GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK

Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books during the month of February:

SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES

PLEASE NOTE CANCELATION BELOW

February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM

                        home of Margret Schaefer

                        1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley

                        RSVP & directions: 

                        margretschaefer@mac.com

                        NOTE: space is limited. Call for
                        reservations

February 25 – Ethnic Studies

                        30 Stephens Hall

                        UC Berkeley

                        info: 642-3947

Postponed till further notice because of staffing problems at the library.

February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at 6 PM

                        Global Exchange

                        2017 Mission St. at 16^th Street 2^nd floor

                        San Francisco

A link to this talk will be posted on this newsletter as soon as it becomes available thanks to a team of WILPF-Disarm/End Wars women who joined S.F. Occupy Forum. The WILPF  team is on a West Coast speaking tour ranging from Southern California to Bremerton, WA, home of the trident submarine, where a great part of the US arsenal is stored.

GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK

 Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World makes the case that the sameold sameold doesn’t work. “Civilization” has resorted to it repeatedly, in disregard of Einstein’s dictum that repeating the same behavior hoping to achieve different results is a form of dementia, but unfortunately there’s no locked facility big enough to hold 7.4 billions of us and counting.

Western European civilization is the technologically dominant civilization or our time. Global technological culture is its ultimate articulation. All seven billions of us are now in thrall to its totalitarianism and technology. Its overarching power arrangements—economic, geopolitical, and technological—are destroying our planet.

The good news is that pockets exist in the world, small enclaves where new ways of thinking are being implemented. None of them are entirely radical because none are entirely  free of the taint of the old culture. This week, a number of such projects modeling significant change have caught my eye.

•A landmark  settlement in the federal class action Ashker v. Governor of California  will effectively end indeterminate, long-term solitary confinement in all California state prisons.

•Obama announced a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison.

As such, neither development signifies a radical re-thinking of incarceration itself. Both initiatives still carry the taint of old ways of thinking.

Michael Moore talks about Norway’s radical approach to incarceration here at 20:29.

•In response to growing popular outrage against the militarization of law enforcement, exemplified by police lynchings of people of color, and police violence accompanying arrest of demonstrators practicing civil disobedience, some police forces are rethinking use of force practices. 

•Last year for the first time, New York City allocated a line item in its budget to develop worker-owned cooperatives. And the number of worker cooperatives in the city has tripled since 2014. Foundation grants have been made available to owners who may be thinking of transforming entrepreneurial businesses into such cooperatives.

•Movement Rights, a new organization, formed just over a year ago which focuses on the Rights of Mother Earth, is working with indigenous people in California and nationwide in efforts to ban fracking, oil trains, and other unnatural disasters, modeled on a study of Cultural Survival’s New Zealand Project among the Moari, “I am the River, the River is Me, giving the rights of a person to the Whanganai River.

•As of now the EPA joins the Surgeon General’s early warning system, a reflection that health of the body is metaphor for health of the planet. Modeled on gas pump labels in some provinces of Canada, and in response to the threat of climate change, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office drafted a proposed label to be displayed on city gas pumps. But when we give up driving altogether for public transportation and walking, we’ll be lots farther along the road to stemming some of global warming’s impacts.         

                             

FOUR EYES, TWO WAYS OF SEEING

Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books during the month of February:

SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES

February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at 6 PM

                        Global Exchange

                        2017 Mission St. at 16^th Street 2^nd floor

                        San Francisco

                         

February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM

                        home of Margret Schaefer

                         1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley

                        RSVP & directions: margretschaefer@mac.com

 February 25 – Ethnic Studies Library at 5:30 PM

                        30 Stephens Hall (downstairs)

                        University of California                   

                        info: 642-3947

FOUR EYES, TWO WAYS OF SEEING                      

 

There’s nothing like writing a book to allow you to see the world with fresh eyes. Two images: two civilizations. Both have cultures which speak languages derived from Proto-Indo-European, a language not unlike ancient Sanskrit.

One civilization moves eastward, the other charges westward on swift horses, herding cattle, ever on the move looking for new grazing lands. The other culture keeps to vegetarian ways.

Those riding the swift horse, in a hurry to appropriate territory, scatter all who came before them, arming themselves with weapons, governing through hierarchical structures, imposing implacable patriarchy, replacing the rebirthing cycles of the Earth goddess with a male sky god who ends the cycle with death, and reigns in His heaven to this day.

Those living eastward ponder existence. Not in a hurry, they consider the mysticism born of astronomy and mathematics. They write poetry. 

Those sweeping westward drive more peaceful people ever closer to lands end where escape is no longer possible. Those who can’t run fast enough they exterminate.

Those living eastward worship a pantheon of gods, male, female, and elephant for good measure.

What do you see? Two images, two ways of seeing, both deriving from one language.

Long before writing Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World on my two-month-long, 3,000-mile passage through India, I came across a temple, perhaps as far south as Madurai, where in the forecourt (an architectural splendor which in the West might be called a cloister) I came upon 46 side shrines (we might call them side chapels) adorned with exquisite frescoes, each housing the identical sculpture—having about the dimensions of a street hydrant—of the lingam and yoni. It was early morning, and yet long before my arrival, the devout had sprinkled each of the 46 icons with a cascade of warm, liquefied butter, and adorned it with flowers.

Although appearances talking about my previous book, Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step took me to the Great Lakes States where thousands of Minutemen silos are still kept on hair-trigger alert, and where recently a major accident damaged one of these to the tune of millions of dollars, and resulted in the demotion of several military personnel, I had never visited such an installation in real life.

Over the past many years, many activists have demonstrated against the use of these weapons of mass destruction—one of the first being Carl Kabat (still at it in his 80s, still risking arrest) with whom I occasionally corresponded during his long months in jail—none of them have thought to adorn any Minutemen with warm, soothing liquefied butter prior to adorning them with petals.

WORDS TO MEND A WORLD

Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books during the month of February:

SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES

February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at 6 PM

                        Global Exchange

                        2017 Mission St. at 16^th Street 2^nd floor

                        San Francisco

                         

February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM

                        home of Margret Schaefer

                         1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley

                        RSVP & directions: margretschaefer@mac.com

 February 25 – Ethnic Studies Library at 5:30 PM

                        30 Stephens Hall (downstairs)

                        University of California 
                        info: 642-3947
    
          

To create peace in the world, how radically would we have to change our thinking?

Whenever I talk about Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World, I find new ways of approaching a complex subject, and new approaches to my audiences. January 24 addressing an audience of peace activists, I asked for a show of hands: how many folks have volunteered for various kinds of peace activism? And of those folks, how many are convinced that by nature, humans are irredeemably warlike, making conflict a “done deal?”

The good news is that humans have not always been warlike, but to support that view we have to search before history, before HIS story, to a time before patriarchy overtook the world.

I love talking about this book, how I started with a question, and an intuition, and how more and more my research took on the character of a detective story, an investigation of a crime which took place some six thousand years ago, and whose consequences are still being felt throughout the entire world today.

Links to some of the interviews I have given so far include:

Kate Raphael on “Women’s Magazine” on KPFA: starts at 12:00 minutes in

https://kpfa.org/episode/womens-magazine-october-5-2015/

Lisa Savage interviews Cecile Pineda for Went 2 the Bridge:

https://went2thebridge.blogspot.com/2016/01/interview-cecile-pineda-author-of.html

Pineda talks to Tom Klammer at KKHI: http://tellsomebody.libsyn.com/apology-to-a-whale-words-to-mend-a-world

MAKING IT WORK

This month, I’ve happened on three places in the world where people have allowed themselves new (and very old) ways of thinking:

Kalamazoo, Michigan: In 2005, anonymous donors initiated a program called Promise, that guarantees any high school student with acceptable grades free college tuition at a public, in-state school. Of Kalamazoos students, 44% are African American, one in three falls beneath the national poverty level, and one in  twelve is homeless. The program has re-vitalized a hollowed out community where most of the large business have shut down, been outsources, or acquired by larger corporations. But since its inception, the program has changed the spirit of Kalamazoo. It has motivated students, teachers, and families. It has prompted teachers to revise their teaching schedules to provide students with remedial work in math and reading, increasing grade proficiency by at least one grade.

But most impressive is the systemic change it has brought to the entire city, extending to the nearby suburbs. From the long-range returns to the community by an educated, innovative work force, a higher tax base and a more energized business environment.  Fringe benefits have included better nutrition for children, better housing, medical care, and universal pre-kindergarten programs.  It has stopped urban flights,  and fostered the construction of new schools both in Kalamazoo itself and in surrounding suburbs. It has attracted more students, and with each new student, guaranteed another $7,250 a year from the state. New teachers can be hired for every additional 25 students, and hundreds have been hired so far. The district has been able to upgrade existing facilities, and passed bond issues to finance the construction of new schools.

A high dropout rate persists despite these changes. One-third of students failed to graduate, and a disproportionate number of them are Black males, a phenomenon which suggests that such students still find school programs irrelevant to their lives. But the good news is that Kalamazoo’s Promise program has spread to at least 25 American cities, among them Pittsburgh, Denver, Peoria, and Ventura to name a few. For more background go to  

Albuquerque, New Mexico: In 2015 the City of Albuquerque initiated There’s a Better Way, 

a program to reduce homelessness. The homeless policy of many other cities, San Francisco and Berkeley among them, seeks to penalize poverty, an archaic holdover from Plymouth Rock, and of the Puritan legacy in American culture that upholds the belief that if folks are poor, it must be because they deserve it; and if people are rich, they don’t need to share. But a few cities, Albuquerque among them, has a mayor, Richard Berry, who thinks that housing people makes more sense than citing and jailing them, and sending them to the ER in  health emergencies. What’s interesting about Albuquerque’s program is that the city partners with a program already in place, St. Martin’s Hospitality Center, the non-profit that connects folks with housing, employment and mental health services. It pays the salary of Will Cole, a van driver, who trolls the city’s streets once a week, looking for homeless folks who may prefer working for a day tidying up the city at $9.00 an hour to panhandling on the streets. But most remarkably, a video shows Cole, who is Black, shaking hands with all the folks he meets and treating them with consummate courtesy and respect. 

Blue and white signs have been posted at major intersections listing a 311 number and website where panhandlers can connect with services, Not only: motorists can visit the website, too, and donate to local shelter, food bank, or the employment fund that pays for the day-workers’ wages!

Bayt Ghazy, Yemen: “I would carry him over my back and run amongst the people.” So said the brother of a man soon to be released after 13 years from imprisonment at the age of 17 in the hell-hole of Guantanamo back to his small village in Yemen. I have saved the best for last: a visit to Fahd, and to a paradise-on-Earth, a village in the country Saudi Arabia, with the complicity of the United States and Britain, is bombing back to the stone age 

"Waiting for Fahd:One Family’s Hope for Life Beyond Guantanamo." Your visit to this village will be a short one (no more than 10 minutes) but to those who have lived there all their lives, truly there is nothing closer to paradise on Earth. As his waiting wife says: “God will bless him because he will be released and we can live on Earth together.”

WORDS TO MEND A WORLD

SCHEDULE OF JANUARY APPEARANCES

Cecile Pineda will be talking about Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World and signing books during the month of January:

January 17: Silk Road House, 1944 University Avenue between MLK Jr. Way & Milvia in Berkeley Sunday, January 17 from 1 to 3 PM. The event is wheelchair accessible, but space is limited. Please call first to reserve your place at (510) 981-0700.

January 23: San Francisco Mime Troupe, 855 Treat Avenue at 22^nd Street on San Francisco, Saturday, January 23 at 2:30 PM. Space is limited. Please call first to reserve your place (415) 285-1717.

January 24: Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonita Streets, Sunday, January 24 at 7 PM. The evening is a fund raiser for the Drone 4 whistleblowers. The event is wheelchair accessible. For information call (510) 841-4824.

State of Rage, State of Mourning

Last week another Black man was lynched on the blood-stained Streets of San Francisco by a lawless enforcement posse of shooter cops who believe their office gives them license to run amok. Over 500 of such murders have taken lace this year in the United States. This time, the name to remember—which we must add to the thousands of names of those fallen, from Mamadou Diallo, felled by 49 New York City-purchased bullets to those of Sandra Bland, murdered in a Florida prison cell from not signaling before making a right turn, to Yvette Henderson murdered by AK 47—part of the “peace” keeping weapons expenditure by the City of Emeryville—is Mario Woods, a young man whose already prone body received a handy total of 21 bullets—all purchased at City of San Francisco expense.

ECONOWAR

The world is changing, and understanding of the world is changing with it.  A time has arrived when warfare-as-we-know-it is slowly becoming obsolete. Certain exceptions still stand out.  The ruination of 7 Middle Eastern Countries has taken a bit longer than the neocons’ optimistic estimate of only five years, but chalk that up to unforeseen resistance: quite inexplicably some people are not entirely sold on hosting foreign invaders.

Letter to Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Client State Japan

One thousand nine hundred and fifty-three days follwing the Planetary Catastrophe at Fukushima-Daiichi

To:  His Excellency, Shinzo Abe

        Prime Minister of Japan

Your Excellency:

Although you have declared that Japan must end its dependence on expensive imports of fossil fuels to meet its energy demands, and therefore the nuclear industry must re-start all 43 Japanese reactors shuttered following the Fukushima-Daiichi planetary disaster, your silence on the much more reasonable costs of solar energy and wind energy seems particularly puzzling in light of the recent drain on the Japanese economy resulting from the disaster at Fukushima and the resulting need of Japan to import much of its energy from abroad.