Sunday, May 06, 2018

From Courage To Resist-Why I stand with survivors of empire

 
SUPPORT THE RESISTANCE

Why I Stand with Survivors of Empire

Dear Al,
I'm Anya, Courage to Resist's Project Manager. I originally came to this work as a veteran of the fight to end the war against women, in which I have fought in both the trenches and bureaucratic offices for the past twenty years. What I know is that survivors who ask for advocacy, support services, and who speak up, will face public and familial humiliation and retaliation from naming their oppressors.
These women are among the most courageous people you will ever meet. And if I am going to learn anything at all about the courage needed to change our society, then I want to be by their side in struggle, determination and persistence.
This is also why I feel it is so vitally important to support war resisters, or survivors of empire. People with this same quality of courage and who choose to use it against the very assumptions of war itself.
In truth, many of us do not stand up and fight back against state-sponsored violence. We accept and bargain with situations of violence we’ve found ourselves in, because to directly oppose can bring even more push back, often with significant economic, social, physical and/or psychological harm.
Each person who stands up and says “No more will I keep my mouth shut or my eyes closed” impacts endless others through modeling and illuminating how near both resistance and resilience really are.
I joined Courage to Resist only one month before Chelsea Manning was released from jail, and attending the celebration parties I was blessed to witness what is possible. Oppression works when we believe the lies that are told to us, that ‘they’ have ultimate power over our lives. But that is not true.
Tactics of empire will not change until it is more than the ones being stomped on who take a stand. Solidarity moves mountains and softens cruelty’s blow.
Draw a line in the sand. If you have not donated yet this month to our mission, now is the time to do so. In the words of Tamar Ze’evi, the young Israeli refuser with whom we just published a podcast interview:
“Where is the line at which one should stop cooperating, and was it already passed?”
In solidarity,
Anya de Marie
Project Manager, Courage to Resist
We cannot support the resisters without YOU! Please donate what you can today!
COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist
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Look us in the eye, Wendy’s! Farmworker women and men to confront Wendy’s Board at shareholder meeting…

ACTION ALERT: Look us in the eye, Wendy’s! Farmworker women and men to confront Wendy’s Board at shareholder meeting…
Dozens of farmworkers and allies emerge from last year’s 2017 Wendy’s Annual Shareholder Meeting after calling on the executive board to take responsibility for the human rights abuses in the company’s supply chain.
June 5th in Columbus, Ohio, farmworkers, allies will descend on Wendy’s annual shareholder meeting!
We are one month away from Wendy’s annual shareholder meeting, in which the company’s Board of Directors — including Board Chair Nelson Peltz — and executive leaders will gather with shareholders to share updates, graphs, and rosy indicators from the fast food giant’s past year of accomplishments and milestones. But rest assured, shareholders will get an earful about much more than the company’s annual earnings. 

Thousands of marchers arrive in front of the offices of Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz during the March 2018 Time’s Up Wendy’s March.

Because, since the last annual shareholder meeting, the national Wendy’s Boycott has not stopped growing… on the contrary, it is stronger than ever. Just two months ago, two thousand supporters joined the Time’s Up Wendy’s March, taking to the streets of New York City alongside nearly one hundred workers and consumers who fasted for five days outside the offices of Nelson Peltz. Across the U.S., over a hundred thousand consumers have committed to boycott Wendy’s until the fast-food giant joins the Fair Food Program. Meanwhile, Wendy’s has been slammed on social media and in the press, with news of the boycott reaching tens of millions more consumers as Hollywood stars like Alyssa Milano and Amy Schumer defended CIW following the fast food chain’s offensive comments about farmworker women “exploiting” the #MeToo movement.

Thousands of marchers arrive in front of the offices of Wendy’s Board Chair Nelson Peltz during the March 2018 Time’s Up Wendy’s March.
And, in the last year, Wendy’s has doubled down on its dubious and expensive public relations strategy of disparaging the Fair Food Program and farmworkers themselves, and at the same time, the fast food chain has attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers (and its own shareholders) with a sham supplier Code of Conduct — which, executives would have you believe, is strong enough to combat the widely-documented gross human rights abuses in their supplier of choice, the Mexican produce industry. On June 5th, farmworkers and their supporters will confront the company’s series of unscrupulous actions — from declaring that farmworker women are “exploiting” the #MeToo movement to refusing to support a program that PBS Frontline called “unique in the country” in its ability to fight sexual harassment — and will not leave without an answer: Why will Wendy’s not join its competitors on the right side of history, and sign a Fair Food Agreement?

And for executives like Nelson Peltz, there will be no more glass walls behind which to hide.
Find out how YOU can take action during the upcoming Wendy's shareholder meeting over at the CIW website!
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

DONALD TRUMP AND THE NEXT CRASH
A quarter of the way into 2018, shadows of 2008 are already emerging. Only two months ago, the Dow logged its worst single-day point decline in history before bouncing back with vigor. In the meantime, the country whose banks caused the last crisis faces record consumer and corporate debt levels and a vulnerable geopolitical global landscape.  True, the unemployment rate is significantly lower than it was at the height of the financial crisis, but for Main Street, growth hasn’t been quite so apparent. About one in five U.S. jobs still pays a median income below the federal poverty line. Median household income is only up 5.3% since 2008 and remains well below where it was in 1998, if you adjust for inflation. Workforce participation remains nearly as low as it's ever been. Meanwhile, the top 1% of American earners saw their incomes go up by leaps and bounds since the Fed started manufacturing money -- to more than 40 times that of the bottom 90%...  So, today, we stand near -- how near we don’t yet know -- the edge of a dangerous financial precipice. The risks posed by the largest of the private banks still exist, only now they’re even bigger than they were in 2007-2008 and operating in an arena of even more debt.   More

TEACHING A LESSON: Class Conflict in Red State America
Teachers in red-state America are hard at work teaching us all a lesson. The American mythos has always rested on a belief that this country was born out of a kind of immaculate conception, that the New World came into being and has forever after been preserved as a land without the class hierarchies and conflicts that so disfigured Europe.  The strikes, rallies, and walkouts of public school teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, soon perhaps Arizona, and elsewhere are a stunning reminder that class has always mattered far more in our public and private lives than our origin story would allow. Insurgent teachers are instructing us all about a tale of denial for which we’ve paid a heavy price…  Despite their past history of working-class rebelliousness, the sight of teachers striking (and sometimes even breaking the law to do so) still has a remarkable ability to shock the rest of us. Somehow, it just doesn’t fit the image, still so strong, of the mild-mannered, middle-class, law-abiding professionals that public school teachers are supposed to be.    More

'May Day' Militancy Is Needed to Create the Economy We Need
In most of the world, May Day is a day for workers to unite, but May Day is not recognized in the United States even though it originated here. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the US walked off their jobs for the first May Day in history. It began in 1884, when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions proclaimed at their convention that workers themselves would institute the 8-hour day on May 1, 1886. In 1885 they called for protests and strikes to create the 8-hour work day. May Day was part of a revolt against abusive working conditions that caused deaths of workers, poverty wages, poor working conditions and long hours…  The future is more than re-legalizing unions and raising wages and benefits, it is building wealth in the population and creating structural changes to the economy. This requires a new economy where workers are owners, in worker cooperatives, so their labor builds power and wealth.


*   *   *   *
NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

Congress Offers a Bipartisan Blank Check to Trump for War
The Corker-Kaine bill would institutionalize the inverse of that. It would essentially rubber stamp the president’s authority, for instance, to continue the ongoing shooting wars in at least seven countries where the U.S. is currently dropping bombs or firing off other munitions. Worse yet, it provides a mechanism for the president to declare nearly any future group an “associated force” or “successor force” linked to one of America’s current foes and so ensure that Washington’s nearly 17-year-old set of forever wars can go on into eternity without further congressional approval.  By transferring the invocation of war powers to the executive branch, Congress would, in fact, make it even more difficult to stop a hawkish president from deploying U.S. soldiers ever more expansively. In other words, the onus for war would then be officially shifted from a president needing to make a case to a skeptical Congress to an unfettered executive sanctioned to wage expansive warfare as he and his advisers or “his” generals please.   More

On the other hand, a bipartisan group of House members are urging the Senate to re-assert the Congressional authority on waging war – 15 coogners, including only McGovern so far from our state; and Mass State Sen. Barbara L'Italien (candidate for the open seat being vacated by Nikki Tsongas) has filed Resolution SD.2488 instructing our Congressional delegation to vote limits on the President’s authority to launch a nuclear strike.

Army Special Forces Secretly Help Saudis Combat Threat From Yemen Rebels
For years, the American military has sought to distance itself from a brutal civil war in Yemen, where Saudi-led forces are battling rebels who pose no direct threat to the United States.  But late last year, a team of about a dozen Green Berets arrived on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, in a continuing escalation of America’s secret wars.  With virtually no public discussion or debate, the Army commandos are helping locate and destroy caches of ballistic missiles and launch sites that Houthi rebels in Yemen are using to attack Riyadh and other Saudi cities…  They appear to contradict Pentagon statements that American military assistance to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen is limited to aircraft refueling, logistics and general intelligence sharing.    More

The Iran crisis presents a bigger danger to peace than North Korea
The Iran crisis is truly dangerous in a way that was never quite true of the North Korea crisis. In Korea, we are talking of a peace agreement that would replace the Panmunjom Armistice of 1953, but there has been no war going on there for 65 years, though there have been a few sporadic clashes. Compare this with the position of Iran which is a rival for influence with the US in a ferocious war in Syria and one that in Iraq that is currently receding, but could easily blaze up again…  Short of diplomatic options, the White House might view military action against Iran as an increasingly attractive approach. The Iran and North Korea crises are very different but in both cases Trump is behaving as if the US is turning into a stronger power when, thanks to his leadership, it is becoming a weaker one.    More

US Public Support for Iran Deal Returns to Record High
With 10 days to go until a deadline for President Donald Trump to decide whether to keep the United States in the Iranian nuclear agreement, public backing for the deal matched a record high in a nationwide poll that also shows net support at its highest level…  Net public support is at a record level — 30 percentage points — in the most recent survey. The share of voters opposing the deal — 26 percent — is at the lowest point since Morning Consult began tracking the topic in August 2015.  Sixty-eight percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents said they support the deal, which has been pilloried by Republicans since its inception. GOP voters were split: Forty-six percent backed the deal and 42 percent opposed it. The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.    More

NETANYAHU: Don't look here where we'reshooting children, look over there at Iran
Netanyahu instanced no evidence at all that Iran is out of compliance with the 2015 deal, and UN inspectors continually have affirmed that Tehran *is* in compliance. His allegation that Iran’s recent missiles are designed to be fitted with warheads is simply false.  So why try to put Iran on the front burner of American war-making? It is a desperate attempt on Netanyahu’s part to divert world attention from the ongoing Israeli Apartheid discrimination against the stateless Palestinians, which it militarily occupies (directly with jackboots and colonial settlers on the West Bank, indirectly with military encirclement and the sniping of innocent protesters in Gaza).    More

Netanyahu claims 'Iran lied' about its nuclear program, but Israel has been lying for decades
Iran’s nuclear archive doubtless looks like a neighborhood lending library compared to Israel’s nuclear archive.  But Israel doesn’t sign conventions, it doesn’t allow inspections and it lies. It mocks and winks – 60 years of continuous nuclear lies. In fact, it has never said a single true word about its nuclear program. It’s all for peaceful purposes, just as Iran claims its nuclear program is. The Dimona reactor was built for lifesaving PET/CT scans at Ichilov Hospital’s nuclear medicine department.  Israel is allowed to lie. Israel is a special case. “Israel won’t be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East,” Shimon Peres said. He was proud of making up this claim, which was the fraud of the century. What is Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity if not a series of refusals to tell the truth?  …Can Israel, a fairly violent and aggressive country – in fact, one of the most violent and aggressive in the world today – really convince anyone that nuclear weapons are safe in its hands?    More

Here's something stunning: buried in the text is the information that this was a poll only among Israeli Jews, who make up 75% of the Israeli population.  Imagine a poll of white Christians only that was reported just as “Americans”. . .
44% OF ISRAELIS SUPPORT STRIKE ON IRAN’S NUCLEAR FACILITIES
The prospective replacement of Rex Tillerson with Mike Pompeo clears one of the last apparent hurdles between Donald Trump and his destruction of a significant diplomatic achievement that has been squarely in the interests of the United States, of nuclear nonproliferation, and of the containment of conflict in the Middle East…  . Pompeo also has a long record of Islamophobia and Iranophobia that is more visceral than cognitive. The extreme to which Pompeo is willing to go to act on his obsession about Iran is perhaps best illustrated by his tendentious and irregular effort—taking a page from the playbook of those who sold the Iraq War to the American public—to conjure up an alliance between Iran and al-Qaeda, even though no such alliance has existed and those two players are on opposite sides of most sectarian and geopolitical divides that matter.    More

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Join Us at the Wake Up the Earth Festival!

Join Us at the Wake Up the Earth Festival!

Saturday, May 5 @ 12:00 pm - 4:30 pm ~ Southwest Corridor Park, near Stony Brook Station


Come see Mass Peace Action at Jamaica Plain’s annual Wake Up the Earth Festival and have a good time while spreading the message of peace and justice!  We will distribute literature on war & peace issues and gather petition signatures.  We’ll have our Nuclear Globe on display, too!  Everyone is invited and welcome.   Please volunteer for an hour or two!
When: Saturday, May 5, 2018
Where: Jamaica Plain (near Stony Brook MBTA station)
The Wake Up the Earth Festival began in 1979 when a group of local neighbors and activists banded together to stop the Interstate 95 expansion into Jamaica Plain. The festival began as, and still is, a celebration of what can be accomplished when people of all traditions, cultures, ages, and beliefs come together. The annual Wake Up the Earth Festival (WUTE) takes place each year on the first Saturday in May and is currently attended by well over 10,000 individuals of all ages and features 4 stages including the music and dance performances, Popular Theatre, the Youth Stage, and Story Telling for All Ages. In addition to performances, WUTE features over 50 craft, non-profit, and food vendors; recent festivals have also included an enchanted puppet forest, side shows, live bands, dancers, acoustic performers and a giant pageant. A great many individuals, local artists, community groups, and schools join forces every year to create this unique community collaboration.
Contact info@masspeaceaction.org or 617-354-2169 to sign up for a shift.


--
"Not one step back"

Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-354-2169 w
617-466-9274 m
Twitter: masspeaceaction

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May 6: Workshop on Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Paul Shannon

Please join us Sunday, May 6 in Newton for a presentation and workshop on the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

All are welcome! No RSVP is necessary, but please email info@nuclearban.us to let us know you will be attending.
Light refreshments and parking are available. This event is sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Mass Peace Action
An additional write up on NuclearBan US is attached




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