– An Open Letter on Stealing from Soldiers

12 May 2008

An Open Letter to PSR Students, Faculty, Staff, and Other Community Members;

Last week, we, the members of Seminarians to End War (SEW), began to collect the items for our final care package for our “adopted” soldier serving in Iraq, from the donation box in the Holbrook lobby. To our deep disappointment, we found that items we ourselves had placed in the box were no longer there. That is, some member(s) of the PSR community had stolen these items from the donation box.

This theft calls for community-wide repentance.

A systemic analysis of this theft reveals that the Holbrook Lobby may be more like the Oval Office than most of us would like. Perhaps PSR is willing to continue the Bush Administration’s pattern of irresponsibility and its eagerness to deny US soldiers the human comforts that would seem to be deserved by anyone suffering the inhumane treatment of the US military.

Unlike during wars of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation, today’s US Americans have not been asked to sacrifice to help the “war effort” in Iraq. John McCain, George W. Bush, and other Republicans “hawks” who initiated this war have blocked the latest G.I. Bill, which would provide veterans with adequate care and provide soldiers with adequate safety equipment. This care would be too generous, they argue. Taking the past week’s events here at PSR as an example of citizen opinion, they might be correct. Some of us seem unwilling to sacrifice even a candy bar – which we did not even buy – for others.

Perhaps we have not made clear enough that these care packages are not part of the war effort, but instead part of our peace effort. We see how the war’s effects do not take place only abroad on the front lines of battle. The repercussions of war resound for decades in the lives of all who experience it. Currently, hundreds of veterans attempt suicide every month; this is part of the travesty of war that those who wage it would rather we did not know. As faith leaders who work for peace, we choose to know this – and to act to ameliorate this sin. By supporting the mental and spiritual health of one soldier, we are helping end part of the war being waged on the battlefront of his very soul.

This was theft not only from our friend in service in Iraq. It was also theft from all the members of the PSR community who have been donating what they can afford.

We have another chance to rectify the damage of this theft. We have postponed sending out our final care package, in order to gather more candy, snacks, and other items. If you took any items from the donation box, we invite you to donate at least as much as you took. If you did not take the items, but would like to contribute toward the care package, we invite you to join us in supporting “our” service person and we thank you for taking part in this peace effort. Please place your donations in the box by Friday, May 16th.

May we all confess our complicity in the many layers of war’s sin.

Blessings of peace and healing,
the members of Seminarians to End War, Sow Peace (SEW Peace)

– We Have the Power –

– Americans and Iraqis Can Vote Directly to End the War

If we begin to act now, we can place initiatives against the war on the ballots of as many as thirty states in the November election (and many more cities and counties), and give over half the American people the opportunity to vote to end the Iraq War.  This will be the best way to elect a pro-peace majority in Congress and successfully pressure the next president to bring all the troops home. 

We can also support the Iraqi people in their democratic, nonviolent efforts for peace, including a possible national referendum in Iraq on ending the U.S. occupation.  A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in response to such a democratic vote will greatly reduce support for terrorist groups and the threat of terrorism. 
In California, it is too late to put an anti-war initiative on the state ballot, but if the twenty-nine cities and four counties that have passed resolutions against the war simply place initiatives on local ballots, 25 percent of the voters of this state can vote on ending the war.  If we organize more broadly, we can reach even more voters. 

Please come to the meeting to plan a campaign to place anti-war initiatives on city and county ballots throughout California, and in states and cities across the nation: 

Thursday evening, February 21, 7-9 PM

Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1606 Bonita (Cedar and Bonita)

Fireside Room (upstairs)

Iraq Initiatives Project, a project of the Ecumenical Peace Institute

initiatepeace <at> yahoo.com       

– 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.

– 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.