Prisons – Page 4 – Engaging Peace

Hear-ye, Hear-ye, Read all about it!

Posted on June 26, 2017March 11, 2021 by kathiemm

By Kathie MM

Last Saturday, June 17, 2017, on a miserably wet day, multitudes of women marched in New York City.

Their purpose? Rallying for a United Nations ban on the use, development, and sale of nuclear weapons.

Support for such a ban, like support for efforts to deal with climate change, may be essential to the survival of most of the remaining species on earth, including human beings.

However, effective banning of the bomb faces enormous obstacles. Foremost is the opposition of all member countries already possessing nuclear weapons—including the United States.

Fortunately, many courageous women—and their male supporters—have faced daunting obstacles in the past and have overcome them.

Step back. Imagine what it must have been like for women in this country when:

they could not vote,
advocating for a right to vote could mean a term in prison or an insane asylum,
divorcing an abusive husband meant losing your children,
distributing contraception aids or advertising safe abortions was a criminal offense,
higher education was pretty much out of bounds, and
while poverty was rampant, nearly every kind of job was closed to women except domestic work and prostitution (which was more lucrative but also a pathway to prison).

Perhaps you have heard the names of some of the women (e.g., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull) who worked, often at great personal cost, to challenge these injustices.

If you want to immerse yourself in the lives of those women and others (e.g., Susan B. Anthony) as they struggled against widespread oppression and persecution (personified by the smug zealot Anthony Comstock), read Marge Piercy’s Sex Wars.

The novel is riveting, with rich and well-researched characterizations of Cady Stanton and Woodhull–courageous, passionate, sometimes conflictual, flawed, admirable human beings–and the nefarious Anthony Comstock (who devoted his life to sending uppity women to jail ), as well as the inimitable fictional immigrant, Freydeh Levin.

Read it for an intimate and engrossing engagement in a culture awash with violent prejudices, run by a cabal of rich and powerful white men able to postpone but not prevent the protest movement for women’s rights.

Read it, be grateful for the progress that’s been made,, and ask what you can do for…

Peace,
Survival of the earth, and
Human rights.

Getting to peace and social justice

Posted on June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 by kathiemm

Anti-nuclear arms protesters display a banner during the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) rally at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. April16,2011. Author: Brian Stansberry

By Anthony Marsella

Here is a straightforward list of actions and policies to promote peace amidst the madness of pursuing destruction and war for the apparent rewards of empire, economic, and delight in immorality and illegality.

Productive Foreign Policy and Domestic Options, Choices, Alternatives: Paths to Peace and Social Justice

Acknowledge the national security of the USA is best secured by pursuing and modeling peace, not by engaging in constant accusations and enemification of nations, cultures, religions, and people;
Address and resolve domestic inequities and inequalities in wealth, power, and position. Create new policies for equity and opportunity;
Address and limit monopolies (e.g., Big Agro, Big Pharm, Big Health, Big Transportation, Big Education, etc.) because these monopolies concentrate power, and they become impossible to control – “Too big to fail.”
Address the reality of USA decline in reputation and image by stopping the pursuit of a global empire;
Adopt a “Never Again” policy and practices for all countries, by all countries. “Never again” must not be limited to a single group or nation;
Apologize and ask for forgiveness in a public forum. Express intention to no longer pursue violence and war as national policy;
“Be the nation you want others to be;”
Build museums, monuments, holidays, and tributes to peace. Stop glorification of war;
Cease all vilification of Muslims and Muslim nations;
Condemn and prosecute apartheid;
Choose and support non-violent and non-killing protests and social changes;
Circulate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to all schools and governments as an accepted guide;
Close Guantanamo, and other “war on terrorism” prisons, camps, and rendition sites;
Destroy all weapons of mass destruction Nuclear, Toxic, Gas, etc);
Develop Department of Peace as an official standing cabinet office separate from State or Defense Departments;
Develop a metric to assess and prosecute USA international abuses and crimes;
Develop metrics to assess USA contributions to advancing humanity and the natural sectors. Assess metrics constantly;
Develop, implement, and empower UN conflict resolution office;
Develop ethic/ethos of global interdependency;
Diplomacy dialogue, rather than military force or violent interventions;
Educate women and children, and re-educate men;
Empower UN, and improve its functions and roles;
End corporate political election influence, control, and dominance;
End global surveillance and restore privacy and constitutional rights;
Increase governmental transparency and accountability;
International loan forgiveness;
Join and cooperate with international courts;
Limit “imperial” president powers as reflected in abuses of signing statements;
Limit lobbyist influence and control of public offices;
Limit Presidential terms of office to six years;
Limit Congressional terms of office to eight years. End seniority system of power;
Limit military-industrial-congressional- education complex powers;
Non-Contingent humanitarian aid and assistance, rather than contingent aid;
Practice humility, apology, and forgiveness;
Prosecute American war and military crimes to national and international laws;
Public apology for violent and destructive national and international policies and actions (e.g. NATO);
Reconsider political and economic treaties that isolate and marginalize nations (e.g., TPP) and seek hegemonic control (e.g., Russia, China);
Resist military solutions to conflicts and disagreements – choose diplomacy;
Restore balance of power across executive, congressional, and justice sectors. Dominance of the executive branch under the auspices of protecting national security has been abused, and has proven a failure and crime;
Restorative justice to victims;
Restrict central banking model of financial control over nations’ debt;
Review immediate and long-term consequences of DHS/NSA Abuses;
Stop “for profit” prisons, and their associated judicial corruption;
Speak truth, do not distort or exaggerate, practice transparency;,
Use “Justice” as an arbiter for decisions;

From: A.J.Marsella (2014).Two Paths in the Wood: “Choice” of Life or War. First published in Transcend, 27 October 2014. TRANSCEND MEMBER

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

Ain’t Gonna Finance War No More!

Posted on March 23, 2017 by kathiemm

Larry Bassett and his mother in front of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, 1985.

by Larry Bassett

I have happily just passed the nine-month mark of my first year of massive resistance. I mark this new beginning of my life on June 11 with the death of my father and with my commitment to redirect as much of my inheritance as possible to make a better world.

Dad left me $1 million with instructions to distribute about half of it to grandchildren and great grandchildren and special others. I did that and set to work on my half.

My commitment to civil disobedience in honor of my mother who became a criminal for peace in her later years is acted out in my case with war tax resistance. I will resist the $128,005 I owe in federal income tax next month. I will have donated more than that amount to meet human needs internationally and nationally and locally.

To honor my father and mother, I am trying to do as they did many times in their lives in trying to directly help the less fortunate. They were brave and compassionate by giving money and offering a place to stay in their home and loaning other personal goods.

My parents found that helping others was not always free of risk. People who were ill and without resources sometimes took advantage of them. But my parents knew that they had much and others had little.

Since I live in the Internet age, I have had a much broader range of people in need. While I have given to many charities, I have also tried in a very small way to help some individuals in Haiti and Kenya and Uganda who had little compared to me, who had been left with so much by my father.

My effort with individuals has taught me a lot about the desperation of poverty. I have often remembered my first job out of college working with the poor in Pontiac, Michigan. Back then I came to the conclusion that what the poor need most is money. So when I found the international charity GiveDirectly that gives cash to the extremely impoverished in East Africa, I knew I had found an Organization that I wanted to support significantly.

My mother once spent 30 days in jail for merely “crossing the line” at a plant in Michigan that produced a part of a missile. What she learned from that experience was that the women who shared her jail cell were poor and black. She learned that the justice system needed reform.

The government learned and continues to learn that the biggest result of putting peace and justice people in jail is that they are creating people who diligently work to change the system.

I do not know what the justice system will do when I refuse to pay my federal taxes in April. I am a little bit scared of what they might do just as I was scared in 1985 when they took me to court. But sometimes as my parents knew, and as they taught me by their example. you have to do what you have to do.

As I write this post, I am remembering her and my father with pride just as they were proud of me back then.

Larry Bassett is a peace activist and son of peace activists; he has worked for the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign (CMTC), National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), and National Campaign for a Peace Tax Campaign (NCPTF You can learn more about him at facebook. To read the story of his successful confrontation with the IRS, go here To read an inspiring set of quotes that he has assembled regarding war, peace, government, humanity, etc., go here .

THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, CONCLUSION

Posted on January 1, 2017 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

To paraphrase George Santayana: Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Not only is America the most militarized and largest debtor country in the world, it remains the only technologically advanced country lacking universal health care and still clinging to the death penalty.

Since 1985, middle class income in Germany has risen five times faster than middle class income in America. German workers have two months paid vacation per year; guaranteed, taxpayer financed, universal health care; and a higher quality, more egalitarian national education system than America, with generous funding for the arts.

Meanwhile, among the advanced industrial nations of the world, America has one of the highest infant mortality rates, the highest percentage of citizens in prison, and more than 40 million American families deprived of health insurance (a number recently mitigated by Obamacare).

In addition to his militarization and deficit spending, Ronald Reagan’s most profound domestic legacy was the vast expansion of two segments of the American population: billionaires and the homeless.

Instead of being the most militarized, debt ridden, fundamentalist, stupefied, historically illiterate, consumer driven, energy gulping, empire building, sports and celebrity obsessed, advertising drenched, and dangerous nation in the world today, the U.S.A. could, as it once was, be a beacon of hope.

This could easily be accomplished by instituting: a four-day work week, a five-hour work day, universal health care, affordable child care, guaranteed economic security and a living wage, taxpayer-financed life-time educational opportunity, global interfaith dialogue, nuclear disarmament, demilitarization, democratic pluralism with multi-party choice, supremely well-paid full-time teachers across the educational spectrum, a sane and modest teacher-student ratio in classrooms, the teaching of real history instead of mythic mush, the de-monopolization of the media, the “greening” of ecological sustainability, and vastly increased funding for the arts in schools and beyond, with daily street fairs and festivals for everybody and time enough to enjoy them.