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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Crisis in the Ukraine: Cold War? Civil War? Roots of the Conflict
When: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pmWhere: First Parish Unitarian Church • 3 Church St • Harvard T • Cambridge
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Ukraine in 2013; Crimea is now
part of the Russian Federation
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speakers:
- Mark Solomon, professor of history (emeritus), Simmons College
- Gary Leupp, professor of history, Tufts University
President Obama in his April visit to Japan commented, "Mr.
Putin has had an increasing tendency to see the world through a Cold War prism."
But there are many questions:
- is the US/NATO push into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union the real source of tension with Russia?
- Did the US government spend five billion dollars for democracy or regime change?
- Who are the fascists in the new Kiev government?
- Will sanctions isolate Russia?
- What is behind the conflict in Odessa and Eastern Ukraine and will it lead to civil war?
How should the peace movement respond to rising tensions
between the two biggest nuclear powers and the US shift towards covert war?
The UJP forum will examine these issues and possible action items.
$5 donation requested
sponsored by United for Justice with Peace
617 383 4857 or info@justicewithpeace.org  | ||
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United for
Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and
community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed
after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic
justice.
Help us continue to do this critical work! Make
a donation to UJP today.
| ||
| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithpeace.org | |
|
From The Struggle Against The American War Budget
Thursday, May 22, 11am-2pm
Thursday: Budget for All Lobby Day! Join us!
Thursday, May 22, 11am-2pm
*** Start time changed to
11 am! ***
Massachusetts State House
Meet in 4th floor
cafeteria
Supported
by 75% of voters in 91 cities and towns across the state, the Budget
for All resolutions, S.1750 and H.3211, are pending before the
Massachusetts House and Senate’s committees on Ways and Means.
Can
you help? With over 50 legislators to visit, we need YOU on
May 22 to make sure all of them know about the Budget
for All!
No
lobbying experience needed! We will start with updates and background
information on the Budget
for All, then divide up into groups. Each group will visit 8-10
offices during the day.
Please
let us know you're coming! Sign up online, call 617-354-2169, or
email info@budget4allmass.org.
Stop
the Cuts · Invest in Jobs · End Corporate Tax Breaks · Reduce
Military Spending
Budget
for All!
11
Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Budget4AllMass.org • (617) 354-2169 • info@Budget4AllMass.org
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|
United for
Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and
community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed
after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic
justice.
Help us continue to do this critical work! Make
a donation to UJP today.
| ||
| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithpeace.org | |
Upcoming Events:
From The Struggle Against War
The Teachers of Norway:
An Oratorio
Severyn
Bruyn
(The
libretto is based on Gene Sharp’s interviews with Norway Teachers and
official reports.)
Libretto
Oh. Here's my
husband He was sent to a concentration camp. (Oh) The police knocked on my door in March nineteen
forty two. He was shocked. (Oh) We did not know what to do.
One thousand teachers were arrested in Norway. They defied Quisling. They
refused to join the Nazis. Oh! What to do!
Quisling
said: "All teachers in Norway must sign an Oath to obey the Nazi State
You must sign an Oath of loyalty
to us!!
"Obey!" Who are
we? Will we stand here like trolls? No! No! Hail, Hail to Norway. We cannot let
them do this! The king and his family must escape. All Jews must leave this
country now. Hitler says we are part of the Aryan race. (My God) He will save us
from the British and from the Jews. He's mad He's insane. We will not (No) talk
with Germans. Not at all! We will not talk to Germans. Do not speak German. I am
not a pacifist. No, No!
Norway is
controlled by the Nazis. We refuse to speak. Norway is based on terror. We must
go underground. Norway is becoming destroyed. What can we do? Oh. Some of us are
terrified. Others filled with rage.
Let's
organize and go underground. No! No! No! No! NO! NO! We do not want a
dictatorship based on fear and force. We will not obey! We will fight! We will
fight them! We will wage war. We'll resist. We're going to
fight
The Nazis try
to control us. Quisling forced all citizens to give up their radios to the
government. Radios were seized. We hide them. We hide them. We wore badges to
identify ourselves. Then... Quisling then banned all badges of resistance. We
hide them. We hide them. Resistance.
We talked of
revolution. Dangerous. What could we do? We hold meetings. I was the “contact
man” for our school district. Quisling said: "Obey or go to prison." We want our
freedom. We want to be free again. Quisling created a Nazi union for teachers.
He ordered his portrait hung in each school. We said "No"! We said No! He made
plans for a Nazi Youth Movement. We said: No. No. We said No. This is our
country. Here we live or die.
We organized.
We put together our own movement underground. We wrote underground letters to
each other. My job is to support teachers who resisted. We fought Quisling
through our movement for freedom. (We will not join the Nazi movement.) We will
not teach Nazi textbooks.
I will not
teach. I will not teach. I will not teach. I will not teach. We will not teach.
We will not teach. We will not teach Nazi texts. We refuse. We will fight all
Nazis. We fight by not obeying them.
Ten thousand
teachers fought the German state. Ten thousand said NO. They said NO! NO! NO!
NO! We will not teach. We refuse to teach. Not us. It is a matter of Conscience.
It's our conscience. We will not teach. Resistance grows.
We Bishops say
"No." We parents say no! "No" Clergy resign. No. Professors quit. Quisling does
not know what to do. What could this dictator do? He can do nothing. What will
Quisling do?
Quisling shut
down all schools. He made it official. Oh. We live in a total state. Yes!
Quisling struck back and shut down all schools. Parents wrote thousands of
letters. Dangerous. (Angrily.) They took the risk of their lives in this step.
Woe to Quisling. We will stop him. “Open up our schools!" Or we will teach
without your schools. We will teach our children how to fight Nazis. We teach
now in private homes secretly in our own homes. Stop the Nazis. Quisling
threatens parents with prison. One thousand teachers are arrested today. What
can we (Oh) do now? We are helpless before Quisling.
I was among
the thousand that were taken. They took me too. I was among the thousand that
were taken to prison. Six hundred of us are sent to a concentration camp (where
they suffered). Some were tortured, and beaten to death. My friend died. Oh
God!
Children
watched as we moved in cattle cars. So a long the way... Children came to sing
songs to them at train stations. We were overwhelmed. They loved their teachers.
Germans stood in charge. I became the translator as they began to starve us. In
the morning, What? We got coffee that is all. In the afternoon we got some hot
water soup. Dinner was small slices of bread. No mattress to sleep upon. Hard
floors were for sleep and for collapsing. Each morning we do "torture
gymnastics." Guards would tie our hands behind our backs tightly and make us
crawl in deep snow. We were suffocating each day.
They are above
the Arctic Circle, It is freezing there and we are worried that they will die
there and no one will know what happened to them. Some are being tortured. (They
are being tortured and they may be killed at any time. I know they are
suf-'fring. What can we do? What can we do to help them? We know they are
freezing there in the Arctic.
We are freezing
here. Death is near. Some of us caught pneumonia and blacked out for days. (They
will die,) Thirty-two of us gave up but six hundred and eighty of us stayed and
lived through the wretchedness. (They lived through it. They lived to tell the
story of these camps of torture, pain, and torment.) We stayed. (Thank God. They
endured. They stayed to tell us the story. Some were maimed for life.) Some
experienced emotional breakdowns. Ten died from torture, others lived in agony.
(Tell us what happened!)
Torture and
breakdowns. It was cold. It was freezing. Cold. It was very cold, cold, cold.
(We worried. You would all die from the cold and be tortured to death,)
Friends lost their eyes in hard labor, Oh. We worked night and day for Germans.
(Were friends killed?) Yes, a friend of mine was killed loading supplies.
(Torture?) My friend broke his arms and one leg carrying loads. Straining,
pulling, carrying, laboring hard. We did not feel like heroes. We worked night
and day in the Arctic cold and darkness. We sang songs and gave lectures in some
spare time. We wrote our own songs and we strategized.
Some of us
were put in fox cages. Forty prisoners slept in a row so close, so tight; so
fixed that no one could turn without disturbing all. Contagious diseases swept
the camp Men became deadly sick. This was the "dark time" in the Arctic. No sun.
Just night all day and night; blackness (darkness). It was black cold. Pitch
cold.
And with
you?
The
government tried to test our stamina at home. We stood the test. (Good for you.)
Quisling tried to open the schools and then tried to make us members of the
state union. We refused Quisling knew not to take strong measures. We were
organized. Quisling stormed and raged. He came to our school and arrested me.
(What?) We said the Nazis should arrest us all. All of us. (All of you?) Put us
all in jail. The Nazis were powerless at home. Did we help?
Four hundred of
us were released. The Nazis lost. Oh. We won. Now we can come home to stay. Yes,
we won. What more can we say for others to know what happened? We stayed
together and built a "fund" for all those families left behind without fathers.
What did you do? What did we do?
(Singers all
in counterpoint.)
Well, We kept
track of the Nazis. They wanted to replace our Parliament with a total state. (I
tore out the pages of textbooks that were based on Nazi propaganda.) What did
you do? What did we do? Well, We all pledged to stay independent of them and hid
all our money and put away our treasures from view. Quisling wanted to get
control over all Norway in the eyes of the world. Well, Quisling wanted us in
high school to dress in uniforms like the Nazis but we said we would wear our
own clothes. You cannot stop us from wearing our own clothes in school. We would
not allow Nazification in our public schools. (My father was
arrested.)
The Nazis
said to me to me “Let’s have a Sports Day for all young people to join in a
cross-country ski race. But, we said “No!” No! No!” We will sing patriotic songs
to them and they could nothing to stop us from singing. The Red Cross tried to
give food to prisoners but the Nazis stole it. Oh. My father took notes on all
that happened and so I know I’m telling the truth about events in awful times.
Professors were arrested; Bishops dismissed. People were fired but we kept on
protesting everyday. Yes, to the end of those awful days before we got back our
freedom.
Quisling
admitted his defeat.
Now we can
dance. Now we can dance and sing together once again and celebrate our win over
Quisling. Quisling admitted his defeat and so now we can dance and sing together
about our victory. We won with the strength and power of our people to fight and
stand against the demands of a dictator who depends on us. We would not obey him
and this requires a faith. Yes, a lot of faith in our selves and with courage to
risk all lives for freedom and democracy for all our citizens. It requires
courage to die for your country. Thank God we also had faith in our selves and
that is how we won the war.
Here is our
new Anthem. We defeated our invaders without killing them. We suffered but
carried on to win a nonviolent war. We won back our freedom. We’re proud of our
work. We saved a lot of lives by civilian defense. We have a lot more to learn
but let us teach our children and all future generations.
__._,_.___
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