'\¡Mtñl 'jliV1t"t!lrì!\ ¡r:\'¡r,L!ì;,j!4n:!( I i lrri lll. Ji ',rlr I r' r,, .t.il'i' ¡ ¡ ,li i r&¡i\/:rF)!ilitù¡ l "i, :1.,,,: i ltlr ::r'trìl j; l ' , ,r,,:l.ri' rr I 'l t:J, ,, \, dvocating revolut¡onary nonviolence is never easy. lt's a ,'r ,'rdaunting task just to communicate the why and the how of An obituary is the final word on a subject. lt's about the past turning the world upside down, of achieving profound social justice and peace using no weapons but our bodies and 0ur faith in the of someone or something with no future. This isn't an obituary because every piece in this final issue of W/V speaks to the future of rightness of the gOal. The hours are l0ng, the pay-when there is this endeavor as well as of its past. As a print publication, WIV may any-is l0W and the task doesn't c0me with an instructi0n manual. be over, but the business of communicating the whys and the hows We who work at it can sometimes see, at a distance, glimmerings of of revolutionary nonviolence wll/ go on. And this extraorclinary col- that goal achìeved; m0re often, it's out of sight, maybe real in s0me lection of afticles by people who have toiled in the field for decades distant future, and maylle existing 0nly in 0ur hopes. And yet, the people whose words yoq're allout .'111,1ì is, collectively, a broad and deep look at the multiple intersections given much of their lives to that task; indeed, the pages that follow, of movement journalism and activism-activism in general, and specifically the project of nonviolent revolution-and the ways in read carefully, may lle the beginnings 0f such a manual. which that history, those intersections, point us to the future. lt may ii 'i, t0 read have well have more pointers on how we can best communìcate that goal t,ii , , l,t ,i . l,ll, ,,1,,t,r,,-f i.,: r than anything heretofore put between the covers of one magazine. r As one facet of its resistance to war, WRL has been in the pub- lishing busìness for a long time. lt staned sending members a newsletter, WRL News, in 1945, The New York Workshop ìn Nonviolence began publishing the first t4l/lV in 1966 (its full name was M/V Peace and FreedomThru Nonviolent Act¡on). WRL /Vews welcomed WIV as "constrtuting a sprightly new addition ' ' :'i'l ,l I lt.,l,..lrl, ''ìil,r,iri r,iri.:,ll ,llìrir I lr .1,' ''iliii,li i, l,'i rj: lÌl lr,ll llr i i,ìitrllri ,i r ltl|l (Lrtl> . Ihr:ifistri Ilick [Ip Thc G ffit';tÁ l!icclli WIN 2 ' , " i:ìll/Ji\lijr':\i ,ri.:-|, rl I ,l ,ilr ì1 'i' ì' i, ii¡l ') . ", , Thatsaid, it's by no meansthe lastword on the subject.There are mrssing voices.The contributors are a diverse bunch, age- and gen- folded in 1983, WRL expanded its newsletter into a new magazine, The Nonviolent Activist, which was revamped in 2006 and re-named WlN,in honor of its great predecessor. der-wise, but-reflecting the face of the U.S. peace movement over those same 49 years-far less drverse in race and class. (Reflecting the close-knrt radical pacrfist c0mmunity that generated all three But this, as many 0f you may know, is the final issue of MN. magazines, by the way, you'll find a lot of names repeated Not a few The changing econ0mics of publishing have hit the publishing of the writers of articles in this issue quote other writers appearing side of WRL, which can n0 longer afford the price of putting out a magazine.This is not to say the organization is gÌving up publishing altogether. lt will still produce important resources like its annual Pie Chaft flyer. There's a new edition of "What Every Girl Should Knowj' the brochure for young women, queer and trans youth, youth 0f color, and poor youth, about sexual and gender-based violence in the military (co-published with the here.)There are missing subjects, as well. There are pieces here on Africa and the environment, on prison work and Palestine, on poetry and gay life ¡n the '60s, and on what defines an action as member. When I took on the task of coming back to put it together, ,., -', ",,. ,,tntlil . r\" .;Írì\\' . ."t,,"fi\ . t,l t ,, ,ii l' ii,, itì I imagined that lwas goingto help create an extended obituary, a reflection on the highs and maybe some of the lows, the achievements and the struggles, of that haltcentury of activist journalism. I was wrong. , ',1 : l: l ;l i'' il":l ;l: ,. dicted co-conspirators" from all three magazines describe their favorite issue(s). to pacf¡st literary en- Women of Color Resource Center). Right n0W we're proud to announce the upcoming publication (with Tadween Publishing) of Field 0rganizer Ali lssa's new book, Asainst All )dds: Voices of Popular Struggle in lraq. Beyond print, WRL will be soon putting m0re news and information online, in a more dynamic way. So stay in touch-there'll be plenty to read. Meanwhile, we decided to make this last issue of fViN one to re- ''lrrrliìrrl pieces highlight current activìst projects; and editors and "unin- deavoursj' and WRL became a co-publisher of the magazine. When WIV , ,\rlr lii A roundtable conversation among five former eclitors looks at the nuts and bolts of activist publishing; four "continuities" Longtime writer and journalist Judith Mahoney Pasternak was the editor of The Nonviolent Activist from L995 to 2005. She now lives in Paris, France, where she writes, edlts, trans/ates, and works for peace in Palestine. "nonviolentj' but space considerations, if nothing else, prevented a comprehensive look at all the subjects touched in those 49 years. But it's a start, and as a staft, it covers an amazing amount of ground in its 50+ pages. More significant, it looks back at almost 50 years of activist journalism in order t0 p0¡nt the way to the next 50 years. Which is why, out of the 60 issues I edited-59 Nonviolent ,Actlvists and this issue of MIV-this is my favorite issue. -Judith M ahoney Pasternak A necessary postscnpt; Among the chronicles of the broad community the magazines covered were actlyists' obituaries. The revamped WRL website will, of course, continue t0 post obituaries for those we've lost; please look there for ongoing news, includ¡ng ob¡ts for war-tax resistance pioneer Juanita /Ve/son, Narayan Desai, one-time Chair of War Resisters' Internati¡nal and one of the creators of Peace Brifades lnternational, and LivingTheater coJounder Judith Malina, all of whom died as lhls lssue was being put together. And please bring your thlughts, comments and remlnlscences to WIN's Facebook paf,e (facebook.com/wrlmagazine). 3 WIN { ,t Pushing for Radical Transformation: WRlls 20l5Anti- M ilitarization Campaign By Skanda Kadirgamar and Iara Ïabassi /f s War Resisters League organizers, and as people llcommitting our lives to challenging militarism, we don't often see moments when our work comes together and people power is stronger than people in power. But a lot came together last September 5, when for once we could truly feel that people power strength. It was a cross-community rally outside of the Oakland Marriott-the host of coprshop weapons expo Urban Shield, the culmination of months of local and national organizing, Toward the end of the day, we were excited to hear the announcement from Oakland Mayor Jean Quan: Urban Shield would end its eight-year run and not be hosted in 0akland next year. As organizers celebrated this development, we also understood this was just the beginning-not only of our work against Urban Shield, but in forging synergy between movements against t& Skanda Kadirgamar is a student and volunteer with WRlls Demilitarize Health and Security Campaign. Based in the United States, with family from Sri Lanka, he believes strongly in organizingto undermine state repression.Tara labassi tVRLb national or{anizer, is currently campaignint against domestic police militarization, as well as weapon industries and warfare tlobally. focused on the self-determination of LGBTQ youth of color communities. wa¡ militarism, and police violence, and for the self-determination of all communities. As the Stop Urban Shield coalition said in our statement the next day: the words of Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and 0rganizing Center,'We sày no to Urban Shield anywhere; we say no to militarization everywherel" For antiwar activists, saying no to militarization everywhere means resisting the obvious, such as armored tanks and drones, but it also means fighting-and transforming-a state of mind, Militarized mentalities have permeated U.S. police departments anO OramåÛcally amplified the force of police violence affecting a variety of communities. Militarized mentalities have also begun to infuse emergency preparedness as we saw in 0akland and Boston's Urban Shield expos, where firefighters and EMT train right along with heavily armed SWAT teams, all funded by the Department of Homeland Security. Urban Shield, a private entity despite its DHS funding, doubles as war expo for arms vendors to show off their high-caliber products, while also providing a space FY 2014 UASI "Organizers have asserted, however, that their work is far from will not host the trade show and training, they have not received guarantees that the city will completely withdraw participation, i.e,. providing city funding, sending over, While Oakland Statei Territory Arizona Allocations Funded [Jrban Area FY 2014 UASI Allocat¡on Phoenix Area $5,500,000 Anâheim/Santa Ana Areâ city agencies and offering city sites for future Urban Shields, ln California $5.500,000 Bay Area $27,400,000 Los Anqeles/Lonq Beach Area $67,500.000 Riverside Areâ $1,000,000 Sacramento Area San Dieqo Area Denver Arêa District of Columbia National Capital Req¡on Miam¡/Fort Lauderdale Area $5,500,000 Flor¡da Orlando Area $1.000.000 Tampa Area $3,000,000 Georqia Atlanta Area $5.500.000 Hawaii Honolulu Area lllino¡s Ch¡cago Area lnd¡anâ lndianapolis Area $1,000,000 Louis¡ana New Orleans Area $3,000,000 Maryland Baltimore Area $5.500.000 Massachusetts Boston Area $18,000,000 Michiqan Detroit Area $5.500.000 Minnesota Tw¡n Cities Area $5,500,000 Kansas City Area $1,000,000 St. Louis Area $3,000.000 Nevada Las Vegas Area New JerseV Jersev Citv/Newark Area $3,000,000 $53,000.000 $1,000,000 $69,500,000 $1,000,000 $21.800.000 New York New York City Area North Carolina Charlotte Arêa $3,000,000 CincinnatiArea $1.000.000 Cleveland Area $1,000,000 Columbus Area $1.000.000 Ohio Oreqon Pennsylvania Texas llvtN 4 6,874,000 Colorado Missour¡ Stop Urban Shield Rally, Oakland, CA, September 5,2Ot4. Photo by Ramsey ElQare/www.elqarephotography.com. $1.000.000 $1 Portland Area Philadelphia Area Pittsburqh Area $1 78,926,000 $1,000,000 $18,500,000 $3,000,000 Dallas/Fort Worth/Arl¡ngton Area $15,500,000 Houston Area $24,000,000 San Antonio Areâ $1,000,000 Utah Salt Lake Citv Area $1.000.000 Virginia Hampton Roads Area $1,000,000 Washinqton Seattle Area Total $5.500.000 $587,000,000 for global police departments to play-act counter-terrorism with war weaponry, ln response, WRL is challenging a significant support structure for this militarization, by striking at the more than half-billion-dollar federal grant program, the UASI-Urban Areas Security lnitiative, which stren$hens and unifies state repression by funding for "emeçncy response" in more than 38 "at-risk" urban areas. That the emergency scenarios they train in, and the language they use, are steeped in the "War on Terror" is not an accident. READYING THE GROUND The mid-1960s and the '70s and '80s saw the introduction of high-level military equipment and techniques to U.S. police forces via the wars on drugs and crime. These early mod- el SWAT teams were upgraded in the following decades under the National Defense Authorization Act, which contained weapons transfer programs between the military and police, first for "counter-drug" activities, and later for "counter-terrorism" purposes and the "enhancement of officer safetyJ' lt is in this light that we must understand the "War on Terror" because that is the rationale or with which the Department of Homeland Security continues to further consolidate police and military infrastructure. (One example gaining much notoriety of late due to the Ferguson uprisings is the Pentagon's 1033 "Excess Property" program, the 1997 extension of the NDAA that allows for the transfer of military arms and equipment from the federal government to state and local law enforcement agencies-free of charge.) The Urban Areas Security lnitiative, the billion-dollar grant program under the Department of Homeland Security that subsidizes the transformation of police forces from civilian to quasi-military agencies is another example of how the relation- ships between federal and city institutions have continued to deepen since the Bush administration in the early 2000s. (Fqr more detail on this, see the DHS "Fact Sheet: Office of State and Local Government Coordination & Preparednessi' pbadupML} 427 / lúL0 427 4069 7. pdf. ) UAS l, wh ich is perhaps of greater concern than the 1033 program due to the nature and scale of its operations, bankrolls massive trainings in SWAT techniques, helping sequester practice areas in city neighborhoods (rural areas are not necessarily excluded), often without residents'foreknowledge. Most alarming, it requires all agencies accessing its funds, from fire departments to emergency responders, to have a "nexus to terrorism" in all trainings and activities. By calling for increased coordination between law enforcement and emergency management offices, as well ws. n rc. gov/d ocs/ 5WN Jr as corporate and nonprofit institutions, UASI is, in the words of the New York City Office of Emergency Management, creating a "one-stop-shopl' This rapid amalgamation of city agencies will only lead to a tlghter web of repression used against those already deemed disposable, dangerous, and/or "radicall'We reject a furthering of these cultures of fear. Fostering paranoia and normalizing a constant state of emergency, these UASI allotments, undertaken in the name of security, have incredibly repressive potential, the effects of which we can see every day-if we know where to look. The road to police militarization in Ferguson was paved in other cities by UASI, among them 0akland and Boston, Both cities have made the news for SWAT activity, One famed moment during Occupy Oakland in 2012 was what NBC News described as the police's "overuhelmingly military-type response" to the protesters' encampment. 0n April 75,20L3, the same day as the Boston Marathon Bombing, armored police indiscriminately raided homes in Dorchester and Roxbury-primarily neighborhoods of working-class people of color-arresting 30 individuals on suspicion of selling marijuana, oxycodone pills, and crack cocaine, Perhaps more controversial, both cities have hosted Urban Shield expos, MAKING THE ROAD 'T WR[s current campaign, Demilitarize Health & Security: A Campaign to End the Urban Areas Security lnitiative, takes nonviolent aim, so t0 speak, squarely at UASI to challenge militarism and lift up community wellness and safety. The campaign is grounded in the conviction that if we dismantle police power internationally, we challenge U.S, militarism locally. However, this campaign is also rooted in the understanding that across communities, there is a need for solutions to poverty, violence, and trauma, and that these very solutions can banned Urban Shield from that city. While this victory is great, the coalition continues to organize together as the arms expo moves to the nearby city of Pleasanton for fall2015. > Bostonb 'ST)MP": The Boston ST0MP coalition, "STop 0ppressive Militarized Policingj'was formed around an awareness that Urban Shield was also a presence in the¡r town, one that extended the violent logic of policing there and was also very connected to the lockdown of the town of Watertown after the bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, and the lockdown's heavily militarized parades in residential areas that so disturbed the entire country. ST0MP had leaders from many movements, including Youth Against Mass lncarceration and Black and Pink. Building 0n that momentum, the forces of this coalition are gathering for renewed action this spring. > "Demilitarize Health & Security" Coalition: With the largest and wealthiest police department in the country (with offices in 11 cities around the world), as well as vibrant and far-reaching organiz¡ng against police violence, New York City is a key site of struggle, Early this year, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton's ann0uncement of new militarized units, equating protesters with terrorists, only underlines how what used to be Mayor Bloomberg's army continues to grow Living in the largest recipient of UASI grant funding (at around New York City's $179 million in 2014), New Yorkers are increasingly ra¡sing the call to demilitarize. As a recent cross-community statement opposing the new NYPD units states: "We, the undersigned, demand the immediate dismantlint , of the new NYPD counterterrorism auxiliary unit and Strate{ic Response Group, which will only deepen the crisis of police violence and repression faced by our communities. lnstead of buildint the NYPD's power to criminalize, control, and kill people, we need resources that and will be made by the communities themselves.Through lifting keep communities healthy, whole and free to flourish. We up self-determination and reallocating of resources to allow for will not stop until we have them!" community wellness and resilience, we further support imagining a world where we get to decide how to take care of one another, where funding and resources for climate emeçncies or family safety don't come through the Pentagon and police departments, and where communities have the resources and political power to define priorities for public safety and emergency preparedness-a world that allows all people the ability to transform violence and empower peace. The campaign is anchoring three coalitions nationally, starting in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and New York City, and using a diversity of tactics to further build people power against police militarization. Ihe Bay Area's"Stop Urban Shield" Coalition; As described above, after two years of campaigning against the war-expo and SWAT team-training, Urban Shield expo, the Stop Urban Shield cross-community coalition was successful in creating enough local and national pressure so that Oakland's mayor > w[{ 6 Not stopping means knowing where we are going, knowing what world it is that we want, and living that in our practice of resistance. lt means transforming what at times seems like the endless repression and fear around us to caring, support, and the beauty of solidarity. lt means pushing for something radical we might call revolutionary nonviolence. O For more information on the Demilitarize Health and Security campai{n, see www.facingteargas.org/ p/ d e m i I i ta r i ze - h e a I th - s e c u ri Militarism is guns, armored tanks and drones, but it's also a state of mind. Militarized mentalities have permeated U.S police departments and amplified dramatically the force of police violence aga¡nst our communities. It has also begun to infuse emergency preparedness. Now Fire-fighters and EMT are training r¡ght along with heavily armed SWAT teams, all funded by the Department of Homeland Security (the original DHS). Join us in challenging these harmful forces, striking at the $500 million (plus) grant program-UAS!-that strengthens and unifies state repress¡on. Support imagining a world where we get to decide how to take care of one another. Litt up commun¡ty wellness, res¡l¡ence, and safe$. Together we can Demilitarize Health & Security! 139/ ty. learn more and ioin us at uvuuw.faci n$eargas. org/ p / I39 demi I itarize- health-secu r¡ty / ,t ;* Cf'T PEACE ANO FREEOOM THRU NONVIOLENT ACTION My Favorite lssues: The First Year, 1966 @ Maris Cakars was the third major figure aTWlN.When the magazine began, he thought of himself primarily as an organizer and was concerned that work on the magazine might take energy away from By Markley Morris organizing demonstrations-the heart w lN first appeared January 15, 1966. lt was published 28, 1966, Maris stepped up as a writer, by the New York Workshop in Nonviolence, sponsored contributing a strong essay, "The Political Relevance of Public Witnessi'And it was Maris who championed MN for years, lssue 3 also contains the first examples of what is probably MN's greatest contribution to journalism-coverage of demonstrations with first-person accounts by several participants, woven together to create vivid, multi-dimensional reports. The same issue also marks the first appearance of Henry Bass's'Alphabet Soupj' an effort to make sense of the myriad progressive organizations known by their initials, lssue 9, May 28,1966, includes a reading list, MN invited writers and activists to recommend books, Responses came in from journalist Nat Hentoff; poet Allen Ginsberg; WWll conscientious objector and anitwar coalition genius Dave Dellinger; AT WAR changing world gave WIN a variety of opportunities and challenges, including: The Vietnam war was tiny but steadily growing bigger. More and more U.S. soldiers were coming home wounded or in body bags, Opposition to the war was also escalating. MNb role became reporting on nonviolent direct action against the war, especially civil disobedience, lt also reported on the wide range of writing about the war and nonviolence. > This was also the era of the Human Be-ln, of flower power, of dancing in the parks and on the beaches.Youth culture blossomed. MN covered these peaceable happenings fully. 0ur pages were infused with positive energy, a certainty that although our work is urgent we should strive to accomplish our tasks with joy, simplicity, and love for each other. The New Leftwas also flourishing.These educated youngsters tended to be more interested in tactical nonviolence than pacifism, and they loved to argue. There were debates between those fully committed to nonviolence and those who had doubts.These tensions and arguments spilled into the pages of MN, Perhaps some of us learned a little from one another. This was the golden age of the Underground Press. MN > > proved to be just barely hip enough and funky enough to ù sometimes be considered a part of the counterculture-without being too offensive to more staid and older pacifists. And it should be pointed out that we were part of a world encumbered by towering white male privilege. Perhaps we nonviolent activists were a bit more enlightened than the country at large but we had enough racial prejudice, sexism, and homophobia to give us things to work on for years. > With allthis in mind, let's look at lssue No. 1, The lead article is "The Washington Marchi' by Martin Jezer-with the delicious subtitle, "proselytizing the Iiberalsl' It is followed by reports by Don Newlove and Bradford Lyttle, respectively, on a peace rally at NewYork City's Herald Square during the Christmas rush and a civil disobedience demonstration (14 arrests) at the Boeing-Vertol helicopter factory near Philadelphia.The next 10 pages are devoted to reviews-written mainly by Paul Johnson-of books and magazines about the war. Markley Morris (called Mark Morris back then) was the first Manating Editor of the originalWlN magazine. After six lssues, seeinf WIN was in splendid shape, he moved on to other work but remained c/ose to WlN, contributin{ traphics and writinS over the years. He is now 87,lives in San Francisco, and takes part in a weekly Quaker visil a{ainst allwars. See hls webslte about the LGBT civil disobedience at the Supreme Court in 7 9 87 : s u p re m eco u rtcd. o r!/ H o m e. html wtN I organizer Sidney Lens; two profoundly of , influential pacifist thinkers, A.J. Muste and Barbara Deming; and critic Edmond Wilson, although Wilson refused to recommend any the Workshop; but by issue 2, January by both Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) and War Resisters League. The timing was fortuitous. WIN appeared as the United States was entering years of tumult, This rapidly > co-founder (with folk singerJoan Baez) of the lnstitute for the Study of Nonviolence lra Sandperl; WRls David McReynolds; playwright Arthur Miller, writer and labor All in all, an excellent issue, both hip and well written. No editors are credited. A staff list did not appear until lssue 3, February 11, 1966. lt named Marty and Paul as "editors this issuel'They were the ones who had persuaded the Workshop in Nonviolence t0 publish a magazine. Other staff members listed are Henry Bass, Judy Brink, Maris Cakars, rtr. yJ.ii r¡., ,r' books, Amazingly, no book was recommended twice, With lssue 16,October 5, 1966, MN went national, distributed by both CNVA and WRL, and I became managing editor, I found myself working on an exciting and relevant magazine, well edited and well written by the peace workers and writers who started it, helpful to and loved by nonviolent activists everywhere and making a real contribution. We were off on the long, difficult, and gratifying struggle to end the Vietnam War. O f¡ Ì ,,rrr¡r¡d n(il E *nll 9ñ-¡ Stay Tun€d: WIN's Final issue! Pduqrb @¡ilh ñnãl ls6 of WN M4.¿no. WRL ò¿! b.. Þutrt4 dr qulår pd¡r Þuubiloßlor 70 yà¿R,3þn¡ng ùrh WRI Nem¡n t9a5, bùrrh¡r bng Nn ¡r @nhgro¡n.tu. Rqotrõbt WRL*lll.ée Fducüon otõ pd¡l publc¡dôn dthWNb Spdng 2015 k!u.. ìn sEtr9Êl-WRL ¡s H¡r¡ng: Dov€lopment ând Membêrship Coord¡nâtor lho W!. tu$rd L€go. Kk!6ñ €nrhull5ric6nd oxp.nencd O..i!@r. tundr*r trbññge lñt¡¡rÙ..ñ þ*3 m[ cdlâb6iÞd, ro.@úrn¿te ¡¡d f.cnftr. rhe.dvânr€m.il ofou. flndrdrtnq oúrmnb.BhrÞ bãs. . þqrðû.1ñ.n.rr¡O oûr hcotu, drn.iloMlftlbilty.nd Leonard Fetzer, Rebecca Johnson, Dorothy Lane, Martin Mitchell, Gwen Reyes, Bonnie Stretch, and Robert Sievert. 9WIN ,?, * Cf'T PEACE AND FREEDOM THRU NONVIOLENT :t 9 $ o I{ fot Of €'r fft * CO laerest ACTION *\îc My Favorite lssue: The One on Gay liberation, Nov. 15, 1969 !€,..* .ra" \'iiil!e Ð> By David McReynolds I silence was the iron rule? I was asked for this final issue of WIN to comment on the Many of us in the gay community went over to the West Goodman and a long one by me ("Notes for a more coherent Village immediately afterthe first riotous night. I ran into Allen Ginsberg there, observing, as I was. (0ne of the things about Allen that most deeply impressed me was that he was an openly gay man, at that time almost the only writer or poet in America who was,) article"),The irony is that I cannot claim to have been an activist in the Gay Liberation movement, yet this article of mine, and this issue of WN were impoftant. Let me take readers back to that "homosexual world" as I knew it (and as I had ln 1969 there were virtually no openly gay men in public life (and fewer open lesbians, if any). The exceptions proved the rule. Everyone knew Liberace was a bit queer-everyone except his audience of mid- known it since becoming aware in I l'm not sure. I was then descending into the personal darkness of alcoholism. Perhaps one part of me thought revolution. (But looking back, all power t0 them!) lGay Liberation issue of 1969, which had an article by Paul 1949 that I was homosexual). I would never, in 1969, at the age of 40, have guessed this "deviant world" would morph so radically into what it is now when l'm 85, I never even liked the term "gay," as I didn't, in my experience, find that much about it that was gay. lt was a neurotic world, filled with guilt, too much alcoholism, and centered around youth, After 40, one truly entered the dark ages, Nor am I clear why I wrote the article, what drove me to "come out in print" with one of the very first such articles. While I was certainly influenced by the Stonewall riots, the Stonewall kids were not my crowd. I had tried to go t0 Stonewall once, some time before the riots, but was turned away at the door, Too old? Too straight? lt was a gathering place for young cross-dressing fellows-frankly the last people from whom I would expect a David McReynolds joined the staff of Liberation in 1957 and the WRL staff Ìn 1960. He was lont involved with WIN and the NVA. He also ran for Con{ress on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 7968, for the New York Senate in 2004 as a Green Party candidate, and for the U.S. Presldency on the Socla/lst Party ticket in 1980 and 2000. He retired from the WRL staff in 1999. He has never retired from radicalism. lryril 10 dle-aged women, who adored him. by the same vice squad agent who arrested Johnnie). t Gay writers such as James Baldwin were not "outJ' Major cultural figures, such as composer Leonard Bernstein, had felt it best to get married, so deep was the blas against anyone openly gay. NovelistTruman Capote served as a shield for a host of other gay writers-Capote, so obvious and flamboyant, was what people thought homosexuals were like, ln reality the vast majority of us moved through the world invisible to all except very close friends. What characterized gay life in those days was the need for secrecy. What would our families, our fellow workers, our employers, think if they knew we were queer? Readers of LVIN know that civil rights and peace icon Bayard Rustin spent much of his life worrying that his arrest on a morals charge in Pasadena in 1953 would destroy his value t0 the movement. But it was not just Bayard who suffered. My close friend at UCLA, Alvin Ailey, who would go on to fame as a dancer and choreographer, as a youth spent 30 days in the Los Angeles county jail on a morals chaç. My friend Johnnie Labaç was picked up in Ocean Park by the vice squad and spent 30 days in jail. (What a grand party I threw for him when he got out, Captain's lnn, turning up at the home of lesbifriends an of mine, after the bars closed. I think the great-and today almost unknown-lesbian singer Aggie Dukes joined that party. Who now, reading this, even remembers the Tropic Village or heard Aggie Dukes sing? Johnnie, I fear, is long dead. And I only barely, and by the grace of God, avoided be¡ng picked up We were all potential felons, immoral creatures, our private lives, our loves, in violation of church and state, None of us then would have believed the time would come when openly lesbian W stars Ellen DeGeneres and Rachel Maddow would be such accepted figures, or that two of the CNN anchors, Don Lemon and Anderson Coope¡ would be openly gay? We would certainly not have believed gay maniage was on anyone's agenda. That is the great sea change in what is now called the LGBT community, that and the number of same-sex couples who are raising children. I can think of no other change so radical, so unexpected, lt may, in part, have occurred because of the AIDS epidemic. The sexual part of gay culture in the sixties was the freedom of the scene, and few were the liaisons that lasted more than a single night or at best a few weeks,That youthful abandon ended with a generation of young men seeing most of their friends die of AIDS. I know that if I were ten years younger ld be dead-l was just old enough when the frenzy hit that I wasn't part of it, But even I lost several friends. I remember visiting one in hospital, early in the plague.The room was curtained off, and one had to wear a mask, gown, and gloves before entering, since in those early days no one knew how the disease was transmitted, I think it was this that caused men to look for liaisons that lasted more than a week or so. What moved me, then, in 1969, to write that article, when such an article would gain me some attention. Butthat is not really fair-Bayard taught me that all of us act from mixed motives. I think the key reason was that I was tired of living a lie, I had visited Bayard in jail after his Pasadena arrest (he was utterly broken by the arrest) and when he got out had him down to my beach shack in Ocean Park for dinner, As I drove him there, I said that one of the reasons I admired him so deeply was that he was the only man I knew who was aware that half of what he said was a lie. I didn't mean just the things which, on reflection, are obvious. lf you were sheltering Jews in your basement in Germany, and a Gestapo officer asked if you were hiding Jews, you would ceftainly violate the principle of absolute honesty by saying no. (As Bayard pointed out, "moral absolutes, in the real world, can conflictj' a point Bertolt Brecht-himself no stranger to homosexuality-would have appreciated). No, what I meant was that those of us who were homosexual hid this fact when we spoke of the Gandhian principle of absolute truth, Yes, truth and honesty about everything ... except our own lives, which were in violation of the laws, and about which we had to keep silent in order to speak the truth about war and peace, racism, capitalism, Truth about everything.,, except the one thing that could destroy us. My article was an effort to be honest at last. ¡ You, reading this now, cannot believe how underground homosexuals were in 1969. lf I helped crack open that underground, then the article was important and MN magazine played a crucial rule in publishing it. I did not know, in writing it, what would happen t0 me-what would be the reaction of the War Resisters League for which I worked, lndeed, when Bayard read the article, he called Ralph DiGia, on the staff at WRL and an old friend, and said, "Ralph, you folks have to get rid of David. He will destroy the leagueJ' I did not feel betrayed by Bayard-one of my personal heroes-because I understood very well the fears that moved him. But to the credit of WRL (which obviously survived my article), I remained at my post there for many additional years. O ll WlN I ,r t I T I PEACE AND FREEDOM THßU NONVIOLENT ACflQN, My Favorite lssue: No. 200, May 16, L974 it meant we could get promotional materials using those initials names, and when familiar names dropped off. By Martha ïhomases f-f ere's what I think when I remember the 200th issue of WN I I magazine: We were right. It is the conventional wisdom of many in today's popular culture that the antiwar hippie movement was a monumental failure. lt was, they say, the precursor to the selfishness of the "Me Decade" that followed. Besides this photo gallery, there is a two-part story describing repressed impulses without causing any actual damage, We got to watch Nixon resign, We laughed when President first became aware of MN in 1968, when I was 15 years old, a freshman at a girls' boarding school in Connecticut. lt had only been a year or so since I decided I was a pacifist. Through one of my friends, I discovered the War Resisters a typicalweek in the life of the staff. I wrote the first part of it, and editor Maris Cakars wrote the second. Back in those days, putting together a magazine was hands-on work. Every word was typeset on a typewriter. Every image was printed on paper.The printed papers were then cut up and pasted on cardboards, to be sent to a printer in the League, and, through WRL, city, who would also do the mailing.To be an editor on staff at They are wrong. I t Our days were not drug-filled orgies the way modern pop culture would have you believe (or, ilthey were, I wasn't invited). We had a rhythm to our tasks, and to our little joys. We liked to read the mail. We liked to play board games. I've always said you haven't lived until you've played Monopoly with socialists and Risk with pacifists, lt brings out all those UYIN. My tenure as a staff-person at MN was brief, from early I974lo mid-1975.This happened during the time MN had moved to upstate NewYork, onto a small farm near Kingston, and almost all the staff lived and worked together. There were two buildings, a farmhouse and a converted barn.The barn had bedrooms, the office, and chickens on the ground level. For a time, we had a goat.There was a housecat, Ho Chi, and barn cats, Matilda and Hillary, lf you believe the popular narrative, communes were places for maniacal and charismatic leaders to brainwash their supplicants.The social structure would be dominated by a religious zeal, one that encouraged participants to abandon their families and ignore the outside world. We weren't like that. We had a magazine to produce every week, without fail, And we did, except for a few rare double- issues that let us skip a week. The 200th issue was special because it was about us. It shows what life on our commune was really like, as much as paper is able to do, There are pictures of our friends and neighbors and contributors, both local and around the globe. Media loddess Martha lhomases blogs at "Brilliant Distuise," mdwp.malibulist.com, and is the author of the Dakota North comic books. She ls currently the chair of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute Board of Directors. wrt¡ t2 that time, one had to be able not only to edit and proofread, t but to use rubber cement and a straight-edge, Reading description of what we did, I'm struck by the fact that we spent at least three days doing things that today could be done in an afternoon with a two-year-old iMac. I'm also struck by the description of the editorial process. Three of the men who worked on the magazine-Maris, along with Marty Jezer and Fred Rosen-selected the feature stories, Marty (and, later on, l) would edit the news section. I edited the arts section, and Susan Cakars did the letters. ln other words, men made almost all of the editorial decisions. My memory is that it was more of a consensus process involving the entire staff, My memory might be fogged by nostalgia. Along with putting out a weekly magazine, we had a garden, where we grew vegetables. With the chickens and the goat, this meant there were always chores to do, I found that, when something irked me, I could go outside and rip up a few weeds and feel better. Weeding was also good for writer's block. I might not be able to form a beautiful sentence, but I could clean up a row of tomatoes while I worked that out, We had about 10,000 subscribers at that time, and I felt like I knew almost all of them. Not because we got that much mail (although sometimes, we did) but because we did all of our fund appeals by hand. We stuffed envelopes and stuck the printed labels on every piece, We noticed when there were new the quite easily and inexpensively for 0ur own supporters. We knew FBI was checking us out, not only because of our antiwar activities, but also because they thought that maybe we were hiding Patty Hearst, I mean, all communes are the same, right? We weren't the Symbionese Liberation Army, We weren't the Manson Family. We were friends and family who shared a common goal: to end the war, keep the peace movement connect- the ed, and maybe, just maybe, grow some corn. 0 Gerald Ford proclaimed he would "Whip lnflation Now" because la. Ènt 4 ca Zt ' o¡ l^re wnR RèS #tJ. rSÌê ê 4cUË ARCHIVE THIS! Help Us Preserve and Share WIN/NVA For Future Generat¡ons Print publication of WIN is ending. But an onl¡ne arch¡ve can ensure that the lessons and visionary work of previous generat¡ons rema¡ns access¡ble to activists, students and scholars. Join us in helping WRL preserve and d¡g¡tize the rich history, analysis, and artwork from earl¡er issues of WIN and the Nonviolent Activist by contributing to WRL's arch¡v¡ng fund today. To make a donation toward secur¡ng access to WIN and the NVA for future generat¡ons, v¡s¡t warres¡sters.orgldonatewrl. 13 Wtl{ I .n t 't Cf,T PEACE AND FREEÐOM THRU NONVIOLENT ACTION My Favorite lssue: The Tenth Anniversary Issue April 29/ May 6, 1976 By Susan Kent Cakars fI o celebrate its tenth anniversary in 1976, MN re-published a range of articles from its earliest years. Editor Mark (now Markley) Morris chose to focus mostly on the first two years both for space considerations and to represent the beginnings of both the magazine itself and the peace movement it represented. lncluded are many reviews of demonstrations aga¡nst the Vietnam War, Coverage of a 1966 U.N, vigil and Times Square sit-down and of the 1967 "Siege of the Pentagon" protest follow the same multi-voiced format of participants writing briefly about their experiences. Draft resistance pieces feature dumping excrement into draft board file cases, eating a draft card, and a resister's day in court,The Bread & Puppet political theater troupe is extolled for its effectiveness at demonstrations. A 1967 essay on how the October 22,7966, "Ye110w Submarine" demonstration was conceived points out that it was one of the first designed to be fun rather than glum. A 12foot wood and canvas vessel was carried joyfully across New York City and launched in the Hudson River. Participants sang, danced, played instruments, and passed out flowers to show what we were for, not just what we were against. The issue includes both a speech given by peace movement leader A. J, Muste at a demonstration in Saigon in April 1966, and sadly, commemorations on his death in February 1967. There's a 1967 letter from folk giant Pete Seeger saying how much he loves MN-and more. But l'd like to switch now to some of the issues covered during the rest of the ten years. (My brief overview will omit the names of our many wonderful unpaid contributors so that no Susan Kent Cakars wrote, edited, kept books, and helped with whatever was needed to keep WIN afloat for eight of its first ten years. wtil 14 one can complain about being left out,) Without dropping coverage of demonstrations, resistance, and political analysis, the magazine began to branch into considering the necessity of improving our own lives and values as a way of improving society and ending wars, racism, and injustice, The coverage of the assassination in 1968 of Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. calls on whites to continue his work by dealing nonviolently with the institutional forces of racial oppression-an ongoing ¡ concern of the peace movement, if not one of its noticeable successes. The January 1, 1969, issue focused on alternatives-mostly communes of many sorts. The August 1969 issue was on ecology, expanding MNb focus from improving our institutions and ourselves to protecting the world we live in. The magazine had an early issue on Gay Liberation on November 15, 1969,4nd although women's concerns had been written about earlier, it wasn't until January t, t970,that an issue was devoted to the Women's Liberation Movement. One afticle pointed out, "There are not male supremacist'attitudesl We live in a sexistsystem!" Remedies proposed included women talking to women, women working with women-in feminist, lesbian, and antiwar groups-and women doing what they themselves felt was right. Many more articles on both gay rights and feminism would appear in the following years. MNb coverage of lifestyles included a feature titled "Rock and Revolution" as well as articles on food, cooking, chlldrearing, schools, There were comics, cartoons, and photographs and coverage of concerts and theater. A 1972 issue had a recording tipped in of songs by poet-publisher-rock band leader Ed Sanders. And of course wars and the many, many demonstrations in protest against them, including draft board break-ins and file burnings, were covered. All of this earned us the sobriquet "the liveliest publication on the left" from Villa{e Voice columnist Nat Hentoff. press by former Department of Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, with interviews with Dan and his wife Pat. ln 1973 there were ln 1971we moved WlNfrom offices atthe Lafayette Street "Peace Pentagon" in NewYork Cityto a commune in Rifton, NewYork. (How we managed to put out a magazine in the many articles on activist-priests Dan and Phil Berrigan, and on April 5 of that year we switched from a twice-monthly to a weekly schedule to get speedier postal delivery. 0n April country was described in our 200th issue, May 10, 1974.) 0n May 15, 1971, we published the Vietnam diary of Sgt. Bruce Anello, who had been killed in action May 31, 1968. lt is as well written as anything on the subject and is heartbreaking in its similarity to accounts from lraq and Afghanistan. ln March 7972we published the complete collection of political documents stolen by a group of peace activists from the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a year earlier, on March 8,I971. Several newspapers had published selected documents the group sent to them, revealing that the bureau had spent much of its effort infiltrating antiwar activists and Black student groups in order to stifle dissent and enhance "the paranoia endemic in these circlesi'[lV/N, however, received and published a// the political files, answering a Justice Department official's claim that the files reported in the press were taken out of context. The November I,1972, 11, L974, we published a special issue on men, focusing on the role of feminism ¡n the lives of straight men. The June 27 1974, issue was on fighting against nuclear power plants, , And on December 19,I974,we published a special issue on money (always a hard subject to talk about), r I975 saw more reports from other countries, issues "Women 1975 j' lesbian culture, anarchism, and the WRLinitiated Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice, and of course the same year saw the end-finally-of the Vietnam War, something we all thought would have happened many years before and the reason we started MN in the first on place. So much to cover and so much l've left out (including the last year)l I see now why Markley chose to stick to the first few years. I hope you enjoyed this walk through MN and will seek out these early issues.They are well worth it, O issue focused on the "Pentagon Papersj'the massive collection of documents leaked to the 15 WIN :4 Poems say wake up, use language as weapon3 of nonviolent mass creation that see and hear and reconfigure Whitman s "l sing the body electricl' Poems shout, "Bring justice to the victims PEACE AND'FREEDOM THRU NONVIOLENT ACÍION By Mary lane Sullivan H *l''., ere we are in the 2lst century where social relations are compromised. We live in states of exclusions from one another and refrain from attesting to states of ignorance that lead to violence. lt is complicity that leaves wounds 0ne can barely count. How do we c0me to know intellect, language skills, skin color, sexual identity, soc¡al status, and stories that challenge this disorder within this field of ignorance? The fabric of our civil discourse is fragmented, for the concepts of the common good and community based on equality and transformation are rendered inactive. Human relations are shaped by the realities of history and the struggles that convey how forces of oppression and domination maintain inequality, violence, and cruelty. There is no one elixir, but I continue to recommend the power of poetry as a force field of human transformation to counteract verbal hypocrisy and the militarization of the mind. Poetry is intrinsically just because it is based on mutual consent between the poet and the one who engages the poem as a body, engages the one who suffers injustice in the small ways of everyday life and perhaps just needs to dive into the wreckage of destruction, now more than ever bound to the future of existence on this planet, ln 1979, I was a member of the editorial collective alWIN. From the top floor of a loft on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, we absorbed and printed the voices of the nonviolent movement for peace and social justice, a goal beyond categories. Without the currency of social media, we were able to reach out across the globe with hard-working, relentless activists and theorists at the height of the antinuclear, antiapartheid, antiracist, and feminist movements. lt is my belief that what motivated us more than anything was the power t0 imagine a just world based on fearless speech. MN was never about the singular "li' lt was about contesting, the interdependent "wei'And our tools were those of language and nonviolent action, which challenges the passivity and submissiveness of the status quo. Yes, that was 35 years ago. Many of us are still at it, for it is a way of living. ln the fall of 1979, afterthe meltdown atThree Mile lsland intuitional forms of violence censor the need for open dialogue amongst all of us. Many of the stories and poems have been torn language with the force of one's entire body. from the archives of history. These stories seize the trauma of published in this issue and dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood, who blew the whistle on faulty nuclear plant practices and paid for it with her "mysterious" death, and to Eliot Gralla, who had also died not long before the poem was published. "Poets in Our Worldi' December 13, 1979 imagination. Without doubt the reproduction of stereotypical of systemic social injustice," Poems employ Satyagraha to speak Denise Levertov speaks it fonruard in her poem, "Beginnersi' My Favorite lssue: conversation concerningthe relationship between race and the history for all of us who live in this country. I am a mature woman now There are films and poems to stitch and share, but I want it to be a part of an opening to what is unfolding. The generations now writ¡ng at this time of collision and collusion against the imagination are being challenged by whatAmiri Baraka calls the "motion of HistoryJ'ln the 21st BEGINNERS century, writers of color keep aniving on that nonstop train giving 'From too much love of living, Hope and desire set free, voice and sense to dialogues that need to continue to move off the page into direct and forceful activism. For as we know we Even the weariest river think, we speak, we act, and the conflict between saying and do- Winds somewhere to the v sea-' But we have only begun ing has to be challenged and transformed by those who walked the rim of privilege and violence. lt is now being done and it requires all of us to listen and read and walk the talk. O to love the earth. and the protests against Seabrook and Shoreham nuclear power plants, several of us attended a benefit called "Writers We have only begun AIR TEXTURES to imagine the fullness of life. Nuclear winter begins ln the gullies of aquifers Opposed to Nuclear Power and Weapons" for the Shad Alliance, How could we tire of hope? The testing grounds of the thermonuclear. the War Resisters League, and Mobilization for Survival. lt -so sparked an idea; we decided to publish renowned and younger poets who held forth that poetry weighs in at its historical moment and lives in it insofar as it remains the news of human life. Poetry is at the root of communication. Among the poets were Muriel Rukeyser, Jane Cooper, Joseph Bruchac and How can desire fail? and -we much is in bud. Evidence of the burn is found in follicles of the tree have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, The arsenals of thinking follow the laws of human consent The geiger counter recalibrates plutonium, cesium a tail winds circulate in pacific gyres only begun to envision how it might be Sleeps in the screens of scripted dialogue to live as siblings with beast and flower, Out of terror Grace Paley, ranging from Kathy Engel to Jan Barry to MN staff not as oppressors. the familiarity of estrangement members Mark Zuss and me.Those poets mentioned were our teachers, as we have become teachers t0 a younger generation Surely our river is the book of rules in the 21st century, As Muriel Rukeyser said in her timeless into the sea of nonbeing? essay book, The Life of Poetry: "But there is one kind of knowledge-i nfin itely precious, ti me-resistant more than monuments, Surely it cannot Mating rituals interrupted drag, in the silt, What sings waggles in the dance of the bees here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetryl' lt was a radical idea to make a whole issue one of poetry.The news coming to us all that is innocent? the landscape of the speaking eye Peter Blue Cloud, Jean Valentine, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, r cannot already be hastening Not yet, not yet- The sonic impulse of water fragments ¡nto the hydroelectric What whispers is ground to wind, there is too much broken The stones of languages lost to human war every day was so intense that we really had to sort out what to print, in a time of global/national uçncy. We were being that must be mended, too much hurt we have done to each other So why do I stay quiet in disenfranchised emergencies formed by the connective tissue we held amongst us from Brooklyn to the four corners of a growing movement. Poetry often fell through the cracks of activism and, like seedlings in the cracked pavements of Brooklyn circa 1980, waited, For many of us, it lived in our nonviolent movement for social change. Poetry was not the foreigner, As it is today in spoken word and performance poetry by the younger generation, it was a meeting place where those false barriers between that cannot yet be forgiven. That require no thought or obligation us were and are taken down, stripped of their power, Poetry is PRESCRIPTION FOR THE NOW of the people, and sometimes we might not want to hear about We have only begun to know Why do I avoid the knowledge that blue corn comes from the sun? the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle. Remote sensing is beyond a large screen tv So much is unfolding that must It marks the surface of your love/s body who knows consent or complete its gesture, violation so much is in bud. The beauty of resonance where forgiveness is unspoken. The children who sing forth that song in its desperate longing. As I write this I have just returned from a compelling, con- Are they themselves violated? Mary lane Sullivan is a poet, filmmaker, and Film and our faults, our deviations from revolutionary friendship. We are tentious conference in Missoula, Montana, called Thinking lts They walk to the unknown of sensing. Humanities instructor at the University of Colorado- compelled via civil discourse to witness our own becoming in this place called America, Presence:The Racial lmaginary. Fellow writers and filmmakers pushed my understanding of white privilege and the incomplete As chains of tyranny target. Colorado Springs. WIN 16 -Mary Jane Sullivan 17 t'VlN * (tI},IATT MTASTR(lPI{T ',-,i,1'Él(,1.-À,1 A Gall for "Glimate Satyagraha!" L_l-,,'ì¡ JUtY 5, l0llr THE CRtStS, THE CALL|NG, THE STRATEGY, AND THE HORIZON dignified rage on the parts of the fossil fuel economy that are most vulnerable: the choke-points and bottlenecks through which the vast major¡ty of global production passes on a daily By Ecosocialist Horizons ecosocialisthorizons.com / 2Ot4/ L1,/call-for-climate-satyagraha lrr, 7.9P},| l ì basis, Choke-points are everywhere, from big internationdl ports document emerged from an invitation to discussion put fhis I fonruard by Ecosocialist Horizons at the first Pan-African conference on nonviolence in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2014, where delegates and representatives from 34 African countries and over 50 countries from every continent helped give b¡rth to the PanAfrican Network for Nonviolence and Peacebuilding. Refined and revised by participants around the world, this document is a dramatic calling for massive nonviolent action in defense of life on Earth. From the birthplace of humanity and the continent which stands to lose the most to climate catastrophe, we must join together in a movement to remake the world, THE CRISIS Catastrophic climate change is coming to a village near you, and it's coming sooner than you think. lt's not complicated to understand. Africa is going to burn, unless we resist, The numbers are staggering: One half of all the species alive on earth today will probably be extinct by the end of the century; already we are losing them at the rate of hundreds a day. Millions of hu- man beings will soon be refugees, as their homes are lost to the oceans or to the deserts. Already hundreds of thousands perish social, but also political. ln the 11th hour, we are building more pipelines through the last stretches of pristine land, damming the last of our rivers, and felling the last of our forests.The crisis is absolute and threatens to consume much of the life and beauty that remains in the world, ln our moment of greatest need, we hear a calling to the horizon, THE CALLING The ticking clock is not in your imagination. lt resounds in the ears and hearts and minds of every one of us who is not content to simply wait for the coming storms and the mass graves. We have a duty to resist the exploitative, eKractive, unequal, and unjust fossil fuel war economy. We need to replace it with a just peace. And we must restore a safe climate, sustainable livelihoods, and food and water security: the rhythm of humanity living in harmony with ourselves and with the earth, To those of t you who feel that pulse, we say one word: Satyagraha. It means "soul force" and was popularized by Mohandas Gandhi against two superpowers that many believed would last forever: one was British colonialism in South Africa, the other was the British Raj in lndia. Both were overthrown, with mass to your local gas stations, airports, trâlns, pipelines, or 1 high- ways. They can be found throughout the sup ply chain, from t 'q the point of extraction to the point of consumption, An alliance of organized labor in the big ports and logistics and distribution centers, together with the support and coordinated local actions of communities around the world, can stop the movement of oil and coal, rtr/- l' €__Ð By blocking these arteries, defending them, and transforming them, soul-force can bend the arc of history toward climate justice. ln particular we call attention and action to those targets that are the biggest perpetrators of catastrophic climate change: i ÍIiTURI N6 'r i I i llr rllLì'\ -,:,i: llill L l.lll,l'll WAHU K.4ARA coal-fired electricity, the oil industry, industrial agriculture, and (rtrBnÂilli0 ¡l{{ tflitrY 0t the military account for the majority of global carbon emissions. The biggest bottlenecks in the global economy, where all these climate criminals meet, are the logistics and distribution centers through which allsupply chains must pass.These are the points at which we can leverage the international revolutionary political RESISTING FOSSIL FUELS 1,rr,,1,, DTNNIS BRUTUS ECOSOCIÀ| ¡sT HO¡TZONS yA¡ ¡[stSTEls |MEIN ATTONAL Maryland, joined New York activists protesting the Seneca Lake An exciting, 0nly months-old project called Beyond Extreme gas storage site, and joined a march against Dominion Resources movements of nonviolent resistance changing the course of his- Energy is c0nnecting anti-fracking activists all along the U.S. in Virginia where horneowners are suing t0 keep pipeline surveyors every year as a direct result of climate change, Africa stands to lose the most, but all life on Earth is at risk. tory. But satyagraha is bigger than Gandhi, and our movements must move beyond him. Today, we are up against powers that East Coast. BXE's main focus is the Federal Energy "Regulatory" off their pr0perty. BXE has inspired locals to rise up and resist the "done deal" liquefied natural gas export facility now under con- There is an international scientific consensus: only by containing global warming at less than two degrees Celsius can we far exceed previous empires in their globalized intelligence and coordinated military power. lt is unthinkable to approach them in anything but massive numbers, wielding anything but those weapons identified so many years ago: truth (satya) and power prevent the full onslaught of catastrophic climate change. once this point is passed, earth system feedback loops (for example, the release of methane trapped in melting permafrost and the ocean floor) will overwhelm any human effort at mitigation. To prevent thís, according to the same international scientific con- sensus, carbon emissions must peak by 2075, followed by a rapid and permanent decline. Such words, however, contradict the logic of our economic system, which is based on the imperative of infinite growth, This system has a name: it is capitalism, and it is the enemy of nature. Decades of international conferences and decades of missed opportunities demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that neither governments nor corporations nor NGOs are willing or capable of bringing about what every doctor has ordered. This is the nature of our terminal crisis-not only ecological and WN 18 Commission-"regulatory" in quotes because the FERC in reality rubber stamps viftually all fracking infrastructure projects, such as pipelines, c0mpressor stations, and the first East Coast liquified struction. Local neighborhoods right on the doorstep of the plant were ignored in Dominion's permit application that FERC rub- fracked gas export facility now in the early stages of constructiOn ber-stamped. No other LNG terminal anywhere in the world is in by Dominion Resources near the town of Lusby, MD, at Cove Point such a densely-populated neighborhood, with only 0ne two-lane (agraha). on the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay. road for evacuation should a chemrcal spill or gas explosion occur. The tireless work of activists, well-intentioned officials, and enthusiastic schoolchildren has made one thing clear: Rallies outside office buildings and conference centers will not turn the tide. The time for symbolic protest and for demands is over, lt BXE has held two action camps at FERC's Washington headquarters and has another scheduled for May 21,,29.9XE activists tance actions, meetings with attorneys for advice about legal have protested at gubernatorìal inaugurations in Pennsylvania and steps against Dominion, canvassing, flyering and petition gathering is too late to speak truth to power, Now we must speak to the power within ourselves, because only we the people of the world can keep the oil in the soil. We must resist the war on Mother Earth with a climate satyagraha; an overarching strategy to end the war on Mother Earth. BXE's "We Are Cove Poìnt" project has facilitated civil resis- in Lusby.The Cove Point export facility would ship fracked gas from all over the U.S. eastern seaboard for sale to Europe and Asia, so Ellen Barfield is a long-time antiwar activist with WRL and Veterans For Peace who organ¡zed November 6 with BXE at slowing or ending it will have an impact on dangerous and pollutFERC to publicize the U.N. day against exploitation of the environment in war and challenge the Pentagon as the world's blgsest fossl/ fuel burner. ing fracking projects in multìple states. For more information, see beyondextremeenergy,0rg 0r wearecovepoi nt. org. Ellen Barfield THE STRATEGY lf our goal is a carbon emissions peak, we must focus our 19W[{ . ..'- :.'t:' ìi horizon of ubuntu and ujamaa-together these African change necessary to transform the philosophies are a revolutionary light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism, patriarchy, and war. Gathered together in Cape Town at the first PanAfrican conference on nonviolence, hailing from every continent, this is a call for a coordinated global uprising. We share a vision built on beloved communities of care and trust, making use of modern technologies but most of all returning t0 our ancestral roots of wisdom, unity, and ecological balance. This call is in solidarity with every movement for peace world economy. THE HORIZON There is an alternative. lt is being imagined and created all over the world, and now is the time to realize it. But we cannot move beyond fossil fuel, war, or capitalism without a positive vision of the world we wish to create and care for. Every action t0 stop the fossil fuel economy, war and capitalism, must embody its goals, must prefigure 'c'-(). 'o D with satyagraha, we invoke and honor the history, vision, and practices of ubuntu and ujamaa. I Å world's peoples are already discussing amongst themselves the necessary tactical plan to make the impossible inevitable. With this common vision, we can rendezuous with victory on othersj' ubuntu expresses our fundamental interconnectedness, Kiswahili for "unityj' ujamaa represents a vision of grassroots cooperation, the spirit of inter- dependence, and community, Together they mean a new economy and a new humanity, emerging from sustainable and egalitarian productive communities that prefigure a new mode of production. Our calling is for satyagraha, and it calls from the a global horizon, in truth and in power. O ''f -f.t tí/t rt '\ PAN-AFRICAN NONVIOLENCE nrrddle of the Ebola crisis spreading through his city, country, and NETWORK SOARS region. PANPEN helped him spearhead a multilingual "Know the Facts" campaign throughout Monrovia and other key cities and towns. A former child soldier, Abel noted that "peace Zenzile Khoisan. He was voicing the feelings of many, not about life to us now means being safe j'with safety meaning freedom from disease, in post-apartheid South Africa-where wide, deep inequalities leave poverty, repression, and military control. ln another example, much work still to be done-but about the burgeoning unarmed PANPEN is a co-sponsor of an upcoming conference of the Africa South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission ¡nvestigator civil movements sweeping Africa. Many of these movements are Peace Research and Education Association being held this April in part 0f and supported by the Pan-African Nonviolence and Peace- Abuja, Nigeria-the first of its kind on the continent. PANPEN has building Network, which convened a series of events around the War also convened and led nonviolence trainings for newly emerging Resisters'lnternational conference held in CapeTown July 4-10, coalitions between Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan act¡vists, 2014. and for campaigners from Eritrea and the Horn of Africa. Founded in 2010 at a WRlTraining forTrainers meet¡ng in ln other words, though PANPEN is still in its earliest stages, it Johannesburg, PANPEN played a major role in developing the WRI is clear that a passionate new energy ¡s spreading. As lnter-Press conference and has continued t0 grow and expand since then. Service journalist Kanya D'Almeida put it in her report on the work, "With attendees from 33 African countries and every region of the "actions may be small, but their impacts are felt at the hishest the African continent;'noted PANPEN co-chair Nozizwe Madlala- levell' Routledge, "PANPEN is set t0 deepen our networking capacity- sharing best practices, urgent information, and strategies for PANPEN may be contacted through its co-chalrs, Moses John (mosesjoa@tmail.com) and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge changel' ( n o zi zw e m r@ {m a i l. c o m ln the weeks following the July conference, for just one example, WIN 20 B. Abel Learwellie found himself in the I À a hai/s breadth away. ln every place, the lsiZulu for"we are who we are through "l feel younger now than I felt years agol" declared former I 6 D and justice, with every people struggling to build a new world in the shell of the old. We believe that a movement of billions, united for climate justice, armed with truth and love, is only the world we wish to see. So together Liberian PANPEN member -, ). - Matt Meyer i I I .T I I I I I How We Worked: newsletter in which workshop participants would report on their actions, discuss tactics, promote upcoming events, and even tell Five Decades of Movement Journalism of WlN, we thought it would be useful to $r this final issue processes I take a look at the of putting out activist news and analysis and the thinking that went on around that task. So we asked five experts to discuss the subject as they experienced it-five former editors of the three magazines published or copublished by WRL between 1966 and 2015: from the original MN Magazine. Murray waswas a memberof the WNstaff from Ig74lo 1981 orso and then served on MNb editorial board until the magazine ceased publication in 1983. He served as executive director of the A,J. Francesca as editor from 2008 RUTH BEI{N, from lhe Nonviolent Actrvrst. Ruth is the Coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, co-writes the annual Pie Chart flyer for WRL, and is act¡ve with NewYork CityWRL, She edited The NonviolentActMst from June 1987 to June 1993 and served as director of WRls National Office from 1994 to 2000. ANDY MAGER, from The Nonviolent Activist. Andy has been an organizer, trainer, activist, writer, and speaker in movements for peace, social justice, and environmental protection for more than 35 years. Andy edited lhe Nonviolent Actrvist in 1994-95 and worked on the team for the War Resisters League organizer training program from 1989 to 1993. He now works as the sales manager for Syracuse Cultural Workers. FRANCESCA FI0RENTINI, from the new MN, Francesca was hired in 2005 to replace outgoing Nonviolent Actrïrst editor Judith Mahoney Pasternak and the next year conceived and oversaw the transition from the NVA to MN through nonviolent revolution, She's now a host and producer with the online news channel AJ+ of Al Jazeera Media. She also moonlights as a stand-up comic, She lives in San Francisco. CALVIN REY MOEN, from the new MN. Calvin followed l'vtN 22 people once they got on the mailing list, jokes. Soon activists in other parts of the country were sending in reports, and the publication became the place where you could find news from dozens of small and larger actions. 0nce MN settled into being a regular, weekly publication, it became the place that tied the national and international peace move- lo 20t2 and has remained ment t0 local movements and groups, on lly activism was born in the late 1970s/early 1980s move- Andy: ments to stop nuclear power and prevent the reinstitution of draft registration. As a college student, ,i the publications committee since then. He was a facilitator and organizer with the lcarus Project in New York City and continues to Investigate grassroots alternatives to mainstream mental health models. He currently works doing outreach and advocacy with psychiatric survivors in hospitals and communities in southern Vermont. ties, from the national office to local THE ROUNDTABLE organizing, WRL News also served as a forum for presentation of ar- I came across MN magazine and found it to be an invaluable source of ideas, information and inspiration on the power of active non- Ruth: WRL News, published from 1945 to 1984, was WRls house organ, an eight-page newsletter that kept members in touch with activi- MURRAY R0SEI{BHTH, Muste Memorial lnstitute from 1985 to 2008. He is currently a director and fund manager at New Alternatives Fund, the oldest U.S. mutual fund investing in renewable energy and energy conservation, A longtime WRL activist and member, he has served on the National Committee and the former Executive Committee and is still active as a member of WR[s Finance Committee. members, but it certainly played an important role in connecting guments within the violence. As I grappled with the decision about how to live out my refusal to register for the draft, I found my way to the War Resisters League, which served as my philosophical and activist home for WIN: What was/were the magazineb most significant contrihution(s) to the theory and/or practice of nonviolence, peace, and war resistance? lo other social justice movements? such as WRls role in electoral politics or the pros and cons of war tax resistance.The great MN magazine, Activist to replace both LÍlN and WRL News, the NVA sought to Muray: ln the early years, MN served as the voice of a nonviolence movement emerging founded in 1966, was close to WRL but editorially independent; after it folded in 1983, many felt the loss of a news magazine from a pacifist perspective. balance the dual role of movement magazine and organizational from the counterculture. lt wa5 looser, irreverent and certain- The Nonviolent Activist: The Magazine of the War Reslsters League was created to combine these missions and publish WRL I believe that an admirable job was done over the years in maintaining that balance. The NVA included a robust section of concise reports, updates and upcoming campaigns from around the globe (Activist News). The dialogue that took ly more profane (just like the news along with journalistic articles of importance to the nonviolent movement around the world. The first issue of the NVÁ was published in December 1984.The first editor was David Croteau, place in the letters column provided a forum for thoughtful, and at times pointed, exchanges of ideas and perspectives. WIN/NVA/WIN placed active nonviolence in the forefront, ad- and my first issue as editor was June 1987. We were challenged to inform WRL members and produce a magazine that m¡ght inspire vocating for a model of organizing and activism that we believe is most principled and effective for creating the just, peaceful, and a casual reader toward nonviolent activism and to join WRL creative world we seek. As part of that, we were a primary source Compared to the cultural breakthroughs of MN and the intellectual contributions of the earlier Liberation Magazine,lhe NVA cannot claim such fame. However, looking over a pile of magazines, there's a helluva lot of valuable information, along for information about the struggles and occasional triumphs of war resisters and conscientious objectors around the world. ln this case, as in most, we linked information to action. WRL and the publications served as a challenge to broader movements for social justice to dig deep and consider the long-term ramifi- '60s) than the publications and style of established organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League, and various Quakerinspired groups. lt represent- ed a mostly younger crowd of peace activists who were nurtured by these same organizations but who also embraced a more "hippie" approach. MN also served as a bridge from the previous generation of nonviolent activists who had emeçd ¡n the post-World War ll years from the prisons and Civilian Public Service camps and who became active in the civil rights movement, campaigns against nuclear weapons, and anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, These were the folks who started the Committee for Non-Violent Action, A Quaker Action Group, and Peacemakers, among other groups, to promote a greater direct action approach to their nonviolent activism. 0riginating in the New York Workshop ln Nonviolence (NY WIN), a local group that staged direct action protests at the annual Veterans Day parade and the civil defense drills of the early 1960s (and co-published by WRL), MN started as an irregular organization, with striking art, photos, and graphics; inspiring stories; and con.¡ tributions by nonviolent activists from every corner of the earth. For instance, the cover of my first issue as editor included these lines (and a few more) from Wilfred Owens' poem, "Dulce many years. When WN folded in 1983 and WRL launched the Nonvio/ent newsletter. cations of the tactics and strategies we chose. Francesca'. So much of the mag- et Decorum Est": "lf in some smothering dreams, you too could pace/Behind the wagon that we flung him in..," lt seems appro- azine was about sustaining WRL members' appetite for movement to note this at this time of events marking the centenary news, political discussion, and antimilitarist analysis, But a moment when we really broke out of reaching the usual suspects-our membership-was in 2007, when we decided to conduct a series of priate of WWl. ln a few lines Owens made vivid the horror of war, The poem accompanied an article aboutVeterans For Peace, still a partner with WRL in the struggle to end that horror. We also sought out writers and reports from activists representing many organizations, which facilitated and strengthened networking, lt's impossible to say if the NVA brought in new interviews with various movement 23WtN leaders in what we dubbed the "Listening Processi'The energy of 2003-2005's antiwar movement had largely petered out, and many antiwar forces were trying to regroup and figure out how to build for the long haul. 0ur way of doing that for WRL was to showcase various activists in a "cross-pollination of ideas" to reflect the "wisdom from an array of sectors and perspectivesl' That meant hearing from racialjustice, climate, veteran, student, and immigrant rights organizers, lt was a rich experience for the magazine and WRL as a whole, and one that certainly brought up more questions than it gave answers. lt's much easierto interview and opinionate and much harderto implement a political action plan for a then-84-year-old organization. Calvin: The guiding social justice principle, in theory and practice, during my time at WN was (and continues to be) intersectionality. To focus on any single organizing topic, like resisting war, and ignore how war affects communities based on race, class, gender, status, sexuality, etc., is citizenship to recreate the same colonizing dynamics that we purport to resist. What we did in the second incarnation of t¡1l/N with ìlì the themed issues was to dig deep into the root causes of war, which the WRL pledge identifies as "racism, sexism and all forms of exploitationj' and find where those different roots were tangled up with militarism, imperialism, and a global war economy. This was at a time when WRL organizing was making a con- scious shift into connecting with and supporting the work of people-of-color-led grassroots groups in the United States and internationally: lraqi labor unions, U.S, immigrant youth, resisters in occupied Palestine, indigenous activists in uranium-impacted communities in New Mexico, and queer organizers in the South, to name a few. The magazine endeavored to be an organizing tool, both to introduce new voices and visions to WRL members and WN readers and to build bridges between struggles 0n the ground. We occasionally got some pushback ("1 thought we were an antiwar organization. Why are we talking about farming?"), but overall, the responses-from incarcerated people, environmentalists, vegetarians, boycott-divestment-sanctions suppofters, classroom teachers, trauma survivors, and others-were of mutual recognition, of seeing and being seen. applied to the articles was to promote nonviolent action in the pursuit of social change. This included, at times, a vigorous debate as to whether this was possible and also what constituted nonviolence-i.e. was property damage violence? lf forms of oppression were expressions of violence, what is the best way to counter them? ttVlN was born out of the growing anti-Vietnam War movement, but had a historic tie to earlier political movements, and so these discussions were carried out across the spectrum of issues emerging from the mid-sixties and onwardthe Black power movement and civil rights, women's liberation, gay rights, indigenous rights, prison and death penalty abolition, the nuclear and converitional arms race, nuclear power, tax resistance-name the issue and campaign and you would likely find a lively discussion of the politics and tactics of it taking place among local organizers in the pages of WN. Among the notable achievements in the early years was a special 1972 issue containingthe entire contents of the FBlfiles stolen by the "Citizens Commission to lnvestigate the FBl" from a branch office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971. These documents were the first revelation of a concentrated effort by the FBI to spy on and actively disrupt social change movements across the country. ljoined the WiV staff in lale I974, as the war in Vietnam was winding down. MÀ/ had never been solely focused on the antiwar movement, but it had formed the overarching concern during the magazine's existence to this point. Over the next few years, there was a parade of issues and campaigns across our pages reflecting the organizing work taking place in communities around the world.The list could take up ten pages, but among them were: liberation struggles in Latin America, the anti-apartheid movement, economic inequality (sound familiar?), the second and third waves of the feminist movement and the rise of the so-called men's movement in support; the continuing growth of gay and lesbian activism, the reinstatement of the draft, growing threats to civil liberties, and, as always, the 0ngoing efforts to halt the nuclear arms race and impede the spread of militarism of color in particular? Do gay rights, abortion rights, or animal rights need to be discussed in a primarily antiwar organization? What about wars of liberation and nonviolent philosophy? I see the recurring theme as the role of nonviolent activists in all these struggles. As the only national secular pacifist organization, WRL has a unique voice in progressive struggles. The magazine was a place both t0 present that voice and to act as a forum for debates. The deciçion-making bodies of the organization could take guidance froin tfie responses that came as letters to the editor (or dropped subscriptionsl), Most important, I think, was t0 help individuals feel more connected to a wider movement-whether we all agreed or notby telling the stories of nonviolent activists and giving readers inspiration to push on in our Sisyphean task. Andy: During my brief tenure editing the NonviolentActlvlstsummer 1994 to fall 1995-the question of "humanitarian" in- tervention was a major issue facing the left. War in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda and U.S. intervention in Haiti were the most visible examples of the government's effort to portray the United States as using its military power to help those facing violence and persecution. Many progressives were swayed by President Clinton's rhetoric and supported such policies. As part of analyzing and debunking this approach, we published several "think pieces" that looked at the "Spectator Culture" that emerged with the election of a Democratic president following 12 years of Republican control 0f the White House. After decades of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was elected President of a non-racial South Africa during this period, accompanied by thoughtful analysis of the progress that had been made and the long struggle still to come before true equality was achieved by that nation's black majority. The 50th anniversary of the end of World War ll, includingthe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, occurred during this time. We developed a special section of the NVA throughout 1995 that addressed the Holocaust, Japanese internment, the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the atomic bombings, reflections of WWll resisters, and more. 0n the other hand, the horrific genocide in Rwanda took place in spring 1994 and didn't get the attention it deserved, part of a larger pattern of relative inattention to Africa. During the same period, by the way, the NVA and WRL saw the retirement from the paid staff of our beloved Ralph DiGia' Ralph was one of the WWll total resisters who played an often quiet, but central role for WRL over 40 years. ln the end, his "retirement" consisted entirely of no longer drawing a paycheck; he continued as a volunteer, working almost full-time for more than a decade, until a 2007 fall that broke his hip and led, eventually, to his death at the age of 93. Francesca: When I came 0n as editor it was becoming clear that grassroots organizing for the peace movement meant 0rganizing with veterans' communities and youth who were being poached by the military. Lifting up the stories of vets was critical, as was the resistance of youth via counter-recruitment-specifically resistance of Black and Latino youth, At that time you didn't see or hear the stories of lraq and Afghanistan War vets the way we do today, Nor was there was as great an understanding of the so-called "poverty draft" in the military, which still has yet to enter popular consciousness when it comes to the military __ . t¡¡ internationa lly. One of MNb notable contributions during the mid- arms race in space, and on and on,There were arguments over things Iike vegetarianism and "nonviolent Iifestyle" vs. nonviolent action as a force against war. ls "war" armies on a battlefield or does it include the "war at home" perpetuated on communities to late *illl-- aæ-,¡"- 1970s was t0 serve as a crucial news source and communication tool for the direct action movement against nuclear power and the dozens of local "alliances" across the country that carried out occupations and blockades of nuclear power plant sites. I've come to believe that t¡l¡lN provided a valuable bridge between the established movement against nuclear ì,rÈìì-,õ '@* W weapons and the new activists opposing the spread of nuclear WIN: Durint your tenure, what issues/topics emerged as the most pressrng, and how did the magazine respond (or fail to respond) to them and to specific historical moments? Murray: For most of its original existence (1964-1983), MN was pretty non-ideological, Although it was affiliated with WRL for most of its existence, the main criterion that was loosely WIN 24 power reactors. Ruth: Overthe six years I edited the magazine, we wrote about \e þ " war toys, third world debt, apartheid in South Africa, the death penalty, lsrael/Palestine, disarmament, nuclear power, peace politics in Japan, the first Gulf War, military resisters, legacy of the war in Vietnam, racism, vegetarianism, gay rights, Sudan, 25 Wlt{ I GNACÉ PALEY (Lt1Ír', ."rlf$"i lfl*o" "" rr¡'ffrr'r -----"ååËJ' È {ì 11 { I recruitment. We highllghted intergenerational organizing. I was the young- est person on staff at the time, new to an organization whose members held so much movement history and knowledge. I was ìli constantly learning from older membership, and also felt empowered to offer up my own ideas and insights. I hoped and tried to cover that crucial intergenerational conversation in the magazine. The first issue of the re-born MN featured a roundtable on intergenerational movement building, complete with the wisdom of the inimitable WRL legend, Ralph DiGia. Calvrn: Spring 2011, othenruise known as Arab Spring, saw the eruption of the biggest, most inspiring nonviolent revolutionary movement a young generation had ever seen. There was n0 expanded reviews section that made up the second half of the issue, which we called "Occupy Readingl' Comparing the Arab Spring and Occupy issues, we had it easier with the second one, both because of the timeline and because of our proximity to the source. A lot of the action had taken place months before, and we were able t0 comfortably reflect on and analyze the impact of the initial encampment on¡ the ongoing movement. Much of the content of the Arab Spring the U.S. labor movement from the president of the lraqi Federation were stepping up t0 our responsibilities while learning our limita- of Oil Unions, with whom WRL national oçnizers were building connections. Sadly, because of our tight production timeline and the limitations of our publishing software, the Arabic version 0f the letter (we had printed the original Arabic and its English translation in two adjacent columns) became garbled and was ultimately tions-as long as of the Wisconsin State Capitol building following Governor Scott illegible. No one caught it until after it was printed, One year later, we covered Occupy Wall Street, the encampment that had ta ken place the previous fa ll in Man hatta n's Zuccotti Park-less than two miles down Broadway from WR[s national of- fice-and the subsequent national movement. The contributing writers were also close to home, organizationally if not geographi- cally: National Committee member lsabell Moore shared her open letter, "Why I Occu pyj' M att Meyer of th e Ad m i n istrative Coord i nati n g Committee wrote about his Brooklyn-based anti-racism group's WIN 26 Ruth: While I edited the magazine, I was also a full-time staff member and part of all the organization's decision-making meetings, Therefore, it's impossible to separate challenges to Andy: I was hired to edit the A/VA following staffing problems in the national office. I worked primarily from my solar powered, wood-heated home in an intentional community in rural upstate the magazine from organizational challenges, which have been New York, traveling to the office for several days each month. That was a challenge in some respects, but working within it, I built a base for the magazine in my community, with a group of many-money, political disagreements, debates over tactics, personnel changes, the deaths of too many wonderful people (quite a few much too young), and the powerful web of institutions and structures that we're up against. Since I touched on editorial responsçs in the previous question, I admit that what first came to mind rlvere the technological challenges. At the time I took over the NVÁ, the WRL office had one computer for the database. The magazine was sent to a typesetter and the galleys were pasted-up on "boards" and sent ple that are most important. Looking at the magazines there are s0 many names of others who continue as friends and colleagues in the struggle for peace and justice.The magazine was issue relied 0n connections through field organizerAli lssa, while the Occupy issue drew from among familiar WRL voices and ad- Walkers attacks on labor uni0ns, Medicaid, public education, and transportation, Tying the two together was a letter of solidarity to majority of it to the uprisings happening in North Africa and the Middle East. "Rising Up" also covered the union-led occupation something members could pafticipate in with their reports and writing, and one 0f the tools for maintaining and building the to the printer. I don't miss the struggles as we shifted everything t0 computer (the damned thing crashed ten times a day), but in the process I became lifelong friends with Rick Bickhart, the terrific graphic artist and designer who has volunteered his skillsand high-quality work-as layout artist, designer, and desktop publisher to WRL for decades. Whatever the challenges, when you look back it is the peo- participation in 0ccupy Wall Street, and then-development intern lsham Christie contributed a piece informed by his international solidarity work connecting U.S. Occupy with global resistance groups. Providing context and a broader conversation was an jacent organizations. With "Rising Upj'we were taking risks necessary to show up as allies to an international struggle against U.S.-supported imperialism, and we may have been in slightly over our heads, as shown by the botched printing of the letter in Arabic. But even highly visible, embarrassing mistakes like that one can be chalked up t0 growing pains, evidence that we way we were putting out that quarter's issue without devoting the passion for the magazine's mission led us to ssmetimes work second jobs when MN couldn't bring in enough money for payroll. ln the end, it was not a sustainable situation. temporary fix to a constant lack of consistent funding. When [¡VlN was founded, it was relatively inexpensive to maintain production. People could also live on relatively small incomes. 0ur Francesca: The biggest challenge was the major rebranding the magazine undenruent halfway through my time as editor. We wanted to revamp the look and feel of the NonviolentActivistadd more images, color, better paper-and change the name to be something more appealing and accessible. Whether or not we succeeded is another question. The internet isn't the only reason print is dying. lt's expensive to produce a magazinel We brought the magazine closer to the 21st century, but not all the way into it. lt was a time that I think exposed a fundamental question about the project: Was it more of a WRL newsletter for members, or was it meant for the general antiwar public, both active and not? To fully do the latter I think þra ltlUþ Hcg HomWar ',,i,., Effective soc¡al change requires pass¡onate individuals and organazations w¡th a long-term commitment to strategic, nonviolent direct action. WRL ,liaÈ a rich history of organizing and educating to resist militarism and of aèt¡ng in fearless sol¡darity as we work to eliminate the root causes of war. WIN: What challenges did the magazine(s) face, and how did Murray: LVlNb greatest challenge, which eventually led to its demise, was its inability to survive financially, Like so many institutions of that period, it was almost founded on a whim and relied on a devoted group of people who were willing to be self-exploited to keep publishing. Although we tr¡ed many different forms of fundraising and marketing to sell subscriptions and advertising, none of our efforts ever provided more than a longtime activists meeting to proofread each issue and share ideas for future content. I found this to be very helpful in providing a broader vision for the magazine, which I often perceived to have a very NewYork City-centric approach. Sustaln Reslstanee we stayed accountable for our mistakes. it/they respond (or, again, fail to respond) to them? beloved community. ï r :r ''f 'Whether you become a WRL monthly susta¡ner or deepen your commitment by temembering us ¡n your planned giving, your generos¡ty helps sustain and grow vibrant antimilitar¡st movement for years to come. For more information on becoming a WRü,eusta¡not, v¡sit warres¡sters.otg/ dunateTñiri. To learn more about leaving a"bequest call our Development and ,¿ olVlembersh¡p Gootdinator at 2L2-228.-O+50. 27 WtN I I TWIN st required more resources and staff time. We kind of straddled the divide and that was a huge challenge. I think fundamentally a magazine is only as strong as the community of writers and readers that contribute to it and in some way feel ownership of it. And while we certainly brought new voices and writers into the WRL fold during my time, we weren't able to create a new crop of committed readers and COLOR Æ A SM O¡ take place instantly, but it is also easierto leave people out (yes, there are still some who avoid all this technology).0nline forums have the potential for wide input, but it's easy to jump from one place to another and never fully absorb anything. lt's easy to get y0ur message out, but not have a channel coming in that is shared, li ke the letters-to-the-ed itor section, ln this information-glutted world, maybe it's more import- OREÊN writers who felt that ownership. 0r maybe we didn't connect well ant to promote and provide opportunities for face-to-face COøR üE A YE TOV S@úRINÈ to the readership we already had. interactions: conferences, trai n ngs, d nners, protests, civi I d isobedience actions. Lifelong friends weç made in WRL training programs, workshops, jail cells, and even'during endless meetings, A new print publication may return to the organization's priorities in time. For now, I'll mourn a little the loss of a WRL print publication, but Joe Hill's voice is calling: 0rganize! i Calvin'. lt always weighed heavily 0n me that there was n0 money in the budget to pay contributors, either authors or artists. I believe strongly in paying people for their work, and writing and illustrating are work. The challenge for the Publications Committee, in seeking out authors, was always, "Who can we get?" Particularly with authors, we risk favoring two types who will often work for free: writers or organizers who will put in the time and effort in order to get broader recognition for their own work or their organization and therefore are not providing an objective, nuanced analysis or perspective; or well established PÊACI & ruEDOM IHROUG+I Ronru¡Rnacen Andy: I haven't been active with WRL or Lhe NVA/WIN for the past 15 years and wasn't part of the decision to cease publication, so can't comment on the factors that led to it, or the wisdom of the choice. ln my organizing work, which has continued throughout that time, I continue to believe that we need to utilize all the mechanisms available to communicate with our constituency, to recruit new activists, and to speak to the general public, Social media and the instantaneous communications available now can keep our message and work before people on a daily or even hourly basis. However, those media offer little opportunity for the more in-depth analysis and discussions that are so important for building powerful social movements. I believe writers or experts who will do it out of fondness for or allegiance to WRL or WIN but are not offering a fresh take on a subject or exploring a topic more deeply than they have previously. The challenge as editor was to work closely with them, asking questions that would elicit unique, thoughtful pieces while respecting r*i 't' the fact that they were donating their time. WIN: Finally, given the profound s[Ífts in the role communications vs. the internet and its wide ran$e of print of com- munication media (e.$., orSanization websites, blo(s,'net magazines and journals, social networks, etc.), what do you see as the optimum mode(s) of communication between and among, WRL and Íts present, future, and potential membership/constituents? How do you think WRL can contínue to share new, outsÍde visions and ideas with members and supporters, and how can we continue to draw visionaries and activists to our work and keep buildin$ those relationships? I guess l'm still old fashioned. I believe that good organizing and direct actions are still the best way to build our movement. 0f course, effective communication and publicity play an important part.There seem to be an increasing number of venues to get our message out and I don't know that I'm Murray: qualified to evaluate which ones-blogs,Twitter, other social networks, email, web sites, and yes, even printed matter-work the best. I suspect it's a balance, lt does seem to me that all this new communication technology has made the dissemination of nformation more decentralized and democratic, The final challenge (well, that may be a little dramatic-a big challenge) is instilling a long-term vision to a new generation of activists who are growing up in an environment where everything i WIN 28 i still has a significant older membership, many of whom find !/l! l, '.1 ì4,'i,,. P::,1 I.r.,r!,r!t.: ( 11, ., ¡ a:liri,r..' r, :r seems to happen faster. We know that our vision of a nonviolent world is still a long term project. But it's one that will be made up of thousands of small steps, With commitment, hard work, and more than a little luck, we will find the right combination of communication to show people that each of these steps is taking us a little further along the right path. a strong and clear message can galvanize a nation and the world, and push this revolution of values to its brink. Calvin: ïhe most compelling argument for keeping MN in print as long as we did, despite budget concerns and subscription tracking complications, was getting the content into prisons and other places without internet access. Othenrise, it's easy to point to online resources that cover the same topics, or even to WR[s own website and blog, as filling the gap left by a print magazine. So it is imperative we not foçt about members, resisters, and other revolutionaries on the inside and that we continue to nufture those connections and lift up those voices, Consider supporting (or starting!) a local chapter of Books to Prisoners (bookstoprisoners.net) or Black and Pink (blackandpink.org), which supports queer and trans prisoners by connecting them with pen pals on the outside and publishes a newsletter featuring queer and trans prisoners. Francesca: I think the WRL has and will always draw visionaries and activists with or without MN, based on its history and than insisting that these young, capable organizers cater t0 their elders' existing skillset. lf you know hoq consider teaching a baby boomer to tweet! these are primary sources of information. 1..'l,i roes and sheroes of nonviolent resistance. As we've seen with #BlacklivesMatter, #YaMeCanse (Mexico), and other movements partly born from online action, we shouldn't underestimate how Years ago WRL d¡d more to directly engage people through speaking tours and national organizers' meetings with activists and organizations around the country. Despite the opportunities afforded by digital technology, face-toJace organizing remains critical, and I'd like to see that prioritized in the coming years at the same time that new media help us connect with people around the country and the globe. are to remain relevant, we need to reach young people for whom I rC ¡rri.l the action itself, This messaging should be part and parcel of WRlls organizing work, and lift up the past and present he- ln addition, we need to work to ensure net neutrality and greater access to technology. I had the good fortune recently to attend a panel discussion by #BlacklivesMatter organizers from Western Massachusetts alongside an audience of mostly middle-aged white folks. Others in attendance were asking how they could know when they were being called to support the actions of the young organizers, who communicate with their networks exclusively via Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and text messages, Some of us 3o-somethings began to see a potential role for ourselves as educators, bridging the gap between the tech-immersed millennials and our parents' generation, rat[er WRL Twitter, Facebook, and lnstagram to be completely foreign. lf we f' ::.:', lnstagram, and other NSA-approved communication go a long way to growing and keeping WRL and antimilitarist politics alive. More than a magazine, a solid movement media strategy I believe is so key for the organization. Just as in any successful nonviolent direct action, getting the coverage is nearly half current work. But one of the most amazing things for me during Ruth: ln July 1993, John M. Miller (this issue's desktop publisher) wrote an article about a new thing called Peacenet that WRL had joined. He printed our first email address and explained a bit about the internet and the wonders of instant connection to a worldwide network of activists. A magazine that came out monthly at most (during my years there were ei$ht then six issues per year) could not offer much of a discussion platform, With that first email address the discussions began to my time was stumbling on the archived volumes of the first MN, beautifully illustrated movement relics from the '70s and '80s, Those volumes, the Nonvlo/ent Activist, and the new W/V should certainly be archived online in a way that can be readily searchable. Having a regular online presence on social media is indispensable for building and sustaining the message and membership of the WRL Facebook, Facebook groups, Twitter, Tumblr, Francesca:0ne final comment: What an honor it is to have worked on LVIN! What an honor to inherit the magazine's editorship from the fierce and skilled Judith Mahoney Pasternak, who was a superb coach and mentor, despite leaving me the biggest pile of papers I'll ever see in my life. What an honor to work with the members of the Editorial Committee like John M. Milleç and to be given the reins and the opportunity to re-envision the magazine.Thank you all.lt's was a great run.Onwardl O 29 W¡N I THE flE MAGÂZINE oFnE wÄR BEsrsERs l'aGUE My Favorite lssue: The Essence of NonviolenceThe lnaugural Editorial, Vol. 1, N0. 1, Dec. 1984 Action j'signed by the Publications Committee. lf memory serves me well, the article was loosely By David Croteau n 1984, WRL hired me to be the founding editor of lhe lNonviolentActlvist. ln retrospect, the inaugural issue that I appeared in December was a reflection of the state of WRL at the time-and its publication was an important moment in my own life. "Founding edito/'sounds much more significant than it actually was. ln reality, I took the part-time job as a working-class kid fresh out of college. I had helped start an alternative .ìi David Croteau is a sociologist who teaches and writes about the media, social movements, and class inequality. His books include Politics and the Class Divide (Temple University Press, 7994) and Media/Society (with William Hoynes, Sa$e Publications, 2014). He is one of the editors of Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Movement Scholarship (University of MÌnnesota Press, 2005). His current work experiments with innovative uses of di$ital technoloSy in teachin! and learning. M student publication, been politically active during the Reaganera military build-up, and had a work-study job with ISTNA (lnternational Seminars on Training for Nonviolent Action), which had received financial support from the A.J. Muste Memorial lnstitute. I knew the mechanics of putting together a publication, was familiar with and supportive of WRI-s approach to nonviolent action, but had no significant track record Re-reading it now, years later, it strikes me as a piece written by committee. The first third of the M. Miller, Susan Pines, Murray Rosenblith, and Wendy Schwartz. Those names are all familiar ones to anyone who followed the t evolution of WRL in the ensuing years. ln working with them afticle is devoted to acknowledging broad i nfl uences (a na rch ism, socialism, western beralism, and a general utopianism) and noting the importance of the feminist critique of patriarchy and the role of environmentalism.That's a lot of terrain to traverse in a few hundred words and it threatens to be a laundry list. (Yet, notably, the all-white committee makes no mention of anti-racism work in this part of the piece.) The article's strongest part, by far, is its middle third, where and the otherWRL staff, I received a crash course in WRL and movement history. lt was an educational experience I value to two connected themes are developed. First, the idea that "the link between means and ends has served as the thread this connecting all nonviolence thinking" is introduced. This analysis condemns the tragedies of totalitarianism, where means inconsistent with stated ends paved the road to slave camps and mass executions. lt also condemns a variety of American efforts where, despite sometimes good intentions, the arrogant use of violence undermined the ability to achieve wofthwhile goals, declaring, "The United States has all too often brought destruction to others through our inability to limit ourselves." This segues to the related theme of acknowledging limits, Here, there is a pervasive sense of humility that remains appealing, as in, "Those of us working on this magazine have barely enough wisdom to run our own lives. Often not enoughl' Such statements were not just personal acknowledgments; they were building blocks of a political analysis, ïhe editorial illustrates this with, "We cannot possibly profess to know what is the 'correct' line of action for people living in El Salvadot in Nicaragua, in Poland, in South Africa, in Afghanistan, or in other situationsi'And finally, "We are imperfect in a world that is imperfect. We cannot claim to know truth. Yet, this lack of absolute knowledge must not prevent us from acting on our beliefs. We use nonviolence both because of our commitment in either. I started atWRL with the able guidance and support of a Publications Committee made up of Rick Bickhart (our graphic designer), Ed Hedemann, David McReynolds, Matt Meyer, John day, The most significant afticle ¡n that first issue of the NVA was a two-page editorial statement called "Our Roots of f{ffi l{ffi EN AGAINST WAR Cìlolral Moventcrlt Agaillst War faking ll to lhe 3lreelc WIN 30 drafted by David McReynolds, and my job was to revise it, incorporating the many comments and suggested changes from other committee members. i,'j, I i to action and because of our recognition of our limitsl' To me, that remains the essence of a nonviolence philosophy. ln an age where the hubris of drone assassinations and the fanaticism of religious violence dominate the headlines, emphasizing the importance of a little humility seems more vital than ever. The final third of the article sadly foreshadows some of the problems that would prompt me to leave the NVÁ just a few years later.The editorial statement is forced to acknowledge that "we have many divisions within our own ranksl' lt seems comfortable with marginality, not only in society but even within already marginal movements by noting, "We are the left, yet we are a problem for the leftl' Even the first letter published in the IVVA was from readers who were "dismayed, discomfited, and amazed" by earlier WRI News articles implicitly supporting voting for a Democratic presidential candidate. Such a focus on somewhat esoteric debates-while the world outside went on without noticing-became disillusioning for my younger self. More important, I think it was part of why I doubt the NV,A had a significant impact while I was there, either within WRL or, ceftainly, the broader progressive community. lt was largely an inward-looking publication that rarely reached out beyond a small choir. But even choirs must be sustained and I hope that some readers of the Nt/A learned from it and felt suppofted by its message. My own siren called me back to mofe mainstream work. I felt more useful promoting a basic message about social change and the potential power of nonviolence to more diverse audiences. However, the lessons I learned in working on the Nt/Á-the lessons articulated in the best parts of the inaugural issue's editorial statement-stayed with me. I hope am not alone. Today, unlike in the era of paper periodicals, digital platforms dangle the possibility of WRL having unprecedented I reach, looking outward to engage with a broader audience about the relevance of nonviolence. While doing so effectively will require creativity and experimentation, it is an opportunity I hope the next generation of WRLers takes up enthusiastically, O 3l WIN I ,¡ ,n lHE MÄG¡AZTE OFilEWAF REITEN3 |åGUE My Favorite lssue: Looking at the Middle East, Jan.-Feb. 1gg4 Except for the most faithful and ByVirginia Baron ow can I choose one issue to call a favorite? Easy. Select one on a subject that continues to obsess me the West Bank and Gaza. israelis succeeded in getting rid of responsibility for the welfare of Palestinians living in what were It happens that I still have a copy of the January-February then referred to as the Occupied Territories.That responsibility fell to the new "Palestinian lnterim Self-Government Authorityj' with no mention of where the resources were to come from. lt should be noted that all these issues remain unresolved, The reactions I found disappointed some 0n the WRL staff. It turned out that the accords were not a big hit, at least in activ¡st and intellectual ranks. As usual, some Palestinians chose to be hopeful. Merchants updated their stores, restau- H 1994 NonviolentActivist (edited by Sharon Seidenstein and designed by Rick Bickhart) stuck in an old folder 0n the bottom shelf of my bookcase. The cover theme, screaming in red-violet letters over a dramatic line-drawing of a handshake by Dorit Learned, is "Middle East Peace: A Perilous Processi'What could be more relevant? (Disclosure: Because I had spent so much time in lsrael and Palestine, including several trips and a prolonged sabbatical stay during the 1989 lntifada, the NVA asked me to find if the Oslo Agreement were celebrated as a breakthrough in the region, My own article is thus among those I am reviewing.) At the time, the theme was inspired by what appeared to be a significant blip in the on-again-off-again 60-plus-year lsrael/Palestine peace process, Middle East junkies were cele- brating the Oslo Accords.The handshake between lsraeli Prime M i n ister Yitzha k Ra bin and Palesti n ia n Li beration Organ ization chief YasirArafat had taken place in September 1993 on the White House lawn, hosted by President Bill Clinton in spite of the fact that Amer¡cans had had no involvement in the deliberations. (Former President Jimmy Carter in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid noted that Johan Jøçn Holst and Terje Rød-Larsen, the Nonrvegians who had originated the secret talks, were stuck in the back rows, unacknowledged at the ceremony.) ln the public hoopla about the agreement, it was widely overlooked that critical stumbling blocks were put off for further negotiations. The NVA didn't overlook them, however. My article Iisted them as "Jerusalem, refLlgees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors and other issues of common interestl'There was no specific timetable for the withdrawal of lsraeli troops from Virginia Baron is a former editor of Fellowship ma{azine and has served as president of the International Fellowship of Reconcilìation. She has devoted her attention to the M¡ddle East for many years and has focused particularly on the practice of nonviolence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. She is currently on the board of Palestine/lsrael Report ma{azine. wrN 32 rants were enlarged, and the optimists waited for the tourists to flood back in. But activists on both sides knew that nothing of real consequence had been achieved even though Rabin seemed to have experienced a transformation. He had shed his "break their bones" lntifada personality and seemed to have a new awareness ofthe urgent need for a resolution to the ' endless conflict. But the accords had not achieved anything substance, and even though Rabin was on a constructive path, no breakthrough had occuned. Alas, even this hopeful era was to be cut short by Rabin's assassination in November 1995. ln my article, lsraeli feminist-activist-scholar Simona Sharoni noted that there was no mention in the Oslo Accords that Palestinian statehood was a goal, and that it was significant that those who had long experience working on peace issues had been cut out of the process. She urged the U.S, peace movement not to get excited by handshakes, but to stay engaged and to continue to lobby congress aga¡nst the military of budget, FORECASTING THE FUTURE Rabab Abdul Hadi, a member of the National Board of Palestinian Women's Associations in North America, expressed surprise at how much had been extracted from the PLO in the agreement. She bemoaned the lack of improvements for the lives of impoverished Palestinians. She, too, urged, "You must address the question of military aidl' The semi-gloom of the article and the satirical cover turned out to be a forecast ofthe future. And noq after 20 years of U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace initiatives, what has changed? What have we learned? stalwart members of the left in lsrael, there is nextto no enthusiasm for the two-state solution that has been the goal since 1948. IEdito/s note: ïhis article was written before the March election that won Benjamin Netanyahu a fourth term as lsrael's Prime Minister, apparently on the strengh of his "no Palestinian statehood" pledge, leaving "next to no enthusiasm" an apparent understatement,l All Palestinians want is a better economy, however it may be brought about, and reconstruction and rescue for the people of Gaza. Things have deteriorated so far that the greatest fear for lsraelis is that international pressure will finally force lsrael into serious negotiations, or the cost will be isolation and sanctions. All is not lost. Here in the United States, the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement has taken hold. A new generation has taken up the cause, and the words "boycott, divestment, and sanctions" are familiar on college campuses. Every week there are more divestment votes, or news of colleges and universities that are forbidding votes and being met with student uprisings. Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish groups have shaken the stalwart pro-lsrael camp. Peace and justice organizations have joined the BDS movement. National church denominations have voted in favor of divestment. Even Ifie NewYork llmes, through the voice of op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, dared to condemn the occupation. lts finally happening after all these years, and we can gladly claim all those voices that spoke out through WIN and the NVA to raise unpopular but necessary issues. lt's impossible to shut us up. lt's that old truth to power story. We'll keep talking, one way or another. ïhe rest of the issue proved to be impressive and instructive. ln an article on "The Economic Dimension of Nonviolence: ls Rich Pacifist an Oxymoron? j' Charles Gray told us how he lived on his "equal share of a sustainable world incomei' ln the Reviews section at the back, Simon Meyer favorably reviewed @;.¡- ,g'-Þ.- I could have forgotten this valuable source of information ln the "Hidden Wars" series, professional ca rtogra pher Zolta n Grossman wrote an extensive explanation of the "War in the Caucasus," including a map for clear reference and a chart ofthe autonomous republics, including their major ethnic groups, history, dates, etc.The 22 republics ofthe Caucasus have been fought over for centuries by three major powers: the Russians, the Ottomans (Turks), and the Persians (lranians). As Grossman explained, "The [ies] along the 'fault line'between Christianity and both the Sunni and Shiite branches of lslamJ' Maybe we understand the significance of this better these days. Three main sect¡ons covered the history of Georgia, Armenia, Caucasus region and Azerbaijan, but the complications of ethnic group struggles, Russian and Turkish takeovers, NATO, and threats of U,S. bombing are mind-boggling. There s even a list of peace and human-rights groups that were working ¡n the region in 1994. lt's all about the 0ngoing and eternal question of self-determination. There are also ads for a trip to Cuba (for $1100) and job openings. A news story describes the release of "shadow painters" Susan Crane and Maxine Ventura after being jailed for painting human forms in the lobby of Lawrence Livermore National Lab in protest against Livermore's legacy of toxic and radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons design and production. Other news items tell of Selective Service being funded, civil disobedience arrests, war tax resistance, a conference on nuclear war, a people's fast for justice, a con- . scient¡ous objector imprisoned in Croatia, the Balkan Peace Team, and a peace museum in Samarkand.There are photos of WRL staff member (and WWll C0) Ralph DiGia and WRL West staff member Mandy Carter, taken by WRL staff member David McReynolds. There's an obit for Freedom Rider Jim peck Gray's book, Toward A Nonviolent Economics, concluding that by historian Bob Cooney, the Organizing Network, and the NVAs 1993 lndex, with Good Reading ads on the back cover. we read these books but"¡n large measure we seem to be unwilling to reduce our own lifestyles to achieve the kind of equity I love this 2O-year-old issue. lt stood up to many readings for this summary. Now who will write the nonviolent history of Gray hopes fori'Charles Gray represented the ultimate model. ourtimes from all these published treasures? 0 I read the next article at least four times. I wondered how 33WIt{ ,.+, ffE M^OÂ;{XE OF fHE WÁF ñEtrsrßS LEÄCUÉ ra within their articles. Charlie and I both had to do that in this issue. ln his article, Charlie wrote about "re-evaluating longheld pacifist beliefs" in the face of EastTimorese requests for My Favorite lssue: Solidarity and Self Reflection, Nov.-Dec. 1999 By John M. then weekly magazine as it chronicled the ContinentalWalk for Disarmament and Social Justice and the beginnings of nonviolent direct action against nuclear power. I soon had my own subscription and a WRL membership card (yes, we used to issue them). And not content to read on the sidelines, I become active in the local Potomac Alliance opposing nuclear power. ln early 1981, I moved to Brooklyn to join the MN staff for its lastthree years,Two of us oversaw its final issue, as MN went out fighting (so wrote the Natlona/ Guardian) wilh an October 1983 final issue focused on the global struggle against nuclear weapons. I helped plot the launch of the Nonviolent Activlst and later its transition back to MN, serving over the years as a member of its Publications Committee, Among my first introductions to EastTimor were articles in the April 1, 1980, and September 1, 1981, issues of MN. I became active on the issue a decade later, after a November 1991 massacre at a cemetery in Dili inspired me to help found the EastTimor Actton Network (EIAN) with, among others, Charles Scheiner (a former WRL Executive Committee member), who is also featured in the NVA issue.The U.N.-organized vote was made possible by decades of EastTimorese resistance to lndonesian rule, the fall of lndonesian dictator Suharto, and changes in U.S. and other government policies brought on by grassroots campaigns like EIAN's. The issue contains five pages on the referendum, including background on the issues (one underlying theme throughout WIN/NVA/WIN is that action should be informed by informa- tion and analysis). Charlie wrote about the organizing and implementation of the lnternational Federation for EastTimo/s 0bserver Project, the i nternational non-governmenta I observer mission that EIAN initiated. lFE[-0P recruited 125 activists from the global EastTimor solidarity movement to observe the doing layout for too many issues to count, rewriting many a headline, and working once or twice as temporary editor. When I first joined MN, among the tasks I was responsible for was editing the regular columns (including "Serve the Peoplej'on food and cooking, where I learned what a/ dente meant by asking the other staff) and the "Changes" section, a round-up of short news items. "Changes" became'Activist News" when the NVA launched, Over the years, I've proposed and written (and re-written) many of these short news items, but have not submitted many feature articles. (My first was a report in the Nov. 15, 1979 issue of WIN on a blockade of the headquarters of the Department of Energy; a version also appeared in WRL News,) With so many issues of WIN/NVA/MN to choose from, I'll focus written in the heat of the vote's aftermath, as EastTimo/s towns were still burning, as most EastTimorese were hiding in the hills or being forced over the border into lndonesia, and as journalists and the U.N. and peacekeeping troops were only on the November-December 1999 issue of the Nonvio/ent or the peace movements were debated. MN and the NyA ActÌvistthat published my account of EastTimo/s historic and bloody vote for independence. By then, I had been working toward that vote for nearly eight years. often featured two or more writers arguing their take on issues, including the right to die; property destruction; the perennial John M. Miller is a lon!-time member of the WRL National Committee and National Coordinator of the EastTimor and I ndonesia Action Network. t'VlN 34 I imperfect in a world that is imperfect. We cannot claim to know truth, Yet, this lack of absolute knowledge must not prevent us from acting on our beliefsl'And solidarity, if it means anything at all, means listening carefully to those whose rights you are to feature a lobbying campaign as a sit-in. The issue also includes stories related to WRIs then program priorities, as well as other reports of interest to those seeking to change the world for the better. We are introduced or reminded of interesting people, and not only in the obits, There is also a short report about Dennis Lipton, an Air Force doctor threatened with court martial after he became a pacifist. For me, one of the most important functions of WIN/ act¡ng to defend. NVA/WIN was as a forum where we could express the varied armed peacekeepers to help oversee the vote. I wrote, "lt will take both an arms cutoff lof lndonesia by the United States and othersl and the introduction of multinational force to end lndonesia's ravaging of the country. ... While an earlier cutoff might have forced lndonesia to stop the violence before it began j' it was at that point too late. "Optionb become limited j' Miller I started readins WN in 1976. A roommate subscribed while I I *u, living in ilashington, DC, and I was captivated by the Nyerere of Tanzania and Walter Bergman, a Freedom Rider who attempted t0 desegregate transportation in the South in 1961. He was paralyzed after a beating by KKK members, but liùed to 100. ln many ways, this was a typical issue of the NVA, which had become bi-monthly by then. There is a strong action focus. The issue is full of stories about people taking action and urging readers to do likewise. And these actions are not only those of direct action or pickets. The periodicals were almost as likely vote and-we hoped-to prevent violence. My more personal account ("Eyewitness, EastTimo/') was continued, "as violence escalates and genocide is threatenedl' As we had said in the NVA's inaugural editorial, "We cannot possibly profess to know what is the'conect' line of action for people living in El Salvador ... or in other situations. ... We are one focuses on a visit by congressional staffers to lraq, the first interests of WRL members and friends beyond our national program, in this case an issue that had occupied my attention since the 1990-1991 Gulf War. A report on WRls A Day Without throughout the decade and beyond. Elsewhere in the issue is another eyewitness account,This the Pentagon 1999 focused on military recruiters rounds out the features. A holiday centerfold of WRL resources for sale reminds readers that the NV,4 also needed to serve WRls promotional needs, Activist News contains reports of David McReynolds' bid for presidency under the Socialist Party's banner and an action blocking a missile systems factory in Massachusetts by a new WRL local. The magazine lists three new locals (alas, none is still active).There are also obits for 'African freedom fighter, socialist and peacemake/' Julius Regular readers of WIN will know that EastTimor is now the independent Democratic Republic of ïimor-Leste and that EIAN has become the EastTimor and lndonesia Action Network.Yes, I confess I picked this issue of the NVA to take one last chance to talk about the issue I have worked on for nearly two dozen years. Not quite as long I as I have involved in WIN/NVA/WIN. LVIN readers will have to get the¡r updates on Timor-Leste's progress elsewhere, You can start with the EIAN website etan. org. (And that's my last plug, at least within these pages.) O begin to filter in. SUBJECT TO DEBATE MN and the NVA have always been open forums where issues and controversies within the left, the nonviolence, and/ quadrennial discussion of whether or not to vote; and, most controversially in 1980, on abortion rights,The discussion would then carry over to the readers, The surest way to generate letters to the editors was to mention choice (from 1980 on WIN/NVA was firmly pro-choice) or meat eating. Occasionally, writers would wrestle with their principles Destruction in Dili. Cover photo by John M.Miller from November-December 1999 NVA 35Wl¡¡ I .7. ffE MAG¿INEOFffEWAH RBISIBS |åGUE VOLUHE THE IS.NUM8ER{SI HAGAZINE I{KNC I.MME St¡ll Relevant: What Makes an Action Nonviolent? My Favorite lssue: July-Aug. 2001 SO !0Ä?6 ONìW OF lHE WAR RESISTERS VCQUSBOHSM VEIWWIs MU rurULNrK4tÊD rOSf@ A@N9twS LEAGUE WrutrKË WHAT MAKES Ah¡ ACilON NONVlOLEf,lm By Joanne Sheehan The July-August 200t Nonvio|entActivist asked "What makes an action nonviolent?"The question had acquired urgency among peace and justice activists in the wake of the November 1999 massive protests in Seattle aga¡nst the World Trade 0rganization. I picked this issue to review because l1 wished that discussion had gone on longer and gotten deepeç and because we are once again in a time of protest with a considerable urgency. This time, in the wake of the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten lsland, NewYork, "Black Lives Matter" has become the rallying cry of a Black-led grassroots movement.This time the discussion is not about property destruction, as it was 14 years ago, after Seattle, but about the appropriate and effective response to violence committed by official or quasi-official forces. And if the question is still, "What makes an action nonviolent?" we need to explore what we mean by that in this c0ntext, How does WRL, which holds that change happens through the implementation of revolutionary nonviolence, and that those most affected need to be at the center of change efforts, engage in I 'l:- this movement? Let me begin with the definition that nonviolent action is an empowering way of engaging in conflict, an active form of resistance to systems of violence and oppression that is committed to not destroying other people. We need to explore how that is different from actions that are "not violentl'What is the difference between nonviolent direct action and other direct action in terms of strategy and tactics? We also need to be conscious of the historic context.ln the 1950s and early'60s, the single largest group of people staffperson, encourages people to see War Reslsters' lnternational3 Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns for more on pragmatic dimensions of nonviolent action, cam- paifn development, organizing effective actions and training exerclses . w ri -i rg. o rg/ p u b s/ N o nvi o e nce H a n d b o o k I an d ha nd b o o k- wa r resi ste rs. o WIN 36 no nvi ol r!/ e nt- sto re/ h a n d b ook- o rga n i zi n {- lu ca mpaisns-secon d - ed iti o n. id e/ property destruction. practicing nonviolent direct action were Black people protesting Southern segregation with their bodies. By the time of the 1980s actions aga¡nst nuclear power and weapons, and by the time of Seattle, that was history, Most nonviolent civil resisters, including the vast majority 0f the Seattle protesters, were white. ln the past few years, that has been changing again, as immigration rights activists and low-wage workers, many of them people of color, have been engaging in sit-ins and walk-outs, And since Ferguson, as the shift in the demographics of protests has become swifter, so, necessarily, have the dynamics of protest and the stakes involved. This article is therefore an attempt to look both at how the Nl/A examined the question of nonviolent action after Seattle, especially in its July-August 2001 issue, and how we might examine that question now, in 2015. There were discussions on nonviolence and property destruction during the Seattle protests, and in the NVA immediately aftenvard, in the January-February 2000 issue. The headline on the cover was, "Nonviolence at the turn of the century, Showdown in Seattlei' lnside, an editorial said, "0n the opening day of the WTO meeting, tens of thousands of environmental, labor, human r¡ghts, and religious activists joyously and nonviolently blockaded the meeting site, while some 40,000 Joanne Sheehan, nonviolence trainer and WRL New En{land acts toward living beings," he wrote. "The anarchist black bloc that engaged in property destruction only targeted the property of multinational corporations and made sure not to harm individualsl' The discussion continued in many circles, including the NVA, ln the MayJune 2001 issue, in "Microcosm of a Ch a n gi ng Movementj' student-activist Lel ia Spea rs wrote about the National Conference on 0rganized Resistance, 'iln the movement, as well as at the confereqce, there is now a move towards acceptance of nonviolence'as a tactic among other tactics. Although many see this as a positive move, people new to the movement may be not getting a background in nonviolence, which most agree is useful at least as a tool, a tactic and a strategyi'That article provoked more letters challenging the acceptance of a "diversity of tactics" that includes labor union members attended a city-licensed anti-MO march and rally; during the same day, a small band of protestU,S. ers who rejected nonviolence rampaged through the street near the meting site, breaking windows and damaging propertyl' ln the next issue after "Showdown in Seattle," a member of one of WR[s YouthPeace groups objected to the suggestion that property destruction was a rejection of THE 2OO1 NONVIOLENCE SPECTRUM It was in that context the July-August 2001 NVA asked nine activists (including me) to respond to the question "What makes an action nonviolent?" And as I reflect 0n the nine responses, I see the respondents standing all over the place on the cross-spectrums of what is nonviolence and violence and what is effective and not effective, another issue raised by several of them. (We use cross-spectrums in a nonviolence training exercise-participants place themselves on a grid formed by two perpendicular axes representing polar opposites, in this case, nonviolence/violence and effective/ not effective. For more on the exercise, see wri-irg.orglnode/23374.) Activist-poet-priest Dan Berrigan wrote that the main discussions in planning both the draft board raids of the '70s I R I rR,i , fi'! N Ii III Et) T tilr I I ä,i þ-l I. i\4s A Noirvor¡xcu,u TU-rÌ_Tu¡l and Plowshares symbolic disarmament actions consisted of spiritual preparation and the search for symbols. "So wanton thoughtlessness and mere destruction were out, from throwing trashcans to throwing bombsj' he wrote, but "[t]he use of homemade napalm on draft cards and the pouring of blood on nuclear warheads seemed to speak to peopleJ' "l would rather not focus on whether one form of propefty destruction or another is violentj'wrote Melissa Jameson, then the director of the WRL National 0ffice, "but on why we do what we do, and how we getthere from here, Since one ofthe tenets of nonviolence is at least the recognition of the humanity of one's opponent or oppressor, actions that do not allow that, for me, would not be a way I would choose t0 express myself. lf nonviolence means without injury, then nonviolent action would have to mean things that do not bring harm to another living beingJ' Anarchist Kadd Stephens wrote that this discussion of property destruction too often leads to the "the crusade for the rights of propertyi' as he sees it. "Nike's r¡ght to an immaculate storefront takes priority over the tens of thousands of workers exploited beyond the reaches of our imaginations within their factories. ... This is not to suggest that targeting property is a universally viable or even preferable target. ... [t] often serves to alienate sectors of the population critical to the success of any movementl' Mandy Carter, who was on the staff of WRL/West in the 1960s, wrote, "During a 'Stop the Draft Week' in Oakland, some protesters turned over cars, slashed tires and committed other acts of physical destruction, They never stayed around to be accountable for their actions. ... IBut] the folks doing nonviolent civil disobedience were accountable. ... I am very grateful that the first two groups I got involved in were the American Friends sEnE]QINl!lI $ilo\\lDowN E I E t nonviolence. "IN]onviolence means not engaging in harmful 37 WIN I Service Committee and the War Resisters League. Both are Collective have shut down public transpoftation. Black Lives me, pacif ist-based nationa l/ i nternationa I o rga n izations. They gave me the philosophical underpinning that has stayed with me for the past 32 years and countingJ' 4 Black Lives, and white allies shut down the Police Headquarters. Black Brunch teams go into Oakland restaurants crowded with primarily white customers reciting the names of Black people killed by police.Through these actions l0 n gti Lelia Spears ended her response by saying "l accept the destruction of property as a tool in an activist's toolbox, but because I personally do not consider it the most communicative tactic I feel it should be reserved for times when all other means of expression have been exhaustedl' ln her earlier article Spears had acknowledged that while any activists were embracing "diverse tacticsi' new activists were n0t getting the training in nonviolent action needed for what she agreed was a useful tool, tactic, and strategy. Unless we have those "other means" in our activist toolbox, we can't effectively use them.This discussion might have become deeper and more fruitful if it had been able to continue, but it was derailed after September 11 of that year. Plowshares activist Sachio Ko-Yin, who served more than two years in prison for hammering and pouring blood on a missile silo, asserted his "respect for the Black Bloc participants" and their "sincere in their desire to end the corporate globalization !" Yet he wrote of their acti0ns, "When several people "¡ destroy property in a frenzy (and my impression is that some Black Bloc actions have been frenzied) ... lwould call it rioting. ... But because it is so challenging to a property-conscious society, our emphasis on nonviolence and non-hatred has to be so much stronger, ... out of reflection rather than ragei' Yes-what about the rage, the anger about injustice? There is a distance between the activists and the injustice we were/ are protesting. This was not a discussion by people who felt a direct impact. Surprisingly, there was no mention 0f race, and lwas the only one who raised the need to look at gender issues, even though the writers were gender diverse. No one mentioned that people of color are already targets of the police and therefore may not want to engage in property destruction or civil disobedience that could subject them to more abuse by the police and courts. "f['t[g $FJEG'[-F{[J[vÍ f,h! 203-5 Fast forward to the present day. ln the wake of the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, a new movement has risen up, led by those most affected, those whose lives are threatened. African-Americans are organizing local groups around the country. Studies such as "Operation Ghetto Stormi' conducted by the l/alcolm X Grassroots Movement, which shows that a Black man, w0man or child is killed by police or vigilantes every 28 hours, expose the perpetual war on the Black population. As described in the last issue of the MN, Black activists and their allies have organized highway blockades and occupied shopping centers. Groups including the Blackout WIN 38 Matter, Asians they are speaking to both the police and the society, forcing them to confront the issue.They are doing what Martin Luther King, Jr. described as the goal of nonviolent direct action in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":They are "dramatiz[ing] the issue so that it can no longer be ignoredJ'Some identify their actions as "nonviolent"; others say only "direct actioni' None have promoted destruction of propefty. ln "Turn Up: 21st-Century Black Millennials Are Bringing DirectAction Backi'Malkia A. Cyril wrote in lhe Huffintton Post, "This amazing display of strategic coordination and tactical discipline represents a new era of social protest methodology that seeks cultural as well as political and economic changeJ' Cyril reminded us that, "The tradition of Black nonviolent direct action in the Americas isn't new. From enslaved Africans to Black labor activism, Black communities have long used tactics of nonviolent confrontation and non-cooperation to resist extreme repression, expand political imagination and point the way toward a long-term vision for changeJ' As #Black Lives Matter proclaims "This is Not a Moment, but a Movementl' Demands have been formulated, strateg¡es developed, trainings held. Creative actions are being organized. Allies are engaging in nonviolent actions around the country. For example, last December students at more than 70 medical schools around the country held die-ins to spotlight racial bias as a public health issue. 2. WRL Broken Rifle T-shirt $15* . WhiteJo!þ on royal-blùe. 3. Broken Rifle Baseball Cap $15* Pewter embro¡dery on black. Order online at warresisters.or#store r *Shipping not included I What should WRL be doing now? With our history of revolutionary nonviolence, resources on nonviolent actions and nonviolence tra¡nings, our international network of nonviolent activists, and campaigns such as Demilitarize Health & Security, WRL has an impoftant role to play. An organization consisting of primarily white members, we have developed resources on being good allies and are fostering a deeper understanding of gender and racial justice. lt is our obligation to keep offering our resources through a diverse groups of activists, organizers, and trainers to a diverse group of activists, organizers, and trainers. We should not judge those who, for many reasons, do not embrace the term "nonviolenti' But we should not shy away from the use of the word. We must continue our exploration of the power of nonviolent actions, campaigns and movements. We must engage in this movement for racialjustice. We are now witnessing empowering ways of engaging in conflict, resisting systems of violence and oppression, resisting the destruction of people without harming the perpetrators. That is what makes an action nonviolent and has the potential for revolutionary social change, fÌ fhe Gl t¡1 i lrü¡t¡¡¡ ttt sür I ,n Prison Abolition and Critical Resistance An lntenriew with linda Thurston ou have a lon(, history of working not just for political V I prisoners, but for the rights and freedom of prisoners in (eneral, as well as for prison abolition,What motivated you to fet involved in this work? Linda Thurston: ln the very beginning it was extremely personal. My first memory in my entire life is of police showing up at my front door and taking my father away when I was four. I remember being very upset that the grownups weren't acting the way grownups usually act. I was upset that these unidentified, unknown, laç, loud white men were taking Daddy away, But I had also been freaked out because Daddy had been hitting Mommy. I was in this situation where my parents were arguing and the police dealt with it by dragging Dad away. Everyone was rfç in pain, with screaming, yelling, and chaos. It was instinctively clear to me at this point that something was desperately wrong. This was not a solution to anyth¡ng. I think that every single time during my life, when I was working with prisoners, all these issues came up again, I would remember what it felt like and think about the children. lt wasn't at that moment that I committed myself to working with prisoners or even to being an activist. I didn't come from an activist family in the sense of people having a political analysis, although we did things in the community and with the local church. But it framed my thinking about imprisonment and police for the rest of my life. When I was in junior high school, I started doing work through LindaThurston rs the Coordinator of WRlls National)ffice, in which capacity sheb been the glue holding the office together-and keepint its computers and the website runnin!since 2007. But in the spare time that Herculean task allows her, she works, as she has done since her high-school years, aga,nst the prison-industrial complex and for the rifhts of all prisoners. Since the late'90s, sfie's done most of that work in the context of CriticalResistance, the grassroots píson abolition froup, and also with the lroups working in support of Pennsylvania prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.This interview is adapted from Lel Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U,S, Political Prisoners, edited by Matt Meyer (PM Press,2008). wtl{ 40 my church with what was,euphemistically called the Children's Center in Providence, Rhode lsland, lt was basically a maximum-security prison for kids, with such horrendous and repressive policies that it was later shut down. lt was very interesting to be the same age as those kids, from the same neighborhood as those kids, speaking the same language as those kids, and be acutely aware that there but for the powers that be go I. Even before I knew how badly the kids were treated and abused, the entire situation seemed wrong to me. The next significant moment in my political development regarding prisons was as a college student, running the Black theater group as a Harvard undergraduate.The group was called the Black Community and Student Theater, but given that this was Harvard, many folks had unfortunately forgotten the community piece of it! I remember sitting in a board meeting when a letter came in from one of the prisoner organizations asking if we would please come out and do a play for the prisoners. The entire group swung their heads in my direction, because I was already involved in some political activity on campus, They knew that ld be interested in doing it. We took a play out to the prison, and I remember being profoundly affected by that experience. I actually ended up working with the "prisoner self-help groups" at Walpole prison outside of Boston, helping with issues involving prisoner mistreatment, use of pepper spray, tear gas, and such. Coming of age in the late 1970s and 1980s, paying attention to these issues, it was hard not to notice that at one moment there were 300,000 prisoners in America, and a moment later there were 500,000 thousand. iust a few years later, there were a million prisoners in America and today there are two million people locked up in America. My lifetime has been the period of time when the United States has used prisons as its solution to everything. You've worked with a number of the key regional and national organizations in thís field. Would you share some of those experiences? LI: When I became the director of the New England Criminal Justice Program of the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee, one of the big issues was a tendency to lock up any prisoners who spoke out on any issues in solitary confinement-sometimes for years, These were clear cases of political repression, locking people up, not because they posed any threats, but because they were willing to fight for their rights, even as prisoners. Many folks whom I worked with then may not have landed in prison because of political activities, but they certainly got politicized once in prison. Partly because I was in Boston, where there was a very tvery strong anti-apartheid movement and a strong Central American solidarity movement, I learned about many people doing time because of refusal to cooperate with federal grand jury investigations, At the Red Book Store in Cambridge, I remember meeting some people-like Tommy Manning and Jaan Laaman of the Ohio 7 case-who are still political prisoners to this day. KaziToure, now out of prison and the national co-chair of the Jericho Amnesty Movement, was around in those days, along with his brother, Arnie King, who is also still doing time despite an incredible record of community support and work. I think there are some regional cultural differences that have shaped people's political development differently. ln New York City, for example, most of the political prisoners came directly out of the local Black Panther Party. But in Boston and later, in Philadelphia, with the case of MOVE and the M0VE 9, I had a different framework, While I was working for AFSC, I began to learn more about political prisoners through my own writing and radio projects. As an AFSC staff person, I was involved in the 200 Years of Penitentiary project, recognizing Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail as the first prison in the USA.The campaign was a way of doing prison abolition work in the 1980s, and I got to dress up in my Sunday best and speak to all the Quaker groups, Methodists, Presbyterians, and United Church folks. From there, I got to work with the National lnter-ReligiousTask Force on CriminalJustice, Those networks, with people like Episcopal Minister S. Michael Yasutake (founding chair of the Prisoner of Conscience Project) building bridges between social and political prisoners, helped create lasting relationships and commitments. Fast forward some years, to the early 1990s, and I ended up working with Amnesty lnternational USA on death penalty issues. I actually had, from the beginning, some very real issues with Amnesty lnternational. ln part, this was because Amnesty refused to name Nelson Mandela, or any number of other people, as political prisoners. I didn't understand at that moment the human rights movement's nuanced differences in definition regarding political prisoners, prisoners of war, and prisoners of conscience. Nor did I understand how amazingly egg-headedly legalistic and academistic the whole human rights framework could be. But at that particular moment, between 1994 and WIN issues on prisons 41W[{ I W¡NTER ror3 1995, executions in the USA had almost doubled in one year, lt seemed ' vollMt ¡9. NO .. rms throuÁb r.aó.ul¡ôi.r. The Reviews lssue 14 Radical Lives noryioi.nêè more opportunities for all kinds of interaction and discussion, Not to be naive, but these dialogues between those of us doing basically similar work are an urgent necessity. We've got to find greater ways to work together. important to do that work with those resources, but it was one of the most frustrating experiences of my The key ls to see the connections be- life, Amnesty is an organization that grew out of the Cold War mentality. tween these struggles, and not to pit them against one another, We've got They began as a group that issued bulletins on behalf of prisoners of conscience, one prisoner from the lots of work ahead of us. It also has now gotten way more complicated because more and more political prisoners are spending vast, unbelievable amounts of time in prison, and not getting out. West and one from the Soviet Union, trying to embarrass those governments by bombarding them with letters. While I was there, we did begin trying to get Amnesty to pay at- tention to the case of Black Panther death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal. But I could not stay at Amnesty for HOWARD ZINN:A MAN OF HOPE HUHIA: LoNG DISTANCE REvoLUTIoNARY job I had at the Center for Constitutional Rights was Coordinator of the Ella Baker Student Program, which I used to refer to as my job of training little "baby radical lawyersl' The These were young people that we would recruit from various law schools who thought that they wanted to be "movement" lawyers, Whatever issues they were eventually going to work on, it was crucial that they get an education in the history and the current way of looking at the role of prisons in society and the reality of political prisoners. I remember bringing Attica prison rebellion survivor and representat¡ve Big Black in, to come and talk to these law students after weU shown them the film Attica. It was a strong way of educating and radicalizing people who could have a direct effect on the lives of prisoners, What were and are some of the issues involved in building bridSes between the people who do work around political prísoners and those who work around the prison industrial complex or prison abolition? LI; I think there are people who come out of a political context, who make many assumptions about categories such as "social prisonersl'Some people who work on political prisoner cases have, in a general theoretical sense, the idea that prisons themselves are bad, but also that pr¡sons are where bad folks ways they can best understand and convey the complexities of the system on a local and national level, As,we all need t0 step up and become active when that's needed, we also need to learn to step back and take leadership from the folks who haven't been in leadership, Some of us older folks need to learn that in regard to the youth, too, Another thing that's fairly unique about CR, in my experience, is the way in which the regional organizations reflect the national program as well as the specific political context in a given region of the country, we've been weaving a soft of web You've heen active, srnce the be{inning, in the development of Critical Resistance, which in some ways tries to present a new framework about how to do some oÍ this work. And you continue to hetp bridse the Eap between work around prison abolition and around political prisoners. Could you describe the current national scene, around the $ime of the tenth anniversary of CR, and dl'scuss how things have chan{ed, and between the local networks and the national group. There's also a great deal of attention in CR given to political how they've stayed the same? Political prisoners are dying in prison, LI; lt may be a new framework and a new concept in this so the issue becomes more urgent. current iteration, but the notion of prison abolition is much older than the 1998 founding conference of CR. I actually didn't get involved in CR until after that initial national conference in At the same time, as l've said, vastly increased numbers of people are being sent to prison-also for long pe- education. Far too often in our movements we don't find out where people are coming from, lf somebody shows up for a meeting, we're s0 glad that they're there, we'll just give them some things to do and tell them wheh and where to go for the riods of time. ln countries where the "political prisone/' concept of is recognized as a legal category, there may still be human rights problems and justice issues, but the complications and divisions between them tend to be easier to deal with. lt is agreed that there are political prisoners, and it is agreed that there are major problems in the prison industrial complex. Here in the United States, an urgent task is for folks doing political prisoner support work to recogn¡ze the broader at the first Critical Resistance gathering who were overjoyed that people were talking about prison abolition again. We didn't know that over a thousand people would show up, with energy to build local and regional chapters. We clearly hit upon a mo- next meeting. But CR really works to build community. I feel very connected to the local folks in the organization, even though I work more with the national, We are in a situation where someone can put a call out and say, "Yo, the sister who was at the meeting last night-her kid just got arrested. Can any of you get t0 court?" And people do it. lt reminds me of working with the ment when people were ready to work on issues involving the groups in Boston when I was younger: that sense of community, role of prisons in U,S, life. One issue that we've been dealing with, and need to contin- of family, of connectedness. That feeling also comes up when I get emails from different political prisoner support groups say- ue to deal with, is the role of people who have been most im- ing, "So and so on the inside is sick, we've got to jump in here context of the prison industrial pacted by the prison industrial complex. Our organizations can't just be made up of people who want to work on an issue. lt has to include people who did time, people whose family members and deal with thisi' sfoRtEs oF uPRtstNGS, RESTSTANCE,AND HOpE long. ì.\ work with the general prison popula- tion do it purely from a social service perspective and aren't interested in working on political prisoner issues. complex. One place where we've seen this take place is around the case of Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia's case has brought so many people from different political movements and perspectives together. ln general, though, with all the cases, we need to make Oakland, but I did attend the conference.There were many folks r have done time, These folks must be in the leadership of the movement and the leadership of the struggle, because in many Wl+lr Ot süiì$ {-if levels or we're not going to make it. Sometimes our * failure is as simple as calling a meeting iúr$?+ I at ¡a'o ;,;.':."'jli;i:1ij;r..,. . . ':,,;;.,' ot :' .-:i..:..--',,' ,..,.'-l are. lf you stole something, you?e a thief, lf you killed somebody, .,. --- "- _"_g ¡ water at the table. lf we're going ts survive, if we?e going to succeed, if we're going to win, if we're going to -;'.1j,;,: t you're WIN 42 dinnertime and not having so much as a pitcher of :à""o"¡ä tot^ on rhe a murderer, And that is what you are, that is who you are, and that is all you are. I really have a problem with that idea, maybe coming from my spirituality or maybe just my common-sense political analysis. Nobody is only one thing, and no one is only as bad as the worst thing they ever did. lf that were true, we'd all be in big trouble because we're all human, Some people who won't do work around social prisoners or politicized social prisoners have this perspective, and many people who do WN promotes WN through the years I guess l've come full circle after all these years, realizing that we need the political analysis, we need the political education, we need the strategizing, we need more bodies, and we need resources. But we also damned sure better remember that we're human beings and we need to support one another on all 5'lt free folks, we've got to get better at doing the human piece of building movement building community. O by Dralt dodgers, peace 3p some copsreadWlN! Why don'tyou? ùs; @ L tr'rrriluin"lr r.üL r¡: - r.:.Tru ilr'tr1 ilir'rrr-inl .illltiJ N1j¡lrrtf rlilt.v,i¡L ' 'rr" 1" Wl!lu¡¡¡rrItil'Urtr I \t,\ ¡.n"*' tr,dr"{r:r¡¡'lDfr(, ti'rrtWlN t.,J+''Jo? ': *rlitr.lr | 'jn1 l!.nr t¡,rnsr r-'nr*'â!.rr rFi¡r, fdfr{l!lnsl{cr i:l,r'ihfr4d¡-dqr'll!.¡'Jr,r''l¡r'ili..irrlElÑ'tríFnn¡r.r!ìr!¡!rur ¡.¡ :{,.,,--.,/ n,n^ r¡^ñr¡r"T, 43 WIN ,f; through revolutionary nonviolence My Favorite lssue: The (Brand-)New WIN,Summer 2006 women of color: An ¡mportant part of our development is being able to communicate and express ourse/yes. Especi a I ly By Matt Meyer for youngwomen, who are I taughtto be quiet and not express ourse/yes or have 4t015 needs WN. Not just this year, not just the very Émagazine you hold in your hands (or are reading online). Our overall moment in history, in the adolescence of the 21st century, needs the politics of revolutionary nonviolence. That politics is proclaimed on the cover of this unique publication, often described within its pages, but scarcely elsewhere noted or heeded. Even we may not have the right words just yet t0 adequately describe what unarmed revolution looks like. And we are surely-in the footsteps of iconic nonviolence thinkers Barbara Deming and A.J. Muste-still experimenting with the practical meaning of our deeply held beliefs. We may not know the exact best ways to bring these words to you, as pr¡nt fades to flat screen, and ever-smaller electronic machines transmit messages to shake our psyche, But we know that we must be on a better path to build the world anew. For all these reasons, I pick as my favorite issue the new MN, Volume 23, Number 3, Summer 2006: a deceptively humdrum set of numbers to signal the re-birth of its illustrious predecessor. As someone who had the honor of both writing for, and being written about in, all four WRL-related publications (WRL News,WlN, the Nl/A and MN again), I heard this issue, more than any other, shouting out, "We're STILL HERE, refreshed, renewed!" act and smart enough to dreaml' We still need workshops and trainings in nonviolence; we need grand remembrances of past glories without getting stuck in a "we tried that back then and it didn't work" mentality, When Francesca led us to revitalizeThe NonviolentActivist into a newly re-named MN, she did it with acute awareness of the need to learn from past efforts while building br¡dges t0 cutting-edge movements of the future. She also understood, from her own experiences and as a wise younger activist sensitive to the lessons surrounding her own present moment, that the issues of race, class, patriarchy, and the gender binary were vital in examining and resisting war in all its forms, lt should come as no surprise, then, that the cover article brought together five inspiring voices, diverse yet united in their commit1r ment to building new movements in creative WRL elder and WWll conscientious objector Ralph DiGia implored us to find new energy: The arny grows all the t¡me. They {et better equ¡pment, have better wars, and what the pacifist movement needs ls some inspiration-whats the next step? We can't always just have demonstrations and petitions and people bein! arrested.That doesn't seem t0 work. ... We ways: need a spark. WRL New England staffer and longtime nonviolence trainer With the beauty and brilliance of two doves on the cover ca rryi n g movement-bu ild ing messages, with the cha lenging Joanne Sheehan proposed that we make space for a more rigorous process of self-reflection: Ihe government has learned and dazling energy of new editor Francesca F¡orentini, the re-born MN promised to "explore the cracks in this empire that are bringing us closer to the just world in which we have much more than the acfivlsts have about the /essons from the Vietnam War era. ... Analyze. Evaluate. How did ¡t go? What did we do well? What could we have done better? ... Can we honestly look at these /essons in an inter-generational way? I to live-from free health clinics and collective childcare to alternative economic systems and alternative energyl'The 21stcentury MN dedicated itself to "harness[ing] the revolutionary imagination, bringing stories from a movement bold enough to yet Matt Meyefs first artÌcle in a WRL-related magazine, published when he had just turned 79, was "The Coalition Proliferation Principle," in the December 75, 7987, rssue of the original WlN. He has slnce published extensively in WRL publications and e/sewhere and currently seryes as War Reslsters' I ntern ational's Africa Su p port N etwork Coordi nator. lvrl{ 44 Black Panther and former political prisoner Ashanti Alston noted the tightrope quality of movement-building across the generations: l'm not try¡ng to be the leader. But I do want to participate, because I think that l'm on to sone th¡ngs that can be helpful. And at the same time, be humble enough to be able to l¡sten to others and engage in th¡ngs that mi{ht show me shortcomings in myself or open me up to new learnin!.We gotta ¡nteract.We can't do this work without taking risks-comfort zones have got to be shaken up a bit. Sista ll Sista member lje Ude discussed working with young an opinion.We create opportu nities for you n t women to experience their own voice and the impact that that can have. Youth empower- ment activist Hannah El-Silimy commented on the disconnect regarding not only age, but the ways different generations look at the question of pacifism: A lot of people comintfrom the peace movementfrom older fenerations are not open to dialo{ue about nonviolence and other methods of change. /t'siust like,"No, nonviolence is the answer and thafs all there is to it." ... Part of it rs the messenger. ... There has to be an understandint of why people wouldn't choose nonviolence, a context to different struSg/es. ... We also need to talk about violence not just in the context of U.S. forei{n policy, but to see violence and racism in our own country. ln addition to this far-reaching first feature, the new MN contained shorter commentaries and reviews from a wide range of peace and justice stalwarts. lndypendent editor and co-founder Arun Gupta wrote about brewing war prospects with lran, and Fellowship of Reconciliation leaderVirginia Baron described her recent visit to that country with an FOR delegation, Then-arms trade expert Frida Berrigan presented an action update on AlliantTech, the "merchant of death of the monthi'The reviews included pieces byWWll conscientious objector Larry Gara, a founder of the field of peace studies, on lra Chernus' key new work, American Nonviolence:The History of an ldea;West Coast New Left activist Max Elbaum on fetfers from Youn! Activrsts; young Catholic Worker Amanda Daloisio on Don't Call Me a Saint, a new documentary about Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day; the lâte, legendary veterans rights and military organizerTod Ensign on Sif No Sir/ the just-released film on antiwar veterans and active-duty members of the armed services; editor extraordinaire Judith Mahoney Pasternak on a new book by women's suffrage historian Robert Cooney about that movement's legacy; and (required disclosure) this writer on a recent biography of the great U.S. pacifist coalition-builder Dave Dellinger. All those pieces spoke in one way or another to the mission of the new MN, but perhaps none more explicitly than the look at the career of Dave Dellinger, who understood more than most that revolutionary nonviolence is, in fact, not a contradiction in terms. Rather, it's a necessary amalgam of cutting-edge concepts, oç as I wrote, a "dialectic: a springboard to action and thinking outside of the box, as opposed to a fundamentalflawl' Under Francesca's leadership, that 2006 issue of WIN embodied this vital dialectic, as does the War Resisters League under the leadership of national program officers Ali lssa and Tara Tabassi. WR[s recent work has brought us correspondence and campaigns especially relevant for the challenges of this century. They have boosted the very unfinished broader project of making the organization and its publications, including (if to a lesser extent) this favorite issue of mine, more than the extremely segregated spaces we continue to be. lf we are to finish the job of making war irrelevant, of bringing about a beloved community of justice, we must imagine a space beyond board rooms and carefully kept endowments, taking calculated risks based on broad visions of effective, last¡ng social change. Perhaps then, MN will rise again. At the very least, perhaps-one campaign at a time-some victories will be won. O çpÍn- fl ruror dmft..,,l,-t ¿ulw ¡t natior¡l dr¡ft <¿¡d tunrin, my ¡,lfrGc o CI n tht PJt.r¿í¡l¿"€ fì 45Wril Y ,t. through revolutÍonary nonviolence My Favorite Issue: WRHs 90th Anniversary, Fall 2013 turned the anti-civil defense drill witness of a few Catholic Workers into a full-fledged protest that filled City Hall Park and finally forced the demise of the civil defense drills. Meyer and Pasternak nicely summarize that event but neglect to poínt out WRL By Rosalie Riegle ¡þonversations \f are a crucial component of WRL work, conversations about specific nonviolent strategies, about how racism and sexism affect our decisions (sometimes when we don't realize it), even lively discussions about brewing beer or whether the anarchists or the socialists will win a WRL softball game, So it seemed singularly appropriate for the WRL from 1960 to 1999). I remember his telling me how, in 1960, backgrounds and what drew them to WRL. I didn't know for instance, that it was WRL strategic planning that leä'to real change. As someone who loved to poke around in old issues of the first MN, I resonated with the "From the Archives" sidebars with our grassroots networks. lt's all too easy to get caught up in our singular successes and fail to carry them on to the next step, Lakey calls us to remember that "the police are the enforcers, not the deciders" and to get out of our radical boxes and "mobilize cross-class coalitionsi'ln its new Urban Aieas Security lnitiative (UASI), WRL is doing just that building coalitions with populations targeted by militarized police and addressing the decision-makers who target them by weaponizing their police and emergency response teams with that Mandy in this anniversary issue and with priceless quotations from anniversary issue that Kimber Heinz, our national organizer in 2013, published the deeply personal conversation she had grew up in an had with two long-time WRL leaders (and long-time friends), that Joanne Mandy Carter and Joanne Sheehan. (Disclosure:The issue used to be MN as well as from Liberation and WRI News. An interesting sidebar was the flyer for the Women's Pentagon Action on November 16, 1980.The late poet-activist Grace Paley, one of the organizers for that action, told me in an oral history and staff bring all of who they are to the table, and the anniversary issue both recaps 90 years of these contributions and points to the promise of the future as also contained a cogent review by WRL and Veterans for Peace a Roman stalwart Ellen Barfield of my 2013 book, CrossinEthe Line.) Mandy Carter first came to WRL West through nonviolent civil disobedience as part of Stop the Draft Week back in 1965. She was impressed with the number of gay men on the staff, the diversity in ages, and the strong w0men with whom Catholic. interview: "The guys were so mad at us, $aid we were taking people awayl'She told them. "0h no! Thère will be more we live out our mission, not only to nonviolently resist all wars, but to eliminate the "causes of war, including racism, sexism, people in WRL than ever before." And there were, this time with women in leadership and staff positions. and all forms of human exploitationl' 0 she worked, Among her many contributions was orgnizing WR[s 50th anniversary gathering in California in 1973. Joanne Sheehan came to New York a few years later, first working on defense for the draft board raids, thus meeting WRL folks who shared the building on Lafayette Street with other antiwar groups. She soon gravitated to WRL and tax day protests, then became a member of the Executive Committee (now called the Administrative Coordinating Committee), and today serves as New England staff, coordinating nonviolent trainings and a host of other projects. One thing that struck me in this deeply contextualized conversation was Mandy saying, "l've got to bring all of who I am to the tablei' For Mandy and for all of us, part of that means telling our stories to each other, something I value immensely as an oral historian and something we need to spend more time doing whenever WRL folks get together. ln this interview, Mandy and Joanne do just that, sharing their Rosa/le Rlef,/e rs a Contributin! Editor of WIN and a/so serves on WRts National and Fundraisin{ Committees. A peace activist srnce the Vietnam War, she is the author of four oralhlstories; Voices from the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day: Portraits byThose Who Knew Her, DoingTime for Peace: Resistance, Family, and Community, and Crossing the Line: Nonviolent Resisters Speak Out for Peace. wlil 46 orphanage, or I think bringing who we are to the table means more than letting people see all of us, though, and it's something I see Joanne Sheehan and Mandy Carter at WRLS shining through 90th Anniversary conference. Photo by Linda Until 2004, I lived in the hinterlands of Saginaw, Michigan, and when I first started noticing WRL, through tax resistance and the anti-war toys campaign, I didn't realize that women in New York and San Francisco had to fight to make a feminist perspective part of WRL practice just as we did in the Saginaw selves to the work. They don't just put in the hours, they live the life, So we see Joanne and Mandy working to subvert the tyranny of structurelessness that so plagued movements in the Manifesto for Nonviolent Revolutionj' and Lakey wrote a reasoned reflection on the manifesto for this anniversary '70s and saving the 1976 Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice by winning participants to a more participatory process. issue. ln the manifesto, he defined the five stages neces- interview Thurston' and through the entire issue. WRL volunteers bring their whole As Matt Meyer and Judith Mahoney Pasternak wrote in "Ninety Years of Resisting Warj' their historical survey for the anniversary issue, WRLs longevity may be based on its ability to combine "a principled radical vision with an understanding of the need for tactically reformist organizing effortsi'What began in WRL as an emphasis on individual acts of non-compliance has grown into a vibrant radical community that sees the value of strategic organizing and grass-roots coalitions. This sense of bringing our whole selves to the work shines through the anniversary issue, especially in the photos, some by David McReynolds who, since 1956, has given his whole self to WRL (including but not at all limited to 39 years on the staff, Yes, WRL volunteers t4Ìo09ô Valley Peace Watch. Now I'm on the WRL National Committee and a contributing editor of WIN and I've learned that eliminating racism and sexism are still hugely important to WRlls work and also that we have to be ever alert so that those tasks remain central to our practice. ln 1976, the first MN published Geoç Lakey's'A this Pentagon surplus, sary to bring about a truly nonviolent revolution: consci- entization, building organization, confrontation, mass noncooperation, and parallel government. ln assessing the dream and demise of several mass movements since the manifesto's publication, including the Battle of Seattle, Occupy, and the Arab Spring, Lakey poi nted out the d ifference between pa rtici patory tactics and participatory strategy, which is "putting tactics in a sequence that leads to victoryJ' He then calls for radicals to study the successes of reformers, who, to him, appear much less self-absorbed and able to turn tactics into strategies for victory. ln my work on the National Committee, I need to keep that in mind as we design and implementWRLs program and work 47W[{ ,Í Closing Guantánamo by Frida Berrigan n 2005, I helped to establish Witness A$ainst Torture when to Guantánamo a few months later, he was subjected to routine abuse. According to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the Chadborn teenager had been,singled out for mistreatment because he vocally objected to being called "niggeri' Mohamed is not Cuba with the hope of gaining access to Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. naval base where more than 700 men, called "enemy combatants" by our government, were then detained. We were only taking up an invitation that President George W. Bush made to European Union leaders in response the only juvenile imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, There were 13 other young men who came to Guantánamo as teenagers. El Gharaniwas repatriated to Chad in 2009. Murat Kurnaz was born to a Turkish family in Bremen, Germany. After September 11, he traveled to learn more about to allegations of torture and human rights abuses there. "You?e welcome to go down yourselves ... and tak[e] a look at the lslam in Pakistan, where he was arrested. He was eventually sent t0 Guantánamo. As the son of "guest workersj' Kurnaz does not have German citizenship, even though he was born there. For a long time, Turkish officials maintained that Kurnaz was German and therefore not their problem. Even after conceding their responsibility, Ankara did not pressure Washington to release Kurnaz. His mother begged "for a sign that my son is alive, that he is being treated justly, that he has not been Excerpted from lt Runs in the Family: 0n Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood I (0/R Books,2014) 125 of us flew to conditionsj' Bush said. So we did.The naval base authorities denied our requests for entry and so we fasted and vigiled for five days before returning home to organize a movement to shut down Guantánamo and to end torture and indefinite detention.The first "unlawful enemy combatants" arrived at Guantánamo on January 11,2002.Ihe American people have since learned the truth-the vast majority of these men were not the "worst 0f the worsti' as Bush administration officials claimed. They were chicken farmers, illiterate Seton Hall Law School, Our walk began in Santiago de Cuba on December 7 and over five days we walked about 70 miles, camping on the side of the road at night. Sometimes we walked in silence, meditating on the stories of prisoners in Guantánamo. I walked, thinking about Mohamed and Murat, two teenagers who were inside endured. A member of WRIIs National Committee, Frida Berri{an is a col u mnist for Wagi n! Nonviolence (wa{i ntnonviolence.or{) and a "stay-at-home" mother in New London, Connecticut,where she /lves with her husband Patrick Sheehan-Gaumer and their three children She rs the dauthter of Plowshares activists Liz McAIIÌster and the late Philip Berritan, and the book from which this is excerpted rs, as the title declares, a memoir of her childhood as their dauthter and her adult life as an activrst and a mother. tv¡N 48 coming home. And so was Mom. But Faris, Johina, and Michael's father has not come home. Shaker Aamer is originally from Saudi Arabia, but he has lived in the United Kingdom since 1996, where he is a legal resident married to a British citizen. Shaker and his family were in Afghanistan in 2001, doing charity work before he was seized by Afghan bounty hunters and turned over t0 U.S. forces. He recalled his relief at ending up in American hands after being held and mistreated by various Afghan groups, But that relief He was brought to Guantánamo in February 2002, Shaker was tortured repeatedly, singled out as a ringleadet and subjected to gross abuses. Shaker Aamer has been cleared for release since June 2007 and the Bush and Obama administrations agreed that he is not a terror¡st, that he poses no threat to the United States or its interests, and yet he continues to languish at the prison.... When [my father] was in prison, my mom re- does not hold ordinary Americans responsible for the abuse he Mohamed el Gharani was 14 when he was anested in an October2001 raid on a religiousschool in Pakistan,Transferred mom and dad would come home from jail. lt was not forever. lt was not endless. Six months, 18 months, two years, even the longest sentences had a "come-home datei' ... He was always was short-lived. U.S. Guantánamo. Even before I really understood time, I always knew that my released Guantánamo captives, he was transported by plane in shackles, wearing a muule, opaque goggles, and sound-block- forces, according to a study by Mark Denbeaux, a professor at allied governments such as Pakistan and handed over to the fact that they suffer for our "securityl' I do what I can becåuse I cannot sit idly by while children are keptTrom their fathers. torturedi' Kurnaz was released on August 24,2006. Like other ing earmuffs. He was reported to have been denied food and water during the 17-hour flight. He now lives with his parents in Germany and has a desk job, which he enjoys. He says he tribesmen, and well-traveled, well-meaning students: 93 percent of the men at Guantánamo were captured by bounty hunters or press, including Arabic-language outlets. A network of lawyers representing the prisoners brought news of our proximity and solidarity to the men.They knew we had tried, and are still trying. There are so many issues, so many injustices, so many transgressions that tug at the heartstrings and the conscience, and there is only so much time, only so much energy, I am haunted by the families shattered by indefinite detention. I am undone by lnside the huge base, which straddles both sides of Guantánamo Bay, is Cuba's only McDonald's, state-of-the-art recreation and sports facilities for American soldiers and their families, two airstrips, and a desalinization plant, because Cuba cut off the base's water supply, Also somewhere in the far-flung slice of stripmall Americana were Camp Delta, Camp Echo, Camp lguana, and Camp V, where Murat, Mohammed, and 500 other men were imprisoned. We set up our camp along the Cuba fence, five miles from the prison, closer than Mohamed's father or Murat's mother have been to their sons in years.The dust and scrub brush next to the fence was our home for the next five days as we prayed with knowing for sure what had happened. I remember how the relief was quickly replaced by outrage. For his own protection? He was in no danger. He was in a position to help other inmates understand and process the horror they were watching on rec room W screens, to contextualize and explain and educate. So were Marilyn Buck, Comancho Negron, Sundiata Acoli, and others who were isolated and silenced. Maybe the prison industrial complex sought protection from an informed and motivated population. We only had to wait ten days, but we had a U.S. senator and her office on our side, Ten days, not ten years, not 12 years, not forever. When I stay up too late working on a press release, when the last thing I want to do is brainstorm ideas for the next action, when I am hungry and delirious on day two of a ten- or I2-day fast, when I spend the nisht on the hard and grubby floor of a police holding cell, when the handcuffs are too tight, when the orange jumpsuit is too unflattering or too hot or too cold or too stinky from the last person who wore it, when the last thlng I want to do is go t0 another demonstration to close Guantánamo, I think about those ten days our family spent working to get my dad out of the hole, I think about how precious that first letter after the long silence was, I think about how happy I was to hear his voice on the phone, I think about how even when he was incommunicado, he was always coming home. And I want that for Faris and Johina and all the parents and children of Guantánamo. 0 ceived a letter from him every day, Their correspondence was so steady that even the smallest blip was cause for alarm, After September 11, she went days without hearing from him. After being stonewalled by the prison officials, Mom appealed to Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who eventually found out that Dad was being held incommunicado in solitary confinement. He was placed there on September 11, right before lunch. The senato/s office was told that he was put in the hole for his own protection. He was released back into general population afterten days. and fasted. Our principal aim in going to Guantánamo was to let the pris- oners know that they were not alone, Despite the reflexive fear that Americans have toward those held in Guantánamo, coverage of our witness in the U.S. press was positive and extensive. Our march received widespread attention in the international Without that outside pressure, that solitary confinement could have been indefinite, ,,. I remember those days of uncertainty and anxiety as my mom frantically tried to fi$ure out what happened to Dad. I remember the relief that came Witness Against Torture demonstration ¡n Washington, DC, January 2008. Photo by ResistanceMedia.org,/Ted Stei n. 49 WIN .', POSTJ * How One WIN Moment Changed Three lives: Anne McVey Upshure's 94 Years of War Resistance By Chela (Gonnie) Blitt and Dennis l. Bernstein year was 7978. Connie Blitt had come to NewYork after collete, Iookinf to find others with a passion for social change. She joined the staff of WIN, where she became immersed in the rssues of the day. Her life chanted forever when a call came in to the WIN office; Ninety-year-old peace actlvist Anne McVey Upshure needed a home care companion. Connie accepted the short-lived position; before it ended, she had The become devoted to Anne, whom she saw as a role model. The next year she asked fellow journalist and her partner at the time,WBA| producer Dennis J. Bernstein, if he would join her in a special project. Anne wanted to move back to the country after six decades in New York City. Dennis a$reed, and off they went looking for a place where they could live and supAnne in her final years.They received far more than they could have imagined: They inherited Anne's legacy. port f, nne McVey Upshure was a lifelong advocate for peace and Ëljustice, She lived her activism; her values permeated her personal interactions, as well as her political stands. During the Vietnam War, the War Resisters League chose to honor Anne with their annual Peace Award. She respectfully declined, saying that peace was not the work of an individual, but of entire communities. "ln declining, Anne pointed out the elitism of this sort of gesturej' recalled longtime WRL staff member Kaf Bissinger years later, "However, she joined us for dinner, we all had a wonderful time, and Annie is still awardless except in our heartsl' When Anne was 91 and could no longer take advantage of Chela (Connie) Blitt creates short documentary videos and social media canpai{ns for progressive non-profits. Sfie ls an advisor to the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human RlShts. For a short video by Chela (Connie) about her relationship with Anne, to to bit.lylAnneMcVey, Dennls J. Bernstein /ives ln San Francisco and is a poet, journalist, and radio reporter specializing in human rithts and international affairs. He is currently the host/producer of Flashpoints, a daily news magaz¡ne syndicated on Pacifica radio. l'l|til 50 NewYork City's many offárings, we moved with her into a reconstituted farmhouse in Middletown, NewYork, on an old back road in the middle of hundreds of acres of farmland. Our living room was filled with art and sculpture from her many years of living in New York, There Anne welcomed activists and friends of various generations as they found their way to visit her. Our home in the country brought back memories for Anne of her upbringing in Centerview, Missouri, and she began to tell us vivid stor¡es of her life, Her mother had died giving birth to her on August 25,1887; Anne was raised by her father, a homeopath and, as she said, a "Eugene Debs socialisti' ln the morning before going to their one-room schoolhouse, Anne and her sisters would brush each othe/s hair until it shone, while their father read to them from Walt Whitman and Emma Goldman. (Decades later, Anne's father opposed U,S. participation in World War I and went to jail for his courageous resistance to that very bloody war.) When she was eight years old, Anne was shocked by the way Native Americans were portrayed in class. She remembered stamping her feet and saying "How would you like it if someone came and took your land away?" Early in the 20th century, Anne went to California and studied theater at UCLA, then moved to NewYork, where she directed her favorite play, lbsen's Enemy of the People. ln 1926, at the age of 38, Anne met her soul mate: Luke Theodore Upshure, a disabled composer and philosopher, and the son of a former slave from the deep South. Together the interracial couple set up a loft in Greenwich Village that was alive with music, poetry, and political discussion. I inherited an archive of hand-written letters, flyers, and leaflets that opens a window into their life and concerns through the years. ln an invitation to a party at their home on May 6, 1934, Theo wrote, "Please, come rest, meditate, make merry a while among friends in an atmosphere of tranquility far removed from the chaotic muddled world with its ghastly hypocrisies and eternal stupidity. lt is my desire to give you a musical feast with wholesome music, just a sip of nectar before we are hurled back to the alcoves of the unknown." Anne had poi$nant and vivid memories of many gatherings at the loft, including those that both preceded and protested the state murders of Sacco and Vanzetti and of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Eventually Anne and Theodore moved to a low-income cooperate. So they housing project in Harlem, ln 1965,Anne wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King about the Selma-to-Montgomery march. "We have followed the moving events of the past days with full hearts. ,.. We have witnessed the moving of mountains by a people picked him up, and canied him down the hall horizontally in the air, with an FBI agent holding possessed of faith and a burning desire foi rights and justice. * ,.. But Dr. King how can there be justice without peace in the world? Vietnam hangs as a dark and threatening cloud over our rejoicingsj'she lamented, "You Dr. King have been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize,You have been destined to lead your (ouQ people out of the wilderness. ... Selma has become the symbol of the might of a people when united in the right ... how wonderful if our people, in the middle of their triumph, were to extend themselves beyond their horizons, to include all suffering people of the world." (Dr. King did publicly op- flashed their badg_ Anne McVey. Photo courtesy of Chela Blitt. es and shouted 'FBl, we have a prisoner, clear the elevator,"' Chuck recalled. "But before anybody could move, Anne, who pose the Vietnam War three years late¡ shortly before he was was about 5'1", white haired, and well known to everyone in assassinated.) the project and much loved, jumped into the elevator doorway, spread her arms and legs blockingthe doorway, and said AfterTheo's death in 1969,Anne redoubled her efforts for peace and justice. She continued to keep her doors open as a community gathering place-and to speak truth to power. Over each arm and leg. When the elevator door opened, the elevator was full of people. "The FBI men 'Darlings stay where you are, do you know what they are doing? They have come to take him away because he won't kill people. the time we lived with her, we heard many tales of her political resistance and personal testimonies of her compassion from Save those beautiful babies in Vietnam, stop this bloody wa¡ the waves of people she had moved over the years. Chuck ended the story with, "l am hanging in mid-air, and thinking if you have to be sent away this is the way to do it!" "l knewAnne when she lived in the Grant Projects Harlem in j' Rose Lilly told us. "[When I was 18], my father was beating me with belts. Anne knew of my home life situation, so she gave me the key to stay with her whenever I needed to. When I was thrown out of my home, I don't know where I would have gone if it wasn't for Annei' Anne's home in Harlem was a way station for draft resisters during the Vietnam War. Years later, while visiting Anne in Middletown, Chuck Matthei, founder of Equity Trust, a local community economic development organization, told us he had been staying with Anne in Harlem when the FBI came to arrest him for his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. According to Anne's FBI file (which we obtained through the Freedom of lnformation Act), "Mrs. Upshure began crying and weeping and quoting poems by Walt Whitman and praising the subject [Chuck Matthei] as a man of peace and verbally abusing the agents. She expressed her dislike for the FBl, terming it an evil oçnization. She voluntarily stated that she is 81 years of age, had been a socialist all her life, and that her father was arrested during World War I for anti-war [sic] activityJ' Chuck remembered it this way. When they came to arrest him, in an act of nonviolent resistance, he refused to resist the draft, don't pay war taxes, and stay in the elevator!"' As she was slowing down in her 93rd year, Anne was determined to make a public stand for peace. "Wild horses couldn't hold me back!" she said, when she heard about plans for women to encircle the Pentagon and disrupt the business of making war. So late one cold November night in 1980, after much preparation, Dennis helped Anne into the car, then she and Connie headed off to Washington. There they joined the historic Women's Pentagon Action, where 2000 women encircled the . Pentagon and (as WRL described it years later) "put grave- stones in the lawn, wove yarn across the entrances to symbolically reweave the web of life, and created rituals of mourning and defiance by chanting, yelling, and banging on cansl' ln an extraordinarily beautiful moment captured in a film by WRlls Kate Donnelly, there is Anne at 93, steadily beating her drum, first softly, then louder and loude¡ as younger women around her whoop with joy and solidarity. Anne's conviction that there really is power in the people never wavered; memories of her inspire the two of us and countless others to this day. O 51WtN ,rdfr\ GD1 05703 NONPROFIT U.5. POSTAGE PAID WAR RESISIERS TEAGUE Westboro,MA 339 lafayette Street NewYork, NY 10012 Permit No. 100 rllåt¡,1årglil¡åå¡rilil¡r r¡¡¡ rl¡l¡ Ëlr¡fafu¡lr¡rfåiifr r llhå lållg F4ã ,l ËETH **-..euT**Ë-F F#tftT ¡G åT I 5äË FUIF tr*Ë'! Fi [b{åËtE"rTå ÃuE IbSILFJ.AUHËË þVt 5æ?i r 4rË.Ë4 ry '@.* nTa \.i - ¡ i' 1" ..t it ..t 'I ii .i , Graffiti on Berlin Wall, from notecard collection published by WIN in L982. Photo by Harriet Hirshorn. Thaß all folks!