Peace Action New York State

Upper Hudson Peace Action member Paul Rehm’s reflection on his latest trip to Israel/Palestine is posted below – thank you, Paul, for your peace work and for sharing your experience with us.

If faith is part of your identity, hearing someone mention religion might bring to mind the image of an individual whose life is central to your beliefs or an image of the building in which you worship.

Had you been with me in Palestine last month, you might now have a new image of faith.

It was noontime on a Friday and the call to prayer was reverberating through the streets surrounding Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque.  We (members of Christian Peacemaker Teams) were monitoring one of the three Israeli military checkpoints through which many of the faithful must pass if they want to worship in that house of prayer.  I wondered how members of our local churches, mosques, temples, synagogues would react if they had to go through two or three military checkpoints just to get to their house of worship. Would they go or stay home?  Just then, I was called to another checkpoint about 50 yards away.  Israeli soldiers had stopped two young worshippers, taken their IDs for verification and forced them to stand in front of a wall across from the checkpoint.  Given those too often occurring circumstances, most young men simply stand silently and wait impatiently for 15, 20, 25 or more minutes till the soldiers deign to return their identity documents.

What would you and I do if soldiers forced us to stop and wait, and wait some more while they checked our IDs?  How would we react?

With the voice of the Imam still carrying through the streets and the soldiers looking on, I watched as both young men began a silent Islamic prayer ritual.  Was their response one of deep devotion?  Was it the steadfast, non-violent resistance called Sumud?   Perhaps it was a bit of both.  I only know that the image of these two young men in prayer is now among the first to appear when someone speaks to me of faith.  They may have been worshipping silently, but their actions spoke more profoundly than words can convey.

Paul

PANYS is proud to announce our national board representative and Upper Hudson Peace Action member, Larry Wittner, recently published the novel What’s Going On at UAardvark? You can order his book online here, on Amazon.com, or by phone at 1-518-689-1083.

About the book:
What’s Going On at UAardvark? provides a lively, irreverent tale of how an increasingly corporatized, modern American university becomes the site of a rambunctious rebellion that turns the nation’s campus life upside down.

Along the way, there are hilarious encounters with a playboy university president, bizarre U.S. military commanders, poetry-writing Hells Angels, foul-mouthed, decadent students, an unusually avaricious corporate titan, gun-toting “Christian Patriots,” a schizophrenic FBI director, hypocritical politicians, a witch-like union leader, and a host of other zany characters. All in all, What’s Going On at UAardvark? sets readers off on a comic romp through what has become a serious issue in contemporary America: the corporate takeover of higher education.

“Lawrence Wittner has channeled the spirits of Kurt Vonnegut, Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Jon Stewart, the Serb kids who overthrew Milosevic, and at least two of the Three Stooges into this delightfully dystopic, comic novel. If you enjoy the bursting of pretensions and political pratfalls, you’ll love this story. But if you expect our “betters” to be respected for the Superior Beings they believe they are, this funny little book is not for you.”

-Professor Tom Hastings, Portland State University and
former President, Peace & Justice Studies Association

“Observers of academic life will recognize key aspects of the contemporary U.S. university scene in this dystopian send-up—the campus takeover by Fortune 500 corporations; MBA modeling of the college “product” and “brand”; a campus president who relishes revenge against a brighter faculty; the bored and drugged student body; the abolition of liberal arts courses; and the effort to eliminate full-time, tenured faculty. The uproarious revolt that occurs against this new university model will inspire wishful thinking among many of us.”

-Professor Sandi Cooper, President, Faculty Senate,
City University of New York

About the author
Lawrence S. Wittner, Professor of History emeritus at the State University of New York/Albany, is an award-winning writer and political activist who taught for 43 years on college and university campuses, in the United States and abroad.

Anti-drone activists Mark Scibilia-Carver, Brian Hynes, Jim Clune (Vice President of Broome County PA) and Ed Kinane are posing here after their release from prison, where they were held for ten days for protesting the armed drones being flown from Hancock Air Field near Syracuse, NY. All these men missed the anti-drone conference that took place in Syracuse the last weekend of April as a result of their sentencing the week before. The Nation magazine had a piece in its “Noted” section this week about these activists and quoted part of the statement that Jim Clune read to the court room – please read Jim’s account below. Thank you to all those pictured for your courage and conviction.

In this picture  we four nonviolent activists with the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars celebrate our release on May 3rd from the Onondaga County Jail after serving 10 out of our 15 day sentences (the maximum) for trespass at Hancock Air Base in Syracuse, NY.   From the left, we are– Mark Scibilia-Carver of Trumansburg, Brian Hynes of the Bronx, Jim Clune of Binghamton (myself) and Ed Kinane of Syracuse.  This was Ed’s second sabbatical in custody for saying no to illegal drone warfare.  At our trial in DeWitt Town Court we asserted our defense that our blocking the driveway at Hancock Air Base while holding Peace signs was not only allowable under international and national law, but mandated under the Nuremberg judgements. Pilots of the 174th Air Attack (sic) Wing of the New York Air National Guard sit at consoles and computer screens at Hancock and other places and launch Hellfire missiles at people in villages in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  We told stories of innocent victims.  The estimate of high level targets within the number of those killed is 2%, not to mention that assassinations are illegal in the first place. In my statement to the court I said, paraphrasing Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “The killing of the innocent must never be business as usual, the normal course of events, but should be seen as what it is.  A catastrophe.  An outrage.”

Today, March 19, marks the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Please join PANYS this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. for a protest outside of the L-3 corporate headquarters (600 Third Ave. between 39th & 40th Streets in Manhattan). Please also read this article, written by Phyllis Bennis, about the 10-year anniversary of this war, which is far from over for those who fought in it and those Iraqis whose lives have been forever changed by it. Rep. Barbara Lee’s press release about today’s anniversary can be read below the jump. Read more →

Join us as Rockland Peace Action hosts its first meeting on Wednesday, March 27 at the Nyack Library (59 South Broadway) at 7pm.

PANYS Executive Director Alicia Godsberg will be speaking about Peace Action’s campaigns and how you can become involved… be a part of something new!

Contact Bill at rocklandpeaceaction@yahoo.com and please spread the word. Thanks!