Young girl Leek farmer in Afghanistan

For the last several years, a group of young Afghani’s in the Bamyan province of Afghanistan have been on “Our Journey To Smile” (http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/).  This journey to smile is their effort to bring about peaceful nonviolent solutions to conflicts in Afghanistan using the principles taught by Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

Who We Are

Who we are-

Afghan college students and youth who started this journey in 2008.

International volunteer for Journey to smile

International volunteeers who will participate in support of Our Journey to Smile.

To date, we have volunteeers from Singapore, Egypt, Italy and Nepal.

VENUE World Heritage Bamiyan Buddhas

LOCATION Bamiyan Afghanistan    DATE 21 September 2009

Our Journey to Smile in 2009 wishes to gather Afghan college students and Afghan youth from every ethnicity, as well as international volunteers from every country, to come together at the World Heritage Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan on International Peace Day, 21^st September 2009, to be an example and encouragement to the world that wide-scale humane relations based on a humane love is possible, however in-humane our current global situation may be.

So, we ask every one of you, to join or support Our Journey to Smile, knowing that the cumulative hope and conscience of humanity, once communally expressed on a wide enough scale, would demonstrate a love that inspires Mankind to grow and to be compassionately humane.

In 2009 AD, Afghanistan is in the depth of world conflict and self-interest.

Whatever our fellow humans, Obama or Osama or others, decide, the college students and youth of Afghanistan, together with all of humanity, wish to to encourage ourselves and others to SMILE.

By smiling, we are grieving over Mankind’s proud, in-humane and self-absorbed behavior. We seek to raise the possibility of a humane love by building wide scale humane relationships and thus enjoy the growth of a majority public practice of humanity’s shared hopes.

We hope to put courage and dignity into our lives and our world, to put delight into the hearts of children and all of Mankind, to suggest that whatever our shared condition, a HUMANE LOVE is possible.

While the US, NATO, Taliban and all other players decide what to do with a country that is not theirs and with a world that does not belong only to them, is there ANY ONE PERSON who understands what the common, average citizen of Afghanistan or citizen of the world wishes for?

Some say realistically but sadly, ‘this Journey will NOT happen….’

What they are saying is ,’ Genuine love, humanity and peace belong only to the poets and the fables. Humanity doesn’t have what it takes.’

It’s sad because both Afghans and the world need encouragement.

It’s sad because reality, perhaps life itself, seems keen for us to remain frozen in the timid beliefs that humanity cannot have the HUMANE RELATIONS which the majority of us want, that the small minority of decision-makers must always have their self-interested ways.

We want to address our own cynicism, to try, to face disappointment, to take our small steps, believing that when we embark on Our Journey to Smile, humanity has to grow and will not shrink back to its unsure and undignified days.

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteer’s Journey To Smile Bringing the Reality of the War In Afghanistan to the United States

Posted by asmig on 5/16/10 • Categorized as News

For the last several years, a group of young Afghani’s in the Bamyan province of Afghanistan have been on “Our Journey To Smile” (http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/).  This journey to smile is their effort to bring about peaceful nonviolent solutions to conflicts in Afghanistan using the principles taught by Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

These brave young Afghani men (and women) are aided by a humanitarian medical doctor from Singapore, Hakim, who previously worked for a Christian based NGO in Afghanistan, in the universal quest to promote nonviolence in a region that has been racked by almost constant violence since the 1970’s.  Douglas Mackey, from the FOR affiliate in the Olympia, WA area has been working with this group for well over one year.

Christian Peace Witness and other organizations have joined the effort to bring a few of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers to the United States this summer to share their story and their journey for nonviolence.  Unfortunately, their request for Visa’s has been denied by the United States government on the basis that the U.S. government feels that they are risks to over stay their visas and not return to Afghanistan.

While attempts are still being made to get them Visa’s, there are still plans being made for a “virtual” tour of the United States for the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers this summer if the Visa’s are not obtained in a timely manner.  This virtual tour would consist of Josh Steiber, a young Iraq war veteran who became a Conscientious Objector, and others touring the U.S. and showing powerful films made by the Afghan youth, to various U.S. audiences and linking live to some of the Afghan youth so U.S. citizens attending these events have the opportunity to interact directly with these brave Afghan Youths who are working for non-violence.

Please go to “Our Journey to Smile” site (http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/) to learn more about these young Afghani’s and view some of their videos.  Also consider doing one or more of the following:

• Contacting your Congress person, Senator, the State Department or White House and ask them to provide Visa’s for these young Afghani’s to come to the United States either this summer (or sometime else in the near future);
• Considering hosting Josh and his traveling partners for an event to talk with the Afghani Youth from Afghanistan (or possibly another country they may visit this summer if the U.S. government continues to deny their VISA request).
• If the tour does not come by to your geographical area, consider hosting a live interaction from your area during a time that the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers will be speaking to another group in this country where Josh Steiber will be.  Your group would be able to ask questions and speak to the Afghan Youth and the other U.S. location live.
• Consider helping to pay for this effort.  Fellowship of Reconciliation is collecting donations for Christian Peace Witness for this event.  Online donations can be made through the FOR website (http://www.forusa.org/) or checks can be mailed to FOR noting that the donation is for helping to fund the visit of the Afghan Youth Peace Fellowship to the United States (either physically or virtually).

Also, please pray for an end to United States military involvement in Afghanistan and for the success of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in their journey to smile.

Christmas in Beit Sahour, Palestine

  From Mazin Qumsiyeh
I have spent 26 Christmases in our homeland but never had a more meaningful one than this one.   In the traditional 12 days of the holiday season, we finished with class work at Bethlehem University.  My masters' students and my undergraduate students did very well throughout the semester as they evolved their critical thinking and analytical skills and developed admirable self-confidence.  Then the holidays came and with them came people from around the world to join in our struggle for freedom.  In particular 73 French activists joined with others to attend and participate in a number of direct actions that challenge the colonial structure.  Starting on 22-23 December in Jerusalem, the group participated in direct action and other events in Shaikh Jarrah, Silwan, and ethnically cleansed villages behind the green line. After two nights in Jerusalem focusing on the increased pressures to isolate and destroy life for the remaining inhabitants of this Palestinian city, the activists were to come to Al-Walaja village (a village that suffers from colonial settlement activities on the small percentage of its land that remains after Israel took over 75%).  The Israeli apartheid army tried in vain to prevent the event from happening from preventing a bus company from transporting activists to blocking the road to the village to threatening people in the village.  Strong will and creative on-the-spot triumphed maneuvers frustrated the army's maneuver and all did in through other means to hold a huge demonstration of at least 200 people (Palestinians and Internationals including some Israelis). Not allowing empty buses to come to pick the demonstrators, we still managed to get everyone out safely to go the manger square for the traditional Christmas procession. With over 50 volunteers wearing bright yellow vests (Handala and Free Palestine prominently printed on them), we distributed over 2000 'Christmas Cards' to the Christian pilgrims.  The cards referred to the wish for peace with justice and linked to the Kairos document, a call by Palestinian Christians issued a year ago (see http://www.kairospalestine.ps)

Later in the afternoon, we traveled to Beit Jala where we shared putting-up a Christmas tree at the home of Abu Michel, a Christian whose land was taken over for the apartheid wall.  Then onto Aida refugee camp for a meaningful Christmas Eve with refugees. Christmas day was spent mostly in Hebron old city including in a demonstration against the racist settlers who continue to attempt to destroy the old city.  The occupation authorities used tear gas and stun grenades and kidnapped two internationals (French and a Scottish, both released later at night). Some Internationals joined us in the candle light march in the Shepherds' field that evening (over 2000 attended, a marvelous event; Above is a video of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34HiwC75MCU ). The next morning, activists went to Qalandia checkpoint and protested the Israeli army preventing Palestinians from entering Jerusalem.  A Palestinian and nine French activists were detained and many were beaten and injured (video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCpB54gcvUc ).  That afternoon, a tree planting event near the wall in Bil'in was met with Israeli tear gas and stun grenades (video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6uqb9ZuuCY ).
Later in the evening, we had an evening of camaraderie and solidarity despite attempts to politicize the event by some. The next day, the delegation visited Nablus (see photos at
http://www.europalestine.com/spip.php?article5724 ) and on the way back
stopped by Beitil and had a demonstration against the closure of roads
inside the west bank to Palestinian travel (photos at http://www.europalestine.com/spip.php?article5721 ). Two were detained and several injuries were reported due to the Israeli assault on the peaceful demonstration.  All detained in these various demonstrations were mistreated
but were eventually released.  

I urge all to come visit us and see what is happening in the "little town of Bethlehem": 170,000 people nearly half of them are refugees crowded into 13% of the original district size of Bethlehem and surrounded by 27 ft high walls and electrified fences.   Many people describe it as a Ghetto or a Bantustan (and the Israeli government calls such remaining Palestinian areas in the Negev and elsewhere as concentration areas).  But on the positive side, the pressure of the occupation and the test of us make us better human beings. The hundreds of internationals that participated in these activities told us how honored and leased they were by having shared a meaningful holiday season with us. Energized, we now planned much bigger activities for this summer (stay tuned).  Similarly, the Palestinians who participated in
the demonstrations or who even simply hosted internationals in their homes or who even saw us on TV or read about us in newspapers all felt a sense of hope and empowerment.  For me personally, having a house full of internationals sleeping everywhere eating together, working together, being attacked by occupation authorities together was the best Christmas gift. Come to think of it, that is what the message of that prince of peace born over two millennia years ago was about. We are the descendents of those first believing Shepherds who saw the star and believed in Jesus. Jesus born in a country called Palestine was thus Palestinian by birth but when he grew up he also challenged a Jewish ruler (Herod) put in place by a Western government.  History does repeat itself although with some variation but the message of love and peace will eventually triumph. This Christmas from here din the Shepherds' field just down the hill from the Church of Nativity, we sang "this in my heart, I do believe.we shall overcome someday" .. Merry Christmas.  by Mazin Qumsiyeh

Veterans for Peace Are Arrested at the White House

Videos and other stuff from the action at the White House. To be clear, the organizers had no expectation of stopping the wars, changing government policy or even influencing public opinion. What we wanted was to keep the spirit of resistance alive and well, empower and encourage solidarity, which we did - and we had a good time doing it, arrests non-withstanding. Read Chris Hedges superb article for more on that.

No Act of Rebellion is Wasted http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_act_of_rebellion_is_wasted_20101213/

Ellen Davidson's pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/ellen.rachel.davidson/CivilResistanceToWarsAtTheWhiteHouseOn121610#

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7642244-video-135-choose-arrest-at-white-house-as-veteranled-civil-resistance-demands-stop-these-wars/video/68878861-the-real-news-report-on-war-protest-at-white-house

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7642244-video-135-choose-arrest-at-white-house-as-veteranled-civil-resistance-demands-stop-these-wars

Democracy Now! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfCaqqMyAfc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YQoydgMXkU

UPI http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/News/Veterans-For-Peace-protest-war-in-Afghanistan/4342/1/

Bill Perry's pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=338596&id=744057563&l=dc00ed2c77

Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/15/ellsberg-antiwar-protesters-white-house-fence_n_797410.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-S4SIre3kk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS6nPSOLyw4

http://rt.com/news/afghan-protests-white-house-obama/

Andrew Courtney's photo album: DC,VFP demo 12.16.10

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Daniel-Ellsberg-Ray-McGov-by-Rob-Kall-101218-333.html

www. stopthesewars.org

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Inmates in Georgia Prisons Use Contraband Phones to Coordinate Protest

By SARAH WHEATON  Published: December 13, 2010 U.S. NEWS
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=713691&f=21

The prison protest has entered the wireless age.

Inmates in at least seven Georgia prisons have used contraband cellphones to coordinate a nonviolent strike this weekend, saying they want better living conditions and to be paid for work they do in the prisons.

Inmates said they would not perform chores, work for the Corrections Department's industrial arm or shop at prison commissaries until a list of demands are addressed, including compensation for their work, more educational opportunities, better food and sentencing rules changes.  The protest began Thursday, but inmates said that organizers had spent months building a web of disparate factions and gangs - groups not known to cooperate - into a unified coalition using text messaging and word of mouth.  Officials at the Georgia Department of Corrections said Monday that four facilities remain in a lockdown status and there have been no major incidents or issues reported.

Inmates complained of scattered clashes with guards.

Smuggled cellphones have been commonplace in prisons for years; Charles Manson was caught with one in a California penitentiary this month. Officials worry that inmates will use them to issue orders to accomplices on the outside or to plan escape attempts.

But the Georgia protest appears to be the first use of the technology to orchestrate a grass-roots movement behind bars.  Reached on their cellphones inside several prisons, six participants in the strike described a feat of social networking more reminiscent of Capitol Hill vote-whipping than jailhouse rebellion.

Conditions at the state prisons have been in decline, the inmates said. But "they took the cigarettes away in August or September, and a bunch of us just got to talking, and that was a big factor," said Mike, an inmate at the Smith State Prison in Downing who declined to give his full name.

The organizers set a date for the start and, using contact numbers from time spent at other prisons or connections from the outside, began sending text messages to inmates known to hold sway."  Anybody that has some sort of dictatorship or leadership amongst the crowds," said Mike, one of several prisoners who contacted The New York Times to publicize their strike.  "We have to come together and set aside all differences, whites, blacks, those of us that are affiliated in gangs."  Now, Mike said, every dormitory at participating prisons has at least one point man with a phone who can keep the other inmates in the loop.

Miguel, another prisoner at Smith who also declined to give his full name, estimated that about 10 percent of all inmates had phones." We text very frequently," he said. "We try and keep up with what's going on in the news and what's going on at other facilities. Those are our voices."

They are also a source of profit to the people providing the contraband. Miguel said he paid $400 for a phone that would have cost $20 on the street.  Mike said he bought his through a guard. "That's how a lot of us get our phones," Mike said.  Inmates said guards had started confiscating the phones, and they complained that hot water and heat had been turned off.

The Corrections Department placed several of the facilities where inmates planned to strike under indefinite lockdown on Thursday, according to local news reports.  "We're hearing in the news they're putting it down as we're starting a riot, so they locked all the prison down," said an inmate at Hays State Prison in Trion who refused to give his name.  But, he said, "We locked ourselves down."

The inmates contend that if they have a source of income in the prison and better educational
opportunities to prepare them for release, violence and recidivism will go down.  But the Department of Corrections has not publicly acknowledged the protest.

Mike said that the leaders were focused on telling inmates to remain patient, and not to consider resorting to violence.

The inmates' closest adviser outside prison walls is Elaine Brown, a longtime advocate for prisoners whose son is incarcerated at Macon State Prison, one of the other major protest sites.  A former Black Panther leader who is based in Oakland, Calif., Ms. Brown helped distill the inmate complaints into a list of demands.

She held a conference call on Sunday evening to develop a strategy with various groups, including the Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Nation of Islam.
_______________________________________________ 

The Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor, December 11, 2010

It's the birthday of writer Grace Paley, (books by this author) born in the Bronx (1922). Her parents were Jewish Socialist immigrants from Ukraine, Isaac and Manya Gutseit (which they changed to Goodside). They spoke Yiddish and Russian at home, and English in public; her father learned English by reading Dickens. Her family was affectionate and noisy — they loved to sing and to argue about politics. Young Grace absorbed different immigrant languages in the streets of the Bronx, and she loved listening to the gossip of family and friends and neighbors. She said: "The word gossip, which is considered so terrible, is really just another way of storytelling. And it's the way women tell stories, and it's kind of denigrated, 'cause its women who do it." And she said, "It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life."
After high school, she took a class on English literature from W.H. Auden, who was her hero. During a lecture, he asked if there were any poets in the class who would like to meet with him and discuss their work. Out of 250 people, only five raised their hands, including Grace. She arranged to meet with Auden, and after an initial setback because she went to the wrong café, she did meet him and he read her poems, which she had written in his style, using British phrases and formal language. She said: "You understand I was a Bronx kid. We went through a few poems, and he kept asking me, do you really talk like that? And I kept saying, Oh yeah, well, sometimes. That was the great thing I learned from Auden: that you'd better talk your own language. Then I asked him what young writers now ask me — and I always tell them this story — I said to Auden, Well, do you think I should keep writing? He laughed and then became very solemn. If you're a writer, he said, you'll keep writing no matter what. That's not a question a writer should ask."
So she kept on writing poems, but she had plenty of other things in her life — she did occasional work as a typist, she was active in community projects, and she took care of her two young children. She had moved to Greenwich Village when she got married, and she spent many afternoons in Washington Square Park, hanging out with other mothers, hearing their stories. She would write down poems on scraps of paper, but she was too busy to think of writing anything much longer. Then she got sick, and she sent her kids to daycare so that she could recover. She had several days a week all to herself, so she started to write stories, drawing on the voices of the women she spent time with in the park every afternoon, writing about the kinds of events and characters that filled their lives.
She wrote three stories, and she showed them to a couple of people, including her friend Tibby McCormick, whose kids played with her kids. Tibby had just separated from her husband Kenneth McCormick, an editor at Doubleday, and Tibby guilt-tripped him into reading Paley's stories by telling him that their kids spent a lot of time hanging out at Paley's house and it was the least he could do. So he read them, and he came to see Paley and told that if she would write seven more stories, he would publish a book. And that was The Little Disturbances of Man (1959). Her first story in the collection, "Goodbye and Good Luck," begins: "I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose. I wasn't no thinner then, only more stationary in the flesh. In time to come, Lillie, don't be surprised — change is a fact of God. From this no one is excused." The whole story had sprung from that single phrase, "I was popular in certain circles," which one of her aunts had said many years earlier. Paley said that she often based a story around a single line or phrase or way of speaking that rattled around in her head until she created a story for it.
She published just two more collections of stories, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974) and Later the Same Day (1985). But she gained a devoted following, and when her Collected Stories was released in 1994, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She knew each story inside and out, and when someone would tell her that they loved one of her specific stories, her response was: "What's wrong with the rest?"
She never made her living as a writer alone. She taught at Sarah Lawrence and the City College of New York. And she was a passionate activist for social causes, protesting against nuclear proliferation and against wars from Vietnam to Iraq, and lobbying for women's rights. She said: "I think that any life that's interesting, lived, has a lot of pulls in it. It seems to me natural that I'd be pulled in those ways. [...] And you are privileged somehow to do as much as you can. I wouldn't give any of it up. And I've talked a lot about this with women's groups because I think that in whatever is gained, that everything, that the world should be gained. But that nothing should be given up. I think a good hard greed is the way to approach life."
She said: "You can't write without a lot of pressure. Sometimes the pressure comes from anger, which then changes into a pressure to write. It's not so much a matter of getting distance as simply a translation. I felt a lot of pressure writing some of those stories about women. Writers are lucky because when they're angry, the anger — by habit almost — I wouldn't say transcends but becomes an acute pressure to write, to tell. Some guy, he's angry, he wants to take a poke at someone — or he kicks a can, or sets fire to the house, or hits his wife, or the wife smacks the kid. Then again, it's not always violent. Some people go out and run for three hours. Some people go shopping. The pressure from anger is an energy that can be violent or useful or useless. Also the pressure doesn't have to be anger. It could be love. One could be overcome with feelings of lifetime love or justice. Why not?"

TO HEAR THE ENTIRE PROGRAM GO TO:
http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/writers_almanac/2010/12/twa_20101211_64.mp3?_kip_ipx=1245338883-1292186464