usual saturday evening life blues with Bob in Lulu Carpenter’s. sitting at a table sipping our tea, reading the news papers. a press conference on the eve of Condoleeza Rice’s visit to Beirut and Jerusalem. “What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing — the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” the warmonger declares. my stomach turns around as i read the sentence a couple of times, oh my god… they are not going to stop, these bulldozers of death and destruction…
Category: war
why
total immersion in reading and writing for many hours… sahar recognises the santa, and instantly starts cooking for me. yoran tries to come and play but i’m absorbed by finding out what is happening with this war, what can be done,… and trying to write responses to the nextgenderation list that would allow for distinctions and political positionings to be made. constantly fighting the “what’s the use of this” sentiment, especially now when taking action is more urgent than anything else. but then i see that one of the things that hinders people to react is the feeling that “it’s all so complex”, as emma put it. a very familiar feeling. angry with myself that i didn’t engage in some of these discussions before. try to post an action mail with every discussion piece. the discussion is disheartening, and it sucks the life out of me, don’t know how long i’ll be able to do this. when giulia calls i just start to cry.
shifra, a friend who is israeli citizen living in the netherlands at the moment, got arrested in amsterdam. she went to the infamous pro-israel demo that someone announced on the nextgenderation list, to peacefully express dissent and denounce israeli violence, and the police arrested her.
yoran insists. the game he wants to draw me in is a shooting game.
– nee lieverd, we gaan niet schieten. er is al zoveel oorlog (no darling, let’s not shoot. there’s already too much war.)
– is er oorlog? (is there war?)
– ja. (yes)
– waarom? (why?)
then follows a litany of me coming up with possible answers that are met, without exception, with an insisting waarom? eventually yoran’s attention is caught by something else, but he often comes back to me during the day: “sarah, is er nog oorlog? (is there still war?)” and we re-play the litany in many variations.
lotte told me this story. the other day, as yoran kept on asking his insisting waarom?, she began to do the same. he interrupted her: “don’t ask me all these questions, mama, they make me dizzy in the head.”
wars
yesterday night sahar and i spoke with sarah in beirut. super active super alive. in the face of israeli bombing and the absence of a government the groups and networks she’s connected to began to organise the relief work in their neighborhood. in more than 20 schools, for more than 8000 people, numbers growing by the hour. a sense of empowerment in making a difference, grassroots politics “taking over” – obviously very fragile but also contagious. don’t stop protesting over there in the west, in the states, she insists.
we know – but how. the demo at the israeli consulate in SF felt all but empowering or making a difference. one must be connected to others to do something in any case, and in santa cruz there doesn’t seem much to connect to. (we regularly cross people, like in our own house, that haven’t heard about this war.) i’m drawn to europe and the networks and ways of navigating that i’ve know for so long. i decide to begin posting on the nextgenderation list, knowing well that it’s not a place where one can take for granted that people find it necessary to respond to the violence and injustices of this war. it seems precisely a good reason to do so. the overwhelming question of how to create and affirm networks and political connections that are capable of acting in times and wars like these…
the global action day demanding the end of the death penalty for homosexuality in iran, on the 19th – the day on which the two teenagers were hung in Mashad last year. sahar had send me an informal statement by the lgbt section of the Human Rights Watch with an elaborate and nuanced argumentation of what makes this action day politically problematic. the HRW piece is actually much softer than some of us would call these lgbt – and feminist – politics that either willfully position themselves within the belligrent clash of civilisations paradigm or chose to ignore or not see the geo-political context which we’re inevitably part of, wether we like it or not. there are no witnesses, as they say, only participants. another overwhelming question of how to create a “not in our name” resistance among our feminist and lgbt networks and friends…
wars on all sides. connecting the dots.
trying to recognize where we are in those dots,
and what can be done from there.
meanwhile the grassroots organizing in beirut that sarah is part of
has a blog with more info: sanayeh reliefcenter
help out if you can.
silence
back in santa cruz. i switch my computer and the back-ground image of my desktop hits me in the face. beirut. a breath-taking skyline of a city reconstructing itself, yet another fragile skyline that does not exist anymore. a long mail from kristy, she got out of beirut on a last al italia flight before the airport was bombed. angry. waiting in italy to get back. waiting. i think back of our email exchange before the war: how living in beirut, with her lebanese family, wasn’t always the easiest thing after having been raised in california. how the invitation to my “american” birthday bbq had made her homesick. now there’s only one place she aches to be, she’s determined to return – tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after…
back in santa cruz.
drowning in a pool of silent unmendable sadness today.
war in the world, again.
artificial paradise peace here.
obscene global divisions of labor.
war
talking to sahar from a payphone in the mission and we decide to meet at the israeli consulate. the email from sarah in beirut yesterday. the news – hezbollah’s bold kidnap move yesterday, immediately met by the israeli collective /civilian punishment called “Operation Just Reward”, one of these nasty belligrent eufemisms meaning air strikes on Lebanon. yesterday, or perhaps it all happened earlier, this part of the world runs hopelessly behind…
on the BART i see a young guy with the imprint of a fatima hand dripping blood and “Jews for a Free Palestine” on his t-shirt. i ask him and yes, he’s going to the demo. on our way he tells me about the groups that took the initiative: Al-Awda (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and a Palestine Solidarity alliance in which his group participates. he also gives me the latest news: the airport in Beirut is bombed. and he mentions that there’s a pro-israel counter demo (strange how that possibility hadn’t crossed my mind…)
while the protesters denouncing israeli violence stand on the side-walk in front of the israeli consulate, people are facing the other side of the street, where israeli flags and peace signs prevail. traffic on montgomery street continues as usual – we are not many, perhaps 150, they are not many, perhaps a bit less, not enough to occupy the street. and then police makes sure both sides remain on their side-walk. so we shout at/against each other. (those who are there to denounce isreali violence have an advantage: we have a microphone.) meanwhile cars drive by and people on both sides ask them to honk for support. of course, a drive-in demo, why would you get out of your car for anything, after all this is america…
disheartening in many ways. the tiny small number of people. with a few exceptions, a striking absence of comments on the attacks on lebanon or the war-waging in gaza of the last couple of weeks. instead the same old slogans, with a déjà -vu feeling that didn’t give us much hope that a demo like this would change a thing. and most of all: the rhetorical monopoly on the word “peace” on their side. “Israel wants peace”, “pro-Israel pro-peace”. at some point the zionist crowd began to chant “Where are your peace signs?” accompanied by righteous attitudes and triumphant smiles. “No justice no peace” was the (amplified) response. which is very true, but it didn’t work to break the framework that a regime that causes so much violence is really about peace and security…
we were there because of this consuming urge “to do something”. but the whole spectacle made us feel even more powerless. still, there is no other option than to do something. but we’ll need all the brains and hearts and hands we can get to figure out what can be done…
for more on this and other actions over here in the bay area, see http://www.indybay.org/international/palestine
4th of july
We kind of avoided and turned down invitations for BBQs and picnics. When Leta proposed we do a BBQ with the house for the 4th of July, marÃa couldn’t help asking what exactely we’d be celebrating. [+ quote on independence from José Lopez] In the end most of our house-mates went to a BBQ of Cynthia’s friend who invited our entire house. MarÃa wanted an independence day on her own, one of these days where you have all your time to spend as you want. And i wanted to take up an invitation i got for a picnic in Berkeley organized by Tikkun.
An attempt to give the 4th of July another meaning. From the invitation: “All year we focus on what is wrong and what needs to be changed in American society. On July 4, however, we take time from our schedule of struggle to affirm all that is good in the U.S.: particularly the way that ordinary people have been able to build upon the radical elements ingredient in the original struggle for independence and the (at the time extremely limited) commitment to democracy to expand democratic processes and civil and human rights. We in the Tikkun Community and in The Network of Spiritual Progressives encourage you to create local celebrations that focus on telling the story of all the struggles to expand democracy and human rights, focusing not on the “goodness of America’s elites” (who continue their tradition of resisting and whenever they think possible, because of our inattention or relative weakness, rolling back victories for democracy that we had hoped had been one for all times), but rather on the goodness of the American people, their willingness to take risks and fight for justice, freedom, democracy and human rights. So many of our children (in fact, so many of us as adults) do not really know all the stories of heroism and hardship that America’s peoples have endured to expand democracy, human rights and civil liberties. So July 4th is the perfect time to learn and to then tell those stories.”
The idea was that local Tikkun Communities would spend time to compile a collection of such stories (a secular Haggadah, the book that tells the story of liberation), putting them together with rituals of celebration. The Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley organized a picnic to share such stories and poems and rituals in order to have some kind of alternative celebration, while they insisted that: “Of course, telling these stories should not be separated from restating our opposition to the continued militarism, erosion of democracy, erosion of civil liberties and human rights, erosion of separation of church and state, homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and media disempowerment of ordinary citizens and the perpetuation of cynicism, despair and societal-wide depression. But for once, on July 4th spiritual progressives contextualize all this within the frame of the good that the U.S. also has achieved.”
I liked the idea a lot. In the end it was an issue of mobility (once more…) that held us back – getting ourselves to Berkeley with public transport on a holiday proved to be such a discouraging project which would have taken us more time than the picnic itself. And we definately weren’t in the mood for hitch-hiking anymore. Difficult to do independence here without a car.
So also our independence day was spent sweetly at home in our own time. At some point marÃa climbed on the hottub in the backyard to try to see in my garden room, as our housemates weren’t sure whether we had left of not. By the time we opened our room, only marÃa was in the house and we were all very happy to have escaped the traditions 4th of July. We even speculated about going to the Garden of Eden again but that also meant a getting hold of a car, and so in the end Giulia and i went to the beach.
A good crowd had come out to beach like on a beautiful sunday, and we enjoyed the sea and sun (and wrestling) like on a beautiful sunny day. But it was not just a holiday in a beach resort, as we were reminded… Or maybe the tragedy is that is was just that, a sunny day in fun-loving Santa Cruz as the war goes on…
retreat is not an option
Wasn’t woken up by an earthquake today, so it’s a bit later than yesterday by the time i get myself on-line. Disturbed by the news of the vote in the House against any perspective on withdrawal of the troops from Iraq. These people in Washington, mostly Republicans of course but a bunch of Democrats as well (what the hell…) would like to “complete the mission” in Iraq. Haven’t been terribly impressed with the word “mission” since i’m living here and visited the State Historic Park of the Santa Cruz Mission, but that aside. I’m really wondering how those people in that House consider the state of the mission. “Retreat is not an option,” said one of the Republican representatives just before the vote, and since de facto it obviously always is an option, since it has been an “option” before (remember Vietnam), i’m wondering what this statement means in terms of his vision on the current war situation. I guess those people in the House must believe that the situation in Iraq is better than it was some years ago (i wonder how many Iraqis would agree…), or if it’s not better now, than at least it will get better soon. En effet, tout va très bien, Monsieur le Président… As i’m struggling to understand just a bit more of the quagmire of this war, and just a little bit more what it would take for Iraq to have a better future, i’m frankly quite baffled by the (arrogant) confidence of this House. It almost gets fascinating: so you’re confidently striding on your mission to be completed eh, please do tell me more about that cause frankly i’d like to understand how you can come up with such a disney-wonderland vision on the world…
(from the NYTimes) “WASHINGTON, June 16 — The House of Representatives voted, 256 to 153, today in favor of a resolution promising to “complete the mission” in Iraq, prevail in the global fight against terrorism and oppose any “arbitrary date for withdrawal” of American troops.
The nonbinding but politically significant resolution was approved with just three Republicans voting against it and 42 Democrats voting for it. The measure also expresses gratitude for the valor and sacrifice of American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and congratulates the new Iraqi government.
This morning’s vote, coming after an emotional and partisan debate, was a victory for President Bush, who has declared that it is in the national-security interest of the United States to stay in Iraq until that country is secure. It was a victory, too, for the House Republican leadership.”
spiritual activism (day two) at the white house
The appointments with “our” political representatives this morning. I chose to skip them – part of me is very tempted to do participant observartion: join other people going to talk to their Californian congressmen and women, and even intervene in the conversations if i feel like it, who knows. But another part of me finds it too much, and then the jet-lag that i forgot to schedule does try to kick in. I sleep a bit longer and spend a morning walking through “political Washington”.
I get there by bus, from Columbia Heights where Jayne’s appartment is. As we’re approaching the city, it’s strikes me that i’m the only white body on this bus, and that many of the black and latino bodies are marked by a lack of various kinds of resources. In the middle of wide avenues and imposing government buildings, and suits, ties and briefcases walking briskly and purposefully, this slow bus seems somehow out of place. The people whose posture reflects a sense of entitlement to these streets and the whole world it invokes, are not on this bus. I get myself to Capitola Hill, and do the long walk to the White House. War in my head: images of war and poverty keep flashing before my eyes. It’s infuriating. The more i look around, the more men and women in suits and ties seem to transform into small and not so small agents of this giant war machine. Am i in the headquaters now? Can’t help thinking: this place should be bombed, should be flattened with the ground.
Commotion: police cars with sirenes racing in, out of nowhere, from every direction. They surround a truck with latino road workers. It seems that the truck was taking taking a road that it shouldn’t take, in order to get to the road works. The mistake is cleared out in a couple of minutes, the truck turns around, the police cars disappear as fast as they had come. Five minutes later there’s no trace of the commotion. A sense of heavy yet rather invisible surveillance remains. This place should be bombed, but when the workers’ shift is over. (is there ever such a moment, in between janitors and the construction workers?).
LaFayette Park, opposite the White House. the pray-inn, called for by the Network for Spiritual Progressives has just started. Cindy Sheehan is speaking. Then there’s Code Pink, who were gathered in Washington after their recent Mother’s Day vigil. I recognize a old grey-haired woman whom i saw in the Greyhound Station in Oakland in the beginning of this month. As she squatted on the floor besides her backpack with a tag with a Washington, carrying a peace sign and wearing quite some pink, i remembered thinking that i could guess where she was heading. Many people speak and propose prayers, some sing. Sahar, guess who was also in the crowd, the iranian guy who spoke at the NYC demo against the war in Iraq. “Long live Venezuela. Friendship with Iran”, is the message that he carries around.
At the end of the pray-inn we march to the white house. In the midst of all the imposing buildings in this neighborhood, this white house is deceptively small. Almost a bit insignificant, as if it wants to convey the message: don’t pay too much attention to me, i’m just another rich guy’s house. It also seems deceptively accessible. But as we get closer, the “police do not cross” yellow tape all around the gates becomes visible. We march with many papers, which are spread out all over the marchers. These are the names of people who signed the petition to stop the war on the Iran before it starts. as we approach the gates, people lift their arms and hold the papers in the air. Don’t Iraq Iran, is one of the slogans.
Disappointment: we are not allowed to officially hand the petition to White House. In the end people throw the papers over the gates. Some people get angry. Others get put off by the anger. They get into discussions with each other (why do you need to get angry? etc.). I get put off by the discussions, which don’t seem to lead anywhere, and which add nothing to the discussions on different tactics within a demonstration that are familiar to me. I actually get a bit upset with those who don’t like the anger – i mean, this is one of the most peaceful marches i’ve ever been to (and i’m sure there’s a reason for that, i’m sure the police would intervene massively and quickly if someone stepped over some kind of line), and the slight bit of anger against the refusal of an official reception of the petitions does not seem out of place at all. I have respect for the radical non-violence stance of some of the marchers, for whom shouting was inacceptable, only i felt that their annoying questions (do you really need to shout?) were not only counterproductive but also reflected a lack of creativity. If they wanted a different kind of energy, this was not the way; they could have tried to sing a song or something. (Coming to think of it, one of the songs was All we are saying, is give peace a chance… equally a bit tiresome…)
I turn away from the crowd and focus a bit on the police. They must be slightly amused by the discussions among the marchers, although their masked expressions don’t show it. They are filming all of us. I’m starting to feel in the mood for a little conversation. I turn to the cop near me, whom i see very well is not the leader of the gang, and ask him very sweetly:
– Excuse me Sir, can i just ask you for some information?
He gives me a friendly nod.
– The thing is, i’m a relatively new resident of this country (okay, a little lie, but it sounds better than “i’m an alien non-resident”) and i don’t really understand the situation. Could you explain me what exactely is the problem with giving the citizen’s petition to someone who can bring it to the White House?
Very friendly he explains me that it would be better if i’d spoke to his superior, to which he leads me. I repeat the thing, adding this time:
– Cause you see, i would have thought that this would have been a civic right, in line with the first ammendment?
The superior (y’r typical ugly cop):
– Well, it’s their right to accept it or not, and they won’t accept. You see, that’s your right; if somebody comes to your house, you can choose if you receive them or not.
I’m baffled by the comparison of the White House to any private house. I think back of cop-conversations when our actions were stopped around the parliament and government buildings in Brussels. Their the argument would be that we were disturbing a “neutral” zone with “progaganda”. Here the argument is connected to the sanctity of private space?
– But Sir, surely that is not the same thing. The White House is not a private house, it has a political function.
He considers for a moment, and responds:
– Okay, yes, it’s something political [sic!]. But you know, there’s always a security issue.
Ah, the saving grace of security. From the private straight to security, pushing out the public-political.
– A security issue for papers? We just want to hand over some papers?
– Oh yes, papers can be very dangerous.
In the meantime we’re surrounded by a bunch of marchers. Frankly everybody looked rather baffled. The exchange should have been filmed – the kind police officer in front of the White House saying that papers can be dangerous was quite a powerful image. (The conversation was in fact filmed, but by the police). As we continued talking among us, i understood that i didn’t quite get the thing as it was intended. In my imaginary, it was all about non-democratic regimes declaring the written word to be dangerous. My co-marchers assured me that the cop was invoking the threat of anthrax.
The march continues to Rumsfeld’s house, but the participants to the Spiritual Activism conference are asked to convene at the All Souls Church for the rest of the afternoon and evening program. As we move in small groups, i pick up more and more conversations of people who didn’t like the energy at the march, how some people were aggressive, etc. I shut up, don’t feel like arguing, pretend i don’t know these people. Then a woman addresses me and when she finds out that i’m from Europe, she asks why the EU did nothing to stop the war in Iraq. I suddenly feel like arguing – Oh, who exactely took the initiative for this war? And where exactely were all the millions and millions of people in the street in this country, as happened in many cities all over the world? (i mean, extrapolating the number of people that got together in Rome on the 15th of Feb in 2003, that would translate in about 15 million people on the streets of NYC or Washington.) And more than that, do you think those massive marches would have happened if people couldn’t overcome the “i don’t like the atmosphere of this march” feeling and got stuck arguing about “why are you shouting?”. Plus the way in which the “punishment” of warmongers like Blair and Aznar provokes a certain kind of understanding among many people throughout europe, although they don’t agree with the tactics of the violent attacks, which destablizes or interrupts a hegemonic use of “the events” like that of 9/11 in the US, for more war. I’m all about criticizing and organizing against european goverments and policies, but what about getting a bit more active within the belly of the beast instead of hoping for someone or something “from outside” to stop the US? (oh friends, i already told you, this spiritual activism conference really doesn’t bring out the best in me…) The woman politely turns away and continued chatting with the other people, pretending not to know me.
mother’s day
A good chunk of public life in this place is concentrated on Pacific Ave, the one main street in town where most of the shops, a number of restaurants and bars and two cinema theatres are located. Pacific Ave on a Friday night is to be avoided, if one doesn’t appreciate a kind of compulsory small town “it’s time to go out and have fun” atmosphere. Too familiar from those American movies and series that actually make you happy you didn’t have to grow up in that place (oh mama, now i want to know why precisely you decided we shouldn’t grow up in the U.S. and move back to Belgium? will you tell me?), and too familiar from growing up in the village, where that kind of Friday and Saturday night entertainment was definately greatly aspired by the bored-to-death teenagers, an aspiration which couldn’t be met in our small village (with its public space limited to a grocery shop, a bakery, a school, a church and a cafe, and the youth movement house) and which took the kids to neighboring bigger villages.
Do you remember that you didn’t let me go out till i was 16, mama? And of course i wanted to, “going out” (from that place) sounded so promising. Did i ever tell you the truth about that first time that i could go? That i found it so stupid, so senseless, such a waste of time. That, if anything, this rural discotheque was village stupidity and boredom larger than live; it was by no means going out, rather falling deeper into it. Of course, i couldn’t tell you then, after having put up the “why can everybody go except me” routine for a while, but i stopped wanting this “going out”. Would only be satisfied with a “going (getting) out” of a more radical kind (remember the episode when i desperatedly wanted to go to school in New York…) Anyway, my first friday evening downtown in Santa Cruz, back in February – while i was walking home between the loud, drunk, behaving stupidly and vomitting teenagers (and students no doubt, they’re beginning to look so young…) – represented one of the moments of lucidity in which i knew i couldn’t stay in this place. Yesterday evening i walked on Pacific Ave again, on my way to Berna and Feza. It was early in the evening, just after dusk. I had a six-pack of Corona and a big bag of blue tortilla chips in my hands (an evening of movies!) and was addressed pretty much the whole way down the street, by underage kids and the homeless, begging for one of those bottles of beer…
We started off watching a Belgian movie, Everybody’s Famous! I hadn’t seen it before, didn’t think it was a good movie, but Berna and Feza had heard good things about it. And it was sweet, and interesting from a Marxist analysis, in which we indulged ourselves – its represenations of a post-industrial context and of class (heavily marked by differences in a spectre of Flemish and Dutch accents, which totally got lost in the subtitles of course…). And one scene made us laugh so much we almost rolled out of the sofa… on the basis of an eye-witness of one of the kidnappers of the famous singer the police makes a profile that is subsequently distributed, and according to the profile the kidnapper (a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes…) is… Moroccan. Before watching the movie we had a whole session on the recent “events” in Belgium of course – the stabbing to death of the 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeek some weeks ago which initiated an intense scapegoating of the Moroccan community until (and still after…) it seemed that the perpetrators were Polish kids, and the rambo-style action of taking a gun to the streets and killing non-white people (women and a girl basically) by an 18 year old white boy (who happens to be the nephew of a Vlaams Belang politician) in Antwerpen and the current discussion whether this is a racism or an disturbed kid (who actually declared that his mission was to kill as many non-white people as possible, but you see, he might be so disturbed that he is deluded and even if he proudly claims to be a racist, it might actually not be appropriate to speak of racism in this case, cause he’s a disturbed individual and Belgium is not really a racist society and the earth is oh-so-flat – do you understand? But i shouldn’t get on my horse now, saving the AAA (Anger, Analysis and kicking-Ass) for the Flanders blog that Nadia and me are starting soon… What was i writing about? Movies (and i had brought Yes; friends, i really want you to see Yes!) and companionship and sleeping over and making pancakes in the morning. And so today I was walking down Pacific Ave again on my way home, and all of sudden i saw and heard this bunch of old grey ladies who squatted – with a little table and banners and their somewhat fragile but impressive selves – in the middle of Saturday afternoon (shopping) business.
 |
Armed with aprons and kitchen utensils, they were singing popular and American folk songs with modified lyrics – one of songs they had aptly entitled “The Raging Grannies”. This one i heard a couple of times (to the tune of Country Roads):Bring ‘m home, bring ‘m home To the place, where they belong There are children, stop the killing, Bring ‘m home |
They were from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; they even looked as if they had been part of the league since it was founded. More than that, they looked determined, “still standing”, and not planning to go anywhere else soon. Their leaflet reads: “It was the wisdom of our founding foremothers in 1915 that peace is rooted not only in treaties between great powers or even in ending the arms race. They understood that peace can only flourish when it is planted in the soil of justice, freedom, non-violence, opportunity and equality for all.” They were collecting signatures against the war in Iraq to send to senators (“Can i sign, i’m not a U.S. citizen?” “Of course, my dear, they won’t really know, will they?” she giggled. “The more post-cards we send to our senators, the more pressure they will feel.”) And they were giving out cards for Mother’s Day (“What about giving this card to your mother instead of shopping for a present?”). I’m sometimes troubled by peace-activism so rooted in a certain notion of motherhood. But not on Mother’s Day, and not here in Santa Cruz where i wished more of the students would continue to struggle and organize against the war their country is waging. And i wish i could give you the card the raging grannies made, mama, but it won’t cross the atlantic in time. So i copy the text below for you. En ik wens je fijne moederdag, mama, van ver weg, maar toch ook weer dichtbij! dikke kus, sarah
——————————————————————–
Mother’s Day began with a woman named Julia Ward Howe,
who nursed the wounded during the American Cival War. In 1870
she started a crusade to institute a Mother’s Day as a Day for Peace.
Here is her Mother’s Day proclamation:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have
hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us,
reaking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons
shall not be taken form us to unlearn all that we have been
able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”
We women of one country will be too tender of those
of another country to allow our ons to be trained to
injure theirs. From the bosom of the devasted earth
a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
if there’s a black list, i wanna be on it
Yesterday evening we got a phonecall in the house, from some charity organisation to sollicit (financial) support for “our troops”. Strange to get such a call at home, especially when the only answer i could come up with on the phone is: the only thing about “our troops” we support at this stage, is immediate withdrawal, like NOW. Was it really a charity that called us? Does this mean our house now features in the TALON database?
Technologies and mentality of surveillance and control are spreading at such a speed that sometimes one can only make fun of them. Time to play. This morning: a funny follow-up mail on the War on Terror teach-in at Santa Cruz two weeks ago. The message let us know that, while the Pentagon eventually got the UCSC protest against military recruitement on the campus out of TALON, a conservative blog writer published all the kids’ names and emails and guess what – they all received death-threats. Okay, not a very funny game, but it does get better. The message included a letter from UC Davis to the Pentagon, concerning their upcoming teach-in against the war. (and note that i’m not the only one connecting the surfing “fun-loving” culture of this place with a profound lack of political passion and activity…)
———————————————————————————-
Lt. Col. Gary Testut
Threat and Local Observation Notice Database (TALON)
Pentagon
Washington, DC
Dear Lt. Col. Testut,
We, faculty and students of the University of California at Davis, would like to Call your attention to an upcoming teach-in at our campus titled “Connecting the Dots: The War on Terror and You.†In particular, we urge you to consider designating our teach-in a “credible threat†in your TALON database.
As you may be aware, the different campuses of the University of California compete vigorously with each other to attract students, faculty, and research funds. Your designation of protests at UC Santa Cruz as a “credible threat†bestows considerable prestige on that campus. In the interest of fairness, we believe you owe it to us to seriously consider our teach-in for the same honor.
Though you have never made public what criteria you use to judge what constitutes a “credible threat,†we are certain that, by any criteria you may be secretly using, our activities here at Davis constitute a threat at least as credible as any in Santa Cruz.
• Demonstrations: our students have held numerous, vibrant, and well-attended demonstrations, including demonstrations against military recruiters on campus.
• Radical student groups: our campus takes just as much pride in promoting freedom of speech and scholarship that Santa Cruz does, and you will find student political groups here from across the entire political spectrum.
• Diversity: our faculty and student body include many people of color and foreign nationals, including people from the Middle East.
Furthermore, there are factors which we believe make our activities at Davis a more credible threat than anything in Santa Cruz:
Our campus not only has the same mix of freedom of speech, anti-war groups, and immigrants and minorities, but we also host significant military research. This combination of immigrants, freedom of speech, and military research should be enough to conjure up a credible threat in the mind of even the most complacent TALON investigator.
Finally, please note that Santa Cruz is the site of one of the world’s best surf breaks. No matter how passionate their students may be about political causes, if the surf is up they will run for their boards, giving your recruiters ample opportunity to present their message to the non-surfing student body. Here at Davis, having no such diversions, our students are more serious and focused. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest opportunity.