January/February 2005

What Now?

Thinkers and Activists share their thoughts on where we go from here.

Tom Artin: The People’s Choice

It wasn’t a good omen—all those magnetic yellow ribbons spreading like a virus across the backs of SUVs in the weeks before the election. No matter the daily press reports testifying to the increasingly disastrous course of the American military in Iraq; no matter the lie after lie dragged into the light. Packs of our neighbors in even a supposedly “blue” state defiantly—in the teeth of the facts—taunting doubters to “support our troops.” Had they read the papers? Had they listened at all? These die-hard patriots no doubt also believed Saddam Hussein had schemed and carried out the atrocities of September 11th.

Until this election, progressives might take heart in the conviction that word need only be spread, truth be made known, for the righting force of democracy to correct the follies and evils of a regime run amok. Weren’t Americans sensible enough to “throw the rascals out” if it could be shown they were rascals?

Can we cling to such faith still? This time, the facts were out for all to see. Eyes wide open, the American electorate chose a frankly corrupt conspiracy to continue leading us toward geopolitical and environmental catastrophe: a self-destructive act we can comprehend only as willful turning from the light, as obscurantism, as fear of reality so profound that blind faith in obvious but alluring falsehood seems preferable to truth. This, after all, is a population for whom “reality” TV is real. No wonder so many Americans turn out to be malleable by a ruthless directorate.

History shows us oscillation between enlightenment and obscurantism. We have the bad luck to find ourselves in one of the dark periods, probably only at its leading edge. We may console ourselves in the knowledge that eventually, the pendulum will swing again. Inevitably it does. Before we lull ourselves into faith in net progress, though, we should meditate on the history of the Twentieth Century.

Tom Artin is a freelance musician and photographer living in Rockland County, New York. He is the author of Earth Talk: Independent Voices on the Environment, written while working on the Dai Dong Project of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the early 1970s. He was the first child born in the United States to parents who fled the tyranny of Nazi Germany in 1937.

Cesar Hernandez: One Day at a Time

A popular Mexican song by Los Tigres del Norte titled “Un Dia a La Vez/One Day at a Time” starts with the lyrics: In need I find myself, Lord. Help me to see, I want to know, what I should do? Show me the way that I should follow…

At this moment, many of us in this country may find ourselves feeling the words of these artists. What should we do? How do we do it? One suggestion: one day at a time.

One day at a time, Lord, that is what I ask of you. Give me the strength to live—one day at a time. Yesterday has passed, my Lord, maybe tomorrow will not come. Help me today, I want to live one day at a time.

One day at a time, we must continue to organize. We must come together and develop a common vision for the future of our communities and our country.

You have lived among men: you know, my Lord, that it’s worst today. So much pain, so much greed, and so much evil, Lord. For my own good, I want to live one day at a time.

One day at a time we must affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We must challenge ourselves to confront evil with justice, compassion, and love. We must love each other and protect each other. We must all become architects of peace. One day at a time.

Cesar Hernandez of Oxnard, California, is Outreach Coordinator/Organizer for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). Its current work includes living wage campaigns, health coverage expansion efforts, a women’s economic justice project and other social and economic justice efforts in the Central Coast Region of California. Hernandez was recently elected to the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, representing the Southwest.

Paul Rogat Loeb: Lessons in Persistence

The recent US election was a huge defeat for humanity. Yet together with the peace movement that preceded it, it brought several million people into involvement for the first time. If they stay engaged, it’s the largest peace and justice movement we’ve had in years, and a chance to move the country forward. Our first job is to give those who’ve just gotten involved the long-term frameworks to help them persist.

We’ll need to remind them that history turns in unexpected ways,that courage is contagious, and that successful movements of the past often hit setback after setback, but persisted to succeed. We’ll need to help them build engaged communities, because few can act alone in hard times. And we’ll need to remind them that bleak as the landscape may seem, our action itself forges new possibilities: “believing in spite of the evidence—then watching the evidence change,” in the words of Jim Wallis of Sojourners.

Even in what seems a losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who goes on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Rosa Parks’s husband Raymond convinced her to attend her first NAACP meeting. But who got him involved? The links in any chain of influence are too complex to trace. But only by acting with courage and faith can we create these links of possibility.

It’s going to take a broad marshalling of citizen power to turn things around, including reaching out to those who voted differently, like members of conservative churches. FOR’s traditions of bridging hold valuable lessons. But given the organization’s modest size, members may make their greatest impact by helping offer others the context to keep on. Because movements for justice are not only about winning particular critical issues, but also about building engaged community for the long haul. The peace movement as a whole needs to reach out to our fellow citizens. But those of us who are long-runners need first to approach those who’ve recently come into involvement yet are wondering whether their efforts really matter. Because if we can just keep them engaged, we never know what their actions might create.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books 2004, www.theimpossible.org), and of Soul of a Citizen (both books available from FOR).

Lynn Gottlieb: Sustenance

Where do we go from here? What makes the world worth living in, immediately and for the future?

I am remembering the words of a Quaker woman named Marty Rafferty, a social worker from Belfast who lived through the brutal times of British-Protestant-Irish-Catholic divide over land, religion, identity, and sovereignty. She recalls how society slowly surrendered civil liberties for the sake of so-called security, how people slowly accepted growing levels of violence and fear as part of daily life. She also testifies that when the peace finally came, it was held in place by the foundations created through the dedicated work of thousands of local neighborhood groups. People reached out to their neighbors on the other side of the conflict and struggled mightily to find ways to work together for the sake of the children and youth growing up in their midst.

People with amazing hearts offering religious, vocational, educational, health, and artistic alternatives, the promise of a future, in the face of debilitating violence and despair. This is what one sees in many killing fields, fields as vast as the sea of refugee tears. Women, men, and children trying to hang on to life.

May our reconciliation and justice work be blessed in the coming years with success. May the FOR be a portal through which people can easily connect to networks of interfaith solidarity that support the work of reconciliation, social and environmental justice, and peace. May the possibilities of creative nonviolence that arise from the content of our work and the strength of our faith engender dynamic strategies for resisting human brutalities in others and in ourselves.

For me, this translates into building long-lasting relationships with my brothers and sisters from other faith groups, bringing youth and communities together to make neighborhood institutions and cities more responsive to youth leadership. The arts, the wilderness, the study of narrative text, the dialogue of ceremony, the cultivation of critical minds and courageous souls, the witness of pilgrimage, listening to stories late into the night while drinking a cup of tea with friends on the road—all these sustain and bless the miracle of being alive.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb serves a congregation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She also works for the Interfaith Inventions Foundation in Ventura, California, and co-leads Jewish/Muslim peace walks.

Tayyibah Taylor: Build a Working Example of Peace

Whether one celebrated or grieved after the recent elections, people in the nation and the world are now moving on with their lives. Those of us whose lives are governed by a faith tradition realize that all election results, here and in other countries, are allowed by the Creator. As believers concerned with world peace and justice, we know that our complete sense of spiritual peace is not contingent on a particular person or on a specific situation, but rather on our connection to the Creator.

By living out our beliefs in the equality of all human beings, we can illustrate the brilliant power of faith and parity to the world. When Jews, Christians, Muslims and others believers live, work, and pray together, we provide a working example of peace and a valid alternative to a world of chaos, conflict, and contempt. As believers living peace, we can create a world of peace.

 Special interfaith events, services, seminars, and journeys are all wonderful. Yet even more powerful are the ordinary day-to-day interactions and the close genuine relationships that demonstrate harmony in spite of our varied faiths, cultures, and frames of reference. Showing to all that unity does not demand uniformity, we can deny power to those who seek to use our differences to instill fear and hatred.

Those who divide humanity into arbitrary categories, do so to assign a value of worth. Employing this value, they can then rationalize oppression and justify war and conflict. We can transcend these arbitrary divisions and avoid creating others by focusing first on our spiritual peace and seeing each human being as he or she is—another spirit on its journey back to the Creator. Believers can be powerful beacons of peace for all on this journey.

Tayyibah Taylor is publisher and editor-in-chief of Azizah. www.azizahmagazine.com.

Jonathan Schell: Democratic Resistance

It seems to me that the most critical task for the peace movement now is to invent ways of building up enduring strength in institutions and associations and activities that are independent of the political parties but seek to influence them from without. The gush of energy that went into the Kerry campaign, connecting millions of people to politics, needs to be redirected through a thousand smaller outlets.

Will the quagmire in Iraq, as terrible as it is, curb Bush's adventurism in other countries? I think it will. But the cost, which we now see in the rape of Falluja, will be terrifying. And there is no guarantee that when the crisis in Iraq comes, the reaction by the Bush administration will not be an extreme one. They have consolidated a fearsome amount of power, at home and abroad, and they use it ruthlessly. We need to be more than a democratic opposition; we need to be a democratic resistance.

Jonathan Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute, is the author of The Time of Illusion, The Fate of the Earth, and—available from FOR—The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.

Arun Gandhi: Own Up to National Arrogance

The 2004 Presidential election was a clear indication that we Americans still ride the high horse of superpower arrogance. All the talk about God and Morals and Values becomes empty and meaningless when we don't connect it with a wholesome respect for human dignity and human life—and I don't mean simply American dignity and American life. There cannot be one set of morals and values for Americans and another for the rest of the world. The majority of Americans voted for the morals and values represented by President Bush. The President himself has told us time and again that he believes in God and prayer and that he prays every day, often several times a day; and one must assume that the war he wages in several parts of the world and the sacrificed lives he offers (American and other) are sanctioned by God. Since so many voters gave President Bush their votes, it must be assumed that they also believe in this theory.

I am not a Christian, but one does not have to be to know that Jesus says love thy enemy, not kill thy enemy. Or it is as a friend once told me? “Jesus was perfect, I am not”... implying that Jesus must only be worshipped, not followed. But if Jesus is the human concept of God, then I don't think we can rightfully claim to have God's sympathy and understanding. When some Catholic bishops value the lives of unborn American children more than the lives of adults slaughtered on the battlefield, it makes one wonder about our spiritual priorities. In this respect, unfortunately, Republicans and Democrats proved to be equally untruthful.

We, as Americans, need to do more than revisit our political aspirations: we need to reconsider our spiritual expectations. America can never preserve its sanity and safety by aiding and abetting the destruction of the world. We have proved to the world that we are a superpower in terms of our military strength. We have yet to prove to the world that we can also be a superpower in terms of our moral strength. Instead, our attitude is as Kipling would put it: the whole world is an enemy except thee and me, and even thee is a little suspect.

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, is director of the Gandhi Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. His most recent book is Legacy of Love: My Education in the Path of Nonviolence.

Shelley Douglass: Reflect and Reconcile

Last Saturday, at our peace vigil, six young men came and held signs with us. They told us that they were in the army and had all been released after serving their time. They were now being recalled and would be shipping out to Iraq in a few weeks. They especially liked a poster that said, “Support our troops: bring them home now!”

They were a sign to me to avoid the trap of division. The troops (even the ones who support the war) are not our enemies. They hold the key to resistance and refusal, and many of them are profoundly troubled by the war and their part in it. We need to reach out to them with information and support after they’re in the military. We also need to educate as many people as possible to the options of conscientious objection and resistance. My Catholic Worker group now plans to add the GIrights.org website to our nonviolence discipline card–for the next soldiers who stop.

Just as Mr. Bush plans to continue and deepen his commitment to American dominance, so we need to continue and deepen our commitment to nonviolence. Our activism will continue, and I hope we will also take some time for Gandhian reflection. How is it that we perpetuate the reliance on violence endemic to this country? How could we begin to change ourselves? I would suggest—again—that the question of abortion is essential here. If our work is dedicated to enhancing and nurturing this planet and its people, can we not find ways to encourage conscientious objection to abortion? This would not involve changing the law, but changing minds and hearts in the same way that we work to change the minds and hearts of soldiers, and supporting people through the consequences of such a change.

Shelley Douglass, former FOR national chairperson, lives and works at Mary’s House Catholic Worker in Birmingham, Alabama. Mary’s House offers hospitality to homeless families and fosters nonviolent peacemaking.

Patty Ackerman: Live in Hope

At times like these I think we live in hope because that is where we can live, where there is life and love and endurance. Today I opened a fortune cookie and it said "nature, time, and patience are the three great healers."  Even the fortune cookies are leaping out toward the truth. We cannot let the negative forces stop us from doing what a loving and compassionate God calls us to do—to care for creation, one another, our neighbors. We have no enemies, only obstacles to peace.

The Rev. Patricia Ackerman is Program Coordinator at the Garrison Institute, a multifaith think tank and retreat center in Garrison, New York.

Ken Sehested: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Doubtless most of us consider the recent US elections among our most Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days in recent memory—which is why there has been such a flurry of suggestions for moving to Some Other Place. That’s the reaction of Alexander, in the Judith Viorst children’s book from which I’ve taken my title: he kept longing for relocation to Australia. We know about that hankering—though it makes some of our Canadian friends nervous, and the word from Australia (with Howard’s reelection) isn’t encouraging.

Frankly, all this relocation romance is at least as discouraging as the electoral results. As are the evidential circulars shuttling the Internet. You’ve probably seen the “Jesusland” map, with its cultural stigmatization of the Bush/Red states. Or the spoof study referenced by columnist Will Durst, under the title “Stupid people love Bush.” (Purporting a “correlation between the decline of IQ and rise of the GOP,” many reproducers took it at face value.) Or the H.L. Mencken quote, from 1920, attributing the election of “a moron” to the White House to “the plain folk of the land.”

My numerous trips to Canada make me think it a wonderful place. But what is the meaning of this fretfulness? Could this be the political meaning of rootlessness?

And why this disparaging of plain people? Have we become so insulated in bi-coastal urban centers that we’ve been severed from the very “power” of the working-class people whose interests we claim as our own?

“Remain in the land,” was the Prophet Jeremiah’s ordained advice (42:10). “Fear not the king.”

Ken Sehested was for eighteen years the executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. He is now co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation, and a stonemason, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi: Bowing to the Inevitable

Now that what we hoped would not happen, but knew would happen, has happened—what should we do? Blame the Democrats’ choice of Mr. Kerry to run against Mr. Bush? Or blame them for not being Christian enough, in the face of the national paranoia after the 9/11 attack? No. This is not that kind of problem. The point is that a good majority of the country voted for Mr. Bush and his ideal of American domination of the world. And who wouldn’t want to be a citizen of such a nation? Especially if you have nothing else. If you are poor, uneducated, jobless, homeless, miserable, what better compensation is there than to be “proud to be an American,” and to follow Mr. Bush, God’s chosen one, in the crusade against evil? The rich and successful were perfectly correct to vote for him. For although they have ninety percent of the nation’s wealth (despite being only two percent of the population), they have to get more. But they could never have achieved this victory alone. Thank God for the masses.

Now what about the rest of us, who do not like Mr. Bush and his policies? During the Vietnam era they told us “America: love it or leave it.” We loved America, and so we did not leave it. And we still will not leave. We may consider these events to be a change in the atmosphere of this beautiful country; a change of weather, like global warming. I mean, after all, we cannot leave this world merely because it is warming! What we’ll probably have to do is to learn how to take off our clothes. 

Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi is the spiritual leader for the Americas of the Jerrahi Order, a 300-year-old Muslim Sufi order headquartered in Istanbul. An artist, teacher, and translator of many books, he is the originator of FOR’s Bosnian Student Project.

Walter Wink: Don’t Sell Your Soul

The religious right didn’t win the election for Bush. Like the religious left, they were always there, though better funded and organized. The left just didn’t like to talk about it. Because you can’t talk people out of their religion. You can knock on doors, call folks long distance, even get in your car and drive with other like-minded souls from their homes in Massachusetts to homes in Pittsburgh or Columbus, like some of my neighbors did, and you can talk their arms off. But they will never, never abandon their faith on the basis of rational argument.

No, that election was won the moment Karl Rove hit on the expedient of going to war, somewhere, anywhere.

George the Lesser’s polls were horrendous. Rove knew that Americans would never vote to change leaders in the midst of a war. The mildest criticisms could be characterized as unpatriotic. But how could a war be sold to the American people? Without going into theories that the Bush administration actually set 9/11 up, it certainly was just what the doctor ordered. From that day, fear became our daily diet, force-fed by the media.

We were demonstrating against war when we learned that Afghanistan had been invaded. We were still demonstrating when we learned that Iraq had been attacked. We all knew it: Bush had sealed his election without lifting a finger.

Kerry’s campaign was stillborn. He hadn’t a chance. No other Democrat could have won. Kerry shot off his foot by not attacking the war, but he still would have lost. Dean was gutsy, but he hadn’t a chance, either.

So let’s go easy on Kerry. He won the campaign, he won the debates. He made huge mistakes, but they didn’t matter. The outcome was settled in advance.

Let’s be cautious when Democrats try to ape the religious right and use religion to garner votes. We can organize progressives who are religious, but we had better not sell our souls for political gain.

Walter Wink is author of Jesus and Nonviolence (Fortress Press, 2003, available from FOR). A New Testament scholar, he is a frequent speaker and workshop leader.

Pamela Meidell: Two Faces of Darkness

The morning after George W. Bush won the election, I woke up and thought, “Nuclear weapons. What is George going to do about nuclear weapons?” I was overcome with shock and awe: shock at the election results, awe at the power that a president can wield. 2005 is sixty years since nuclear weapons entered our world and America became the first country to use them in war. We still live under the nuclear shadow. For good or ill, George W. Bush has returned public attention to that shadow.

We have all seen it in the faces and eyes of all soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. We feel it when talk turns to Security Council discussions about “weapons of mass destruction.” How do we continue to keep our eyes open and be present to the pain of what we see, the darkness, the nuclear shadow, and what it evokes in us?

And in this dualistic culture, how do we remember that the darkness also carries our connection to the earth, our grief, our sense of forgiveness toward these harsher aspects of ourselves, and the womb where new life is nurtured and protected?

We won’t know the face of that new life unless and until we are willing to join hands and face our collective shadow together. For this task, we need the wisdom, compassion, love, and joy in the teachings and practices of all of our spiritual traditions.

Pamela Meidell lives in Oxnard, California, where she directs the Atomic Mirror

( www.atomicmirror.org ), which seeks to transform our nuclear world through the arts. She is a member of FOR's National Council and Disarmament Task Force.

Angela Boatwright: Subversive Joy

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. — Jesus

I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from:

nobody told me that the road would be easy, I don’t believe [God]

brought me this far to leave me. — Curtis Burrell

A friend of mine once fell in love with the phrase "subversive joy." It is a wonderful phrase, sweeping and exuberant and almost gleefully naughty. One really shouldn’t be rejoicing, but—who can resist? Regardless of what the individual who coined the phrase intended it to mean, subversive joy as I see it is what people of goodwill may need to feel right now. In the face of absolutely nothing to be joyful about on the political front, one still can rejoice for all that can be, and will be, if we withstand the temptation to despair. Subversive joy, to me, means looking at the political realities and the faith realities and choosing on the side of faith—where nothing is impossible, with God. The God I know and love has assured me that the world already has been conquered, not by armies but by love. And I believe that.

Love walks through the door of my office almost daily, unannounced. Love collects coats for the poor and lays them gently on a table in the parish hall. Love calls and offers to set tables or wash dishes at a free community dinner or make coffee early in the morning for the day laborers project. Love drives a van deep into the city night, finding the colonies of the homeless and giving them something to eat. Love offers an extra turkey to give away at Thanksgiving. Love teaches a recent immigrant to speak and read in English. Love takes a stranger, poor and ill, to the hospital and pays for the medication needed to make that stranger well.

Maybe these are small things, insubstantial against the complexities of contemporary politics, economics, sociology. But the world is filled with small things that, when multiplied, can stop even the most formidable forces. A flood is little more than the accumulation of millions and millions of tiny raindrops, gentle and insignificant on their own yet unstoppable when united. I believe in the power of many raindrops. I believe in subversive joy.

I believe that, in the face of evil, good will find its strength and rise up—and in fact, already has. I believe that, in the face of fear that either hides or swaggers, goodness will rise up and soar, free, graceful, joyful. It is entirely too difficult to maintain fear. We weren’t designed to do it and we basically cannot. No matter how long we try to keep our hands in a fist, they will, by nature, slowly relax and open, palms ready to receive new grace. I believe in feeding people, because people who are well fed are too happy to hate and too satisfied to be greedy. And, incredible as it may seem, I still believe in this country.

There was a time when the people who lived here knew that the land, the resources, the beauty, did not belong to them. The spirits of those ancestors, who saw the sun rise here many times before the Mayflower even set sail, live on in the communion of saints, and they will guide us. I believe that subversive joy beats with the rhythm of life, under the surface, undetected by important people too busy to notice. I believe that when they do notice, it will be too late: love will have embraced everything, including them. I believe that, in the small hours of the morning, before people take over the streets, the rest of creation laughs in a subversive joy, knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.

Angela Boatwright is the priest of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Spring Valley, New York. In June she represented the FOR in a delegation to Haiti.

Don Mosley: God, Help Us.

"We gonna do the best we can ‘til we can’t." That’s how Willie Dee Wimberly used to put it when he lived at the Open Door, our sister community in Atlanta that has worked decade after decade with death row prisoners and homeless people.

We have the same three choices now that we had before November 2. We can follow the majority of people in the United States and live in denial, refusing to acknowledge that anything is seriously wrong or that we could do anything about it if there were. Or we can allow ourselves to be paralyzed by despair. Those are both hopeless courses to follow. Only the third one holds real promise for the future. People of faith can look honestly at the huge problems facing humankind, breathe a prayer—"God, help us"—and get to work.

"People act their way into new ways of thinking far more often that they think their way into new ways of acting," says a friend of mine. I have found that actions taken in love have special power to change not only the way we think but the whole environment around us as we act. In the past few years I have had the privilege of seeing such miracles of hope grow out of such actions all over the world.

The great peacemakers of history have always been people of faith, compassion, and action. I don’t intend to let one little election prevent me from trying to follow their example!

Don Mosley, former national chairperson of the FOR, is a member of Jubilee Partners in Comer, Georgia, which has hosted over 2,600 refugees from thirty countries. A leader in Habitat for Humanity, Mosley has worked for peace in Central America, the Middle East, and other regions of the world.

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.... If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.”

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter sent in 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act.

(Quoted in Thomas Jefferson by R. B. Bernstein, Oxford University Press, 2003)