A Season of Peacemaking

Dear Friends,

After about an hour and a half working on a careful reflection about my upcoming journey I accidently erased the entry!! ::sigh:: There are many lessons in peacemaking, disarmament and alternatives to violence when such a thing transpires. Unfortunately the heart of my sojourn will have to wait for another time. For now, a brief outline of my journey:

August 25-29:
Greensboro & Durham, North Carolina
I will be traveling to these cities to visit with friends at the Rutba House Community as well as two folks I have worked with, Kate and Steve, in our seminary-project called Word and World. One of our Board Members, Rev. Nelson Johnson along with many others is helping to convene hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of North America. This commission will examine deep issues of race/class relations, segregation, and civil rights by examining a horrible massacre of 5 labor organizers in 1979. Modeled after a similar effort in South Africa that brought about the end of Apartied, the Truth and Reconciliation hearings should get to the heart of the great ache of slavery and systemic oppression that continues to plague our society and ourselves.


August 31:
Chicago, IL

Voices in the Wilderness

I will be using Chicago as my home base over the next four months as I will be working with Voices in the Wilderness whose main headquarters are in Chicago. From here I will participate in various efforts for peace and stability in relation to current events in Iraq. To read more about Voices visit there website at www.vitw.org.















September 10 - 25: Washington D.C.
Voices in the Wilderness will begin a three week long fast in Washington D.C. while the IMF/World Bank holds crucial meetings on economic restructing in Iraq. Information and writing will be posted on the Voices website as we grow closer to this event.



September 26-30: New York City, NY
Voices will end its fast at the headquarters to the United Nations in New York. (Pictured at left: Cathy Breen, Sattar, and Johanna Berrigan)













October 1-10: Minneapolis, MN
An organization I work with, Word and World, will host a mini-school or weekend-long conference in celebration of William Stringfellow. To know more about this event or Word and World visit our website at www.WordandWorld.org

(Picture above: William Stringfellow, "Keeper of the word." Icon by Fr. William McNichols)

October 12 - November 7: Dublin, Ireland

















I will be returning to Ireland for the second time this year to help organize internationals coming the trial of the Pitstop Ploughshares 5. In early morning hours of February 3, 2003 a group of five Catholic Worker activists disarmed a US military plan in Shannon, Ireland that had stopped over night to refuel and receive a new crew. The activists, deeply rooted in the tradition of the ploughshares movement, disarmed the plane and began a necessary dialogue on the use of Shannon airport, a civilian airport, as military stop-off for US war planes enroute to various locations, especially the Middle East. The 4th Ammendment to the Constitution of Ireland forbids Ireland both its Parliment and its citizenry to participate in foreign wars, the efforts of the five catholic workers has brought on a tremendous debate in Ireland. The first trial for the group was in March 2005 and ended in a mistrial. The Re-trial will begin October 24, 2005. To learn more visit their website at:

www.peaceontrial.com

(Pictured above right: Ciaron O'Reilly and Damien Moran, two of the five folks who participated in the Pitstop Ploughshares disarmament. Ciaron's hand reads: Resist The War. Damien's hand reads: Pray for Peace.)


November 15 - 19: Fort Benning, GA
I will travel to Ft. Benning to resist US collaboration with terrorism through its School of the Americas. Thousands of activists, many of which are Catholic, venture down to this remote city in Georgia to recall the brutal history of US/Latin American relations especially between 1950 - 1990. For more information visit our local SOA Watch at www.soawne.org

January 1 -8: Los Angeles, CA
I will venture to Los Angeles for a meeting of the Board of Directors of Word and World, we will be 6 months away from our next school on Faith and Labor in Memphis, TN.

The Legacy of Debt

Geneve, Suisse–As I made my journey from Camden, New Jersey to Geneva I became overwhelmed with curiosity imagining what a country that stayed ambitiously neutral during World War II, and had produced such recognized documents as the Geneva Conventions would be like. Would Geneva be a haven of progressive politics and social radicalism? Or would the shroud of Calvinism and the “protestant work ethic” thwart my romantic sway? Upon arriving I found Geneva to be a beautiful city, confident, elegant and spotless! However, the immense “success” of the banking industry fills the poetic potency of the city with the sterile air of classicism. The revolutionary social writings of one of Switzerland’s most well known philosophers, Jean Jacques Rousseau, appear to have been written upon the banks of the Lake Geneva, and washed away by the ever strengthening tides of globalization. His legacy preoccupies my mind as I amble through avenues full of familiar names: McDonalds, Starbucks, H&M …

Still, I have not come to Geneva as a tourist. I have come, together with a small group of eight Americans, one Irish and one Iranian to fast and vigil at the entrance to the United Nations Geneva compound. We have gathered to challenge the legitimacy of the United Nations Compensation Committee meetings around economic restructuring and debt compensation in Iraq. As G-8 Conference members prepare to meet in Scotland over debt relief in Africa, the West’s most recent imperialist conquest, Iraq, faces its executioner once again on the ever perilous road towards self determination. In April 1991 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 687, which established the legal foundation to impose war reparation claims against Iraq. In that same year the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) was born and given the thorny task of overseeing debt repayments Iraq accumulated under the lavish military spending sprees of Saddam’s Baath Party during its invasion of Kuwait. An extensive list of individuals, multinational corporations, and governments has demanded repayment to the tune of $385 billion.

While a resolution to collect 30% of Iraq’s oil revenues was established by the UNCC in 1991, it wasn’t until 1996, the year the UN passed Resolution 986, (known as the oil-for-food programme) which significantly raised the cap on Iraqi oil revenues, that the Iraqi Regime agreed to begin repaying the debts. When UNICEF figures came out in August 1999 concluding that the UN’s economic sanctions policy had contributed to the deaths of a half million children under the age of five the world community demanded its own repayment: an explanation! It appears that as members of the Compensation Commission met in comfortable Geneva offices and continued throughout the 1990’s to write million dollar checks to rich countries like Kuwait, their fellow Baghdad colleagues stepped over corpses on their way to the bank. Our literature asks that the Compensation Commission recall the dreadful consequences following the Treaty of Versailles on Germany’s devastated economy that contributed to the dawning of the Second World War. Iraq is of course not Germany, and our message is not intended as a threat, but perhaps an unusual opportunity to recall the lessons from our complex and brutal history and not repeat our mistakes.

Our delegation celebrates its 9th day of the fast tomorrow; we are halfway to the end! We continue to believe that lessons of hospitality and generosity are also working in our history as many of us experience them on the shabby dirt roads of Jummeriyah or the broken streets of Camden, where I live.

As we gather each day we pray that members of the UNCC do not continue to step over more corpses on their way to fill the coiffeurs of the rich. As we fast we recall the prophetic words of Dr. King in his 1967 address at the Riverside Church in New York City where he challenges, “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Farah Marie Mokhtareizadeh is a 22-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, and member of Fast for Economic Justice in Iraq.

The photo above was taken by my friend Bobak on the Rue de Contamine in Geneva, Switzerland. From left is myself, Abdul Mossedegh, and Kathy Kelly.

Special Note: It was a miraculous series of events that led to this picture being taken, and my blessed meeting with Abdul Mossedegh. Abdul is a kind and gentle man who runs the Biblioteque Mossadegh in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the grandson of Mohammed Mossadegh who was the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran from 1951 - 1953. He was overthrown by the Shah in a coup d'etat sponsored and organized by US and British intelligence agencies (CIA). To learn more about him please visit the following address:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh

Sangha and Tzedakah

"We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still."

This poem by Wislawa Szymborska represents a way of seeing that belongs not to ourselves, but to the earth. Szymborska’s meaning allows for a beautifully challenging perspective on the world, and the poem lends itself entirely to the complexity of perspectives presented in Geoffrey O’Connor’s Amazon Journal. O’Connor’s documentary relates the various struggles of indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon to the “reactions” and organizing efforts of mainly white, Western peoples. Journalist, ethnographers, anthropologists, students, clergy, environmentalist, miners, artists, and politicians all contribute a voice and a lens into which O’Connor’s audience may engage the struggle of the Yanomani people. Though, O’Connor is careful to swing his pendulum between these folks and the voices of the tribal leaders within the Yanomani people in order to engage fundamental questions on the nature of cross-cultural relationships, development, and communication. In this way he is able to reintroduce into dialog the consequences that may occur if we (white, Westerners) presume to give ourselves the power to easily “fix” such complicated and potent world realities as those in the video. The genius of O’Connor’s work is in the simplicity in which he presents his questions; not by relating the issues via large corporate bodies, but on a “human-scale”1 through relationships. This is most thoughtfully embodied in the story of the two Catholic missionaries, Fr. Guilherme and Sr. Florence. In the story of the founding of the mission, and the evolution of the missionaries’ own religious and cultural identities O’Connor is able to synthesis the immensity of Amazonian politics.

In O’Connor’s book, Amazon Journal: Dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier, he confesses his suspicion “of anyone who professes a special identification with the Indian. I mistrust their all-encompassing enthusiasm that turns people into kitsch objects and denies them the possibility of ambiguity and imperfection. No one can live up to those ideals, and no one should be subjected to them.” For me, these thoughts relate to the dialectic on the intersections of justice and time, where O’Connor learns over the decade of his work and thought on the Amazon that one of the best ways in which he can do justice to the story of the Amazonian Indians is not to view them through “benevolent eyes”. In this way he is able to quickly interdict the Panglonian assertion that the Yanomani’s way of life is in fact the “best of all possible worlds.” O’Connor thusly practices the philosophy of Buber, recalling the necessity to view “the other” as human instead of subjugating the Yanomani to an object of idealism and fascination. The utility of this wisdom may in fact be the catalyst of not only a reinvention of perspective for whites, but an important realization of time. How the Yanomani may support 21st century development (including but not limited to participation in the market economy) and maintain their cultural ethos.

"While considering the appropriate and vulnerable question, ‘in whom can I see myself,’ I feel that the best answer would have to reach into a more Eastern-minded conceptualization of the earth and humanity. In truth I see pieces of myself in almost every person featured in the video, yet the reflection is clearer in some more than others. Though, after considering the topics, themes, questions, and ways of seeing introduced in this class, and through which I have grown more sensitive and compassionate, I cannot help but to feel most akin to the Brazilian rainforrest itself--the naive, simple-minded, complicitor who holds between her teeth the miracle of living as a cultivator, creator, and liberator of life.
If the project of liberation calls for an embrace of pluralism then O’Connor’s documentary reveals an essential component in not just how we theorize social, religious and environmental change but also how we may live it. The gentle ferocity in which Szymborska approaches this subject through her poem (and subsequently all her poetry) gives inspiration to my own project, and for her, O’Connor, and Sr. Florence (amongst many others) I maintain inexhaustible gratitude.

"The window has a wonderful view of the lake,
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.

And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.
A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The characters is invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman."

Robert Frost, 1915

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.