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<*> To visit your group
on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smedleyvfp/
Saturday, November 17, 2012
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On October 7 (the anniversary of the US attack on Afghanistan), a
delegation of 31 US antiwar activists marched with tens of thousands of
Pakistanis sickened by the civilian death toll and growth of rightwing reaction
brought on by the US drone war in Waziristan. Hear first-hand reports and view
slides from delegation members who just met with the families of drone victims,
with intellectuals, political activists, and others in Islamabad, Lahore, and
the tribal areas. We will also hear from Pakistanis on the impact of the US
“War on Terror” and drone attacks on Pakistan.
Thursday,
November 15, 2012
12:00 pm - 1:00
pm
Harvard
Yard
Do you
believe STRONG, STABLE JOBS and RESPECT FOR WORKERS should be
central to Harvard’s mission?
It is time
to STAND UP with Harvard’s 4600+
employees represented by HUCTW!
HUCTW workers have
been without a contract for months.
Meanwhile, Harvard
continues to insist that it cannot afford decent wage increases and affordable
health care plans for workers.
For more information,
see http://www.huctw.org/negotiations/rallyforafaircontract.html .
Harvard College
Student Labor Action Movement -- PLEASE FORWARD!
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Share
Stand with Walmart Strikers on Black Friday
Event
Quincy Supports Walmart Workers on Black Friday
November 23 • 08:00 am 
Quincy, MA 
MassUniting 
darrin@massuniting.org Stand with Walmart workers in their fight for their rights. For decades, Walmart Stores, Inc have dragged down wages, forcing their workers to work irregular schedules, and intimidated and took retribution on any workers who fought back. It's time for the retribution to end, so come to this local Walmart to show your solidarity and tell Walmart that they need to pay their fair share.
Got a website? Click here to embed a widget of this event on your site.
Take Action
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Dear
,
In
honor of Veterans Day last weekend, Under the Hood Cafe and Outreach Center
along with members of IVAW marched in the local parade outside of Fort Hood to
carry the message of veterans' and service members' Right to Heal.
In
this photo, IVAW member, Malachi Muncy, dramatizes the issue of reliance on
medication to treat soldiers and veterans suffering from various forms of
military trauma:
Malaichi
said, “It’s easy to remember the veterans coming home on planes and impossible
to forget those coming back in boxes. It’s those locked up at home with mounting
prescriptions, those falling into the judicial system, and those dying senseless
accidents that are being forgotten.”
For
more photos of this event, you can go to the Under the Hood Facebook page (and like
it!).
Under
the Hood and IVAW also used the parade to spread the word to active duty
soldiers about the Appeal for Redress, a project that makes it easy
for service members and veterans to reach out to members of Congress about the
lack of access to proper health treatment for PTSD, Military Sexual Trauma, and
Traumatic Brain Injury. If you are a veteran or service member, you can add your name to send a letter urging members of
Congress to take action around issues of proper health care in the military and
VA systems.
In
Solidarity,
Iraq
Veterans Against the War and the Afghanistan Veterans Against the War
Committee
P.S.
Please support the important work of Under the Hood Cafe and Outreach Center, a safe
haven outside of Fort Hood for soldiers and their families to get support and
alternative information about their rights.
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P.O. Box 3565, New York, NY 10008. All Right Reserved. |
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I
am writing you very quickly today. World Can't Wait has a mission of stopping
the crimes of our government. All day yesterday, in court (see below) we were
getting messages and calls about the aerial assault on Gaza by Israel. Reading
the news, we learned that Israel is preparing a ground attack, and that three
Israelis were killed by missiles from Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is reported
now to be 15, including children, and the widely circulated photo of a parents
holding a baby they buried today.
From The Smedley Butler Brigade -Veterans For Peace
Hi Smedleys & Samanthas,
Someone just asked me to post the song I wrote that I read at the Veterans
/ Armistice Day Rally at Faneuil Hall. It is entitled "Extremists" and was
inspired by the ACLUM's "Policing Descent", the monitoring of Peace Groups by
the Boston Police.
Extremists
Chorus
They say that we’re
extremists
Cause we’re out here in the
street
How unpatriotic to be marching for
peace
They say “we better watch them, like
never before”
Cause there’s nothing more
dangerous
Than Veterans Against
War
Verse
So they stand on every corner, with
their cameras in their hands
Taking film and snapping pictures of
everything they can
They develop film and write reports
on everything they saw
Protecting all our citizens from
folks who broke no law
They’ve been doing this so long,
they know us to our core
They know we’re peaceful veterans,
who know the cost of war
Because we’ve seen the horror, and
the price we always pay
They have to document everything we
do and say
They got Home Land Security, FBI and
DIA
State and local police, don’t forget
the CIA
Why, we are so important, a clear
danger to the land
Can’t let this love and peace thing,
get too far out of hand
Well they got their Bric, play all
their tricks, wasting all our dough
All those files and pictures, with
nothing much to show
So we raise our voices here today,
to let them know it’s time
Stop hassling the peace groups, go
back to fighting crime
© Patrick J. Scanlon
2012
15 November 2012
Tom Hayden : Sticking It to Wall Street
A legacy of Occupy:
Sticking it to Wall Street
The Occupy movement energized a vanguard of voters to become more populist in their demands.By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2012
It is unfortunate that Occupy Wall Street lost its momentum after the uprisings of 2011, because the election and its results have opened another opportunity to stick it to Wall Street and choke and reform the “great vampire squid” for another next generation. As I wrote six months ago in The Nation:
This year marks the first presidential campaign in our lifetime when the gluttony of Wall Street, the failures of capitalism, the evils of big money in politics and a discussion of fundamental reform will be front and center in election debates. No doubt the crisis that gave rise to Occupy will not be fixed by an election, but that’s beside the point. Elections produce popular mandates, and mandates spur popular activism. It’s time to organize a progressive majority.From the general Occupy standpoint, Obama was just another Wall Street candidate, and the elections did not matter much anyway. That is a tragic view to take, since it robbed Occupy of an occasion to take credit and feel empowered -- “Fired up! Ready to go!” as the Obama multitudes say. In fact, Occupy did influence the election, did influence the outcome, and did shape the mandate, without, in most cases, its members even voting for Obama. Hopefully they will try to shape the terms of the bailout ahead.
The Occupy movement influenced the political climate in which Obama and his advisers chose to attack Romney as an agent of Bain Capital; incidentally, against the strong preferences of such powerful Democratic figures as Bill Clinton and Cory Booker, the Newark mayor who publicly said he was “nauseated” by the president’s attack on private equity.
The Occupy movement energized a vanguard of voters to become more populist in their demands. The Occupy movement surely helped make it possible for Elizabeth Warren to ride the wave to Washington. And those were only some of the aftershocks of Occupy long after it faded from the streets and headlines.
Wall Street, which did everything in its considerable power to turn on and defeat Obama, now thinks it is “time to mend fences.” (New York Times, November 8, 2012) But if Obama and Axelrod retain any of their Chicago political instincts, there should be some payback before any mending takes place. If Obama is forced to compromise his preferences on the fiscal cliff, reforming Wall Street is where he should be able to implement his words from the campaign trail.
If Obama had to stock his cabinet with Wall Street players in order to avoid total economic disaster in 2009, now he can offer some new choices and directions. Where is Ralph Nader when we need him?
Obama should stick it to Wall Street and make it hurt so badly that they will never forget the screws in this lifetime.
First, Obama should encourage Harry Reid to put Elizabeth Warren on the Senate Banking Committee and empower a de facto reform bloc of Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Harkin, Chris Murphy, Al Franken, Jon Tester, and Warren, among others. Let progressive populist leadership come out of the new Senate. Second, deeper public hearings should bore into the scandal and call the attention of public watchdogs over the obscure process of writing Dodd-Frank regulations on derivatives and hedge fund manipulations.
Wall Street lobbyists are already preparing a "lobbying frenzy” against the administration’s tentative plan to “apply derivatives rules to American banks trading overseas.” (New York Times, November 8, 2012) As Obama promised long ago about health care, such Wall Street plans should be exposed on television at every turn because, like mushrooms, they only grow in the dark.
This opening of the process for all to see can be achieved if there is aggressive monitoring of a U.S. senator. Wall Street somehow thinks its world will conveniently go dark as they lobby in stealth to weaken the Volcker Rule, contain the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and legislate a diluted authority for other key agencies.
The opportunity to prolong the recent ideological and values debate may increase, not subside. On the left, an opportunity still exists to enter the debate loud and clear with concrete demands.
To “occupy” Wall Street is no longer a policy demand, if it ever was. Extending democracy to Wall Street might be a better and bolder banner -- with proposals for greater disclosure, accountability, regulation in the public interest, a ban on secret donors to campaigns, a Robin Hood transactions tax, and a long state-by-state campaign to eliminate the Citizens United decision.
The theme song might be Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy Is Coming to the USA.”
[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]
The Rag Blog
15 November 2012
Alice Embree / Terry DuBose : Defend the Soldiers' Right to Heal
Defend the right to heal:
Veterans’ Day parade in Killeen
As the deployments wind down from this decade of combat, service members are finding that their access to medical care is restricted, denied, delayed, and stigmatized.By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2012
Malachi Muncy’s vision was obscured, but he could hear a boy’s voice saying:“It’s a soldier in a pill bottle. Break out! Break out!”See story by Terry J. DuBose and photos by Alice Embree and Susan Van Haitsma, Below.
The boy, a spectator along the Veterans Day parade route in Killeen, Texas, got it. So did most of those who saw Under the Hood’s message on Saturday, November 10.
Under the Hood (UtH) is a GI coffeehouse that opened in 2009 in Killeen, a mile from Fort Hood, the largest U.S. military post in the world. The UtH contingent marched for the second time in Killeen’s Veterans’ Day event. Three veterans led the march with this banner: “Honor All Who Served: Defend Service Members’ and Veterans’ Right to Heal.”
Behind the banner, on the bed of a pickup truck, was Malachi Muncy, a veteran of two Iraq deployments, a writer and an artist. Malachi had produced the pill bottle image as a print on paper made of combat uniforms. For the parade he took his art large, constructing a six-foot tall orange pill bottle with a white cap. Malachi, in uniform, stood inside the bottle, occasionally reaching his hands above him into the air. The prescription read: “RX: We Deserve Better.”
Although Malachi’s vision was somewhat limited by the orange acetate he was behind, he could hear the crowd’s response. Those seated along the parade route would begin asking each other what was on the truck, then talk amongst themselves as they realized it was a soldier in a pill bottle. There was occasional laughter, even applause. Some spectators made comments about the medicines they were on.
Along the route, UtH supporters handed out leaflets supporting soldiers’ right to heal -- for real treatment beyond pills for the hidden injuries that are now so prevalent -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Military Sexual Trauma, and Traumatic Brain Injury.
Supporters also carried signs with the grim markers of this decade of war.“A veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. Stop the cycle!” “There were 154 service member suicides in the first 155 days of this year. 154 suicides vs. 134 combat deaths.”
In an October 23 article, the Austin American-Statesman dug deep into the Texas face of these statistics: “Special Report: Uncounted Casualties,” reporting on the recent Texas veterans who have died of overdoses, suicide, and vehicle crashes.
As the deployments wind down from this decade of combat, service members are finding that their access to medical care is restricted, denied, delayed, and stigmatized. An appeal to Congress for redress for service members’ and Veterans’ right to heal can be found at www.RighttoHeal.org. You are urged to sign this petition and to continue to support Under the Hood -- a space for free speech, peer support, and decompression.
[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist, organizer, and member of the Texas State Employees Union. A former staff member of underground papers The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement, she is now active with CodePink Austin and Under the Hood Café. Embree is a contributing editor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project. Read more articles by Alice Embree on The Rag Blog.]
Malachi Muncy:A veteran artist
Malachi Muncy, a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, uses art and theater to express his frustration, situation, and anger. Two of his prints, “Trapped” and “Escape,” carry strong messages in this era of record suicide rates among troops and veterans.
Malachi prints on paper made from his combat uniforms. As guerrilla theater for the Veterans’ Day Parade in Killeen, Malachi designed and built a giant pill bottle. Standing in uniform in the bottle on the back of a pickup truck his art reached hundreds along the parade route.
Malachi served in the Texas Army National Guard as a motor vehicle operator from 2003 to 2009, with service in Iraq from 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. He has a BA in journalism form Texas State University (TSU) and is currently pursuing a BA in English.
Malachi’s writing has appeared in the Copperas Cove Leader Press, SKUNK Magazine, and at RawStory.com. His poetry and prose have been included in the Warrior Writers anthologies. Malachi’s print and papermaking artwork has been exhibited at The National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago.
Malachi has volunteered as arts coordinator at Under the Hood Café, a GI Outreach Center in Killeen. He has conducted workshops there on making “combat paper” from uniforms -- transforming war experiences into art. In December he will become the new manager of Under the Hood.
-- Terry J. DuBose / The Rag Blog
[Terry J. DuBose, who was an organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Texas, is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Diagnostic Medical Sonography at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.]
Find more photos of Under the Hood and the Veterans Day parade by Alice Embree and Susan Van Haitsma.
The Rag Blog
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