What Are You Doing on September 21?

 
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Revelation 22, NRSV


On Sunday September 21, 2008...
Will Your Church Be Praying for Peace? 
Will Your Church Speak Up About Violence?

On Earth Peace invites your congregation to join the World Council of Churches' 2008 International Day of Prayer for Peace campaign.

You know your community.

Is there domestic violence, homicide, poverty, child abuse, racism?  

You also know God has a different vision for life -- for abundant life, for dignity for all, for justice and shalom.

Will you consider calling together a public prayer service about your community's violence this September?

Hundreds of thousands of people from churches, synagogues, and mosques around the world will join together in the International Day of Prayer for Peace.

For participants connecting through On Earth Peace, there will be opportunities to connect with other peace-committed Christian congregations concerned about violence, access to On Earth Peace resources, and guidance on how to make praying and acting for God's peace an ongoing activity.
 
We look forward to working with you to creatively address the needs of your community with spiritual power.   For more information and to register, please visit our website by clicking here.
 
Blessings and Peace,
 
Matt Guynn
Coordinator of Peace Witness
On Earth Peace

www.onearthpeace.org/prayforpeace

Longshoremen to Close Ports To Protest War

Friends, sisters, brothers,

Watch the news for this in a couple of weeks. . .

Why do you think it creates so much panic & chaos when laborers strike? 

What can we learn from that about where power lies, and how power works, in order to make our political action more powerful?

Here's to powerful action programs, that truly get in the way,
or that truly generate alternatives to what the powers are offering us,

~ Matt Guynn
On Earth Peace



Longshoremen to Close Ports on West Coast to Protest War
Jack Heyman
Open Forum SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle)
< http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/ED8L101F5U.DTL >



Wednesday, April 9, 2008

While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction - key concerns being the war and the economy - the war machine inexorably grinds on.

Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S.  West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union's Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution.  The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a "no peace, no work" holiday.  Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.

Last month, in response to the union's declaration, the Pacific Maritime Association, the West Coast employer association of shipowners, stevedore companies and terminal operators, declared its opposition to the union's protest.  Thus, the stage is set for a conflict in the run up to the longshore contract negotiations.

The last set of contentious negotiations (in 2002) took place during the period between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq.  Representatives of the Bush administration threatened that if there were any of the usual job actions during contract bargaining, then troops would occupy the docks because such actions would jeopardize "national security." Yet, when the PMA employers locked out the longshoremen and shut down West Coast ports for 11 days, the "security" issue vanished.  President Bush then invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, forcing longshoremen back to work under conditions favorable to the employers.

The San Francisco longshore union has a proud history of opposition to the war in Iraq, being the first union to call for an end to the war and immediate withdrawal of troops.  Representatives of the union spoke at anti-war rallies in February 2003, including one in London attended by nearly 2 million people, the largest ever held in Britain.  Executive Board member Clarence Thomas went to Iraq with a delegation to observe workers' rights during the occupation.

At the start of the war in Iraq, hundreds of protesters demonstrated on the Oakland docks, and longshoremen honored their picket lines.  Without warning, police in riot gear opened fire with so-called less-than-lethal weapons, shooting protesters and longshoremen alike with wooden dowels, rubber bullets, pellet bags, concussion grenades and tear gas.  A U.N.  Human Rights Commission investigator characterized the Oakland police attack as "the most violent" against anti-war protesters in the United States.

And finally, last year, two black longshoremen going to work in the port of Sacramento were beaten, maced and arrested by police under the rubric of Homeland Security regulations ordained by the "war on terror."

There's precedent for this action.  In the '50s, French dockworkers refused to load war materiel on ships headed for Indochina, and helped to bring that colonial war to an end.  At the ILWU's convention in San Francisco in 2003, A. Q.  McElrath, an octogenarian University of Hawaii regent and former ILWU organizer from the pineapple canneries, challenged the delegates to act for social justice, invoking the union's slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all."

She concluded, "The cudgel is on the ground.  Will you pick it up?" 

It appears that longshore workers may be doing just that on May Day and calling on immigrant workers and others to join them.

Fighting Violence with Nonviolence: Unarmed Civilian Peacekeepers

Fight violence with nonviolence
Unarmed civilian peacekeepers are saving lives today.
By Rolf Carriere and Michael Nagler
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
MARCH 27, 2008

Atlanta - Legends relate that Buddha stopped a war between two kings who were quarreling over rights to a river by asking them, "Which is more precious, blood or water?"

Could ordinary people use the same kind of wisdom – and courage – to check the impulse to fight wars today – over oil, water, or identity? Mahatma Gandhi thought so. He created teams of civilians called the Shanti Sena or "Army of Peace" and deployed them in various communities around India where they could avert communal riots and provide other peacekeeping services.

Over the past 25 years nonviolent peacekeepers have been going into zones of sometimes intense conflict with the aim of bringing a measure of peace, protection, and sanity to life there. Rather than use threat or force, unarmed peacekeepers deploy strategies of protective accompaniment, moral and/or witnessing "presence," monitoring election campaigns, creating neutral safe spaces, and in extreme cases putting themselves physically between hostile parties, as Buddha did with the angry kings in ancient India.

Civilian unarmed peacekeeping has had dramatic, small-scale, quiet, and unglamorous successes: rescuing child soldiers, protecting the lives of key human rights workers and of whole villages, averting potentially explosive violence, and generally raising the level of security felt by citizens in many a tense community.

Recently a village on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines was under threat by two armed groups who had come within 200 meters of each other. The village elders called for help from the Nonviolent Peaceforce stationed there, who intervened and by communicating with all sides persuaded the armed group to back away. Thanks to mediation, no violence erupted, no lives were lost.

Why haven't you heard about this exciting work? Because it is terribly underfunded, for one thing. There is also a prevailing prejudice that only governments or armed forces – including those of the United Nations – have the responsibility or means to contain conflict. While the UN Security Council has often authorized "all necessary means" to maintain peace and prevent violent conflict, in fact, the UN has not systematically considered large-scale civilian unarmed peacekeeping.

To read the rest of this story, please visit
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0327/p09s01-coop.html