New Clear Vision

What Doing for Others Does for Ourselves

by Nipun Mehta

Keeping Lit the Fires of Peace, Justice, and Democracy

by Kathy Kelly

Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Our apartment doesn’t have indoor heating or hot tap water. We bundle up, overnight, in blankets, quilts and sleeping bags, and the Westerners, unaccustomed to the indoor cold, wear at least five layers of clothing during the daytime. Tap water is contaminated, electricity shortages are frequent, and internet access is spotty, but compared to those who live in Kabul’s refugee camps, we’re ensconced in plenty of creature comforts. (more…)

Three Books Encapsulate the Spirit of 2011’s Protests

by James Russell

If 2011 was the year of the protester, as TIME Magazine recently declared, then it was also the year of the protest publication. Before Occupy Wall Street encampments set up in early September, handmade pamphlets detailing protesters’ rights were the primary publication of protests. When at a large-scale action and the activists’ goal is arrest, these pamphlets often appear, replete with legal information.

But with the emergence of Occupy movement, mock newspapers replaced these pamphlets. Publications like The Occupied Wall Street Journal and The Occupied Chicago Tribune served as a chronicle of the various speeches, messages and tactics surrounding Occupy. As reported on The Huffington Post via the Associated Press, some of these items, including the newspapers, are now even being acquired by archives, museums and historical societies. (more…)

Telling Stories Through the Healing Medium of Theatre

by Christine Baniewicz

“Khaleena enshouf!” Faisal calls. The crowd settles. Let’s watch!

I’m sitting in Jenin refugee camp, surrounded by Palestinians — men, women, children and adults. We are crowded together on blue mats, carried over from The Freedom Theatre down the street. It’s three in the afternoon. I bat a fly from my face and lean forward to watch the enactment.

To my left, a staff member snaps photos. Mustafa lies in the rubble, stretched out across the uneven ground and squinting down the barrel of a video camera. He aims it at the actors, who stand in silence before us. (more…)

Art Prayers for the New Year

by Ellen Greenblum

It’s New Year’s Eve and some of us may be feeling hopeful and some of us may be feeling hopeless after yet another year filled with local and global violence and tragedies. The Occupy movement reminded us that we still know how to gather up and say “No,” but it also reminded us that we may be hauled off to jail for standing up for love and justice. And it’s difficult for a mother or father or employee to publicly fight for basic human rights when we have family members depending on us for a plate of spaghetti and a good night story with a happy ending.

Where do we begin when we find ourselves haunted in the wee hours of the night by thoughts creeping into our psyches when we’re most vulnerable? What if we’ll fail in our role as a human being in the face of everything we strongly believe in about working toward a just and peaceful world? (more…)

Amid War, Following Yonder Star Toward Peace

by Kathy Kelly

Beneath our flat, here in Kabul, wedding guests crowded into a restaurant and celebrated throughout the night. Guests sounded joyful and the music, mostly disco, thumped loudly. When the regular call to prayer sounded out at 5:20 a.m., the sounds seemed to collide in an odd cacophony, making all music indistinguishable. I smiled, remembering the prayer call’s durable exhortation to live in peace, heard worldwide for centuries, and went back to sleep.

Through most of my life, I’ve found it easy to resonate with the ringing and beautiful Christmas narrative found in the Gospel of Luke, but less so with that jangling discord with which westerners are so familiar — the annual collision between (on the one hand) the orgy of gift-purchasing and gift-consumption surrounding the holiday and the the sweeter, simpler proclamations of peace on earth heralded by the newborn’s arrival. (more…)

Between the Sphinx and the Bank Vault

by Alon Raab

1929

“Between the sphinx and the bank vault, there is a taut thread that pierces the heart of all poor children,” cried Federico Garcia Lorca after visiting Wall Street in 1929. His vision sharpened by gathering storms of fascism, in his native Spain and across the European continent, compounded by new forms of corporate control in the US, and a broken heart over unrequited love, he poured his soul into the powerful “Poet in New York” poems. Visiting Wall Street, the sidewalks barely swept of fall leaves and the remains of leaping bodies — small‐time investors convinced that untold wealth shall be theirs only to see life‐savings vanish, and of the occasional banker who followed their lead ‐‐ his eyes pierced Capitalism’s many veils.

Wall Street ‐‐ built on Iroquois and Algonquin land, named for the wall that the Dutch colonists erected to keep the English and the Indians away. Soon, the Dutch West Indies Company, early and major importer of slaves, brought them to New Amsterdam, too. Auctions in human flesh were held nearby, a connection deepened by major banks and investment firms turning money from slave transactions to new gold and influence. Later, a place giving birth to economic shenanigans and scams, crises and broken dreams ‐‐ vast fortunes for the few, misery for the many. (more…)