<div dir="ltr"><h2 class="gmail-m_2971913877557606022gmail-title">The Next Step in Caring</h2>
<div class="gmail-m_2971913877557606022gmail-meta">
<span class="gmail-m_2971913877557606022gmail-submitted">By David Swanson<br><a target="_blank" href="http://davidswanson.org/node/5429">http://davidswanson.org/node/<wbr>5429</a><br></span></div>
<p><img src="http://www.davidswanson.org/sites/davidswanson.org/files/1939.jpg" style="margin-right: 0px;" class="gmail-CToWUd gmail-a6T" tabindex="0" align="right" height="359" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="316"></p>
<p>Airport resistance is the biggest step forward by the U.S. public in years.</p>
<p>Why do I say that? Because this is unfunded, largely unpartisan
activism that is largely selfless, largely focused on helping unknown
strangers, driven by compassion and love, not political ideology, greed,
or vengeance, and in line with activism around the globe. It's also
targeted at the location of the harm, directly resisting the injustice,
and achieving immediate partial successes, including very meaningful
successes for certain individuals. It's gaining support from people
never before engaged in any activism. And it shows no signs of any
significant undesirable side-effects. This is a movement to be built on,
and I have an idea what a next step should be.</p>
<p>Of course it is not at all uncommon for people to selflessly act for
strangers. Much of the charity industry is driven by that sort of
generosity year after year. But activist organizations are constantly
telling themselves that this is not the case, for example that ending
the bombing of distant unknown families can only be accomplished by
advertising the financial cost of it or instituting a draft or making
known the harm to veterans of the military doing the bombing. Yet when
the peace movement in the United States has been stronger, in the 1920s
in particular and also in the 1960s, acting on behalf of others has been
central, as it was to the first big activist campaign, that begun
against the slave trade in London, and as it has been in countless
campaigns. Working to protect the natural environment is work for future
generations. You can't get more selfless or enlightened than that.</p>
<p>But what's unique about this moment of sympathy and solidarity with
refugees from nations the United States has bombed (plus Iran which it
has gone after in other ways) is that it runs counter to U.S. government
propaganda, it replaces fear with courage, hatred with love. This isn't
just love stepping into a void. This is a transformation into love from
its opposite. This is why I think another major step might be possible.</p>
<p>When I <a target="_blank" href="https://ia601508.us.archive.org/2/items/BATTERYPARKRallyAndMarch/BATTERY%20PARK%20Rally%20and%20March.mp3">listen</a> to people interviewed at New York protests, or <a target="_blank" href="https://photobyted.smugmug.com/Other-2/No-Muslim-Ban">look</a>
at the signs they bring to the White House and to airports around the
country, I'm struck by the expressions of love and concern for others,
more than by the presence of partisanship or hatred for Donald Trump
(though it certainly is a factor). And I'm bowled over by the widespread
recognition of the lesson from history of the damage done to European
Jews by U.S. immigration policy. Protesters' signs indicate an awareness
that Jewish refugees were rejected by the West, that Western
governments met and refused to accept their mass eviction from Germany,
that the U.S. Coast Guard chased a ship away from Miami many of whose
passengers later died in the camps, that Anne Frank's visa application
was rejected by the U.S. State Department. I had no idea people knew
these things, much less learned and applied a lesson from them.</p>
<p>Of course, some protesters have personal connections to those put at
risk by Trump's Muslim ban (and that's what it is, based on his campaign
promises and his <a target="_blank" href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3415371/Read-the-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-CIA.pdf">renaming</a>
of the Global War on [of] Terrorism to the Fight Against Radical
Islamism). And others find ways to identify themselves with those at
risk, such as: "We're a nation of immigrants. My great-grandparents were
immigrants." But this doesn't make the movement less altruistic.
Identifying with people in some way, even as fellow human beings, is a
common part of coming to care about them and to act for or with them.</p>
<p>There are indications that this sentiment is not limited to those
protesting and resisting at airports. The ACLU has never raised more
money before. And check out this tweet:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><u><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/johnpaulfarmer">John Paul Farmer @johnpaulfarmer </a></u></strong></p>
<p>I'm 20 minutes from landing at JFK. Pilot just warned us about delays due to <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NoBan">#NoBan</a> protests at T4. The passengers' response? Applause.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are also protests happening around the world, outside of the
United States, allowing us to build a global movement against global
injustices even when those injustices are headquartered in Washington,
D.C. And in Washington D.C. and around the U.S. we see unprecedented
resistance from an Acting Attorney General and from judges -- a group
that seemed to be mostly asleep for the past 16 years.</p>
<p>And Canada, which has resisted U.S. wars, aided those enslaved, given
shelter to conscientious objectors, and protected people from all
variety of U.S. injustice for centuries, stepped up too:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><u><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau">Justin Trudeau @JustinTrudeau </a></u></strong></p>
<p>To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WelcomeToCanada">#WelcomeToCanada</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are elements of partisanship in this uprising that could hold
it back, and of nationalism as well. Some liberals are not so much
concerned about human cruelty as about Trump <a target="_blank" href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-trump-already-showing-signs-major-disrespect-us-military?akid=15164.22822.eJiUsC&rd=1&src=newsletter1071426&t=4">disrespecting</a>
their sacred U.S. military. Where were these crowds when President
Barack Obama was setting records for deportations, or when he was
bombing the nations that Trump is now banning refugees from, or when he
was purporting to create the presidential power to do what Trump is now
doing?</p>
<p>Our task is not to erase mistakes of the recent past but not to focus
on them either. Our task is to move forward with what we now have. And I
think the way forward involves taking one additional major step beyond
where the resistance is right now. Once people have come to resist
injustices to refugees from wars, to identify with them, to contemplate
lives lived in horror of immigration police, to consider the suffering
of family members in distant lands suddenly blocked from visiting their
loved ones, it seems to be a quite achievable step to begin opposing
dropping bombs on those family members. If you're going to oppose harm
to refugees, why not oppose the destruction of their homes that makes
them refugees in the first place? If you are willing to question
government fear-mongering, you are ready to question the government
dogma that says more weapons sales and more bombs and more troops will
make things better rather than worse.</p>
<p>If that step is taken, then this becomes a movement that cares not
only about that fraction of suffering populations that finds some
tenuous connection to U.S. shores, but about that whole 96% of humanity
that lacks any such connection. Then we really have something new under
the sun. Then we really transform U.S. policy. Then the trillion dollars
a year wasted on preparing for more wars can be cut into a little bit
to fund human and environmental needs beyond our wildest imaginings.</p>
<p>I was heartened by this recent tweet:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><u><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/yarotrof">Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof </a></u></strong></p>
<p>Number of US citizens who traveled to Iraq, Syria to kills locals on
behalf of ISIS: 250. Syrians or Iraqis who carried out attacks in US: 0</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I replied:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong><u><a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson">David Swanson @davidcnswanson </a></u></strong></p>
<p>What about number who went there to kill locals on behalf of US military?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>photo by<span name="Ted Majdosz" class="gmail-m_2971913877557606022gmail-gD"> Ted Majdosz</span></p><div class="gmail-yj6qo gmail-ajU"><div tabindex="0" class="gmail-ajR" id="gmail-:415"><img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif" class="gmail-ajT"></div></div></div>