New Clear Vision

Stories of Courage and Nonviolence

by Robert C. Koehler

In the end, perhaps, this is bigger than personal safety. It’s about rescuing our humanity.

Two images compete for my attention as I write this, a month after Newtown, a week after the shooting at a high school in Taft, Calif., with hundreds of murders in between. One image is of Robbie Parker, father of slain 6-year-old Emilie, offering public condolences to the family of the shooter and pleading, through his tears, “Let it” — the murders of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School — “not turn into something that defines us, but something that inspires us to be more compassionate and humble people.”

The other image is of Americans flooding gun stores from coast to coast, buying semiautomatics and other weapons in the wake of feared new gun laws. (more…)

Struggles — and Signs of Possibility — in Haiti

by Sasha Kramer

Dear Friends,

I am writing this letter at 3:53 pm on January 12, 2013.  Three years ago today, Port au Prince was bustling with activity as people spilled into the streets from work and school.  Mothers returned home after a long day of working under the hot sun, fathers greeted their children with tired eyes, neighbors shared warm handshakes and laughed away the day’s challenges.  One hour later the city collapsed and over 300,000 of these mothers, fathers, children and neighbors were lost in an instant. Last night at the stroke of midnight the hills around our house in Port au Prince exploded with voices from the thousands of people attending an all night service in honor of those lost in the earthquake 3 years ago today. What struck me most deeply, was not the despair in the voices, it was the sound of ecstasy, the sound of resilience it was the sound of life. It was as though at the same time as people were mourning their loved ones, they were giving thanks for those who were spared, the were celebrating their strength in surviving, not only the earthquake, but the 3 years of struggle that have followed. (more…)

New Book Highlights Nonviolent Heroes and Peacemakers

by David Swanson

Hundreds of Americans, young and old, are regularly going to prison, sometimes for months or years or decades, for nonviolently resisting U.S. militarism.

They block ports, ships, submarines, trains full of weapons, trucks full of weapons, and gates to military bases.  They take hammers to weapons of mass destruction, cause millions of dollars worth of damage, hang up banners, and wait to be arrested.  They cause weapons systems to be canceled, facilities to be closed, and Pentagon policies to be changed.  They educate and inspire greater resistance.

The people who do this take great risks.  U.S. courts are extremely unpredictable, and the same action can easily result in no jail time or years behind bars.  Many of these people have families, and the separation is usually painful.  But many say they could not do this without their families or without their close-knit communities of like-thinking resisters.  A support network of several people is generally needed for each resister.

More often than not, a great sacrifice is made with no apparent success in terms of governmental behavior, either immediately or even after a lengthy passage of time. Police are becoming more violent.  Sentences are growing longer, and prisons are becoming more awful. (more…)

Community Leads Its Own Efforts in the Rockaways

by Victoria Law

Months before Sandy devastated the Rockaways, tragedy had already struck Rockaway resident Sharon Plummer. While bicycling home from the corner store, Plummer’s 18-year-old son Shawn was caught in crossfire on Beach 29 Street and Seagirt Avenue. He died before reaching the hospital.

“The community was there for me,” Plummer recalled in a phone interview with Truthout. Two days after Sandy, Plummer was there for her community. In the parking lot of a laundromat on Cedar Boulevard, she set up Rockaway Guardians In Memory of Shawn Plummer, a distribution center, giving out water, canned goods, toiletries and baby supplies to hundreds of people each day.

Other residents joined the effort. Rudolph McBeam lives a block from the laundromat. “I just walked over there,” he told Truthout. “There were two other persons. We set up some tables and began to give out things to the public.” Although he has lived in the area for 15 years and has helped set up music festivals on the beach,  “This is my first time being involved with something like this,” said McBeam. (more…)

All the Foolish Things in This World…

by Windy Cooler

My neighbors across the street lost their house to fire a few days ago and one, an elderly woman, lost her life. Two other neighbors have been displaced because we share walls in our neighborhood, and they share walls with the house that burnt. It took about 20 minutes for most of this to happen. Flames came from the roof. I was home with my six year old. It was horrible.

The following day news reporters came to interview the occupants of our court. What do we have to say? It was horrible? I refused to be interviewed because it felt like participating in tragedy porn to say anything. Other people came and took photos of the shell of a house, where our neighbor had died, on their cell phones. I have no idea why.

And then there is the part where most of the rest of us, people who are really quite close and live together well, did not truly know the people in the home that burnt. They were very quiet. We do not know how to help and the house is a daily reminder of this. There is helplessness in this and some grasping of a lesson and just pain, which varies from person to person. (more…)

Reflections on Two Years (and Counting) of New Clear Vision

With the passage of another year, we are provided with an opportunity to reflect on what was and project toward what might be. Undoubtedly, for most of the planet’s inhabitants, 2012 will be remembered as a year where the stakes got higher and the cause for alarm grew louder.

Around the world, we are seeing mass movements for change, yet also mass complacency as the issues before us grow more complex and the elite decision-makers more remote in their processes and politics.

Here at New Clear Vision, we try to help make sense of these tidings by bringing forth incisive analysis of the news of the day, all wrapped with our usual penchant for highlighting solution-oriented perspectives and cultivating a sense of grounded optimism for the future. We are under no illusions that the road ahead will be easy, nor that hopefulness alone will somehow turn things around. Rather, we take the view that positive change is more likely to occur when people are motivated toward something instead of being in retreat or apathy. (more…)

On the Importance of Integrating Social and Ecological Perspectives

by the ISEP Class Working Group

{Editor’s Note: This collaborative statement was produced in the context of a college class focusing on the integration of social and ecological perspectives. The depth of critical engagement with the intersecting crises in our midst, coupled with insightful visions for action and change, provide a source of hopefulness in a time of profound challenges.}

I. Why We’re Concerned

Our world’s current dysfunction is a multifaceted crisis, exemplified by a host of social and ecological problems, including racism, violence, water shortages, drought, species extinction, pollution, and many others. Upon closer examination, the roots and solutions of each of these problems have both social and ecological components, which are dependent upon and directly influence each other. (more…)