Cartoon: Engaging Peace is taking flight! Come along for the ride!

by Joe Kandra, Kathie Malley-Morrison, Pat Daniel

Engaging Peace, the nonprofit we created in 2010 to promote peace and social justice education, is about to embark on a new venture. Specifically, the blog will be transferred to another activist organization–Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA).

Mass Peace Action is the largest peace organization in Massachusetts, with ties to other peace organizations around the country. Here are a few examples of its activities in 2020:

  • Hosted more than 70 webinars, with speakers like Noam Chomsky and Trita Parsi
  • Held dozens of events to protest war in the Middle East and intervention in Latin America; sent more than 10,000 emails to state and federal legislators and the White House
  • Surpassed 15,000 supporters, 1,000 subscribers on YouTube, and 5,000 followers on Twitter
  • Grew to eight working groups with active engagement of over 100 volunteers
  • Started the “Fund Healthcare Not Warfare” Campaign

MAPA’s Education Fund, like Engaging Peace, is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization.

Before the Engaging Peace archive moves to its new site, we want to thank all our readers, guest authors, and donors for sharing our work towards peace and social justice over the last 11 years.

What a wonderful journey it’s been, starting when we first imagined a blog to making it happen, becoming a nonprofit, adding the newsletter, and growing our contacts to over 900. Over more than a decade, Engaging Peace has published over 1,000 posts (which prompted almost 5,500 reader comments), more than 100 monthly online newsletters, and over 60 political cartoons.

During that time, we were honored to have contributions from over 90 guest authors and illustrators, dozens of interns, and hundreds of commentators.

We most especially offer thanks to our donors who supported EP and helped us meet our budget, and to our board of directors (Doe West and Alice LoCicero) for helping to guide EP through a host of decisions and milestones.

Although Engaging Peace, Inc. as an organization will close, Kathie, Pat, and the EP cartoonist, Joe Kandra, will continue to publish occasional posts and cartoons on the MAPA site.

The best news of all is that our efforts for peace and social justice will continue within a larger constellation of activists within Mass Peace Action. Our work is their work, our goals are their goals. Please continue to participate in these efforts toward a more peaceful and just world for ourselves, our children, and the future of the earth.

Action: If you would like to sign up for MAPA’s e-alerts, just click here. And please be sure to watch for new posts and cartoons from Kathie and her team on the MAPA site.

Civilizing….us

by Kathie MM

In the enticing elegiac Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery shares the following reflection (p. 107):

“Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of primates. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education. What does education imply? One must offer camellias on moss, tirelessly, in order to escape the natural impulses of our species, because these impulses do not change, and continually threaten the fragile equilibrium of survival….In fact, when the struggle to dominate our primate aggressiveness takes up arms as powerful as books and words, the undertaking is an easy one…”

What do you think about Barbery’s words? Would you like to add anything?

May The Unseen Be Seen

Statue of Truth outside the Supreme Court of Canada in the capital City, Ottawa in the province, Ontario. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: Tomkinsr at English Wikipedia

by Caitlin Johnstone

May what is unseen become seen.

May the hidden dynamics of oligarchy and empire be revealed to all of humanity.

May the depravity of the powerful be exposed before everyone.

May government secrecy end.

May the public become aware of the pervasiveness of mass media propaganda.

May people realize that they’ve been deceived about the world since childhood.

May there be a widespread recognition that things are not as they seem.

May obfuscation and distortion be replaced with truth and clarity.

May the public grow more conscious of the reality of class dynamics.

May the public see money for the made-up game that it is.

May people begin clearly perceiving the horrors of war and economic sanctions, and feel it all.

May awareness sink in of the need for urgent climate action.

May we clearly see the existential need to begin collaborating with each other and with our ecosystem before we destroy it all.

May we all become conscious of racial and sexual dynamics and inequalities.

May we all look squarely at the unacceptable cruelty of factory farming.

May manipulators and abusers everywhere be recognized for what they are.

May abusive dynamics everywhere be clearly seen: in nations, in communities, in families, in relationships.

May unwholesome interpersonal relationships move into clarity or meet a natural end.

May unjust restrictions on consciousness-expanding substances be ended.

May everyone everywhere become conscious of their inner workings.

May our psychological trauma move into the light where it can be healed.

May our unconscious mental and perceptual habits move into consciousness.

May we all become conscious of the illusory nature of self and separation.

May we all become conscious of how experience is really happening.

May we all become conscious of our own true nature.

May we all see clearly what is happening, both inwardly and outwardly.

May we use our clear perception to move efficaciously in this world, and collaborate as one toward health and harmony.

May we build a sane and healthy world together that is based on truth and clear seeing.

Amen.

______________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge

Topsoil bomber

Thanks to Fidel Fernando for sharing his work on Unsplash


By BOB SCHILDGEN*


My finest accomplishment–not that I’m burdened with choices
in this department–is the creation
of five-hundred cubic feet of topsoil,
with the aid of billions of unidentified micro-organisms,
and earthworms churning through the compost,
and several rabbits who worked with uncommon dedication
to contribute manure and maintain morale:
Myrtle, who passed away of old age–
Habermas, who was murdered by a pit bull
that ripped the bottom from his cage–
Sartre, who perished suddenly from unknown causes,
and Derrida, who is uncommonly fond of dandelions.
Five hundred cubic feet of topsoil from sheer waste,
to enrich a garden, transform to food and flower
orange peels, tea leaves, clippings, weeds,
a bonsai Mount Fuji of compost power.
The world needs all the compost it can get.
Topsoil made us what we are,
without it we simply don’t exist,
which is an earnest modern way to say
God did indeed make Adam out of clay.

Imagine a world transformed by compost,
fertile, abundant, fecundant reckless green.
Imagine cargo ships loaded with topsoil
for every compost-craving corner of the world.
Imagine nuclear submarines distributing topsoil!
Military transport planes packed with topsoil!
Precision missiles delivering topsoil exactly where most needed.
Aircraft carriers piled high with topsoil!
Bombers dropping two-ton bombs of topsoil!
Preemptive strikes of topsoil,
weapons of mass destruction buried
under thousands of feet of steaming compost!
Imagine composters in every land, tending peaceful heaps,
singing in a vast harmony of regeneration.
Down slopes of compost comes the world’s salvation.

*From Hey Mr Green, Sierra Magazine, May 25, 2010; reprinted for educational and informative purposes.