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The Big Voice
About six months ago, Dan Pearson, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, swiveled around in his office chair in our tiny "headquarters" to ask what we thought about organizing a walk from Chicago to St. Paul, arriving just before the Republican National Convention. (www.vcnv.org). A dedicated group of volunteers joined Dan to plan a project, which, to me, is one of the best organized efforts I've ever encountered, all aimed at voicing a witness against war, particularly in Wisconsin, where 3,500 National Guard troops are on alert for a call-up to combat duty, in Iraq, in 2009. Generally, three to five "day walkers" will join our core group of nine walkers. We walk about fifteen miles each day carrying signs that call for an end to the war and for keeping Wisconsin National Guard troops home. The sign I carry on this walk reads "Rebuild Iraq, rebuild the U.S." Another of our signs, decorated with the obligatory elephant and donkey, reads "We hold both parties responsible." We began walking on July 12, 2008 and will arrive in St. Paul Minnesota on August 30th.
Our "Witness Against War" walk is in Wisconsin, traversing traditional land of the Ho-Chunk Nation, also known in English translation as "People of the Big Voice." In 1836, U.S. settlers, including farmers and miners, coveted this lush farmland and its rich mining resources and forced the Ho-Chunk to sell it all for a pittance. The US government imposed repeated roundups and "removals" on them, resettling them from Wisconsin to Iowa, from Iowa to Minnesota, then to South Dakota and onward, in dangerous, and for some deadly forced transports. "In the winter of 1873, many Ho Chunk people were removed to the Nebraska reservation from Wisconsin, traveling in cattle cars on trains," according to the Nation's website (www.ho-chunknation.com). "This was a horrific experience for the people, as many elders, women and children suffered and died." Some of the transports were imposed to remove the Ho-Chunk people from conflicts with other nations - conflicts created by previous forced transports.
But after the removals by train, they walked back on foot to Wisconsin, to reclaim their former homes, It's a tale of immeasurable suffering, but because of these walks back they are still here, as the "Ho-Chunk Nation" in this beautiful Wisconsin land where their ancestors were buried.
And we're here too, walking on behalf of people in Iraq who've been made refugees to escape U.S. violence, and also the sectarian violence made inevitable by the U.S. government's wholesale dismantling of their country, whether achieved deliberately or through incompetence we can't know. We're walking for people who, like the Ho-Chunk people, were told that if they didn't cooperate with a U.S. project to seize their precious and irreplaceable resources, we would kill them.
The name of the "Ho-Chunk" nation means "People of the Sacred Language," or "People of the Big Voice." And when no-one was listening to them, they spoke to each other and chose to return, and strengthened each other for the return here where their action spoke louder than words and they eventually, after eleven removals and five weary returns, were ceded parts of their original land.
I and my companions here think of deliberate nonviolent action as a sacred language. Tomorrow we're crossing the line into Fort McCoy to protest the cynical use of our young men and women, many of them seeking opportunities denied them in their communities, to kill and dispossess members of the Iraqi nation, to drive them into refuge in Jordan and Syria, to drive them into conflict the one against the other arming first this faction and then that with more and more weapons in the name of establishing "security forces," so that we will have an excuse to occupy this oil-rich region for ages to come, whatever platitudes our leaders may offer now about eagerness some day to withdraw. Several of us may face several months in jail. Our leaders will continue to use these lands for wrongful purposes and we will keep walking back, until enough of our fellows join us that we are allowed to reclaim these lands, and our resources, to be the refuge and the comfort of all.
The United States is called a democracy. That means "People of the Big Voice." A sacred language. But we as a nation are not yet ready to use our voices loud enough to be heard, or to use our feet, when our voices are ignored, in the sacred language of nonviolent direct action, in resistance to the greedy powerful few who would limit our choices to choices of war and claim all lands, heedless of the voices of the people living in them, for the purposes of greed. The world looks to us, much of it in genuine pain and anguish, asking when are we going to rescue them from our government, by expressing our wish for peace at long last in the Big Voice we have always claimed as our heritage?
28 Comments so far
Show AllThis morning's sermon was entitled If You Want To Walk On Water You Have To Get Out of The Boat, referring to when Jesus walked on water and Peter joined him in Matthew 14.
The lesson was that to make a difference in life we must not remain in the relative safety of the boat, but instead, must step out and walk on water.
Like Peter, at times we may falter, but the only way to produce change is to Step Out.
Kathy and those who work with her found realized this long ago and they do indeed step out of the boat each and every day. Blessings to them!
A member of the Anishnabe tribe in Canada once told me, White people think of life as a straight line with a beginning and an end, Native people know life is a circle, everything is connected.
We cannot treat others as though they are not equal to us and expect that good will come from this treatment. When we respect and love others we receive the same in return. When we degrade and destroy others we receive that in return.
Blessings and Peace!
We need that Big Voice, Now! The danger of a US attack on Iran is acute and the consequences would be dire! Stopping this war may be the only thing we can do to stop a McCain victory and possibly the loss of what's left of our democratic institutions.
According to Rep/ Ron Paul (http://_attack_plan_146.html), the plan to attack Iran has a 'Green Light', and the use of nuclear weapons against Iran is being talked about in the halls of Congress.
Writing in the Baltimore Chronicle, Stephen Lendman reports (http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/080708Lendman.shtml) that as of Aug. 1, "H.Con.Res. 362", which demands a total blockade of Iran and amounting to a war authorization, had 252 congressional co-sponsors. Incredibly, there has still been NO mention of this bill, which was introduced on May 22, on any of the networks or national newspapers, including NPR! Only Yahoo News and a few local stations and regional papers broke the silence, none of it recent. My Google Search Alert should have picked up even a letter to the editor, but has seen none! This level of media discipline around concealing the war plans is frightening! Despite this, pressure from the peace movement has resulted in it's being stalled in committee, where it waits for a crisis, hanging over our heads like a Sword of Damocles.
Senator Obama has already clearly signaled that he won't oppose this war. Whether he merely goes along with it or tries to lead the charge, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it will sink his campaign! As Chris Hedges warns http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080804_a_war_of_self_destruction/, it could also sink the economy and possibly what's left of our democratic institutions!
Compounding the danger, according to Mark Ames writing in The Nation, (http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/09/10898/) Sen. McCain and a group of powerful bankers were deeply involved in promoting Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, not far from Iran's northeastern border, which is now being portrayed in the press as a Russian war against Georgia. The Russians obviously see this as part of a process of isolating and encircling them, and their response could be drawing them (and the US) into a wider Middle East War. This could easily escalate into the World War III (or IV) that the neo-cons keep talking about.
The time to act is now, the need is urgent. In my little corner of the world I am calling together a group of people to discuss what we can do about this and act. My proposals:
1. Meet with our representatives demanding that they speak out about these developments - and in particular against HCR 362 - and communicate with their constituents about them.
2. Meet with the editors of our local dailies and TV and radio stations demanding that they report on it or at least publish our letters about it.
3. Participate in local actions that the media can't ignore. Up the ante.
4. Keep pushing Impeachment to try to put the yahoos in check.
5. Promote "teach-ins" about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan on the college campuses.
*In my view this effort is the most valuable thing we can be doing right now to stop the McCain succession and save the Obama campaign from running onto the rocks.*
As much as I admire Kathy Kelly and support her wonderful work and writing, it also disappoints me that there is no discourse on how the 'Church' was at the bottom of the atrocities endured by the Native American (and so many others in the world) population.
The missionary zeal to convert and to steal the very souls of indigenous peoples everywhere is at the root of colonializm and hegemony. They were and still are, the front lines.
The so-called 'white man's burden' has its roots in the effort to Christianize the world. The absolutely absurd and bizarre belief that one group of people has the only true way to view reality and to live it leads to the belief that we can destroy for the good of the soul of others. Now it is called 'democratization'. But the underlying construct is and has always been the same.
readyfortransforming
Amen
BUT: the Enlightenment, and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, present a drastically different view: basically, and simplistically, they say: we are in this together - all of us.
The Constitution is the framework for the process whereby we work together for the common good, with protections for each.
This grew out of the near universal experience that people had always lived - and likely would always live - under government by ruthless tyrants with absolute power, aided by priests who told the people that the rulers were divinely empowered, that any lack of fealty would subject them to cruel punishment now and the prospect of more in an afterlife.
The founders' true revolution was the insight: the only way people could live free of tyrannical government was to govern themselves...
One could frame the disasters we see all around us, and have been forced to endure all these centuries, as the work of forces intending to eviscerate the Constitution and to re-establish the Dark Ages...
Profound posts, all. I believe that persons like Kathy Kelly and Father John Dear transcend their faiths in their boundless willingness to set self-interest aside to that they can TRULY stand witness for others, and help those in need. These are souls with a HIGH calling, and I totally applaud their efforts.
PEACESEEKER: Thank you for mentioning the truth of the circle. That is a symbol I often relate to.
CHRIS HORTON: Your posts are always evocative and important. I wish a paper in my area would publish a "letter to the editor," but I have tried, and that venue seems tied up, too.
READY FOR TRANSFORMING: I agree the church has operated with a false sense of authority in seeking to mold every people into its image and likeness. The circle shows 12 key positions that predated Jesus' choice of 12 disciples or Abraham's founding of 12 tribes. There are 12 quintessential templates for human beings to follow, and if societies understood this and freed persons to follow the law(s) of their own unique beings, we would see a world where there was much more harmony among the players. Centuries of authoritarian programming have relied upon the false witness that one size fits all, that God sends down rules about genitals and other BS, BS that's proven QUITE effective when controlling the evolution of humanity has been the goal to maintain ancient structures that profit a few at the expense of so many.
The USA is the "Mo-Chunk" nation..which means "People of the Big Ass"
CANUCK CHUCK: You've got a point! This is one reason I bike every day! Gotta defeat the statistical odds!
Fusion: Thank you for a thoughtful response. The key is truly about individuals being self governing. The big problem here is that, as Siouxrose so eloquently alluded to, the powers that be have undermined humanity's trust in themselves/ourselves.
I have come to a realization that the belief in 'original sin' is the way the church has controlled people for a very long time. In order to become self governing we will need to radically re-envision what is 'human nature'. This is an evolutionary leap that must occur, as far as I can see.
As long as people believe that they are innately flawed, they will never truly trust themselves enough to govern themselves. And we will continue to look to authority figures to dictate to us. Quite honestly, I believe that if a breakthrough in consciousness does not happen fairly soon, then we will need to experience the results of what we have created in a very major way. Learning happens one way or another, eventually.
Siouxrose:
Thank you for your kind comments on Kathy Kelly and Fr. John Dear. These two people are the voices of the few in the church. Why is it only the courageous few?
Kathy Kelly was one of thirteen who crossed the line today at Ft McCoy and all held for an hour and released except for Kathy Kelly. Kathy and her walkers with Voices for Creative Non-Violence are hard core activists and many have been in Iraq.
Thought you would like to know that I was privileged to be with them for the first two weeks of the march as a volunteer support vehicle.
Also I was with Fr. John Dear two years ago in a 5 day walk from the Trappist monastery in Gethsemane to Louisville KY in honor of Gandhi and Thomas Merton.
P###### Nobody: You express strong opinions-don't you think the first part of your "handle" is a contradiction? Just a thought-have always considered that word one of the strongest insults in use.
PissantNobody, capitalism works just fine if you limit enterprise size and asset ownership to ten man-powers. You have to keep it small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. It shouldn't be hard to do - most enteprises in the USA are already rather small. East Asia will have a rougher time downsizing. The action for individuals to participate in the worldwide downsizing of capitalism is to halt one's exchange/association with the capitalists. Try your local small farmers/craftsmen/merchants. If you can drown them in a bathtub, they're safe to do business with.
PISSANT NOBODY: It still comes down to consciousness! Perhaps the elites would not see the "underclass/proletariat" as "less than" if they truly came from a place of love, of spirit, not one of measuring their status on the basis of the materialistic yardstick of what they GOT.
STEPHEN RILEY: I truly appreciate those of faith who rise above orthodoxy to live the TRUTH of the spirit. As Jesus taught, it's about the SPIRIT of the law, not vice versa. And my rants against what so-called Christianity is doing in America are justified because the churches, for the most part, as institutions, are fomenting the very aggression their master taught to overcome.
READY FOR TRANSFORMING: You (whatever your gender) and I are in synch! I just completed a very intensive edit of a radical book that proposes a different concept of time relative to the female experience IN a body. And I have a long chapter on the relative energetic expressions of Venus and Mars, that they are the cosmos' intended lovers and co-equal powers; but the allotment of disproportionate homage to Mars has thrown off the Divine ("as above, so below") equation. I relate this imbalance to Original sin! And that by using sexuality as a wedge issue (literally), the church has succeeded in robbing a central power from individuals. Of course my understanding of this is shaped by a number of thoughtful minds--Matthew Fox, Rajneesh, and Wilhelm Reich to name a significant 3. There is no question that the person who manages his/her own instincts with confidence, requires no third party to tell them what is right or wrong. The conscience is a code inborn to every person (but the sociopath, and why it's been absented from these types, only the law of reincarnation explains); and our passions are also inborn.
I wrote & published a mock survey years ago (in Key West) that alleged to poll people on the top ten reasons for reincarnation. Sex of course is on the list... right there with Ben & Jerry's Kama Sutra ice cream!
Oops: It's caramel sutra!
And I guess psychology's relating early sexual abuse can also help explain the sociopath personality. Does this explanation pertain to Bush? I watched an interview with Jeffrey Dahmer's father, ashamed and shocked at who his son became, but a rational cold scientist, he deduced that Jeffrey came of sexual age when he was attracted to road kill. (I am not making this up.) So the father saw a corelation between the erupting of his son's puberty with exposure to dead animals. Sure.
A thorough analysis of the birth blueprint (this does require exact time of birth) will show sexual perversion. These patterns are not the result of caprice, rather, they are what the soul has earned on the basis of conduct (along with belief systems) taken from other lifetimes. As Edgar Cayce put it, "Entity is meeting self."
canuckchuck August 10th, 2008 5:03 pm
I need to move to Canada I guess to live in a country of ultimate perfection with only harmony as its governance.
PissantNobody August 10th, 2008 10:41 pm
I agree, the marches don't mean much. Have no effect. The right and wrong of the war in Iraq has been decided. It's already been decided to bring our troops home asap.
I wish that everyone that wants to compress our military or wants to combast what they consider militarism, would just once concentrate on something achievable like Korea for instance instead of the constant...military bad chant. That would be worthwhile and might actually have a chance to work in my opinion.
I would like to suggest that you might want to soften your rhetoric about Christians. We don't post insults about agnostics or atheists all the time. "It's not your fault you socialists are so dependent upon the advocates of Marx and Engels false supersteious social theories for leadership? Can we not think without the communist manifesto? Disgusting!" (revised)
See how that sounds? I know you don't mean to insult people or denigrate their disagreements with you. I'm sure its just as you said, frustration. I'd just ask that you lighten up on us poor Christians!
Pax
SOUIXROSE: I just spent time writing you a long response, and it didn't seem to get posted! If it doesn't show up, i will try again. (I really think you would appreciate it).
I know what i did wrong. I didn't 'submit' it, i hit 'logout'.
Well, thank you for sharing all of your insight. I appreciate and understand all of the references, even the 'esoteric' ones.
God, i can't believe i lost all of that writing. It was about the multidimensional nature of consciousness as a way of viewing reincarnation. And about 'original sin' as a belief that makes us feel we can't do any better than we have, as human beings. That is one reason that nothing seems to essentially change after all these centuries of time.
Unsustainable beliefs create an unsustainable physical world. That is the nature of creation. We *experience* our beliefs that way.
I wish i didn't lose all that writing...
Our collective psyche surely does need a quantum catharsis now.
READY FOR TRANSFORMING: I have also lost important work to some inexplicable computer glitch. I totally agree about Original Sin, and as I mentioned, I've studied some profound authors who have explained why demonizing sex (healthy sex) has managed to dislocate people from their own sovereign power source.
You seem (?) new to this forum. Many times I have explained at length how societal identification with images of the powerful warrior reinforce what I term "the old gods" such as Mars. Saturn would work for the angry, judgmental, punitive father figure who's personified in the Old Testament. These male personae are taken for "God" and the lack of any compassionate feminine counterbalance has led mankind to develop its masculine aggressive side, and leave its feminine aspect to languish and often atrophy. How men en masse treat women--lack of a vote till relatively recently, GREAT levels of domestic abuse, violence and rape--and also the Earth Mother deeply portrays what playing with half a pack, following an asymmetric course, and denigrating HALF of our Divine heritage has and still costs us.
My new book, MOON DANCE: FEMININE DIMENSIONS OF TIME represents 12 years of analysis, synthesis, and development of these and related ideas. It's quite a labor of love and I hope will be available in 2009. Years ago it was held by a very respectable publishing house, but passed over. I no longer have an IN with that house, although it's a far better work now, having been rewritten several times.
Pissant nobody: I would invite you to consider the idea that thought must precede physical reality. Class systems were created by people who held/hold certain beliefs about human nature.
Unsustainable beliefs lead to unsustainable civilizations and socities. If class alone determined consciousness, then no one would ever think beyond the prevailing thoughts of the day. True, we become stuck within deeply rooted belief systems, however there are some breakthroughs from time to time.
Something to ponder...
PissantNobody August 11th, 2008 11:24 pm
"The Bible is riddled with proveable inaccuracies, bigotry, and bad advice"
So is science. So where are we? I am a christian and you are a believer in science....
Hhuuummmmmm......Maybe the Romans were right, or the Greeks. Its all a matter of faith and interpretation. The bible isn't literal in any case though there are those that say it is.
Would you impose your religion of non-belief on someone else? Would you dictate what someone else would believe?
I have no faith in Marx and Lenin. Their theories run counter to human nature as I know it. So, I'll stick with proven commodities.
"Of course there are...gems of wisdom within it..." - Thomas More
And why, good Doubting Thomas, proceed farther than to succor indulgently on "gems of wisdom"?
No! Silence Thy haste to prove your better bigger boy and better bigger girlhood: there is no better answer than to succor indulgently on gems of wisdom - search yourself indulgently for 5-10 seconds and once again that Truth is revealed.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10...
There: that's a good starting point; shall We complete the Circle? Yes, garlands of daisy chains are on the comeback - undeniable, undisputable so...why? Well because I made a pact with Babaji for blowing out the last candle and I've a minimum of 505 incarnations to go...
But that's not the point here: the point is as Joseph Campbell and others scientifically report every social order ever biologically functional as organism has walked the path of mythological construction - it's just a matter of how - as some put it "the sixth chakra" and as others state it "the frontal cortex" - function.
And believe me the symbolic center of consciousness, whether liable as a "sixth" or a "frontal": of Kathy Kelly - in regard to the destiny of humanity - is functioning on par excellance! After receiving a first hand witness - in regard to depleted uranium deformed babies - at St. James Church in Ferndale, Michigan, this excel lance is known, and known by others as witnessed in this forum; and as it is also known by this realm of understanding Kelly's march in the name of the "ho-chunck" will have more pronounced ramifications on the unfoldment of the history of Earth than the so called up coming elections in the United States.
Why will Kelly and her tribe have such an impact? Because as canuckchuck ordains and siouxrose confirms this is the era of "The Mo-chunck" - "The Big Ass" - the rooting of humanity's root chakra within a global spectrum - the baptism of organic global humanistic recognition - the momentum for conception of the coming of global mass human consciousness!
Yes, with each pedal pump our Sioux in primordial Seminole country...dictates human destiny to a greater extent then each tap of the key for yet another common dreams entry...multiple this by 10 as well as a Kathy Kelly entry...and I'll show you the reasons why when those who wallow in pessimism I revel in Donne and drink from the Rumi Jar as I revel in all humanity can be.
"And why, good Doubting Thomas, proceed farther than to succor indulgently on 'gems of wisdom'?"
1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...in the depths you know all humanity can be...so, yes, succor indulgently on wisdom of gems...
Science or religion? God gave us brains. It is an insult to (him her it) not to use them.
Considering our national lies about WMD shrouded in images of nuclear holocaust and then the spreading of a 1/4 million pounds of oxidized uranium into the ground and atmosphere, and now the great intellect of the Harvard Law review promising to bunker bust the tributaries to the Indus river, I think it's how we are using our brains that is the greatest insult to he, her, and it.