The world was made poorer by
one life-time activist when, on July 25, Jerry Zawada died at the age of 80. By
the time I met Jerry at the Nevada Test Proving Ground some years ago along
with a Code PInk contingent protesting drone warfare at Nevada’s Creech AFB,
Jerry could barely walk. But there he was with many others of us attending
Chief Bob Bobb’s prayer ceremony on land appropriated from the Western
Shoshonne by the U.S. government for its planetcide nuclear arms program.
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| Fr. Zawada (right) at a missile silo |
Fr. Jerry Zawada was a
nuclear resister, a peace and justice
activist, and a Franciscan friar. He served two years hard time in the
late 80s for repeated “trespass” at Midwest nuclear silos (some 400-plus still
on hair trigger alert), and a total of eighteen months for “trespass” at the
genocidal “School of the Americas”, the U.S. training program for Latin American
death squads. The Vatican censured him for advocating women in the priesthood,
and for celebrating mass with them. In retirement, he supported migrants as
they attempted to cross the desert at the Arizona border.
In 2010 Jerry wrote a letter
to the people of Dai Kundi, Afghanistan, in the Dari language. He titled this
letter Hamdard, which in Dari means “shared pain.”
To my friends in Dai
Kundi:
It's already over 9 months since 21 members of your families have been killed by NATO. How hard it must be for you, for your family to continue without your loved one, an innocent victim of a war that should never have happened. It's not enough for me nor from a citizen of a country responsible for your personal tragedy to say "I'm sorry."
In some small way, I sense a little of your pain and I'm finding it hard to write when tears are clouding my eyes. This too is not enough. I'm so glad that three special friends of mine.., are with you now to express in person what I and so many who are so strongly against the hurt we as nation have brought to you and to your country. I pray that all this tragedy will come to an end soon. I wish I could be with you now and to work with you to end all warfare.
You are my family. I never want you to have to suffer this way any more. With best wishes and a prayer that Allah blesses you and enables me to feel your hamdard.
Your brother, Jerry Zawada
When headlines read: “Mosul’s Bloodbath: ‘We Killed Everyone – IS, Men, Women & Children’ or “Beauty of Our Weapons” in the War on Yemen” how many citizens of this waroholic country have reached their hamdard threshold to be able to write a letter such as Jerry Zawada’s? Are you one of them?
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| U.S. Troop deployment world-wide |
Because each one of us is
complicit, every one of us over 300 million U.S. citizens owes such a letter to
the people of Yemen (who face famine, and whose children are dying by
U.S.-enabled hands), Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, and
the many other countries where the U.S. is obsessed by “full-spectrum
dominance,” and whose brave young men and women defend our right to take other
people’s lives and their resources.
•universal healthcare for its
population (of the world’s richest countries the US with the
highest expenditures ranks last.)
•universal free higher
education for its youth (unlike any number of other advanced countries,
including Mexico & Brazil!);
•maintaining the
infrastructure of its roads, bridges and dams;
•subsidizing mass transit;
•programs for the disadvantaged
including low-cost housing, prison
reform, nutritious programs for poor women and children to name only a very few;
•A cabinet post for the arts;
and a cabinet post for women
The U.S. disparity in budget
priorities alone demands that every man-jack one of us becomes a full time
peace activist.
Yet, it comes as something of
a counterintuitive surprise that Peck’s Bad Boy in the White House has defied the
Pentagon and the CIA on the subject of the U.S. proxy war in Syria by
negotiating ceasefires. Because the
MSM, in its complicity with CIA-style coup strategy, has tried hamstringing PBB at every turn, including
ascribing PBB’s motive in Syria to “collusion with the Russians,” you need to depend on the Black Agenda Report or
Information Clearing House for this remarkable piece of news.
Mistake me not, I am not
ascribing motives of hamdard to PBB, but I am raising the question: is it
better go along with mob rule 100% to demonize a foolhardy president or is it more
appropriate to consider the consequences of each of his separate actions?
Endorse the Coalition Against
U.S. Foreign Military Bases.
Calculate your hamdard
coefficient:
How important to you are
black lives in domestic U.S.?
all;______ maybe some;
______none; _______don’t know______
How important to you are
foreign black lives?
all;______maybe some;
______none; _______don’t know______
How important to you are lives
in domestic U.S.?
all______; maybe some;
______none; _______don’t know______
How important to you are foreign
lives (including people in the Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa?)
all______; maybe some;
______none; _______don’t know_____
If you answered “all” four
times, you are hamdard-sensitive. Please compose your own letter to the people
of your own U.S.-ruined country of choice and send it c/o Kathy Kelly, Voices
for Creative Non-Violence (vcnv.org) @ 1249 W. Argyle Street #2, Chicago, Ill.
60640, info@vcnv.org.
If you answered maybe some,
or none, water got into your moral compass.
If you answered “don’t know”
four times, call the undertaker.
Some Roses Amongst the Fortnight’s Thorns
Transcanada backs away from
Keystone XL Pipeline for economically persuasive reasons.
On Friday July 14, a federal
court rejected the Trump
administration’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the approval of
fracking in federal waters off California.
Utah
declares ag-gag law unconstitutional, allowing activists to investigate
farming practices.
Arkansas
and Missouri ban Monsanto-made dicamba weed killer. Like GMO crops, it
damages crops through drift.
Democrats (party of the carrot) won
two seats in Oklahoma in a special election. (That’s two seats that are not
Repuglican.)
And U.S. underserved citizens breathed a sigh of relief as
their activism
brought them a reprieve from Trumpcare-less.
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