Right now there is no way to explain or describe the loss we all feel at Howard Zinn’s death. In the days to come, I am sure we will try to wrap our hearts around the loss and the call to action. For now I ‘d like to share this …A poem by Wendell Berry comes to mind. It is my belief that Howard Zinn always lived in the “grace of the world and is now truly,  ”free.” May we each be filled with his spirit for kindness, his energy for justice , his willingness to work for all of it.THE PEACE OF WILD THINGSWhen despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free.— Wendell BerryRobert Shetterly wrote to several subjects of the portrait series this summer and asked them to share their ‘moment of truth,” a turning point when each knew they would go on to do something more with life. These were written for students in order that they could understand how fragile, fleeing and transformative life can be.Here was Howard Zinn’s note to us:” I grew up in a family of working-class immigrants, living in tenements in Brooklyn. Our living quarters were rather miserable and we kids spent most of our time out in the streets. It seemed natural that I should develop a certain class consciousness, an understanding that we lived in a society of rich and poor, and whether you were rich or poor had nothing to do with how hard you worked. There were young radicals in my neighborhood, a few years older than me, and I was impressed with how much they knew about what was going on in the world. I was beginning to read books about Fascism and socialism. One day, my friends asked if I would join them in going to a demonstration in Times Square. I had never been to a demonstration, and it seemed like an exciting thing to do. When we got to Times Square, there was no sign of a demonstration, but when the big clock on the Times Building struck ten, banners unfurled in the crowd, and people began marching and chanting. I wasn’t sure what they were concerned with but it seemed they were opposed to war, and that appealed to me. One of my friends took one end of a banner and I the other. I heard sirens and shouts and I wondered what was happening. Then I saw policemen on horses charging into the crowd, beating people with clubs. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Here were people peacefully demonstrating and they were attacked by the police. Before I knew it, I was spun around and hit on the side of the head, with what I didn’t know. I was knocked unconscious, and when I woke up in a doorway, it was an eerie scene, everything quiet as if nothing had happened. But something had happened to me. I was stripped of my illusion that we lived in a democracy where people could protest peacefully. At that moment I moved from being a liberal to being a radical, understanding that there was something fundamentally wrong with the system that I had always thought cherished freedom and democracy.”

Students might sigh and even roll their eyes at hearing this topic but let them read this piece by truth teller Granny D Haddock so they can understand just how directly they are impacted and what this might mean for their future.Ask them to respond to the piece in terms of what they believed before and how they see it differently after reading her strong call to action.From Granny D Haddock:Ten years ago, I walked from California to Washington, D.C. to help gather support for campaign finance reform. I used the novelty of my age (I was 90), to garner attention to the fact that our democracy, for which so many people have given their lives, is being subverted to the needs of wealthy interests, and that we must do something about it. I talked to thousands of people and gave hundreds of speeches and interviews, and, in every section of the nation, I was deeply moved by how heartsick Americans are by the current state of our politics.Well, we got some reform bills passed, but things seem worse now than ever. Our good government reform groups are trying to staunch the flow of special interest money into our political campaigns, but they are mostly whistling in a wind that has become a gale force of corrupting cash. Conditions are so bad that people now assume that nothing useful can pass Congress due to the vote-buying power of powerful financial interests. The health care reform debacle is but the most recent example.The Supreme Court, representing a radical fringe that does not share the despair of the grand majority of Americans, has this week made things considerably worse by undoing the modest reforms I walked for and went to jail for, and that tens of thousands of other Americans fought very hard to see enacted. So now, thanks to this Court, corporations indirectly fund their candidates without limits and they can run mudslinging campaigns against everyone else, right up to and including election day. Moreover, their lobbyists now have carte blanche to threaten incumbents with smear campaigns if they don’t bend to the respective corporate interest.The Supreme Court now opens the floodgates to usher in a new tsunami of corporate money into politics. If we are to retain our democracy, we must proceed in a new direction until a more reasonable Supreme Court is in place. I would propose a one-two punch of the following nature:A few states have adopted programs where candidates who agree to not accept special-interest donations receive, instead, advertising funds from their state. The programs work, and I would guess that they save their states more money than they cost by reducing corruption. Moving these reforms in the states has been very slow and difficult, but we must keep at it.But we also need a new approach–something of a roundhouse punch. I would like to propose a flanking move that will help such reforms move faster: We need to dramatically expand the definition of what constitutes an illegal conflict of interest in politics.If your brother-in-law has a road paving company, it is clear that you, as an elected official, must not vote to give him a contract, as you have a conflict of interest. Do you have any less of an ethical conflict if you are voting for that contract not because he is a brother-in-law, but because he is a major donor to your campaign? Should you ethically vote on health issues if health companies fund a large chunk of your campaign? The success of your campaign, after all, determines your future career and financial condition. You have a conflict.Let us say, through the enactment of new laws, that a politician can no longer take any action, or arrange any action by another official, if the action, in the opinion of that legislative body’s civil service ethics officer, would cause special gain to a major donor of that official’s campaign. The details of such a program will be daunting, but we need to figure them out and get them into law.Remarkably, many better corporations have an ethical review process to prevent their executives from making political contributions to officials who decide issues critical to that corporation. Should corporations have a higher standard than the United States Congress? And many state governments have tighter standards, too. Should not Congress be the flagship of our ethical standards? Where is the leadership to make this happen this year?This kind of reform should also be pushed in the 14 states where citizens have full power to place proposed statutes on the ballot and enact them into law. About 70% of voters would go for a ballot measure to “toughen our conflict of interest law,” I estimate. In the scramble that would follow, either free campaign advertising would be required as a condition of every community’s contract with cable providers (long overdue), or else there would be a mad dash for public campaign financing programs on the model of Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut. Maybe both things would happen, which would be good.I urge the large reform organizations to consider this strategy. They have never listened to me in the past, but they also have not gotten the job done and need to come alive or now get out of the way.And to the Supreme Court, you force us to defend our democracy–a democracy of people and not corporations–by going in breathtaking new directions. And so we shall. 

Truth teller Amy Goodman presentation on the death of  the founders of organizations related to the support of women and girls in Haiti.  A good study/question for students always in terms of ANY event: How does this event impact women and children differently than men? Why is this so? For an ongoing source to the answers always seek out Lucinda Marshall’s Feminist Peace Network blog. She taught me to ask the question!The earthquake claimed the lives of Haitian feminists artists and activists: Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of Haiti’s most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and girls. Myriam Merlet in partnership with Eve Ensler and V-Day helped establish the first shelter for women survivors of violence in Haiti: the V-Day Haiti Sorority Safe House.For more information about Myriam Merlet visit Democracy Now’s website athttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/19/haitian_feminist_leader_myriam_merlet_1953.For more information about all three women visit: http://www.daylife.com/topic/Eve_Ensler.For more information about the V-Day Haiti Rescue Fund visit http://www.vday.org/node/1781 for the Safe House and community of women it serves.Recommendations of philanthropic organizations supporting Haiti from the Ms. Foundation

• The Global Fund for Women, http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/
• Grassroots International, http://www.grassrootsonline.org/
• The Lambi Fund of Haiti, http://www.lambifund.org/
• Partners in Health, http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

Read more about Eve Ensler’s work with women in Haiti and other parts of the world related to both she and Majora Carter, both truth tellers in Americans Who Tell the Truth series. 

Here is N. Kristof’s column in the NY Times on Haiti. It’s a great resource for students if only that he lays out some very clear facts for us to consider about governments, donations and people. Again , we are asking students to consider the ramifications of “charity,” “giving ” and to whom and from whom the money is coming.

Some Frank Talk About Haiti

           

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 20, 2010

On my blog, a woman named Mona pointed to Haitian corruption and declared: “I won’t send money because I know what will happen to it.” Another reader attributed Haiti’s poverty to “the low I.Q. of the 9 million people there,” and added: “It is all very sad and cannot be fixed.”

“Giving money to Haiti and other third-world countries is like throwing money in the toilet,” another commenter said. A fourth asserted: “Haiti is a money pit. Dumping billions of dollars into it has proven futile. … America is deeply in debt, and we can’t afford it.”

Not everyone is so frank, but the subtext of much of the discussion of Haiti is despair about both Haiti and foreign aid. Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, went furthest by suggesting that Haiti’s earthquake flowed from a pact with the devil more than two centuries ago. While it’s not for a journalist to nitpick a minister’s theological credentials, that implication of belated seismic revenge on Haitian children seems defamatory of God.

Americans have also responded with a huge outpouring of assistance, including more than $22 million raised by the Red Cross from text messages alone. But for those with doubts, let’s have a frank discussion of Haiti’s problems:

Why is Haiti so poor? Is it because Haitians are dimwitted or incapable of getting their act together?

Haiti isn’t impoverished because the devil got his due; it’s impoverished partly because of debts due. France imposed a huge debt that strangled Haiti. And when foreigners weren’t looting Haiti, its own rulers were.

The greatest predation was the deforestation of Haiti, so that only 2 percent of the country is forested today. Some trees have been — and continue to be — cut by local peasants, but many were destroyed either by foreigners or to pay off debts to foreigners. Last year, I drove across the island of Hispaniola, and it was surreal: You traverse what in places is a Haitian moonscape until you reach the border with the Dominican Republic — and jungle.

Without trees, Haiti lost its topsoil through erosion, crippling agriculture.

To visit Haiti is to know that its problem isn’t its people. They are its treasure — smart, industrious and hospitable — and Haitians tend to be successful in the United States (and everywhere but in Haiti).

Can our billions in aid to Haitians accomplish anything? After all, a Wall Street Journal column argues, “To help Haiti, end foreign aid.”

First, don’t exaggerate how much we give or they get.

Haiti ranks 42nd among poor countries in worldwide aid received per person ($103 in 2008, more than one-quarter of which comes from the United States). David Roodman of the Center for Global Development calculates that in 2008, official American aid to Haiti amounted to 92 cents per American.

The United States gives more to Haiti than any other country. But it ranks 11th in per capita giving. Canadians give five times as much per person as we do.

As for whether aid promotes economic growth, that’s a bitter and unresolved argument. But even the leading critics of aid — William Easterly, a New York University economist, and Dambisa Moyo, a banker turned author — believe in assisting Haiti after the earthquake.

“I think we have a moral imperative,” Ms. Moyo told me. “I do believe the international community should act.”

Likewise, Professor Easterly said: “Of course, I am in favor of aid to Haiti earthquake victims!”

So, is Haiti hopeless? Is Bill O’Reilly right? He said: “Once again, we will do more than anyone else on the planet, and one year from today Haiti will be just as bad as it is right now.”

No, he’s not right. And this is the most pernicious myth of all. In fact, Haiti in recent years has been much better managed under President René Préval and has shown signs of being on the mend.

Far more than most other impoverished countries — particularly those in Africa — Haiti could plausibly turn itself around. It has an excellent geographic location, there are no regional wars, and it could boom if it could just export to the American market.

A report for the United Nations by a prominent British economist, Paul Collier, outlined the best strategy for Haiti: building garment factories. That idea (sweatshops!) may sound horrific to Americans. But it’s a strategy that has worked for other countries, such as Bangladesh, and Haitians in the slums would tell you that their most fervent wish is for jobs. A few dozen major shirt factories could be transformational for Haiti.

So in the coming months as we help Haitians rebuild, let’s dispatch not only aid workers, but also business investors. Haiti desperately needs new schools and hospitals, but also new factories.

And let’s challenge the myth that because Haiti has been poor, it always will be. That kind of self-fulfilling fatalism may be the biggest threat of all to Haiti, the real pact with the

Let us make certain that our students understand this issue in great depth. Here is an excellent source for all of us: Danny Glover always a voice for truth and compassion.

From YES magazine and others who have written about how we can help our students understand Haiti in deeper way. An opportunity for them to see how relationships to other nations can be handled differently than in the past.The best options for helping the Haitian people recover from the devastating January 12 earthquake.Reports from Haiti indicate massive trauma and casualties from the January 12 earthquake. Outside help is needed for people who were already the poorest in the western hemisphere. But the wrong kind of help can feed corruption, dependence on outsiders, and even exploitation.How can we support the right kind of aid, the kind that builds local self-resilience, strengthens the local economy, and fosters local leadership?Here are some of the groups that have a track record of offering the right kind of support:Partners in Health. Paul Farmer, founder, has been offering medical care to the poor in Haiti since 1983. The PIH team has sent an urgent request for help.Oxfam’s Latin America emergency response team is headquartered in Haiti, so they are well positioned to respond quickly. And they have a strong track record of supporting local rebuilding rather than funneling money to outside contractors.Grassroots International has set up an emergency fund to assist their Haitian partners—local organizations that have been working for years for a sustainable future for Haiti.Action Aid, which is working around the world to end poverty, works in Haiti and is looking for help for both short term response and long-term rebuilding.Doctors Without Borders, which already had medical teams in Haiti, has begun treating earthquake victims. According to a staff member, most medical facilities in Port-au-Prince are not functioning.Any of these groups will use your donations effectively. Please spread the word. Comments are welcome on these and other opportunities to help.And another…..Friends: There are ways that your donation, no matter how small, can have a big impact. They are not via the huge bureaucracies, but via the foundations who have long histories of accompanying, trusting, and strengthening the grassroots groups which, in Haiti, are the only ones who have ever made a sustained difference. These are small foundations that know that the only thing that ever works in Haiti is for people to have control over their own rebuilding, over their own communities, and over their own needs and destinies. These are the small foundations who understand that the best that they can do is strengthen those groups’ capacities and strength with funding, infrastructure, and technical support.The need today is of course enormous and overwhelming. Even the UN and Red Cross have no idea how to respond to a calamity of this size. Past the urgency of everyone now getting food and water (which will not happen) and the wounded getting care (neither), what will be needed is what the Lambi Fund called today “second responders.” That involves rebuilding the efforts that were under way to move Haiti “from misery to poverty with dignity,” as it is known there. That is the slow, careful work of helping grassroots movements get back on their feet, reclaim what they lost, and move forward - both individually, and as organized movements working for change and justice. The two groups listed below bring respect, trust, and integrity to that process.Lambi Fund of Haiti, www.lambifund.org Grassroots International, www.grassrootsonline.orgIf you have any questions or want any more information, please let me know.With gratitude,Beverly Bell  Other Worlds

The crisis in Haiti stands as an example for our students of the best and the worst of humanity.For now, students can be asked to observe and document this process carefully as it unfolds. There are so many issues being raised but for now, the question for every one of us and our students is what now? and where and to whom do we direct our help first? The answers to those questions ought to be considered carefully now as we look at the realities.This crisis stands as a lesson for us all and the people of Haiti impacted now have sacrificed more than anyone ever should have to in order that others learn a lesson.Telling the truth about Haiti…. have students observe and find out what that is.I’d suggest that teachers/ parents share this poem with students now as a reminder of the goodness and light that can triumph. “YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WALK IN DARKNESS” seems a message students should hear during events of this nature. Grim times like these in Haiti are not a call to despair, but rather, a call to ACT with COMPASSION and to WALK WITH COURAGE IN LOVE. Thank you Wendell Berry.A poem by truth teller  Wendell Berry written to his grandchildren. To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust

Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin

Now you know the worstwe humans have to knowabout ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know that you will be afraid.To those of our bodies givenwithout pity to be burned, I know

there is no answerbut loving one another,even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:when a man of war becomes a man of peace,he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.When a man of peace is killedby a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.If you will have the courage for love,you may walk in light.  It will be

the light of those who have sufferedfor peace.  It will beyour light.

~ Wendell Berry ~

 

(A Timbered Choir)

 

 

 

 

  Recently AWTTT heard from Kalia Mussetter who , as many individuals do, made suggestions for a portrait subject, Greg Mortensen, of whom I have written regarding his work written about in the text, Three Cups of Tea.Kalia offers a very detailed and helpful summary of the work and its implications that would be extremely worthwhile as a general study or quick overview in class. Thanks to Kalia for sending this our way!!!I have also included here a youtube link to the interview done with truth teller Bill Moyers on PBS this week.

I’m an artist and community service coordinator. My passion is bringing resources and relationships to the most vulnerable people in our community, including individuals and families struggling in homelessness; adults living with serious mental illness ordual diagnosis; kids living in poverty, family crisis, abuse, or group homes; gang-affiliated teens, and families with one or more incarcerated member. I also like to support the front-line workers who serve our most vulnerable neighbors every single day: the extraordinary, usually unrecognized heroes who are saving the world, one relationship at a time, in non-profits, schools, and institutions all over this country.When people with resources and heart for service come together with people who are currently in need of support, both parties are deeply transformed. Real service work is always a collaboration between two equals towards a goal of healing and empowerment. This is true no matter how each person looks when pressed up against society’s standard yardstick of worth and value.My joy is bringing art-making of all kinds, including quilting, painting, muraling, mosaic glass work, and ceramics, to vulnerable kids. So many of us find ways to express our unspeakable stories, and also our worth and dignity, in the process of making and sharing art. My dream is to finish my graduate work in Expressive Arts Therapy, and also to write more. My fun is playing outside, making art, and collaborating with the vulnerable and with other trusted servants involved in the lives of the vulnerable.And here’s her incredible summary of what Greg Mortenson wants us to know:Two weeks ago, I had the great joy of hearing Greg Mortenson, who wrote Three Cups of Tea, and, most recently, Stones into Schools, about his experience of building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He generously provided a small, free teacher/student talk, as well as his book-signing event in Santa Rosa, both of which I was lucky enough to attend. As many of you know, Greg’s work focuses on building schools for girls, which is radical in this region. In 17 years, his schools have educated 58,000 children, 44,000 of whom are girls.Greg’s work gives me hope for the world. Last year, General Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (that is, the head of the entire U.S. military) read Three Cups of Tea, and was literally transformed by it. (His wife had given it to him!) Three Cups is now required reading for all military leadership and deployed military personnel in Afghanistan.    !  I feel so inspired by Greg and his work that I decided to pass on some of my notes. I hope you enjoy, and pass on the scoop, of this incredible person’s work in our world. Happy Holidays—Kalia1.  “Without education, nothing will change in a country like Afghanistan”  —Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and David Petraus, Director of Central Command in Afghanistan (their doctrine has been profoundly influenced by Greg’s work in the region)(….and I thought, “in a country like America”: we need Highlander Institutes, a la Miles Horton, all over the U.S., to teach our children and young adults how to participate in our own communities and in our democratic process for their own best good)2.  “There is no military solution in Afghanistan. What we need are three operating principles in all we do there:             We need to listen more to people             We must have respect for people             We must build relationships with people”     —Mike Mullin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and David Petraus, Director of Central Command in Afghanistan, at the 2009 American Legion Convention3.  The cost to eradicate child illiteracy globally is $6 billion. Total. It would take us 15 years. That is $3 to $5 per child per month, for the 150 million illiterate children world-wide who do not currently have access to education.4.  Greg’s work is animated by this African proverb he learned as a kid in Africa:    ”If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community.”5.  When it is darkest, you can see the stars  —Persian Proverb6.  The only way we can solve poverty is to:               touch poverty               taste poverty               smell poverty               hear povertyWe cannot bring change to those suffering in poverty from a distance.(In my own work,  I see that so often service efforts are characterized by the powerful talking to the powerful about the powerless. Greg’s service paradigm is the opposite of this, with stunning results: 138 schools, all including girls, built in an area in which this is ostensibly impossible. He has done it by focusing on building close relationships with those he serves. And because of this, of course they serve him as well. Greg’s being, life and family have been transformed by these relationships and the work he and his service partners do together.)7.  Greg funds his service organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), almost entirely by Pennies for Peace, a program in which American school children save and donate their loose change, especially pennies, to CAI for the building of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is all facilitated by children, with the help of a small team of grown-ups at CAI Center in Montana. CAI uses no other marketing strategy or fund-raising apparatus beyond this and Greg’s book tours.8.  Pennies for Peace was started by an 11 year old child in Montana, who, after hearing Greg’s first public talk in 1996, told Greg he would fund his work by giving all his piggy bank money to Greg.9.  There are enough pennies in the United Stated to double our entire education budget for our own children each year.10.  Grade school aged children Greg has surveyed recently in the U.S. revealed that 10% of them talk and listen at least once a week with an elder in their own family of community. In Central Asia, the same age group similarly surveyed revealed that 90% of children talk and listen with trusted elders in their family or community each week.11.  So, in all of Greg’s schools, elders come in and talk with the children twice a week, as a matter of standard practice12.  When Greg first published Three Cups of Tea, Penguin Putnam insisted, against Greg’s strong objection, that its sub-title be “one man’s fight against terrorism”. The first run did not do well. Greg negotiated with them to change the sub-title to “One man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time”. The book immediately jumped onto the NY Times best seller list, where it has remained for over 140 months.13.  “Fighting terrorism is based on fear. Building peace is based on hope”, says Greg.14.  According to Islamic law, when a man wants to go on Jihad, he must first ask his mother and gain her permission. Greg and his CAI team in-country have found, repeatedly, that mothers who have been educated to only the 5th grade say no.15.  Ink is mightier than the blood of a martyr.   —Islamic Proverb16.  Nine years ago, 8000 kids in Afghanistan were in school. In the year 2008, 800,000 kids were in school in Afghanistan. Of the half- million people Greg has asked on his tours in the last year, only 52 knew this. U.S. military leadership learned this statistic from Greg in 2008. When he told them, they immediately began to congratulate themselves and U.S. military efforts. Greg responded, “How can you take credit for something you did not know about until today?”17. ”I am convinced that the long term solution to terrorism is education.”  —Lieutenant Colonel. Christopher Kolanda, Commander of Operation Saber, the most dangerous Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan, based on both his military, and Greg’s humanitarian, experience in the region. Commander Kolanda works closely with many regional tribal elders in his daily fight against terrorist insurgents in the area. He and Greg became friends after Kolanda read Three Cups of Tea.18. When kids in the U.S. hear Greg talk about his work each year, when he travels around to hundreds of schools and communities, they are often inspired to create service projects of their own. Three examples are:A.  High school Junior Garrett in Dannville, CA (where Greg was before he came to us in Santa Rosa on the 12th), who started Fund a   Field, which builds soccer fields for kids in Rwanda and other parts of AfricaB.  10 year old Zack, in South Florida, who after hearing Greg speak in his town three years ago, began to notice homeless kids in his own town. he started the Little Red Wagon Foundation, to raise money and awareness of homelessness in the U.S. Last year he walked from his home in Florida to Washington DC. He raised $68,000 along the way. This year he will walk from Florida to LA. His goal is to raise a million dollars for homeless kids in the US.C.  After the horrific 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan last year, which killed, among others, many thousands of children, Greg’s 12 year old daughter Amira realized that the children remaining in villages all over the affected areas had nothing at all to play with—and desperately needed play. At breakfast one morning, she told her dad “you’d better send those kids some jump ropes!”—and then proceeded, herself, to gather 12,000 jump ropes. They were shipped within a month of her insight, and indeed shifted the level of despair in whole communities, whose adults were also affected by the kid’s laughter and play in the midst of such profound loss.19.  Greg showed us a photograph of high-ranking Taliban-supporting elders, who had reached out to him and CAIabout building a high school to include girls in their own province. In the photo, the men have laid down their machine guns to swing on another nearby CAI school’s swing sets. Here is the anecdote Greg told us about this photo:After they’d played for nearly an hour, they gave permission to build the new school. “But it must have a play ground!” they said. Followed by, “We all grew up in war; we fought the Soviets, we lived in refugee camps, when we were children. We were never able to attend school, nor did we have any childhood to speak of. We want something different for our children and grand children.” The audience at the book signing gasped as the photo came on the screen, as Greg told us this anecdote. The lives of such men, who are now wreaking such havoc, have been utterly shaped by personal tragedy and loss. Greg’s work has taken them from pure “other” back into humanness, to reachability.His relentless, respectful, collaborative, humane bridge-building efforts on behalf of children’s basic right to education in this ultra-volatile region have begun to bear the fruits of stable relationships and peace, even among traditional combatants. A miracle with vast implications for the rest of the world. Israel/Palestine, anyone?20.  CAI has found consistently that when girls learn to read and write, they immediately teach their mothers. When boys become literate, they often leave their villages to go find work, and income, to send home to their families. When girls become literate, they remain in their villages and transform them. Hygiene, nutrition, infant mortality rates, family size, and traditional village culture all improve drastically and measurably when girls receive education even to only a 5th grade level. Kalia Kalia MussetterLiving BridgesBringing people together for transformative community service

I am posting a piece by Americans Who Tell the Truth artist/founder, Rob Shetterly. It’s posted on   Common Dreams , a wonderful resource for students and educators.I was struck by a few things, as a teacher and mother, that I wanted to highlight but , as always, with any posting here, it’s  my hope that you will read these and look into them for your own meaning.First, I was struck by the attention to the process of “naming” things as important on so many levels.. where do I start? For that process, the student/child pointing and us naming so often becomes reversed in our educational facilities, i.e., school. As Rob continues the piece, the talks about questions he has for us all about how we will ” name” the things we have done or have been done in our name .  He asks us as teachers how we will adress this; I would daresay many teachers have the question of when they will adress it based upon continued “standards tests based teaching” practices that are only escalating now.  Is what Rob writes about, holding leaders accountable and so forth “on the test?” And what are the ” tests” we ask these leaders to pass? How will they explain themselves to our students? Have your students create a test for their leaders that, using the facts of the incidents examined, objectively requires their answers.In our own hearts and souls, as teachers, we have to wrestle constantly with these dragons. For in our schools, it’s not the students/children who are doing the “pointing” anymore. Rather, they have been, infact, asked to stop their pointing in favor of opening their mouths passively for feeding and then to vomit it all back up on the test for evaluation. How well did they process and remember what we fed them? Imagine the absurdity of this when considering Rob’s eloquent description of the relationship he has with his grandson. This is the nature of the dance of childhood with loving adults. I point, you tell me. After a while , you point and I ask more. And after still more time, we both seek the names of things and together we find them. In other words, I teach you to fish. Life is far more complex than school.  Second, I’d like to highlight the story of Rumpelstiltskin as a metaphor/archetype for Rob’s questions about what will be accounted for and what will not. As in the story, without a name, there is no answer to the little man dancing around the fire making unreasonable demands and blackmailing us based upon what we think we  need. And so, in the process of teaching the current events of our time at school, naming them is the most important part of the relationship. In “naming” them , we tell our truths.  And the truth is the point, above all else, between teacher and student.And here’s Rob’s piece at last:Having looked the beast in the eye,Having asked & received forgiveness,Let us shut the door on the past,Not to forget it,But to allow it not to imprison us.- Archbishop Desmond TutuWe have slain innocencelet history begin- Alicia Ostriker, interlude: the song of JoshuaBefore my grandson was one year old and before he had learned to speak any words, he was fascinated with the identification of things. He pointed his tapering little right forefinger at the dog until someone said dog, and then at his mother, his father, his sippy cup, my nose, the window, his bowl & spoon, his nose, the chair, a tree. He wanted everything named. Over and over. I would hold him against my chest and we would walk around his parents’ apartment inventorying item after item. He was new in the world & needed to know the names of his fellow travelers even though he could not say the names himself. Hearing them spoken seemed reassuring. One could sense the whirring of his new brain as it sorted and filed, constructed the synapse scaffolding for speech. He would look at me, point, watch my mouth say the name. He needed to know that if we called it a flower this morning, it was still a flower this afternoon and tomorrow.Photographs and paintings on the wall seemed particularly perplexing to him. He wanted to touch the surface of each. If it looked like a dog, why was it flat, slick-surfaced and cool? Why didn’t it lick, scratch or change expression? What’s real and what isn’t?Introducing a pre-verbal child to the world of things engages the basics of trust. Knowing the name of a thing and the difference between it and its representation is a fundamental survival skill. Parents, grandparents, and caregivers would never think of answering the curiosity of a 10 month old with a false name — Oh, that chickadee at the feeder? We call that “bookcase.” Deception like that would not only be cruel, it would literally be crazy making. How can anyone navigate the world if the names of things aren’t constant. Anything, then, can be everything. Meaning disappears. It all turns to mush. Who would want that?Well, of course, people with power are in love with mush. The high fat, low vitamin variety. Deception, name swapping, is the reality they promote. And it makes us all crazy. What’s democracy? Oh, we call that free-market capitalism. What do we call the grievances of people victimized by this form of free market democracy? Victims with grievances? No, we call them evil. What do we call the clear-cutting of the rain forests and the blowing up of beautiful mountains to scrape out the coal by the cheapest means? We call if development of resources. We call it progress. What do we call our terrorism? We call it collateral damage, necessary and justified murder. What do we call national security? The right to classify the truth. What do we call the corporate media? We call that free speech because we have given corporations the rights of individuals under our Constitution. And corporate free speech includes the right to bribe with campaign contributions. What do we call a country that allows two presidential elections in a row to be stolen? The greatest democracy in the world!What I’m saying is nothing new. These are simply a few obvious hypocrisies that have become the foundation of political discourse in this country. It’s a corruption of language we would all be ashamed to use with a ten month old. It would be child abuse.The worst for me though, the language that haunts me, is Obama’s portentous philosophical declaration that we shouldn’t seek accountability for the crimes of the Bush administration because we need to go into the future with our “core values” intact. Any school kid should know that a core value of democracy is accountability. You can’t pretend to live by the rule of law if only some people are held accountable, and the biggest crimes are too big to prosecute because they implicate the entire corrupt system.Such a pronouncement makes me very sad. Sad for Obama that he presents such absurd cant as wisdom. Sad for a culture that accepts it. Because, besides what it means in terms of castrating democracy, it means that memory is cleansed of the truth. It means that teachers can’t teach that Bush and Cheney, Powell and Rice, Rumsfeld and Tenet and the rest of that pathetic gang committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. It means that the truth is a matter of opinion, a partisan either/or, one half of the fair & balanced equation. Which is which is never identified.The quote at the top of this essay is from Desmond Tutu talking about the Truth and Reconciliation committees set up in South Africa after the end of apartheid .They decided that seeking justice for all the brutal crimes of apartheid would be too socially disruptive and agonizingly prolonged. But they also knew that the truth of what happened had to be acknowledged. Perpetrators had to admit publicly what they had done. Forgiveness without justice is a bitter pill. But denial and forgetting without justice makes forgiveness impossible and, as Tutu suggests, imprisons you forever in your own history. In this country we have been asked to forego justice and made forgiveness unnecessary because we have foregone the truth, too.My grandson, like every little kid that age, has a quality of eager and vulnerable innocence, innocent even of the names of things. That innocence radiates out of him, presses outward from under his skin like a manna of joy, a nutritious balm of trust and hope potent enough, one would think, to penetrate the cynical armor of even the most shriveled heart. That radiance is innocent of the names of the objects that reflect it — innocent of categories, classifications, prejudices and euphemism, innocent of the sorrow of plastic, the corrosion of television, and the betrayal of war. This innocent light is particulated by awe and the purity of color. When he reaches his small hand up and rubs my prickly beard, it’s pure sensation for him. He has no words to describe it to himself. He puts his fingers in my mouth, his buzzing mind yet uninhabited words for teeth, tongue, and mucus membrane. But he knows this is where naming begins.What are we to think of those who are slyly anticipating stealing that radiance, co-opting it with the titillations of advertising, infecting it with fear, and addicting it to violence and cynicism? What are we to think of people who define patriotism as profit? Who, in a few years, would lie to my grandson to enlist him to murder those who stand in the way of that profit. What are their core values? Do they want to name the beast for my grandson, look it in the eye, or do they prefer to be the beast — I mean, benefactor?Robert Shetterly [send him mail] is a writer and artist who lives in Brooksville, Maine. He is the author of Americans Who Tell the Truth. See his website.

Truth teller Kathy Kelly posted this piece today for us to consider. Have students think about how they would feel if life on their university campuses was like this for them. There are important questions raised regarding the funding of wars, the occupation of their country and what is really at stake for US citizens.

There’s a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: “Speak Truth to Power.” One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the presidential administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad’s Islamic International University had a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. One student summed up many of her colleagues’ frustration. “We don’t need America,” she said. “Things were better before they came here.”

The students were mourning loss of life at their University where, a week earlier, two suicide bombers walked onto the campus wearing explosive devices and left seven students dead and dozens of others seriously injured. Since the spring of 2009, under pressure from U.S. leaders to “do more” to dislodge militant Taliban groups, the Pakistani government has been waging military offensives throughout the northwest of the country. These bombing attacks have displaced millions and the Pakistani government has apparently given open permission for similar attacks by unmanned U.S. aerial drones. Every week, Pakistani militant groups have launched a new retaliatory atrocity in Pakistan, killing hundreds more civilians in markets, schools, government buildings, mosques and sports facilities. Who can blame the student who believed that her family and friends were better off before the U.S. began insisting that Pakistan cooperate with U.S. military goals in the region?

In neighboring Afghanistan, 2009 was the deadliest year for Afghan children since 2001, according to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor. In a January 6 statement, the group noted that in 2009 about 1,050 children had died in suicide attacks, roadside blasts, air strikes and the cross-fire between Taliban insurgents and pro-government forces, both Afghan and foreign. The group’s director, Ajmal Samadi, noted that this figure amounted to nearly three children per day. It’s estimated that nearly one third of these children’s deaths were caused by US/NATO coalition forces. This week, hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in protest after the Afghan government said its investigation has established that all 10 people killed by U.S. led forces on January 3, in a remote village in Kunar province, were civilians and that eight of those killed were schoolchildren, aged 12-14. The Times of London reports that the U.S.-led troops were accused of dragging the innocent children from their beds, handcuffing several of them, and then killing all eight of them.

Stories of carnage, horror and impoverishment aren’t new in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan. Ten years ago, each of these countries suffered under severely repressive governance and extremes of poverty. In the case of Iraq, these conditions were made immeasurably worse by U.S.-imposed economic sanctions that punished innocent Iraqi citizens for their inability to rise from under Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, all the while rendering them completely dependent on Hussein’s regime to meet their basic survival needs. Yet in all this suffering that preceded the U.S. invasions of the region, there were very few accounts of suicide bombings in the lands where the U.S. is now at war. The kidnapping and torture industries, now rife in all three countries, had not developed, and their entire economies had not been hobbled by blatant official corruption.

What has U.S. invasion and occupation unleashed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? And how are these wars creating security for U.S. people?

The New York Times reported on November 14, 2009 that, according to internal U.S. government estimates, it costs $1 million to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for one year. Consider this sum in light of the fact that, in Afghanistan, district governors earn $70 per month. Their operation budget is $15 per month, and half of them have no dedicated office. Or, in light of the UN estimate that the Gross Domestic Product, per capita, in Afghanistan, is less than $1,000 per year. Or that The United Nation’s Children’s Fund, better known as UNICEF, says Afghanistan is the worst place in the world to be born, having the highest infant mortality rate in the world with 257 deaths per 1,000 live births. Only 70 percent of Afghans have access to clean water.

Kai Eide, the outgoing Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan, briefed the UN Security Council on January 5, 2010. With regard to military activities, he bluntly stated that “civilian casualties, house searches, and detention policies are sources of recruitment for the insurgency.”

President Obama’s administration is soon expected to request another “emergency” supplemental expenditure for the Iraq and Afghan wars, this time for between 40 and 50 billion dollars. If (some would say, when) this figure is approved, it will make 2010 fiscally the most costly year of the ongoing War on Terror, surpassing President Bush’s expenditures by a significant margin. Before the year is out, President Obama will also have submitted a budget item to fund the wars in 2011, with military services already planning to request something in the range of $160 to $165 billion.

The U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law to abridge the right of people to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance. We are deeply aggrieved by the folly of these wars. Our right to free speech is irrelevant if we don’t exercise it, and so we intend to raise the lament of those who bear the brunt of our wars but whose voices seldom reach U.S. government figures.

For two weeks this January, leading up to the date when President Obama is due to submit his budget for Fiscal Year 2011 to Congress, Voices for Creative Nonviolence and friends will gather in Washington D.C. for a “Peaceable Assembly Campaign” project.

We’ll be meeting with elected representatives to raise questions about the folly and the crime of war, holding daily vigils at the White House, and engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to emphasize our refusal to cooperate with the war makers.

We urge you to join us in this year-long campaign, whether in Washington D.C. this month, or participating locally where you live. Please make sure to visit the Voices website, www.vcnv.org, to learn more about ways to become involved, both locally through this coming summer and in the Days of Resistance in Washington. We’ll be there from January 19 through February 2.