practical peace

They

Sunday October 28, 2018

“They”
Already the word is a declaration of separation. Expressed in the head to head model, it suggests that we should be struggling for the power that “they” hold and use to “their” advantage and “our” disadvantage. As if life can only be successful for some, but not everybody. As if there is a monolithic, definable set of bad guys, and if only we could beat them….

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WATERMELON

Thursday October 25, 2018

We had two choices about picking the melon. I could sneak a plastic pancake
spatula from my housing unit kitchen down to the garden and split the watermelon into
five pieces, which we would have to eat on the spot. But the assumption here is that we
are all thieves and will steal or strong-arm everything that is not vigilantly overseen.

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HALF-WILD

Saturday October 13, 2018

Each summer, we were supposed to clean up our garden spot on the last weekend
in October, to tidy things up before the seasonal rule Don’t Go In the Garden Space was
made explicit. But things don’t stop growing just because the guards say, “Don’t go in
the garden space.” They have a life of their own. I said I would do it, and I did. But
instead of tearing everything out and putting it in garbage bags in the dumpster by the
Clinic door, I bent the radishes, lettuces, and tomatoes over and suggested that they
reseed themselves. I cracked open the late season watermelons and the cantaloupes we
had grown from seed smuggled out of the Central Kitchen garbage and loosed their seeds
in the dirt at the edge of the plowed ground, then kissed it all good-bye and waited to see
what would happen.

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REFUGEE TALES

Thursday July 12, 2018

I’ve been thinking about the difference between the situation of the children stranded in the Thai cave on the one hand, and on the other hand, the US border patrol’s separating children from their parents and putting them in cages.

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My Sign for Protests against Immigration Separation of Families

Tuesday June 19, 2018

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The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Calls for a Revolution

Wednesday April 4, 2018

Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence
This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru….
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. …
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

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Kelly Temp at the Paper Mill

Thursday February 16, 2017

I used to work Kelly temporaries. The immersion in the nitty gritty of manufacturing helped me to see how deep change happens, how a single set of reforms is so much more than one moment’s gain in the endless tug of war, one that we could lose on the next election round.

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Fusion Politics - What We Have in Common

Sunday February 12, 2017

“Often the groups most impacted by injustice have been convinced that they are enemies. Fusion politics is about helping those who have suffered injustice and have been divided by extremism to see what we have in common.”

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