Speaking out, spoking out

I'm thinking about Diane Wilson today. She stood up to BP CEO, Tony Hayward as he began his address during a Congressional hearing in DC this morning. Smeared with artificial oil, she called out that Hayward should be prosecuted for his company's crimes against nature. She was handcuffed, taken out of the hearing room and jailed. Mr. Hayward proceeded to speak as a free man.

I have met Diane and have read her remarkable writings. She knows the waters and the sealife of the Gulf of Mexico intimately. She has made a living as a solo shrimper. She knows what she is talking about.

Here is an article that Diane wrote recently about the gulf and what she knows about the contamination it suffers at the hands of corporate polluters. The article begins this way:

I'm a fourth-generation fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast, on a boat since I was eight. Over the last two decades, I've become a self-appointed watchdog of the chemical, oil, and gas corporations that are decimating the Gulf.

I hate to say it, but what I'm seeing now in the Gulf ain't nothing new. The toxic releases, the lies, the cover-ups, the skimping on safety, the nonexistent documents, the "swinging door" with regulators, the deaths. Same ole same ole.

What is new is the massive nature of the oil gusher and the fact that it can't be covered up because it's ongoing and being videoed. This elephant can't be swept under the carpet, but I'm sure if BP could, BP would.

There are politicians out there -- we've all heard them -- who say this oil spill is just one accident and one accident does not a case make. Heck, one plane crashes and you don't stop flying, do ya? Well, this isn't just one accident. This is the biggest flame among the thousands of fires set by Corporate America on its Sherman-like march across the Gulf.

and it concludes this way:

The bottom line is that the Gulf of Mexico dies a little every day from the tens of thousands of chemical plants, oil refineries, and oil and gas rigs that pockmark the Gulf and its coastlines. It's a death of ten thousand cuts, and many of these offenses don't get reported at all. We, the public, really have no way of knowing. The companies and the agencies certainly aren't going to tell us. They've proved that time and time again. The truth of the matter only becomes clear when something monstrous like the BP oil spill comes along and wakes us up to the nightmare.

It's hard to take in the immensity of the harm inflicted on our planet. Being aware of the barrels flowing every moment into our beloved Gulf of Mexico is like being ever conscious of the monetary and human costs of war accruing every moment. How can we stop the bleeding?

I admire Diane's courage in going right to the source. She can back up her nonviolent, dramatic protest with expert knowledge of the situation at hand.

My response to the catastrophe is less dramatic, but I feel in solidarity with Diane. For the past month, I've been walking or riding my bike more often than using the bus, which is one small way for me to accept some share of responsibility for living in an oil-dependent society, and to "be the change" I want to see in the world.

I haven't owned or driven a car since 1990, partly because of that oil war, so most in-town travel since then has been by bus -- which I love because of its community-building aspects. But now, I'm trying the further step of transporting myself more frequently by human power. Yesterday, for example, I biked for the first time to and from the job I have that is the furthest distance from my house. I biked about 15 miles total, which is not a lot compared to many bicycle commuters, but, for me, it felt like a good stretch in 95 degrees. What I enjoyed, as well as the scenery and the exercise, was being out there on my decorated "love your mother (earth)" bike. Passersby seemed to appreciate the sentiment.

The bicycle revolution that has been sparking the world in recent years is a big part of the solution to our energy crisis, I believe. This gives me encouragement and a way to act in the face of our planet's dire circumstances.

AP photo of Diane being taken out of the hearing room today after speaking out on behalf of the Gulf of Mexico she knows so well

Peacemaking highlights of the decade

Over the New Year holiday, writers have published lists of highlights -- in genres such as politics, movies, music, etc. -- from the past year and the last decade.

Here is my list of just some of the many positive movements and trends toward peacebuilding over the last ten years -- examples of bold, creative, nonviolent People Power standing up to political, military and corporate power.


1) the worldwide antiwar demonstrations in February 2003, the largest coordinated protests in human history, in opposition to the Bush Administration's planned invasion of Iraq

2) the "Saffron Revolution" in Burma in 2007 -- Buddhist monks and students leading the movement against the tyrranical military junta in Myanmar

3) the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation process in Rwanda, maintaining stability and preventing a resurgence of retaliatory killing after the genocide of 1994

4) the Iranian people's democratization campaign of last year, which continues in spite of the government crackdown against it

5) the largely nonviolent, grassroots resistance against the illegal coup this past summer and fall in Honduras -- despite serious poverty among the Honduran population, the lukewarm response of the US government and outright support of illegitimate coup "Golpistas" by some US Congresspersons

6) growth of resistance to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan among US military veterans, active duty personnel and military family members. Iraq Veterans Against the War was formed in 2004, Military Families Speak Out began in 2002 and Veterans for Peace will mark its 25th anniversary in 2010. These organizations have grown significantly since their beginnings and have organized numerous events around the country and abroad. Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX in 2005 drew widespread support. IVAW's Winter Soldier hearings in 2008 have brought to light military realities in Iraq and Afghanistan that have been under-reported in the mainstream press. Veterans have organized Winter Soldier panels in a number of other cities since the initial hearings, including two in Austin last Spring. The GI coffee house in Killeen, Under The Hood, opened last year.

7) a resurgence of activism among young adults on issues of war and peace, the environment, education and immigrant rights, AND a resurgence of activism among us middle-aged women -- who defy ageism with our energy and life experience!

8) exponential growth of the alternative press and social networking. More news is more available to more people. Regular folks like me have been able to publish our writing online and organize quickly through the internet. The traditional media has incorporated more interactivity into their sites. Kudos to the AAS for their early embrace of this trend -- such as hosting reader blogs.

9) a resurgence of interest in creative arts and crafts -- making things ourselves or buying from local artists and craftspersons

10) growth in all things green -- green building, urban farming, native planting, bicycling, alternative energy production. Every step toward sustainability lessens the underlying motivation for war.

Clearly, our world faces dire threats -- most of them man-made. But, I find much inspiration for reversing destructive cycles through courageous, innovative ways such as these that so many people are working to preserve, understand and revere all life.

Line items

Following on a green theme ... whoa, it's like living in a virtual clothes drier this week. I happen to love hanging out laundry -- it's my favorite of all household tasks. I do it year-round. It's a mystery to me why more folks in Austin don't air dry their laundry. I think AAS writer, Denise Gamino wrote an article about this once. She, too, is a devotee of the clothespin and open air.
I guess I come by it naturally. My folks, in their 80's and living in Wisconsin, still hang out their laundry as often as weather permits, and through the winter, they hang it on lines strung in their basement. For us, it's partly frugality and a desire to be green, as well as a preference for the fresh outdoor fragrance and the exercise. But we also like the way it looks.
Oh, I know, some people object. When I first heard of neighborhoods actually prohibiting clotheslines, I was shocked, especially in a southern climate where getting to hang laundry outdoors where it will dry quickly is at least one benefit of our scorchers.
To me, laundry on a line is beautiful, so it sometimes becomes my subject matter. Above is a drawing from this week's napkins drying beyond our zinnia patch. Who's to say they are not also prayer flags?
If you don't already know the joys of a clothesline, put our sun and wind to good use and create something beautiful and green (along with other colors) in your own yard!

drawing by makingpeace

Going green in San Francisco

A recent article in the Austin American-Statesman described the recycling and composting program in the green vanguard of San Francisco.
A couple of days ago, I ran into one of my neighbors, who lives part of the year in that fair city, and I asked her if she liked the recycing process there, and how it worked for her as a resident.
She wrote back with a great description of the program from her perspective, and, by permission, I post it here:

I am glad you asked me about composting in San Francisco. I love it! The City has made it very easy for apartment dwellers to compost, and I'd love to tell you about it.
As you may know, San Francisco is truly a leader among cities when it comes to waste disposal reduction. We have recycled for years and now are composting. In fact, I just read in the paper recently that the City will be hiring some trash cops to go around and make sure that people are truly recycling and composting. In San Francisco, recycling and composting are mandatory, not optional.
I live in a large, downtown apartment building. Earlier this spring, the City started a campaign to distribute recycling equipment (not much is needed, just a bucket and some "green" garbage bags, i.e., bags that are made out of something biodegradable, like corn).
I was home one day and answered a knock on my apartment door. I opened it to find a young woman with curly hair and jeans who looked like she'd just gotten home from a Peace Corps stint abroad. She explained to me that the City was commencing its recycling program and that my building was now a part of it. She handed me a small green bucket, one even more diminutive than my kitchen trash. In fact, my recycling bucket may only be one gallon. It is made out of a green mesh plastic. The City also provided a starter supply of recycling bags. (Weeks later, after I ran out, I was able to get new ones at my nearby Whole Foods Market. I understand that they are available in lots of places, including Walgreens.)
San Francisco is composting just about anything edible. Because the City also requires all restaurants to use biodegradable takeout containers, we are also composting coffee cups and napkins and plates and spoons. If one does not eat that leftover Chinese food, into the compost it goes, container and all!
Now that I am both recycling (including all paper and all rigid plastic) and composting in my apartment, my trash is reduced to nearly nothing. As soon as I buy some of those cloth produce sacks, I will hardly be throwing anything away. Sadly, plastic produce bags are my trash downfall....
My apartment building has a trash chute on every floor down which we launch our garbage bags to the basement. But, in order to recycle and compost, I have to go down the rickety back stairs of my 1920s Art Deco building, into the basement, where I deposit my paper bag full of recyclables and my bio bag full of food and soiled food containers into their respective blue and green bins.
It's not the highlight of my day but it seems like such little effort for a large return. And I am delighted to see that people in my building are recycling and composting in droves. I hope that someday I'll be able to buy a condo in a more modern building. I understand that the City is now requiring new residential construction to build in three chutes, one each for trash, recycling, and composting.

Cindy Sheehan visits Austin

When I entered the Unitarian Church on Wednesday evening to hear Cindy Sheehan speak about her new online book, "Myth America," I saw Cindy in a hallway studying a framed poster of "100 Unitarian Universalists Who Made a Difference." She gave me a hug (though she doesn't really know me), and we looked at the poster together, noting some people we hadn't known were Unitarians -- astronaut, Laurel Clark, for example, who was killed in the space shuttle Columbia accident in 2003. And author, Sylvia Plath. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, my father's dissertation subject, was a Unitarian. And, of course, Thoreau. Cindy noticed how many were writers. In the lower right corner of the poster was a little mirror, subtitled, "You here."
"I'm a Universalist," said Cindy, looking in the mirror. "But I don't think I'm a Unitarian."

In the church sanctuary, Thom the World Poet coincidentally - or not - riffed on these themes in his free form poetry and word play, backed by musicians improvising along with him. He urged attendees to fill the front pews first, to recognize the uniqueness of this evening, of this particular selection of people, which would never be gathered quite this way again. We are unique beings, single units, but we are also part of a whole, indivisible from one another. Fences, barriers, borders, are constructs. Separation is illusion. "Let's de-program, unprogram, re-program," said Thom, noting that we were not holding programs in this congregation.

Displayed in back of the altar where Cindy spoke were three verticle banners, part of the church decor. The first read, "To Come Alive." The middle banner read, "To Seek Truth," and the third, "To Heal Our World." Coincidentally - or not - the banners became perfect headings for what she had to say, in just that order.

"People tell me I should just get on with my life," Cindy said. Do they just want her to fade away? The death of her son, Casey propelled her into the peace movement and his death is part of her life still. Parents whose children have died for any reason report similar feelings -- life never gets "back to normal." Outliving a child is not the normal course of things. And, as Cindy says, "There can't be healing until there's accountability."

Cindy described her visit two days prior to the street in Dallas where the former president has retired. She carried a sign asking the same straightforward question she brought to the gates of the Bush ranch in August 2005: "For What Noble Cause?" In the face of a "let's move forward" climate that would like to bury the memory of her son, Cindy's insistence on accountability, "even if we don't succeed," she says, is a way to not forget Casey.

If the former president won't face the question of causes of war, the answers keep Cindy up at night. She said that she began writing her new book when the title sprang into her head one night and she decided she'd better get up and just start typing. She settled on addressing ten myths that she felt she had been taught about the US, and as she travels on her book tour, she keeps adding to the list in her talks.

In this book, Cindy divides Americans into two classes: the "robber class," and, of course, "the robbed." While I don't find it helpful to categorize people like this, I can't deny many of the facets of truth about theft, nor the pervasiveness of the myths she explores. The first myth she names, "The USA is the greatest country in the universe" finds overt and subtle expression in our churches, schools, families ... even in our new, more universalist president's addresses to the world.

I agree that class divisions are the most significant of all the divisions American's have created in this country, despite the "everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps" mantra and our meltingpot history. And I agree that wars usually serve to profit the wealthy, increasing the distance between the very wealthy and the very poor. But, I also think there is responsibility to be shared among most Americans. Who is a robber, really? Is it the CEO of Halliburton or Xe? How about the person who knowingly buys stock in companies that profit from war? Or the teacher whose retirement benefits come partly from investments in banks, or insurance companies, or oil companies or weapons manufacturers? Most of us, maybe all of us, are tied into some level of complicity, and I think it's instructive to consider how, rather than divide ourselves into perpetrator and victim. In important ways, most of us are both.

Actually, Cindy seems to address this point in her book's "revolution conclusion." She said she wanted to leave her readers with suggestions for positive action. Examples she cited in her talk at the Unitarian Church included: work at the local level in politics, "where it has some effect"; take savings out of the big banks and establish accounts in credit unions; stop using credit cards; simplify possesions; buy local. In such ways, we each seek accountability rather than wait for former or even current presidents to do it.

Although Cindy and I are the same age, we have traveled different life paths, and her conclusions echo the ones I reached in the 1980's when I first moved to Austin after college. I have never used credit cards, for example, but I was also privileged to be able to attend college without student loans because my father was a professor. I didn't have children, so it's been easier to lower my living expenses and to stop driving a car. I haven't had to live with the pain of the death of a child, so it's easier for me to see our former president as a man who should be tried for war crimes, but not labeled "a murderer."

What I appreciate most about Cindy Sheehan's continuing activism is that she is not afraid to stand up to what whe sees as wrong-doing. She speaks and writes plainly and with humor, too. She hasn't, as many would like her to do, just gone away. If a democracy, as Pete Seeger says, rests on an obligation to participate, Cindy has done that. She knows her First Amendment rights, and she uses them. She is an eager student of history and has embraced the methods of historical nonviolent movements.

In many ways, there are and have been grassroots movements rising up in the US which are now acknowledged as being so mainstream that the major media have jumped on the bandwagon to amplify them. News about green building, supporting local business, growing more food at home, supporting public transportation, recycling, increasing bicycle use ... all this is becoming the rule rather than the exception, and it's happening because it really must.

Will war collapse of its own dead weight, like the big banks, insurers and auto makers? As people withdraw their support from the pillars of war and establish alternative, sustainable economies, will the US withdraw military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and its hundreds of bases worldwide because there is simply no more money for or interest in retaining them?

I don't know. The drive for power, to retain power, is very strong, but so is the power of necessity. Maybe we will become true Universalists because we must acknowledge our reliance on our common planet's resources. We will never unite about everything, but our diversity is what makes us healthy. Different paths seem to be converging into shared conclusions. Every person's experience is one's own truth, yet because we are all parts of the whole, we see that our experiences are intermingled in countless ways. Sharing our stories is the opposite of robbery. Seeking truth can heal the world, and we can live on.

Happy 90th, Pete Seeger!

Oh, how nice it would be to have a spot at Madison Square Garden tonight for the 90th Birthday concert for Pete Seeger, our national treasure. The line-up of musicians who've gathered in NYC to honor Seeger is tremendous.
Two years ago, my partner and I saw "The Power of Song" at the Dobie Theatre when the film came out, and we later took our teenage neighbor to see it. She learned about some US history that isn't widely taught, such as the attacks on First Amendment freedoms during the McCarthy witch hunts.
Pete Seeger rose above the ugliness of that period by standing firm for his freedoms and maintaining his community-mindedness and his fundamental belief in the goodness of human beings. The positive influence of his lyrics and music has reached millions, and he remains a man of the people.
I like the way the ticket prices for tonight's concert started at $19.19 (his birth year) and averaged $90, his age today. The concert benefits the Clearwater, his Hudson River Sloop that has done so much to raise environmental awareness in the Hudson River Valley.
Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger!

The Obama garden: a project of the people

It was great to read today's news about the organic garden that the Obamas plan for the White House lawn! This project is the result of a truly grassroots lobbying effort, not only by well known proponents like chef, Alice Waters, but by a groundswell of gardeners and local food advocates all over the country who have called on the Obamas to support local farming through their own example.

Once again, the people lead.

I've been fortunate to have a vegetable garden almost every year and place I've lived since college. Our current yard is quite shaded in the summer, but this winter and early spring, I put in a small salad greens bed in the front yard to catch the winter sun, and it has done well. I installed a second rain barrell yesterday and look forward to the next rain (it's GOT to come sometime....) to see how it works. We have had a compost pile as long as I've been gardening, and since we don't cook with meat, we are able to compost almost all our food waste. With the new single-stream recycling system, we have been able to whittle our throw-away trash down to about half a grocery sack weekly for the two of us. Compared to most of the rest of the world, we still consume and throw away too much. But, we're trying to move in the right direction.

Pedal People

This week, my partner and I had a most interesting house guest. Ruthy Woodring arrived Monday night by train and made her own way to our house via foot power. She travels light, with her home-made back-pack, a small sleeping bag and a folding scooter. In past trips, she has sometimes traveled with her folding bike. She's not only a bicycle advocate, she has helped create a bicycle-powered livelihood.

I had met Ruthy a couple of times before -- once in Chicago when she was living at a Catholic Worker house. I remembered the beautiful garden she was cultivating there at the time, a productive plot of earth tucked into the urban landscape. Now, she and her partner, Alex Jarrett run a bicycle powered trash and recycling pick-up service in Northampton, MA. They began the business in 2002 and call themselves Pedal People.

Check them out on the web. They've established a brilliant niche in a green economy. Northampton doesn't have municipal trash pick-up, so Ruthy and Alex entered the market by offering to take trash and recycling to the city's transfer center via bike trailer -- year-round. We're talking winter in Massachusetts, and that's serious business when you're hauling 250 pounds through slush and snow. A page on their web site describes what they wear for the weather. If they can carry loads by bike all year in that climate, there is not much standing in the way of other such businesses operating in smallish towns all over.

Ruthy borrowed my bike while she was here to explore Austin, and she was quite impressed with our trails. The home she and Alex bought in MA was chosen because it backs up to a Rails-to-Trails corridor. Their household also has experimented with solar energy -- using a single solar panel that they can move around, which powers their fridge (a chest-style, low-energy model) and a couple of LED lights. They have a garden and compost intensely.

I like Ruthy's special combination of valuing personal independence and community interdependence. I've rarely met a young woman who seems as fearless and sanguine about the world, even though she is wise to the hard things in life and has been willing to give up her own freedom for a time when she spent 6 months in a federal prison for crossing the line at the School of the Americas. She thinks carefully about the resources she uses -- food, water, even small, day-to-day materials. She left us with some colorful, home-made envelopes she had created during her train trip (she travels with a few tools, like scissors and a bike wrench) from pages of calendars she'd retrieved from her recent recycling pick-ups (a winter bonus).

Check out this article about Pedal People published in the last issue of Orion magazine. And here's a quote from Ruthy I like from one of the interviews posted on the Pedal People site:
When asked if she sometimes uses cars, Ruthy responds,

"Oh, sure, sometimes I carpool, hitch, take the bus or the train. But I try to keep my transportation simple and nonviolent. When I'm in a car, looking out at the houses and trees speeding by, I feel for those whose lives I'm unknowingly impacting -- the people who live next to the highway who never hear quiet, the people who have to breathe the air I'm polluting, the people who lost their land to highway construction, their farms to sprawl and strip malls, the animals who can't roam because they can't cross the highway... I don't think any of us uses resources in a way completely consistent with our beliefs. But for me, since I can bike and I like it, this is one way I can minimize my complicity in the violence done to our planet."

Ruthy took off for Mexico on a late-night Greyhound, and we hope to hear about her adventures when she passes back through Austin on her way north next month. Since her visit, my partner and I have been even more aware of our own footprint on the earth, thinking about ways we can, like Ruthy and Alex, creatively problem-solve to live more compatibly with our neighborhood and planet. As always, the power of example is the greatest teacher, and Ruthy opened us to a wellspring of happy possibility.

photo of Ruthy from Pedal People

Still kickin' in Austin

Well, I thought we were going out to hear our multi-talented neighbor, Robert, play his theremin as "background music" at an event at BookPeople on Friday night. Or so my partner had told me -- which was reason enough for me to want to go!

Have you ever heard a theremin? It sounds like a musical saw and works as though through magic. Robert made his own instrument, which is housed in a small, painted wooden box with an antenna-like rod extending from it. Robert moves his hand around in the electro-magnetic field surrounding the rod, bringing eery tones out of thin air. He used to play it with an actual theremin orchestra that grew up in Austin, but most of those players have moved on to spread the gospel of theremin to other locales. So, if Robert had an occasion to make music outside the box, I wanted to be there!

What I didn't expect was to hear Robert include my name along with the other 24 surprised recipients of Spike Gillespie's "Umpteenth Annual Kick-A** Awards (and birthday party)" that the theremin baited me to attend! For my ostensible peacemaking efforts (including this blog, apparently), I was handed a trophy that has a judo guy on a pedestal ... um, kicking a horse's keester. As I accepted the award, feeling a little wobbly with surprise, I wondered how I was going to explain that to my mother. (Actually, she loved it. In her community in Wisconsin, she is, at 83, still one of the most active keester-kickers in town.)

It was a very cool event all around, despite my flustered self. It was very inspiring to hear the introductions, both funny and sincere, of the other awardees -- local movers and shakers who help make Austin the a**-kicking kind of place it is.

I'm talking about people who are artists, entrepreneurs or unsung social service providers, and often are all three at once. These are folks like Peg McCoy, owner of the Farm to Market Grocery on South Congress and Marla Camp, publisher of Edible Austin -- both enterprises that have been effective engines of the local food movement. There were author/comedians, Owen Edgerton and Les McGehee, who presented trophies to each other and had the crowd rolling. Owen also presented an award to his spouse, Jodi, who accepted the trophy while nursing their newborn, Oscar, who appeared to be quite at home eating dinner in front of a roomful of smiling admirers. And Jodi, in turn, presented a trophy, in absentia, to her midwife (who was, at the moment, delivering another baby, "or so she says," said Jodi.)

There were luminaries of Austin theatre, including Barbara Chisholm, Ken Webster and Madge Darlington. There were stars of the Austin Chronicle, Margaret Moser and her dashing brother, Stephen Moser. There was the happily wired (even though he'd just come from yoga) Austinist co-founder, Allen Chen, and there was a former Buddhist monk and a current Buddhist monk, both of whom are much beloved caregivers in the community.

With the serious strife in the world, and even in our fair city, it can give us a boost to recognize the positive, creative change that people do accomplish. Hearing the testimonies, the funny stories, the heartfelt appreciation offered to and received by all these awesome people gave me a real kick in the you-know-what to keep on keeping on.

Thank you, Spike Gillespie, for this gift you've given Austin on YOUR birthday! When Robert (who was presented with a Kick-A** trophy himself last year) played "Happy Birthday" to Spike on the theremin, I felt, in an Austin kind of way, like there was new life sprouting all over.

check out Spike's blog to see a photo of Robert and his theremin and Spike's kick-a** history of the Kick-A** Awards.

Encouragement all around

I'm feeling hopeful about a lot of things these days despite the mess left by the Bush Administration. Maybe it's partly because of the Bush catastrophe that people have been taking matters into their own hands -- educating themselves about the environment, growing more of their own food, supporting local businesses, riding bicycles and public transportation, creating their own music, films, visual art, spoken word...
I like this trend!
Almost every day, I see something new that confirms this positive direction. Today, I came across a great video about the hip-hop band, Flobots, and their work with at-risk kids in Denver. Flobots' CD, Fight With Tools, is one of my very favorite releases of the last year. I hope they come back to play Austin in '09.
Just before the new year, I really enjoyed reading the following open letter to Barack Obama, written by two Peace Corps volunteers, who propose a "Hope Garden" at the White House and offer themselves to be the "First Farmers"...

President-Elect Barack Obama Kluczynski Federal Building
230 South Dearborn Street Chicago, IL 60604

Dear Farmer-in-Chief Obama,

Congratulations on your victory and welcome to your new home on Pennsylvania Ave. Knowing how much you love fresh vegetables, we'd like to help you tear up the lawn and plant an organic garden!
In the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden and inspired by Michael Pollan's vision in the New York Times Magazine, we humbly suggest planting a Hope Garden on the White House Lawn. In these days of rising food prices, global climate change, and deteriorating health, the President's Hope Garden could grow as a model of sustainability for the nation and, indeed, the world. It's a model of a simple way to enhance food security while reducing our ecological footprint and improving our families' health with fresh local food.

We nominate ourselves to be the White House's "First Farmers." Here's our vision:

• 
  Serve fresh organic Hope Garden produce at State dinners and to the First Family, to lead by example and improve White House food "security";
• 
  Give tours of the Hope Garden to journalists, students, and other visitors as a means of educating the nation about healthy eating, organic techniques and the power of growing your own food;
• 
  Use the Hope Garden to support urban gardening initiatives in the D.C. area to show that eating local is possible for anyone anywhere;
• 
  Donate surplus Hope Garden produce to local food banks to feed those without gardens;
  Produce a variety of organic heirloom fruits and vegetables all year round, using cold frames and hoop houses.

We are Peace Corps Volunteers about to return home after three years of service in Paraguay, working to improve food security & nutrition, promoting gardening, and helping Paraguayans diversify their farms sustainably. We have studied these issues at the University of Wisconsin's Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. More than just avid organic gardeners, we also have experience in science & environmental education, research, and program management. And, perhaps most importantly, we are filled with hope and excitement about working with you!

Sincerely, Justin Mog, Ph.D. & Amanda Fuller, M.S.

cc: Dale Haney, White House Grounds Superintendent

Amanda Fuller and Justin Mog just returned from three years of service as Agriculture and Environment volunteers in the Peace Corps. They left for Paraguay in 2005 after earning graduate degrees from the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Letter posted on Common Dreams on Dec. 29, 2008

Karl Meyer and natural rights

The annual holiday letter from Karl Meyer arrived this week, and he graciously gave permission for it to be posted here. I like what he relates...

December 4, 2008

Dear fellow creatures,

My annual letters often tell stories of being arrested and jailed for trespassing on lands or properties claimed by others, usually in the name of The People of the United States, or subordinate jurisdictions. I confess that I was not arrested anywhere, for anything, this year; yet I still return to my familiar theme with this tale of –

The Trials of the Nashville Greenlands Twenty-Two
(With a tip of the hat to my old friend, Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ, author of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine)

In these cases the defendants were thirteen rats, eight squirrels, and one juvenile possum, detained and arrested in Havahart traps while trespassing in the vegetable gardens and orchards of our autonomous republic, Nashville Greenlands.

We admit that they were born on these lands, or in territories immediately surrounding us, and have a natural right to be here, yet we claim sovereignty and jurisdiction by virtue of the powers of possession. They ate most of our gooseberries and soybeans, and much of our tomato crop, before we could get control of the situation. Of course, we did not create these crops – we just planted seeds and plants, pulled weeds and mulched a little, and then waited for Earth, sun and rain to do the rest.

I still remember vividly the words of a Catholic priest in Herscher, Illinois, in the spring of 1965, when I walked from Chicago to the State Capitol in Springfield seeking abolition of the death penalty (a goal we reached that year, though only for awhile). He left me standing in pouring rain on the steps of his porch, as he asked me through the screen door between us, “We shoot rats, don’t we ?”

Well, no. We don’t practice capital punishment at Nashville Greenlands. Here is where the irony and the contrasts begin, between the way we treat animal trespassers here, and the experience of protesters, immigrants, homeless people and others arrested in the United States for being in places where they are not allowed to be, such as the soybean fields of Iowa, or the tomato fields of South Florida, where they might be harvesting food for us to eat.

We give each rat or squirrel a prompt hearing, almost always within twelve hours of their original detention. They squeak and squeal in languages we do not understand, but wish we could. Unfortunately, English is the only language understood by the ruling powers here. We sentence them promptly and uniformly to thirty days of unsupervised probation for trespassing and destruction of property valued at less than $1000, and we warn them sternly that they may be sentenced to as much as six months of probation if they are found again on the property here. Then we quickly deport them at least a quarter mile into the fields and woods across the street, into jurisdictions claimed by the State of Tennessee and the United States of America, whence they will have a hard time finding their ways back to us (or so we think).

I admit to being a world class recidivist trespasser myself, though arrested always on properties allegedly belonging to the people : a nuclear missile base under construction in Nebraska; the hallways of federal courthouses while leafleting against the military draft, war taxes and imperial wars; the public wharf at the Bay of LeHavre, the streets of Muhlenbeck just north of East Berlin; a public subway platform in Chicago, while leafleting against a fare increase; a sidewalk in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon; the steps of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, while inviting the Ambassador to share a meal of rice and lentils equivalent to a typical Iraqi ration during the period of economic sanctions; the grounds of the infamous School of the Americas; the Nashville office of Senator Bill Frist at the start of the current Iraq War. In contrast to our treatment of the Nashville Greenlands Twenty-Two, I have waited in filthy, crowded cells as long as twenty-six hours before seeing a judge for arraignment, as long as seven days in jail waiting for trial, and twice been sentenced to six months in prison for trespassing at military reservations. Of course, this was very mild if compared to recent treatment of people who dared to fight against the invasion of their countries, without being authorized by the U.S. Government, or people who come to this country to cultivate our fields and harvest crops for us, without the right authorization papers.

This year, as usual, I traveled north to Chicago for the autumn season and worked at carpentry repairs for old customers. [...]

Responding to the Housing Finance Crisis

I returned to Nashville, pulled out the cash savings I had been parking temporarily to prop up the flagging fortunes of J.P. Morgan/Chase Bank, and invested in cash purchase of another vacant house in our neighborhood (our fourth so far), that will be restored and owned by our friends Enrique Romero and his father, Felipe, highly skilled building tradesmen from Toluca, Mexico. Thus, a Catholic Worker style, direct action response to the housing finance crisis, sub-prime loans, and the need for affordable housing.

As the year winds down we are organizing locally against a proposed amendment to the Metro Nashville Charter that would make English the only language that could be used in any official actions, communications or publications of all Metro Government bodies.

Despite the inroads of our rodent friends, 2008 has been a year of bumper harvests from our gardens. Freezer, refrigerators and cabinets are full of preserved green beans, onions, beets, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, pears, peaches, cherries, almonds and chestnuts, while the garden cold frames still yield a generous supply of fresh carrots, beets, and greens.

And that’s the news from Nashville Greenlands, where all the men are good looking, all the women are strong, and all living things are held in reverence.

Fraternally, Karl Meyer

On interest

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about my views on interest -- that is, about the concept of making money with money. Wall Street news got me thinking about it again. I looked up an essay I read some time ago by one of my longtime sheroes, peace and civil rights activist and war tax resister, Juanita Nelson.

Juanita's ideas influenced my own. Here is what she wrote:

On Interest

By Juanita Nelson

I consider war tax refusal an essential step in the direction of a saner society, when a society is squandering its substance on war waging and preparation. But if I stop at that point I haven’t got the point. Another imperative for me is to look at economics, beyond the use and abuse of federal tax funds, and to take whatever faltering steps I can in the light of insights as I gain them.

An insight I gained many years ago concerns interest, or the ability of money to multiply, to grow, to reproduce itself. I examined the concept inside out, upside down, top to bottom, and concluded that money has no reproductive powers. A hundred pennies sealed in a jar for however many years remains a hundred pennies. It makes no difference if the jar rests on your desk or in the vault of a bank or is invested in the Sleight-of-Hand Corporation. (Experiment with the jar of pennies on your desk.)

Interest is a construct invented so that, as John Ruskin observes in Unto This Last, some can take advantage of other's distress. If I lend you a hundred dollars that I have no need of at the moment, or that I obviously can manage without, why would I demand a hundred and ten from you within a year instead of merely the original hundred? I would have done nothing to deserve the ten dollars. It would result from work you had performed and therefore, according to my calculations, I would be extracting ten dollars worth of your labor.

For a paragraph, I'd prefer to remove the discussion from the distraction of dollars or money, only a representation of the real thing. What I'm really dealing with is the product of labor applied to natural resources, the only combination I am aware of which yields wealth. (No matter how many dollar bills, of whatever denomination, are thrown to the ground, they cannot dig a hole, as one person can.) So I, having a surplus, let you use ten bushels of corn to supplement your poor crop, a supplement without which you must go hungry much of the winter. But I stipulate that the next year you must return to me not the ten bushels you had from me, but eleven. If we assume that it takes equal amounts of time to grow a bushel of corn, I would be usurping a bushel of corn's worth of your time, your labor. With what justification?

So, the first thing to ask about interest is, what is it? And the answer appears to be: appropriation of another’s labor - though the ultimate victims of that appropriation may be many times removed from our immediate view - maybe just a polite way of saying robbery. If this sounds harsh, listen to Cicero in De Officius, 44 B.C.E.: When Cato was asked what was most profitable in the way of property, he replied, "good pasture." And when the man who asked the question said, "And what about lending at interest?" Cato answered, "What about manslaughter?" I was pleased also to be backed up by economist Maynard Keynes: "At the base of today’s acquisitive society is legalized usury, or lending money at interest."

Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters reluctantly keeps a small bank account to enable check processing. Some years ago we agreed that taking interest on the piddling sum was contrary to all we believed in. We approached the bank to ask that we not be credited with interest. We went from a surprised receptionist to a nonplussed teller to an adamant president, who told us their charter required them to give us the interest. It was only after I recounted an experience in Philadelphia where I had been allowed to forego the unwanted sum that the president decided he could honor our request. Not only that, he consented to what we’d mentioned only offhandedly because we thought it would be too much - we could return the interest we had previously collected! Which we did. We had won permission not to take money we didn’t want.

photo of Juanita and Wally Nelson, 1986

Challenging market economy assumptions

Regarding the Wall Street crash, here's one of my thoughts:

To a certain extent, I think all investors, from the big players on down, share some responsibility for what is happening.
The market system encourages speculation. It's based on the presumption that making money with money is the wisest use of one's financial resources, even when it's a gamble.

But, inevitably, this leads to the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, to greater disparity between rich and poor and to individual investors losing sight of exactly what their money is being used for. It leads to inflated prices for goods whose intrinsic value does not increase.

The thing is, money doesn't make money all by itself. Money plus labor makes money. Is it right or fair to accrue wealth through someone else's labor?

I decided some years ago that it didn't seem fair to me to benefit from the labor of others by obtaining money from investments. Folks talk about "earning" interest, but I don't think interest is earned by the person holding the bank account. Someone else is doing that work.

So, I do what I can to stand aside from the market-driven bandwagon. I have a non-interest bearing bank account and don't invest in the stock market. I don't buy on credit. I realize the bank invests my funds in ways that I may not approve, but my compromise is to not accept the interest on that investment.

These views are not shared by many, I know, but given the current state of affairs on Wall Street and Main Street, maybe some are questioning the basic assumptions underlying the economy, too.