Quote of the Week

"Failure to love one's neighbor is a frequent form of disobedience to God. Wars are just a large scale version of this type of sin."

Millard J. Erickson (1932- )
Distinguished Professor of Theology
Western Seminary

Lest We Forget: Remembering the Other 9/11

Today marks the 21st anniversary (September 11, 1988) of the destruction of St. Jean Bosco Church in the slums of Port-au-Prince. While Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide was giving mass, armed thugs working for the Henri Namphy regime entered the church and, in a siege that lasted several hours, massacred over twenty parishioners and injured many, many more before setting fire to the church. While Aristide managed to escape with his life, the incident eventually led to his expulsion from the Salesian order on December 15, 1988. Aristide, a liberation theologian and Roman Catholic priest, led the popular movement that led to the downfall of the Duvalier regime on February 7, 1986. Two decades (and two not-so successful Aristide presidencies) later, Haiti continues to be mired in poverty and violence.

Let us continue to work for peace and justice for the Haitian people.

Naga Insurgents Agree to Reconciliation

American Baptist missionary Dan Buttry writes:

For over twelve years I’ve been working for peace and reconciliation with the Nagas who live in northeast India and northwest Burma. The war between the Nagas and India has been going on since 1955. Then in 1975 a flawed peace agreement sparked division among the Nagas that has been as bloody as the conflict with India. In 1997 I participated with Ken Sehested of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and John Sundquist of International Ministries in the Atlanta Talks. Wati Aier was the leader of the Naga mediation team with whom we worked. All four of the major Naga factions at the time were due to attend, but at the last minute one of the largest groups pulled out. Though the participants drafted “The Atlanta Appeal” for reconciliation, the splits were still very deep and expressed in on-going violence.

Read the full story here.

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my!

From the Denver Post.

Beating Back Bigotry in Five Minutes Per Day

Tired of listening to anti-immigrant bigotry on the airwaves or reading it in the op-ed pages? Want to do something about it? Then consider participating in Eric Ward's Seven Days to Beat Anti-Immigrant Bigotry. By participating, Ward promises that "you can take a bite out of bigotry in less than five minutes a day!" That's right, by just taking five minutes out of your busy schedule each day for the next seven days, you can help to stop anti-immigrant bigotry cold in it's tracks. Check it out!

War Resistance in Killeen, Texas

An article published in truthout tells the story of soldiers from Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, who have found one another through their mutual conviction that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are morally wrong and unjustifiable. They are part of a newly connected group of people in Killeen who have determined that they must take a stand against the war. Two soldiers, Spc. Victor Agosto and Sgt. Travis Bishop, have faced court martial for their refusal to deploy.

One of the outgrowths of this developing community of war resistance has been a coffee shop just down the street from Fort Hood, called Under the Hood. Members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, soldiers, and families of Fort Hood military personnel have found refuge and strength for their convictions in this new gathering place.

The Resistors from Casey J Porter on Vimeo.

The following quotations are excerpts from the truthout article.

Sgt. Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad with the 3rd Signal Brigade, faces a court-martial this Friday for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan.

Bishop is the second soldier from Fort Hood in as may weeks to be tried by the military for his stand against an occupation he believes is "illegal." He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposes on both moral and legal grounds and he has filed for conscientious objector (CO) status.

Spc. Victor Agosto was court-martialed last week for his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan.

* * *

Bishop told Truthout he was inspired by Agosto's stand and had chosen to follow Specialist Agosto's example of refusal. Both his time in Iraq, the illegality of the occupation and a moral awakening led to his decision to refuse to deploy.

"I started to see a big difference between our reality there and what was in the news," Bishop explained to Truthout about his experience in Iraq, but went on to add that morality and religion played a role as well.

When he received orders to deploy to Afghanistan, Bishop said, "I started reading my Bible to get right with my creator before going. Through my reading I realized all this goes against what Jesus taught and what all true Christians should believe. I had a religious transformation, and realized that all war is wrong."

Bishop received his orders to deploy to Afghanistan in February, but at the time "didn't know there was a support network or a way out at all. I thought GI resistance was something archaic from Vietnam."

As his deployment date approached, he met with other soldiers at a GI resistance cafe, "Under the Hood", in Killeen, Texas.

"They told me not only do I have a choice, but I have a support network backing me up," Bishop explained, "I told them my thinking, and they said that I sounded like a CO. They put me in touch with (James) Branum and when I learned from him what a CO was, I knew I couldn't go."

* * *

Bishop hopes his refusal to deploy will inspire soldiers to search their consciences.

"My hope is that people who feel like me, that they don't have a voice and are having doubts, I hope that this shows them that not only can you talk to someone about this, but that you actually have a choice," he said.

"Choice is the first thing they take away from you in the military," Bishop added, "You're taught that you don't have a choice. That's not true. And not wanting to kill someone or get killed does not make you a coward. I hope my actions show this to more people."

There is a video documentary linked below, for those who want to learn more about Under the Hood Cafe. Be warned that there is some rough language used by some persons who are interviewed.


Mike Broadway

Racism and healthcare reform

As someone who lives in the South and who is currently working for healthcare reform, I've been interacting with some people who are deeply suspicious of the President's push for healthcare reform and who believe the myths about it. Most people I've talked to DO support healthcare reform, (of course we're talking to mostly registered Democrats) but they haven't yet been as publically vocal as the right-wing.
Last year during the election, we talked to so many white 'Democrats' in Louisiana who said they would not vote for Obama for reasons that seemed to be related to race in some way. I guess I just thought that once Obama was elected, white Southerners would have to deal with that fact and would be stretched by it once they realized the world hadn't ended because we elected a black man as president. But right now there is this very vocal minority that is behaving as if Obama is singlehandedly destroying the country. This post at Daily Kos has a really good analysis of the racism underlying the teaparty, birther, and anti-healthcare movements.
I don't know how we begin to try to counter this conservative backlash, but I believe that understanding the racial logic behind it is crucial. It goes to show that the struggle against racism in this country is ongoing. In light of this backlash, we need to recommit to work for healthcare reform, because this fight is about peoples' lives.