rivervision

i’ve been reading the news as it comes out about the israeli attack on the gaza freedom flotilla. there are of course two sides to it. there’s the side of those who were attacked and then the side of those who did the attacking. i try to read with an open mind – the side of the attacker. i try to believe that the activists had weapons and were planning an attack from the moment they knew that the israeli defense force (IDF) was surrounding them. i try to believe in the innocence of the individual IDF members, even though what they were doing – trying to stop this flotilla in international waters – was clearly illegal. seeing both sides, in my opinion, is the pacifist thing to do. rather than attacking back, just listen and learn. this is their perspective on things, this is their narrative. i have my perspective, my narrative, and i want it listened to as well.

joy in palestine, though, reminds us of the israeli spin machine.

“A friend of mine was charged with “assault with a baby,” because when they demolished his house for the 3rd time, he handed his daughter to a soldier. He said, “I don’t have anyone where for her to sleep. You take her.” Another friend of mine was speaking at a completely nonviolent. He was beaten until his ribs were broken and then he was charged with assaulting a police officer. At his trial the police officer who testified admitted he wasn’t there and couldn’t even find the area where the demo took place on a map. My friend still went to jail.”

i am reminded of the american spin machine. the one that took us to occupation of iraq and afghanistan, and into so many places where we caused atrocities. it’s powerful and convincing. those spin machines are coming from legitimate governments versus the words of activists and their legitimate organizations but who don’t have the power of legitimacy of nationhood behind them. it’s easier for the general public, the masses, to be convinced by the governments, especially in the case of palestine, where for 60 years they have been painted as the attackers of the innocent and oppressed israelis. how can the state of israel be an attacker? look at the centuries of oppression, pogroms, and holocausts committed against the people who the country was created for. how can such an oppressed people ever become the oppressed?

i haven’t finished paulo freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” but i have gotten far enough to read where he talks about how rather than learning how not to oppress, those who have been oppressed learn how to oppress. it’s a powerful comment and drawing from my experience in the LGBTA community i can see it. i can see the oppression in my own behavior and language. when we are powerless, we want power, and we express that power in the ways we learned. thus it makes sense, to me at least, that israel would act the way it does, and for its spin machine to spin as fast as possible so that it can legitimize its actions. the state of israel, and my own state, needs to be right.

and so what do we do with all the reports coming in the aftermath of the attack on the flotilla? i can’t speak for we, i can speak for me. me, i read them – as many as i can. i mourn the dead and injured, i can read the spin with an open mind acknowledging that even peace activists can be moved to violence when threatened, i can be grateful that this attack is causing a greater dialogue about the siege on gaza, i can continue to pray that the suffering of the palestinians and israelis will stop, soon. that’s easy though. i’m quite distanced from all of that. i can also take what i’m thinking about peace and oppression in israel and palestine and apply it to my own life and try to hold those who inflict (perceived) injury on me in light rather than dark. i can spend time thinking about the impacts of peace in my personal life on peace in the bigger world.

that’s all hippy-dippy-touchy-feely-crap, i know that. it’s not practical. but in times like this – when the world is full of such uncertainty and people suffering all over because of the actions of others of us – we need a bit of the touchy-feely-hippy-dippy-crap. we need some hope and peace.

and i’ll finish with this, sabeel’s (short) litany for gaza:

Eternal God, arbiter of justice and champion of peace, reach into the deep pit of violence, despair, and ruthlessness that shapes the lives of so many in Palestine and Israel. The nations are in an uproar, kingdoms totter, people cry out.

You, O God, are our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Grant, O God, healing to the men and women injured during the Israeli military assault. Bring grace and consolation to those who mourn the dead.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled.

God who has proclaimed release to the captives and freedom to the oppressed, may all who have been taken prisoner for their involvement in the flotilla return safely home. We remember these and others who are unjustly detained.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, who has sent me to proclaim release to the captives…and to let the oppressed go free.

Lord of all, make known to all in Palestine and Israel that your love extends to all people, that might is not right, that fear begets fear, that love conquers all. Give hope to the many who, in love, speak and act boldly for justice.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

God of Justice, we pray that the nations of the world will no longer stand idly by, but uphold the rights of the oppressed in Gaza, the West Bank, and around the globe . We, the peoples of many lands, “reaffirm [our] faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” [UN Charter: Preamble]

Your judgements are just, O Lord, you will hold all nations accountable for what they have done, and also for what they have left undone.

God who offers life in abundance, break the chains of injustice that shackle the people of Gaza. May the blockade that limits food and medicine, toys and cement, culture and trade, friendships and families be swiftly ended. May the people of Gaza and of the West Bank be brought together in unity.

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. [Isaiah 65]

God of equity, who knows no distinction between race or creed or colour, help us to be ever impatient in our encounter with injustice and abuse. As ambassadors for Christ, do not allow our hearts to be hardened, but let us live your message of justice, peace and reconciliation. We remember the words of your prophet: “The effect of justice will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.” [Isaiah 32:16-18]

God, in your grace, transform the world.

howard zinn is a great image to see when i first come to my blog as my gateway to news.. but this image is even better (btw, i took this from lisa ling’s background on twitter)

if you can’t tell.. that’s a young palestinian boy walking arm in arm with a young israeli boy.

oh, and vickie.. as i was putting up that howard zinn speech i thought of erin…

“After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself — whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist — you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.”

and

“My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models. I don’t mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.”

(from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howard_Zinn.jpg)

Howard Zinn
1922-2010

Against Discouragement
Spelman College Commencement Address, May 2005
By Howard Zinn
[In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College in Atlanta GA, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.]

I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after forty-two years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.

But this is your day — the students graduating today. It’s a happy day for you and your families. I know you have your own hopes for the future, so it may be a little presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but they are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.

My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment. It is easy to be discouraged, because our nation is at war — still another war, war after war — and our government seems determined to expand its empire even if it costs the lives of tens of thousands of human beings. There is poverty in this country, and homelessness, and people without health care, and crowded classrooms, but our government, which has trillions of dollars to spend, is spending its wealth on war. There are a billion people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who need clean water and medicine to deal with malaria and tuberculosis and AIDS, but our government, which has thousands of nuclear weapons, is experimenting with even more deadly nuclear weapons. Yes, it is easy to be discouraged by all that.

But let me tell you why, in spite of what I have just described, you must not be discouraged.

I want to remind you that, fifty years ago, racial segregation here in the South was entrenched as tightly as was apartheid in South Africa. The national government, even with liberal presidents like Kennedy and Johnson in office, was looking the other way while Black people were beaten and killed and denied the opportunity to vote. So Black people in the South decided they had to do something by themselves. They boycotted and sat in and picketed and demonstrated, and were beaten and jailed, and some were killed, but their cries for freedom were soon heard all over the nation and around the world, and the President and Congress finally did what they had previously failed to do — enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Many people had said: The South will never change. But it did change. It changed because ordinary people organized and took risks and challenged the system and would not give up. That’s when democracy came alive.

I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and our government was bombing the villages of Vietnam — bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers — it looked hopeless to try to stop the war. But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end.

The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies. I know you have practical things to do — to get jobs and get married and have children. You may become prosperous and be considered a success in the way our society defines success, by wealth and standing and prestige. But that is not enough for a good life.

Remember Tolstoy’s story, “The Death of Ivan Illych.” A man on his deathbed reflects on his life, how he has done everything right, obeyed the rules, become a judge, married, had children, and is looked upon as a success. Yet, in his last hours, he wonders why he feels a failure. After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself — whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist — you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States. This was horrifying to me — the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call “civilization,” we have carved up what we claim is one world into two hundred artificially created entities we call “nations” and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary, so fierce it leads to murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power, deadly for those out of power.

Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy. But if you know some history you know that’s not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty. We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history — more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.

The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the Black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American “liberty” and “democracy,” their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:

You really haven’t been a virgin for so long.
It’s ludicrous to keep up the pretext.You’ve slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you’ve taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows.

Being one of the world’s big vampires,
Why don’t you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

I am a veteran of the Second World War. That was considered a “good war,” but I have come to the conclusion that war solves no fundamental problems and only leads to more wars. War poisons the minds of soldiers, leads them to kill and torture, and poisons the soul of the nation.

My hope is that your generation will demand that your children be brought up in a world without war. It we want a world in which the people of all countries are brothers and sisters, if the children all over the world are considered as our children, then war — in which children are always the greatest casualties — cannot be accepted as a way of solving problems.

I was on the faculty of Spelman College for seven years, from 1956 to 1963. It was a heartwarming time, because the friends we made in those years have remained our friends all these years. My wife Roslyn and I and our two children lived on campus. Sometimes when we went into town, white people would ask: How is it to be living in the Black community? It was hard to explain. But we knew this — that in downtown Atlanta, we felt as if we were in alien territory, and when we came back to the Spelman campus, we felt that we were at home.

Those years at Spelman were the most exciting of my life, the most educational certainly. I learned more from my students than they learned from me. Those were the years of the great movement in the South against racial segregation, and I became involved in that in Atlanta, in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Greenwood and Itta Bena and Jackson.

I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point — that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us — of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality — are human beings and should cherish one another.

I was lucky to be at Spelman at a time when I could watch a marvelous transformation in my students, who were so polite, so quiet, and then suddenly they were leaving the campus and going into town, and sitting in, and being arrested, and then coming out of jail full of fire and rebellion. You can read all about that in Harry Lefever’s book Undaunted By The Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967.

One day Marian Wright (now Marian Wright Edelman), who was my student at Spelman, and was one of the first arrested in the Atlanta sit-ins, came to our house on campus to show us a petition she was about to put on the bulletin board of her dormitory. The heading on the petition epitomized the transformation taking place at Spelman College. Marian had written on top of the petition: “Young Ladies Who Can Picket, Please Sign Below.”

My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models. I don’t mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.

Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, who, like Marian, has remained our friend all these years, came from a tenant farmer’s family in Eatonton, Georgia, and became a famous writer. In one of her first published poems, she wrote:

It is true —
I’ve always loved
the daring
ones
Like the Black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.

I am not suggesting you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly, but also of nationalism; that you do what you can — you don’t have to do something heroic, just something, to join with millions of others who will just do something, because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together, and make the world better.

That marvelous African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn’t do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn’t do what Black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun — you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.

By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap My hope for you is a good life.

Copyright © 2005, Howard Zinn

it’s been a long 2 weeks. it’s been hard. there have been moments of horrible agony. i’ve stepped out of my comfort zone though.. i emailed two folks to ask for help with some of my research.. and i made an adult call and sent another adult email.

i also have gotten my butt down to salt lake city twice in two weekends and tomorrow will be a third time in three weekends. i really don’t like the construction between exits 213 and 206. 2 weekends ago it was to listen to a new friend sing amazing songs. folk songs. the kind of music that brings comfort and joy to my heart all at once. i love that kind of music. i hope i didn’t overwhelm my new friend with how much i enjoyed his singing and guitar playing.. but when music moves the soul in that way it is hard to stop it. 1 weekend ago it was to listen to an amazing woman talk about her trip to palestine with the compassionate listening project and then participate in a 3 hour compassionate listening project workshop. the power in this woman’s story about palestine? her father is a palestinian refugee from jaffa and technically, because she is her father’s daughter, she is considered one of the 4.62 palestinian refugees. what was moving about her talk? how she said she isn’t angry at the israelis.. but rather, when she thinks of them, she feels sad and i heard compassion too. a palestinian refugee without anger at the israeli government. really, the only word is amazing and i am glad that i drove 1-15 between exits 213 and 206, twice (round trip), so i could hear her. and tomorrow, tomorrow is another drive down for lunch with that singer songwriter new friend. it’s good to get out of cache valley.

but the sent. the verb in the subject? that, that is referring to what i did just before i started this post. i sent my dissertation proposal to my committee. my chair, bless her heart (btw, whenever i say or think that phrase i always hear it in my head in a southern accent) – she is so patient with me and my neuroses – has been going back and forth with me on this for awhile. 7 versions. i hope the committee makes the defense part easy, but i hope its easy because what my chair and i have sent is good. i hope i can find a time where they are all available the 3rd or 4th week of february. next step. sent.

today started horribly. a horrible that i don’t want to relive but that verb, sent, makes the end far better. the day got better. i’m glad.

i’m bummed i just now discovered michelle shocked.. but i’m so glad i did. i keep listening to this over and over.. i love it. you have to watch it though.. because just listening, well. i’d have thought it was a break up song. it’s not.

Hi Benjamin!  I loved your video.

LOPWMIPFMTIMAC from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

Who’s on my list?
Laura Sheppard!
My grandmother
Mother Teresa (because of both the heroic things she did AND her struggles)
Pastor Paul Heins
the folks at the Christian Peacemaker Teams
my friends Virginia, JaNiel, Preston, and Matt.
Shane Claiborne
Thich Nhat Hahn (his book “Living Buddha, Living Christ” reminds me why I am a Christian).
My doc.
Jesus (he’s the reason why I kept coming back!)
Pastor Dan Bryant
Pastor Pieter Niemeyer

“I am rarely influenced by someone yelling at my or acting like a jerk towards me. I don’t think I ever change my mind about something if it comes with an insult or hostility. Why does that seem to be the currency of exchange in so many instances these days? I’m going to work really hard to dial it back in my world and I hope you will, too.” ~vickie buenger, erin’s ma.

“For Love is the beginning and the middle and the end. And wherever we go, there we are, and wherever we are, God is there.” ~ Rev. Katie Mulligan, Mt. Laurel Covenant Church, NJ (blog here)

• i wrote a draft of a close ended question to measure change in TPACK tonight. i ran the idea by one of my committee members and he liked it. i hope my chair likes it too. i feel a bit smart now.

• i would like a pug. i hung out with bubba the pug tonight and that little creature really is just pure joy. apparently all pugs are like this.  of course i’d have to get a pug puppy so that she learns that max-cat is the boss around here.

• i got a lot of work done tonight, while getting to hang with my friend the g’s. i really do <3 the g’s. and s.g. has done such a good job raising her kids and so i really do enjoy hanging out with them too (they are teens). i also got to hear a little bit more about their research and i may may may get to do some work with them at some point (they are in the same college, but different department. r.g. is on my committee). i’d love to have the chance to even volunteer with them just so i can learn from even more people how to do research. the profs i get to work with rock, but every chance i get to learn something more from a different angle is a good thing.

• i would like to go climbing tomorrow. i probably won’t get too, but i would like to nonetheless.

• on that note, i need to go to bed. i’ve been either getting up near the crack of dawn because i have to or sleeping waay to late (i got up at 10.30 on friday for an 11am meeting, and 9.45 for 10.30 church. i usually get up 2 hours before i need to be anywhere or do anything productive) it’s midnight now and i have to email my doc by noon and it takes me at least an hour to fall asleep. i have to email her to let her know how things are. yes, my health is so bad that she wants me to check in with her via email. if she doesn’t get an email from me she tracks me down. i don’t want her to have to do that.

no longer in cache valley.  for the next 10 days i will be a part of the majority culture.  whoo hoo!  and goodness me, it smells good here too… it smells like rain and green and flowers blooming.

updated later:

okay, so i’m sitting in this heavenly yard right now.  s’s housemate j really does a good job with this yard.  on a cool spring evening this certainly is a nice place to escape too.  bonus is i picked up some OJ and brought my coconut rum, so it’s even better.. yep, yep, i’ve discovered the wonders of a little after-day drink.  it certainly takes the edge off of all the big ol’ feelings of feeling out of sorts and out of place in a place that otherwise feels so much like home.  in moments like this i really do wish i’d never ever left eugene, so that my continuity of having a life here wouldn’t have stopped.  i still have friends here, but they have all moved on with their lives and i just get to come back every now and then and pop in.  it really really is an odd feeling.    my poor counselor already has so much work to do when it comes to me, and if this feeling stays for the entirety of my visit she’ll have even more work.. what little is left from working her scrawny butt off for me already will just be gone.  *sigh*  at least she’s patient, and for that i’m grateful.  i suspect that after a good nights sleep this feeling will be lessened.  anyhow.

i should go check on the pre-adolescent and see if she needs nagging about washing her (now short) hair or cleaning her room.  she’s working on an essay with a friend right now so i’m letting her get that done.