THE SAN DIEGO COALITION FOR PEACE AND
JUSTICE generally meets the SECOND and FOURTH
Monday of each month at
the First Church of the Brethren at 7 pm, 3850
Westgate Place, San Diego.
WE HAVE RECENTLY CHANGED OUR SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS - if unsure, call (619) 263-9301
or email info@sdcpj.org) For directions, click
here.
HIGH SCHOOL LEAFLETTING Help pass out anti-war/pro-peace leaflets at local
high schools (La Jolla, Sweetwater, Poway, San
Marcos, San Dieguito, Madison, Lincoln, Vista and
others). For more info: sjagitator@ucsd.edu
Get Involved with Peace!
The U.S. occupation of Iraq has led to over
4,000 American deaths and roughly 30,000 injuries.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions are homeless.
Spending on the war thus far has been:
From the Israeli newspaper and website HAARETZ.COM
Israel' s Greatest Loss:
Its Moral Imagination
Published June 11, 2010
If
a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities
cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions
are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
By By Henry Siegman
Following Israel's bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a
life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My
friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless
long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared
for his response. He told me--in a voice trembling with emotion--that the
world's outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark
period of the Hitler era.
He told me most everyone in Israel felt that way, with the exception of
Meretz, a small Israeli pro-peace party. "But for all practical
purposes," he said, "they are Arabs."
Like me, my friend personally experienced those dark Hitler years,
having lived under Nazi occupation, as did so many of Israel's Jewish
citizens. I was therefore stunned by the analogy. He went on to say
that the so-called human rights activists on the Turkish ship were in
fact terrorists and thugs paid to assault Israeli authorities to
provoke an incident that would discredit the Jewish state. The evidence
for this, he said, is that many of these activists were found by
Israeli authorities to have on them ten thousand dollars, "exactly the
same amount!" he exclaimed.
When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me
that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt
and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million
and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in
inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler
years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly,
are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the
inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were,
but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence.
Fully 80% of Gaza's population lives on the edge of malnutrition,
depending on international charities for their daily nourishment.
According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza's children
suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and
shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a
deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at
de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical
and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the
outside world.
Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of
amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press
reports have jokingly described it as "putting Palestinians on a diet."
That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering
amused the Nazis.
Another feature of that dark era were absurd conspiracies attributed to
the Jews by otherwise intelligent and cultured Germans. Sadly, even
smart Jews are not immune to that disease. Is it really conceivable
that Turkish activists who were supposedly paid ten thousand dollars
each would bring that money with them on board the ship knowing they
would be taken into custody by Israeli authorities?
That intelligent and moral people, whether German or Israeli, can
convince themselves of such absurdities (a disease that also afflicts
much of the Arab world) is the enigma that goes to the heart of the
mystery of how even the most civilized societies can so quickly shed
their most cherished values and regress to the most primitive impulses
toward the Other, without even being aware they have done so. It must
surely have something to do with a deliberate repression of the moral
imagination that enables people to identify with the Other's plight.
Pirkey Avot, a collection of ethical admonitions that is part of the
Talmud, urges: "Do not judge your fellow man until you are able to
imagine standing in his place."
Of course, even the most objectionable Israeli policies do not begin to
compare with Hitler's Germany. But the essential moral issues are the
same. How would Jews have reacted to their tormentors had they been
consigned to the kind of existence Israel has imposed on Gaza's
population? Would they not have seen human rights activists prepared to
risk their lives to call their plight to the world's attention as
heroic, even if they had beaten up commandos trying to prevent their
effort? Did Jews admire British commandos who boarded and diverted
ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the aftermath
of World War II, as most Israelis now admire Israel's naval commandos?
Who would have believed that an Israeli government and its Jewish
citizens would seek to demonize and shut down Israeli human rights
organizations for their lack of "patriotism," and dismiss fellow Jews
who criticized the assault on the Gaza Flotilla as "Arabs," pregnant
with all the hateful connotations that word has acquired in Israel, not
unlike Germans who branded fellow citizens who spoke up for Jews as
"Juden"? The German White Rose activists, mostly students from the
University of Munich, who dared to condemn the German persecution of
the Jews (well before the concentration camp exterminations began) were
also considered "traitors" by their fellow Germans, who did not mourn
the beheading of these activists by the Gestapo.
So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think
long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For
the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the
questions raised about violations of international law on the high
seas, or even about "who assaulted who" first on the Turkish ship, the
Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human
condition by Israel's occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza's
civilian population.
If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such
unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to
understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions--and
even its legitimate security concerns--are inflicting on another people,
what hope is there for the rest of us?
Henry Siegman, director of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a visiting
research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former
Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations
and, before that, was national director of the American Jewish Congress
from 1978 to 1994.
General Atomics in San Diego is the manufacturer of many of the "Drone" unmanned aircraft that have been responsible for many civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The aircraft are controlled by people sitting in front of computer and video screens on the other side of the globe. This is the beginning of "War Without Consequence" where the powerful, technologically-advanced army sends remote "robots" to kill, maim and intimidate a population.
GROUND THE DRONES
SEE PHOTOS OF A DEMONSTRATION AND "DIE-IN" AT GENERAL ATOMICS CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS IN SAN DIEGO ON MAY 19TH, 2010. CLICK HERE
SocialistWorker.org writer Eric Ruder and Trey Kindlinger, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, look at the broader context in which the tragedy at Fort Hood unfolded.
November 9, 2009
The main gate at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas (Robert Hughes | UPI)
PEOPLE ACROSS the U.S. and the world were shocked at the news that an Army psychiatrist went on a shooting rampage, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. Their question was why?
But as the details about the background of Major Nidal Malik Hasan trickled out, commentary about the horrific event settled into two wrong answers.
On the one hand, right-wing pundits, once they learned of Hasan' s Muslim faith and Palestinian heritage, decided they had all the information they needed--and proceeded to pass judgment about what motivated not just Hasan, but all Muslims.
Debbie Schlussel, a frequent columnist for the New York Post and Jerusalem Post, urged readers of her Web site to think of Hasan "whenever you hear about how Muslims serve their country in the U.S. military."
She continued, "Well, actually, they do serve ' their country' in the U.S. military. And their country is Dar Al-Islam and greater Koranistan. It's Islamic terrorism, stupid. Wait, that's repetitive. It's Islam, stupid."
What else to read
Deepa Kumar's "Islam and Islamophobia" in the International Socialist Review is an excellent dissection of the right-wing demonization of Islam.
Go to the Iraq Veterans Against the War Web site to find out more about organizing against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and news about war resisters and other initiatives by antiwar veterans and active-duty troops.
The Citizen Soldier Web site is an excellent resource for active-duty soldiers looking for news and advice about their rights. Soldiers can also contact the GI Rights Hotline Web site, or call 877-447-4487 from the U.S., 202-483-2220 from outside the U.S., or 06223-47506 from Germany.
The real problem, according to syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, is "the whitewashing of jihad by the MSM [mainstream media]. I've said it many times over the years, and it bears repeating again as cable TV talking heads ask in bewilderment how all the red flags Hasan raised could have been ignored: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror."
According to Fox and Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson at Fox News, even the military has succumbed to this "political correctness," prompting her to wonder, "Could it be that our own military is so politically correct right now...to be careful about treatment of Muslims that they would have allowed this to go by?"
The other way the Fort Hood events were seen in the media was less vile, but still not very illuminating. The shooting was seen as the act of a deranged individual, an unpredictable spasm of violence caused by the mental breakdown of a medical professional who himself needed the counseling he was supposed to provide to others.
While an advance over the hate-filled tirades of conservatives, this explanation ultimately leaves the most important cause of the Fort Hood tragedy unexamined--namely, the U.S. war drive in Iraq and Afghanistan and the military's callous disregard for troops it sends abroad to kill and be killed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
HASAN JOINED the military after college out of a sense of patriotism, according to friends and relatives, who describe him as a calm and gentle person. Hasan's parents are from Palestine, and he was born in the U.S. and raised in Virginia.
But after the September 11 attacks, Hasan experienced racist harassment within the military and outside it that left him feeling isolated and under siege. A bumper sticker that said "Allah is love" in Arabic was torn off Hasan's car, and the vehicle was scratched with a key while it was parked at his apartment complex in Killeen, Texas, near Fort Hood, in August.
Hasan's uncle, Rafik Ismail Hamad, who lives in the West Bank town of Al Birah, said his nephew told him that fellow soldiers once handed Hasan a diaper and told him to wear it on his head. In another incident, according to a Los Angeles Times report, they drew a camel on a piece of paper and left it on his car, with a note that read, "Here's your ride."
Despite this abuse, Hasan seemed to be coping with the situation. Hasan's uncle said his nephew told him, "They're ignorant. I'm more American than they are. I help my country more than they do. And I don't care what they say."
"He felt sorry for them," Hamad told the LA Times. "He didn't feel grudges. He felt sympathy."
As the Times report continued, "[Hamad] described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, his uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby."
But at a certain point, the stress must have begun taking a toll on Hasan. Hasan's cousin, Mohammad Munif Abdallah Hasan, who lives in Ramallah, told CNN that this was one of the reasons Hasan had sought to leave the military:
There was racism towards him because he's a Muslim, because he's an Arab, because he prays. They used to see him dress in traditional Muslim clothing, so he was a bit irritated because of this. Also, the fact that they wanted to send him to Iraq. He decided to leave the Army for good and hire a lawyer because of this matter.
They wouldn't treat him as if he is one of them. He was a major in the Army, and other majors wouldn't treat him equally as a major should be treated. Yes, you are a major in the U.S. Army, but you are still an Arab, a Muslim, you have your own traditions and values and we have ours. He was bothered by that a lot. He wasn't respected as he should have been.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ON TOP of the racist abuse, Hasan's job as an Army psychiatrist brought him face to face with countless soldiers haunted by memories of battlefield horrors--a seemingly endless line of young men and women scarred by their experiences of war. According to an excellent New York Times report:
Many of the patients who fill the day are bereft, angry, broken. Their stories are gruesome, their distress lasting, and the process of recovery exhausting. In time, the repeated stories of battle and loss can leave even the most professional therapist numb or angry. And hanging over it all, for psychiatrists and psychologists in today's military, is the prospect of their own deployment--of working under fire with combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan...
Major Hasan was one of a thin line of military therapists trying to hold off a rising tide of need. So far this year, 117 soldiers on active duty were reported to have committed suicide.
The crushing caseload--there are 408 psychiatrists for 553,000 active-duty troops around the world--leads to burnout and despair among those charged with treating the mental health trauma of a generation of soldiers. "It's a pretty damn stressful place to be," said Dr. Stephen Stahl of the conditions for psychiatrists at Fort Hood. "I think it's a horrible place to practice psychiatry."
Plus, according to the Times story:
Providing care has its own risks. In studies of therapists working to soothe mental distress in victims of violence, whether criminal, sexual or combat-related, researchers have documented what is called secondary trauma: contact distress, of a kind. In one 2004 study of social workers on cases stemming from the September 11 attacks, researchers found that the more deeply therapists were involved with victims, the more likely they were to experience such trauma.
According to Hamad, Hasan's uncle from Al Birah, Hasan told him that his caseload of physically disabled and mentally troubled war veterans was weighing heavily on him:
He didn't have time even to breathe. Too much pressure, too many patients, not enough staff. He would say, "I don't know how to treat them or what to tell them," because he didn't have enough time. They just kept coming one after the other. Sometimes he cried because of what happened to them. How young they are, what's going to happen to the rest of their lives. They're going to be handicapped; they're going to be crazy. He was very, very sensitive.
Spec. Chance Mills is an active-duty soldier at Fort Hood who personally experienced the inadequacy of the military's mental health services--in particular, the Army's Combat Stress Control Team. When preparing for deployment or already deployed, troops are seen by doctors only to send them back to their unit so they can continue fighting, according to Mills.
"It was just there to check a box [on a form]," Mills said in an interview. "It was an assembly line, following the steps. It was a [false] remedy to the problem, so they could send people back. There was no resolution of anyone's problems."
Cindy Thomas runs the Under the Hood Cafe, an antiwar, pro-troop hangout for soldiers at Fort Hood. As she described it:
In general, those with mental health issues are treated so horribly it's a wonder that more don't snap. It's to where even officers have issues with PTSD, feeling depression and pressure. It's harder for those who deploy--they're not stable. With pressure, they are snapping harder and quicker. But the everyday pressures of going to work and seeking mental help is causing PTSD even within those who don't deploy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN RECENT years, Hasan became more vocal about his opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That hardly distinguished him from many tens of thousands of troops who witnessed firsthand the futility and brutality of the U.S. war on those countries. Nevertheless, mainstream media outlets reported on Hasan's opposition as if it were somehow inappropriate or misguided to have such thoughts.
Dr. Val Finnell, a former medical school classmate of Hasan's, described Hasan as "a very outspoken opponent of the war" in the classroom and in public settings. "He equated the war against terror with a war against Islam," said Finnell. Finnell explained that he was "shocked" by the shooting, but "that said, given the things that Major Hasan has said to me in the past and to other people, I am not surprised."
But how farfetched is it to believe that the U.S. "war on terror" is at least partly a "war on Islam"?
Consider the words of Gen. William Boykin, who said in 2003 of the U.S. pursuit of Somali warlord Osman Atto: "He went on CNN, and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.' Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
In September 2009, Boykin declared, "There is no greater threat to America than Islam."
It's impossible to know how many times Hasan counseled soldiers who had just told him stories of killing innocent women and children in the streets of Baghdad or the mountains of Afghanistan.
But it's certainly plausible that hearing such stories--told to him by young men and women practically young enough to be his children--could have produced a confusing tangle of emotions: Feeling himself to be an American patriot, while empathizing as a Muslim and a man of Palestinian descent with the Iraqi and Afghan victims of the U.S. military. It could also have left Hasan with an unbearable mix of anger and desperation.
The grief at Fort Hood over the carnage Hasan left is very real. But it's important to remember that for millions of people throughout the world, there is grief at the carnage that the U.S. military causes day in and day out--the bombing of Afghan wedding parties that leave dozens dead on what should have been one of the happiest days for their families; the gunning down of whole families at checkpoints in Falluja and Baghdad and Basra.
Hasan may have pulled the trigger, but it was the U.S. military that loaded the gun--with its killing fields around the world, its callous disregard for the troops it sends into battle and its neglect of the mental health professionals who are supposed to help soldiers survive their mental scars.
The real solution to the horror that took place at Fort Hood is to build a social movement large enough to bring the senseless and ultimately futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--with their trail of civilian and military casualties--to an end.
No More War on Afghanistan
Troops Out Now
Healthcare, Jobs and Education
No to War and Occupation!
Why are we there?
We are not in Afghanistan for democracy (think of Hamid Karzai's fraudulent election).
We are certainly not there to protect the US people, the people of Afghanistan, or to defend the rights of women.
We are there for empire, to control the strategic territory between Iran, Pakistan, and Khazakstan.
What is it costing?
Cost of Afghan war to US: $230 billion (about twelve times what the US spends annually on education) and growing, part of a total US war budget of $1 trillion per year
California's share - over $22 billion, enough to pay for
2.6 million Head Start positions, provide health care for almost 9 million people, or provide renewable electricity for almost 39 million people.
For $1 billion, the government could create 7,100 military jobs, or 7,500 clean energy jobs, 10,400 health care jobs, or 16,900 education jobs 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan, 12,000 more on the way, and 40,000 additional troops requested
Contractors, including Blackwater, outnumber US troops
Over 800 US fatalities since 2003 and an unknown, but large, number of Afghan civilian causalities 3.7 million Afghan refugees are living in neighboring countries
What can we do? The majority of the US population wants us out of Afghanistan, yet according to senior Obama officials, that item is off the agenda. In fact, they are planning a campaign to win us over to a war without end.
Ten Things You
Can Do to Oppose the War in Afghanistan
This article appeared in the April 27, 2009 edition of The Nation
Ten
Things
The
war in Afghanistan is a quagmire bordering on a catastrophe. With a
current price tag of $2 billion a month, this drawn-out conflict took
the lives of 155 American soldiers and 2,118 Afghan civilians last
year--the bloodiest year of the war to date. Western airstrikes alone
killed 522 civilians, fueling hostility toward the United States and
causing more Afghans to join and support the Taliban insurgency that
has
spread into Pakistan. President Obama has escalated our military
presence by committing an additional 17,000 US troops and 4,000
trainers
to work with Afghan security forces. Where is the public outcry? The
Nation and Z.P. Heller, editorial director of Brave New Films, have
put together a list of things you can do to oppose the war.
1 Watch parts one and two of Brave New Films'
documentary Rethink
Afghanistan, which
explores many fundamental questions.
3 Check out the coalition of bloggers and activists seeking
nonmilitary alternatives to escalation at Get Afghanistan Right.
4 Demand Congressional oversight hearings. It is Congress's
duty to challenge policy-makers and inform the public about everything
from the overall mission to the efficiency of military agencies. Sign a
petition calling
on Senator John Kerry and Representative Howard Berman to hold hearings
immediately.
5What
question would you ask at a Congressional hearing on
Afghanistan? Take a video of yourself or a friend asking your question
and e-mail it to
Brave New Foundation
via YouTube. For help on recording and uploading your video to YouTube,
watch the tutorial
video and follow the Quick Capture
instructions and then go to Rethink
Afghanistan to submit the video.
6Contact
your senators and representative directly to
demand Congressional oversight hearings. If you can't visit their
offices, a phone call or e-mail to voice your opinion can be just as
effective.
7 Write to your local paper's editorial board and your
favorite political blogs to raise concerns about the war. Don't let the
mainstream media remain silent as they did before the Iraq War!
8 Support anti-escalation Afghan groups working for women's
rights and social justice. You can aid organizations like the Afghan
Women's Mission, MADRE and the Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) by buying them
equipment from their Amazon "wish
list" that helps them document and spread the news about their
efforts. Stay updated with the Afghan Women's Mission newswire.
9 Join the Campus Antiwar
Network and
hold teach-ins, debates, talks, demonstrations and walkouts on college
campuses across the country.
10 Get involved in the peace movement with groups like Win
Without War and Peace
Action West, which are devoted to finding nonviolent
alternatives to military escalation in Afghanistan. Follow Peace Action
West on Twitter.
CONCEIVED by WALTER MOSLEY
with research by Rae Gomes
NOTICE OF BLACKWATER USA NAME CHANGE
BLACKWATER = XE (pronounced "zee")
"A mercenary by any other name still smells rotten"
Please feel free to contact Dawn M. O'Brien or myself for further
information, Dawn can be reached at: dawnobde@yahoo.com
Saturday October 11, 2008
WARS, ELECTIONS & EMPIRE AT THE CROSSROADS
A comprehensive San Diego symposium addressing vital and timely issues was held on October 11th, 2008. Please view the following video of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz discussing "War, Empire & Everyday Life" and Marjorie Cohn discussing the current issues revolving around U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (introduced by Rick Greenblat).
(slightly abridged)
I've got some bad news.
My friends at the Courage Campaign asked me to convey it to you personally by email, given this community's activism against Blackwater over the last year.
Thursday, June 5th, after a federal judge cleared the way, Blackwater opened a large training facility in San Diego, just three blocks from the border that separates California and Mexico.
As you may know, I wrote a book ("Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army") chronicling how this dangerous private security corporation leveraged over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to build an elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror." Now, Blackwater is setting its sights on the so-called "war on drugs" and recently opened its own private CIA, called "Total Intelligence Solutions," marketing "CIA-type services" to Fortune 500 companies.
Blackwater is aggressively building up a parallel infrastructure to the U.S. national security apparatus as its owner, Erik Prince, promotes Blackwater as the "Federal Express" of the military industrial complex.
And now Blackwater has set up shop in California a stone's throw from the Tijuana International Airport. But this battle with Blackwater is not over. Grassroots activists in San Diego, led by relentless local groups like Citizens' Oversight Projects, Activist San Diego, and the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, are ramping up their campaign to shut down Blackwater's base of operations on the border.
Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times, brilliantly captures the threat that Blackwater represents to us in this excerpt from his review of my book:
"These hired guns... appeared on the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. They operate, at home and abroad, beyond the bounds of legal constraints and are controlled by secretive puppet masters, such as Erik Prince, who have close ties to the radical Christian right.
Should our nation enter a period of instability following another terrorist attack on American soil, an economic collapse, or a series of environmental disasters, the tyranny that groups such as Blackwater impose on others could become the tyranny they impose on us. The rise of this unchecked mercenary force... could presage the final stage in the collapse of American democracy."
Those are harrowing words, I know. But this is not hyperbole -- it's reality. And that's why we need to spread the word that Blackwater has just opened a base of operations inside California. If we don't act soon to push these mercenaries out of California, the nightmare scenarios described above could be realized right before our eyes.
Thank you for taking time to read this message and send it to your friends.
Jeremy Scahill
P.S. If you are interested in reading more about Blackwater, and would like to buy my book, please consider making it a two-for-one action by making a donation to my good friends at the Courage Campaign.
If you contribute at least $50 to the Courage Campaign, I'll sign a copy of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" and Courage will send it to you as soon as possible:
..............
The Courage Campaign is an online organizing network empowering nearly 100,000 members to make this a new era for progressive politics in California. In 2008, the Courage Campaign will work with grassroots and netroots activists to increase California's importance in the race for the White House, hold our elected officials accountable, and defeat the November initiative that would ban marriage equality.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! PLEASE COME TO THE COUNCIL MEETINGS AND HELP US DEMONSTRATE THAT SAN DIEGANS DO NOT WANT BLACKWATER IN OUR COMMUNITY (OR ANYWHERE).
12th floor, 202 "C" Street
Downtown San Diego
More info on Blackwater: www.prcsd.org
Thank you for your support!
Peace Resource Center of San Diego and Activist San Diego
Below are the "strategic guidelines" as adopted by the Coalition at the June 19, 2006 meeting
San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice
Strategic Guidelines
The peace movement has experienced remarkable success in shaping public opinion with regard to the war on Iraq. Recent polls substantiate that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose the war. Unfortunately, public sentiment has not been reflected in public policy. A disempowered Congress, a toothless media, and an unyielding administration bent on "staying the course" necessitate our finding new ways to engage with power. With this in mind, the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice adopts the following guidelines to be used in the planning and implementation of future SDCPJ activities:
1) SDCPJ will engage in nonviolent activities
2) SDCPJ will engage in anti-war activities of high visibility
3) SDCPJ will engage in activities that increase the political costs of the war
4) SDCPJ will engage in activities that directly impede the administration’s ability to prosecute war
5) SDCPJ will plan and implement activities which reflect a high degree of moral outrage with the continuing occupation of Iraq
6) SDCPJ will carry out activities proportional to the crimes committed in Iraq
7) SDCPJ will engage in activities virtually assured to penetrate media blackout
8) SDCPJ will engage in activities that demand response from elected officials
9) SDCPJ will engage in activities that empower participants and challenge the climate of fear
10) SDCPJ will prioritize outreach to new groups and individuals, and the formation of new alliances
The San Diego Coalition for Peace & Justice welcomes your comments and ideas. Please email your thoughts to info@sdcpj.org
POSTED MONDAY, DECEMBER 20TH
Please see the document below (SDCPJ Statement) for the coalition's statement on NBC's revelation of the Pentagon's spying on counter-recruitment and anti-nuclear organizations.
You can see MSNBC's orginal article, including link to 8-page excerpt from Pentagon's database at:
The database itself is a secret 400-page Department of Defense document isting more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period. The 8-page excerpt lists one San Diego event at the 32nd Street Naval Station. This event was a demonstration during the trial of Pablo Paredes.
Attend San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice Meetings
First Church of the Brethren, 3850 Westgate Place. Meetings are generally the first and third Monday of each month. If unsure, or for more information, call 619-263-9301 or email info@sdcpj.org.
