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Watch out! Here’s a chance for PJALS to get sucked right back into dear old reaction mode. The evil empire of Wal-Mart is knocking on the door, again, in Spokane.
But wait. Maybe we are prepared and can meet the threat head-on through programs and infrastructure we already have. How is your energy level for facing off with the world’s largest retailer and the master of making profits from sweatshop labor?
Wal-Mart is about to build a huge store at 44th and Regal and has plans for a Sam’s Club in North Spokane. Familiar arguments will be made in favor of this consolidation of economic power as brokers of wealth and privilege list more choices and bargains for area consumers, more shoppers coming to Spokane, and more wonderful retail jobs. Wal-Mart has built an empire on these empty promises.
Fortunately, the façade of benevolent respectability is being torn away from this vicious corporation that likes to invoke the memory of good ole Sam Walton while streamlining the worst excesses of capitalism run amok. Even mainstream media are now compelled to acknowledge that Wal-Mart has pioneered a system that routinely destroys local and family businesses, loots local government resources, and creates a peasant class of workers in the United States while sustaining virtual slavery in offshore factories.
One festering sore in this country is the health care mess. Finally, it has been revealed that Wal-Mart plays a major role in the shortage of health care benefits because its employees dominate state health plans for low-income individuals and families. Washington legislators are among the most recent state officials to realize that Wal-Mart has been subsidized for its high profits and low wages, virtually excused from providing health insurance benefits for most of its employees.
As we try to catch up with the health insurance scam, it will become clear than Washington is one of many states providing many kinds of corporate welfare for Wal-Mart, whose ownership is controlled by five Walton family branches, each with over 15 billion dollars in personal wealth.
The centerpiece of the PJALS economic justice program is the living wage movement, and shining light upon Wal-Mart’s attacks upon unions, women, minorities, and workers in general will be good for our living wage campaign. As an organization committed to economic justice and advocating a living wage for all workers, we cannot stay out of the struggle against Wal-Mart expansion. We encourage all of our members to increase community dialogue and to refrain from patronizing Wal-Mart. In addition, we expect to be in a position to suggest specific volunteer activities as we work with other groups to prevent the Wal-Mart advance.
The raucous meeting with Wal-Mart officials at Ferris High School on January 26, tells us several things. There is a good pool of angry, well-informed residents of the South Hill; people have the energy and determination for a campaign; and they need cohesive leadership and an understanding of active nonviolence. I hope PJALS will be able to take a constructive role in the empowerment of these potential activists while expanding the process of educating the local population on economic justice issues.
Reacting may often be the best pro-active thing we can do. It may even be that reacting to this dangerous capitalistic incursion, we find ourselves acting pro-actively in other areas of social justice. After all, there is no shortage of links between the rise of corporations to international power and the ease with which our country finds enemies to attack for recreation and profit.
Perhaps the Wal-Mart push is just what you needed to put you into the trenches. - RN
By Maurina Ladich
"A
wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When
we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about
getting a court order before we do so. We value the Constitution." -
George W. Bush, August, 2004
Thirty years ago, John Dean, former White House Counsel, warned President Nixon of "a cancer on the presidency." He was referring, of course, to Nixon's abuse of executive powers including illegal wiretapping, misuse of the CIA, bribery, and perjury. After the recent revelations of President's Bush's executive order authorizing the warrantless wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, Mr. Dean believes President Bush may have outdone Nixon. Mounting evidence suggests he has.
Despite his lengthy rap sheet, President Bush asserts he has done nothing wrong. Since 9/11, he has maintained that his wartime powers as commander in chief of the military are limitless, justifying indefinite detentions at Guantanamo and other prisons, "black sites", covert overseas prisons, the exporting of prisoners to countries that permit torture, and now, eavesdropping on the phone calls and e-mails of innocent Americans without a warrant.
This same
reasoning led to the infamous 2002
"torture memorandum", which held that prohibitions on torture were
"quaint" and that Bush could authorize interrogators to violate
anti-torture laws in the interest of national security. After the memo
was leaked, Bush publicly disavowed it, but never abandoned his belief
that as President he is above the law. When he reluctantly signed
Senator John McCain's torture amendment, he quietly issued a "signing
statement" reserving the right to bypass the law to protect "national
security". Now he has another justification for his misdeeds. Jan. 19, the Dept. of Justice released a 42 page memo claiming Congress authorized the President to order domestic spying when it passed the 2001 resolution for the use of "all necessary force" in fighting terrorism. In view of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which explicitly criminalizes domestic spying without a warrant, the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits warrantless searches, and direct Supreme Court precedent, the argument is absurd. Congressional authorization of the use of force did not overthrow the Constitution and give the president plenary powers in the war on terror. One constitutional scholar calls the memo, "42 pages of malpractice". U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler from New York recently called the memo's justifications the "legal arguments of a monarch."
The president's tortured justifications cannot withstand scrutiny. In 1952, the Supreme Court rejected similar arguments from President Truman in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer. During the Korean War, Truman ordered seizure of U.S. steel mills because a nationwide strike potentially threatened production of munitions. In that case, Justice Jackson wrote, "The Constitution did not contemplate that the Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy will constitute him also commander in chief of the country, its industries, and its inhabitants." The court also held: "No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a president can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role."
Bush's illegal power grab abrogates 800 years of Anglo-American legal precedent, beginning with the Magna Carta. In a democracy: the people are supposed to be sovereign; the three branches of government are supposed to be co-equal; and no one is above the law. Bush's power grab violates the very soul of our democracy and threatens our carefully crafted constitutional framework. It is high time to call for investigation and impeachment
Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon Impeachment proceedings, wrote in "The Nation" (January 30, 2006), "As a matter of constitutional law, [Bush's] misdeeds constitute grounds for [his] impeachment . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law - and repeatedly violates the law - thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office."
The framers of the Constitution intended the impeachment provision to reach gross abuses of power and Constitutional violations. Bush's reckless disregard of our laws and Constitutional framework unquestionably fit the bill. The verdict is inescapable: by breaking the law, trampling on our civil liberties, disregarding the will of Congress, the courts, and the people, Bush is guilty of the highest crime of all - theft of our democracy and the promises of our Declaration of Independence.
It is time to act. As citizens we can organize rallies, speak out, write our Senators and Representatives, and practice civil disobedience. Grief-stricken Cindy Sheehan urges us to demand Bush's impeachment and openly resist his policies, reminding us, "The opposite of good is not evil, it's apathy." In the name of all of Bush's victims, it is time to get off the fence. - Maurina Ladich, PJALS Steering Committee.
Peace activists in Spokane are
feeling the need to be on the
streets, again. We are planning a major rally on March 18, but in
the
meantime, let’s march on Saturday, February 4th. Meet at 2:00 pm
in
front of the Community Building, and we’ll have some brief remarks
before walking up Division to Sinto. After more brief remarks,
we’ll
return to Main via Ruby. Bring signs with your views on the war
or on
the impeachment of individuals in the Bush Administration.Come enjoy an evening of music for peace and freedom at the Community Building, 35 West Main,
Saturday, February 11, from 7 - 9 PM.
Featuring: Laddie Ray Melvin, singer/songwriter; The Raging Grannies, a fun group with original and meaningful lyrics; Mark Stanton, singer/songwriter; Jenny Edgren, singer/songwriter; and BRTC The Blue Ribbon Tea Company.
Local songwriters, singers and musicians come together to oppose the war in Iraq and oppose the dangerous and sinister trends of the erosion of civil liberties and traditional American values of privacy and freedom of speech and expression that are occurring under the cover of the post 9/11 government "war on terrorism." Spying on Americans without court orders, secret prisons, NSA data mining, the justification of torture and the labeling of opponents of administration policies as unpatriotic and even "traitorous" are the marks of a government that has lost its respect for values that we have embraced as part of our heritage and tradition.
This evening of contemporary and original songs expresses a firm belief in these
traditional American values and virtues.
For further information call Bill Kostelec at 323-3816 daytime, 363-0144
evenings
Imagine a Washington state resident named Gloria. She lives in the suburbs, drives a Honda, and has a steady, if low-wage, job. Gloria pays taxes and social security, works long hours, and worries about much the same things many people might—paying her mortgage and keeping her high-school-age son out of trouble.
But because Gloria came to the U.S. from Mexico in search of a better life for her son, one critical difference separates her from many of her suburban neighbors—she is undocumented. And for that reason, she may soon become a victim of Congress’s misguided efforts at immigration reform.
Contrary to popular belief, undocumented immigrants don’t live “in the shadows.” They build homes, take care of their children, attend places of worship, work in stores and hospitals, and go to parent-teacher association meetings. The vast majority are law-abiding—our neighbors, friends, and community members. And they contribute to Washington’s economy, supporting industries like construction, hospitality, and agriculture.
Of course, listening to the hyperbole that characterizes our national conversation about immigration, it’s hard to remember that immigrants are even human beings, let alone contributing members of our communities. Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform blame immigrants for everything from the problems of our health care system, to ruptures in our social fabric, to terrorism. But this kind of rhetoric makes a poor basis for sound policy. It leads to headline-grabbing crackdowns rather than real, comprehensive reform.
Take the latest immigration “solution,” passed last week by a deeply divided House— Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner’s Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. If it were to become law, the bill would mandate criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants, even those fleeing repressive regimes or reuniting with their families. In many cases, it would criminalize contact—even innocent contact—with an undocumented person. And it would close the courtroom doors to immigrants—legal or undocumented—seeking review of most immigration decisions, when access to a judge is something we expect even for a traffic violation. So under this law, Gloria would be subject to jail time without recourse to the judicial system—all for wanting her son to have it better than she did.
Although touted as real reform, Sensenbrenner’s bill is, in reality, more of the same old, tired, enforcement-based approach that forms the basis of our current, broken system. With our detention centers overflowing and job-seekers continuing to cross the border, we’ve seen that the enforcement approach is doomed to failure. Yet there’s nothing in this bill that goes beyond enforcement to address the role of our trade and economic policy in spurring migration, or the dependence of many sectors of our economy on migrant labor. And by focusing enforcement efforts on job-seekers, the bill does nothing for national security, either.
If we are to have a real discussion about immigration, we need to take a step back, block out the hyperbole, and consider the important questions: Why do people migrate to the United States? What role do immigrants play in this country? And how do we create an immigration policy that addresses our current reality and lives up to the values we proclaim as a nation?
The truth is that immigrants like Gloria play essential social and economic roles in our communities. The millions of undocumented people living in the United States today cannot simply be “sent home”—to suggest otherwise is to ignore the hard lessons of our past failed enforcement efforts. Any real immigration solution must provide a safe and orderly process for them and future job-seekers to gain legal status. A real solution must also reunite families divided by borders—we need to cut through the backlogs that have left our current system hamstrung. Finally, our immigration system should reflect our values by ensuring that everyone living in our country—regardless of immigration status—has the same labor protections and human rights that are the real basis of America’s freedom.
We are at a crossroads in the immigration debate. On the one hand, we could surrender to the cacophony of rhetoric that insists—in ever-harsher tones—that people like Gloria are the root of all our ills, and that we could somehow painlessly send them all home. On the other hand, we can choose real immigration reform that reflects both our values and our economic reality. We must recognize that Gloria and other immigrants are an integral part of Washington’s communities, support vital industries, and add to the diversity of America’s rich fabric. Before we pour many millions more dollars down the enforcement drain—and before Gloria and millions of other immigrants become unwitting scapegoats—let’s make the right choice.
December and January have been busy months for Inland Northwest Equality! From City Council appointments to statewide rallying around House Bill 2661, we have worked hard to increase positive visibility and legal protections for all people in our state.
Thanks to a statewide effort, including that of our own coalition, House Bill 2661, a bill banning discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation passed on January 27th with a vote of 25-23 in the senate.
Washington is the 17th state in the US to add this clause to our non-discrimination policy.
INWE participated in a state-wide campaign to encourage constituents to contact their legislators and urge them to vote for the passage of HB 2661, which is a landmark in equality and justice for our state. Thanks to all of you for your support in this struggle.
Marriage
Equality
We are
still awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on the Anderson and Castle
cases, challenging the constitutionality of the 1998 Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA). On the day of the decision (which will be a
Thursday sometime in the next month and a half), we will have a
gathering at the Federal Building at 5 pm to respond to the decision.We’re not stopping there, either! INWE has established a "Next Steps" group, which is organizing our activities post-DOMA decision. These activities, which we are coordinating with the state-wide Legal Marriage Alliance, will include legislative action, voter contacting, and public education.
City
Council
A number of changes have been made in the
local-level government. The Spokane City Council position has been
filled with Rob Crow, the co-owner of Lloyd Industries and member of
Leadership Spokane. INWE had been advocating for Judith Gilmore and
Lewis Griffin, both great advocates of equality and justice for gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, and intersexed
people in Spokane. Although we were not successful in advocating for
these allies, we remain hopeful for the new City Council.Are you interested in keeping up to date with information surrounding activities such as these? Contact us at inwe@pjals.net or call 838-7870 and ask to be added to the e-mail action list.
The next INWE meeting is Tuesday, February 7 at 5:30 pm at the Rainbow Regional Community Center. Please join us!
Joe Donato begins a 27-month sentence Feb. 21, two weeks after his wife, Inge, completes a 6-month term in federal custody. The Donatos and Kevin McKee, who begins a 24-month term on the 12th, were convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and willful evasion of federal taxes in 2004. They belong to a group that teaches a gospel of pacifism and refusal to support the military.
At trial, the defendants agreed to a compromise submitted by the judge to pay taxes and fines to a fund that could not be used by the military. The IRS rejected the proposal and insisted upon the harshest charges found in the Internal Revenue Code.
Donato says they would gladly pay taxes if the government could assure their money would not fund war making. More at www.peacetaxfund.org
The World Peace Forum 2006 will organize panels, workshops, public
forums, arts and entertainment activities and networking events to
offer all participants an open space for discussion and performance
within the main theme of Cities and Communities: Working together to
end war and build a peaceful, just and sustainable world. The mission of the Forum is to create a global culture of peace. This is how we propose to implement our mission:
1. Publish a World Peace Forum
statement, “Building a Culture of Peace and Sustainability,” for the
global community, outlining what individuals, communities, cities,
groups, and nations can do locally to create a culture of peace and
sustainability.
2. Create an ongoing legacy of bi-annual World Peace Forums, in cities around the world, to refine, promote, and expand the culture of peace and sustainability.
3. Encourage communities and nations to plan for peace, for example, by inaugurating Departments of Peace at city, regional, and national levels of government.
4. Celebrate and protect diversity of culture locally and globally.
5. Make war abhorrent, peace popular, restoration and protection of global ecosystems a priority.
2. Create an ongoing legacy of bi-annual World Peace Forums, in cities around the world, to refine, promote, and expand the culture of peace and sustainability.
3. Encourage communities and nations to plan for peace, for example, by inaugurating Departments of Peace at city, regional, and national levels of government.
4. Celebrate and protect diversity of culture locally and globally.
5. Make war abhorrent, peace popular, restoration and protection of global ecosystems a priority.
The World Peace Forum program will follow these four guiding threads throughout the conference:
Economy of Peace
Social Justice and Peace
Environment and Peace
Culture and Peace
Social Justice and Peace
Environment and Peace
Culture and Peace
Join us June 23-28, 2006 in Vancouver, B.C.
Christian Peacemaker Teams(CPT) visited the city of Fallujah on Nov. 8, the first anniversary of a major U.S. assault on the city in which the largely Sunni population of 300,000 was expelled, its industrial base and services were destroyed, and a third of its homes were flattened. What has happened since?
The city is surrounded by checkpoints controlled by U.S. forces and Iraqi Army Shi’a. No one is allowed in without U.S. Marines-issued ID or other permission. Even with permission it took us 75 minutes. Checkpoints choke economic life, double food prices and cut off surrounding villages from Fallujah’s markets, services and hospital. Residents say they are living in a prison.
Our first visit was to a sheikh who heads a major mosque. He said that most of the population has returned to the city centre, but those who live further out cannot return because their homes were the most damaged. Power is only available downtown, and only for a few hours in the middle of the night. The majority is still unemployed since factories have not been rebuilt. The economic situation is so desperate that the limited reconstruction funds are consumed by immediate needs for food and material aid. Schools are mostly open, but three schools and the Ministry of Education offices are still occupied by U.S. forces. As we spoke to the sheikh, U.S. and Iraqi forces swept up the street searching homes and threatened to blow up our driver’s car, parked outside the mosque.
Several days before, Iraqi Army troops had blown up a teacher’s car. On the day of our visit, he came to the mosque weeping. The sheikh offered to raise the $5,000 needed to replace his car. The sheikh said that when someone complained to U.S. forces, a U.S. official said, “Talk to the Iraqi Army.” The Iraqi Army told him, “You are all children of Saddam.”
The manager of a popular downtown restaurant described increasing violence. There was a September explosion near his restaurant. On arrival, the Iraqi Army sprayed his restaurant and neighboring businesses with machine-gun fire. A few days later he found a sign on his door saying that anyone who sold goods to U.S. forces or the Iraqi Army would be beheaded. “I feel caught between two enemies,” he said. When he refused to serve in the Iraqi Army, he was detained for hours, but a friendly policeman secured his release. He said on Nov. 1, after another explosion near his restaurant, several children ran from the danger. The Iraqi Army shot three of them dead. The same day, soldiers set up a new roadblock, and when an old man became confused and tried to drive away from the roadblock, they shot and killed him. On Nov. 6, U.S. forces commandeered his uncle’s house for a sniper post. As they searched the house, they found his $10,000 in savings and confiscated it as “proceeds of terrorism.” The same day, a cousin was passing through the checkpoints into Fallujah when the Iraqi Army found his wages of US$200 in his pocket and confiscated all of it.
Our final visit was to Fallujah’s only hospital. It is operating, but very short of equipment. The staff says that U.S. officials promise aid but only supply blankets and a few kerosene heaters. Violent deaths are up to 100-200 per month.
A man visiting the sheikh challenged us with this question, “If I come and smash everything in your house and take all your money, and then I do the same to all your neighbors, what would you do to me?”
- Doug Pritchard in Signs of the Times, the publication of Christian Peacemaker Teams, www.cpt.org
PJALS joins peacemakers around the world in hopeful anticipation of the release of the Christian Peacemaker Team’s Tom Fox, of Virginia; Harmeet Singh Sooden and James Loney of Canada, and Norman Kember of Great Britain.
If their captors come to understand the commitment to peace, justice, and nonviolence of their hostages, they will be far ahead of American, Iraqi, and British leaders. Threats have been renewed by the kidnappers in recent days after a long silence.
Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of active peacemaking sponsored by: Church of the Brethren, Friends United Meeting, Mennonite Church Canada, Mennonite Church USA, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Congregation of St. Basil ( the Basilians), Every Church a Peace Church, On Earth Peace, and Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.
Few speakers have had a greater impact in Spokane than Bud Welch. The father of one of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 spoke for INDPAG at Gonzaga University several years ago, and has taken his inspiring message all over the country since then.
Bud will be the guest speaker at the Abolition Day Dinner of the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in Seattle on March 4, 2006.
PJALS affiliates with the WCADP through our group, the Inland Northwest Death Penalty Abolition Group (INDPAG) and encourages your support of abolition statewide. You may get more information about the Abolition Day Dinner and fund-raising auction from the PJALS office or abolishdeathpenalty.org
Poverty in Spokane is a clear and present danger for thousands of working families. The level of poverty in Spokane is higher than both the state and national averages. The everyday battle fought by low-wage workers to meet their basic needs is fierce and often a losing one. While Washington State’s minimum wage is the highest in the nation, it still falls far short of what it takes to sustain a family. According to the Self- Sufficientcy Standard for Washington State, even the smallest of families (one parent and one child) needs an annual income of at least $22,000 to provide for their basic needs. When workers earning the current minimum wage make about $15,000 dollars annually, we have our work cut out for us. There is a deeply held myth in this country that diligence and hard work serve as a means to escape the hardships of poverty. The real experiences of countless Spokane workers prove that this is undeniably false.
One concrete way for Spokane workers to address their own poverty is to demand that the City of Spokane pass a living wage ordinance. This is exactly what Spokane Citizens for a Living Wage aims to do. Right now we are fine-tuning our ordinance to bring before the City Council. With any luck, the Council will see the urgent need for a living wage lay in Spokane. But if they don’t, we are ready and willing to bring the issue directly to Spokane voters. Either way, there is much work to do. One of the most important aspects of our current work is to inform people in Spokane about poverty issues and how living wage laws can benefit working families. We can all contribute to this effort by having proactive conversations with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers about fair and sustainable wages.
For the past several years, Spokane Citizens for a Living Wage has been trying to raise public consciousness of this issue, and now is the time to intensify our efforts.
On February 18th at 2:00 p.m. at the community building, we will hold the first in a series of forums on issues of economic justice in the Spokane community. The first two parts of the series will include Tom Jeannot (February 18th ) and Bart Haggin (February 25th). The third forum, on March 3rd, will be an open session for discussion and strategic planning. The problems presented by poverty in Spokane will not go away until citizens act.
Let’s raise wages in Spokane. - WE
I guess it's up to me to tell you about Sean Daly, and it's difficult because he rarely revealed much of himself, preferring to talk about positive actions of veterans and how we might become part of solutions to military madness.
Sean is dead. Friends called from Colville to tell me Sean killed himself in a motel there, on January 23.
This is not so much a shock as a huge disappointment. It's no secret that Sean has been having a tough time. He was ill and had never put enough distance between himself and his demons, but his struggles did have a positive effect upon many lives in the Inland Northwest.
Never caring to make a splash on the national scene, Sean was, however, the person responsible for bringing Veterans for Peace to the West. In fact, the Colville Chapter is #4, making it the first outside the Northeast.
Sean Daly was one of the Vietnam vets that fled "back to the land" to get away from California, people, and military memories. He landed in Northeast Washington, and before long, learned there were many others like him in the steep woods. Eventually, many of these vets discovered they needed more than isolation, and came together in a rap group. The therapy was good, shared experiences and solidarity were nothing short of transforming and life-saving.
As soon as Sean learned of the embryonic VFP, he began working to establish it in Colville. Essentially, through his efforts, his rap group became VFP #04, the go-to group for peace and justice in the rural Inland Northwest.
Meanwhile, I was being drawn into social justice activities in Spokane, and I began to see Sean from time to time. He was always identified as a veteran who hated war and violence, and I was beginning to deal with my military experience which I had stuffed. Sean taught me the importance of the voice of warriors converted to peacemakers, showed me even a reserved rustic could be a powerful voice for truth when he spoke on the streets in Spokane after Brian Willson was maimed by the arms train in California.
In 1987, Sean was one of 14 of us arrested at the U.S. Marine recruiting office in Spokane in protest against U.S. crimes in Nicaragua and was an important part of that witness that lasted through months of preparation for trial and ultimate convictions for trespass. Most of his work continued to be in the Colville area, taking precedence over the dairy goat operation with which he sustained himself.
Goats were part of the one grandiose scheme Sean concocted. He wanted to collect goats from all over the Northwest and ship them to Nicaragua for the victims of the contras to use to build new lives and hope. He had a good plan, but we could never overcome the built-in obstacles for exporting livestock to a country cursed by U.S. policy.
Perhaps Sean's greatest triumph came with his 1997 trip with Brian Willson and other California vets to southern Mexico. His journal from travels through Chiapas and Oaxaca astounded me with his depth of perception and understanding. I published part of his report in the Handful of Salt.
Sean's death is hard for me to contemplate. I fear I never did anything to alleviate his depression, and surely he was disappointed in the light impact of the Spokane VFP chapter which he had personally placed in my care. Of course, he always thought all of us should be doing more to undermine the influence of military violence, and I know he had no wish to bequeath any guilt. He probably thought of himself as just another casualty of the Vietnam War, one whose name will not appear on the black wall but is engraved upon the hearts of hundreds of peacemakers in the Inland Northwest. -RN
By Stan Goff
Stan
Goff, the former Green Beret NCO who speaks bluntly about US military
adventurism, writes another tragedy of war. I decided to print
this excerpt right before I learned of Sean Daly’s death(see above).—ed.
"All is not okay or
right for those of us who return home alive and
supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an
illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home
missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live
with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those
who served will ever understand." - Douglas Barber, 2005
January 16th, having talked quite normally on the phone with at least two other people, Douglas Barber, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War living in Alabama, changed the answer-message on his telephone. "If you're looking for Doug," it said in his drawl, "I'm checking out of this world. I'll see you on the other side."
He then called the police and took his shotgun onto his porch to meet them. From sketchy reports, it seems police wouldn't oblige him with "suicide by cop" and tried to talk him down. When he saw he wasn't able to commit cop-suicide, 27-year-old Douglas Barber did an about face, rotated the shotgun and killed himself.
There is a hell of a lot that we just don't know about how this happened. I talked to Doug on the phone earlier, and he described how excited he was to have joined IVAW, how he looked forward to taking up the pen and speaking out. Others had spoken with him only days and hours before he quieted the chaos in his head. There were no "classic" signs of suicide.
We know he had been prescribed medication. When he came back from a National Guard assignment to compensate for the combat overstretch in Iraq, he was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress, and the VA medical system leans toward drugs. In fact, they frequently shazam PTSD into something called "personality disorder," which can be treated with drugs. One veteran I know was prescribed Paxil which made him feel suicidal. This kid switched to his own anti-depressant -- marijuana, which he says works better than the Paxil and doesn't make him feel like killing himself.
If one has a personality disorder, the "pathology" has no relation to one's job, like the occupation of Iraq. The etiology exists somewhere within the individual, like a genetic disorder, missed during induction, missed by one's units, and missed during medical pre-screening.
We don't know if Doug was taking medication, or stopped, or what medication he had been prescribed.
We do know that he drove convoys between Baghdad Airport and a giant military base subject to so many attacks the troops call it Mortaritaville. We do know the stress was hard on Doug. In July 2003, his convoy was hit with an improvised explosive, and mortar attacks were so regular they were almost a weather pattern. But Doug said something else was even harder. The grunts would come in and describe how many civilians they'd killed.
Doug was in a traffic jam one day, feeling very vulnerable, when a woman in a bus held up her baby... like that window-sign we see here -- "Baby on Board." Only she was trying to prevent an attack that could kill her child.
Douglas Barber was nurtured on the illusions that secure our obedience, but when the real system needed to demonstrate the price of disobedience, the vile carnival barkers of the Bush administration, like those before them, did not recruit the children of Martha's Vineyard or Georgetown. They went, as they have always done, to places like Lee County, Alabama, where simple people have formed powerful affective attachments to the myth of our national moral superiority.
Doug may have decomped from medication, I don't know. That could have contributed to his suicide. It's possible. He fought with the defunded, Bush-administration VA for two years trying to get counselling, and trying to get authorization for his disability. It's very difficult to be a "productive member of society" when one fears sleep, and when one has lost meaning.
I read a book on post-traumatic stress once. Rape is the most common cause, then combat. It said that trauma disrupts one's sense that the word is a safe place, that trauma destabilizes our sense of meaning.
Let me explain something, as a veteran myself of eight conflict areas, and something that Doug discovered in Balad. The sense that the world is not a safe place is not a "disorder." It is an accurate perception. And the sense of meaning many of us enjoy is an illusion, a cruel construction that normalizes the orderly activity of the suburb and nurses our children on simple-minded, Disney-fied optimism pumped through television sets in a relentless datastream.
Post-traumatic stress is not a disorder. Calling it that earns it a place in the DSM IV, professionalizes and medicalizes this very accurate perception that the world is not safe, and that life is not a comforting film convention. Calling it an individual "disorder" cloaks the social systems responsible for experiences like Vietnam and Iraq. And it renders invisible the fact that Douglas Barber was not merely a suicide.
When that worldview, that architecture of meaning, collapses in the face of realities like convoy Russian roulette, and women holding babies up to prevent being shot, and daily stories of slaughter by the people one sleeps with, the profound betrayal of it is not experienced as some quiet, somber sadness. It is experienced like bees swarming out of a hive that has been broken, as a howling chaos. So we quiet it with marijuana, alcohol, heroin, and even shotguns.
The most fortunate of these survivors find one another. Doug had recently joined IVAW, where our veterans not only establish mutual support networks of plain love and care with one another, but where they can engage in the most "therapeutic" activity of all -- fighting back against the criminality that sent them there in the first place. We arrived too late for Doug. We were going to meet him in Birmingham later this month to involve him in the planning for a veteran-led march from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, and serve as the conscience of a nation that will spend trillions to drop bombs on Iraqis, and use a hurricane in the Black Belt as a pretext to accelerate gentification.
So when we launch out of Mobile in March on this 135-mile trek, we will carry Douglas Barber with us.
Stan
Goff is a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. He is the author of
three books; "Hideous Dream - A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of
Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), "Full Spectrum Disorder - The Military
in the New American Century" (Soft Skull Press, 2004), and "Sex &
War" (Soft Skull Press, 2006 [to be released soon]). He is the military
affairs editor for From The Wilderness, and writes foreign policy
analysis for Sanders Research Associates. He is a member of Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Veterans for Peace (VFP), and Military
Families Speak Out (MFSO). His son is in the active duty army and is in
Iraq now for the third time. Goff is on the coordinating committee of
the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, and advises Iraq Veterans Against
the War (IVAW) on organizational development. His blog is called "Feral
Scholar."
As a supporter of PJALS, you should know we are spending more money than ever. That’s good because we’re reaching more people and making more waves, providing more opportunities for progressive, caring people to make a difference locally and globally. It’s hard because being sustainable requires an expanding membership base and increased giving or fund-raising from our usual suspects
With unprecedented competition for funding from private foundations, we have been fortunate enough to be entrusted with a couple of significant grants. Many of our members have also given well beyond annual dues, and some of the gifts have been remarkable. We are trying to make these gifts count, and we’d like to making giving as convenient as possible, beyond assuring that you get credit for your tax-deductible contribution. That’s the reason for our direct deposit program.
One long-time member has given us two wonderful gifts of stocks. This is unusual for us, but something we would love to pursue. Scott Brockway of Edward Jones in Spokane has helped us handle these gifts and has some tips for those who might consider such a gift. We’ll be glad to discuss possibilities for creative giving or for our monthly pledge program.
Also, we are now soliciting items for our annual auction, and we want you to suggest items and donors, and then come and bid to have fun and to help keep us busy.
By Jim Hightower
Jack Abramoff is a fellow much like you and me—except that he’s a multimillion-dollar lobbyist with tight ties to the Bushites, Tom DeLay, and other top Republican leaders. Hear this man’s story, though, and learn a lesson in civics.
Jack represented two Indian tribes in Louisiana and Mississippi that ran profitable gambling casinos on their tribal land. Then a third tribe entered the picture and asked the Interior Department to okay another casino, which would cut into the profits of the first two. Jack appealed to Congress and was delighted to find that all 33 members he approached promptly wrote to the interior secretary for rejection of the new application.
Here’s your lesson: Jack Abramoff put a little sweetener in his request for congressional help. Either his lobbying firm or his clients donated more than $830,000 to the 33 Congress critters within days of their intervention on his behalf. House Speaker Dennis Hastert pocketed $103,000. Democratic senate leader Harry Reid sent his letter off, and, amazingly, the very next day, one of Jack’s tribal clients issued a check to Reid’s political fund. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000.
See? If you want Congress to be responsive to your needs, it’s all in the way you ask.
- Jim Hightower in the January The Hightower Lowdown
Is it just me? Or do many of us think it’s strange that Members of Congress expect us to give them a pass for accepting tainted money from tainted special interests as long as they cough it up under pressure? It’s hard for me to grant mitigation for near-bribery when an elected official says, “We (the royal we) don’t want this money, and we’re going to give it to a charity.”
Either the money was spent on the campaign long ago, or they had too much money in the first place. The only acceptable penance is to ban excessive spending and fundraising in every subsequent campaign and demand the same of colleagues.
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