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Peace movement comes to US Social Forum

United for Peace and Justice held a workshop at the US Social Forum in Atlanta on Thursday, at which several speakers made some pretty amazing statements.

Peak suburbia

I get lots of letters from people in various corners of the nation who are hysterically disturbed by the continuing spectacle of suburban development. But instead of joining in their hand-wringing, I reply by stating my serene conviction that we are at the end of the cycle -- and by that I mean the grand meta-cycle of the suburban project as a whole. It's over. Whatever you see out there now is pretty much what we're going to be stuck with. The remaining things under construction are the last twitchings of a dying organism.

John Edwards supports "open source" for voting systems

GRANITE BAY, CA -- John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to support "open source code" for election systems. In a letter dated June 21st addressed to Alan Dechert, the Edwards campaign stated that, "To ensure security, these machines should be programmed with an open source code for complete transparency, and election results should be safeguarded by voter-verified paper records."

Currently, software used in election systems remains the proprietary property of vendors. This situation has created a continual problem when anomalous results have been reported and independent experts are denied the ability to review how the systems work. A growing body of critics oppose this privatization of the voting system.

"Open source" means that the computer instructions written by programmers are publicly available. Open source software is rapidly replacing proprietary software in other applications, including the Internet and military applications.

"We congratulate Senator Edwards for taking a leadership role in the fight to restore public oversight of the voting system," said Alan Dechert, president of Open Voting Consortium.

The violence interrupters

A dozen of us stood around a dead flower and a piece of bare sidewalk. There may have been more ho-hum in my heart than grief, at least at first, but slowly something started to break.

“Oh God, have mercy.” This is what we chanted.

I paw at hope as I write about this — hope for Chicago, where I live, hope for this country and hope for peace. I say those last words with humility and skepticism, aware of how small I felt as I stood in this group, but knowing I was only there because a large turning is in motion.

“Oh God, we come before you today, crying out for the shooting initiated by Anthony Morgan, which led to his death on this corner of our neighborhood Tuesday night.”

A matter of focus

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Kucinich comes to take back America

My friend Steve Cobble gave Kucinich a great introduction, receiving applause for each point he made about Kucinich's platform and past performance, arguing that Kucinich was right four years ago that opposition to the war and support for fair trade were key to winning, and that's how Democrats won in 2006.

Kucinich opened with the need to cut off the money.  He proposed simply not offering any more bills to fund the war.  Kucinich won huge applause as he shouted about the troops coming home, the bases being closed, the oil being left to the Iraqi people...

We must challenge the very idea of war in order to reconnect with the nations of the world, Kucinich said.  "I believe that the path to peace runs right through Jerusalem," Kucinich said, promising an even-handed approach.  He got loud applause for being the first to raise the topic.

Comfest Satuday ends in radical street demo

The first ComFest took shape when a handful of political hippies who had already formed, among other things, a free medical clinic, a food co-op, a tenants union and an alternative newspaper, pulled off a big street party at the convergence of East 16th and Waldeck Avenues in the OSU area. Saturday June 23rd, 2007 Comfest regained some of its political clout when the festival ended in a radical street march against the War in Iraq. At around 10pm a crowd assembled by the pond at the northeast corner of Goodale park. Demonstrators brandished bullhorns, bucket drums, banners, signs, and torches. The festival had been going on all day and much of the crowd had grown rowdy and boisterous after a day of Comfest beverages and music.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity

You can't generally hold a writer responsible for a headline, usually written by an editor, but you can take issue with it. The headline "Antioch's sunk itself by refusing to evolve," in the June 17 Columbus Dispatch over a Mike Harden column, suggests that the new corporate college and university model is in some way a step forward for humanity.

Remember that the Antioch College motto, taken from the great educator Horace Mann, is: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

How one talks about the death, or temporary closing, of the legendary Antioch College – without talking about the great victories that it has won for humanity, this nation, the state of Ohio, and even the city of Columbus – is puzzling.

Let's recall that history. The Christian Connection founded the college in 1852. It's a little hard to believe now, in the era of George W. Bush's warmongering, profit-loving, pro-corporate version of Jesus, but there was a time when the American Christian churches drew more from the Sermon on the Mount than Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

TOTALLY boom/doom Solartopian green by 2030

We are all now desperate runners in the epic race between doom and boom. It's a global- warmed dead heat between apocalyptic ecological collapse, versus a Solartopian green-powered prosperity.

Defeat is defined by a death spiral that decimates our planet. Victory means the wealth, jobs and organic well-being that can come with renewables, efficiency and a post-pollution prosperity.

A middle ground is likely along the way, but would almost certainly happen by dividing humankind even further between rich and poor. That polarization is ultimately unsustainable, and will demand correction, one way or the other.

The "tipping point" where climate chaos becomes self-accelerating and irreversible may be as close as ten years away. Some believe we're already over the edge.

The global economy runs parallel. Any system addicted to huge inputs of irreplaceable, monopolized resources whose prices are soaring must soon collapse.

The cure is clear---a technological, economic and social revolution built around the transition to green power.

Overgrown kids, unshackled ids, and the death of the superego

"Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them."
--Sigmund Freud

Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants.

Nietzsche once pronounced God dead. In the United States, we have a more readily demonstrable (and perhaps related) problem. Our collective id has rendered its governing superego impotent, and perhaps dead. Our prevailing moral standards, as inconsequential as they have become, are of the Jerry Falwell variety. They are mean-spirited, self-serving, judgmental, narrow-minded, selfish, and belligerent. As far as US Americans are concerned, Christ may as well have preached the Sermon on the Mount from the lowest recesses of Death Valley.

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