New Clear Vision

Consider a ‘Truth Surge’ Instead

by Randall Amster

It has been equal parts bemusing and bedeviling to watch as many liberals and moderates get on board with the latest episode of U.S. military adventurism. Equally fascinating has been the ostensible conservative response firmly opposing U.S. actions in Libya, since in a not-too-far bygone administration this faction never met a war they didn’t like. These fickle vicissitudes of partisan politics point to a singularly troubling principle underlying our collective moral compass when it comes to foreign policy — namely that we lack such a compass, and thus principle is subsumed by expediency.

Has it always been so? “There never was a good war, or a bad peace,” Benjamin Franklin once said. Most might agree with the latter, but the former is a more challenging proposition. (more…)

Green Justice Coalition Supports Labor and the Environment

by Amy Dean

According to Republican governors in places such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, our states are in crisis and the only solution is to squeeze middle-class employees. Unions, in their view, are part of the problem. And if you point out that their attempts to seize power in the name of balancing budgets do little, if anything, to solve the real economic problems we face, they will insist that there is no alternative.

They are dead wrong. There is a better answer.

These governors could travel to Boston and the North Shore in Massachusetts to talk to Ana Perdomo about how we can create jobs, raise working standards and increase services for hard-hit communities – all while reinvesting public dollars in local taxpayers’ communities. The politicians might even learn a thing or two about protecting the environment.

A remarkable process has taken place around green jobs in the Boston area. It did not come easy, but rather took hard work and cooperation from local labor unions and community organizations. (more…)

Practicing Peace Before Wars Break Out

by Michael N. Nagler

The nonviolent revolution in Egypt has spread across the Mideast, but unfortunately in many other countries, particularly Libya, “revolution” was picked up without “nonviolent.” I have been asked whether there is anything that nonviolence could nonetheless do in the face of the bloodbath that is going on before our eyes in that country. There is, but I would like to consider not one but two questions: what can we do now (which is very little), and what could we be doing if we lived in a more nonviolence-aware world. As we will see, the two questions fold together at one point.

Libya’s convulsion once again caught the “international community” (it’s more like an international schoolyard) flat-footed. Open warfare broke out very quickly, and the scale and stage of the violence are extreme. Yet there is still a way to respond that, while extremely difficult to pull off, could be called nonviolent. (more…)

Challenges and Lessons for Western Peace Activists

by Matt Meyer

In a week of bombing and bloodshed, I have been amazed and saddened at the amount of confusion, arrogance, and paternalism from supposedly progressive people of the so-called global north. Perhaps I should not be so surprised: the US “left” is an under-developed country, and we would all do well to take some serious lessons — in democracy, nonviolence, and revolution — from our counterparts in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps the silver lining is to learn from the lessons of Libya:

On Revolution and Nonviolence

The good news, of course, is that these two concepts, so often pitted against one another as opposites — the false dichotomy of our era — have, in 2011, been rehabilitated. (more…)

Despite Appearances, Are We Headed Toward a Better World?

by Kent Shifferd

With the 20th century having been the bloodiest in history, and with bombs falling in Libya, explosions in Iraq, Hamas rockets falling on Israel, and a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, the answer to the question of whether peace is possible seems an obvious “No!” But if you take the long view and look at the totality of trends that have been going on more or less unnoticed for two centuries, it could well be a “Maybe.”

Consider this: after thousands of years of warfare, the first organized peace societies in history began to form and work in the early 19th century.  By 1899 their efforts resulted in the calling of the inaugural world peace conference, and out of that came the first-ever court to adjudicate disputes between nations, the so-called “World Court” (its actual name is the International Court of Justice).  By itself it was not enough to stop World War I, but some 22 more trends developed over the century and are ongoing today, which when viewed together make the 20th century not only the bloodiest, but also the century marked by  more progress toward controlling war than in any other in history.  Ironic and paradoxical, yes, but it was a century of peace. (more…)

Nuclear Songs Remain the Same — Will We Listen?

by Randall Amster

In the early 1980s, a group of antinuclear activists and musicians put together an album of protest songs as a statement against the development of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant outside of Phoenix. The plant is unique in that it isn’t adjacent to a large body of water, meeting its cooling needs instead with treated sewage from nearby locales. The main turbines were supplied by General Electric, and the plant has been cited for a number of safety violations in its 25 year history. Situated near the sixth largest city in the U.S., the Palo Verde Station has been the site of heightened security as a potential strategic target in terms of warfare or terrorism. But back in the ’80s, activists had other concerns on their minds. (more…)

Youth Movements Confront Legislated Intolerance

by Joel Olson

As spring heats into summer in the desert, two Arizonas fight for supremacy.  One, lodged in power in the Arizona State Capitol, drafts anti-immigrant and “fiscally responsible” bills with glee. It is old, it is white, it is dour and narrow.  The other protests these bills from outside the capitol walls.  It is young, it is largely brown, it is hopeful but angry, and it aims to clash with the old Arizona.  And last Thursday it earned its first victory.

The day before that, a hundred youth from six weeks old to drinking age marched on the Capitol to protest a rash of anti-immigrant bills that, if passed, would have made Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 look like an act of charity.  These five bills challenged the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and would have required every member of official society — from nurses to teachers to school secretaries to doctors to employers — to check a person’s immigration status before healing or educating or hiring them. (more…)