[Peace] AWARE minutes

[Al Kagan]

AWARE Minutes, July 14, 2002

1. David Green facilitated the meeting. He opened the meeting with 
the following quote. David noted the recent  PBS propaganda  program, 
Wide Angle, on the supposed relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida.

 From Randolph Bourne, "The State," in War and the Intellectuals, 
Collected Essays, 1915-1919:

"War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion 
throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for 
passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience 
the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. 
The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, 
the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly 
around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them 
really to be converting them. Of course the ideal of perfect loyalty, 
perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom 
the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but 
often their agitation, instead of converting, merely serves to 
stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some 
intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation 
in war-time attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values 
culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could 
not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other 
values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the 
enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, 
and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the 
amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these 
values for themselves but in coercing other persons into sacrificing 
them.

War--or at least the modern war waged by a democratic republic 
against a powerful enemy--seems to achieve for a nation almost all 
that the most inflamed political idealist could desire. Citizens are 
not longer indifferent to their Government, but each cell of the body 
politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last on the way 
to full realization of that collective community in which each 
individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation at 
war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels 
immensely the strengthened in that identification. The purpose of and 
desire of the collective community live in each person who throws 
himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding 
distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out. 
At war, the individual becomes almost identical with his society. He 
achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of 
all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents 
or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the 
power of the collective community. The individual as social being in 
war seems to have achieved almost his apotheosis. Not for any 
religious impulse could the American nation have been expected to 
show such devotion en masse, such sacrifice and labor. Certainly not 
for any secular good, such as universal education or the subjugation 
of nature, would it have poured forth its treasure and its life, or 
would it have permitted such stern coercive measures to be taken 
against it, such as conscripting money and men."


2. Music by Kevin Elliot.  Applause.

3. News of the Week by Carl Estabrook.

4. Cuba presentation by Jan and Durl Kruse.  They went on an 8-day 
program called, "Cuba at the Crossroad" sponsored by Global Exchange. 
They distributed 2 handouts.  Contact  them at durljan at earthlink.net. 
Note the new campus group, Students for Cuba.  Contact is Dushan, 
384-5077.

5. Upcoming events.
	July 22, "Lies My Teacher Told Me About African American 
History and How to do 	Better."  [lecture] 9 a.m.-noon. 100 Gregory 
Hall, James W. Loewen, University of 	Vermont.  For more 
information, call 333-7781, Afro-American Studies and Research.

	There is still room for articles in the August issue of the 
Pubic i, deadline is Thursday.

6. September 11th anniversary plans.
There will be a University of Illinois event, either 12-1 or 5-6 PM.
WILL radio will do a program.
The Baker Board will do a walk for peace and an interfaith calendar of events.
The group, September 11th Families for Peace is willing to send a 
speaker  the week before.
Billboards cost $1500 for 4 weeks, or 9 for 1 week for $3600.

7.  The July 21st meeting will concentrate on planning for the 
September 11th anniversary.  We will have the usual 10 minutes of 
culture, news of the week, and announcements of past and future 
events.  Instead of a topical presentation, we will spend the 30 
minutes discussing our goals for September 11th anniversary based on 
the ideas put forward on July 7th. We will form several working 
groups which will meet just after the discussion.

8. There will be a preliminary small group meeting for those who want 
to get started, 7PM on Tuesday evening at Ricky's house, 606 W. White 
St, Champaign.  The cross street is Lynn.

Minutes by Al Kagan
-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu