fascism – Page 3 – Engaging Peace

Zinn Zingers: Right Then, Right Now

Posted on June 28, 2018June 29, 2018 by kathiemm

By Kathie MM

Believers in peace and human rights are reeling from national symptoms of fascism, racism, and violent responses to engineered fear and misdirected rage–and now on top of everything else, an opening in the Supreme Court.

But, there’s an antidote to despair in The Progressive’s 2005 article from Howard Zinn.

Here are a few excerpts, reminding us: we have overcome before–and can do so again.

“It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice….

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves….

Knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture–the media, the educational system–tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan’s dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than [particular judicial hearings and appointments]…”

There’s gold in them there words. Keep the faith. Heed the call.

Enlightenment and Social Hope, Part 3

Posted on April 16, 2018 by kathiemm

For Enlightenment by Kathie Malley-Morrison

by Stefan Schindler

Standing before Michelangelo’s statue of David, the poet Rilke said: “I must change my life.” A Catholic bishop, after reading the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, said in his New York Times book review: “We must change our lives.”

Norman Mailer noted the contradiction at the heart of America’s ethical schizophrenia. As a largely self-defined Judeo-Christian nation, America pretends to worship the Prince of Peace, yet forgets that Jesus chased the money-changers out of the temple. America sacrifices its moral integrity on the altar of a perpetual and frenzied pursuit of profit. Today, the gap between rich and poor is larger than it was in the 1920s.

America’s unregulated banking system was the primary cause of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, causing the Great Depression of the 1930s, the devastation of the European economy, and the rise of fascism resulting in World War Two.

Justice Louis Brandeis said: “We can have great concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have democracy. We cannot have both.”

Brandeis and Mailer point to democratic socialism as the only viable way to save America’s soul. Democratic socialism – roughly defined as egalitarian economics and a politics actually “for the people” – was embodied in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” FDR’s “New Deal” included a nation-wide system of Savings and Loans banks prohibited from the stock market gambling so insidiously inherent on Wall Street and resulting in periodic recessions ranging from modest to extreme.

The Savings and Loans were systematically destroyed during the Reagan presidency in what was called the S&L crisis, as part of the Republican Party’s counter-revolution against The Spirit of The Sixties and FDR’s legacy of economic justice.

Lighting Those Candles

Posted on October 6, 2017November 20, 2017 by kathiemm

By Kathie MM

Yesterday’s post by Lewis Randa, Director of the Peace Abbey, is a model letter for Donald Trump to consider sending to Chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jung-un. The post is also a beacon to all of us in these stormy, treacherous times.

In 1932, as newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt undertook to combat the greatest threat of the times—the Great Depression—he spoke those immortal words, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Nameless unreasoning fear abounds today, but much of our terror is justified—not because there are hordes of terrorists whom people in power are nevertheless eager to name, but because of the all-too-real threats to the sustainability of life on earth.

Fear—for example, of fascism, of the National Security Administration, of terrorists, of losing everything—is destructive of hearts and minds, depressing and debilitating, and demoralizing in countless ways.

One common response to de-moralizing fear is to strike out, to hurt, to punish, to destroy the target of one’s fear.

But recognize this: Hatred and murderous aggression rarely lead to sustainable fear-reducing outcomes.

On the other hand, making love instead of war may be too passive and self-focused to confront fear and make the world a better place.

So, here’s a better antidote to destructive fear and feelings of helplessness: Engaging in prosocial activism, engaging peace.

Specific prescription: Engage in letter writing campaigns of the sort recommended by Lewis Randa. Send his letter, with or without your own modifications, to Donald Trump.

Or, write your own letter to President Trump, with your own recommendations for avoiding nuclear war, for achieving peace with North Korea, for making the world a safer and more life-sustaining place for coming generations.

And even more promising: Start your own letter writing campaigns or join existing programs that seek positive solutions to problems such as gun violence, sexism and racism, world hunger and poverty, environmental destruction. Make loving efforts for peace, not war.

For further inspiration, listen to a recording of John Hall’s Power .

You can read the lyrics here.

Patriotism Embraces Nonviolence in the NFL

Posted on September 27, 2017September 27, 2017 by kathiemm

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick . This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.Author: Daniel Hartwig.

It’s time—no, it’s way overdue—to pay tribute to people of color in the United States for their self-restraint in response to centuries of violent racist resistance to their pursuit of democracy.

If we are going to accept the Miriam Webster definition of “patriotism” as “love for or devotion to one’s country” (which is not the same thing as the easily-manipulated symbols of flags and anthems), and if “patriotism” also means love and respect for democracy and social justice (which it should), then the patriotism of countless people of color in this country far exceeds that of the white beneficiaries of the military industrial complex.

It seems almost miraculous that violent race wars are rare almost to the point of non-existence (other than during the near-genocide perpetrated on the native people by the European colonists) when decade after decade people have been beaten, tortured, murdered, and (equally-harmfully) robbed of resources, dignity, and respect.

How have people been able to tolerate so much violence perpetrated for no real reason except that their skin was not deemed white enough by the power brokers—or that they were pinpointed as easily identifiable scapegoats for diverting the rage of paler people convinced (often correctly) that they were not getting a fair break?

Gene Sharp [see here and here and here] has advocated nonviolent resistance as the most effective response to tyranny (and racism is tyrannical), because tyrants always have more killing and destructive power than their victims.

Fascism may seem to be spreading like lice in the fabric of this nation, but we have seen some great examples this year of nonviolent resistance to the social, psychological, economic, educational, and environmental brutality of a greedy and racist power structure.

Recently, a notable example of nonviolent protest in action is the stance of Colin Kaepernick, and a growing number of supporters, who have refused to stand up robotically in enforced homage to an anthem and a flag whose benefits have never been offered freely to people of color. Since when is kneeling down or joining arms antipatriotic?

It is those protestors who should be honored for pursuing true democracy.

(For more on the long history of race, sports, and politics in the US, click here)