[Peace-discuss] p.s. Fox on Fox

[Ricky Baldwin]

Hey Karen!

Great thoughts!  

If you want my input (I have a lot), I think you
identify an important problem, that protesters are
often portrayed and seen as violent.  And sometimes
are.  But somehow people are able to look at that
image or some relatively minor violence and forget the
major violence that the US, Britain, Israel and others
do.  I'm not trying to excuse anything, just noting
the bitter irony.

Pirates and emperors, as Chomsky says:  Alexander the
Great captured a pirate and asked him "how he dares
molest the seas."  The pirate says, "How dare you
molest the whole world?  Because I do it with a little
ship only I am called a thief; you, doing it with a
great navy, are called an emperor."  And still is.

It's part of the way we're trained to resist change, I
think, too.  But what do these so-called patriots
think  Thomas Paine and Paul Revere and that crazy lot
were, if not protesters?  How did women and black
Americans win the right to vote?  Philosophical
debate?  The largesse of our all-knowing leaders?  No,
protest.  Everyone knows this.  It's the connection
they don't want to make.

It's easier to see in the past, but important to see
now.  A lot of this "way of life" talk boils down to a
kind of Lebensraum-sort-of idea, but to an extent
there is something else there - freedom as a value -
and I think we can focus on that as common ground.

I think *if* we get the chance to talk what we want to
question is, what exactly the troops are defending -
not their motives as individual soldiers (which don't
matter much anyway since they don't decide policy) but
how they are being used by politicians born with
silver spoons in their mouths, etc.  Didn't US troops
defend slavery against John Brown?  And who was on the
side of freedom then?  

It's obvious to *us*, but I think we need to say to
them it's the anti-war protesters who are defending
the rights we have, working for more rights, and Bush
& Co. who are trying to restrict them.  *We* were the
ones -  protesters - anti-war, anti-imperialist, and
all - who said Reagan and *Rumsfeld* shouldn't be
helping Saddam when he was gassing the Kurds.  Carter
and the CIA shouldn't have been training mujahadeen in
terrorist tactics against the USSR.  Etc.  This mess
is the DIRECT RESULT of our government NOT listening
to protesters.  

You and I know this, but it's hard to remember to SAY
it.

If these wars - and I'd try to shift the debate to the
wars and not the individual soldiers (who are pawns) -
are really for our freedoms, how come war always means
we have to GIVE UP freedoms?  The PATRIOT Act, etc.  

Of course if they won't stop and talk, I have no idea
how to reach them - except by protest (irony?). 
Mostly they don't want to talk, I find, and even if
they do it's hard for them to hear what we're saying. 
It's like, again as Chomsky says, we're from Neptune.

We'd stand a better chance if we weren't so obviously
something "other", foreign, alien.  People usually
find it easier to listen and talk with people they
perecive as belonging to the same group as them - go
to the same church, work the same job, belong to the
same x,y or z...

But if we're patient, don't play into the angry
protester image, listen to them as well, and try to
find common ground (work, life, even basic values: why
should the children suffer?  any civilians?  aren't we
as guilty for allowing our government to do these
things as they are - moreso because we can vote and
protest - does that make us legitimate targets?) I
think there's a chance that they'll think of what we
said later.  

If we shout and point our fingers and emphasize our
differences, it just makes it easier to dismiss us.

Well, there are folks who come to talk *seeking* that
sort of thing, but I think we should keep in mind that
others see us, too.

Anyway, we don't NEED to shout and wave our fingers. 
What we have to SAY is offensive and crazy-sounding
enough to a lot of people.  I just think we ought to
recognize what we seem like to some people -
especially if we want to actually communicate - not to
say they can't understand us (I also think people are
not stupid) but that when an idea is new or alien
(algenra or trig to some of us, old as that is) it's
harder for some people to digest.

Like a foreign language.  Repetition is key. 
Patience.  Persistence.  Honesty - if we water it
down, we'll only cause confusion) - but know when
you've got as far as you're going to get with a given
exchange - and kindness.  After all, the folks who
come up to talk with us are not the ones engineering
these crimes against humanity.  If they're talking to
us, they're trying to figure something out.

OK, enough from me for now.  I need to work on being
concise.

Ricky


--- Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu> wrote:

> Some things have been bothering me.
> 
> 1) The other day at the One Main event, a family
> joined our 
> demonstration. They were very nice and the parents
> were strong 
> messengers of peace. Yet one of the daughters tied a
> string between her 
> father and herself. She was "arresting" her father
> "for protesting."
> 
> The Fox-like messages do seep in to the children.
> 
> 2) Protesters of all sorts are seen as violent
> idiots who are 
> mind-controlled by an evil leader. In some people's
> minds, protester = 
> criminal = insurgent = terrorist.
> 
> How do we reach people who are afraid of us?
> 
> 3) The same day, a woman in her car said "You should
> be glad you live in 
> a country where you have freedom of speech."
> 
> How do I help her understand that I love my country
> and that is why I 
> must stand up when it is going the wrong direction?
> 
> 4) Violence and force are portrayed in the news, in
> the movies, and in 
> games as the only way to solve problems.
> 
> These messages seep in to us all.
> 
> 5) I am haunted by Jan's story of the young woman
> who had returned from 
> Iraq believing that she was "defending our way of
> life" as if our way of 
> life was something sacred that all people were
> wanting to take away from 
> us and therefore we need to protect it at all costs.
> 
> How do we prevent our children from growing up like
> this child?
> 
> 6) This one is positive, but I don't see how we
> could accomplish this 
> sort of thing: A man suggested that if we could put
> the leaders into a 
> room where they could try out their theories in a
> sandbox before they 
> put them to use in the real world it might solve a
> lot of problems more 
> safely.
> 
> -karen medina
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com