Communicating via People Pedal Power

One single bicycle – and many pedaling people -- powers Occupy San Francisco’s media center: three laptops, a handful of cell phones, and wi-fi hotspots.

It is fitting that, on the day when as many of five thousand protested outside Wells Fargo Bank, something as simple, sustainable, and ubiquitous as a bicycle video-streamed and communicated the goings-on to the rest of the country and the world.

This people pedal power demystifies electricity and sends a hopeful message: if one bicycle and a few batteries enable world-wide communication how dependent are We the People on centralized coal and nuclear power plants?

People pedal power encourages the person in the street intuitively to grasp an emergent urban story: each of us is capable of creating decentralized solutions that still allow us to run our beloved electronic equipment. Perhaps we really can outwit and work around the corporations and financial institutions at the heart of OWS movement’s dissatisfaction.

There’s nothing special about the bicycle that was donated by Bay Area business Rock the Bike. It is stationary and rigged to stand about six inches from the ground. When pedaled, the spinning rear wheel, attached to a small motor, transmits people power to a “box” that is connected to a battery…that is connected to inverters… that plug into equipment that requires 12 volts, or 115 AC, or even 5 volts for cell phones.

Kames Cox-Geraghty, one of the Occupiers working on a laptop on Market Street near the Embarcadero BART station, said, “Right now these things are definitely basic but we're getting there; we have people who really want to help build the system who come down here to advise us.”

Earlier in the occupation, the encampment had a generator but police stated organizers needed to apply for a permit from the fire department. According to police, however, the encampment had “too many personal items lying around that constitute a fire hazard” and it was unlikely to be granted a permit. 

“So, at the moment,” Cox-Geraghty explained in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview, “we don't have backup. Instead, we have somebody on the bike almost 24/7. It's an intense system; we go for maybe five minutes without it, then we do a big shout out, ‘I'm done. Who wants to go next?’”

The shout out, also known as the “human microphone,” is another example of a work-around that has become common at occupation sites where “necessity is the mother of invention.” Activist/author Naomi Klein and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Sizizek are among the speakers who have popularized this ingenious urban call and response system that obviates the need to apply for a permit for sound amplifying equipment. Speakers break sentences into staccato sound bites that members of the audience repeat and pass through the crowd. It works for immediate needs – recruiting cyclists to generate pedal power – and it also works to educate and connect the dots between the OWS movement and world events.

One such moment occurred at Occupy San Francisco when someone shouted, “How many… American deaths…. in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

A response popped up and was amplified through the crowd, “About nine thousand.” (A number that includes military contractors killed.)

Then another voice shouted, “What about… the deaths… of people not American?”

There was no answer to that but that the question was asked raises awareness about the terrible swath of war beyond America borders. (The answer? Approximately one-and-a-half million Iraqis. Afghans? Unclear; the American military doesn’t “do body counts”.)

A longtime activist, Francis Coombs, said, “When the husks of the old world fall away we will see that new growth has already taken root.”

The world-wide Occupy movement shows all the signs of new growth taking root as engaged human beings collaborate to create renewable people power.

Yes, for Ecuador! Or, Confessions of a Fired Chevron Contractor

(Came across this anonymous article and want to share it to spread the support for Ecuador's cleanup)
By “Supa Strika”

A resounding cheer for the US appeals court that ruled Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine on behalf of Amazonian residents for the corporation’s massive pollution of the rain forest. Needless to say, Chevron will appeal the decision; it has been doing so for 18 years. If it manages to crawl out from under this fine it will not be for lack of effort by activists who keep the spotlight on Chevron for this and other practices that damage the environment and the communities that depend upon it.
I was a Chevron subcontractor during George Bush’s second term and there were many mornings I’d honk and wave to friends as I drove to work while they protested corporate polices at the gates of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California.
My first day on the job coincided with the Bush junior’s re-election. It was impossible to miss the expressions of corporate jubilation in the hallways, break rooms, and offices that day; someone wrote “WAR” and drew a smiley face on the whiteboard in my office too.
Over two years, I successfully implemented a global website located in a building east of CVX headquarters. My job performance was good enough that, on completion of that project, I was offered another in corporate headquarters – one floor below then-CEO “Dave” O'Reilly where I rubbed elbows with Chevron’s corporate publicists and marketing mavens.
A first responsibility was to put a “lighter, brighter face” on the public website Chevron devotes to explaining its side of the Ecuador story.  My foreboding about my new role was matched by that then-dark and dreary site branded with Texaco’s black and red palette. Moreover, it was populated with self-serving legal rhetoric about why Chevron was blameless in the horrors wreaked by oil spills and lax environmental controls in Ecuador’s forests and on its people.
It was difficult to pretend to enjoy my work or that I had much in common with my colleagues. As a life-long social justice activist I was aware of corporate malfeasance around the globe and I was not good at keeping my emotions hidden. Moreover, my only son was serving in the US Army – to my mind the element used to project US might in foreign lands and safeguard oil fields for corporations like Chevron. (Eventually, my son was honorably discharged after serving one tour of duty in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.)
I was fired within three months. Had I been a true believer I’d have fired someone displaying my attitude too. For example, meeting with the marketing team in 2006 about Chevron's strategy to be beat Proposition 87 – the Clean Alternative Energy Act – I quipped that Chevron create a marketing campaign to promote a new gas standard: instead of “miles-to-the-gallon” it use “number-of-dead-Iraqis-to–the-gallon”. (Chevron contributed over $34 million to “No on 87” – and won: that Clean Alternative Energy Act failed.)

My experience convinced me that corporations like Chevron act like a cults. There’s the isolation: believers do not mix with “non-believers”; isolation ensures believing members do not doubt or question the corporate mission or the corporation’s role in his/her life.
For days prior to protesters arriving at the gate for a permitted protest, employees and contractors were sent emails decrying the action, warnings about traffic congestion and frustrations, and offering assurances about personal safety that implied protesters were intrinsically violent people.  (Actually, the majority of left activist groups espouse and practice non-violence as a matter of course.)
Corporations pay (or donate?) decent salaries that allow members to entertain themselves shopping, consuming, and keeping up with the Joneses. The threat of being cut off from the corporate tit is terrifying and employees obey and believe corporate messaging -- in Chevron’s case, “Human Energy” – even when faced with conflicting evidence.
In 2005, the ChevronToxico Campaign for Justice in Ecuador somehow convinced the management of Mudd’s Restaurant, right across the street from Chevron Headquarters, to  exhibit “Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco's Rainforest Legacy”. This series of 50 photographs documented the human and environmental impact of what experts believe is the worst oil-related environmental disaster on the planet. Few, if any, Chevron employees attended.

Who is Supa Strika?
I have never hidden from my activist friends that I contracted with Chevron…or any corporation. Indeed, I believe that those of us who espouse “left” ideologies ought to work in corporations at least once. Then, when we denigrate corporations’ activities around the globe, we also understand how the mindset operates at home, how employees’ minds are colonized by fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of knowing, and fear of speaking the truth in meetings. Fear keeps publicists and marketing mavens churning out campaign messages that white- or green-wash corporate misdeeds too. 
I chose Supa Strika as my pseudonym partly because I am fearful: being known for criticizing the corporate-hand-that-feeds does not put bread on my table. (I’ve been unemployed for more two years as it is!)
Additionally, Supa Strika is a wildly popular comic series in Africa, South America and Asia Pacific that features a fictional soccer team -- all brown-skinned -- that sports Chevron’s Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys. I grew up in South Africa so I know that the vast majority of soccer-crazy South African children cannot afford real soccer balls; they improvise by stuffing plastic bags that litter the streets into other plastic bags until they form something hard enough to kick. Instead of Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys they wear rags.
Ironically, Supa Strika editions originate in the very office I worked in at Chevron headquarters where employees churn out and distribute thousands of these colorful and well-executed comics to hoodwink children. Indeed, Chevron has taken global sponsorships to a whole new level with an innovative animated version of Supa Strika for television. Chevron reports that this “extends beyond traditional sports sponsorship and results in significant brand recognition.”
But, activists can, and do, fight back. We expose these companies’ internal workings and understand what keeps employees enthralled; then we support decisions like that of the recent appeals court.
What’s our message? Corporations like Chevron might hide for 18 years or more but they will not escape their fines.
In other words, activists re-frame and re-apply Human Energy. 

(Another unhappy but resolutely outspoken member of the fallen-from-corporate-grace.)

Deep Costs of War Trauma

(Published August 11 in Counterpunch and Sri Lanka Guardian as "The Deep Cost of War Trauma: Destroying Personalities.")

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is a serious problem for America and its war veterans – and that does not bode well for a society that supports war and militarism as a means to generate capital. The high prevalence of civilian assault, rape, child abuse, disaster, and violent incidents also makes PTSD a public health problem -- as borne out by the 1995 national study that estimates at least five percent of men and ten percent of women experience PTSD at some point in their lives; and roughly thirty percent develop a chronic form that persists for life.

War trauma is not new: “soldier’s heart” was the term used to describe it during the American Civil War; “shell shock” during World War I; “battle fatigue” or “war neurosis” during World War II; and “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” during Vietnam. Then a “syndrome” (“a group of signs and symptoms that collectively characterize or indicate a particular disease or abnormal condition”) evolved into a “disorder,” that is, an “illness.” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder formally entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) in 1980.

DSM IV describes PTSD as a psychological condition experienced by people who face traumatic events that cause “catastrophic stressors outside the range of usual human experience” (such as war, torture, rape, or natural disaster). This is different from “ordinary stressors” (such as divorce, failure, rejection, and financial problems) characterized as Adjustment Disorders.

Embraced by scientific and clinical communities (if not wholehearted by the U.S. military), PTSD today is among the panoply of acceptable modern ailments for which treatment exists.

Whether they seek treatment or not American military personnel and their families have access to mental health services. Yes, it may be difficult within the “suck-it-up” military culture to admit the need for psychological care; yes, it may be difficult to receive high quality, ongoing care from an overburden VA; and, yes, perhaps military mental health care relies too heavily on prescription medications…but systematic care is available.

But PTSD is not confined to America. It is prevalent in countries experiencing natural disasters and the social upheaval war brings: loss of home, family, and cultural identity; constant threat of sudden and extreme violence; and impoverishment, scarcity, and displacement. UNHCR 2011's refugee statistics indicate almost 44 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced.

An insidious legacy develops for families in countries too war-torn to offer systematic mental health treatment: PTSD is handed down to future generations.

Iraqi psychiatrist Dr. Ali Hameed explains, “Parents who are victims of war trauma themselves are often incapable of addressing their children’s trauma since no one addressed their trauma.”

Iraq. Before the 2003 invasion, Dr. Ali Hameed researched PTSD in children at the University of Baghdad. He found it difficult to measure Iraqi children’s psychological health since Iraq has experienced decades of conflict: the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, a dozen years of U.N. sanctions followed by the invasion and almost a dozen years of violent occupation, and millions of internally and externally displaced people.

 “While Americans and adult Iraqis were jubilant at Saddam’s demise, children witnessed a mythical figure disappear, someone who loomed larger than life, for whom songs were sung and holidays celebrated. They saw statues topple, mass graves exhumed, families huddled in bombed-out buildings, and mothers and fathers humiliated by terrifying invaders. No child should witness such events.”

Palestine/Occupied Territories. East Jerusalem’s Palestinian Counseling Center works with Palestinian families whose symptoms of acute and chronic trauma include withdrawal, academic regression, aggression, affect dysregulation, hopelessness, helplessness, mania, depression, and suicide.

Former counselor Rashid says, “It has to do with seeing people wounded on the streets, violence at military checkpoints and during curfews, tear gassing, overcrowded living conditions, and growing up in refugee camps. With Israel’s increasing use of high-tech weaponry and home demolitions we see increasing incidences of selective mutism among children. Not surprising since a home is not just a collection of bricks stuck together but a place of safety and security that a child relates to: my books, my toys, my birth certificate, my pictures, and so on.”

Unrelenting shock stuns children into silence; unrelenting violence and deprivation may keep them there.

Lebanon. Mrs. Fadiah Jobeily is principal of a girls school in Sidon with programs geared to socialize children of different backgrounds.

“We want our country to be united and what we do at school is a reflection of what we want in the greater society around us.”

Yet a constant state of warfare or anticipated warfare destroys infrastructure and “also destroys personalities.”

“Girls are not growing normally; they’re more aggressive and unable to see a future worth struggling for. Why study when another war will start?”

Teachers once engaged in civic and school activities are depressed and withdrawn too.

“They tell me, ‘I feel everything is bad.’ This is a recurring theme throughout the country. People are losing the will to live. Or they flee their homeland for safer places. We fight against the disastrous sense that even as we fix things another war can begin any time and destroy our lives again. This has been our situation for the last 25 years.”

Afghanistan. Rahima Haya promotes literacy and cultural understanding in the U.S.

“Today Afghanistan has close to two million widows – 70,000 in Kabul alone -- many of whom are illiterate and mothers to five or more children. It’s shocking to see children and women -- young, old, beautiful – all begging on the streets.”

With three million refugees, one out of three of the world total, Afghanistan continues to be the prime country with the most refugees under UNHCR. Growing up in refugee camps inflicts privations; the seeds for ultra-conservative, black-and-white thinking of the Taliban, for example, began in refugee camps.

The financial cost of war is appallingly high but it is relatively easy to tally. It is not easy to tally the complex cost of evolving psychological traumas generating every minute around our distressed world.

Perhaps PTSD diagnoses will become more nuanced and, in the future, another DSM term and theory will be published. But what harvest will we reap tomorrow from seeds of unresolved trauma sown in today’s increasingly deadly wars on increasingly fragile human beings? And, can our world afford it?

A New American Dream This Mother's Day

 Also published in Counterpunch, May 7 ...
...and in Commondreams, May 8

Every Mother's Day we mothers are subjected to the same consumer brainwash: that we deserve a “day off”, and flowers, and brunch – or at least breakfast in bed.

But Mother's Day originated as a call for peace after the grisly, divisive carnage of Civil War. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wanted to appoint “a general congress of women without limit of nationality...to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

On May 10, 1908 Anna Jarvis presided over the first official Mother's Day celebration at Andrew's Methodist Church... then was arrested trying to stop women selling flowers. She wanted to “keep the day one of sentiment not one of profit”.

In 2005, Israeli Nurit Peled-Elhanan, whose 13-year-old daughter was killed in a Jerusalem suicide bombing, said, “Mothers have always been rebellious. In the Bible, in Greek mythology, there is always a mother who defies authority. The Talmud described mothers as prophets, because they looked ahead and understood what would happen to the children....”

Mother's Day is for the rebellious who concur, “Not for me flowers force-fed for profit in greenhouses built on land that ought to grow non-GM crops to feed the world's hungry and homeless”; “Not for me a day off, rather a day on...shutting down the -isms that thwart life's everyday ecstasy: neoliberalism, globalism, racism, sexism, elitism, oligarchic parasitism”, “Not for me a day in fealty to consumerism but to remember Wordsworth: “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”....

Instead of sitting down at the brunch table Mother's Day could signal the first day of the rest of our lives pledging to sit down in our nation's streets, blow our whistles, bang our pots, sound our alarms, and tell our politicians: “Stop bowing to the almighty corporate dollar, bring home our troops, tax the corporations and the rich to educate our children and ensure the health and well-being of all members of our society... or we will force you from office!”

Pledge to tell it like it is: profiteering shatters our society, tears up our earth, and contaminates our communities; sloganeering destroys our native intelligence, dumbs down our instincts, dulls our wits; careerism fogs our ethics, corrupts our morals, betrays our humanity; waging war kills the souls of all humans – whether made in America or where America makes war.

Fellow Americans may call us tough nuts, or a nut-busters, or just plain old nuts but remind them that another tough nut, United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler told us, even before transnational corporatism's firm grip on our time, our wallets, and our children, that:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Nurit Peled-Elhanan said, “Mothers, women in general, are not used to saying, “No! No, I am nobody's property. No! My children are nobody's property. No, my uterus is not a national asset.”

Lets try it. All together now: “No! No more wars promoted by patriotism but parlayed into profit.”

For, oh, we still have such a long way to go, baby!

(Nurit Peled-Elhanan tells her story in my book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. Buy a copy on this blog.)

Confronting The System through Taxation

Each year unknown thousands of law-abiding American citizens refuse to pay taxes, driven by an ethical compunction not to pay for war. Nailing down the exact number of war tax resisters is difficult – as one resister explains, “we tend not to cooperate with those sorts of endeavors” – but it is just as difficult to know how much of each tax dollar goes to the military.

Even progressive organizations devoted to public education do not agree on how much of each tax dollar goes to war. The National Priorities Project shows 27 cents of every tax dollar paying for war while the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee shows 30 cents paying for current wars and 18 cents paying for past wars. Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England Dr. Joseph Gerson calculates nearly 60 cents of each 2010 tax dollar “will pay for our present and future wars.”

War tax resister David G asks: “Why should I have to pay for these criminal wars anyway?”

He adds, “If I choose not to pay why should that affect my desire for a peaceful life and my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? After all, that's defined in our Bill of Rights and guaranteed by our Constitution.”

Looking for a way “not to go along with what I think is the criminal enterprises that we as a country do in other countries using our foreign policy”, David G reorganized his life, cut back his work hours, and adjusted to reduced take home pay.

“Now, even without the tax considerations, I like my simpler life without a stressful job and big bucks.”

Instead of driving a car he takes public transportation or rides his bike. Instead of eating out at expensive restaurants he learned to cook. Unexpected benefits emerged: more time and energy for exploring neighborhood grocery stores; learning about ethnic ingredients and how to cook them; and meeting people he never had the opportunity to meet when he worked long hours.

He found that scaling down doesn't mean living in poverty. “A common misconception about tax resisters is that we live at or below the poverty line. If we do that it is because we choose to, not because that's the only alternative. I have created a life rich in family and friends and I have the time to enjoy them and to engage in local groups and communities.”

The question for anybody considering tax resistance is: should I resist covertly or overtly? 

To confront or not to confront – that is the question

Overt confrontations with the system are conscious acts of civil disobedience in which a resister understands the risks and potential consequences and takes the opportunity to engage with and confront the system directly: “here's what you say I owe and here's why I say I do not owe it....”

Many resisters who choose overt confrontation design their lives to reduce their vulnerability to government intrusion. Some decide not to own property or they use available laws – such as land trusts – to protect any property from IRS liens or appropriation.

Susan Q has paid little or no federal taxes since her first job more than 25 years ago. “I decided that I wasn't going to work at cross purposes with my ethical commitments. That meant that, if they came after my salary, I would leave a job. I've only had to do that once. I choose not to own anything so I live in community with family, friends, and other people and make myself vulnerable to them instead of to the government. Sure, this has its pros and cons but I live a very wonderful and comfortable life.”

Resistance methodologies can change over time as a resisters' life circumstances change. Elizabeth B

protested war by sending letters to her representatives, marching in the streets, and signing petitions.

“But,” she says, “the government doesn't care how much we march in the streets, etc. as long as we pay taxes.”

So, at the start of the so-called War on Terror, she settled on a method that suited her ethics, religious beliefs, and her pocketbook: paying a percentage of the amount the IRS claims she owes. Then she sends a cover letter along with her check explaining, “Sorry folks, I am not paying all you say I owe. I am a good citizen...and one of the roles of citizens of a democracy is to tell our government when we think they are making a mistake.”

This is Elizabeth's second round of tax resistance. For years she had refused to pay the 79-cent hidden war tax tacked onto every Californian telephone user's phone bill that supported the U.S war effort in Vietnam. She had heard from other war tax resisters that the IRS probably would not come after her for such a small amount of money. But, after several years, they did come after her – for an amount less than $50 plus penalties and interest – and put a lien on her house. As a single mother raising four children Elizabeth would not risk losing her family's home so she paid up.

Fear is a strong motivator...and it is built into a system that intimidates by anonymity, apparently conflicting and arcane rules and regulations, and “take-no-prisoners” reputation.

A fear based system

Confronting a monolithic system like the IRS takes courage. But, as Susan Q states, “It can be very dis-empowering to get up each morning to news of terrible things being done with the fruits of our labor. We [working people] are out there trying to survive while resources are being taken from us to do harm both to us and to those in faraway lands. When we take a stand against that it feels really good.”

Susan goes on to describe how Americans, she believes, tend to “let our fears get the best of us.” We are not, however, facing the fear of bombs raining down on us but, as war tax resisters, “we're facing the fear of a letter...or perhaps an angry knock on our door. This fear is not life-threatening yet we respond as if it is. What is life-threatening is what's being done with our money. The rundown condition of many neighborhoods across our nation is a direct result of money taken out of our local economies and sent off for war. When you come down to it, the risks [of confronting the IRS] are not that big.”

Susan Q concludes that the IRS “Spends a lot of energy scaring people with threats of all the terrible things that will happen...you'll lose your house... you'll land in federal prison...but what they really want is to get your money. At what point do you continue to resist or say, 'Okay, let's work out an Offer of Compromise or something like that'?”

Susan explains that human individuals really do maintain a lot more control than the IRS wants us to believe. “It is not that you won't feel fear but that you can put fear into perspective and make the choice, if possible, to stand up to them and maintain your ethics while doing that.”

A method for every non-tax payer

There are many different ways to resist and people choose their method based upon their life considerations.

Some use the W4 form and take the maximum allowances … or fill out the paperwork and declare themselves tax exempt.

Some – and this method works well for 1099 independent contractors – eliminate withholding at the employment level then, at the end of they tax year, choose to file – or not – and an amount to pay.

Some pay a symbolic amount and withhold the amount they believe goes to pay for war and divert it to a chosen charity or not-for-profit organization.

Some earn only enough to stay below the federal tax limit (in 2011 it was set at $22,350 per year for a family of four).

Some use all the loopholes available through tax laws although with far less success than corporations. Considered a “legal person” General Electric is the latest in a long line of corporations benefiting from this designation. According to ABC News, GE “earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid not a penny in taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, went offshore. [Moreover] GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit.”

Struggling Americans who will file taxes may be further outraged to know that, while GE employs more than half its workforce outside the United States, closed 20 US factories between 2007 and 2009, and laid off 21,000 American workers, President Obama takes advice on job creation from GE's CEO Immelt.

Confronting monolithic systems like war and taxes takes endurance and courage. Everyday, thousands among us pursue life, liberty and happiness doing just that.

The Math of War and Waste

While Gov. Walker batters working people of Wisconsin and fingers them for Wisconsin's deficit of $6 billion he neglects to mention that $12 billion of that state's funds paid for the war in Iraq while $6 billion paid for the war in Afghanistan (costofwar.com/en/state/WI).

Our national bill for war is $1,167,300,000,000. Some of us – me included – can barely comprehend that staggering number. Added to that tragedy of my fiscal illiteracy in a capitalist nation is another, more important tragedy: large amounts of this money is simply wasted in war zones.

According to Zach Choate, an Iraq war veteran, Purple Heart awardee, current president of Baton Rouge chapter of Iraq Veterans against War (IVAW), war zones offer military personnel just about any consumer item found state-side. Barring the constant stress of seeing friends and civilians killed and the fear of being killed, off-hours in the war zone are spent at a shoppers home-away-from-home where troops wearing battle gear mosey around picking-and-choosing from military bases' well-stocked aisles. Dominoes Pizza might not deliver but troops nevertheless consume vast amounts of pizza, burgers, fries, apple pie, donuts, and candy washed down by gallons of soft drinks whiling away off-hours playing video games simulating war.

But only the miserly would criticize troops for wanting to keep up with their version of the Joneses who have the luxury to shop in malls back home. Besides, troops pay for these items out of their own pockets; consider the captive audience that is deployed, bored, and frightened troops and you find an excellent business model.

But then there's the model that is seldom mentioned, that generated by “following false intel.”

Choate explains, “An enormous amount of ammunition and fuel is wasted following false intel...plus wasted man-power hours and the waste of young lives killed on these missions. Add to that cost is the incalculable cost of bad faith and negative impression created in the minds of civilians who lose loved ones to military strikes based on that false intel.”

While Wisconsin's Gov. Walker – and those whose share his mindset – accuse teachers, fire fighters other public employees, and union members of taking more than their fair share in hefty annual salaries a quick look at the salaries of those other public employees, military personnel, puts things in perspective.

First, understand that the basic salary for an entry-level American private military contractor (training courtesy of the US military) is more than $8,000 per month or $100k per year.

According to an Army Times article on basic pay in 2007, an enlisted person with less than 2 years of service was paid $1,301.40 per month while a CO 1 with less than 2 years of service earned $2,469.30 per month. Add to that hardship duty pay from $50 - $150 per month; troops involuntarily spending more than 12 months in combat zones receive an extra $200 per month; imminent danger pay is $225 per month. (A four-star officer with 38 or more years of service tops out at $16,795.50 per month.)

But, surely, if anyone can claim the moral high ground it is Gov. Walker; after calling the salaries of other county workers “excessive” he voluntarily gave back slightly less than half of his annual salary, that is $60,000, until 2008 when he cut his give-back to $10,000 per year.

Then there is the hidden cost of that other waste, the waste of resources as human beings struggle for 'normalcy' after seeing the devastation of war.

In a recent Raising Sand Radio interview Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace presented the costs shared by those in his war in Vietnam and Choate's in Iraq: deaths, suicide, ongoing physical and health problems, homelessness, and violence within military families. If anything, current wars re-stimulate fears and feelings that many Vietnam war veterans kept dormant for years and they seek mental health care.

One thing that has changed is the ubiquitous use and availability of pharmaceuticals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Choate explained, “When I got back to the combat zone in Iraq after I'd been treated for wounds [sustained by an explosion] I had medication laid out and waiting for me: 120 Klonopin (or Clonazepam used alone or in combination with other medications to control certain types of seizures – Choate was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury), a few Xanax (Alprazolam used to treat anxiety disorders and panic attacks) and Lexapro (Escitalopram to treat depression and generalized anxiety disorder). “If I wanted more all I had to do was ask the Physician's Assistant in our unit. Gunners I worked with used Ambien to help them sleep but they never slept anyway. I wouldn't trust anybody doped up on Xanax or Ambien but asking the PA is all it took to get drugs.”

Ferner summed it up. “We are all citizens of a republic and, as such, ultimately responsible as citizens.” Just as Gov. Walker cannot just point to hardworking people to shoulder the blame, continued Ferner, “we can not just point to Washington and complain about what's going on there while we go about our lives, pay our taxes, and allow this wasteful system to to go. No matter our walk of life, every one of us needs to look into our hearts then show up and speak out. We need not go along with the current wasteful policy of war. If we do we are complicit. These days, no one is able to say, 'I didn't know.'”

That Moment People say “No!”

by Susan Galleymore

Published in Commondreams, Feb 20, 2011
Listen to the radio interview with Mary Edith Bentley Abu Saba. (29 mins)

Fifty years ago six college students – two African American and four White – went to jail for sitting down at Patterson Drugstore lunch counter in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Their plans had been amorphous: “let's just talk to Mr. Patterson”...they were honor students after all, and talking surely would convince the owner/manager that racial segregation was wrong.

They had no plan when, red-faced and enraged, Mr. Patterson yelled into each of their faces giving them one last chance to vacate his establishment.

One of the group Mary Edith Bentley Abu Saba,twenty-one years old on December 14, 1960 said, “None of us moved. We just sat there. Actually, I couldn't move!”

Mr. Patterson called the police.

The police gave them one last chance to leave.

Still the students sat.

Behaviorists and scientists name this phenomenon “entrainment” – when separate objects vibrating at different speeds start to vibrate at the same speed.

Those scared students entrained. And their story is a metaphor for what is happening today, from the Middle East to Wisconsin, as people come together as one to protest the lack of dignity with they are treated.

The police arrested and handcuffed the group – later known as the Patterson Six – and took them to jail.

It is yet to be seen how long and how far will progress the resistance across the globe. In this case, entrainment – unlike “group think” – depends on how each person gauges the personal and political consequences.

Bentley had had other things to do that day. “I needed to practice for an important music recital. I also was busy planning my wedding for the day after I graduated. So when my friend Rebecca Mays Owen approached me at noon about going for coffee I made her promise that I'd be back on campus by five o'clock.”

Instead, Mary Edith Bentley and Rebecca Mays Owen of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, James Hunter and Terrill Brumback of Lynchburg College, and Barbara Thomas and Kenneth Green of Virginia Theological Seminary and College spent the next three hours in jail, segregated by race and gender.

To his credit, the president of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Dr. William Quillian, Jr., never wavered in his support for the students. He posted $1,000 bond for each of them. But “civil rights” were dirty words in that part of the country at that time and the students' photographs and story were plastered over the front page of newspapers throughout the South, then the nation. Quillian was under tremendous pressure from the college board and the community to condemn and expel Bentley and Owen. He resisted.

Jim Holt was the lawyer for the Patterson Six. His presence in the court room disturbed the judge who had never faced an African American in that role before. Anytime Holt praised the students' actions,the judge banged his gavel to redirect the defense saying, “we need not go down that road.”

The judge was astonished when Holt and the defendants refused to appeal their 30-day sentence and chose jail instead.

Bentley Abu Saba laughed as she told the story in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview, “I was ready for jail. I had a change of underwear and my toothbrush in my pocketbook. We may have been naïve [about the power of talking to those in power] but we understood that six honor students spending 30 days in jail would have a great impact.”

And it did. Lynchburg streets and courtroom were crowded with angry, shouting Southerners, many of whom carried weapons improvised from bicycle chains.

Yet Bentley never had second thoughts about what she'd done. “On the contrary: I felt proud of myself. I learned about an inner strength that I never knew I had.”

All episodes of resistance have consequences. For Bentley in the microcosm of Lynchburg, Virginia the Episcopal minister retracted his invitation to play her final music piece on the church's new, state-of-the-art organ. The Methodist minister refused his church for her wedding when he learned she'd invited African American guests. It took eight years to de-segregate – by race and gender – Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Fifty years later, Bentley and Hunter, the two surviving members of Patterson Six, are feted.

The full consequences of resistance in the Middle East and Wisconsin may not be fully understood for years. But, expect the unexpected as people act as one, as they entrain. As New York Times reporter Nick Kristof wrote from Bahrain recently:

... activists are unbelievably courageous. I’ve been taken aback by their determination and bravery. They faced down tanks and soldiers, withstood beatings and bullets, and if they achieve democracy – boy, they deserve it.

While people from vastly different cultures, languages, and background may not agree on how civil rights, democracy, and dignity look they all know how a lack of dignity feels. Clearly they have had enough of that feeling. With cries of “No more! Enough!” they're ready to go down a different road, one where “entrainment” has a different name: People Power.