- Pictures from Peace Week 2007!

Check out our page of pictures and reflections from PSR’s Peace Week 2007 by clicking here.

- NCC Resources for the Day of Prayer for Peace

To download the National Council of Churches’ four-page poster for the 2007 International Day of Prayer for Peace, which include prayers, history, and action suggestions, click here.

- Day of Prayer for Peace: September 21

… so start organizing now!

The Church of the Brethren’s On Earth Peace agency is hiring a short-term organizer for their nationwide effort to coordinate events for the International Day of Prayer for Peace on September 21 this year, as part of the UN’s Decade to Overcome Violence. Info about the job position is on the On Earth Peace facebook page, at

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=2496511675

I think SEW Peace should be sure to hold some of the events for this day. This seems like a great opportunity to plug into the national Christian mobilizing for peace – so conveniently timed for the school year, too!

- War Tax Resistance Resources

Information from Ryan Baum

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee - http://www.nwtrcc.org

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance. NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the war tax resistance actions of groups and individuals.

Northern California War Tax Resistance - http://www.nowartax.org

NCWTR provides information and support for conscientious war tax resisters in Northern California, primarily the San Francisco Bay Area. They operate the People’s Life Fund (an alternative fund for resisted taxes), offer informational workshops, provide individual counseling, do public outreach and hold demonstrations.

War Resisters’ League menu on war tax resistance -

http://www.warresisters.org/wtr_menu.htm

- Mother’s Day as Pacifist Action?

Alexander Carpenter writes about the origins of Mum’s Day on the Beatitudes Society blog:

Did you know that Mother’s Day started as an antiwar proclamation?

As Dibgy writes:

It’s unfashionable and vaguely unpatriotic these days to talk about “peace” but back in 1870, it was a pretty compelling concept. As the country was still reeling from the effects of the civil war and still dealt daily with its consequent illness, poverty, injury and death, feminist Julia Ward Howe wrote the following proclamation creating a Mother’s Day convention and a demand for “the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” How quaint.




Mother’s Day Proclamation – 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

 

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

 

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Cool Free Peace Art Online

Check out these cool online resources for free anti-war, pro-peace art:

Anti-war.us

 

Another Poster for Peace

If you have more suggestions for free peace art, post a comment here and we’ll add them!

Got Vision?

A mini sermon by Emily Joye McGaughy

M-Div Candidate, Pacific School of Religion

You can learn a lot about a place by its bumper stickers. I remember the first time I saw the bumper sticker “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam.” Startled by the sharpness of that statement, I thought surely it was an over generalization. After all, wars have different contexts—different times and places and most importantly, different faces. Vietnam was about the spread of communism; Iraq is about terrorism. During the Vietnam era there was a draft; today ours is a volunteer army. Democrats Kennedy and Johnson waged war on Vietnam; whereas the Iraq invasion has been a neo-conservative, republican project.

I went to South East Asia with a curiosity about war. Born in 1981, I was the child of two Vietnam era activists. Anything I knew about the war America waged in the 60’s, I heard through the voices of privileged, white, middle class protestant parents. I heard another voice about war, perhaps from the whispers & screams of history, on the 17^th of January when my PSR colleagues and I took a trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels of Vietnam.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were built by the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. They are located 30 kilometers from Saigon and exist today as a tourist site. They are an elaborate tunnel system stretching 75 miles. The NFL used these tunnels as a place to retreat from and organize against US troops who were occupying Vietnamese territory just a few feet above.

I was apprehensive about descending into those tunnels when given the opportunity because they were small and once you passed a certain point, you could not see a thing. Wanting to get out of my comfort zone on this trip, I chose to go down anyway. Besides, I was following Jeffrey Kuan and I knew he’d help me if I needed it. 30 seconds into my descent I froze with sheer terror. My eye-sight and hearing afforded me nothing. Professor Kuan was far enough ahead of me that he might as well not have existed and I was completely void of sight. I panicked—couldn’t move or say anything. The prayerful place in me cried out for help. The voice of wisdom came in response and I knew it was safe for me to retrace my steps. I had the choice to back out of this situation.

When I finally got above ground I began to cry and couldn’t stop when I thought about all the women and men, boys and girls that spent days in those tunnels without the option to surface, who could not see their homes or dads or friends—who could not ‘back out of this situation.’ And then I began to think about all the Iraqi civilians who turn their lights off—and without sight—wait for American soldiers to raid their homes and bodies.

There is a similarity in every war: a lack of vision—literally and figuratively—takes away our power.

Today, we are not allowed to see the bodies of our dead soldiers coming home—a visual right stripped by the government in cahoots with corporate media. Those of us with white skin and money are not seeing our Ivory Tower brothers and sisters shipped off to war anymore because military recruitment targets (literally and figuratively) poor people and people of color. Our veterans are behind decrepit walls, where the injuries and lasting effects of PTSD go unseen by the majority population. As such an apathetic culture, I wonder if our levels of spiritual empathy are determined by whether or not a potential victim looks and talks like us? Or worse, are we only motivated by the things we can literally see?

PSR historian Harland Hogue writes that PSR was founded by a group of people who acted out of “courage bordering on rashness” as they “worked for a world they could not see.” Here on Holy Hill, one hundred plus years later, we too work for a world we cannot see. AND yet, after having visited Vietnam I know one of the imperatives of justice ministry in the 21st century is bringing reality into full view. Be it through bumper stickers, blogs, sermons, demonstrations, classroom education, and/or relationships, may we always denounce the visionless monstrosities of violence.

My prayer is that in this future we cannot see our bumper stickers won’t say “Iran is Farsi for Iraq,” but “I helped close Livermore Labs.” May it be so.