Friends, there are many deeply disturbing things going on in Washington; it’s hard to keep up.
But here’s one I’m keeping up with, and I invite your attention:
The nomination of longtime CIA officer Gina Haspel to be head of the CIA.
Her nomination should be stopped. Haspel is a torturer, with deep involvement in some of the most horrible abuses and crimes of the ‘War On Terror” era. Continue reading Urgent – Act to Stop Torturer Gina Haspel
During the past year, resistance took many forms, and cropped up in many places. It was also exhausting and resisters took many hits. And the struggle(s) are far from over.
I tried to do my share. And in an effort to keep up my own spirits, and maybe offer some tidbits of encouragement to others, I’ve assembled this personal scrapbook. In the age of phone cameras, such documentation has become much easier. If others are moved to share theirs, I look forward to sampling them.
And it all started, of course, before the new year. After November 8, 2016, like many others, I spent many days reenacting this famous painting of “The Scream,” aloud, silently, and in between. I don’t know if it helped or not. Denial is more than a river in Egypt. But then . . . Continue reading A Year of #45. My Year of Resistance.
The new double issue of Quaker Theology is titled “Quakers & Resistance.” It considers highlights (and some lowlights) of Quaker resistance to oppression, both inside and outside the Society of Friends.
For example, it recalls what happened to Lucretia Mott when she showed up in Richmond, Indiana in 1847, at the time when Indiana Yearly Meeting was gathering. She had traveled by stagecoach from Philadelphia, a bone-rattling journey which took many days. She had barely stepped down from the coach when she was confronted by a committee of elders, who told her to “Go home!”
What did Lucretia do then? You can find out more here.
Not that Philadelphia had been free of troubles. Continue reading Quaker Theology: Highlights of New Double Issue
No Country for Jewish Liberals, Larry Derfner. Just World Publishing. 268 pages.
The Half Life of a Free Radical. Clare Hanrahan, Celtic Wordcraft. 292 pages.
Reviewed by Chuck Fager
[Editor’s Note: In light of the news that the government of Israel has banned staffers from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from entry, due to their support for the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign, this review becomes even more timely.
It’s not about AFSC, but the first author here, larry Derfner, is an Israeli citizen, a proud Zionist Jew, but one who also supports BDS.
It makes me wonder: if Derfner travels outside Israel, will he too be banned from returning? (Besides AFSC, the Israeli government has also banned members of Jewish Voice for Peace from entry.) How much more authoritarian will his government become in the quest to crush the BDS challenge? As you’ll see below, these are not academic questions, but very much alive, even for those on the Israeli side of their divided land. Continue reading Resistance In Review-From Israel to Asheville
The other day I saw a chart from Brown University that maps the 70+ countries where the U.S. has “War on Terror” military operations going on (there are likely more, where the secrecy level is higher). And it set me to remembering.
Continue reading Gone & Almost Forgotten: the “Peace Movement”
What “secret” am I talking about here? Lucretia Mott with a secret?
For her devotees, Lucretia Mott’s life is, or should be, an open book: born into a loving, encouraging family, married for 57 years to what one biographer called “the best husband ever”; she had a long public career of preaching and speaking, of which generous samplings have been preserved; and she wrote hundreds of letters which scholars have combed through. She endured sorrows: the loss of two of her six children, and then widowhood; and she overcame years of withering criticism of her ideas and “heresies.”
None of that is new, or unexamined. And in her personal carriage she was a model of traditional Quaker propriety: she disdained novels as frivolous and vain; it was husband James who sat in a quiet corner, burning the midnight oil, unable to put down Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Then, while Hicksites all around were shedding the grey and the bonnet, she was plain til the very end. Continue reading Lucretia Mott’s Birthday Secret: No Woman Is an Island?
Yes, Lucretia would be 225 years old on January 3, 2018.
And who was Jane Johnson, and why was she racing down Philadelphia streets in a coach with Lucretia Mott in September of 1855? And why were federal marshals trying to catch them??
And why did Johnson run through Mott’s house and out the back door?
Continue reading Lucretia Mott’s Birthday is Coming Soon! (On Wednesday, In Fact)
I
Brooklyn, December 1967
I knew it was going to be another tough day at the Welfare Department when I saw the woman having an epileptic seizure in the Intake room. She was on her back, eyes rolling, jerking and thrashing, head thumping on the cement floor.
A security guard ran over and straddled her, trying to hold her down. Her arm whipped up and knocked off his black billed hat. Reaching back, he pulled out his billy club.
God, I thought, I hope he’s not going to hit her!
He wasn’t, but it was almost as bad. He tried to push the club between her teeth, to keep her from biting off her tongue, which could kill her. The jerking and thumping of her head made this almost impossible, though, and the club whacked repeatedly against her chin and face. Finally he got the club between her lips, and her movements seemed to slow down.
I couldn’t watch anymore. I turned back to the doorway and headed upstairs to the unit, where my desk sat in the second row from the back, the fourth desk over.
It was a freezing cold December in 1967, and there was no doubt about what I wanted for Christmas: Two things: a revolution; and then, a telephone for Mrs. Lee.
Actually, the telephone would probably have to come first, but that’s not how I felt–and I’m getting ahead of myself.
II
Every day in my job at the New York City Welfare Department, I saw dozens of good reasons for revolution: sad and desperate people trooping in and out of the Intake room, looking for help, begging for help, screaming for help. And every day, I watched the system fail them, giving them no help, or the wrong kind of help, or help that just wasn’t enough. Continue reading How I Got so Lucky – A True Christmas Story
Actually this is the report on a twofer/Marathon:
First, “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” and then “A Legacy of Spies,” both by John LeCarre.
“Cold” is 40-plus years old, JLC’s first big hit; “Legacy” is a brand-new sequel/followup/reconsideration. Continue reading Review: A Legacy of Spies” — John LeCarre’s Latest
Continue reading Here We Go Again: Trump vs. Transgender Soldiers