December, 2004
What A Way To Go (Part 1)
Friday December 31st, 2004
A lot of people didn't leave 2004 alive. The horror of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami is impossible for us to comprehend. Will the final death toll go beyond 250,000?
There were other death tolls in the news in 2004. The Lancet medical journal reported that there were over 100,000 civilian dead since the start of the Iraqi War. This is the tsunami that can be stopped. 100,000 men, women and children died because of the United States of America's foreign policy, which very prominently includes the killing of innocent people in massive numbers. Do you ever wonder if there is a population control component to that policy?
"Stop the war, end the occupation, and bring the troops home" has become my mantra.
I wonder how many of the troops who are now deployed in Iraq feel that they got what they bargained for when the joined the military? I'm sure that even some of those who volunteered because they wanted to fight for their country, were forced to wonder what was going on when they saw how poorly they were equipped. It must be startling in that situation to realize that neither President Bush nor Donald Rumsfeld gives a **** whether you live or die.
During the election season, I began chatting with a group of four Bush supporters. When I informed them that I was not supporting John Kerry, they viewed me quite differently. I would take all the negatives that I was learning about Kerry and pass it on to them. They loved it. When I began to pass on to them some of what I had learned about George W. Bush, three of them decided to listen to that too. I'm not sure what they did on Election Day, but I would wager that all four of them still voted for Bush. It is what has happened since Election Day that has amazed me. It is the war and how the government is treating the troops. The Rumsfeld stuff got to them.
One of them recently said to me, " the government can't take care of the people fighting this war with basic necessities then they should bring them home now." It has infuriated these Bush supporters so much that they are beginning to investigate this war for themselves. This is what community organizing is at its best.
But there were others that didn't make it this far. One of them was Jack Newfield the investigative reporter who worked for the Village Voice for years and authored a number of important books. There are some wonderful tributes to him that you can read at
http://www.jacknewfield.com/
Newfield's book that he co-authored with Wayne Barrett, City For Sale: Ed Koch and The Betrayal of New York, was a classic. It was helped bring about a change in city government. Newfield died at 66. He had been suffering with kidney cancer that spread to his lungs. I never doubted for a minute that there was anything suspicious about the death of Jack Newfield.
Another person who didn't make it to the New Year was Gary Webb. Webb, like Newfield, was an investigative journalist. When I heard that Gary Webb committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice! I immediately thought of the deaths of author J. H. Hatfield and Abbie Hoffman. All three of these men's deaths were reported as suicides.
Gary Webb was the reporter for the San Jose Mercury news who exposed the CIA's role in the spread of crack cocaine in Black neighborhoods in the United States in the series "Dark Alliance" which eventually was published as a book. J. H. Hatfield was the author of Fortunate Son the book about George W. Bush that you weren't supposed to read. And then there was Abbie Hoffman. What can I say to you about Abbie Hoffman, other than the fact that he made me laugh and challenged the way I thought. I liked a lot about Abbie Hoffman's ways, but he wasn't my leader. Abbie knew how to reach people and to use politics as theater. Any community organizer had to admire how Abbie Hoffman morphed into the respected environmental activist Barry Freed while he was underground. Abbie was also the author of eight books.
When Abbie Hoffman's death was reported as a suicide I found it difficult to believe. I knew that Abbie was a manic-depressive (as they were classified in those days) but even a depressed Abbie Hoffman wouldn't kill himself as Oliver Stone's Born On The Fourth of July was being released. You see...Abbie was in that film.
It is hard enough dealing with the death of a loved one. Imagine what it must feel like when you are told that it was a suicide. The shock, the sorrow, and the nagging question still remains, why would they kill themselves?
Satirist and co-founder of the Yippies! Paul Krassner was a close friend of Abbie Hoffman's. When questioned about whether Abbie Hoffman had actually been murdered, Krassner responded with a resounding, "NO." Krassner firmly believed that Hoffman wasn't murdered because Abbie Hoffman had committed suicide just the way he had told Paul he would, if it had ever come to that. What Paul Krassner failed to realize is that Abbie had told others as well.
Abbie Hoffman's son Andrew suspected foul play. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall that the same Bucks County medical examiner that ruled Abbie Hoffman's death a suicide was also involved with the report on the death of Jessica Savitch. I didn't buy the story about her death either.
The loved ones of Danny Casolaro had less doubt. Casolaro was also an investigative journalist. His investigation into the links between the Savings & Loan scandal, Iran-Contra and BCCI led him to Inslaw. Prior to his death, he was working on a book that was going to expose this cabal that he called the Octopus. Casolaro had been telling his friends and family just weeks before he died, that if he got killed in an automobile crash it was no accident.
Which brings me to J.H. Hatfield. Hatfield might have committed suicide at a couple of points in his life. Once such time was when his sordid past was made public at the time of the initial printing of Fortunate Son. The book was then removed from stores. What seemed to be so promising for Hatfield became a hellish life. And yet, he did not commit suicide. Another publisher came into his life and a new version of the book was published. The forward contained an explanation of Hatfield's past and how the Bush family exploited it to help kill the book. And so...the book was back on the shelves and selling well. Hatfield was standing by all his research including the allegation that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972. Why would Hatfield kill himself when things were going so well?
In America if you are a successful investigative journalist who uncovers the truth about official misconduct, it seems as if you end up "killing" yourself at the strangest of times.
When elected officials stumble upon information that might upset the powers-that-be, they die in fatal plane crashes at the most convenient of times: Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, Hale Boggs, John Heinz, John Tower and Larry McDonald are just a few. They will be discussed in part two.
Stopping The War In Iraq
Tuesday December 21st, 2004
Its hard to build an anti-war movement while you are simultaneously trying to elect a pro-war president. Now that more and more people are realizing that working for John Kerry's election was a waste of time, they might choose to re-join us in stopping the war in Iraq.
I have attended a number of meetings recently and read a great deal of correspondence about finding the best strategy to end this war. Since this war is being funded by our tax dollars and is being fought in our name by our fellow citizens in the military, it is imperative that we stop this war as our collective priority. This is not a time to further our own political ideology through organizing an anti-war movement, it is a time to save lives.
There are many issues to work on that are just screaming for our attention. And I'm sure we will continue to struggle and work on these issues. But it is time to maximize opposition to the war, and that is accomplished by not excluding anyone who is in opposition to this war, even if they disagree with us on other issues.
When we demonstrate we don't just want to see leftists against the war, we want to see everyone who is in opposition to this war expressing our collective outrage. We want to see evangelicals against the war, patriots against the war, and NRA members against the war. We want to be standing with every one of my fellow citizens who are opposed to this immoral and illegal war. It doesn't matter when they joined the opposition, they must be made to feel welcome now.
We shouldn't want to try to organize the people who agree with us on everything. We should want to help organize all the people who are in opposition to this war. That will mean that there will be people joining this movement who voted for George W. Bush on November 2nd. Maybe they have just become aware of what is really going on. How many people have turned against this war because of the recent statements of Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld?
If we want people to hear what we have to say, it might be advantageous to stop calling them stupid. I don't particularly value highly the opinion of people who call me stupid. I'm sure others would react the same way to that kind of treatment.
I'm trying to get something started in my neighborhood. Think globally, act locally, that's how I usually see it. I have my own idiosyncrasies about how organizing should be done, but at this point in the game, I want to find that place where the most people can come together and stop this war. Welcome everyone. Sometimes it takes hard work.
Back in 1982, as a community organizer, I helped coordinate a feeder march. The Manhattan neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Chelsea were going to combine and march together. On the morning of the march there was turmoil. As 10,000 people were lining up, members of an Evangelical group that was both opposed to nuclear weapons as well as abortion, were standing next to a group of fellow opponents of nuclear weapons who were advocates of abortion rights. This presented a tough problem to resolve. Separating the groups offered a solution. They no longer had to march side by side but they were still united in a common cause.
As we enter 2005, I don't think evangelicals opposed to abortion are any more likely to stand side by side with pro-choice activists than they were in 1982, but if we want to end this war we will need the biggest of tents.
We need to focus on the area of agreement that the war and occupation must end. If we agree that is our top priority, then we must act like it is.
