Dear Reader: May your Nawrooz and Ramadan, equinox, Easter and Passover all be full of generosity and love. May this Missive reach you as well as can be, and may the next one reach you as well. Inshallah!
Please scroll down to see events I am participating in and that I hope you will consider checking out: March 27, April 4, April 14, April 15.
My titular query shouldn’t alarm you about my health. I feel well. I thought about titling it in the plural: Are We Living Missive to Missive Now? but I thought it a bit presumptuous to assert that my Missives are such a guide or guidepost to anyone but me. Don’t worry about me as much as the world.
Good News…from San Quentin?
As a northern California war tax resister, you may know that I contribute to a fund that helps me redirect money I would pay in federal income taxes. This year, as the People’s Life Fund considered the proposals before us, I learned about San Quentin News. I looked at their website, and found this hopeful story about how some states are actually working legislatively to find a way around federal “qualified immunity” protections for murderous, racist police. https://sanquentinnews.com/federal-immunity-for-rogue-officers-bypassed-by-state-laws/ Look further down for info on the April 14 granting ceremony when you can learn about the other great groups and projects we get to support!
Zahra Billoo in Her Own Words
In my previous Missive I shared a letter to the editor that I submitted to the J.Weekly of northern California refuting the bogus charges leveled against her by the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council. Here is her own reflection, not just about the charges against her, but also furthering the discussion she was speaking to in November at the American Muslims for Palestine conference in Chicago that led to the attacks against her. I hope the Jewish community is up to the conversation; up to the task. https://muslimmatters.org/2022/03/09/in-my-own-words-the-way-forward-on-interfaith-collaboration/
Judicial Appointment Outrage!
I sure hope Ketanji Brown Jackson gets confirmed to the supreme court soon. Clarence Thomas has an infection. I’m sure he is getting super human care. I would probably be relieved if Biden got to appoint another Supreme Court justice soon. That said, lost in the judicial shuffle of the big deal of a black woman being nominated to the high court is a horrific, chilling judicial appointment that Biden made at the same time. Steven Donziger is a great lawyer who beat Chevron on behalf of indigenous people in Ecuador who’s land has been devastated by the oil giant. Jennifer Rearden is the lawyer for Chevron who devised a strategy not to pay their judgement, but instead to go after Donziger on trumped up charges. He got six months and is finishing it up on home confinement due to covid prevention measures. It was a unique miscarriage of justice. Here was @SDonziger‘s reaction in January when Biden nominated Rearden to be a federal judge:
“Outraged to learn that Biden has named @Chevron lawyer Jennifer Rearden to be a federal judge. She was paid millions at @gibsondunn to help jail me, attack Indigenous peoples, and cover up a massive oil spill in the Amazon. Biden must align with Planet Earth. Corrupt.” @SDonziger later shared:
“To better understand how Joe Biden named @Chevron lawyer Reardon (from the corporate firm @gibsondunn) to the federal bench, read this investigative report by @AndrewDFish about her financial ties to New York’s @SenGillibrand “A lawyer with Gibson Dunn, a firm hired by Chevron, was a major fundraiser for Gillibrand, who has been silent on Donziger’s case.
Firing Zone 918: I’m There!
One of the areas I visit most when I go on delegations with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence is the south Hebron Hills, more popularly known as Masafer Yatta. Some of this area is in the news because the Israeli High Court is poised to rule that Palestinians in the area can’t access their land. They were going to rule on March 15 but they punted it a little. The military started to kicked the people out in the late 1990s.
Help Gazans with Food for Ramadan through Rebuilding Alliance, and why I’m not fundraising for my June CJNV Delegation trip
Since I don’t need to raise money for my trip, I am asking you to support the Rebuilding Alliance’s latest push: In the Spirit of Ramadan: Gaza Emergency Food “Help 1200 Gaza families celebrate Ramadan in dignity.” Please, be generous.
I’m working more gainfully now than ever, even as I approach…60! I seem able and willing to work harder than most people, and certainly than many people half my age. I need to be careful though, as do we all. Age can remind us of youthful injuries formerly of little consequence. I had to take vacation time to get the time off of my wage slave labor of love, so I will be getting paid while I’m there (on some level). Also, covid onset in 2020 deprived my family of the celebration we had planned for my niece in Albuquerque who got her Masters Degree then. My mom gifted me the United credit from the flights she had booked for folks. I know my mom wishes she were up to the task of joining me, so this way she gets fly with me, or at least I am flying with her.
Western Sahara: Tourists Protect Sahrawi Women from Moroccan Military Rape
I learned about the plight of Western Sahara and the Sahrawi people from Stephen Zunes in 2006 when I was editing a War Resisters League Peace Calendar. Stephen taught me about several nonviolent movements in the greater Middle East and Arab and Muslim worlds as I prepared 2008’s Salaam, Shalom, Solh: Nonviolence and Resistance in the Middle East and Beyond. I remember when their “Gandhi”, the woman Aminatou Haidar, was on hunger strike in Madrid’s international airport in 2009. Morocco was insisting that she use a Moroccan passport as they have occupied her country since it was about to emerge independent of Spanish militarism in 1975. Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time. She was meeting with the Moroccan head of state and did not bring up her situation or the illegal occupation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. On March 21, 2022, Zunes was on Democracy Now! as well as interviews through Nonviolence International with the four U.S. activists who have broken the violent 450 day siege of the house of Sultana Khaya, a Sahrawi activist. Watch it!
Human Rights organizations have recorded widespread detentions, the torture of dissidents, and violent suppression of peaceful protests by Moroccan forces in Western Sahara. In addition to the oppression of peaceful protestors, since November 2020, Moroccan occupation forces are forcibly confining the Khaya Sisters to their home and the family is facing many forms of abuse, including home invasions, sexual violence and injections of unknown substances. We cannot allow this abuse and violence to continue. We are called to expose these human rights injustices and join together to build peace in Western Sahara. Here is a recent update from Nonviolence International’s Michael Beer.
We have enormous amounts of video that we need help editing and posting on social media to educate the world about Western Sahara and their situation. If you have experience with video editing and can help us this weekend or for the next few weeks please, contact me at michael@nonviolenceinternational.net.
Warmly,
Michael Beer
P.S. We can also use more funding for this dramatic, courageous and impactful work. In particular we would welcome monthly donations. Please donate here.
Nonviolence International
http://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/
Ukraine Concern and Angst. Donate to Help Afghans
I am stung by the racism manifest in much of the west’s, including the progressive left’s, response to the war in Ukraine. Every push for compassionate relief I see in stark relief next to the treatment of oppressive US-backed leadership abroad and the plight of refugees fleeing them especially if they are Muslim or people of color. The racism is laid bare and yet the widespread response it to do more of the same: more weapons, more money for weapons manufacturers, more destruction of infrastructure that…let us be frank…will not be rebuilt. It is more of the are on the poor, and to make more poor to be fodder, pawns and targets. War now, is used to ruin people’s lives in a push for regime change whether Putin is doing it to Zelensky or the United States has done it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or is doing it to Russia now. Hillary Clinton talks now like she did as secretary of state in that way and it makes me despair almost as much as Russia’s brutal assaults on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, my sources remain strong. Yurii, the Ukrainian pacifist and member of World Beyond War was on Democracy Now! for the third time the other day, and he is sounding clearer and stronger. I still don’t like the Quincy Institute’s foundational connection to Charles Koch (and George Soros), but I am liking Anatol Leeben more and more as well, also often on Democracy Now! I am starting to accept that Koch started this effort sincerely and is leaving it to the Institute’s great leadership to chart its course. I have met Andrew Bacevich andTrita Parsi (briefly, admittedly), and I like, respect and trust them quite a lot. And images I sometimes receive from my Dutch friend Bas generally show up in western media (with text I can read) a few days later. Here is an interesting piece he sent me on 3/24. that makes very real the question posed by Public Enemy last year: “What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?“
March 27: Why is Palestine at Our Seder Table?
Chavurah for a Free Palestine invites you to a conversation on why the struggle for justice in Palestine enlightens our Passover observances. At this workshop, you will have a chance to process the emotions that come up at Passover in light of Israeli state violence and its devastating effects on Palestinian people and also to share resources for “bringing Palestine to the Seder Table.”
Sunday, March 27, 4:00 to 5:30 pm Pacific Time Zone Register at http://tinyurl.com/palestine-at-our-seder [I am co-facilitating this intimate workshop/discussion. Please, you and your friends are welcome, but please don’t re-post this as an open announcement. Thank you.]
How do you relate Passover to our lives here, today? Do you see connections to the themes and lessons of Passover in light of how Palestinians are treated by the State of Israel? Do you perhaps wonder if Palestine should be acknowledged along with other injustices we grieve, other freedom struggles that we name and celebrate at Passover? Would you like to hear how other people have raised Palestine at their seders and how it has been received? Do you have anxiety or hopes for how your seder gathering may go if Palestine is raised?
After a brief welcome, we will start in small groups to give people a more intimate chance to speak and listen from the heart as we discuss such a charged topic. When we return to the group as a whole, people will be invited to share questions, experiences and resources that can help bring “Palestine to the Seder Table.” Please bring any you have as well!
Appeal from the April 4, MLK’s Assassination Commemoration Committee of the California Poor People’s Campaign
The April 4 day of public participatory readings of the Beyond Vietnam speech throughout the state and the region, will be the second milestone event in the California Poor People’s Campaign January – June Mobilization building toward the June 18, 2022, Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington DC – and beyond.
We have ambitious plans. On April 4, by 6:01 PM ET there will have been at least 54 public readings of “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” in at least three languages: American Sign Language, Spanish, and English. Fifty-four readings, one for each year since Dr. King’s assassination; 6:01 PM ET because that is when the ER doctor pronounced him dead. A flyer, in English and in Spanish will be coming soon.
If you haven’t already done so, please fill in the CA Poor People’s Campaign MLK “Beyond Vietnam” Public Readings, April 4 Sign-Up Form at https://forms.gle/TSnkyhfRmidNEjs97
“We are watching a war unfold with Russia’s attack on Ukraine that has huge ramifications for the entire world, especially the poor. As always is the case with war and violence, poor and low-income people lose the most. In a war over geopolitics and oil, poor people become pawns as autocrats play dangerous and deadly games. This act of war is in part the result of a Christian nationalist project developed by Vladimir Putin and supported by the likes of Donald Trump and his followers.” Click here to read the full Statement on Russia’s attack on Ukraine from the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.
Not One Step Back!
Jackie Cabasso, Bay Area PPC and Faye Wilson Kennedy, California Poor People’s Campaign/Sacramento
April 14, 6:00 to 7:30 pm, People’s Life Fund Granting Ceremony
As mentioned above in the context of introducing San Quentin News, our redirected war taxes not paid to the federal government will be on April 14. It is on zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82299034596?pwd=dVZlclJaRHpROE8vanpFWmRNKytNZz09 Meeting ID: 822 9903 4596 Passcode: 268629 For more background, visit the People’s Life Fund at NoWarTax.org or the site of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, nwtrcc.org.
April 15, Good Friday, 8:00 AM, outside the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab: See you there!
April 15, Good Friday, 8:00 AM, outside the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, Rev. Allison Tanner will speak on the theme “This Tax Day, What Does the Lord Require of Us?” at the virtual interfaith service of worship and witness calling for an end to U.S. development of nuclear weapons. Yours truly has been asked to provide a Jewishish benediction/call to action. A few years ago I held this role when it fell on April 4 and Martin Luther King, Jr. was the obvious inspiration for the day. MLK’s self-articulated eulogy from his sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” is a stellar example of how I hope to live, be and be remembered. This year the riff is Micah 6:8, and his prophetic admonition to “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”
For the Zoom link and for more information visit Ecumenical Peace Institute www.epicalc.org or call 510-990-0374. Donations can be made via the donate button on EPI’S website or by sending a check to EPI , PO Box 9334, Berkeley CA 94709
March Laughter and Smiles with Lacy and Eamon!
Ojala (That’s inshallah, in Spanish), I will be visiting Eamon and the MacAuley clan over Mother’s Day, so you will have to wait for another couple of Missives to se me and Eamon together again. They are all doing great though. Blessed be!
Jim's Approximately Monthly Missives 
Pingback: Times Too Dire for Despair | Jim's Approximately Monthly Missives