Howard Zinn (1922-2010) - A Tribute from Democracy Now!

Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove

Authenticity in a Community Setting - A Tool for Self-Reflection and Change

Authenticity in a Community Setting --- A Tool for Self-Reflection and Change

Hermana Haiti: Myriam Merlet, 1956 - 2010

"I look at things through the eyes of women, very conscious of the roles, limitations, and stereotypes imposed on us. Everything I do is informed by that consciousness. So I want to get to a different concept and application of power than the one that keeps women from attaining their full potential...The basis of my work with women is to open them up to other things, give them new tools, give them new capabilities...give women the opportunity to grow..."

"The More People Dream," by Myriam Merlet, excerpt from Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance.

Eve Ensler remembers Haitian Women's activist Myriam Merlet

Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I come this morning to my protest to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia, nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. This morning however I wish not to speak with Hanoi, the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings.

Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit.

I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.


Click to listen to speeches.

Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future II

Wells Co-Sponsors 2010 Educational Series
There will be transportation from Wells to Syracuse and back for students, staff, and faculty that would like to attend the events. Opening event is Monday, Feb. 8. Email me to reserve a space on the van. vmunoz@wells.edu

Power Paths - Trailer

For Cape Cod Wind Farm, New Hurdle Is Spiritual

SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: January 5, 2010
NYT

Two Indian tribes successfully argued that a wind-power project would impede their ritual greeting of the sunrise.

In seeking the historical designation, the Wampanoag tribes — whose name translates to “people of the first light” — said their view to the east across Nantucket Sound was integral to their identity and cultural traditions.

click for complete article.

Foto: Julia Cumes/Associated Press

AuburnPub.com - Local project to grow produce hydroponically moving ahead

AuburnPub.com - Local project to grow produce hydroponically moving ahead

Rachel Todd Wetzsteon 1967 - 2009

Sakura Park

The park admits the wind,

the petals lift and scatter

like versions of myself I was on the verge

of becoming; and ten years on

and ten blocks down I still can’t tell

whether this dispersal resembles

a fist unclenching or waving goodbye.

But the petals scatter faster,

seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor,

and at least I’ve got by pumping heart

some rules of conduct: refuse to choose

between turning pages and turning heads

though the stubborn dine alone. Get over

“getting over”: dark clouds don’t fade

but drift with ever deeper colors.

Give up on rooted happiness

(the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve

(a poor park but my own) will follow.

There is still a chance the empty gazebo

will draw crowds from the greater world.

And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing:

the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

...

In Memory, and Admiration, of Rachel Wetzsteon in The New Republic

Dr. Oliva M. Espín - Women Crossing Boundaries: Gender, Immigration, and Domestic Violence