May 2003 Meeting First United Methodist Church of Normal May 6, 2003 BNCPJ Activities and Acknowledgments Thanks to... ...Rick and Sue Heiser and Mary Lehman who coordinated the cable cast of "The Hidden Iraq Wars" on Saturday afternoon, April 12. ...SPAN, POWI, and the Greens for their coordination of an anti-war rally in Anderson Park on April 13. Attendance was at approximately 80 people, some of whom came a distance to join in. ...planners and participants in BNCPJ's first "Speak Out!" held after the rally on April 13. The Speak Out format limits speakers' "floor time" to strictly 2 minutes, followed by 30 seconds of silence. It is intended to provide a safe practice space for finding our voices and shaping a brief, compelling message. Thanks, too, to Mark Kelly, who filmed the event for later BNCPJ use. ...Maria Schmeckle, Gabriel Gudding, Heather, Jim Nelson, Carrol Cox, Drew, Nathalie op de Beeck, Meredith Schroer, David McHone-Chase, Susan Burt, Dylan and Rachel Hile-Broadfor their planning and leadership on BNCPJ's "Prospect and Retrospect" on the Iraq War, held Sunday, April 25 at ISU. A nice gathering and good Pantagraph coverage of the event! ...RayDean Davis for his work finding BNCPJ meeting spaces. BNCPJ meetings in June, July, and August will be held at the Mennonite Church at the corner of Hovey and Cottage. Meetings in September, October, and November will be held at the Campus Religious Center. ...Mary Lehman and Elizabeth Kosuth for their coordination of BNCPJ's post "Bowling for Columbine" discussions and design of the snappy flier promoting the event. ...Becca Rossi for her partnership with the Peace is Cool Club at Sunday's meeting. The children made "Dreams of Peace" pillow cases which they will display in public places while inviting other children to make cases as well. ...Linda, from Pontiac, who joined us for the first time, and who affirmed our virtual presence (email lists and website) as important support for her over the last couple of months. Linda urged us to remember that there are many people like her out there who are "listening in" and benefiting from our work. Announcements Monday, May 12: Adults with interest in supporting the Peace Is Cool Club's summer day camp are asked to meet at the Coffee House over supper at 6:30 p.m. Please confirm your attendance with Becca Rossi at [email]. Thursday-Sunday, May 15-18: The Normal Theater will show Michael Moore's Academy Award-winning documentary, "Bowling for Columbine." BNCPJ will host post-film discussions at the Wesley Foundation/United Methodist Church at 9:00 p.m. May 16 and 17. Please spread the news and encourage people to attend! Wednesday, May 21, 7:30 p.m.: BNCPJers who would like to pursue the idea of a booth at the McLean County Fair (July 30-31-August 1) will meet with Susan Burt and Phil Huckleberry at Susie's home, 602 Normal Avenue, Normal. [Watch for date/time/location from Jan/Carrol Cox]: The group coordinating a visit from Depleted Uranium (DU) expert, Doug Rokke. BNCPJ's membership has a couple of videos which are available for sharing. Videos include: - "The Hidden Wars of Desert Storm" - WEEK's "Focus on Iraq": a panel discussion attended by some of our members featuring Senator Dick Durbin, Representative Ray LaHood, and Professor Jamal Nassar. - Opportunities to Contribute - Get the BNCPJ word out! We keep learning from people that they're only just hearing about us for the first time. Please keep a steady supply of BNCPJ brochures on hand and pass them along to people whom you think would be interested in our efforts. Also, invite people to join you for our monthly meetings and other activities. Contact Jan Cox for brochures. - We need help getting BNCPJ activities announcements into Community Calendars and announcements from local media. Is there someone out there who would be willing to make the monthly contacts to get our message out? Contact Julie Hile. - Consider helping plan for and/or staff a BNCPJ booth at the McLean County Fair. Contact Susan Burt. - Are you an artist? A coach? A dancer? A cook? A writer? A musician? The Peace is Cool Club's summer day camp is looking for adults with a positive peace and justice message and activity to share. Contact Becca Rossi. - Will BNCPJ walk as a group in the 2003 Labor Day Parade? Last year we didn't have enough people to make this happen. If you're interested in walking in this year's parade, contact Jim Nelson. - United for Peace and Justice will hold its national conference in Chicago in early June. The conference theme is "What Do We Do Now?" For more information contact Phil Huckleberry. - Who would like to help BNCPJ plan an Independence Day party? We'd like to celebrate the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and the good our country has done and might do in the future. Consider this a non-traditional celebration of July Fourth. Contact Julie Hile with your interest. Discussion Notes At the group's request we employed the "Speak Out!" format for our discussion. Speakers' messages were generally a couple of minutes in length. Attenders applauded the format as "settling," "productive," and "just what we need." Speakers' comments are set apart from one another by bolded words at the beginning of their contributions. Discussion focused on two questions: 1. What do we want BNCPJ's mission, focus, and ethos to be over the long haul? 2. How does BNCPJ want to position itself relative to the 2004 elections? We keep hearing about the "New American Century," which is an old Kissinger vision for remaking the world in the U.S.'s image. We need to do everything we possibly can to counter this recycled agenda. Regarding the next election, we need to educate people-ourselves and our membership and the general public-on what current office holders have already done and taken positions on. How they have voted-their actual record, not just what they say. We need to get them to change their positions or go to an alternative. Doesn't one of our priorities have to be resisting the threat to the US Constitution and to our civil liberties? Certainly this is something we all agree on. The "Speak Out" is an ancient setting, one which we do well to honor now, today. It was known as the tribal council or circle of elders. The ancient wisdom is real. Everyone gets a chance to speak, and everyone listens. Depleted uranium (DU) must never be allowed. It, like the next generation of weapons of Mass Destruction, must be stopped. We need another big march in Washington, DC. If we were able to get out the numbers we had in February, we have an excellent prospect of a really big event sometime this summer. Here is a context for us to consider relative to electoral politics: There have been three big movements in United States history-the Revolutionary War, the Civil War with its abolition of slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. None of these occurred within the framework of legislative initiatives. Rather, people spoke up and made their voices heard. American citizens created chaos and fear, hell was being raised in the streets, so, for example, politicians selected Lincoln to be our anti-slavery person, though even he did not know it at the time. We need to take steps to be informed on other initiatives that are taking place, regionally and even nationally. For example, MoveOn.org and Kucinich's ideas about a Cabinet-level Department for Peace. We should have some of our members stay up to date on what others are doing and maybe make regular reports at our monthly meetings. This is my first meeting, and I have to tell you how desperately I have needed a group just like this one to talk to about these issues. There are no resources for such discussion in my community. Could we be comfortable meeting together? How do we rally people in a low-key way, so as not to frighten them off? I agree that we need to be informed on our incumbents' views and votes. We also need to agree on our own key issues. How do we get immediate results? Though I'm cynical about voting - George Bush won the election with only 24% of the vote! - I'm very focused on getting the vote out. There is a lot of potential in those who, for whatever reason, are not voting. I'd like to see us get people registered to vote, and then I'd like us to follow up, to help them get the information they need and get to the polls. I don't really see myself out there walking neighborhoods and leafleting, but maybe it's time for all of us. How do we get the Dems and the Greens to agree? How do we build this movement and prevent Bush's re-election? I'm a deputy registrar, as are many members of the League of Women Voters. A lot of the issues around voter registration are getting easier. Most people register when they get their driver's licenses, thanks to Motor Voter. But you're right: getting people to the polls is the next issue. (Questions from the group: Is the voting issue bigger or different in college towns like ours because students get confused about where-here or at home-they are allowed to vote, or because they don't know how to arrange for an absentee ballot? What can we do to help people who have recently moved relocate their voter registration?) We need to educate students and help them be aware of where they are actually registered to vote. I've been very frustrated lately about the lies that George Bush and his cronies told us about the reasons for this war. And what frustrates me even more is that no one seems to care that they were lied to. But fussing at people about that doesn't seem to me to help our cause. We need to have this debate with the Green Party. I'm still angry that Ralph Nader gave us George Bush. I'm mad about that. But we need to talk it through. Getting the vote out is a great idea. Street protests? Unfortunately they didn't make one shred of difference with this administration. We need to go after the main stream. We need to stress economics (people's retirements have been ripped to shreds), civil rights, the environment, and health care. And I hope we can get a candidate we can stomach. We need to emphasize our common ground, the values we share, as this group heads into the next election and our own potentially divisive opinions. The far Right has pulled the Republican Party far to the right. We have to consider how we can pull the Democratic Party to the left. It is hard to forgive Greens who gave us Bush. But trying to come together toward the left may be fruitful. In the short term we need to follow up on the opportunities we have before us-get out the vote, the Op Ed pieces for the Pantagraph (and elsewhere)-and to keep learning from the Peace is Cool Club. In the mid-term we need to find ways to have a presence with people where they're at. How can we bring different perspectives together through service? Long term we need to create more diverse circles, more diverse ideas and demographics, youth of all ages into the conversation. How can we see what all we are missing (information) and help bring it to light for others? Think globally, act locally. We will do well to leave each meeting with assigned tasks. We need to share our processes and address local groups who are often looking for speakers (Op Ed, Kiwanis and Elks and Rotary). We need to move our leadership into a steering committee-type structure to broaden our base in order to be effective over the long haul. Let's keep writing those letters to the editor, too. That's free access to the public for each of us once a month. I'm so grateful for this group. So grateful to you all. I just wanted to say that. Look around here. There are 21 of us here at this meeting. I have to say that twelve years ago, after the first Gulf War, there were only five of us in the room. And we decided to give up. Now we are 21, and we're planning for the future. We're hardly giving up. Now that's progress. I'm just back from a bilingual education conference in Phoenix. A couple of us drafted a statement-we started on a couple of cocktail napkins at The Party, you know?-and this friend of mine introduced this recommendation to the 650 people at the conference, to which there was loud applause and for which there was very strong support. We are pushing for less spending on the military and more on education. We came up with a phrase I really like: "When guns speak, human voices fall silent." Asymmetric warfare is a concept that interests me very much. Key military strategists in this country learned from Vietnam that the draft was a losing proposition and that a long war was no longer going to be acceptable. They also learned that control of the media was critical to their meeting their goals. So they developed into a highly organized, highly disciplined group with good technology. And they have been incredibly effective. We have to convince a significant number of people who already agree that we can be effective. (And part of the problem is that moneyed interests are more powerful at this point.) There are many professional associations out there to whom we could present statements for endorsement. Town councils. Academic senates. A couple of meetings back, Carrol Cox urged us to get in touch with the thousands of people out there who agree with us. I've been thinking about that. We need to get to the main stream and then find ways to make people uncomfortable enough to be willing to act on their disagreement with this administration. How do we do that? There are some issues out there that we can bring to people's attention. First, the DU situation. I have yet to talk with any person who isn't horrified by the facts of DU. Second, the fact that the world's super power is crowing about having handily defeated a small, weak country that had no way to defend itself (weapons of mass destruction, apparently, aside). Third, the United States government employing its troops as human shields: knowingly exposing them to DU, to the instability of the situation in Iraq, to a culture we've not bothered to try to understand. You've got to hand it to the Religious Right. Talk about a highly organized, highly disciplined group of people. We need to take a page from the book that has helped them succeed. They started out 15 years ago with school boards and town councils, and bit by bit they've grown their influence and control into the force it has become today. We need to focus with the mainstream on economics-that we all have to wield our buying power as a tool for our agendas. That's what will work in a capitalist culture. I need to ask myself-we need to ask ourselves-"What am I willing to do, personally, to step out to talk to those who don't agree with me? What actions will I take to turn this thing around?" Because I feel myself staying inside some kind of comfort zone, and that's no help. And then, "What risks-personal risks-am I willing to take?" We are too comfortable. And I don't believe that our demonstrations are having no impact, that this movement is being ignored. What caused George Bush to go public with his ignoring us? How else can we interpret that the Republican Party has rebutted Moore's "Bowling for Columbine"? And what about our pulling military installations out of Saudi and now perhaps Europe? The Bushies are trying to make it look like our read of their plan was wrong-headed. I'm sorry to tell you folks, but we've got to go beyond voter registration here. Where are any local officials that we elected who are taking a stand on these issues? Why is it that a Support Our Troops rally is automatically attended by the mayors of both our cities? Where are those people when we take a stand? The Green Party starts at the bottom with local elections and gradually rises to the top. We have got to elect local officials who share our point of view. We all agree that the Republican Party is in the pockets of money interests. But too many in the Democratic Party feel that cooperation with the Greens equals capitulation. So we need to change the Democratic elite (though I don't believe this can happen by pushing from the inside, which is why I do what I do). The local Democratic Party is what got me kicked off the ballot in the last election. Current local officials won't speak up, so you are going to have to be those local officials. There are problems with both parties, but I still don't believe that if Al Gore had been elected President we would have attacked Iraq-or Afghanistan either for that matter. There is still a difference in the parties' philosophies. But Greens didn't cost Al Gore the election. Al Gore cost Al Gore the election. I get upset when I hear these divisive statements. It freezes me right up, undercuts all the good work we do together, the good ideas we've mentioned here. We've got to focus on our common ground. It would be so sad for us to walk away from one another. Let's commit ourselves to what we want to accomplish together. Many abolitionists never saw the results of what they worked for. So we have to work together to move it along to where we want it to go. This discussion is very clarifying and galvanizing for me. Because I understand that the fissure we're struggling to work through is exactly what the Repubs are counting on keeping us from forming a unified front. I know we're going to find a way to work through these issues-more toward what is our common ground. What does "peace and justice" mean to us? What are the non-negotiables that are at the heart of our work? And once we're clear and it's a national movement, the political infrastructure will have to listen to us. The Right has been more disciplined that we have found a way to be. It's easier when your common ideas include that God is white and male and looks like you. But we can agree that it is okay to be messy, that it's not disrespectful. Diversity is very important to us. We cherish this circle process. So let's think about what we have to offer. We believe in speaking Truth to Power. We are frustrated with interference with free and fair elections. This might be a part of our common ground. I think this group has the potential to reach out to other groups in this community, to extend a hand for dialogue and partnership. That is very important work. I'm very excited about how nurturing this group has been for me. We have probably been positively influencing many people. We need to find ways to interject joy into this work!