Protest at the White House against Torture

Grace Paley Award Winner

The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences is pleased to announce that Sơn ca Lâm is recipient of the 2009 Grace Paley Award. Honorable Mention has been awarded to Stephanie Fail and Heather Turner.

The Joiner Center received an overwhelming number of qualified nominees for this award; it's clear that students at UMass Boston are hard at work in the fields of social and political activism. We want to thank the students and faculty who nominated the applicants; our task was bittersweet. We applaud Sơn ca Lâm, Stephanie Fail, and Heather Turner for their work and advocacy; it is an honor to recognize these outstanding individuals.

For the past three years, Sơn ca Lâm has served as a core member of Asian American Studies Outreach (AASO), the student-initiated, student-run arm of the Asian American Studies Program at UMass Boston. She was instrumental in the drafting of Nine Issues of Concern, which framed an agenda of priority issues for Asian and Asian American students. Sơn ca also co-organized all aspects of the 2008 Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Activities on campus. Sơn ca performed at numerous cultural events on and off campus, including The Vagina Monologues. Her academic commitment is outstanding; she is pursuing a double major in Environmental Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies. Combining her academic skills and her community commitments to full effect, Sơn ca used her GIS mapping skills to plot a profile of Vietnamese nail salons in Boston; similarly, she made use of her academic environmental justice expertise to highlight illegal landfills and dumpsites in the East Vietnamese community in New Orleans. Sơn ca Lâm is due to graduate this year.

Stephanie Fail writes op-eds for The Mass Media, the UMass Boston student newspaper. Her columns have covered a wide range of topics, including politics, the T, racism, history, and the need for students to play an active role in social and political affairs. Her work with the Student Antiwar Coalition has included the development of a website, event planning and outreach through journalism. Stephanie and her colleagues at the Student Antiwar Coalition brought the embedded international journalist, Dahr Jamail, to UMass Boston. This event raised student awareness about the war and its consequences.

Heather Turner has put in many hours as an activist, focusing on the needs of the mentally ill and women at risk. Her grassroots activism includes protesting white supremacist activities, leafleting (addressing issues such as the war on terror, the Patriot Act, and other issues concerning individual privacy and freedom), organizing a group of young people to attend the Democratic National Convention, and counseling and assisting at shelters throughout Boston and Cambridge. A member of the UMass Boston Philososphy Club, Heather is currently involved in fundraising for a conference on the Rwandan Genocide.

A reception honoring Sơn ca Lâm, Stephanie Fail, and Heather Turner will be held at the Harbor Gallery in McCormack Hall on Wednesday, April 15th at noon. This event will be preceded by a reading given by writer and activist Carolyn Forché at eleven o'clock. For details or disability-related accommodations, please contact the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at (617) 287-5850.

Passover for Peace and Justice

Philadelphia, PA April 7-8, 2009—This year for the Jewish holiday of Passover, many Philadelphia Jews and their allies will gather at the Israeli Consulate for an 18 hour vigil to remember suffering and commemorate struggles for liberation from ancient Egypt to modern-day Israel-Palestine.

This event, “From Deir Yassin* to Gaza,” begins at 4:00 PM on April 7th and continues through 10:00 am April 8th. The event takes place outside of the Israeli Consulate, 1880 JFK Blvd. in Center City Philadelphia. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again fails to address Palestinian sovereignty, the organization sponsoring the event, Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace (PJJP), gathers together for immediate action. PJJP calls for all people of conscience to stand together in mourning of Palestinians who died in Deir Yassin, for an end to the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and demands an end to the siege of Gaza, and the right of return to Palestinian refugees.

Participants will include individuals, rabbis, community leaders, and groups within the Jewish, Arab-American, Muslim, Christian, Quaker, secular, student, and local Philadelphia peace communities. Rabbi Linda Holtzman of Congregation Mishkan Shalom will lead kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer, for those killed at Deir Yassin. Refugees Fleeing Deir Yassin in April, 1948

The event highlights Imam Dawud Assad, a survivor of the Deir Yassin Massacre who lives in New Jersey as a grandfather and advocate for social justice. Mr. Assad will share his story during the Deir Yassin Memorial taking place 6:00-8:00 PM on April 7th.

The 18 hour vigil holds a packed schedule of events, opening at 4:00 PM with political street theater as a prelude to a Deir Yassin Memorial from 6:00-8:00 PM. A Passover Ritual of Memory and Repentance will be followed by an all-night Teach-In on TOPICS including boycott, divestment, and sanctions. The event will conclude with a protest against the siege on Gaza at 8:30 AM the following morning.

*Deir Yassin was a Palestinian village destroyed by 3 Zionist militias in 1948 in which more than 100 men, women and children were massacred. Word of the massacres spread through Palestine and many residents fled. Within a year of the massacre, Deir Yassin, which had been emptied of Palestinians, was re-populated with Jewish immigrants, and its name was removed from the map. During the war of 1948 that ended in the establishment of the state of Israel, over 530 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Deir Yassin has become emblematic for Israeli violence against the Palestinian people.


Thomas Hurndall, who took this photo was shot by an Israeli soldier.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml
Thomas "Tom" Hurndall (29 November 1981 – 13 January 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On 11 April 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper, Taysir Hayb. Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later.

Man Confronts Police London April 1, 2009

This video was shot by Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, from Los Angeles, CA Please contact him for use.

Knitters for Change

These are pictures from Melbourne, Australia's G-20 protests.

A Walk in March

by Grace Paley May 28, 2007

This hill

crossed with broken pines and maples

lumpy with the burial mounds of

uprooted hemlocks (hurricane

of ’38) out of their

rotting hearts generations rise

trying once more to become

the forest


just beyond them

tall enough to be called trees

in their youth like aspen a bouquet

of young beech is gathered


they still wear last summer’s leaves

the lightest brown almost translucent

how their stubbornness has decorated

the winter woods


on this narrow path ice tries

to keep the black undecaying oak leaves

in its crackling grip it’s become

too hard to walk at last a

sunny patch oh! i’m in water

to my ankles APRIL


...........

March BEYOND the Pentagon to the Arms Makers

It's the 6th anniversary of the Iraq War. The March 21 ended in front of the VA corporate offices of General Dynamics and KBR-and a whole pile of Virginia State Police in full riot gear. Two provocateurs dressed as Black Bloc members were spotted behind police lines, as was a light armored vehicle.



While the mainstream press reported only "hundreds" of protesters, China's Xinhua News Agency reported that 170 cardboard coffins draped with US, Iraq, and other flags were carried. For less than 1,000 protesters, at least one in 10 would have had to be coffin bearers, so with coffin bearers nowhere near that high a percentsage, yet the number of coffins at 170, the total turnout must be higher.

The march that nominally went to the Pentagon went right by the Pentagon-to go after war contractors. It was in front of a building containing Boeing and a "contractor" or mercenary firm specializing in electronics that the APOC blockade of the march occurred. This blockade forced the march to stay on this target longer and approach it more closely (on the sidewalk).

The final stopping point was well beyond the Pentagon, at the Crystal City office plaza containing a big office tower labeled "General Dynamics." The offices of Kellog-Brown-Root(KBR) a former subsidiary of Halliburton, were at the very end of the stopping point area.An armored vehicle stood guard.

Riot cops menaced the protesters to such a degree that the very Black Bloc that had earlier participated in the APOC blockade had to turn around and deploy forward to protect those bearing the flag draped coffins from all those riot cops!A tiny counterprotest threatens Jane Fonda with LYNCHING!

These photos and words are from http://dc.indymedia.org/ one of the best of the US indymedia sites.

International Women's Day

This poster lists the women's agenda in Australia. The poster is a re-make of one of the Soviet posters designed by Rodchenko.

The Northern Territories (NT) Intervention
The Northern Territory National Emergency Response (also referred to as "the intervention") is a package of changes to welfare provision, law enforcement, land tenure and other measures, introduced by the Australian federal government under John Howard in 2007, nominally to address claims of rampant child sexual abuse and neglect in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Operation Outreach, the intervention's main logistical operation conducted by a force of 600 soldiers and detachments from the ADF (including NORFORCE) concluded October 21, 2008.

The package was the Federal government's response to the Territory government's publication of Little Children are Sacred, but implemented almost none of the report's recommendations. The response has been criticised, but also received bipartisan parliamentary support. The current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has and continues to support the response, though he did make some adjustments to its implementation.

The measures of the response which have attracted most criticism comprise the exemption from the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the compulsory acquisition of an unspecified number of prescribed communities (Measure 5) and the partial abolition of the permit system (Measure 10). These have been interpreted as undermining important principles and parameters established as part of the legal recognition of indigenous land rights in Australia. More generally, a lack of consultation with Aboriginal community leaders is often cited by critics of the response, alongside the fact that the action addresses very few of the specific recommendations contained in the Little Children are Sacred Report, while introducing many measures not suggested in the Report.

Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation have responded:
"ANTaR disagrees with the former Federal Government that breaching the Racial Discrimination Act is necessary to protect children. In particular, we are concerned that this has led to mistrust, division and increased intolerance towards Aboriginal people that are barriers to protecting Aboriginal children from abuse."

Coal Fired Power Shut Down

March 3rd, 2009
Yesterday thousands of people came together to offer an unprecedented example of mass protest and civil disobedience for the climate. More than 2500 activists, many willing to risk arrest, successfully blockaded all five entrances to the Capitol Power Plant for more than four hours.
As impressive as that is, this action wasn’t just about this one coal-fired powerplant. The scale and the commitment of the participants was the biggest example yet of the kind of public support necessary to solve the climate crisis. We aren’t going to stop global warming by just changing lightbulbs and driving hybrid cars. The only real solution is to come together and demand unprecedented change through unprecedented action.
And that’s exactly what happened yesterday.

Pink Chaddi Campaign

THE LADIES DO PROTEST TOO MUCH from the Telegraph, Calcutta, India
From pink underwear to passiveness, how can a modern democracy forge new forms of dissent that challenge bigoted notions of Indian Culture without being violent?

To protest against the assault and molestation of girls in a Mangalore pub by Pramod Mutalik’s Sri Ram Sena, the Pink Chaddi Campaign was launched by the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women on February 5. The online campaign — a “nonviolent and loving response” to the brutal attack on the girls — asked women (and men) to send pink underwear (other colours were permitted, if pink underwear was unavailable) to Mutalik and his men. It also got women to organize a Pub Bharo Action on Valentine’s Day. This gesture was of considerable importance. By exposing themselves to risks in real time (of another assault perhaps), the protesters dismissed cynical arguments that the women were only interested in a flippant campaign protected by the privacy of the virtual world.

The Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women have done what Indians and their elected representatives are averse to doing more regularly: object to a violent and depraved act, mobilize opinion and fight back against injustice. I remember one occasion during which I too had acted in keeping with the precedents set by the passivity of my fellow citizens. This is a story not just about a shocking incident. In a way, it is also a story about me and my uncomfortable, weighty silence.

Sometime in November last year, I boarded the Metro at Tollygunge. After we reached Kalighat, the sound of carriage doors opening and onrushing feet made me look up from my book. I watched as the near-empty compartment filled up with people, including a large group of men and women who had come to visit the temple. The men were wearing vests and lungis, and had tikas on their foreheads. They spoke loudly, as if they were excited and afraid at the same time. The women had their faces covered. They squatted on the floor, clutched one another, their bodies tied in one tense knot. With them was a child — he must have been about ten — who was thrust on the seat facing mine. From where I sat, I could see him shifting uncomfortably beside a smartly-dressed young woman on her way to work.

The woman looked uncomfortable too. She stared hard at the boy, her perfect eyebrows knitted into crooked lines. Suddenly, the boy touched her dangling identity card, turned it towards his face, and began to read from it. This unthinking act, which perhaps comes naturally to those unused to the city’s codes, soon lifted the veneer of civility from that very public space, exposing the faultlines underneath. The woman shouted at the boy, snatched her card back, and pushed him off the seat. Others joined her in abusing the boy and those with him, and forced the terrified group off the train at the next station. A few others, including myself, had chosen to remain mere observers. We said nothing, and went our own ways. Even now, I don’t know why I hadn’t defended the child’s inadvertent act. To ease my conscience, I convinced myself that I didn’t share the bigotry, prejudice and nastiness that were directed at the child. The woman’s behaviour, though vile, had not caused grievous harm. Protests, I was convinced, were meant for graver, grimmer violations.

The woman in the train was in the wrong. But so was I, in trying to believe that simple forms of exploitation ought to be put up with. That cannot be, simply because they grow unnoticed, mutate and acquire monstrous, ungovernable forms such as communalism, casteism, environmental pollution and violence against women, children or freedom of expression. It is not enough to hope that the State will come to the citizens’ aid with the immense resources at its disposal. The State has to be prodded by the people, who have to be equal partners in this act of transformation. A democracy has the space to accommodate legitimate forms of anger and dissent. These need not be of the kind that are practised in parts of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat or Kashmir, or even what we frequently experience in Calcutta: bandhs or unjustified, violent demonstrations by fringe groups such as the one against a writer from Bangladesh. Protests can be smaller in scale — acts performed by individuals — but they have to be risked, no matter how trivial the provocation.

Strangely, cushioned as they are in a democracy, the genteel classes are often wary of protesting. There is fear and shame in standing up and confronting a numerical majority that is in the wrong, in demanding what is rightfully ours, or in challenging those who deny what is rightfully ours. It is this shame and fear that relegate protests to the margins of the political, stripping them of their legitimacy, so that they are looked upon as the domain of the unruly and the dispossessed. This points to a larger failure — moral and institutional — on the part of the people and of the State.

I secretly admire these pubgoing, loose and forward women. They share the markers of my social identity — an education, a job and awareness — but they are different. At a time when we are busy building barriers to screen ourselves from disturbing actualities, they have managed to break a few in order to meet the enemy in the eye.

UDDALAK MUKHERJEE

From the IndianExpress:
Mumbai: Thousands of Indians, many fuming over a recent assault on women in a Mangalore pub, are vowing to fill bars on Valentine's Day and send cartons of pink panties to Sri Ram Sene that has branded outgoing females immoral.
A ‘consortium of pub-going, loose and forward women’, founded by four women on social networking website Facebook has, in a matter of days, attracted more than 25,000 members with over 2,000 posts about the self-appointed moral police.

The women said their mission was to go bar-hopping on February 14 and send hundreds of pink knickers to Sri Ram Sene, that has said pubs are for men, and that women should stay at home and cook for their husbands.

Collection centres have sprung up in several cities, with volunteers calling for bright pink old-fashioned knickers as gifts to the Sri Ram Sene as a mark of defiance.

"Girl power! Go girls, go. Show Ram Sene who's the boss," reads one post on Facebook from Larkins Dsouza...
There are more heated discussion threads as well that range from the limits of independence to religion and politics, reflecting the struggle facing a country that has long battled to balance its deep-rooted traditions with rapid modernisation.

Not to be outdone, the Sri Ram Sene, which has cautioned shops and pubs in Karnataka against marking Valentine's Day, has promised to gift pink saris to women and marry off canoodling couples to make them ‘respectable’.

For Valentine's Day: Grace's Anti-Love Poem

Sometimes you don't want to love the person you love
you turn your face away from that face
whose eyes lips might make you give up anger
forget insult steal sadness of not wanting
to love turn away then turn away at breakfast
in the evening don't lift your eyes from the paper
to see that face in all its seriousness a
sweetness of concentration he holds his book
in his hand the hard-knuckled winter wood-
scarred fingers turn away that's all you can
do old as you are to save yourself from love

Non-Violent Protest to Save Coal River Mountain

February 3, 2009
In Pettus, West Virginia, five Coal River Mountain activists were arrested and charged with trespassing after locking themselves to a bulldozer and a backhoe at a Massey Energy mountaintop-removal mine site.

In the face of an impending 6,600 acre mountaintop removal strip mine, they planted a banner for the Coal River Wind Project, a nationally acclaimed proposal that would create 200 local construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs, enough energy for 150,000 homes, and allow for sustainable forestry and mountain tourism projects, as well as a limited amount of underground mining.

After the TVA coal ash disaster in December, when a billion gallons of coal ash poured out of a pond and deluged 400 acres of land in six feet of sludge, the Coal River Mountain activists fear blasting for the proposed mountaintop removal site on Coal River Mountain, which rests beside a 6 billion-gallon toxic coal waste sludge dam above underground mines, could be catastrophic for the communities downstream.

"Massey could flood the towns of Pettus, Whitesville and Sylvester with toxic coal sludge," said Julia Bonds, of Rock Creek, W.Va. "Blasting at a multi-billion-gallon sludge lake over underground mines could cause the sludge to burst through and kill thousands of people."

For a powerful documentary about this struggle over mountain top removing see http://www.burningthefuture.org/

Burning The Future: Coal in America - Trailer from Odessa Films on Vimeo.

Wanted: Drafts and Photos from Women's Pentagon Action

Marianne Hirsch is writing a short essay on Grace's anti war writing and, particularly, the collectively written Women's Pentagon Action Unity Statement. She would like any manuscript drafts of the statement that would be available to reproduce. Are there any photographs of the action in which Grace is featured? She asks if Grace herself was arrested in DC in 1980 or 81?
Please contact mh2349 at columbia.edu

Theater Opening in March in San Diego

Thanks for your wonderful blog on Grace Paley. She inspired many women of a "certain generation" (I was one of them) and continues to inspire younger folks of today.

I can trace the influence of her work on me back to the 1970s, when I was a young mother in NYC trying to figure out how to balance intimacy and creativity in my life, with, at the time, one small boy who took up, to use Grace's language, all my "lumpen time and bourgeois feelings".

I went on to teach women's studies for the next thirty years or so and then left the university to write full time.

I have just finished a play, based on Grace Paley's The Collected Stories. "Acts of Faith," written in collaboration with Sharyn C. Blumenthal, who will direct, will premiere in San Diego in March 2009.

Maybe you can make a trip out here to see it at the small non-profit theater where I am managing director, and where it will be produced? http://www.laterthanever.org for info.

Kathy Jones

Blog about Grace Paley

I Dreamed I Saw Grace P. Last Night by Nomi Hurwitzhttp://neverdied.blogspot.com/