Troops Home Fast; Ice Cream Not War

CodePink is thick in its “Troops Home Fast!” campaign.  A number of people are fasting in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. in a project which began July 4.  Here is what came into my email box:

It wasn’t easy scooping out ice cream for the homeless while on our fast! 

But when we heard about the campaign “I Scream for the Homeless” that during the hot summer months offers ice cream to the homeless in our nation’s capitol, we went to help out.

There we saw the devastating financial costs of this war. 

The $1.5 billion that the District of Columbia is paying for war could have paid for building 10,000 affordable housing units or provided 375 MILLION meals for the homeless! As homeless activist Arafa Speaks told us, “It’s criminal that they’re spending all this money killing people in Iraq and here at home people are dying on our streets because they don’t have jobs or housing.

Diane Wilson, one of our long-term, water-only fasters, is committed to the “I Scream for the Homeless” project.

We’d make a lot more friends feeding people ice cream and bringing joy to the faces of people living desperate lives than bombing villages and abusing prisoners.

So every Friday we’ll be out on the streets dishing out ice cream to show the homeless that we love them and demonstrate our commitment to reversing our nation’s priorities from war to life-affirming efforts.

Please help us. Here’s how:

Donate your lunch money:

Skip lunch for a day, and send your lunch money (or more, if you can) to Troops Home Fast. We’ll use half of it to buy ice cream for the homeless and half to support our actions outside the White House and in the Halls of Congress while we fast.

Fast for one day:

Sign up to join the 3,500+ people who are fasting for at least one day, including Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover and Sean Penn. You can pick any day — or days — between now and September 21, International Peace Day, when the fast ends and we launch a week of actions against the war as part of the Declaration of Peace.

 

Come to Washington DC:


Busy!

Well, if I thought my summer was going to be carefree and laid back…..NOT!

I’m having fun, though. I leave late tomorrow afternoon for my drive to Maryland to see my family. We should arrive in Maryland on Sunday. While there we will spend time on the eastern shore and just hanging out with my children, my parents, and my siblings and their families.

We will leave Maryland around July 23 or 24 to drive to Tuscon for the Green Party of the United States National Committee Meeting in Tuscon, which will take place July 27 – 30. We plan to drive along the Texas/Mexican border on the way there and while in Tuscon, we hope to take a field trip to the border to witness the barriers that are being built.

From Tuscon we will drive home to West Jordan and plan to be back by August 1.

In the meantime, we have successfully prepared our gardens for our absence and are continuing to very actively engage in activism (and plan to stay engaged even while en route in our travels – email and phone are wonderful tools!). Beginning last night we are involved in a youth leadership conference, as part of the Community of Caring Initiative, with three of our students from school which continues today and into tomorrow. Today’s activities should be interesting as we are taking a field trip to Lee Caldwell’s ranch in Leehi – he is a Horse Whisperer.

Onward!

Today in history

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 12

1817
Henry David Thoreau born.

Henry David Thoreau


On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe–“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.”

Read the rest….


1974

John Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate someone’s civil rights. Ehrlichman, while in the White House, had approved a recommendation for a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing on a memo: “If done under your assurance that it is not traceable.”
They had sought to discredit Daniel Ellsberg by breaking into the office of his psychiatrist. Ellsberg, a former Defense Dept. analyst, had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers, documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public scrutiny.

John Ehrlichman

More hiking adventures

Yesterday we took a very short hike into Big Cottonwood Canyon on Guardsman’s Pass. More photos here.

Today in history

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

World Population Day, sponsored by the United Nations to focus attendion on population issues.

July 11

 


The Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was founded in Buffalo, New York.

1968

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


1969

 


The federal appeals court in Boston reversed the convictions of Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Ferber who had been found guilty of conspiring to counsel evasion of the military draft in 1968. The judges considered his activity covered under his right to free speech opposing the Vietnam War.

 

read A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority co-authored by Dr. Spock (1967)

 
   

Carnival of the Green #35

This week’s Carnival of the Green is being hosted by Ester Republic. This blog is run by fellow Green in Alaska, Deirdre Helfferich!

Happy Green Reading!

Donations to Relocate Cottonwood Heights Mobile Home Residents Sought

Last month I published two posts about senior citizens being evicted due to the development of luxury homes in place of thier mobile homes. So while many of us are planning ways to protest the current regime’s visit to SLC, are holding weekly sidewalk vigils and doing outreach to expose the government’s corruption, the effects of that corruption are right at our doorstep: Corporations’ interesets over human needs.

Today’s Desert News has published a follow-up article about Cottonwood Heights officials seeking donations to help relocate those residents. Some of the residents could move their homes for anywhere between $7,000 – $12,000. But if their homes were built prior to 1976, as many of them were, they cannot be moved. Many of the residents are not only elderly, but on fixed incomes.

The Salt Lake Community Action Program is providing services for the residents. Please consider giving a donation. The SLCAP contact info is:

764 S 200 West Salt Lake City, Ut 84101 (801)359-2444 (801)355-1798 (f)
Cathy Hoskins Executive Director, CCAP

“American Values Agenda”

That’s the theme of this year’s GOP election year agenda according to CNN.

Billed as the “American Values Agenda,” the measures range from legislation that would “protect the Pledge of Allegiance from attacks by activist federal judges seeking to rule it unconstitutional” to a constitutional amendment “declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman.”

Otheres are seeing this as an election year stunt. Democrats are crying that they won’t put up with it and will lead the way for a better America.

Really?

Tim Grieve, in his piece on Salon.com’s War Room, says this about the so-called values agenda progress:

The GOP set to work right away Wednesday [June June 28] on the Pledge Protection Act, a bill that would strip federal courts of jurisdiction over Pledge of Allegiance litigation. The idea is to keep federal judges from taking the words “under God” out of the pledge, at least as it’s recited in the public schools, and that’s not something with which a lot of Republicans in the House would want to quibble.
Continue reading

Today in history

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 10

Emma Goldman was jailed two years for inciting  U.S. draft resisters.

Emma Goldman

1976

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members near Georgetown, Illinois, gathered for an ill-fated cross burning. The meeting started an hour late. When the Klansmen went to plant their cross, it was too heavy to move. Three hours later, after the cross was chopped down to a portable size, it was planted, but would not light. Finally, the Klan members gave up and went home.

1985

The Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior (named after a North American Indian legend), was blown up in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, killing one and sinking the ship.

read about the sinking


The Rainbow Warrior then

The attack had been authorized by French President Francois Mitterand because the environmental organization had plans to protest France’s nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific.

 

The Rainbow Warrior today

My Space

Interesting concepts for MySpace at Ober Dicta by Steve.