GRACE PALEY: Pressing the Limits of Action

Jules and Helen Rabin's Weekly Vigil

2011-12-30T10:03:00.000-08:00

With War Over, Staging A Final Vigil

Saturday, 12/24/11 9:30am

MP3 | Download MP3 - Vermont Public Radio

VPR/John Dillon

Helen and Jules Rabin have occupied this sidewalk weekly in Montpelier in vigil for the Iraq War. They say they will hang up their signs at the end of the year.

(Host) The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq means the end of weekly anti-war protests for one central Vermont couple.

But as VPR's John Dillon reports, other activists say they'll continue to stage demonstrations until all U.S. soldiers come home from Afghanistan and other conflicts.

(Dillon) For nine years, veteran peace activists Jules and Helen Rabin have held a midday Friday vigil in front of the Montpelier post office.

They usually arrive around noon, unpack their signs, and stand with a half-dozen others as the lunchtime crowd streams by. A few offer silent nods, others look away or say some harsh words. And some, like Anne Sarcka, give a hug of gratitude as they walk past.

(Sarcka) "You are something else. Thank you for being out here all these years."

(Dillon) Jules Rabin is 87, a short, spry man with an expressive face and a ready smile. Before he hoists his sign, he stuffs disposable hand warmers inside his large leather gloves.

(Rabin) "I chill easily. And we've gone through a couple of boxes, big boxes of these."

(Dillon) Rabin says he feels the wind and chill more these days, so with the withdrawal of U-S troops from Iraq he's ending this form of outdoor activism.

(Rabin) "We've been doing this for nine years. And Helen and I been here just - with a few exceptions - just about every week for nine years. But we're getting cold and we're getting tired."

(Dillon) Rabin is a baker, well known for his sourdough bread, a former college professor, and a life-long peace activist. He protested the Vietnam War and in the early 1960s, Rabin took part in an 8,000 mile disarmament march across North America and Europe.

He says his Montpelier vigil is just one small part of a movement this year that has swept from Arab capitals to Wall Street.

(Rabin) "People are learning that it's not enough to vote every two or four years. You vote with your feet and you vote with a sign you make yourself when the spirit moves you. Something terrible is happening in the country then you express yourself. And that's a citizens vote, too."

(Dillon) Rabin has a new sign today. It says: "One war is over, now use defense spending to keep people warm."

It refers to federal cuts to a program that helps low income people heat their homes.

Helen Rabin says one goal of their weekly vigil was simply to remind the public what their government was doing around the world.

(Helen Rabin) "I feel like the destruction of Iraq, the social fabric of Iraq hasn't been in the forefront of people minds. And we were concerned about that. It's been mainly that, it's not like we feel like we could stop the war. It's just to keep the issue in front of people".

(Dillon) While the Rabins plan to hang up their signs others will maintain the weekly vigil.

Dave Connor is associate pastor at the Old Meeting House in East Montpelier.

(Connor) "We're happy that the war is officially ended in Iraq but we should probably be paying reparations right way for what we've done and left in Iraq behind us. We want to bring the troops home from Afghanistan. We support the troops in every way but we think the safest and best place for them is outside of Afghanistanand back home doing National Guard work in this country."

(Dillon) Connor says the Rabins are an inspiration for their enduring dedication to promoting peace.

A Man of Flesh & Cardboard: a play about Bradley Manning

2011-12-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

Politics and Protest in Papier-Mâché Heads

By DANIEL M. GOLD

Published: December 12, 2011

Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet company, a staple of the Off Off Broadway calendar for 40 years, is a refreshing reminder of the vitality and power of street theater. Part carnival, part protest, all pageant, Bread and Puppet productions express political outrage and satire, sometimes coarse and raw.

Enlarge This Image

Lee Wexler/Images for Innovation

Bread and Puppet Theater is presenting "Attica," a 1971 piece, at the Theater for the New City.

Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow@NYTimestheaterfor theater news and reviews from Broadway and beyond.

Using outsize papier-mâché heads and intricate masks and costumes, the shows offer a funhouse-mirror reality. Narration is barked through a megaphone, and words are usually secondary to the music: loud beats of a drum, cymbal or gong, backing Mr. Schumann’s screechy violin and razzy kazoo. Plots are mostly sketchy, but images nestle firmly in memory. There isn’t a lot of nuance in a cartoon.

Now at the Theater for the New City, the company, based in Glover, Vt., is offering a program of two works. (It is also presenting a separate show for young audiences called “Man = Carrot Circus.”) The first, “Attica,” revives a piece Mr. Schumann first created in the weeks following the notorious 1971 riot at that prison and its aftermath; a giant-headed governor is undisturbed by the bloody resolution he orders, while a “gentleman angel” hovers over a prisoner’s corpse.

A new work, “Man of Flesh & Cardboard,” is an extended howl at the treatment of Bradley Manning, the Army private now imprisoned for more than 18 months on charges that he provided government files, including a video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad, to WikiLeaks. (On Friday, a day before Private Manning’s 24th birthday, he will have his first public hearing: the military equivalent of a grand jury will be convened to determine whether prosecutors may proceed with his court-martial.)

Much is inscrutable in “Man of Flesh & Cardboard,” which presumes a great deal about the case. At times two women portray a Private Manning and a Soldier Manning. News organizations — embodied as an old, compliant woman — are indicted for being credulous and complicit with the military. At one point, figures clad in black pirouette with their arms extended, like the posed prisoner in Abu Ghraib; at another, cardboard skeletons share a dance of death.

Now in his 70s, Mr. Schumann shows that he remains urgently invested in the politics of the age. In introductory comments to the audience, he calls Private Manning a prisoner “for having committed the crime of exposing war crimes.”

When a non-violent protest ends in death

2011-12-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

Nabi Saleh, a small village of about 550 people, 20 km northwest of Ramallah
in the West Bank, has been organising non-violent protests against land theft
since 2009. On December 9, 2011, the Friday demonstration began as it
always did: villagers, international and Israeli activists gathered in the centre of
the village and marched towards land usurped by the Israeli settlement of
Halamish. Soon after, the Israeli military drove to the entrance of the village
in jeeps and began firing teargas at the protesters.

Mustafa Tamimi, 28, was protesting with other young men from the village. As
the jeeps stopped to let a bulldozer clear rocks that had been placed in the road
to prevent their entrance, Tamimi and a few others moved closer to throw stones
in a symbolic gesture against occupation.An Israeli soldier opened his door, aimed
his gun and shot Tamimi directly in the face with an "extended range" teargas
canister; he was shot from a distance of less than 10 metres, according to witnesses.
Tamimi died from his injuries.

Some experts trace conflict in the area back to 1976, when the illegal Israeli
settlement of Halamish (or Neveh Tzuf) was established on land belonging to
Nabi Saleh. Since then, the settlement has continued to grow and expand. In 2008,
residents of the village challenged the construction of a fence by Israeli settlers
on private Palestinian land. When the case was brought to Israeli court, it was
decided that the fence must be removed. However, like many Israeli court rulings
on Palestinian grievances, it was not upheld "on the ground" and the settlement
continued to illegally annex Palestinian land.

Soon after, settlers seized control of several springs which were all located on
land belonging to Nabi Saleh residents. Today, around 13 per cent of the villagers
has been arrested by Israeli authorities for participating in the demonstrations -
including 29 children and four women.

Recently, two prominent leaders of the non-violent struggle, Naji Tamimi and Bassem
Tamimi, were arrested and remain prisoners in Israel. They are charged with "incitement"
and organising "illegal" demonstrations.

fter Friday prayers, residents of Nabi Saleh, with international and Israeli activists, marched towards land stolen by an Israeli ettlement [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Israeli soldiers arrived and blocked the road leading out of the village [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, attended the demonstration [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

La Rue was welcomed to the village by a special, Palestinian-brand of modern art: empty teargas grenades hanging from wires [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

The demonstration escalated when Israeli soldiers fired teargas at the protesters [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

With the illegal Halamish settlement in the background, Palestinian youth throw stones at Israeli soldiers [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Some youth managed to throw some of the teargas canisters back at the Israeli soldiers [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Mustafa Tamimi was shot in the face by an extended range teargas canister from a distance of less than 10 metres, according to witnesses [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

There is no hospital in Nabi Saleh, the closest one is 20 km and a few checkpoints away in Ramallah. But without an ambulance on the scene, protesters had to wait for the first available car to try to save Tamimi [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

It was clear to witnesses that Tamimi's injuries were critical, and that he had lost a great deal of blood [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Tamimi's sister Ola (left) and cousin Nariman (middle) were prevented from reaching critically-injured Tamimi by the Israeli soldiers [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

A Palestinian woman angry at the soldiers after they shot Tamimi [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Demonstrators non-violently protesting the shooting of Tamimi [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

For the first time, a resident of Nabi Saleh was killed in the weekly demonstrations, and it came as a shock to villagers and international activists alike [credit: Lazar Simeonov]

Lazar Simeonov is a freelance photographer based in Ramallah, West Bank. You can visit his website here.

Howard Zinn Puppet Show at SUNY New Paltz

2011-12-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

The Red Wing Blackbird Theater presents a short "mic check" show prior to a Noam Chomsky lecture.

The tape of the lecture which was made by SUNY follows:

Nikky Finney Is Awarded the Poetry Prize at National Book Awards

2011-11-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

Grace Paley Tribute Reading

2011-11-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

As part of a nation-wide celebration of her birthday,
the Joiner Center will be honoring the life and work
of activist and writer Grace Paley.

Featuring readings of Grace’s work by local publishers Mark Pawlak of
Hanging Loose Press, Jenny Barber of Salamander Journal, Pam Annas of
Radical Teacher, Doug Holder of Ibbetson Press, Afaa M. Weaver
formerly of 7TH Son, Jill McDonough and others.

Saturday, December 10th , 2011
4:00 pm
Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church
1555 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA
Reception to follow

Anyone requiring disability-related accommodations in order to fully
participate in this event should go to www.ada.umb.edu and complete
the request form.

The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequence
at the University of Massachusetts Boston

617.287.5850 | joinercenter@umb.edu | http://www.umb.edu/joinercenter

Grace at the Women's Pentagon Action

2011-11-21T13:36:00.001-08:00

Grace Paley Presente!

The War Economy

2011-11-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

When you are the New York Times, or in this case, one of the only real liberal columnists working for the Times anymore, there are apparently some things you just cannot mention.

How else to explain how a seemingly intelligent economist like Paul Krugman can scorch the Republicans in Congress and President Obama for failing to deal with the crisis of joblessness and deepening economic collapse in the U.S., but never once mention the endless and pointless wars into which the country is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars a year?

Here's Krugman:
"I don't mean to dismiss concerns about the long-run U.S. budget picture. If you look at fiscal prospects over, say, the next 20 years, they are indeed deeply worrying, largely because of rising healthcare costs. But the experience of the past two years has overwhelmingly confirmed what some of us tried to argue from the beginning: The deficits we're running right now--deficits we should be running, because deficit spending helps support a depressed economy -- are no threat at all."

What planet is Prof. Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, living on?

The U.S. has over the past decade spent some two trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the so-called "War" on Terror. The actual spending has been much higher (as the honest Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has explained), because only about 50% of the U.S. budget each year, including expenditures for "intelligence" and the military, is covered by tax collections from individuals, corporations, import duties and other federal fees and collections. The rest is financed with borrowed money, all of which has to be repaid in later years with interest. This country has spent another $5 trillion or so on the bloated military budget over the last decade, to finance a military complex that costs as much as the rest of the world combined spends on war and preparing for war. And again, only half of that amount was actual tax revenues. The rest has to be paid back over coming years with interest, because it's all been borrowed.

Hey Krugman! Why don't you tell people the real reason why the U.S. has a "deeply worrying" fiscal problem looming over the next couple of decades? Isn't it really because we've got to pay for all these wars and all the militarism that we've been buying on credit? Be honest. It's not future health care spending that's the problem. It's current and future military spending.

But that's only half of it.

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/757

for a chart from the War Resisters League:
http://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/FY2012piechart-color.pdf

Consensus in Washington Square

2011-10-18T20:57:00.001-07:00

Bread and Puppet's Memorial for Bob Nichol's

2011-09-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Part One: The Bread and Puppet Band, Duncan Nichols, Peter Schumann, Clare Dolan

Part Two: Joel Kovel, Jules Rabin, Margo Lee Sherman, Pati Hernandez, Becky Dennison and DeeDee Halleck speak about Bob Nichols.

Part Three: Margo Lee Sherman, Nidia Bustos, Nora Paley, Max Schumann and Sacred Harp singing in the Pine Forest in Glover, Vermont.

Celebration of Bob Nichols: August 20, 2011 in Glover, Vermont

2011-08-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

Bread and Puppet Theater announces a celebration of the
life of friend and colleague, Bob Nichols. The event will be held
at the Bread and Puppet farm in Glover, Vermont, starting with a
procession and ending with a pot luck dinner. August 20, starting
at 6 PM.

Robert Nichols was a poet and novelist, the author of In the Air, a
collection of short stories, and The Steam Room, a work of comic
fiction, among other works. Mr. Nichols was involved in the
anti-war, anti-nuclear, and conservation movements for decades.
He had a background in landscape architecture and playground
design. The following is the story of Bob's last arrest.

Boots Wardinski, 64, a Newbury farmer and former Marine,
being escorted out of Congressman Welch's Main Street Burlington
office after closing on Monday.

The 'Occupation' Of Rep. Welch's Office, Published 4/1/07
by Robert Nichols
On March 21, I was among the 30 or so protesters who occupied U.S.
Rep. Peter Welch's office in Burlington. Similar actions, part of
the Occupation Project sponsored by Voices for Creative
Nonviolence, have been taking place in other states. The point is
to occupy, or rather take a stand, in the office of a congressional
representative in order to extract a pledge from the congressman.
The pledge? To vote against additional war funding -- in this case,
the spending bill authorizing another $100 billion-plus for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the days before the protest, I learned that some established
Vermont anti-war groups were not taking part in the Occupation
Project. They had met with the congressman and understood his
position. He had campaigned as an end-the-war advocate. Peter Welch
was the wrong target, they thought.

Still, under the circumstances, it seemed wrong not to take some
action. This was a bill to continue the war's funding. The
Constitution was written by persons who were former subjects of
King George III and whose memories were still fresh. The check
against a runaway executive was to grant Congress the power of the
purse. The spending bill, in this case, seemed the last check, a
defining moment.

And so we "occupied" Peter Welch's office. We were greeted
cordially by the staff. It was the day before the vote. We were
told the congressman was busy in committee meetings on Capitol Hill
but would address us by telephone when he came out. A microphone
connected to the telephone was set up on a desk. The 30 of us sat
on the floor in good spirits. There was a song. Then we read out
the names of the dead GIs and Iraqi civilians.

Then Welch got on the phone, and a dialogue began. But as we
learned that the congressman would not take the pledge or say how
he would vote one way or another, the conversation grew more
impassioned and hostile.

The police appeared at the office at closing time -- they were
extremely courteous and good-natured (this is Vermont's most
sophisticated city after all). By that time, just six of us
remained. We followed our plans to be arrested, choosing to leave
in handcuffs. We made our statement to the press.

Still, what we had done left me with an uneasy feeling. I was
disappointed. My guess was that Peter Welch was acting against his
own conscience, a difficult and perhaps agonizing choice, in order
to help the House Democrats maintain discipline and stay united.
Somehow or other, the situation could not be left that way,
however.

The next morning -- this was the day of the final budget vote in
the House, the day for the Democratic majority to get its act
together to pass a measure giving more than $124 billion to fund
the war in order to end the war. This evidently was, in political
and legislative terms, the only and best action. It was still
unacceptable. It was a real disaster for the country and somehow
shameful.

And so two of us went back to Welch's office -- I and another
Thetford resident, Will Allen, an organic farmer -- and announced
that we were there for something that is part of the creative
nonviolent tradition: to fast in order to speak truth to power. We
were to fast until Peter Welch, in a sense speaking to all
Vermonters, made a clear and honest statement of the consequences
of the supplemental funding bill -- consequences that include
further casualties and horrors in Iraq in the coming weeks, months
and year. We would fast until we heard him make that clear and
honest statement.

But actually he could not say what we wanted to hear.

There was another reason for our being there. The reason was to
mourn the passing of our nation's institutional memory. I, myself,
and Will Allen are both old persons. The situation now is the same
as it was at the end of the Vietnam war in 1968-69. That war might
have ended then, but it did not. The reason is that no one in the
administration -- and too few in the country at large --could say
the war was all a mistake. A million Vietnamese killed, tens of
thousands of our own soldiers dead or coming back with terrible
wounds or traumatized by having to kill people in front of their
own houses. All for no reason. All because of a mistake.

We waited and fasted until we heard from Welch. Both Will Allen and
I count ourselves personal friends of Peter Welch. But he could not
admit that there were unspeakable consequences to the bill. He
tried. He wrote out a statement for us. But he couldn't state the
facts.

This is how the "occupation" event was covered in the Burlington Free Press
Six arrested in protest at Welch's office
March 22, 2007 By Sam Hemingway
Six demonstrators were arrested on trespass charges Wednesday night inside the Burlington offices of Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., while protesting what they said was Welch’s unwillingness to firmly oppose the Iraq war.

“Last November, we elected a congressman we thought would end the war but instead the war is being expanded,” said Patrick Kearney, 55, of Thetford as he emerged from the building in handcuffs and escorted by police. “We can’t get a yes or no answer from our congressman about whether or not he is going to fund the war.”

The six, all men ranging in age from 27 to 87, were unhandcuffed by police and released after peacefully departing the building. They were told to report to the Burlington Police Department today to receive their arrest citations. The arrests were carried out by three officers, Chief Tom Tremblay and Deputy Chief Mike Shirling.

Later Wednesday night, Welch spokesman Andrew Savage said Welch would prefer that the charges against the six men not be prosecuted. “We’re fine with the charges’ being dropped,” Savage said.

The arrests came after a five-hour sit-in at Welch’s office by 30 demonstrators who were demanding that he oppose a spending bill up for a House vote today that contains funding for the Iraq war.

When the office closed at 6 p.m., the demonstrators were told they must leave or face arrest. Most of the demonstrators chose not to undergo arrests for family and other reasons and left the office, said Michael Colby, 43, of Worcester.

The $124 billion funding bill provides money for war operations but also has language requiring that all troops be out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2008.

In addition, the bill sets a series of deadlines for turning over military control of Iraq to Iraqi troops and contains guarantees that U.S. combat troops have proper armor before going into battle. The Senate is preparing similar legislation, and President Bush has vowed to veto the measure.

“We are not for this war, and we do not want to pay a dollar more for this war here in Vermont,” Liza Earle of Richmond told Tricia Coates, Welch’s state office director shortly after the group entered the office at 1 p.m. “You cannot fund and oppose this war at the same time.”

At first, the group said they would not leave until they had a conversation with Welch. The group included Vermont state poet Grace Paley of Newbury, perennial Liberty Union candidate Peter Diamondstone of Brattleboro and Dennis Morrisseau of West Pawlet, who ran as the Impeach Bush Now candidate against Welch last year.

As they waited for Welch’s phone call, members of the group discussed their opposition to the war, read the names of American and Iraqi war dead and, at one point, sang the protest song “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

“If he votes for $100 billion for the war, that could have gone for veterans’ benefits,” said Boots Wardinski, 63, of Newbury, who later became one of the six people arrested. “So if he votes for that, he’s saying to the veterans: ‘Screw you.’”

The conversations among the demonstrators and Coates and Welch were mostly cordial. Welch staff members passed out chocolate cookies to the demonstrators, and Buddy, a golden retriever owned by Welch staff member Susan Elliott, occasionally meandered about the room.

At 3:35 p.m., Welch called from his Washington, D.C., office and told the group via speaker phone that he was undecided on the $124 billion military spending bill.

In his remarks, however, Welch appeared to be leaning toward supporting the measure, saying it might be the best way for Congress to mandate a quick, orderly troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“What my decision will be based on is my judgment, and I’ll have to make this judgment as to whether voting for or against the bill is going to hasten the day when we can end this war,” Welch told the group.

Welch also reminded the demonstrators that he supported other strongly worded legislation aimed at ending the war. During his campaign, he often spoke of his opposition to the war and called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who did resign after the Democrats won control of Congress in November.

Welch spoke to the group for a half hour but failed to convince them that the bill he remained undecided on had merit. Instead, his stance drew sharp criticism from the group, most of whom said they voted for Welch in November.

“It’s absurd, when I think about it, that my future and the future of other students all over Iraq and Vermont and our country is being compromised because we are pouring all of our resources into a black hole,” said Renee Morley, a University of Vermont student living in Essex.

Wednesday’s demonstration was one of a series of actions backed by the Voices for Creative Non-violence, a Chicago-based group that has staged protests in states around the country to pressure members of Congress to oppose war funding.

The bill that was the target of the protesters has split the anti-war movement. MoveOn.org, a liberal Internet organization, supports the bill. Savage said Welch had received “dozens” of phone calls Wednesday from around the country urging him to vote for the legislation.

In addition to Kearney, Wardinski and Colby, the demonstrators arrested were Bob Nichols, 87, of Thetford; Palmer Legare, 27, of Cabot; and Will Allen, 70, of Thetford.

Shouting in the Dark

2011-08-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

This exquisite program by May Ying Welsh shows the terrible repression against peaceful protesters in Bahrain.

Tribute to Robert Nichols

2011-06-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

Tribute to Bob Nichols’
Poetry, Plays and Stories
With readings and dramatizations by Tony Melian, Amy Trompetter, Margo Lee Sherman,
Bill Craig, Didi Pershouse, Anne Noonan and others…
works include
Slow Newsreel of a Man Riding Train,
Address to the Smaller Animals,
The Secret Radio Station,
The Mirror of Narcissus,
and more…

New York City:
Thursday, June 30, 7:30PM
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue
(between 9th and 10th streets)
through the red door and downstairs
reception to follow

Thetford, Vermont:

Saturday, June 25, 7:00PM
Latham Library
On the Thetford Hill Green
Downstairs
Pot luck deserts to follow

Boston (same date as NY reading):
Bob Nichols work will be read in
Cambridge, MA, Thursday, June 30
Starting at 2pm at the
Friends Meeting House, Brattle Street
Readings of Bob's work all afternoon
then at 7 continue Bob's work with other poets
also reading their own.

Sponsored by the Joiner Center which is also sponsoring:

Thursday, June 30

Bob Nichols Memorial Day
Location: UMASS BOSTON

9:00 – 11:30	Panel: Writing and Activism W-6-English Department Lounge
12:00-1:30	Student Reading W-6-English Department Lounge
12:00-1:30	Odysseus Project Healey Library -UL, Mac Lab A
2:00 – 4:00	Bob Nichols: Readings from his works W-6-English Department Lounge Location: Cambridge Friends Meeting House
Grace Paley and Sandy Taylor Memorial Reading: 7:00	Ellen LaForge Poetry Prize Winner, Taylor Stoehr, Nguyen Quang Thieu, Bruce Weigl Cambridge Friends Meeting House 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge, MA 02138

Bread and Puppet
There will be readings at Bread and Puppet during the summer.
Date TBA

Joel Kovel and Bob Nichols.

Bob at Bread and Puppet Theater circa 2009

Shawheen Hazratti, Grace, Joel Kovel, Bob Nichols and Molly Kovel Bob was Grace Paley's beloved partner.

Women March for Peace in Barcelona

2011-05-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Photo by Vincenzo Rigogliuso
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acampadabcnfoto/5758869796/in/photostream/
At the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona, women declared May 24 to be the day of women for peace and disarmament. Not one Euro for WARS is their sign. On May 27 the many thousand who had been camping out in the Plaza were forcefully removed by Catalan police. For more images, go to http://www.deepdishwavesofchange.org/blog/2011/05/spanish-rebellion-publishes-declaration-principles

One Village Resists in Palestine

2011-05-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

So many have asked, "Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Where is the Palestinian Martin Luther King?" They are in every face in Budrus and in every face in the nonviolent movements across the West Bank, from Bil'in to Nabi Saleh. The United States called for nonviolence, and they got it. Now they need to support it by investing in the individuals and methodologies that will allow nonviolent resistance to flourish.

Peace Pentagon Exhibition with Bob Nichols Interview

2011-05-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Film by Liza Bear
The 339 Lafayette Building, sometimes referred to as the Peace Pentagon, is in limbo, as the board of directors wrestles with structural problems and rising construction costs. This video was made over a year ago at an exhibition at the Mulberry Street Library of architectural designs submitted to a Peace Pentagon competition. One of those interviewed is Bob Nichols, Grace's partner, who died last year. He and Grace were often seen in the Lafayette Street Building, where Grace was on the board of the War Resisters League.

Botella al mar Bottle at Sea

2011-04-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Incredible sadness today as we learn of the death of the Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni whose body was found in Gaza City.
The only response is poetry
and the hope that someday his message of peace will be carried by some random ocean current to a poet like Cuba's amazing Nancy Moréjon or our own beautiful Grace Paley. DeeDee

Botella al Mar
Bottle at Sea
by Nancy Moréjon
A Luz y Mario Benedetti

Una botella de vino tinto al mar.
Son las tres de la tarde.
Una botella de vino tinto sin licor,
sin apenas los restos de eso vapores
que nos transportana lo indecible.
Una botella con un mensaje
para quien?
Era un papel muy blanco
emborronado con una escritura
minuscula casi ilegible. Alli decia:
"Escribo en este papel
que introduczco en esta botella
para Nadie
y para todo aquel
o aquella
que quisiera leerma
en las prozimas eras."
Salta un pez desde la espuma
y tumba el lapiz y el papel
con los cuales me expreso.
Rueda los dos
y sobre el mar
de grafito
viene un galeon diminuto
Y unos negros
amordazados
dando alaridos
y una niña hermosa y sola
de pupilas abiertas
y un duendecillo feo pero audaz.
Habia escrito estas peripecias
con el aliento de salitre
cuando el papel regreso a mis manos
como por arte de magia
A quien pueda interesar:
"buenos dias, buenas noches."
Una botella de vino tinto al mar.
Son las tres de la tarde.

A red wine bottle at sea.
It is three o'clock in the afternoon.
An empty red wine bottle,
almost without the remains of those fumes
that transpost us to an unmentionable state.
A bottle with a message,
for whom?
It was a white paper
scribble on with an almost
illegible small writing. It said:
"I am writing on this paper
that I put into this bottle
for Nobody
and for any man
or woman
who could read me
in the next ages."
A fish jumps out of the sea
and knocks down the pencil and paper
with which I express myself.
The two roll down
and on the sea
of graphite
comes a small galleon
with some muzzled
black people
screaming
and a beautiful lonely girl
with her eyes wide open
and an ugly but brave little fairy.
I had written these adventures
with my salty breath
when the paper returned to my hands
as if by magic.
To whom it may concern:
"Good morning, good night."
A red wine bottle at sea.
It is three o'clock in the afternoon.

(Translated by Gabriel Abudu)

Juliano Mer-Khamis Killed in Jenin

2011-04-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

From Mazin Qumsiyeh

Humanity mourns. We are shocked. Juliano Mer-Khamis, a friend and fellow peace activist, was murdered in Jenin. The masked killer/s whoever they were were cowards whose madness will not deter those of us who continue to work for justice and peace for all. If they thought they could kill coexistence and love in the holy land by killing a symbol and a great
activist, they are mistaken. Juliano symbolizes what many of us have worked for: a transformation of our homeland into a pluralistic democratic state where every human being regardless of his religion (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) would be treated with dignity and respect. Fundamentalist notions of superiority were at odds with this message. His killers will not get their way and justice will prevail. But Juliano’s loss is a shock to all of
us.

Juliano was a superb human being who embodied the best qualities of activism and dedicated leadership for human rights, justice and peace. He was my age and I first met him a few years ago when we brought him for the Connecticut screening of the film Arna’s children, the story of his mother and the Children of Jenin Refugee camp (see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNGmA8Ma1UM for scenes from the film and Juliano’s words). On numerous occasions over the past few years I visited Jenin Freedom Theater that Juliano cofounded and that injected so much beauty and hope into the lives of the people at Jenin Refugee Camp. See http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/

Juliano took the characters of compassion and caring of his Israeli Jewish mother (she herself worked to challenge Zionist supremacy and fundamentalist idiocies for decades) and gentile love of land and people and pacifist characters of his Palestinian father. He exemplified everything that I and millions of others aspired to: coexistence, tolerance, nonviolence, peace,
love, passion for life, richness in diversity and so much more. He had a two year old child and his wife as I knew was pregnant or may have just delivered their second child. His absence will be felt but I for one will work to ensure that his work continues and accelerates. The best answer to violence is to intensify our work and build on the vision thus never allowing these forces of hate to destroy the future. As to who killed Juliano: all humans are guilty.. our inability to rise as a species beyond violence is largely due to our apathy and indifference to the suffering of fellow human beings. It is telling that many political leaders (from Hamas, Fatah, Israeli leaders) remain silent on the murder of Juliano when they so readily spoke at other convenient political junctures. Those who are apathetic are just as guilty as those fundamentalist racists who ordered this killing or pulled the trigger to shoot fellow human beings. I for one will have a lot of pain in my heart for Juliano, for Bassem, for Jawaher, for Rachel and all the other friends we lost along the way. We must make sure that their murders do not go in vain and the best thing we can do is increase our efforts to continue the path and bring others to this path. Killers must know that 10 will rise in place for every peace activist they kill. Those of us active in the same cause of coexistence and peace must intensify our
work......

The unfolding popular nonviolent resistance in the Arab world reminds us of the power of such movements. We Palestinians have engaged in such nonviolent struggle for over 130 years which I summarize in my recent book. People can be very innovative in these nonviolent struggles. Palestinian women thus were the first to use cars in mass demonstrations: 120 cars were gathered and moved beeping their horns in a parade down the old city streets of Jerusalem in October 1929, a spectacle at that time. When flying the Palestinian flag was punishable by 9 months in jail, Palestinians hung laundry in the colors of the flag. In 1988, Palestinians in my village founded the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People which brought internationals and even Israelis to nonviolently break the siege and curfew laid on our town during the tax revolt. There were so many inspiring and innovative acts of nonviolent resistance that were successful in so many
ways.

The key to understanding the power of these movements is to just look at the history of how we got women’s right to vote, civil rights, the 40-hour work week, ending the war on Vietnam, ending support for apartheid South Africa, and many others. It is when people shed their fears, fears usually stoked by those elites in authority, that they realize that nothing can stop as as individuals working together nonviolently. In the 1960s civil rights movement, the saying was “free your mind and your ass will follow”. Once we free our minds, nothing can stop us. That is what Egyptians, Tunisian, and others have realized. That is what we Palestinians of various religions realized. That is what humanity is realizing. Howard Zinn said, you can’t be neutral on a moving train. The choice before us as individuals and as
societies has always been between fear and courage, between hate and love, violence and popular resistance to violence. Join us in Palestine July 8-16 for a week of activism and peace building. Thank you. Mazin Qumsiyeh

Women and Political Participation

2011-03-29T04:49:00.000-07:00

Country	Year women received right to vote or stand for election	Year women first elected (E) or appointed (A) to parliament	% Parliamentary Seats Occupied by Women 1995 2008 Jan. 2011
Algeria	1962	1962 (A)	7	7.7	7.7
Bahrain	1973+	2006	0	2.5	2.5
Egypt	1956	1957 (E)	2	1.8	12.7
Iran	1963	1963 (A)	4	2.8	2.8
Iraq	1980	1980 (E)	11	25.5	25.2
Jordan	1974	1989 (A)	1	6	10.8
Kuwait	2005	2009 (E)	0	0	7.7
Lebanon	1952	1991 (A)	2	4.7	3.1
Libya	1964	+	0	7.7	7.7
Morocco	1963	1993 (E)	1	10.5	10.5
Oman	**	**	0	0	0
Qatar	**	**	0	0	0
Saudi Arabia	**	**	0	0	0
Syria	1953	1973 (E)	10	12.4	12.4
Turkey	1930	1934 (E)		9.1	9.1
Tunisia	1959	1959 (E)	7	22.8	27.6
UAE	2006	2006 (A)	0	22.5	22.5
Yemen	1967***	1990 (E+)	1	0	0.3

Sources: Interparliamentary Union, Women in National Parliaments http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm last accessed February 2011; and UN, The World’s Women 2000, Table 6A and its updated on-line version as of 28 June 2005. +No information or confirmation available ** Women’s right to vote and to stand for election not yet recognized. *** Refers to the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen

198 Forms of NonViolent Resistance

2011-02-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action

These methods were compiled by Dr. Gene Sharp and first published in his 1973 book, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Vol. 2: The Methods of Nonviolent Action. (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973). The book outlines each method and gives information about its historical use.

You may also download this list of methods.

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION

Formal Statements
1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
4. Signed public statements
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions

Communications with a Wider Audience
7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group Representations
13. Deputations
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
16. Picketing
17. Mock elections

Symbolic Public Acts
18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
20. Prayer and worship
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
24. Symbolic lights
25. Displays of portraits
26. Paint as protest
27. New signs and names
28. Symbolic sounds
29. Symbolic reclamations
30. Rude gestures

Pressures on Individuals
31. "Haunting" officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils

Drama and Music
35. Humorous skits and pranks
36. Performances of plays and music
37. Singing

Processions
38. Marches
39. Parades
40. Religious processions
41. Pilgrimages
42. Motorcades

Honoring the Dead
43. Political mourning
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals
46. Homage at burial places

Public Assemblies
47. Assemblies of protest or support
48. Protest meetings
49. Camouflaged meetings of protest
50. Teach-ins

Withdrawal and Renunciation
51. Walk-outs
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honors
54. Turning one's back

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

Ostracism of Persons
55. Social boycott
56. Selective social boycott
57. Lysistratic nonaction
58. Excommunication
59. Interdict

Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions
60. Suspension of social and sports activities
61. Boycott of social affairs
62. Student strike
63. Social disobedience
64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the Social System
65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation
67. "Flight" of workers
68. Sanctuary
69. Collective disappearance
70. Protest emigration (hijrat)

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: (1) ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS

Actions by Consumers
71. Consumers' boycott
72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
73. Policy of austerity
74. Rent withholding
75. Refusal to rent
76. National consumers' boycott
77. International consumers' boycott

Action by Workers and Producers
78. Workmen's boycott
79. Producers' boycott

Action by Middlemen
80. Suppliers' and handlers' boycott

Action by Owners and Management
81. Traders' boycott
82. Refusal to let or sell property
83. Lockout
84. Refusal of industrial assistance
85. Merchants' "general strike"

Action by Holders of Financial Resources
86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
89. Severance of funds and credit
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government's money

Action by Governments
92. Domestic embargo
93. Blacklisting of traders
94. International sellers' embargo
95. International buyers' embargo
96. International trade embargo

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: (2)THE STRIKE

Symbolic Strikes
97. Protest strike
98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural Strikes
99. Peasant strike
100. Farm Workers' strike

Strikes by Special Groups
101. Refusal of impressed labor
102. Prisoners' strike
103. Craft strike
104. Professional strike

Ordinary Industrial Strikes
105. Establishment strike
106. Industry strike
107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted Strikes
108. Detailed strike
109. Bumper strike
110. Slowdown strike
111. Working-to-rule strike
112. Reporting "sick" (sick-in)
113. Strike by resignation
114. Limited strike
115. Selective strike

Multi-Industry Strikes
116. Generalized strike
117. General strike

Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures
118. Hartal
119. Economic shutdown

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION

Rejection of Authority
120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
121. Refusal of public support
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens' Noncooperation with Government
123. Boycott of legislative bodies
124. Boycott of elections
125. Boycott of government employment and positions
126. Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions
128. Boycott of government-supported organizations
129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
130. Removal of own signs and placemarks
131. Refusal to accept appointed officials
132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions

Citizens' Alternatives to Obedience
133. Reluctant and slow compliance
134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
135. Popular nonobedience
136. Disguised disobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
138. Sitdown
139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
141. Civil disobedience of "illegitimate" laws

Action by Government Personnel
142. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
143. Blocking of lines of command and information
144. Stalling and obstruction
145. General administrative noncooperation
146. Judicial noncooperation
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny

Domestic Governmental Action
149. Quasi-legal evasions and delays
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International Governmental Action
151. Changes in diplomatic and other representations
152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition
154. Severance of diplomatic relations
155. Withdrawal from international organizations
156. Refusal of membership in international bodies
157. Expulsion from international organizations

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION

Psychological Intervention
158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast
a) Fast of moral pressure
b) Hunger strike
c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical Intervention
162. Sit-in
163. Stand-in
164. Ride-in
165. Wade-in
166. Mill-in
167. Pray-in
168. Nonviolent raids
169. Nonviolent air raids
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
172. Nonviolent obstruction
173. Nonviolent occupation

Social Intervention
174. Establishing new social patterns
175. Overloading of facilities
176. Stall-in
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system

Economic Intervention
181. Reverse strike
182. Stay-in strike
183. Nonviolent land seizure
184. Defiance of blockades
185. Politically motivated counterfeiting
186. Preclusive purchasing
187. Seizure of assets
188. Dumping
189. Selective patronage
190. Alternative markets
191. Alternative transportation systems
192. Alternative economic institutions

Political Intervention
193. Overloading of administrative systems
194. Disclosing identities of secret agents
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws
197. Work-on without collaboration
198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government

Source: Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Vol. 2: The Methods of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).

Women in Italy speak up against the sexism of President Berlusconi

2011-02-13T20:22:00.000-08:00

"If Not Now, When?" was a national demonstration of Italian women, against Berlusconi and, to put it bluntly, his porno-democracy. The demo had other slogans as well: Resign! Basta! I don't give up! ADESSO, NOW!

A flash mob in 280 cities of Italy and 50 cities abroad, millions of people, mostly women, but also men and children. The demonstrations have been growing in the months since Berlusconi got caught up in the sex scandal vertigo with minors, prostitutes, pimps and orgies.

A week ago in Milan, in a big rally, the prominent intellectuals in Italian public life threw themselves into the campaign: the distinguished professor and writer Umberto Eco, Roberto Saviano the star of the antimafia campaign, the judges of of the constitutional court, trade union leaders and many others. But as one of the speakers, the orchestra director Pollini remarked : Berlusconi will never step down.

Berlusconi did not leave public life. On the contrary, he sped up his counter-campaign, attacking the judges in Milan who brought the latest of many legal cases against him. He even threatened to take his case to the European Parliament and sue the nation of Italy. He organized rallies in his support , claiming that his innocent altruistic interest in young girls had been cruelly misunderstood. He also accused the investigators of orchestrating a communist-biased coup against himself as head of government.

But his luck may be turning these days, after sixteen long years of media monopoly and political domination. Even the Catholic daily, Avvenire, came out with a big editorial claiming that decent Catholic women should be in the public squares on the 13th of February. It's rare of the Church to urge women to take to the streets to defend their dignity. Then there is the dignity of the state to consider, for the ludicrous shambles of Italian public life has become a matter of international concern.

A British comment in the Guardian justly noted that European Union as the monitor of high democratic standards within the community of states. Yet while they preach good governance to applicant countries like Turkey and Serbia, they ignore the calamitous decline of democracy in Italy, an EU founding state. Italy has become a European laughingstock, all harems, dictators, old men and underage girls.

An irate 18 year old guy in Italy demanded publicly: how am I supposed to get a girlfriend of my own age, since Berlusconi, the grandad of the nation, is buying them all? I don't have his years, his money and power, I don't even have a job or a decent education. University and hospital funds are cut, jobs are in recession and Berlusconi's parliamentary allies are cutting the country apart with regionalist laws. Berlusconi' s government still holds the majority in the parliament. The president of Italy had to admonish him that the country is not his private property.

The president also alleged that Italian democratic institutions are sound, but clearly Berlusconi doubts that and so do the millions of Italians today in the squares all over Italy. In Torino, the capital of Italy in its unification years ago, a protester said: we are the head of the boot extending toward Africa.

The demo today lacked party or ideological symbols: it was a flash mob with umbrellas and screams; RESIGN. It was extremely successful, unitary and grand. It brought out of the closet what is left of Italian decency after long reign of a small macho dictator, who has publicly realized the worst dreams of Italian macho culture. As a woman demonstrator put it: some men after all do prefer a partner to a harem.

Today women of all ages and political opinions were in the squares and streets; I saw Italian women, foreign women, clandestine women, special needs women, female beggars and hobos, girls, babies, even nuns!...and I saw men, boys, old men... The performance was to open the umbrellas, scream RESIGN and spread colorful woolen threads among the crowd to bind those different people. Music played: Patti Smith, Fabrizio de Andre. Girl bloggers asked for a ban of internet use of nude bodies. Women have a value, not a price! Men made fun of their macho patriarchal language with banners and in drag clothes. Pornocrazia!

Today 13th February is the "international day of mistresses." Tomorrow it's Valentine's day, the day of love. Whatever this meeting will bring to future of Italy and the reign of Berlusconi, it's clear beyond doubt that nobody doubts Berlusconi's guilt. They despise his use and abuse of girls and money. Now the big question is -- does public indignation matter? The old Sultan will leave his thone someday, and if not now, when?

Women toppled their rich, remote, corrupted regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. If not here, where? So why not in Italy too?

Jasmina's blog: jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com

Nawal El-Saadawi: 50 Pounds and a Chicken

2011-02-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

Egypt Women Show Courage Participating In Mubarak Protests

2011-02-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/egypt-women-protests_n_817822.html
Jake Bialer HuffPost Reporting
jake@huffingtonpost.com

First Posted: 02/ 2/11 07:33 PM Updated: 02/ 3/11 11:39 AM
"If I wasn't pregnant, I would've just stayed home." Marwa Rakha told the Huffington Post by phone, explaining her attendance of the protests inEgypt while seven months pregnant. "I went out because of my baby. I owe this to him."

Rakha, an adjunct professor at the American University in Cairo, is one of many women who has participated in the recent protests in Egypt. In these demonstrations, which have already led to Mubarak agreeing not to run for re-election, women have taken an active role: promoting them, leading crowds, and providing aid to harmed protesters.

This is in a country where women typically don't have a large public role. Before their last election, Al Jazeera reported that even with election reforms, women would only hold 12 percent of the seats in the Egyptian parliament:

Last year, the assembly passed a law mandating the creation of 64 new seats in the house that must go to women. With only four women elected in 2005, that means parliament's female cadre will leap by a whopping 1,500 percent, and 12 percent of the new house will consist of women.

The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta characterizes Egypt as "a country in which men and women are barely tolerated holding hands in public in the most liberal precincts of comparatively Christian Alexandria, and where public displays of affections are frowned upon and likely to be met with cutting glances and vicious neighborhood gossip elsewhere."

But in the recent wave of protests in Egypt, women have been important contributors and have been accepted by their male counterparts.

ABC News reported earlier that unlike past Egyptian protests, these protests were largely free of sexual harassment.

"Egyptian state TV was spreading rumors that in the protests girls were being sexually harassed," said Rakha. "That's a complete lie. In those protests, I've witnessed Egyptians that I didn't think still existed. They're very supportive of one another. If a girl fell, they would just pick her up, help her, no sexual harassment of any sort."

Rakha said she went to the protests alone.

"I just took my cell phone and went," she said. "I met people and we just began talking, regardless of our religion, regardless of our gender, regardless of our age, regardless of our social class, regardless of anything, we were Egyptians out there who were very angry at lies we've been fed for the last 30 years."

Anna Day, a 22-year-old American M.A. student who is studying conflict resolution, who is writing freelance on the Palestinians and lives in Israel-Palestine, traveled down to Egypt from Israel to attend and document the protests.

Day told The Huffington Post by phone she stood out amongst the crowd. "Everyone wanted to talk to me because I was like the only white person there and I have blonde hair so I looked ridiculous," she said.

Having previously lived in Cairo, she "didn't expect many women to be at these protests," and she was surprised by the involvement of women in the protests. "Women were leading the chants and men were responding which I didn't expect to see in Cairo," she said.

Women's role in the protests wasn't limited to their activity on the street, they were also involved in the online campaigns that led up to the protests. The New York Times reported on Asmaa Mahfouz who used social media to help spread the message of the protests.

That's not to say women were the majority of the protesters. "If you look at the pictures, it's clearly mainly men," Day said. "But for the society of Egypt, the number of women at these protests and their role, they were at the front with tear gas and everything, their role was not something I expected to see."

The majority of women have been avoiding the more dangerous events. "In the evenings, I didn't see as many women out at nighttime," Day added. "At nighttime, it just does set a different mood. People get a little angrier, a little crazier, so I haven't seen women in the nighttime at the same rates as I've seen men."

The number of female participants are in the protests are hard to determine. Slate looked into the participation at the protests on Tuesday:

"Ghada Shahbandar, an activist with the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, estimated the crowd downtown to be 20 percent female. Other estimates were as high as 50 percent. In past protests, the female presence would rarely rise to 10 percent."

But the anecdotal evidence of their participation is everywhere. A "Women of Egypt" Facebook group has emerged to collect pictures of women at the protests. The Global Post has published photos of women. There have been photos of women kissing police officers. They've beeninterviewed. And they've been shown alongside men in videos.

According to Day, women helped treat protesters who were overwhelmed by tear gas using Pepsi.

"If you put Pepsi in your eyes, it neutralizes the pain of the teargas," she said. "These cars full of protesters were bringing Pepsi and water to the protesters."

It was women who discovered the Pepsi trick, Day said. "They're bringing Pepsi and helping people back, putting Pepsi in people's eyes."

Despite their increased role, the women still weren't the rowdiest participants. "They aren't the ones on top of government vehicles holding Egyptian flags," Day said.

But, as the Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi told Democracy Now, "Women and girls are beside boys in the streets."

Follow our Egypt live blog here and learn about the unrest with our Egypt revolution guide.

You can also send us Egypt tips anytime at egypt@huffingtonpost.com or by leaving a message at 00-1-315-636-0962.

Read More: Egypt, Egypt Protests, Egypt Protests 2011, Egypt Revolution, Egypt Women, Egypt Women Protests, Egyptian Women, Women Egypt, Women In Egypt, Women Of Egypt, World News

Around the Web:

  Women in Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   Egypt Protests: Sexual Harassment of Women Drops, Witnesses Say ...

   The Female Factor - In Egypt, Women Have Burdens but No Privileges ...

   Where are Egypt's women? Right here. | FP Passport

   In Egypt, Some Women Say That Veils Increase Harassment ...

   Protests raise hope for women's rights in Egypt

   The role of women in the Egyptian democracy protests

Women of the Egyptian Revolution from sawt al niswa

2011-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.sawtalniswa.com/2011/02/women-of-the-egyptian-revolution/This is a homage to all those women out there fighting on the streets of Egypt, to those whose voices and faces were hidden from the public eye during the first days of the revolution! The album by now has traveled the world back and forth via online social networks, blogs and websites.Patience and modesty are highly appreciated.

First and foremost the credit for this album goes to the courageous people of Egypt who are teaching us that freedom is taken and not given.

Second, to the women who by their courage, determination and strength are inspiring millions of us around the world.

Third to the photographers who took these photos and especially to those who have caused absolutely no problems when it came to copyright issues.

Fourth, to the amazing web of people who have been sending me photos and captions for the album, and to those who are sending corrections of mistakingly posted or labeled photos.

This compilation is meant to further shed the light on the Egyptian people´s strife for freedom, and the complicity of the world governments with the Mubarak regime. It is meant as a call for action and active solidarity with the Egyptian people. A call to protest companies like Vodafone and Orange/France Telecom who have left the Egyptian people incommunicado in the face of a brutal and a repressive regime. The world governments and big corporations have ignored the voices of millions of Egyptians, and the voices of millions of us worldwide and continue to further support and whitewash the crimes of the dictatorship, both vocally and silently.

This album is just a small reminder of what is happening right now, as you are reading this, on the streets of Egypt. A hint of the grassroots and popular revolution facing up to around 41 years of a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship and emergency laws (around 11 years under Sadat, and around 30 years under Mubarak)

It is also very important to highlight the first spark of it all, the Tunisian revolution and its women. To stress that we should not shift our attention from them. They are still fighting and the battle is not over yet. Here is a link to a photo-stream from Le Monde / France in total admiration of the inspiring and courageous women of Tunisia http://ow.ly/3MDyZ

It is important to note that I did NOT TAKE ANY of these photos and that neither I nor Sawt Al-Niswa have the rights to any of them. For any commercial usage we suggest getting in contact with the people who have the rights to them, agencies and photographers.

I´m trying to confirm that all the photos I´m receiving are from Egypt and that they were taken during the past week´s rebellion. It is not an easy task judging the amount of photos I´m receiving and the limited resources I have. If you identify any photo that is mistakingly posted here, or that is not from Egypt or from the ongoing revolution please don´t hesitate to contact me.

For photographers and agencies (a.k.a. Copyright information and the other excruciating reality)

As much as I don´t support nor agree with copyright, I know I´m legally bound to credit you for these photos and take permission to use them. But I hope you understand that the importance of giving visibility to the women in the Egyptian revolution comes before your commercial “rights”. And that this album is NOT being used in any commercial way (i.e. no one is making money out of your work, not a dime) But nevertheless, I´m trying to include the sources of all the photos in a way to acknowledge the work of the photographers and as a thread to who has the copyright for them (in case of agencies). If you see any of your photos here, and wish to be credited for it, please contact me with a clear reference to the photo and the corresponding credits. If your photo was mistakingly credited to someone else, I apologize, contact me and I will fix it.

Women's Rights around the World

2011-01-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Palestine

2011-01-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Young girl Leek farmer in Afghanistan

2010-12-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

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

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

2010-12-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

  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

2010-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

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

__._,_.___

Inmates in Georgia Prisons Use Contraband Phones to Coordinate Protest

2010-12-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

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

Village punished for non-violent demonstrations

2010-11-24T21:09:00.001-08:00

Nov 19. 2010
This Friday in Nabi Saleh the Israeli border police used its stink water
tank in the center of the village, as a clear and gross collective
punishment measure against the entire village for Friday demonstrations.
Nabi Saleh residents and demonstrators in the village center, where the
stink water was squirted.

The stink water is a foul-smelling liquid that makes it unbearable to
live in the place where it is squirted on for at least one week. It is
not officially intended for use inside a populated area, but that has
been its use against Nabi Saleh residents and demonstration in the past,
and this gross attack is now being retained.

The demonstration in Nabi Saleh against the creeping annexation of land
by the Halamish settlement started with an immediate unprovoked attack
by Israeli border police on a peaceful and non-violent march. Following
this attack, clashes erupted, with some stone-throwers attempting to
ward off the army incursion. Nevertheless the army manage to position
itself just outside the village`s built area and shot its tear gas
canisters towards the village, repressing also non-protesting civilians.

Throughout the demonstration the Israeli army has shot tear gas
canisters directly at the protesters, a dangerous conduct which violates
even the army`s own regulations. Rubber-coated still bullets were also
widely used by the army. As a result at least 10 protesters suffered
injuries.

No Justice, Not Chickpeas!

2010-10-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

Robert Nichols Died on October 14, 2010

2010-10-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Grace Paley's partner, Bob Nichols passed away this week. They had lived together in Thetford, Vermont for decades. He was 92 years old. Here is a clip, from several years ago, speaking about his concern for Washington Square, which he had helped to preserve in the sixties.

Nichols, a poet and novelist born in Worcester, Massachusetts, left home when he was young and became a landscape architect. He ... has published several volumes, including a collection of short stories published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, In the Air. Nichols’ other books include Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train, Address to the Smaller Animals, Red Shift, and numerous essays on economics and politics, among other subjects. A graduate of the Harvard School of Design, he described himself as an “activist and sometime organizer, involved in the anti-war, anti-nuclear and conservation movements." -from a Dartmouth College announcement.

Bob was a farmer, a poet, a playwright, a landscape architect and a community activist.
This winter there will be a staging of several of his short plays in New York City and hopefully this presentation will be repeated in Vermont in the early summer.

This is a tape that Liza Bear made with Bob Nichols about Washington Square.

This is alao by Liza Bear-- tape with Bob at a Grace Paley memorial.

Here is an article from 2006 in The Villager about Washington Square:
Square’s fountain to be moved; water jets will move musicians

Luther Harris, author of a definitive book on the history of Washington Square, displayed a large photo of Frederick Law Olmstead, the “father of American landscape design,” as he read his statement at the Art Commission. Harris said he was trying to emphasize that “Washington Square’s landscape is Olmstedian and that Parks is destroying it with its alien axial symmetry.”
Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki

By Lincoln Anderson
Folk singers strummed and warbled ballads against it. Local politicians - not one but four - testified against it. The Fine Arts Federation of New York stated it was opposed to the idea. Disabled advocates in wheelchairs angrily said they were being used as “pawns” - and not to do it in their name. And most of the people offering testimony during four hours of hearings on Monday said they didn't want the Washington Square Park fountain moved 22 feet to the east. But that didn't matter to the Art Commission, which voted to approve the shifting of the fountain, as well as the park's two statues, as part of the Parks Department's $16 million renovation project.
In doing do, they sealed the park's fate, meaning it will change from its historic Olmstedian design of curved pathways to a more formalistic, symmetrical Beaux Arts layout. And coming with the change to a more regimented look will probably be a parallel change in the use of the traditionally freewheeling park - though the Parks Department is avoiding saying that. Nine high-powered water jets in the fountain will make it hard to perform there.
After hearing the copious testimony, the commission took one hour to deliberate and vote on the three issues.

By votes of 10 yes and 1 no they approved moving the Giuseppe Garibaldi and Alexander Lyman Holley statues to the northern areas of the ovals they currently occupy on the park's central east-west pathway. Their vote on the fountain was unanimous. In his presentation of the plan, John Krawchuk, Parks director of historic preservation, said relocating the fountain would be a stunning improvement. Lining up fountain and arch would “enrich the view of the arch and invite people into the park,” he said. “It is a great civic gesture. Keeping the fountain hidden behind the arch is an intellectual nuance that will be seen as a missed opportunity by future generations.”
Just as at the numerous public meetings held before on the renovation, the overwhelming public sentiment at the Art Commission hearing was once again against the plan. State Senator Tom Duane testified against moving the fountain. Duane also said he supports keeping the fountain and sunken central plaza at their current elevation, though the latter was not within the purview of the Art Commission to decide, having been previously approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Calling the fountain relocation “unnecessary,” Duane said, “While I understand the desire for symmetry between the fountain and the arch, Greenwich Village thrives precisely because its geography is not beholden to grids and symmetry. A park serving and representing our eccentric and eclectic neighborhood does not need perfect alignment.”
His remarks drew cheers and applause from the partisan crowd. Councilmember Alan Gerson deferred to the Art Commission on whether to move the fountain, noting this was part of the agreement he and Councilmember Christine Quinn crafted with the Parks Department in which Parks made commitments on other aspects of the renovation. Yet, Gerson added, “My personal view is that the fountain should stay where it's been my whole life. There's something discomfiting to me about having children in bathing suits playing in the fountain in the line of sight of one of our major arteries.”
Again, there were cheers. New Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Assemblymember Deborah Glick also issued statements against moving the fountain. However, Kate Seely-Kirk, legislative aide to Quinn, the new Council speaker, read Quinn's statement, which, like Gerson, deferred to the Art Commission's judgment on moving the fountain. Except, Quinn didn't offer her personal view on the issue. “Boo!” hooted one woman in the audience. “Chris wimped!” Melissa Baldock, director of preservation from the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation, read the society's statement in support of moving the fountain and statues.
“We see no reason to reject the location of these elements,” she said. A member of the opposition pointedly filmed Baldock with a handheld minicamera as she departed after testifying. Keen Berger, Greenwich Village Democratic district leader, noted her late husband Martin Berger 40 years ago defended the right of a mandolin player to perform in the park. Her voice rising to a shout, Berger implored, “The park is a living place - don't let them kill it!” However, weighing in in support of the move was Ric Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects, who called it the obvious thing to do. On the other hand, Tomas Rossant of the Fine Arts Federation of New York said the organization “opposes the relocation of the fountain and sees no reason why a progressive design can't be done with the fountain in place. This redesign privileges Beaux Arts axial symmetry over real history,” he said.
While the mayor appoints all 11 members of the Art Commission, a majority of the commissioners, seven, are selected from a list from the Fine Arts Federation of New York. Last year the federation wrote to the Art Commission expressing their objection to moving the fountain. Ronald Podolsky, attorney on a community lawsuit set to be filed once the project is ready to start, protested that he filed a Freedom of Information Law request to see the updated park redesign plan, but was only notified it was available for viewing the Friday before the hearing. “It is well known that straight lines are the lines of duty, curved lines are the lines of beauty,” Podolsky noted, knocking the redesign. However, broadening the debate, a speaker in support of the project, asked, “Straight lines don't make art? How about the Taj Mahal?” sparking some laughter. Sharon Woolums, a leader of the Emergency Coalition to Save Washington Square Park, on whose behalf Podolsky is filing the lawsuit, said the existing design from the community-driven renovation of the park led by Robert Nichols in 1969 shouldn't be changed. “Bob Nichols was also a theater director and understood how the fountain plaza would function as a theater,” Woolums said. “There is no need to change this brilliant plan. Do not destroy what works.”

Accompanying himself on guitar, Eric Levine, musical director of the Disabled in Action Singers, chose to sing his testimony: Adrian Benepe, our Park commissioner, Says stop the music and that they will do Let not a note by heard from neither man nor bird Ban the guitarists, they're Benepe's taboo We say no to Benepe's men Fight the good old fight again We are the surging mass We are worth more than grass The park's for all people - not just for N.Y.U. During a break in the testimony, Podolsky fittingly led some of the plan opponents in a round of Appalachian coal miners' songs about John L. Lewis. As testimony resumed, noting she's always been a Frisbee player, former City Councilmember Carol Greitzer said it's not a bad thing that there's lots of asphalt in the park. “To play Frisbee you need a lot of payment.

No one's mentioned that.” The actual use of the fountain once the park is renovated was a concern of the commissioners, most notably Byron Kim. Specifically, Kim and a few others voiced trepidations about the plan for a powerful 45-foot-high water plume and eight arcing side water jets in the fountain, wondering how this would mesh with the fountain's current use as a performance space for acrobats and musicians, or even merely as a place to sit and relax. Just the sound of this water display might discourage musicians from jamming nearby, Kim and some of his colleagues opined. They asked the Parks officials if any noise studies of the fountain had been done yet, to which Parks responded that they had not. “The splash factor,” Kim said. “Will it make it difficult for people to sit on the fountain? If you have a lot of water jets will people be able to hear each other talk?”
Art Commission member Otis Pratt Pearsall said the noisy fountain was “a huge issue that needs to be addressed.” Krawchuk said that musicians can ask a park attendant to adjust the fountain, controls for which will be located near the park house. “It'll all be digitized and electronic,” he assured. “I think that this will not be an issue for park users. Certainly, if we feel that noise is an issue, we can adjust the jets accordingly.”
He said the fountain would operate from April to November. Bill Castro, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, said, in fact, most impromptu performances happen throughout the park, not in the fountain. Castro said time could be carved out for performances in the fountain when the water will be turned off. But larger performances will need to get permits, he said. The commission nixed the Parks plan to add a set of eight shiny pink granite urns atop the fountain's piers mirroring historic urns that were on the fountain before it was moved from 59th St. and Fifth Ave. to its present location around 1870.
The urns could be seen as a deterrent to the use of the fountain as an active performance space and could become large ornate ashtrays, commissioners said. The commission instead approved for the piers to be topped with new bluestone caps. There were issues with turning the Garibaldi statue to face southward. Parks said this would allow for better sunlight on the monument. However, a representative of the Garibaldi Museum said for the statute to face west showed how Garibaldi - Italy's equivalent of George Washington - was a man of both the Old and New World. But Amy Freitag, Parks director of capital planning, said by turning him south he would be looking at the historic Italian South Village. Where both statues are now is an impediment to people walking on the pathway, plus the Holley monument gets doused with dog urine since it's near the dog run, so it's best to move them, Parks said. These opened-up oval areas will also be improved as performance spaces, Parks officials said.
The use of the fountain for cooling off in hot weather and for a children's play area will also apparently come to an end with the renovation. The fountain was converted to a water-play feature for neighborhood children in 1934 with water jets spurting out of the eight fountain piers. The central fountain plume was installed in 1970. However, to meet the new code put in place after a drought a few years ago, in the renovation, the fountain's system will be changed to use recycled water, or water that keeps recirculating through it, as opposed to waste water, or water that goes down the drain into the sewer. Any fountain that uses more than 2,000 gallons of water a day must conform to the new code. The Washington Square fountain will use more than 2,000 gallons of water an hour, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.
As for use of the fountain by buskers and children, Freitag said, “Having people in the basin when it's dry is certainly something we'd like to explore. And we'll explore use of a [handicapped-accessible] temporary ramp [into the fountain]…. [But] our policy doesn't allow people to play in our fountains.” The restored fountain will continue to have three steps inside as it currently does. After the lengthy testimony, the commission first discussed and voted on the statues and urns. Signe Nielsen, a landscape architect member of the Art Commission, felt that since the fountain relocation had been the only thing the public had testified about, the commissioners were obligated to discuss it a bit. Alice Aycock, an artist member of the commission, said the fountain had always seemed “in no-man's land” to her: “It's neither here nor there. It's just uhhh.” Another commissioner said it was time for “a rebirth of the park” and a blotting out of any memory of how cars used to run through the park until they were banned in 1963. The plaza and north-south central pathway are roughly in the same spot where roads once ran through the park.
James Stuckey, a commissioner who said he plays 10 musical instruments, said the loss of the sunken plaza won't affect acoustics one bit. During discussion of the fact that a plaque to the Tisch family - who have given $2.5 million for the fountain's renovation - will be affixed to the new fountain, Aycock said perhaps another plaque should be added to acknowledge the famous musicians, like Bob Dylan, who got their start playing around the fountain - “so that it just not ignore that.” After the vote, ECO's Woolums angrily called it “a rubber stamp for the mayor's office. The Fine Arts Federation voted against it,” she noted. However, even the Fine Arts Federation's Roussant had predicted Parks would prevail. “There's too much behind this. Parks is really pushing for it,” he had said. Said Commissioner Benepe afterwards, “We're very pleased with the decision. Also, very happy with the fact that people care very deeply about parks. This was further evidence that New Yorkers care deeply about parks and are passionate about them.” The project should begin this spring or summer, he said. He said Parks will work on the issues of the water plume and jets. During her remarks one woman slammed New York University, accusing, “N.Y.U., which has kept a low profile in all this, is the main gainer, getting a symmetrical, clutter-free space for its graduation ceremonies. What a sorry fate that would be for this most individualistic spirited of parks.”
Yet, some of the project's opponents noted a significant absence at the hearing - no representative from New York University seemed to be present. N.Y.U. spokespersons did not return a call for comment by press time as to why the university did not present testimony or even appear to have an official at the hearing.
This is a letter that Bob wrote in 2006 to The Villager:
To The Editor:
Re “Plaza size matters; judge extends order blocking Wash. Sq. project” (news article, May 24):
I was heartened by the news reported in The Villager two weeks ago of the community’s continuing resistance to the planned reconstruction of Washington Square Park. I haven’t kept up with the legal details or followed recent arguments as to the plaza’s size, but I have to smile at the purported cost of the dramatic deconstruction process, when the actual solution is really so simple and inexpensive. As I explained in The Villager before, the basic failure has been the refusal — perhaps recalcitrance or just plain ignorance — of Parks in maintaining the park. The present Parks Department is not altogether at fault.
The original design by the Committee of Architects in 1970 comprised a number of original elements, park furniture such as the circular benches at the corner entrances and some trees. These were nonstandard and required maintenance procedures unfamiliar to the Parks maintenance crew. They required special supervision and attention. We, the designers, and our sponsors, members of the Greenwich Village Community Association, did not see this as crucial. There was no watch committee to follow up on it or see that the engineering drawings and specifications were forwarded from the engineering firm to the Arsenal in case adjustments were needed.
An example are the trees in the raised sitting walls around the edge of the plaza. A crucial element, why have they not received the same attention to keep them healthy that they would have received on any college campus? The trees need nourishment, the soil needs water and air. It breaks my heart to see them. Years have gone by. While the political and legal battles continue, at the same time this might have been attended to. Nobody has thought to do such a simple thing. Or is it a question of calculated neglect?
The legal and bureaucratic answer is, of course: We have no money. No money for maintenance, only for capital improvement. And so, the park wrecked as $16 million “capital improvement.” Hilarious!

Robert Nichols,
Nichols was a member of the Greenwich Village Architects Committee

Film about Grace Paley is Premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival

2010-10-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

In the opening moments of “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts,” Paley rhetorically asks an audience, “What is the responsibility of a poet?” We soon learn that Gracy Paley answered that question emphatically throughout her entire life.Lilly Rivlin’s inspiring film brings to life the momentous times in which this author and activist lived and worked as she reads from her short stories, poems and essays. Paley was a firebrand on the front line of protest. She opposed war and nuclear proliferation, and fought for the rights of women, which often landed her in jail. As a teacher she influences generations of writers. Grace Paley is a New York icon whose life attests to the possibility that one person can combine public responsibility with individual creativity. Paley not only broke the mold, she created a new approach to her life’s work that combined equal parts writer, activist, woman and mother.

In “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” we learn the story of this child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, raised in New York City in the 1930s. We hear from her daughter, granddaughter and a wide range of fellow writers and activists. We also hear many of Grace Paley’s own words, the greatest joy of Rivlin’s revealing film. (David Becker)

The checkpoint, the campus, the museum, the shopping mall, Neve Tzedek, the Jaffa port, the flea market, the beach

2010-08-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

If there is a Heaven
A chronicle of a joyous and profoundly moving day of forbidden fun in Tel Aviv
By Ilana Hammerman

Jaffa. A summery evening. Between the blue metal police barriers, in the dark, narrow passage that leads into the flea market, from whose alleyways comes an enticing cacophony, a crowd of people squeeze their way past two policemen standing on either side. The people hand their bags to be checked, craning their necks to get a look inside, toward the source of the shouts and bits of music that promise them and those behind them in line great bargains and plenty of fun at the fair inside. We, too, are squashed with the rest - myself and three young women: Lin, Aya and Yasmin.

The hand rummaging through my leather backpack stops all of a sudden and I hear the policeman, whom I haven't even looked at until now, calling: "Hey, hold on, wait, wait! I haven't checked your bags!" I see Lin and Aya and Yasmin swallowed up by the stream of people making its way toward the heart of the action. In the bright light of flashlights, I am just able to catch the gleam of their long straight hair, and a glimpse of the small, dainty purse that Lin, the eldest of the three, is holding above her head for some reason. I call out to them to come back, but it's no use. They are out of sight.

"They're with me, don't worry," I tell the policeman, squinting to try to see which way they went. They won't disappear on you, don't worry, I tell myself. Meanwhile, the crush of people behind me has prompted the policeman to remove his hand from my backpack and now I'm inside, weaving my way through the slow-moving throng. Clusters form around a jewelry peddler, around a pair of musicians, some clowns and a magician - and I see Aya, the youngest of the trio, standing on his carpet and staring wide-eyed at something. Next to her I spy the other two, one combing and smoothing her disheveled hair and the other tucking in the bottom of her blouse and adjusting her glittery belt buckle.

All this excitement actually came near the end of a long day which had begun in the morning in another place altogether, in an alien landscape - perhaps another country. This is the story.

Aya is a young woman of about 18, whom I love. Lin and Yasmin are her cousins, and are about a year or so older. All three live in the same village in the "Land of Judea." Let's call it Tekoa, Bani Na'im, Beit Umar, Battir - the exact name isn't important. One day I was sitting with Aya in front of her home in the Land of Judea, and I asked her why she was looking a little sad. She was bored, she told me. She was tired of being stuck in the village all the time, never going anywhere, never seeing new things.

Arab teens Aya and Yasmin at Tel Aviv University.

Photo by: Ilana Hammerman
"Where would you like to go?" I asked her. The slender girl, wearing a traditional headscarf that hid every last strand of hair, thought for a moment and then said, "Maybe to Istanbul." She watched me with her large brown eyes, waiting for an answer.

"Well," I said, "I can't take you to Istanbul, but I can take you to Tel Aviv! And Tel Aviv is beautiful, too. There are really tall buildings," I stretched one arm up high, "and a giant shopping mall," I spread my hands wide, "and a gorgeous beach! Tel Aviv is always celebrating something. It'll be very interesting. You've never been to the big city. We'll have a good time."

Her big brown eyes filled with joy, truly beaming from her delicate face, whose round features were highlighted by her dark-blue headscarf with a black stripe. But she didn't feel like traveling alone with me, she said. She wanted to bring along her cousins, Lin and Yasmin.

They're older, I said hesitantly, and they look their age, unlike you - you still kind of look like a girl. Though the truth is that because of her age, Aya too, was forbidden from traveling to Tel Aviv without a tasrih, an entry permit to Israel. It really doesn't matter, I thought, making up my mind, and it would be nicer for them to go together. You'll all be traveling there illegally, I told her, which means that I am going to be smuggling you in, but I'm up for it. And you girls? All three were ready and willing, too.

We picked a date and agreed they would all wear modern Western-style clothes and no headscarves. A headscarf was out of the question! On this day they would be free and pretty - secular, young Israeli women. We decided on a Thursday, so we could end our day at the weekly bazaar in Jaffa.

When I got home I checked the map and mentally reviewed the conditions at the checkpoints that I know in the Land of Judea. I was stopped once before at Tarqumiya with a girl I was taking to an appointment at a hospital in Israel, and her mother. The mother had a tasrih, but the daughter, who was ill, did not. The soldiers checked the mother's ID and saw that the daughter was over 16 - meaning she was only allowed to pass through with an ID and a permit. And anyway, they said, this crossing was supposed to be just for laborers, plus Israelis can't go through the same checkpoint with Palestinians. We should try the Bethlehem checkpoint, they suggested; maybe there they would let us through on humanitarian grounds. These soldiers didn't deal with humanitarian issues, that wasn't their job. But we knew that at the Bethlehem checkpoint only Palestinians are entitled to pass - if they have a permit, of course - while Israelis cannot go through.

Nevertheless, because of the importance of the appointment, scheduled after much effort, we tried our luck at the Al-Khader checkpoint, where we were prohibited from crossing together. I let the two off so they could take a taxi to the "Palestinian" side of the checkpoint, while I drove around to the "Israeli" side. I arrived quickly and waited by the booths, where female soldiers sit behind reinforced glass and check the papers of the people wanting to enter. But the mother and daughter didn't show up; maybe they couldn't find a taxi or there was a long line on the Palestinian side that was not visible from the Israeli side.

When they finally did reach the soldiers, they were told the same thing: The girl needed her own ID card as well as an entry permit into Israel. This time, too, our pleas were of no avail - nor was a document showing that the girl had an appointment at the hospital, which we were not going to make on time. We helplessly bid one another farewell from either side of the electric turnstile and went our separate ways.

Signs and warnings

So, Tarqumiya was out this time. I was a little sorry about that because of the lovely scenery on the way from there to the Elah Valley; I'd wanted to include beautiful views in our fun day out. I also ruled out the checkpoint on Highway 60: There were private security guards there now, who are often even stricter than the soldiers, and detain and inspect each and every car. Sliding my finger down the map, I reached the Betar Ilit checkpoint, on Highway 375. I cross this checkpoint on my bike sometimes and know it well. It could be easier to get through.

The Betar crossing separates 20th-century Israel from 21st-century Israel and has numerous signs posted on either side, some yellow and some red, providing detailed instructions on just about everything. The signs inform people coming from Israel that they are prohibited from bringing a vehicle into the Palestinian Authority for repairs; that the transport of agricultural goods into Israeli localities or to a military facility is permissible solely via the inspection points at Bak'a, Eliyahu, Shomron, Maccabim, Bahurim, Za'ayam, Derech Ha'avot, Lamed-Heh and Meitar; that transport of agricultural goods destined for another West Bank locale is permissible solely via "back-to-back" crossings, at Bak'a, Gilboa, Sha'ar Efraim, Bitunia, Har Homa and Tarqumiya; and that the transport of animals and animal products from PA territory is illegal.

That's one side. For those continuing on the other side - in a vehicle that is not, for example, headed for repairs inside the PA and not carrying goods or animals out of the PA - a red sign offers these caring words of caution: "Dear Citizen!!! Due to a fear that you may be entering PA-controlled areas which Israelis are prohibited from entering by mistake/against your will, the soldiers at the checkpoint have taken down your personal and vehicle information, for your safety. This information will be kept by security officials and used for security purposes if it is discovered that you entered PA territory. Have a good and safe trip - Command Center of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank."

A person who passes from one side to the other at this crossing, feeling reassured by the discreet security services promised him in such a personal way, learns from the next set of signs that he is in fact invited to visit Betar Ilit, the city of Torah and Hasidism in the Judean Hills, to head south on Highway 60 to Gush Etzion, Efrat, Elazar and Neve Daniel and on to Alon Shvut and Carmei Tzur, or to continue to Kiryat Arba and Hebron - without actually knowing whether he entered or was brought into PA territory, deliberately or unknowingly. But all that didn't matter to me, because I knew that the village from which I planned to take the trio was located in PA territory, and I was about to enter it deliberately, so as to pick them up and take them to Tel Aviv.

I was particularly interested in the yellow sign that greets those coming from the new Israel to the old Israel - i.e., the sign that would greet me, Lin, Aya and Yasmin on our way out. The sign said "Welcome to the Betar crossing point. This crossing is designated for Israelis only. Crossing over or transporting of someone who is not Israeli is prohibited!! An 'Israeli' is a resident of Israel, someone whose place of residence is in the area or is eligible to immigrate in accordance with the 1950 Law of Return, as valid in Israel."

Despite the awkward wording, I understood what was written on the sign and what was permissible and prohibited. Granted, I could be a stickler and say definitively that not only was the three teens' place of residence "in the area," but they had never left it, to their dismay. On the other hand, it was impossible to claim that they were Israelis or were eligible to make aliyah in accordance with the Law of Return. So, I read the sign and understood it quite well, but I did not agree. I simply could not agree with it.

I arrived at Aya's home at the appointed time, determined to carry out our plans. But I still felt I had to warn the threesome and their mothers. A casual observer that Thursday morning would have seen this picture at the doorway of the house in the village in the Land of Judea: three middle-aged women covered from head to toe in traditional garb - the mothers; another middle-aged woman with glasses, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sweater - me; three young women, their pretty long hair falling on their shoulders, their faces tastefully made up, wearing fashionable jeans adorned with glitter, tight-fitting knit tops (not midriff-baring ones, though ) and casual jackets - Lin, Aya and Yasmin.

It looked as though they had dressed up for Purim, I thought to myself. Three cuties, ready for Tel Aviv! After expressing my astonishment and admiration, I explained the situation, in no uncertain terms: We were setting off on a somewhat adventurous journey, at any rate an illegal one, in a land where military force is the form of governance, which puts us in a weak position. So, I urged, think it over a little more. Do you really want to go? Yes, they said. You're not afraid? Silence. Lin hesitantly shook her head and said, at last: They're afraid but they still want to go.

"Okay, then in that case let's do a quick rehearsal: If they stop us at the checkpoint and ask us: What's up? How are things? How are you doing? You say: hakol beseder - everything's fine. Might even be a good idea to pronounce it like this: hakol be-say-der."

Hakol beseder, they all muttered, all six, and then we quietly got into the car. Lin, the eldest, who was partly responsible for this undertaking, sat next to me. Aya and Yasmin sat in the back.

'We made it!'

The trip to the Betar crossing point passed in almost complete silence. When we approached the checkpoint, the red sign, the metal tower, the speed bumps, the concrete barriers, the soldiers' position, I felt my legs shaking - and not because of the bumpy road. I took a deep breath, slowed down but didn't stop, rolled down the window, gave the soldier a causal wave and he indifferently motioned for me to keep going. "We made it!"

I drove a few hundred more meters and then stopped the car on the side of the road to breathe a sigh of relief and turned to look at my three Palestinian passengers. There was no need for words: We had made it through and now we were free to go have fun. I suggested we start off with a quick stop at a cafe. Yes, I was feeling a bit worn out, too.

We sat at Bar Bahar, a restaurant and parks information center, on a terrace overlooking a landscape in the Judean Hills, where no city of Torah and Hasidism had yet been built. Rolling green hills as far as the eye could see; a little slice of Tuscany right here. Suddenly a cell phone rang. It was Lin's (she was the only one with a phone, a gift from her fiance ). He wanted to know if everything was okay. Hakol beseder, I heard her tell him in Hebrew. He wanted to know where we were exactly and she handed me the phone. Bar Giora, I said. He didn't understand. Nes Harim, I added. He still didn't get it. I looked at the map at the observation point: Mount Eitan, Mount Hatayasim - how could I explain? Finally I said that we were somewhere in the middle of the Judean Hills, between Ein Karem and Beit Shemesh. He was happy to hear it. He knew Beit Shemesh, having worked there illegally, and the name Ein Karem was familiar, too. So you're in ____, right?

I didn't understand what he had said. I gave the phone back to Lin and asked her to repeat the name. She listened and said some Arabic name - perhaps the name of a village or region. I'm still not quite sure. But I did recall that I had had this same experience once before with Palestinians, a young girl and her parents, whom I transported from the Land of Judea to the coastal plain. On the trip from Bar Giora to the Karem junction, the parents kept mentioning names of Arab villages that their parents or grandparents or other relatives had once lived in, whose ruins they had visited before the general closure of the West Bank was declared. I only remember the strange sounds of the words - and my embarrassment - but not a single name. Not that any of this would interest these young women. They were feeling joyful and focused solely on the present. They wanted to get going already.

Museum escapade

Once in Tel Aviv, I took out my camera, and today I can remember the adventure with the help of the photographs. Here they are, chasing one another like little girls on the Tel Aviv University lawn, our first stop. Leaning back under a tree, sitting at a metal table in the big plaza outside the big restaurant building, eating McDonald's hamburgers and fries and drinking Coke; in front of my empty seat is a salad and carrot juice. Here they are slowly entering the library, where, I clearly remember, they listened politely to my explanations about the different wings and about the fact that anyone can enter the reading halls freely - something they were not and might not ever be interested in. I also remember how they gazed at a group of female students who were speaking Arabic, one wearing a headscarf and the others bareheaded. They turned an even more curious gaze upon a young man and woman who also spoke Arabic, straining to hear their conversation; the young woman was bareheaded and her blouse was quite revealing.

Now that I look at the photographs, I notice that in one shot, where Lin is sitting with arms crossed against a gravel backdrop in the campus garden, even through her modest dress, the curve of her young, full breasts is visible. In this picture her black hair is pulled back, revealing a bare earlobe that's a little seductive in its nakedness. There are also the perfect lines of a very feminine shoulder and strong neck, neither slender nor thick, and the bone structure of a cheek that draws the eye to a dimple, to a pinched smile, a chin that is both a little rounded and angular, and from there down to the dark slit of her cleavage.

In the next photos, the three are at the Eretz Israel Museum, which used to be called the Museum of the Land and was given its present name by Rehavam Ze'evi when he was the director. But I didn't remember that when I suggested to the three teens that we visit the museum. I wanted them to be amused by "Faces, Inside and Out," the exhibit that was showing there at the time. When we went in, we discovered to our chagrin that all the captions were in Hebrew.

I did manage to interest them in various masks and caricatures, and especially in the exhibit that explained the connection between a person's facial features and his character traits: In one portrait Aya found an explanation for her nightmares, and Yasmin learned something about why her features were a little less delicate than those of the other two.

At my request, Yasmin and Lin posed for a picture beneath three political caricatures: of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Amir Peretz. Aya refused. In the picture the two young women don't look like they're enjoying themselves much, but they are smiling politely and their heads appear to be trapped between Rabin's bowtie, Peres' double chin, which looks like it is practically resting on Lin's hair, and Peretz' mustache, though only about half of his face is visible in the picture. The three of them did not know about the Rabin assassination. Meanwhile, with their newfound sensation of freedom growing from moment to moment, they disappeared while I read about deciphering facial expressions according to the kabbala and the Book of the Zohar.

When I noticed they'd gone, I hurried off too, looked around with alarm, ran down the stairs and called out their names. I finally found them walking around the "In the Land of the Baron" exhibit, trying to decipher, without much success, the importance of the various photographs and artifacts on display there. They were curious and asked me questions, but since I didn't know what to tell them and could only think of singing to them "If I Were a Rich Man," I suggested that we get out of there and go into the city.

When we got back to the car, I asked them what they wanted to see most for the first time in their lives, the sea or downtown Tel Aviv and Dizengoff Center. They wanted both but it seemed more urgent to get to the mall, which they had heard about. The blue sea wasn't going anywhere.

Dizengoff Center captivated them immediately. They rode the escalators, stopped outside the shops and eventually felt bold enough to touch some of the garments hanging on display. They glanced at the prices and were stunned, going from store to store, from display to display. I didn't know how to tempt them away from this place, which held no allure whatsoever for me. But still, the photo on a bench by the exit from the mall shows me looking happy, with pretty Lin leaning on me and both of us smiling broadly at the camera.

Just an hour's drive

Our next stop was the picturesque Neve Tzedek quarter - "the first official Jewish neighborhood built outside the Jaffa walls in 1887." There I told them about the rest of the plans: We'd have ice cream and walk around, then go to the Jaffa port and see the sea, and then to the flea market. Unfortunately, I didn't photograph them standing there in awe before the array of ice cream flavors, which even amazed me. And I didn't get a photo of the young vendor there, with his earrings and dreadlocks, who was so excited to have the girls at his shop, especially when he heard that they'd come from the West Bank for a day out in Tel Aviv. When the few Arabic words he knew didn't suffice, he just let them sample everything on little plastic spoons and waited patiently until they made their choices. He then stuffed their three cones with as much ice cream as they could hold.

The next photos show them, one at a time, striking different romantic and theatrical poses in the Suzanne Dellal Center plaza - kneeling, standing, leaning against a palm tree in front of one of the brightly illuminated buildings. Their smiles are serious and yet dreamy. Beautiful girls with hearts brimming with hope. It was getting dark so we went off to see the sea, at last! At this hour, it wasn't blue, but still, there it was, the vast body of water they had never seen before even though their village was only an hour's drive away.

From the visit to the Jaffa port, which was shorter than we had planned, I have just one photo - showing two fishing boats moored next to a narrow pier. I was the only one who took a walk on the pier, because the girls sat down right at the beginning of it, took off their sandals, rolled up their pants and waded in the dark waters, refusing to budge.

As I began to drift into a reverie, gazing at the boats rocking there gently in the softly rippling water, a man's voice brought me back to reality. Two burly men were standing behind the girls, and they didn't understand each other. This is a private, fenced-in area and entry is forbidden, they scolded. How dare we enter? I had seen the fence - after all, there aren't many places without fences in this country - but the small gate in it was wide open. Still, given the hour and the circumstances, I realized it wasn't prudent to get into a confrontation with one of the men, who said he was a security guard. So I apologized, took the frightened girls and headed out. They were still barefoot and I was a bit confused.

The man heard the girls speaking Arabic and asked where they were from. I couldn't say that they were from Jaffa, because when I tried to win his sympathy beforehand, I told him that I just wanted them to see and feel the sea for the first time in their lives. They're from East Jerusalem and Israeli residents, I said. He showed his official police ID to me patiently and demanded that we show him our IDs and the girls' entry permits. At that moment, Lin's cell phone rang again: It was her fiance, calling for the umpteenth time to check in on her. I heard her mumble something and she hurriedly hung up. I picked up the word mashakil ("problems" ) despite all the stress - the Arabic word that I'm most familiar with.

Anyway, I somehow managed to get the policeman to let us go with a warning and admonition that this was "the last time" he would do so, as if we'd met this way many times before.

Free on the beach

So, that's the story. I recounted what happened next at the beginning: About three minutes after the encounter with the undercover cop, we arrived at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the flea market, an utterly ordinary security checkpoint, but the three girls, who hadn't quite calmed down yet, pressed by, past the policemen and fled inside without showing their bags.

The end was wonderful. The last photos show them about two hours after the trip to the flea market, running in the darkness on Tel Aviv's Banana Beach. They didn't want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water. And ran and ran, back and forth, in zig-zags, along the huge beach, ponytails flying in the wind. From time to time, they knelt down in the sand or crowded together in the shallow water to have their picture taken. The final photo shows two of them standing in the water, arms around each others' waists, their backs to the camera. Only the bright color of their shirts contrasting with the dark water and the sky reveals that the two are Yasmin and Aya, because Lin was wearing a black shirt.

And it wasn't the last time I'll do something like this. There will certainly be other times. Because I, who returned them safely to their village at 2 A.M., bursting with joy, do not recognize the legality of the checkpoints and fences, or the legality of military rule over the places that Lin and Aya and Yasmin are from. And it seems to me that the ice-cream guy in Neve Tzedek, with his earrings and dreadlocks - and, above all, his kindness and sanity - would have agreed to join me, if I had known him. And then we would have taken two cars and six young women, and maybe men too, and given not only them but also ourselves a feeling of freedom, temporary but still profound and meaningful. W

The Huffington Post August 19, 2010
"A State of Mind; Why Israel should become Secular and Democratic"
Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, Author,
Posted: August 12, 2010 02:40 PM

A note in the Israeli daily Haaretz informing that the state attorney's office has asked police to start an investigation against author and editor Ilana Hammerman justly outraged human rights activists. Hammerman drew attention when she bravely published, in May of this year, a detailed magazine article describing a trip to an Israeli beach in the company of three Palestinian girls.

According to Israeli law and Israeli military regulations, no resident of the occupied Palestinian lands is allowed into "Israel proper" without a special permit. Since 2000, permits are rarely issued and so Palestinians are kept out of the Israeli view and space. They also have an extremely hard time just moving within the West Bank between villages and towns. Israeli Jews, by contrast, are free to travel in and out of most of the West Bank, and are waved politely through the checkpoints by the friendly (to them) guards.

Hammerman decided she will have no more of this. Having heard that her young Palestinian acquaintances had never had a chance to see the sea -- just 30 miles west of their village -- she promptly invited them to disguise as Israelis (namely, drop the traditional Mandil headscarf and dress casually) and get into her small car. They joyfully cooperated, knowing full well that any suspicion at the checkpoint would land them and their families in trouble. Their reward was a happy day of fun and recreation.

The published story touched many Israelis and aroused some heated discussions. An Israeli nationalist organization pompously urged the State Attorney's office to start a criminal investigation against the law-breaking writer. Many in the Zionist Left and the "Peace Movement" expressed sympathy with Ilana but were quick to register their reservations on this "boundary crossing" of civil disobedience.

To some of us, however, it seemed that "doing an Ilana" is exactly what we were longing to do for awhile. The action fully reflected our long-felt disgust with the Israeli legal system that discriminates people according to their ethnic origins and religion.

"Preserving a Jewish State with a Jewish majority" has become an axiomatic notion in Israel and abroad. An absolute majority of Israeli Jews feel there is a "must" to turn a blind eye to all evil "necessary" to facilitate it. For too long we have been demonstrating, writing and complaining about the sorry state of mind Israelis have locked themselves into. Now we saw a chance to actively break away with all this, as Ilana Hammerman had done.

Motivated by the urgency of the direct threat to Hammerman -- her act could potentially lead to up to two years in prison -- we decided to join her and follow her example. A group of twelve women (11+ Ilana) quickly organized. We soon found counterparts: courageous Palestinian women willing to make a political statement and interested in a day trip outside their harsh reality. They all knew the risk they were taking in case their identities should be revealed, but could not care less. At the appointed day we set off in six cars with 12 Israeli drivers and escorts, 12 Palestinian women, four children and one baby.

It was a beautiful adventure. The day started with much tension. There was always the chance that an overzealous checkpoint guard would ask for paperwork and spoil the plan. Fortunately this did not happen. Less than half an hour after we set off we were able to assemble in a state of euphoric joy -- we made it. The unlawful laws were broken, and from now on it was just a question of finding a good beach and nice cafés and restaurants. Israeli cities have plenty of those.

The recreational aspect was indeed rewarding, but it was merely a side product. Our purpose was and still is to make a political point. We aimed to go public and force a public debate. It soon became clear that the Israeli media will not take too much notice without further prompting, and we opted to place an advertisement titled "We Do Not Obey: Women in the footsteps of Ilana Hammerman". Reactions are still coming, and we are gratified to have many positive ones besides the many angry expected condemnations.

Our group is determined to continue with similar acts of civil disobedience. We are encouraged with the response to the ad, published August 6 and slowly picked up by some media and websites. While Israeli officials, diplomats, academics and spin doctors raise alarms through the media and Jewish communities all over the world in the face of a so called "global delegitimization campaign against Israel", we call on fellow Israelis to start cleaning our act back home. We ask good, honest, liberal democratic Israelis to join us in refusing to comply with laws and regulations that deny basic human rights from fellow humans. It is as simple as it sounds, and long overdue.

Non-Violent Protest in Bil'in

2010-07-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

Photo by Hamde Abu-Rahma

From: Iyad Burnat

Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 7:22 PM

Dozens suffered from tear gas inhalation in Bil'ins weekly protest , former vice president of the European Parliament detained by the army and one Israeli protester arrested

http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=300&Itemid=1

Today the people of Bil'in were joined by about 100 international supporters, among them an Italian group including Lousia Morgantini, the former vice president of the European Parliament. The army fired tear gas at the protesters, and managed to grab and detain Morgantini. She was released after about half an hour, while an Israeli protester who tried to help her ended up getting arrested.

The protest started as usual after the midday prayer, and Palestinian, Israeli and International protesters went together towards the gate leading to the military post. People were dancing, singing and shouting slogans, and Argentine and others were carrying the flag of the European Union. Morgantini has been participating in a number of Bil'ins demonstrations over the last years, and is seen as great supporter of the struggle.

As people started to reach the gate, it took about ten minutes until the army started shooting tear gas. After another few minutes the army decided to storm the gate and chase the protesters. In the chaos Morgantini ended being grabbed by soldiers and separated from rest of the demonstration, that were forced back. As Morgantini was held by the military, some protesters decided to negotiate, walking up to the soldiers, who were lined up in several blocks to prevent people from coming up. One Israeli activist, Kobi Snitz was arrested while trying to speak to the army, and was then taken to a police station. Morgantini was released after about half an hour, and is in good condition.

No injuries were reported, though many people suffered from tear gas inhalation. Some stun grenades were also thrown into the field, and caused a fire. Todays protest in Bil'in proved that the army is serious about their threats of arresting protesters who are taking part in the weekly non violent demonstration, as witnessed several times the previous months.

Discussion of Non-Violence in Palestine

2010-07-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

Nicolas Kristof in NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/opinion/11kristof.html?http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/opinion/11kristof.html?ref=opinion
Despite being stoned and tear-gassed on this trip, I find a reed of hope here. It’s that some Palestinians are dabbling in a strategy of nonviolent resistance that just might be a game-changer.

The organizers hail the methods of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recognizing that nonviolent resistance could be a more powerful tool to achieve a Palestinian state than rockets and missiles. Bilin is one of several West Bank villages experimenting with these methods, so I followed protesters here as they marched to the Israeli security fence.

Most of the marchers were Palestinians, but some were also Israeli Jews and foreigners who support the Palestinian cause. They chanted slogans and waved placards as photographers snapped photos. At first the mood was festive and peaceful, and you could glimpse the potential of this approach.

But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.

Soon after, the Israeli forces fired volleys of tear gas at us, and then charged. The protesters fled, some throwing rocks backward as they ran. It’s a far cry from the heroism of Gandhi’s followers, who refused even to raise their arms to ward off blows as they were clubbed.

(I brought my family with me on this trip, and my kids experienced the gamut: we were stoned by Palestinian kids in East Jerusalem, and tear-gassed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank.)

Another problem with these protests, aside from the fact that they aren’t truly nonviolent, is they typically don’t much confound the occupation authorities.

But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.

“This is what Israel is most afraid of,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a prominent Palestinian who is calling for a nonviolent mass movement. He says Palestinians need to create their own version of Gandhi’s famous 1930 salt march.

One genuinely peaceful initiative is a local boycott of goods produced by Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Another is the weekly demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah against evictions of Palestinians there. And in Gaza, some farmers have protested Israel’s no-go security zones by publicly marching into those zones, even at the risk of being shot.

So far there is no Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr. But one candidate might be Ayed Morrar. A balding, mild-mannered activist, he was the mastermind behind the most successful initiative so far: nonviolent demonstrations a half-dozen years ago in the West Bank village of Budrus against Israel’s construction of a security fence there. More than many other Palestinians, he has a shrewd sense of public relations.

“With nonviolent struggle, we can win the media battle,” Mr. Morrar told me, speaking in English. “They always used to say that Palestinians are killers. With nonviolence, we can show that we are victims, that we are not against Jews but are against occupation.”

Mr. Morrar spent six years in Israeli prisons but seems devoid of bitterness. He says that Israel has a right to protect itself by building a fence — but on its own land, not on the West Bank.

Most Palestinian demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but in Budrus women played a central role. They were led by Mr. Morrar’s quite amazing daughter, Iltezam Morrar. Then 15, she once blocked an Israeli bulldozer by diving in front of it (the bulldozer retreated, and she was unhurt).

Israeli security forces knew how to deal with bombers but were flummoxed by peaceful Palestinian women. Even when beaten and fired on with rubber bullets, the women persevered. Finally, Israel gave up. It rerouted the security fence to bypass nearly all of Budrus.

The saga is chronicled in this year’s must-see documentary “Budrus,” a riveting window into what might be possible if Palestinians adopted civil disobedience on a huge scale. In a sign of interest in nonviolent strategies, the documentary is scheduled to play in dozens of West Bank villages in the coming months, as well as at international film festivals.

I don’t know whether Palestinians can create a peaceful mass movement that might change history, and their first challenge will be to suppress the stone-throwers and bring women into the forefront. But this grass-roots movement offers a ray of hope for less violence and more change.

ANSWER TO KRISTOF
HIGHLIGHT Patrick Connors July 11th, 2010
Dear Mr. Kristof,

Thank you for writing about the Palestinian protest movement against Israeli apartheid. You did convey some valuable information, but missed some important, larger context.

First, Palestinians are not "dabbling" in nonviolent protest. They have a long. rich history of nonviolent protest, and Israel similarly has a long history of brutally repressing nonviolent Palestinian protest, a sign indeed that Israel fears nonviolent protest.

The first intifada, as just one historical example, was largely nonviolent, with strikes, marches, refusal to pay taxes, etc., in addition to youth throwing rocks at armed Israeli soldiers.

In this more recent intifada, as another example, Palestinians have held thousands of largely nonviolent protests from 2002 to present against Israel's wall built on West Bank land. The protests you mentioned in Budrus and Bil'in are some of the more prominent campaigns during the last eight years, but are not at all the only ones. Budrus was indeed unique in the success that was achieved there, and Ayed Morrar, Iltezam Morrar and others - friends of mine - deserve tremendous credit for that great success. They did mobilize their entire community in a very effective manner, with women and girls playing extremely important roles.

Still, you are missing vital information when you set Budrus as the good example and Bil'in as the bad example of Palestinian protest. The reality is much more subtle and explains some major Palestinian problems in conducting nonviolent campaigns against Israeli repression. Israel routed its wall was routed through Budrus' land in the West Bank to eat up land for an Israeli military area - as I remember, a firing range - and not for the expansion of a Jewish settlement. In Bil'in and many other places where protests are being held, Israel built the wall deep in the West Bank to steal more of those village's land for settlement expansion. The settlement enterprise, homes for thousands of settlers and the fortunes of Israeli real estate companies like Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev's Africa Israel depend upon completing those settlements - in Mattityahu East on Bil'in's land, as just one example.

Thus while Budrus' mobilization was excellent, it was against a target with fewer vested Israeli interests behind it. After ten months of powerful protests in Budrus, the Israeli government decided it was not worth it to hold onto a military area, whereas, to my knowledge, the Israeli government has not substantially conceded and rerouted the wall anywhere in the West Bank where the Wall's route was designed to create more space for settlement expansion.

Ayed, Iltezam and Budrus deserve all the credit for the reasons you note, but Bil'in and other villages do not deserve to be cast as failed examples of Palestinian nonviolent leadership and protest. Due to the importance to Israel of the Mattityahu East settlement, the people of Bil'in have been forced to continue their protest campaign for five years against the wall and settlements on their land, and have weathered a ferocious assault by the Israeli military, leading to the death of one nonviolent Palestinian protester, injuries to hundreds of others, and the arrest of tens of protesters. This Israeli strategy of crushing Palestinian protest in places like Bil'in and Ni'lin, arresting and harrassing the protest leaders (Abdullah and Adeeb Abu Rahmah from Bil'in are still sitting in Israeli jails), has achieved some success in fragmenting protests over time, resulting in more chaotic scenes like those you witnessed in Bil'in.

Yes, an important lesson of Budrus and Bil'in is the value of the whole community, including women, participating in protests, but other major lessons include Israel's refusal to give up on settlement expansion despite Palestinian protests, and the systematic strategy that Israel employs to attempt to break any sustained, long-term campaign of Palestinian protests.

Finally, thank you for mentioning the growing Palestinian and international boycott movement as another example of nonviolent Palestinian protest. However, by focusing on the boycott of settlement products recently championed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, you have only recognized a small portion of the large and growing international boycott movement, which focuses on all Israeli products, as well as a boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. The Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement was founded by Palestinian civil society groups five years ago, has been endorsed by a wide range of Palestinian and international organizations, and has achieved many successes worldwide. Information on this growing movement can be found at www.bdsmovement.net

Thanks again for your column. It conveyed a brief snapshot, but missed some important context and history that I'm sure you were unable to glean during a very brief visit.

Patrick Connors

A different kind of soccer game!

2010-07-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

Naomi Klein Speaks at Protest in Toronto

2010-06-02T20:57:00.001-07:00

Two Observations about the Israeli Attack on the Flotilla to Gaza

2010-05-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

31 May 2010: An American solidarity activist was shot in the face with a tear gas canister during a demonstration in Qalandiya, today. Emily Henochowicz, 21 year old Cooper Union Art Student, is currently in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, following the demonstration that was held in protest to Israel’s murder of at least 10 civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters this morning.

Middle East News Service comments: Two items on yesterday’s events. The first is from French Le Figaro (kindly translated by John Passant) and notes that the roof body of French Jewry, the equivalent of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has deplored the action. The CRIF is known for its steadfast support of Israel. Criticism from them is highly significant. The second is from former Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer, translated and distributed by the American Friends of Peace Now, again one of the more moderate organisations in the US

– Sol Salbe]

The CRIF deplores the Israeli operation

The CRIF 'profoundly deplores' the Israeli military operation against the maritime convoy heading for Gaza, saying that 'It is not good news for peace,' according to Haim Musicant, the director general of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France.

"We deplore what happened, even if Israel had announced that it would not let this landing occur,' he added. 'Unfortunately, this happens when there are hopes for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, it is not good news for peace." "We deeply regret that there are victims," he added. "We feel sincere compassion and sadness, 'Musicant said again.

French original: http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2010/05/31/97001-20100531FILWWW00416-le-crif-deplore-l-operation-israelienne.php

Israel's moral decadence
Yariv Oppenheimer | May 31, 2010
(published in Ma’ariv, Hebrew only)

Even if the fleet to Gaza is irritating and outrageous, a sovereign state cannot treat every act of protest as a terror event that has to end in bloodshed

Tonight Israel marked a new low point in the way it chose to contend with its domestic and external policy dissidents. A state that will not let its citizens protest, demonstrate and demand justice, a state that is busy composing loyalty tests for its citizens and passing laws to limit the freedom of expression, failed again in the real test and stopped a protest fleet of civilian ships at the cost of more than ten lives.

The fleet that left Turkey a few days ago managed to anger even me. Hundreds of pro-Hamas activists challenged Israel blatantly and outrageously. Not a word of censure of the Hamas government, not a word about Gilad Shalit and not a word about the desire for peace. Nonetheless, a sovereign state cannot treat every show of protest, however outrageous and irritating it is, as a terror event that has to end in bloodshed. Instead of using the fleet to generate an internal Israeli discussion about the effectiveness of the policy of the siege of Gaza and its moral and political implications for Israel, all of the government spokesmen chose to focus on the handful of activists on the ships and grace them with the title of existential threats to Israel's security. From here to unnecessary bloodshed the path was short.

It is not the soldiers' fault, nor the commanders' nor the heads of the IDF's. Israeli society as a whole is responsible for the grim results of the IDF takeover of the protest ships. The radicalization of Israeli society is yielding its fruit. The message to the soldiers and police is crystallizing. When Arabs are involved in an activity, the hand on the trigger is light. Determination boards the ship while sensitivity stays in the water.

But have no fear, the domestic Israeli propaganda machine began to work and in just a few hours every Israeli will be recounting how Hamas helicopters took over a Jewish ship and shot illegal immigrants in all directions. With the use of our repression mechanisms and the encouragement of the IDF spokesman we will again dissociate from reality and the world and manufacture our own unique script in which we are the victims and the whole world is against us as usual. Will the outcome of tonight's confrontation end with an official commission of inquiry? No chance.

Israel justifies its brutal and violent image
The price for the unfortunate results of the fleet will be paid primarily by the families of those who were killed at sea last night. Next in line to pay the price will be the residents of Israel who want peace and the end of the conflict with all their hearts, and who wish to stop the cycle of bloodshed and live in a saner country. We, the silent majority, watch with despair as Israel with its own actions justifies the brutal and violent image it acquired in the last years and gives our biggest enemies in Hamas and Iran a reason to rejoice.

If the miserable naval clash had any winners, they are in Tehran, in the bunkers of Beirut and in the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Hamas government succeeded with the Israeli government's active support to receive international recognition, to gain the support of the Arab world and to be seen as a hero standing up to Israel.

The enemies of peace and the extremists on both sides can again find reasons to attack each other and deepen the hatred and hostility between Jews and Arabs in Israel and outside of it. Again the moderates on both sides are silenced and the voice of reason is drowned out by the voices of incitement and hatred. Without a loud voice of protest by a patriotic Israeli public calling on its leaders to change course, we will all find ourselves in a morally and politically decadent country, slowly sinking into the depths.

2010-05-28T17:35:00.000-07:00

Wonderful New Documentary about Grace Paley

2010-05-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Sonya Friedman has finished a documentary about GRACE. Please let your friends know.

The url of the trailer: www.gracepaleyvideo.com

In this new 51-minute video, GRACE reminisces about her work, life, family and her early literary and political influences. We see Grace at home, in interviews, and at her fabled readings. Grace's close friends and colleagues remember her as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist" and "a writer of genius."

Best regards,

Sonya Friedman

Producer, co-director

Message to Elton John

2010-05-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

HEY ELTON from John Greyson on Vimeo.

from John Greyson, great filmmaker from Toronto

22 Arrested Declaring Grand Central Station a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone

2010-05-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

May 3, 2010 Posted by Ellen Davidson, IndyBlog

Twenty-two activists were arrested May 3 at Grand Central Station for dropping banners off the balconies of the main hall and staging a die-in.

Organized by the War Resisters League, the action declared Grand Central a nuclear weapons-free zone and called for disarmament here in the United States first. Wearing t-shirts that said “No Nukes Begin with U.S.,” the protesters handed out thousands of leaflets to rush-hour commuters and circled the information booth with a picket with large signs shaped like skulls with the names of all the nuclear-armed nations. Participants came from around the country and the world; they were in New York for actions relating to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference.

At 9 am, banners were dropped from the balconies at the west end of the large hall. One set read “Nuclear Weapons = Terrorism,” while the other urged “Talk Less, Disarm More.” After the banner-droppers were arrested, other protesters began to lie down by the stairs. They too were taken away by police, but everyone was released from custody by 11 am.
The day before, NPT Review 2010 International Planning Committee for Nuclear Abolition, Peace and Justice mobilized Disarm Now! For Peace and Human Needs, a march of 8,000-10,000 from Times Square to Dag Hammarskjold Place, where booths and tables were set up in a Peace Fair. A significant portion of the protesters came from Japan, the only country ever to have been the target of a nuclear attack.

The demonstration’s points of unity were:

We want a Nuclear Free Future!
Fund Human Needs, Not War!
End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Protect the planet instead of destroying it with war and nuclear proliferation!

The Raytheon 9 and the Derry Anti-War Coalition

2010-04-12T21:43:00.000-07:00

1 April 2010
Anti-war activists in Derry, Northern Ireland, have been harassing a local plant of the U.S. arms manufacturer Raytheon for several years. In one action, nine people from the Derry Anti-War Coalition occupied the offices and destroyed over £350,000 of equipment. The saboteurs were charged with burglary and criminal damage, but the court permitted them to argue that they were acting to prevent war crimes, and after presenting evidence to support this argument, the defendants were acquitted of all charges by a unanimous jury. Raytheon’s U.S.-side managers concluded that “the legal system in Northern Ireland does not offer the degree of protection to their business that could be expected in other parts of the world,” and the company has decided to abandon their Derry plant!
Congratulations to the Raytheon 9 and to the Derry Anti-War Coalition.

Non-Violence in Palestine?

2010-04-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

Palestinians headed to plant trees last month in the West Bank, part of a new, nonviolent approach to assert their land claims.
By ETHAN BRONNER Published: April 6, 2010
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said he planted trees in the West Bank last month “to establish our presence on our land and keep our people on it.”
Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance.

“It is all about self-empowerment,” said Hasan Abu-Libdeh, the Palestinian economy minister, referring to a campaign to end the purchase of settlers’ goods and the employment of Palestinians by settlers and their industries. “We want ordinary people to feel like stockholders in the process of building a state.”

The new approach still remains small scale while American-led efforts to revive peace talks are stalled. But street interviews showed that people were aware and supportive of its potential to bring pressure on Israel but dubious about its ultimate effectiveness.

Billboards have sprung up as part of a campaign against buying settlers’ goods, featuring a pointed finger and the slogan “Your conscience, your choice.” The Palestinian Ministry of Communications has just banned the sale of Israeli cellphone cards because Israeli signals are relayed from towers inside settlements. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is spending more time out of his business suits and in neglected villages opening projects related to sewage, electricity and education and calling for “sumud,” or steadfastness.

“Steadfastness must be translated from a slogan to acts and facts on the ground,” he told a crowd late last month in a village called Izbet al-Tabib near the city of Qalqilya, an area where Israel’s separation barrier makes access to land extremely difficult for farmers. Before planting trees, Mr. Fayyad told about 1,000 people gathered to hear him, “This is our real project, to establish our presence on our land and keep our people on it.”

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

On Palm Sunday, the Israeli police arrested 15 Palestinians in Bethlehem who were protesting the difficulty of getting to Jerusalem because of a security closing. Abbas Zaki, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was arrested, prompting demonstrations the next day. Some Palestinians are also rejecting V.I.P. cards handed out by Israelis allowing them to pass quickly through checkpoints.

Palestinian political analysts say it is too early to assess the prospects of the nonviolent approach. Generally, they say, given the division between Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority here, nothing is likely to change without a political shakeup and unified leadership. Still, they say, popular resistance, combined with institution-building and international appeals, is gaining notice among Palestinians.

“Fatah is living through a crisis of vision,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Jerusalem. “How can they combine being a liberation movement with being a governing party? This is one way. The idea is to awaken national pride and fulfill the people’s anxiety and passion. Of course, Hamas and armed resistance still remain a real option for many.”

Khalil Shikaki, who runs the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, said: “The society is split. The public believes that Israel responds to suffering, not to nonviolent resistance. But there is also not much interest in violence now. Our surveys show support for armed resistance at 47 percent in March. In essence, the public feels trapped between failed diplomacy and failed armed struggle.”

Israeli military authorities have not decided how to react. They allow Mr. Fayyad some activity in the areas officially off limits to him, but on occasion they have torn down what he has built. They reject the term nonviolent for the recent demonstrations because the marches usually include stone-throwing and attempts to damage the separation barrier. Troops have responded with stun grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas and arrests. And the military has declared that Bilin will be a closed area every Friday for six months to halt the weekly marches there.

“We respect Salam Fayyad,” one military official said, speaking under the army’s rules of anonymity. “But we don’t want him to engage in incitement. Burning goods is incitement. Destroying the fence is incitement and is not nonviolent. They are walking a thin line.”

One reason a violent uprising remains unlikely for now, Palestinian analysts say, is that in the two years that Mr. Fayyad’s security forces and ministries have been functioning, daily life inside West Bank cities and their surroundings has taken on much greater safety and normality.

The police and the courts are functioning again after the intifada of 2000 that led to many deaths on both sides. Traffic tickets are now routinely handed out. Personal checks, long shunned, are increasingly in use.

Of course, the presence of Israeli forces outside the cities and at checkpoints, the existence of the barrier and continued building inside Israeli settlements send most Palestinians into despair and make them doubt that a sovereign state can be built.

One effort to increase a sense of hope is a new push to ban goods made in the settlements, symbols of occupation. A $2 million project called the Karama National Empowerment Fund, jointly financed by Palestinian businesses and the government, aims to spread the message through ads and public events.

Mr. Abu-Libdeh, the economy minister, said a law was likely to go into effect soon barring the purchase of settlers’ goods, a trade worth at least $200 million a year. Efforts to end Palestinian employment in settlements will not carry penalties, he said, because the government does not offer unemployment insurance and it is unclear whether the 30,000 Palestinians who work in settlements could find new jobs.

Palestinian industrialists have financed the settlers’ goods ban partly because they hope to replace the goods with their own. They do not single out other Israeli goods, which are protected under trade agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr. Fayyad, the prime minister, a political independent, said his notion was to build the makings of a state by 2011.

“It’s about putting facts on the ground,” he said in an interview. “The occupation is not transitional so we need to make sure our people stick around. If we create services, it gives people a sense of possibility. I feel we are on a path that is very appealing both domestically and internationally. The whole world knows this occupation has to end.”

Demonstration on Palm Sunday

2010-03-30T18:47:00.001-07:00