February 2009

The caffeine headaches are fading, and I’m beginning to appreciate Lent. Giving something up for Lent is a more effective sort of New Year’s Resolution. You’re reminded of your commitment every Friday and Sunday, and your friends and family will be even more disappointed if you backslide–it’s not just a commitment to yourself, but to God!

Today there were all sorts of folks at the White House protesting on all sorts of issues. Even saw old Joe the Plumber. We’ve had a big, wonderful group in town for the 100 Days Campaign this week. People are coming from many perspectives; I recorded a roundtable yesterday to capture some of them.

Standard Podcast [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Power Shift 2009 begins in DC today. After a full week of activism, I need a break from all that, so I won’t be connecting with PS, but I hope to run across some participants this weekend. I love that Monday the Speaker of the House is speaking, then thousands of people will head off to do civil disobedience at a coal plant. (Note that Pelosi and Reid yesterday took steps to have this plant stop using coal.)

Carl Malamud, rogue archivist and information activist, is campaigning to be made the Public Printer (head of the Government Printing Office). “I’m inspired by Gus Geigengack, a working printer who convinced FDR to name him to the post.”

Mr. Malamud’s “Hack 3: Be Government” was the direct inspiration for Worcester Indymedia’s 2008 project to create a free, public archive of City Council meeting videos. (The City refused to sell us copies of the videos or help in any way; in 2009 they finally started doing this themselves.)

I endorse his campaign, and hope that you will, too. He’s done a heck of a job opening government from the outside–he’d do a heck of a job on the inside, too. Read his platform and then endorse away! “To endorse my nomination, simply comment on any blog post (like this one!), tweet me [@carlmalamud], or send me email [carl@media.org]. The endorsements will be harvested, set into a book, and released as a free PDF file with paper copies dispatched to the White House Office of Personnel. Thank you for your support.”

People I read who are endorsing: On the Commons, Boing Boing

Many of this week’s participants in the 100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo and End Torture are Catholics, so Ash Wednesday is an important day.

We wanted to connect the practice of our 100 Days vigil to our Lenten practice, so after visiting the White House sidewalk we processed to St. Matthew’s Cathedral and held a vigil during the transition between masses.

As our text we chose a line from Friday’s first reading:

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke
(Isaiah 58:6)

A vigil like this can easily come across as a protest against the church or the churchgoers, and indeed we’ve already received one angry, eloquent e-mail from someone who understood our message and is sympathetic to the cause, but didn’t like the vigil one bit. Read the rest of this entry »

Time to hammer out my Lenten gameplan.

Last year, my Lenten project/sacrifice was to pray and fast for an end to the Iraq War. The year before, I added a little liquid-only fasting to my routine, and the year before that I gave up soy on Fridays. (As a vegan, the usual Lenten Friday no-meat fast doesn’t require any sacrifice.)

This year, I’m going to try to give up caffeine, and spend an extra ten minutes each day in silent prayer.

If you have ideas, links, or projects to share, please add a comment. May your Lent be a powerful time!

Photos at Jonah House.

We are told he was injured falling from a tree. More details to come.

Ithaca Blog:

Peter was a veteran of both the U.S. Army and Marines who became one of the leading anti-war activists in America.

[...]

Peter leaves behind his wife, Ellen Grady, and their 4 daughters.

Democracy Now:

And the longtime peace activist Peter DeMott has died at the age of sixty-two. Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq, DeMott and three other peace activists poured their own blood on the posters, flags and walls of a military recruiting station outside of Ithaca, New York. The activists became known as the St. Patrick’s Day Four. Demott served four months in federal prison for the action. He became a peace activist after fighting with the Marines in Vietnam.

A U.S. appeals court has reversed a lower court ruling that the 17 Uighur detainees at Guantanamo should be immediately released into the US. Washington Post:

Two of the judges, Karen LeCraft Henderson and A. Raymond Randolph, found that Urbina overstepped his authority in ordering such a remedy. Only the Executive Branch and Congress have the power to allow people to enter the United States, they ruled.

“The question here is not whether petitioners should be released, but where,” Randolph wrote in an 18-page opinion. “Never in the history of habeas corpus has any court thought it had the power to order an alien held overseas brought into the sovereign territory of a nation and released into the general population.”

In an opinion concurring with Randolph and Henderson, judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that Urbina had the right to order the release of the Uighurs into the United States but had acted “prematurely.”

More analysis from SCOTUSblog.

Commitment for Life is a network within the United Reformed Church committed to praying, giving, and campaigning for better lives all over the world. My church, Saint Columba’s, is a Commitment for Life congregation. As part of this network, we take action, pray, and give for people across the world. Particularly, we support partners in four countries: Bangladesh, Israel/Palestine, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe.

Seventy-five percent of the money we raise through Commitment for Life goes to Christian Aid. In this way, the United Reformed Church raised more than half a million pounds for Christian Aid last year. A tenth of the money goes to World Development Movement, a radical campaigning organization tackling the underlying causes of poverty. There is more information on the Commitment for Life website.

The United Reformed Church, through the Commitment for Life programme, supports partners in four countries: Bangladesh, Israel/Palestine, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe. Today we pray for two of these, Israel/Palestine and Zimbabwe. Will you pray with me. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Daloisio was planning to attend a Move America Forward press conference last week to ask some hard questions, and involved me in his scheme to make a “press pass.”
Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the 100 Days Campaign to Close Guantanamo and End Torture, we’re inviting groups to join us in Washington, DC, for all or part of a week.

This week’s Worcester participants have gone home, but not without sitting down to recap the experience:

mp3 link, other formats, podcast feed

Today was another long, grueling, satisfying day for those still here. Vigils at the National Mall and White House, conference calls, blogging, writing, and a birthday party. Carmen breaks it down:

A personal note
The 100 Days is going great. Nice to be working so hard on something positive. Starting to think about what I should do (for money or for free) when I return to Worcester in May. Ideas? You know how to reach me.

I’ve been thinking about how we pick our causes, inspired by the following 2 articles about causes that have arguably not done well.

Save Darfur Can’t Save Darfur:

In all the activist rhetoric about genocide, one critical fact is lost – as bad as the situation is, it could be far worse. If you don’t understand this simple point, you don’t understand the stakes involved.

(See also Some Defend Save Darfur and The Janjaweed Speak, by the same author.)

Life For March:

At 36 years old, the pro-life movement is still energetic and indignant—and trapped. Every year of Republican rule has increased the suspicion that pro-lifers are the GOP’s useful idiots.

Read the rest of this entry »