Don’t Bicker, Organize

by Ron Jacobs / May 26th, 2013

Recently, Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair posed the question “Is there a Left in America today?” His article was not the first in recent times to pose the question but it did receive a fair amount of attention given the prominence of Counterpunch in the US Left. To sum the piece up in a sentence, it stated that yes, there is a Left, but it is in a fairly deep slumber. Whether one agrees with St. Clair’s essay or not, the facts are as follows. St. Clair is not the first of today’s leftists to pose this question, nor is it a question easily dismissed by some stock answer regarding cynicism, ignorance of the facts on the ground, or some other dismissive remark (one I heard accused the writer of ultra-leftism.)

The question is fair and needs to be asked. The magazine St. Clair edits is known for its provocative style. That’s why it’s called Counterpunch. It’s supposed to make its friends feel uncomfortable on occasion and its enemies unsure on their feet in the ring of politics. Ideally, it causes the latter to fall down for the count every once in a while and the former to challenge the zone they feel comfortable in. Even more to the point for those who are its friends, it should provoke debate that will move the revolution we all know we need that much closer.

I don’t want to sound like an old-timer here–in part because I don’t feel like one mentally or emotionally (physically is sometimes another matter)–but mostly because what I aim to write is not passé or irrelevant to the current situation. The Left has been here before. The historical circumstances were different, but the static situation was eerily similar. Although I could be referring to the 1950s in the United States, when anti-communism was the national faith and leftists were considered on a par with Satan and his dominions by the mainstream media and most of its readers, the period I want to talk about is the 1970s and 1980s.

The New Left was in retreat. A combination of victories and half-victories, massive repression, a retooling of the Democratic Party, and the demise of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had created a situation where a multitude of organizations existed on the US Left. All too many of them considered their line to be the correct one. None were very willing to compromise, preferring instead to fine tune their particular interpretation of Marx, Lenin and the rest to such a point that instead of gaining adherents, they slowly but surely lost them. By the end of the 1970s, some of these groups were working on the left end of the Democratic Party, hoping to expand the small opening created by George McGovern’s 1972 campaign into creating a genuine left parliamentary opposition in the US. Other groups were fighting amongst themselves, listening to provocateurs in their midsts, or just dissolving into thin air, as it were. Meanwhile, the US right wing was consolidating its forces behind millions and millions of corporate dollars. The result was the election of Ronald Reagan to the White House and the portrayal of Jimmy Carter, the creator of the Carter doctrine (which further bound the Empire’s military to the authoritarian regimes under whose lands the energy industry’s oil profits lay), as a leftist and wimp.

Nothing has been the same since. The Left waged successful campaigns against US support for apartheid, but hardly bothered to oppose the US invasion of Grenada. It was also fairly successful in opposing US support for the Contras in Nicaragua and the bloody regime killing thousands in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. Unfortunately, their activities did not foresee the creation of an extralegal funding process for the Contras or the emptiness of the legislation against the human rights violations of the El Salvadorian government. Also, despite one of the broadest campaigns against nuclear weapons in history, the Pentagon and its corporate cohorts placed their missiles throughout Europe. By 1989, the response of the Left to the Bush administration’s invasion of Panama was barely a whimper. Then came Bill Clinton–the popular pretender to the progressives’ throne. In a litany fairly well known, Clinton pushed the neoliberal wet dream known as NAFTA through Congress. Then he “reformed” public assistance to the poor. Then he pushed through the Omnibus Crime and Terrorism Bill, making federal crimes out of a multitude of political activities and increasing the number of federal crimes that were punishable by death. Oh yeah, he reneged on LGBT equality and injected racial coding into his campaign as if he were a modern day Republican.
Meanwhile, he and Tony Blair maintained a deadly sanctions regime on Iraq while bombing it at will. Besides all this, Clinton lobbed cruise missiles much like Barack Obama launches armed drones. On top of all this, he helped create the situation that provoked the crash of 2008. No, he wasn’t solely responsible, but the illusion of money where there wasn’t any greatly expanded during his rule. And the Left was rather silent.

So, what does this have to do with today? To begin, the Left is rather silent. There are a few campaigns organized around the suffering environment, some of them even bringing thousands of people to the streets. The Occupy movement raised the question of corporate greed and responsibility, but when certain elements within the movement directly challenged not just “bad” corporations but the system of capitalism itself, the Democratic White House aligned with the forces of law and order and cracked down hard. This was after the White House’s current occupant rode to his position on a wave of disgust with the wars and cronyism of Wall Street, the Pentagon and Congress. After decades of painting corporate liberals as tantamount to socialists and communists, the right wing dominates the political arena in the United States. The loyal opposition is spot on when it comes to instances of individual racism like the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2011, but ignores the ultimately more damaging institutional racism that has never been far removed from the US mainstream. That same opposition chastises a lone protester who challenges the president on his drone assassination program and the prison camp known as Gitmo, but says little or nothing when those programs murder and imprison innocents. This is the hegemony of capital at work. There is nothing it can not purchase, silence or kill. Elections and highways, politicians and militaries, there is a price on it all.
And it is us who pays that price. It is also us who must end this dynamic.
It is time to organize. We don’t have time to bicker. Debate over tactics and approaches, yes. Bickering and name-calling, no. Leave the latter to those whom we wish to defeat.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground and Tripping Through the American Night, and the novels Short Order Frame Up and The Co-Conspirator's Tale. His third novel All the Sinners Saints is a companion to the previous two and is due out in April 2013. Read other articles by Ron.

This article was posted on Sunday, May 26th, 2013 at 2:35pm and is filed under Activism, History, Obama, Solidarity.

Meet the Woman Who Stood Up to Obama and Made World News: A Conversation with Peace Activist Medea Benjamin

Civil Liberties  

AlterNet / By Evelyn Nieves, Medea Benjamin

Meet the Woman Who Stood Up to Obama and Made World News: A Conversation with Peace Activist Medea Benjamin

CodePink's Benjamin explains her crusade against drones, Gitmo and America's imperial wars.

 

 

May 27, 2013  |  

“I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack, because it’s worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw?”—President Obama on Medea Benjamin

By now, the world knows Medea Benjamin as either the woman who challenged—or heckled—President Obama last Thursday during his speech on drones and Guantanamo Bay.

“People think you’re rude and crazy,” a CNN reporter told Benjamin, the co-founder of two global peace organizations, CodePink and Global Exchange. But Benjamin, already well-known among peace activists and political progressives (she was a major force during Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign) has also inspired legions of new fans astonished that someone had the nerve—or the passion—to stand up to one of the most powerful men on earth.

Now Benjamin has been trying to turn her moment in the mainstream media spotlight to the issues that brought her to the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. on Thursday in the first place. We talked to her about what happened and the issues that fuel her activism and her next steps.




Evelyn Nieves: Were you surprised that President Obama actually addressed you on Thursday rather than simply give the nod to the Secret Service to nab you as soon as you spoke out? Do you think it signals a president who is willing to listen? How does his response compare with other presidents and leaders whom you've publicly challenged in the same way?

Medea Benjamin: Many politicians try to ignore or belittle the folks who interrupt them. I think President Obama is just a really good politician who recognizes that it is better to address the person than have them dragged out. I was grateful that he said that my voice was worth listening to, though it was quite surreal because as the president and I were “dialoguing,” I was surrounded by army, FBI and Secret Service threatening to arrest me and drag me out.

But every time they touched me I said that the president was talking to me, and if they made a scene by pulling me out, they would really regret it. That bought me some valuable time.

Nieves: You spoke up when President Obama mentioned Guantanamo, which has yet to infiltrate the American consciousness despite the growing crisis there. What are you hoping your exchange with the president will do to foster outrage and pressure to finally close Gitmo and release innocent detainees? 

Benjamin: These detainees are in desperate straits. It’s both a humanitarian and a political crisis. Despite the force-feeding, some of these men could start to die, and this could unleash another huge wave of anti-American riots around the Muslim world. So something must be done right away. 

The president is saying that Congress is to blame, and yes, Congress has placed ridiculous roadblocks to closing Guantanamo. But Congress also put in place a waiver system that the president could use immediately to release the 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release. He did announce a lifting of the self-imposed ban on repatriating prisoners to Yemen, and that is positive. But he needs to go beyond nice words and bureaucratic measures: He needs to immediately start authorizing some releases, so that the prisoners will see progress and stop the hunger strike. Then we can tackle the larger issue of giving fair trials to the remaining prisoners. 

In the meantime, my colleagues and I at CodePink will be doing more to keep up the pressure, working with the Guantanamo lawyers and groups like Witness Against Torture, Amnesty, The World Can’t Wait and National Religious Campaign Against Torture. We’re planning more protests and civil disobedience at the White House, a vigil at the gates of the Guantanamo prison itself, a delegation to Yemen to meet with family members and government officials. We’ve got many plans. 

Nieves: You've written a book on drones, another subject that has not permeated the public consciousness to the extent that it might given its profound repercussions. In brief, what do you want the public to know about drones? What do you want the president to do about drones?

Benjamin: The president said he uses drones when capture is not possible, but that’s just not true. The drones have been an alternative to capture. I think we should stop using these killer drones. They have led to the death of so many innocent people. They have become a recruiting tool for extremists and only guarantee what the president said he is against: a state of perpetual war. We should address terrorism through better policing, better defense mechanisms here at home and more robust and creative diplomacy.

Nieves: What's your next step? Do you really think you'll get into speeches now that the whole world will be looking for the woman in pink?

Benjamin: Probably, but I won’t be in pink. And if not me, it will be one of my colleagues. Until the policies change, we’ll still be like fleas, biting at the heels of the powerful. Or perhaps more like gadflies.

Nieves: How do you do what you do? People are in awe of your boundless energy and willingness to put yourself out there. How many times have you been arrested, for instance? How long do you think you can do this (i.e. public protest)?

Benjamin: It’s so funny that the president called me a "young lady," since I turned 60 this year. But thankfully, I still have lots of energy and a passion for justice. I really don’t like getting arrested, and yes, I’ve been arrested many, many times. Unfortunately, it seems to come with the territory. But I think of the great company I’m in with my heroes throughout the ages. I love the Annie Feeney song called "Have You Been To Jail For Justice?" She says:

“Was it Cesar Chavez? Maybe it was Dorothy Day.

 Some will say Dr. King or Gandhi set them on their way.


No matter who your mentors are it's pretty plain to see.

That, if you've been to jail for justice, you're in good company.”


And I love to sing in jail—great acoustics.  

Nieves: Not everyone can be a public citizen to your extent. What are your recommendations for the faint of heart? What do you suggest a newbie activist do in the cause of, say, Gitmo closure? Or any cause for peace? 

Benjamin:Start out within your comfort zone and then keep pushing yourself to the next step. Sign petitions. Call the White House (202-456-1414) and your congressperson/senators. Make donations to peace groups you admire. Those are great individual acts. But you’ll be more powerful as part of a group. Join a local peace group and or start your won.

Re: Gitmo, go to the thrift store to buy an orange T-shirt, make a CLOSE GITMO sign, download some of our flyers and stand in front of a federal building. Invite the press to come talk to you. From there it can snowball, if you keep pushing, reaching out to new allies, using the collective wisdom and ideas.

And while we’re dealing with deadly serious issues, make sure to inject some joy and creativity into your actions—for that’s what keeps people engaged.

Nieves: You're now loved and hated more than ever. In China, you'd be under house arrest or followed everywhere you go. What do you intend to do differently now that, decades later, you're a household voice/face/name?

Benjamin:We activists have our 15 minutes of fame every now and then, and then we go right back to the more tedious work of organizing. I’m still on a book tour for my book Drone Warfare, and I really enjoy speaking to community groups and students. I’ll be leaving for Yemen soon, and then probably to the gates of Guantanamo. We’re organizing an international conference on drones in London in November. We’re constantly meeting with those in Congress—and asking for meetings with folks at the White House.

Someone started a petition asking President Obama to invite me to the White House for a beer. But I’d prefer a few mojitos with real Cuban rum—and a toast to changing another failed policy: the 50-year-old embargo on Cuba.

Evelyn Nieves is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. She has been a reporter for both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CodePink: Women for Peace.

How the U.S. Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists

by Fran Quigley / May 16th, 2013

In just ten months, the United States managed to transform an 82 year-old Catholic nun and two pacifists from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into federal felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing for their acts at an Oak Ridge, TN nuclear weapons production facility, their story should chill every person concerned about dissent in the US.

Here is how it happened.

In the early morning hours of Saturday June 28, 2012, long-time peace activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63, cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property. Y-12, called the Fort Knox of the nuclear weapons industry, stores hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and works on every single one of the thousands of nuclear weapons maintained by the U.S.

Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles, written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Sr. Megan Rice has been a Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for over sixty years. Greg Boertje-Obed, a married carpenter who has a college age daughter, is an Army veteran and lives at a Catholic Worker house in Duluth Minnesota. Michael Walli, a two-term Vietnam veteran turned peacemaker, lives at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house in Washington DC.

In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs stating “No Trespassing.” The signs indicate that unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor, is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
No security arrived to confront them.

So the three climbed up a hill through heavy brush, crossed a road, and kept going until they saw the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) surrounded by three fences, lit up by blazing lights.
Still no security.

So they cut through the three fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the HEUMF. Still no security arrived. They began praying and sang songs like “Down by the Riverside” and “Peace is Flowing Like a River.”

When security finally arrived at about 4:30 am, the three surrendered peacefully, were arrested, and jailed.

The next Monday July 30, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were arraigned and charged with federal trespassing, a misdemeanor charge which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. Frank Munger, an award-winning journalist with the Knoxville News Sentinel, was the first to publicly wonder, “If unarmed protesters dressed in dark clothing could reach the plant’s core during the cover of dark, it raised questions about the plant’s security against more menacing intruders.”

On Wednesday August 1, all nuclear operations at Y-12 were ordered to be put on hold in order for the plant to focus on security. The “security stand-down” was ordered by security contractor in charge of Y-12, B&W Y-12 (a joint venture of the Babcock and Wilcox Company and Bechtel National Inc.) and supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

On Thursday August 2, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli appeared in court for a pretrial bail hearing. The government asked that all three be detained. One prosecutor called them a potential “danger to the community” and asked that all three be kept in jail until their trial. The US Magistrate allowed them to be released.

Sr. Megan Rice walked out of the jail and promptly admitted to gathered media that the three had indeed gone onto the property and taken action in protest of nuclear weapons. “But we had to — we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation,” Rice said. She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”

Then the government began increasing the charges against the anti-nuclear peace protestors.

The day after the Magistrate ordered the release of Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli, a Department of Energy (DOE) agent swore out a federal criminal complaint against the three for damage to federal property, a felony punishable by zero to five years in prison, under 18 US Code Section 1363.

The DOE agent admitted the three carried a letter which stated, “We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social structure based on war-making and empire-building.”

Now, Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli were facing one misdemeanor and one felony and up to six years in prison.

But the government did not stop there. The next week, the charges were enlarged yet again.

On Tuesday August 7, the U.S. expanded the charges against the peace activists to three counts. The first was the original charge of damage to Y-12 in violation of 18 US Code 1363, punishable by up to five years in prison. The second was an additional damage to federal property in excess of $1000 in violation of 18 US Code 1361, punishable by up to ten years in prison. The third was a trespassing charge, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison under 42 US Code 2278.

Now they faced up to sixteen years in prison. And the actions of the protestors started to receive national and international attention.

On August 10, 2012, the New York Times ran a picture of Sr. Megan Rice on page one under the headline “The Nun Who Broke into the Nuclear Sanctum.” Citing nuclear experts, the paper of record called their actions “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.”

At the end of August 2012, the Inspector General of the Department of Energy issued a comprehensive report on the security breakdown at Y-12. Calling the peace activists trespassers, the report indicated that the three were able to get as far as they did because of “multiple system failures on several levels.” The cited failures included cameras broken for six months, ineptitude in responding to alarms, communication problems, and many other failures of the contractors and the federal monitors. The report concluded that “Ironically, the Y-12 breach may have been an important “wake-up” call regarding the need to correct security issues at the site.”

On October 4, 2012, the defendants announced that they had been advised that, unless they pled guilty to at least one felony and the misdemeanor trespass charge, the U.S. would also charge them with sabotage against the U.S. government, a much more serious charge. Over 3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder asking him not to charge them with sabotage.
But on December 4, 2012, the U.S. filed a new indictment of the protestors.
Count one was the promised new charge of sabotage. Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison. Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.

Gone entirely was the original misdemeanor charge of trespass. Now Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli faced up to thirty-five years in prison.
In a mere five months, government charges transformed them from misdemeanor trespassers to multiple felony saboteurs.

The government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a document they called “Motion to Preclude Defendants from Introducing Evidence in Support of Certain Justification Defenses.” In this motion, the U.S. asked the court to bar the peace protestors from being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious, moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy regarding nuclear weapons.

Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli argued against the motion. But, despite powerful testimony by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a declaration from an internationally renowned physician and others, the Court ruled against defendants.

Meanwhile, Congress was looking into the security breach, and media attention to the trial grew with a remarkable story in the Washington Post, with CNN coverage and AP and Reuters joining in.

The trial was held in Knoxville in early May 2012. The three peace activists were convicted on all counts. Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli all took the stand, admitted what they had done, and explained why they did it. The federal manager of Y-12 said the protestors had damaged the credibility of the site in the U.S. and globally and even claimed that their acts had an impact on nuclear deterrence.

As soon as the jury was dismissed, the government moved to jail the protestors because they had been convicted of “crimes of violence.” The government argued that cutting the fences and spray-painting slogans was property damage such as to constitute crimes of violence so the law obligated their incarceration pending sentencing.

The defense pointed out that Rice, Boertje-Obed, and Walli had remained free since their arrest without incident. The government attorneys argued that two of the protestors had violated their bail by going to a congressional hearing about the Y-12 security problems, an act that had been approved by their parole officers.

The three were immediately jailed. In its decision affirming their incarceration pending their sentencing, the court ruled that both the sabotage and the damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of terrorism. Since the charges carry potential sentences of ten years or more, the Court ruled there was a strong presumption in favor of incarceration which was not outweighed by any unique circumstances that warranted their release pending sentencing.

These non-violent peace activists now sit in jail as federal prisoners, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2013.

In ten months, an 82 year old nun and two pacifists had been successfully transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.

Fran Quigley is clinical professor and director of the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law. Read other articles by Fran.

This article was posted on Thursday, May 16th, 2013 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Incarceration.