[Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?

[Ricky Baldwin]

Excellent point, Karen, and well-put.  

The idea that we can come up with permanent fixes is neo-neoplatonic or something.  Anyway it belongs in a different, more armchair-philosophical arena.  Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have written some wonderfully researched and argued, eye-opening stuff on this: Regulating the Poor, Poor People's Movements, The Politics of Turmoil, Why Americans Still Don't Vote.  Piven's latest - Challenging Authority - is available to poor people through the public library system.

(If I could just quibble a couple points: poor kids in Urbana often walk tio school - 60% of Leal students qualify for free or reduced lunches - and they do stay after school for chess clubs and things.  The Urbana Free library also has a free chess club, for example.  One thing I notice, or seem to, is that as movements do make some partial progress, the power gradient will often shift - as in your examples - but it also seems to become more complex.  In reality I think it is usually pretty complex, e.g. civilian deaths have been pretty high in past wars, too, historically from famine and disease and so on, but it has changed like you say.  Hand-to-hand combat is making a bit of a comeback, too, in a way, at the same time we rely more and more on drones and such.  Just a friendly amendment, sorry it's a lot less poetic than your excellent comments.)

Ricky



"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn

--- On Sun, 8/23/09, Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
To: "Peace-discuss List" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 1:46 PM

I am not sure what a lasting effect of a movement is.

With the civil rights movement some things have visibly disappeared in
one form but re-appeared in other forms. Disappeared have the
segregation laws of separate but equal -- gone are the separate public
restrooms, separate train cars and public transportation, and the
white and colored water fountains. Appeared have the huge prisons and
long lines of death row inmates. Appeared has the busing of the poor
kids, while the rich kids get to walk to school and stay for scouting
or sports or chess club. Moved has some of the hatred shown to black
brothers and sisters, moved it has to the Latin Americans and the
Middle Eastern brothers and sisters.

With the anti-war movement, unfortunately:
* Disappeared has the hand-to-hand combat where one person had to
watch another person die. Appeared have the tanks, airplanes, and
remote controlled weapons.
* Disappeared has the front line -- that despised place no one wanted
to be sent to. Appeared has the civilian casualties.
* Appeared did the Geneva Conventions. Gone are the POW camps.
Appeared has the military commissions act and the secret prisons.
* Gone is the military of the past where you did not women anywhere
near, present is the private military.

I think, but could be wrong, that world's powerful choose the message
to get from the movements. And rather than getting the real message
and expanding it, the powerful reduce the message to the very smallest
interpretation possible and then look for ways to work around it.

I think my point is that no movement is ever finished with its job.

-karen medina
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