New Clear Vision

From JFK to Obama — in Words, if Not Policies

by Jay Walljasper

“I believe that for all of our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

These words from President Obama struck a chord with many Americans, even those — on both the right and left — who remain skeptical of his policies on health care, war, economic policy, the role of government and more.

He touched many of us, still reeling from the Tucson tragedy, when he eulogized 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green as “a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday too she might play a part in shaping her nation’s future.”

This was not a political speech, although its political implications may be longstanding. (more…)

Learning Peacefulness from the Zapotecas

by Devon G. Peña

Pundits and analysts have engaged in mostly thoughtful discussions of the social, cultural, and political contexts of the recent mass murder in Arizona. According to Michael Nagler, there is growing recognition of “an apparently forbidden truth: that we bring violence on ourselves when we promote it, glorify it, or legitimize it — as in this case by the extreme rhetoric associated with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, among others.” Still, for every such in-depth analysis of the issue, there are others content to remain on the surface.

Was the Tucson massacre a form of political violence? Some have argued that it was, by virtue of the fact that the principal target was an elected official. Many on the right, including Palin, have objected to this characterization, arguing that “blaming the right” or any one else is intrinsically unfair and that the mindless crime occurred simply because the perpetrator was mentally ill and unhinged. Since the assassin was ‘sick,’ this cannot be seen as a ‘political act.’ The allegedly deranged mental state of the perpetrator becomes an opening to ‘de-politicize’ the crime. This is, simply put, a ruse. (more…)

Farewell to the Utterly Unique John Ross

by Frank Bardacke

John’s gone. John Ross. I doubt that we will ever see anyone remotely like him again.

The bare bones, as he would say, are remarkable enough. Born to show business Communists in New York City in 1938, he had minded Billie Holliday’s dog, sold dope to Dizzy Gillespie, and vigiled at the hour of the Rosenberg execution, all before he was sixteen years old. An aspiring beat poet, driven by D.H. Lawrence’s images of Mexico, he arrived at the Tarascan highlands of Michoacan at the age of twenty, returning to the U.S. six years later in 1964, there to be thrown in the Federal Penitentiary at San Pedro, for refusing induction into the army.

Back on the streets of San Francisco eighteen months later, he joined the Progressive Labor Movement, then a combination of old ex-CPers fleeing the debased party and young poets and artists looking for revolutionary action. For a few years he called the hip, crazy, Latino 24th and Mission  his “bio-region,” as he ran from the San Francisco police and threw dead rats at slumlords during street rallies of the once powerful Mission Coalition. (more…)

Will It Be Force … or Discourse?

by Randall Amster

In that fateful supermarket parking lot in Tucson, two drastically different forms of politics were on display, and the contrast couldn’t have been more starkly evident. On the one hand there were ordinary people meeting with their congressional representative, ostensibly to get to know one another and share concerns about important issues. On the other there was an alienated and disturbed individual armed with a deadly weapon, seemingly bent on making a statement of his own while brutally silencing others in the process. The fact that this transpired in beleaguered Arizona, known widely for its invidious policies, lax gun laws, and blunt politics, has served to heighten the contrast and arouse the nation’s conscience in the process. (more…)

An ex-Weather Underground Radical on the Tucson Shootings

by Mark Rudd

In 1970, when I was 22 years old — the same age as Tucson gunman Jared Loughner — I was a founder of the Weather Underground, an offshoot of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society. At that time, having fashioned myself “an agent of necessity,” I was willing to kill or be killed for some romantic notion of “the revolution.” So it’s not that difficult for me to imagine what might have been in the mind of someone like Loughner, who perhaps acted (as I did) in the misguided belief that it was up to him to do what needed to be done.

By the winter of 1970, the members of the Weather Underground had gone over the edge. A small group of us in New York City, charged with “taking the struggle to a higher level,” was planning a bombing at Fort Dix, New Jersey, which was then an army basic training center. Three pipe bombs filled with dynamite and larded with nails were to be left at a noncommissioned officers’ dance to remind our fellow Americans of the millions of tons of bombs our country had been dropping on the Vietnamese for five straight years. (more…)

Food Justice as a Pathway to Sustainability and Community

by ISE (Institute for Social Ecology)

Please introduce yourself (what kind of work you do, where you live, etc.).

My name is Erin Lingo. I live in Prescott, Arizona, and am the coordinator of the Prescott College CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and the Prescott Farmers Market. My passion is food and all things related: nutrition, cooking, food justice, sustainable agriculture, farmworker rights, and local food systems. I am a graduate student in the Prescott College/ISE program with an emphasis in Community Food Systems.

How did you become introduced to the ideas of social ecology? How do yo define social ecology when asked about it?

I became interested in Social Ecology because I wanted to continue my education with a study that addresses the relationship between society and nature, particularly how it relates to food. I already lived in Prescott and worked for Prescott College, so the PC/ISE program resonated with me. (more…)

Remembering King as an Antiwar Icon

by Randall Amster

Martin Luther King, Jr., obviously is recalled as a champion of racial justice and civil rights. Equally fervent, yet less invoked, was King’s focus on economic justice and ending poverty. King understood the multi-layered relationship among these issues, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

Still, despite a peace award, even far less remembered today is King’s deeply-held belief that “war is not the answer” and his outspoken opposition to the conflict in Vietnam. In retrospect, he appears as a sophisticated antiwar crusader, and had been so throughout much of the 1960s. He didn’t come late to the issue, either, after public support for the war eroded and it became safe to stand against it; and as the war escalated so too did his critical rhetoric, often to the consternation of some of his civil rights allies.

Looking back at excerpts from King’s key anti-war speeches, they remain equally relevant today, beginning with his Nobel acceptance speech in December 1964: (more…)