PeaceVoice

brilliant new book by Daniel Hunter and friends...

Thanks to the Junction City Union (Clay Center KS):

Happy Talk? Nope The three most likely methods by which the human species can self-inflict harm, even extinction: 1. Failure to stem anthropogenic climate chaos.2. Inadequate preparation for the next pandemic, possibly worse

Lost another great one...

Rev James Lawson passed on today.

He was a hero to me and many many more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lawson_(activist)

A celebration of his life and legacy TBD in Portland.

Thank you, Waynesboro, Virginia Augusta Free Press.

Reviewing the personal, political and criminal record of Donald Trump In 2016, Donald Trump ran as an outsider, as someone who was able to criticize the political record of his primary opponents.

A decent conversation with a decent man.

Daryl Davis on Befriending the Klan Yascha Mounk and Daryl Davis discuss his lifetime of convincing Ku Klux Klan members to renounce racism.

Here comes MDay:

May 11, 2024 If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity ...

I always encourage all of us who write--students, essayists, even those who post on social media--to proofread. Here is the title of a story on the website of a prominent local mainstream media outlet today: "N. Porltand police operation ends with several arrests"
Le Sigh...

Never forget. 21 years ago today, 21-year-old single Mom of two little boys, Kendra James was murdered by Portland police. Unarmed, shot in a traffic stop, cuffed and left on the street to bleed out. No indictments.

Thank you, LA Progressive.

Way Outside the Confines of the Box Let them work it out. Stop sending arms. Stop cheering for one side. Cheer for the third side, for peace.

It was 54 years ago today that we celebrated the first Earth Day. It was 28 years ago today that the late Donna Howard and I offered a Plowshares action in the name of Earth Day--we used hand tools to shut down and partially dismantle a thermonuclear command base. There is no quicker anthropogenic catastrophic act of destruction of nature than nuclear war and each step preparing for such a disaster hurts the Earth. We wanted to call attention to it all. Our time in prison was a small price in the ongoing struggle by humankind to end this threat of self-inflicted apocalypse. On this Earth Day 2024 may we all offer whatever efforts we can toward living as if our grandchildren deserve a beautiful world.

Thank you, Augusta Free Press:

Joe Biden is wrecking American: We know, because Fox News says so Joe Biden is ruining America. We know this because Ron Johnson said so on Fox News. Let's count the ways:

Shirley Chisholm, Ingrid Bettancourt, Leymah Gbowee, Barbara Deming, Elise Boulding, Rigoberta Menchu, Rosa Parks, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Lee, Diane Nash, Winona LaDuke...so many more to celebrate and emulate in Women's History Month--some of them are still making it!

Thanks, ZNet!

R is for Reckless--and Republican Driving at 90 toward the cliff--that is such an irresponsible teen image. That's the current Republican party. Thanks to the past fiscal cliff poor deals

Thank you, LA Progressive:

NATO as Provocateur: Trump as Pawn Is Trump simply enamored of the Total Power model, the Ultimate Strongman paradigm, that Putin represents?

One Russian lawyer gives his life to trying to bring democracy to Russia, and the US billionaire is just fined more than a third of a $billion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/alexei-navalny-dead-russia-prsion/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3cc4433%2F65cf95fd1ee4dc2d55d13497%2F5f257086ae7e8a43608d26c7%2F5%2F51%2F65cf95fd1ee4dc2d55d13497
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/16/trump-ny-fraud-trial-decision/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

Judge orders Trump to pay more than $350 million in N.Y. civil fraud trial New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron on Friday handed down a hefty penalty following a civil trial in which Trump and others were accused of financial fraud.

LA Progressive always has the best art with their op-eds:

Both Ways on Bidenomics Should we vote based on how a president might affect our financial future? For families it's hard not to.

Thank you, Augusta Free Press:

Tom Hastings: Four more years of Bidenomics, or four more years of tax cuts for the rich? Do we want another four years of failures that Trump's 2017-2021 term inflicted on us, or do we want another four years of Bidenomics?

Just finished hours reading, responding to some of my 100 students this term, then putting out a brilliant peace plan for Gaza/Israel by Sovaida Maani Ewing (http://www.peacevoice.info/2024/01/25/reviving-the-concept-of-trusteeship-as-a-stepping-stone-to-peace-in-the-middle-east/)... Now it's either very late or very early, so I'm chilling, listening to the Neville Brothers. OK, it's a 20 year old song, but that's recent to a 73 year old guy... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDMiyRmbik

The Neville Brothers - Bird On A Wire Music video by Neville Brothers performing Bird On A Wire. (C) 2004 A&M Records

My hopes this year for MLK Day. Thank you, Augusta Free Press:

Tom Hastings: MLK today Those who like violence, those who prefer cathartic rage, love to lift out Martin Luther King Jr.'s words about riots: "riots are the voice of the unheard."

Thank you, LA Progressive:

Acting Like We Own It The countless stories of disenfranchised people around the world making a difference in their democracies can help motivate us when we feel like it's hopeless.

Thank you, Gilmer Texas Mirror:

A Pax on Both Your Houses: Trauma Legacies A Pax on Both Your Houses: Trauma Legacies By Editor | December 21, 2023 | 0 By Tom H. Hastings Honest minds (and others) are differing on many global conflict questions right now: Russia and Ukraine, Hamas and Israel, Trump and democracy, and so forth. Unless we conduct our analysis in a trauma-inf...

Thanks, LA Progressive.

Guerrilla War in Cities and Other Evolutionary Missteps When any warring party uses civilians as human shields, they invite the other warring party to commit war crimes.

James Lawson Institute – JLI

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Daniel Lee at [email protected] or (310) 936-7593
Website: www.jameslawsoninstitute.org

Legendary Civil Rights Leader James Lawson Assembles Institute on Nonviolent Civil Resistance, in Portland, Oregon, April 24–28

Portland, Ore., will be the site of a sixth assembly of a uniquely acclaimed program that prepares social justice advocates for effective civil resistance campaigns on a host of socio-political crises and predicaments across the nation.

The James Lawson Institute, named for the ordained United Methodist Church minister who advised and led several successful civil resistance campaigns at the height of the modern Civil Rights Movement, will be held April 24–28 in Portland, Oregon. Leaders, organizers, scholar-practitioners, and activists who want to improve their strategy, methods, and mastery required for successful justice campaigns voluntarily apply.

“Few grasp that nonviolent direct action requires planning, preparation, strategizing, recruiting, outreach, messaging and all the mechanisms needed for a campaign, including fierce discipline,” said the Reverend Dr. James M. Lawson in announcing the Institute in Portland. “This doesn’t happen spontaneously. It must be done systematically.”

A close colleague and friend of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Lawson led and guided some of the most capable campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. Most notably, he organized sit-in campaigns at racially segregated lunch counters in Nashville, TN, which ultimately led to desegregation of those facilities and other public accommodations.

Dr. Lawson’s last five-day Institute was held at Ohio Wesleyan University in mid-summer 2018, in central Ohio, when he convened a program focused on Power and Struggle.

Participants in the Lawson Institutes start by focusing on the history of nonviolent action that has been found wherever scholars have searched for evidence of social movements. They will learn both the theory and practice of nonviolent struggle from case studies, planning tools, exercises and skits, and research, taught by a faculty of experienced scholar practitioners and facilitators.

The Institute’s teaching staff and facilitators contend that the spotlight has not been sufficiently turned onto the richness of U.S. history, yesterday and today. Thousands of nonviolent campaigns and drives during the 18th to 20th centuries produced tangible results for abolition of slavery, establishment of tenant rights, ending child labor, recognition of an 8-hour work day, nonviolent organizing for strikes and economic boycotts by the labor movement in seeking basic rights for organizing for labor unions, prison reform, the women’s vote, and even organizing electric power.

The Institute’s partners include the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict as an advisory partner, the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Youth Engagement Fund and the Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Institute meets for portions of five days, starting Wednesday, April 24, 6–9 p.m. with a public talk by Dr. Lawson, Native American Center, Portland State University, to which the public is invited.

The Institute’s program concentrates on core elements for effective civil resistance campaigns:
●BuFor Immediate Release:

Contact: Daniel Lee at [email protected] or (310) 936-7593
Website: www.jameslawsoninstitute.org

Legendary Civil Rights Leader James Lawson Assembles Institute on Nonviolent Civil Resistance, in Portland, Oregon, April 24–28

Portland, Ore., will be the site of a sixth assembly of a uniquely acclaimed program that prepares social justice advocates for effective civil resistance campaigns on a host of socio-political crises and predicaments across the nation.

The James Lawson Institute, named for the ordained United Methodist Church minister who advised and led several successful civil resistance campaigns at the height of the modern Civil Rights Movement, will be held April 24–28 in Portland, Oregon. Leaders, organizers, scholar-practitioners, and activists who want to improve their strategy, methods, and mastery required for successful justice campaigns voluntarily apply.

“Few grasp that nonviolent direct action requires planning, preparation, strategizing, recruiting, outreach, messaging and all the mechanisms needed for a campaign, including fierce discipline,” said the Reverend Dr. James M. Lawson in announcing the Institute in Portland. “This doesn’t happen spontaneously. It must be done systematically.”

A close colleague and friend of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Lawson led and guided some of the most capable campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. Most notably, he organized sit-in campaigns at racially segregated lunch counters in Nashville, TN, which ultimately led to desegregation of those facilities and other public accommodations.

Dr. Lawson’s last five-day Institute was held at Ohio Wesleyan University in mid-summer 2018, in central Ohio, when he convened a program focused on Power and Struggle.

Participants in the Lawson Institutes start by focusing on the history of nonviolent action that has been found wherever scholars have searched for evidence of social movements. They will learn both the theory and practice of nonviolent struggle from case studies, planning tools, exercises and skits, and research, taught by a faculty of experienced scholar practitioners and facilitators.

The Institute’s teaching staff and facilitators contend that the spotlight has not been sufficiently turned onto the richness of U.S. history, yesterday and today. Thousands of nonviolent campaigns and drives during the 18th to 20th centuries produced tangible results for abolition of slavery, establishment of tenant rights, ending child labor, recognition of an 8-hour work day, nonviolent organizing for strikes and economic boycotts by the labor movement in seeking basic rights for organizing for labor unions, prison reform, the women’s vote, and even organizing electric power.

The Institute’s partners include the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict as an advisory partner, the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Youth Engagement Fund and the Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Institute meets for portions of five days, starting Wednesday, April 24, 6–9 p.m. with a public talk by Dr. Lawson, Native American Center, Portland State University, to which the public is invited.

The Institute’s program concentrates on core elements for effective civil resistance campaigns:
●Building an Escalating Intergenerational U.S. Nonviolent Movement—Inclusive of Women, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Other;
●How Women a Century ago Changed President Wilson’s Policy on the Women’s Vote;
●Strategy, Tactics, and Methods in Nonviolent Struggles;
●How and Why the U.S. Freedom Movement Has Inspired Campaigns Worldwide;
●Women in Nonviolent Struggles; and
●Communication and Language for the “New Emerging Society”

Interested parties may apply for enrollment on the Institute’s website through March 10: www.jameslawsoninstitute.org
Applications received after March 10 may also be considered.
#

ilding an Escalating Intergenerational U.S. Nonviolent Movement—Inclusive of Women, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Other;
●How Women a Century ago Changed President Wilson’s Policy on the Women’s Vote;
●Strategy, Tactics, and Methods in Nonviolent Struggles;
●How and Why the U.S. Freedom Movement Has Inspired Campaigns Worldwide;
●Women in Nonviolent Struggles; and
●Communication and Language for the “New Emerging Society”

Interested parties may apply for enrollment on the Institute’s website through March 10: www.jameslawsoninstitute.org
Applications received after March 10 may also be considered.
#

jameslawsoninstitute.org

Dealing with North Korean Missiles

Please read this brief, helpful exegesis of the problem of North Korea, the problem of the current US approach, and the only logical path forward for countries wishing to avoid catastrophe.

http://bit.ly/2xwuyBO

peacevoice.info “Small powers often have leverage well above their size and capabilities. North Korea is the example par excellence today: It has a primitive economy by all the usual standards...” Mel Gurtov Published in: Counterpunch, Mel

Playing Nuclear “Chicken” With Our Lives

Please read this timely and urgent analysis by arguably the world's foremost academic expert on the history of public opinions and movements opposing nuclear weapons, Dr. Lawrence Wittner

http://bit.ly/2vA73Gx

peacevoice.info “What kind of civilization have we developed when two mentally unstable national leaders, in an escalating confrontation with each other...” Lawrence S. Wittner Published in: Common Dreams, Antiwar, The Sentinel-Progress, Chicago Sun Times, Intrepid Report, Huffington

War Prevention Initiative

War prevention needed! See our press release at http://warpreventioninitiative.org/?p=3240

Now

With all the scintillating sideshows, many of us are missing what might be the main event...

http://bit.ly/2vxFgqE

peacevoice.info “We have been living with nuclear weapons for 72 years, so that must make them safe and sustainable, right?...” Tom H. Hastings Published in: The Daily Nonparareil, The Orange Leader, Newberry Observer, Sierra County Prospect, City

Opening Gitmo to the world

Contemplating a world in which prisoners who have not been convicted--and who would ultimately be exonerated--could be tortured for years and kept from their families--is thinkable when we consider Hi**er, Mao, or Stalin, not our nation founded on fairness, based on the law. Yet as journalist Robert Koehler tells us, this happened and is happening. As we hear Trump promising more of the same we must confront our national spirit and ask ourselves if we can continue to tolerate this. We rightly demand North Korea and Iran release innocent Americans... now let us model that to the world

http://bit.ly/2ucsYQl

peacevoice.info “To read Witnesses of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantanamo is to run your mind along the contours of hell...” Robert C. Koehler Published in: Common Dreams, Free Press, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, The Smirking Chimp, Newberry

Jamboree travesty

This essay by a rueful Eagle Scout--and Executive Editor of West Virginia's largest newspaper--on the speech Donald Trump gave at the Boy Scouts Jamboree in which he bragged as usual and referred to the boys as voters last November--clearly inappropriate and more 'alternative facts'.

http://bit.ly/2v1eO9e

peacevoice.info “I don’t blame the Boy Scouts for President Donald Trump’s bizarre speech at the National Jamboree in West Virginia on Monday...” Robert J. Byers Published in: Richmond Times-Dispatch http://www.richmond.com/opinion/their-opinion/guest-columnists/robert-j-byers-column-jamboree-travesty/article_902c1...