New Clear Vision

The Revolution Will Not Be Anti-Social

by Windy Cooler

I have been ruminating lately on how much I am looking forward to school starting up again for Ob, my six year old son, because of how deeply I enjoy my time with other parents picking up their kids after school; how meaningful, powerful, and frankly, political, much of that time is.

Most of us are women. One is a grandfather and one is a stay at home father, married to the only woman he ever dated. We are very different people, religiously, in age, in personality, in class background and country of origin, to some extent, racially. We talk about everything and we have a huge impact on each other’s lives.

We jokingly call ourselves, after the suggestion of one of us, a poet and homeschooling mother, the “Playground Coven.” I usually write for activists, and I am doing it here, despite myself. I think of us sometimes, in that light, as a kind of Bughouse Square. (more…)

Rediscovering Community and Bringing Decision-Making Back Home

by David Swanson

Susan Clark and Woden Teachout’s new book, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home (Chelsea Green, 2012), offers the civil equivalent to slow food. The goal of both is not slowness for its own sake, but quality, health, sustainability, and the pursuit of happiness.

We all know that the federal government ignores us most of the time, state governments nod in our direction once in a blue moon, and local governments listen to us quite often. So, there is an argument to be made for moving decision-making powers to the local level and engaging there.

The focus of Clark and Teachout’s book is on how to engage with local democracy, and toward what ends. Adversarial campaigning may not work. What gets you on television at a Congressional “town hall” could just alienate your neighbors at a real town hall. A deeper understanding of democracy than just the desire for Washington, D.C., to follow majority opinion once in a while involves the realization that we are all better off if all of our viewpoints are considered. We all know that in small discussions the result can be greater than the sum of its parts. The same is true in local politics. New ideas can arise through exchange and disagreement; a synthesis that considers the needs of more than one group can be better for all, longer-lasting, and strengthened by the depth of its public support. (more…)

Why Afghanistan (and the World) Can’t Wait…

by Kathy Kelly and Hakim

Recently, we spent three anxious hours in an outer waiting area of the “Non-Immigrant Visa” section of the U.S. consulate in Kabul, Afghanistan, waiting for our young friends Ali and Abdulhai to return from a sojourn through the inner offices where they were being interviewed for visas to come speak to audiences in the U.S.

They are members of the Afghan Peace Volunteers and have been invited to travel with the U.S.-Mexico “Caravan  for Peace” that will be touring the United States later this summer.  We didn’t want to see their hopes dashed, and we didn’t want to see this opportunity lost to connect the experiences of poor people around the world suffering from war. The organizers of the Caravan envision and demand alternatives to the failed systems of militarized policing in the terrifyingly violent, seemingly endless U.S.-Mexico drug war. They want to connect with victims of war in Afghanistan especially since, as the top producer of opium and marijuana in the world, Afghanistan has a failing war against drugs as well. (more…)

And So It Goes in Higher Education…

by Harry Targ

I have spent much of my adult life in Hypocrisy Valley, a small community which is the regional center of commerce, agriculture, and modest industrialization. It also is the home of a major university, Hypocrisy Valley State University, which has a reputation, we are told, in agriculture, engineering, and science. As a state supported institution it is obliged to serve the research and educational needs of the citizens of the state.

The faculty size of the university and the student population has grown by 25 percent in forty years. The university is the largest employer in the county, and many workers say that while they receive low wages, are not treated with particular respect (except for the annual spring fling distribution of free hot dogs), they work at the university because of the health and retirement benefits, which exceed benefits from other employers in the area. Of course, state law prohibits Hypocrisy Valley employees from organizing staff or faculty unions. (more…)

Can We Find Our Humanity in Conscience and Awareness?

by Robert C. Koehler 

This is American exceptionalism: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

But you have to say it without the doubt, the regret — the horror — of Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist extraordinaire and director of the Manhattan Project, who famously uttered these words in reference to the Trinity nuclear explosion in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert on July 16, 1945.

When you remove Oppenheimer’s moral awareness from the quote, it sounds more like: “Oh, I wouldn’t hesitate if I had the choice. I’d wipe ’em out. You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. . . . That’s their tough luck for being there.” (more…)

Soft Necks Will Not Be Slaughtered

by Kathy Kelly and Hakim

Abdulhai remembers his father being killed by the Taliban. “Anyone who takes up a weapon in revenge, whether the Talib or any other, is acting like the Talibs who murdered my father,” he says, in a matter of fact way. “The solution does not lie in taking revenge, but in people coming together like the people of Egypt to defend themselves in a nonviolent way.”

Nine people gathered this morning for an unexpected although welcome meeting here in Kabul, in the home of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, at which Raz Mohammed, a member of the group who is from Wardak province, had arrived along with a fellow student, named Rohullah. The meeting included Tajiks, Hazaras and one Pashtoon. We were surprised and pleased to see our good friend. (more…)

Will Smarter Phones Mean Dumber People?

by Randall Amster

The road ahead was clearly marked as “closed” and a “dead end,” but the voice from the back seat insisted that we go forward anyway. “My phone says go straight ahead,” counseled the voice, ignoring the driver’s observation that the street was apparently closed. “The GPS in my phone is smarter than you are,” chimed the voice, good-naturedly yet sardonically. Obviously trumped, the driver continued forward — until we inevitably reached the advertised road closure that forced us to turn around and start over.

In itself, such a minor folly is entirely inconsequential and worthy of a little chuckle at best. Yet it’s also indicative of an increasingly prevalent attitude whereby the reliance on “smart” technologies is steadily supplanting human assessments and instincts. By now, such an observation is quite nearly passé, in that we have already given so much of ourselves and our reasoning capacities over to machines in one form or another. But the advent and rapid permeation of personal technologies like so-called “smartphones” raises further concerns that have been less explored during this most recent consumer frenzy. (more…)