- Nobel Peace Prize awarded to make war NOT happen

by Audrey deCoursey

The clever Rev. Peter Sawtell, of Eco-Justice Ministries, explains why a peace prize going to Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in perfect keeping with the Prize’s tradition of honoring controversial activists working to prevent the need for war in the future.  He cites various previous awards as precedent for this year’s award:

Environmentalism is a peace issue: thus the 2004 award to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai.

Preventing war is as crucial for peace as ending active conflict: thus the 2005 award to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Taking sides in ongoing peace struggles is what the Nobel Prize is all about: thus the 1964 award to Martin Luther King, Jr., the 1984 award to South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, and the 1991 award to Burma’s (still-imprisoned) Aung San Suu Kyi.

Thanks, Nobel people!  We sure do need your support!

- Progress on international debt reduction

Meighan Pritchard and I had a great visit to Representative Barbara Lee’s office on October 17, 2007. After several frustrating weeks trying to grab the attention of the Oakland office staff, our meeting with Saundra Andrews, Director of Constituent Services actually sent us home with the tambourines. Saundra has promised to schedule an on campus (yes – here at PSR) appearance for Representative Lee while she is in the Bay area during the next Congressional break.

That gives our SEWPeace and Peace Week community an opportunity to raise the dual issues of ending funding for the war machine AND raising awareness of the implications of oppressive debt (international as well as domestic). I suggested that Rep. Lee try to schedule her visit for a Tuesday during the lunch hour so that we could have a larger contingent of students, faculty, and staff. We are most likely looking at a date in mid November to early December. I will keep you posted!

The other good news is that the companion Jubilee bill was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday, October 16, 2007.

- Drop the Debt not Bombs Follow-up

I am happy to report that our efforts to support Jubilee USA Network and International Debt Cancellation are continuing. Today Michelle and I attended a meeting with Jennifer Tang, Senior Field Representative in the San Francisco office of United States Senator Barbara Boxer. We are hopeful that Senator Boxer will consider being one of the first four co-sponsors of the Senate version of the Jubilee Act (HR 2634). We will keep you posted on this!

What can you do to get “active” in our efforts to impact global poverty through cancellation of odious international debt? Sign up on the Jubilee USA Network at www.jubileeusa.org. Sign up as a supporter, sign up for the blog, find out about the Cancel Debt Fast (act fast because the FAST ends on October 17th). You can find a guide for leading your congregation in becoming a Jubilee congregation (a spiritual leaders best form of grass roots organizing). You can find a plethora of resources to educate and inform yourself on this issue. If you are interested in being part of a small affinity group – a Peace and Economic Justice action/advocacy group, contact me at robynmorrison <at> sbcglobal.net.

- Lesbian soldier killed in Afghanistan

Ciara Durkin, an Army National Guard member from Massachusetts, died from a ‘noncombat-related’ gunshot wound to the head in a secure area of Bagram Base in Afghanistan.

Before her death, she had alerted family to investigate if something happened to her.

She was the first openly gay soldier killed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Read the Boston Globe article about her funeral service by clicking here.

Supporting our troops means all of them – even our homosexual soldiers.

- She Said, She Said – Reflections on Peace Week

She said:

Here’s a topic that you have all probably wrestled with for some time but that came up again at dinner tonight with a group of PSR students: This week we all reminded ourselves that peace is a good thing. What do we need to do in our own lives to make peace possible in the world? Signing paper plates and delivering them to Barbara Lee makes a statement of our will and intentions. Does it tangibly move us closer to peace? Perhaps, especially if she is able to act on it. Or is it just good show? Certainly she needs to know how we feel. What else are we doing? Are we reading books to learn how food supply, $5 Walmart tee-shirts from China, international debt, oil supply, and the arms lobby are perpetuating the current mess?

Two books mentioned at dinner tonight are Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, both of which speak of forces larger than our small voices working for a different god than the one speaking for the poor. In the Dismantling Racism workshop at orientation in August, we first-year Caucasians were confronted with the question, What privileges are we as whites willing to give up/share so that all people, regardless of color, may live in equality? A similar question regarding peace might be, What are we as Americans willing to give up so that people around the world may have food, clothing, shelter, security, freedom from war?

Everything is so interconnected: how many lights we leave on, how long we shower, whether we drive or walk or take public transit, whether we buy organic and local or eat grapes flown in from Venezuela in January. Saying we desire peace is only the first step. How do we give that feet?

She said:

I appreciate your words, thoughts and challenges addressed to all of us. I am, in fact, so appreciative that I think the final paragraph of your email should be posted on our blog site. It appears to me that the questions you raise do not warrant a single answer, but in fact aim to slice through the very idea of single-answer solutions. I dig it. You have highlighted the “interconnected” nature of this war web we’re living in AND simultaneously asked us how we might fling the string(s) so to speak. This is THE conversation that Rev. Lynice Pinkard dared us to have on friday night. Why not take up this conversation as the next phase?

I have to admit I am tired of writing, reading and talking about activism. This is not all I do in the name of “peace,” but the institutions I find myself in highly emphasize these modalities and to a certain extent we academics are domesticated in the ‘house of language’ (Soelle, I think). Having said that, maybe some inspired-embodied-action will come from our dialogue. Besides, when will we ever get past this mind/body dualism? One truly makes possible and reinforces the other, no? Perhaps dialogue through blogging is a way you can keep connected to SEW Peace/Peace Particles. I certainly hope we can keep your voice with us in some way.

In closing, I want to lift up a concept that Rita Nakashima Brock laid down on Friday night at the “Resisting Imperial Peace” EATWT talk: the present moment-ness of love. She basically credited eco-theologians for driving home/bringing back the ‘mindfulness’ of spirituality by connecting our consumer habits with our relationship to deity. The love of a creaturely/earthly g*d now necessitates that we think twice (and hopefullly act different) before leaving the light on, or consuming another round of gas when we can take public transit. In this sense, the prospect of peace and the fulfillment thereof are always at hand…or in your face…and calling us outloud. This is exactly what you have lifted up in your email, Meighan.

What I’m trying to say is that many of us do (or try and fail) the work of peace in the present moment, in ways that are not trumpeted in chapel or celebrated on the wall of Mudd. We can do more, yes, but the SEW Peace got together, not b/c we lacked peace-full action in our own lives, but because we wanted to enliven the (then dead) campus around anti-war issues. Maybe our efforts this week seemed self-serving and narrow. However, the silence of a “progressive and bold” american theological seminary in the face of a corrupt, inhumane, imperialistic war waged by its government was too much for some of us last year. True, children in Iraq are still dying. True, many of us don’t even know the details of geography, ideology and decision making driven to end “terrorism.” But even more true, none of this atrocity will end if we stay posted up in our dorm rooms, heads in books, lips sealed shut and hearts iced over.  Peace Week was a birth-cry. Now, as I think you’ve eloquently pointed out: it’s time to shake. I look forward to your call taking us in new and important directions. May Her grace guide our feet.

Sincerely, Your sister in the struggle.

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