Help find Effective Strategy

Hello friends,
There will be a meeting Thursday, May 3rd at 7 pm at Northern Light United Church (400 W. 11th Street) for JPPJ supporters, Veterans for Peace Chapter 100, and NOW-Juneau to seek consensus on a strategy for action. You are invited to join the conversation. If you cannot make the meeting but have ideas to contribute, you can post comments to this posting by registering first here at Blogspot.com (easy).

See also my posting for April 9th below

Are We Politicians or Citizens?

Howard Zinn
April 16, 2007

Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. This article was originally published in The Progressive.

As I write this, Congress is debating timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. In response to the Bush Administration’s “surge” of troops, and the Republicans’ refusal to limit our occupation, the Democrats are behaving with their customary timidity, proposing withdrawal, but only after a year, or eighteen months. And it seems they expect the anti-war movement to support them.

That was suggested in a recent message from MoveOn, which polled its members on the Democrat proposal, saying that progressives in Congress, “like many of us, don’t think the bill goes far enough, but see it as the first concrete step to ending the war.”

Ironically, and shockingly, the same bill appropriates $124 billion in more funds to carry the war. It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.
Read complete article

How do we find the path to peace?

Hello friends,
At Juneau People for Peace and Justice we have begun discussions to try to begin to clarify how we should move forward most effectively in challenging the Iraq war and occupation, and to build a community of nonviolence. Several us believe we could have a much bigger impact if our efforts were combined and in sync with folks around Alaska - more likely to influence our congressional delegation, and to draw more of our fellow Alaskans into the effort, more and better media coverage of our efforts too.

We imagine you may be debating such matters as well. Can we join the discussion somehow? There are folks in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Homer, Haines, Sitka, Ketchikan, Gustavus that I know of, and undoubtedly more in other communities who have been very active doing a variety of things to raise the consciences of our communities and our congressional delegation. Some are confronting the delegation directly through office occupations, others are working to educate the neighbors - bringing speakers, showing films, putting on plays and art shows, vigils, counter-recruiting work and more.

We propose that as many of us as possible join in a conversation to explore how to focus our work. Please share your thoughts by adding your comments to this blog. You might want to share what you have been doing so far, where you live, and your general level of interest and time for this work.

Some questions and ideas put forward include:

• focus on Congress (on our delegation)
• focus on our communities through education
• direct action
• more vigils
• letters to the editor
• ballot initiatives
• city resolutions

We may need to continue with all of the above in our individual communities, but is there a way we can coordinate our efforts statewide to be more effective?