

That "wisdom," he explains, is that resisting the war "was easy to do and everybody did it." It was a hard-fought slog.

Iraq brings its own lessons of protest. He points to a failure of leadership in the run-up to that war. "In March 2003, we participated in the largest antiwar movement in our lives, possibly in history. Now there was a leadership problem in a sense that the leadership said this is the demonstration that will prevent a war."

"It was a wrong thing to say," Ayers argues, "because it didn't help people who participated in that, particularly young people, to analyze the situation, to make sense of it, to make a contribution, and then to continue organizing. It said we'll prevent a war. That war was not preventable."

Forget the Democrats, they say. "The Democratic Party supported the war in Vietnam..." Dohrn began. Ayers cut in: "Led the war in Vietnam."

"And they've been supporting, and leading this war," Dohrn continued. "I don't look to the Democratic Party. I don't have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big 'us.' "

To mount a movement, "let's look at history," said Dohrn between bites of her tuna nicoise salad. "Lyndon Johnson was not a civil rights leader; Lyndon Johnson was responding to a civil rights movement. FDR was not a labor leader; FDR was responding to a labor movement. We confuse these things when we think about them today."

Indeed, that's "a great mistake. Lyndon Johnson was the most effective politician of his generation, but it took a movement independent of Lyndon Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to use that effectiveness for the good."

Still, I asked, aren't progressives putting high hopes in November? Even leading Republicans admit that the Dems are likely to recapture at least one house of Congress.

So what? That's not the point, Ayers says. Electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. "That's how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. .....we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I'm involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that's a real tricky business."

It wasn't so tricky for Ned Lamont. On Aug. 8 Lamont blew out of nowhere to knock off the pro-war U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic senate primary. For my money, that vote is a strong predictor of the power war-weary voters will bring to the polls this fall.

Despite their critiques, Ayers and Dohrn are eternal optimists. Over coffee, Dohrn reflected that their activist days can serve as a metaphor for a "candle" that illuminates the past--and the future.

"The issue holding us back today, to me, is the idea that what you do won't make a difference. The elite powers tell us the world is too complicated. They spend a lot of energy fostering despair," she argues.

The candle shows us that "it's not true," Dohrn says. "I don't think it's all the complicated issues of what kind of an economic society we really want and how are we going to deal with globalization and all of that. Those are tremendously complex challenges but they're solvable by human creativity and ingenuity and collective effort."

Stay vigilant. The light will come.

Laura S. Washington, an In These Times senior editor, teaches journalism at DePaul University and is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.More information about Laura S. Washington

38 Years Later, All We Are Saying Still Is Give Peace A Chance

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE (by John Lennon)

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A Simple But Profound Exercise For Living.

The Art of Not Being Offended
by Jodi Shams Prinzivalli


There is an ancient and well-kept secret to happiness and well-being
that the Great Ones rarely talk about but frequently utilize, and is
one which is fundamental to good mental health. This secret is called
The Fine Art of Not Being Offended. In order to truly be a master of
this art, one must be able to see that every statement, action and
reaction of another human being is the sum result of their total life
experience to date. In other words, the majority of people in our
world say and do what they do from their own set of fears,
conclusions, defenses and attempts to survive. Most of it, even when
aimed directly at us, has nothing to do with us. It usually has more
to do with all the other times and in particular the first few times
that this person experienced a similar situation, usually when they
were young. Yes, this is psychodynamic. But let's face it, we live in
a world where psychodynamics are what make the world go around.
An individual who wishes to live successfully in the world as a
spiritual person really needs to understand the psychology is as
spiritual as prayer. In fact, the word psychology literally means,
the study of the soul. Those of us who are either ignorant of this
fact or who believe this is not true often tend to have unnecessary
suffering where there could be joy.

All of that said, almost NOTHING is personal. Nothing. Even with our
closest loved ones and beloved partners and children and friends. We
are all swimming in the projections and filters of each other's life
experiences and often we are just the stand-ins, the chess pieces of
life to which our loved ones have their own built-in reactions. This
is not to dehumanize life or take the intimacy out of our
relationships, but mainly for us to know that almost every time we
get offended, we are actually just in a misunderstanding. The true
embodiment of this idea actually allows for more intimacy and less
suffering throughout all of our relationships. When we know that we
are the one who happens to be standing in the right place at the
right psychodynamic time for someone to say or do what they are
doing, we don't have to take life personally. If it isn't us, it will
likely be someone else. This frees us to be a little more detached to
the reactions of people around us. How often do we react to a
statement of another by being offended rather than seeing that the
other might actually be hurting? In fact, every time we get offended,
it is actually an opportunity to extend kindness to one who may be
suffering - even if they themselves do not appear that way on the
surface. All anger, all acting out, all harshness, all criticism, is
in truth a form of suffering. When we provide it no velcro for it to
stick, something changes in the world. We do not even have to say a
thing. In fact, it is usually better not to say a thing. People who
are suffering are usually not keen on the fact of someone pointing it
out. We do not have to be our loved one's therapist. We need only
understand the situation and move on. In the least, we ourselves
experience less suffering and at best, we have the chance to make the
world a better place.

This is also not to be confused with allowing ourselves to be hurt,
neglected or taken advantage of. True compassion does not allow harm
to ourselves either. But when we know that nothing is personal, a
magical thing also happens. All the seeming abusers of the world
start to leave our lives. Once we are conscious, so-called abuse can
only happen if we believe what the other is saying. When we know
nothing is personal, we also do not end up feeling abused. We can
say, "Thank you for sharing," and carry on. We are not hooked by what
another says, does or believes, we can take the world a little less
seriously. And if necessary, we can just walk away without creating
more misery for ourselves.

The great challenge of our world is to live a life of contentment
regardless of what other people do, say, think or believe. The fine
art of not being offended is one of many options for being a
practical mystic. Yet I suspect it is the task of a lifetime. It
certainly is for me.