NEWS

The Advancing Human Rights Committee worked with Development Chair Marybeth Gardam to design this Facebook post for Juneteenth 2020.
 

August 2020

Get Creative & Help Appeal for Online Support!

By the WILPF US Development Committee

Are you a whiz on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? Do you enjoy being creative in your activism? Are you interested in learning the platform Canva and helping to design appealing social media posts and graphics?

The WILPF US Development Committee is looking for your help. We are hoping to appeal more consistently to the public for online support, using a calendar of timeline events suggested by the national issue committees.

Holidays and commemorations that mark peacemaking efforts, international cooperation, and human rights resonate with our local and national projects and tie to WILPF’s program work. By using these dates, you can help create a schedule of posts that can be prepared ahead and scheduled for publication on several social media ‘channels’.   

“We have a reasonable and growing presence on Facebook,” notes Development Chair Marybeth Gardam, “but we are just barely visible on Twitter and we have yet to dip our toes into Instagram.”

“As an example of what we would like to be doing,” Gardam explains, “the Advancing Human Rights (AHR) Committee developed a list of calendar dates that intersect with the theme of human rights. They worked with me to create a JUNETEENTH post for Facebook, using a new creative graphic platform Canva.”

“I’m just learning Canva, but it’s kind of fun to be creative,” Gardam says. “The three AHR chairs helped suggest the quote and select the graphic. That made my work a lot easier!”

If every issue committee could suggest 5-10 events a year that tie to their work (and we hope they do!), there would be a lot more Canva-creating to do.  

Development is looking for eager VOLUNTEERS to help with some of that creative organizing from the safety of your computer desk. Get creative and do good at the same time!   

Contact Marybeth Gardam at mbgardam@gmail.com to learn more or sign up!

Honoring Civil Rights Icons John Lewis and C.T. Vivian

By Valarie Young
Co-chair, Advancing Human Rights (AHR) and Working Toward Racial Justice

“If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?”
― John Lewis

In less than 100 days, the future of our democracy will be in the hands of the American people as we vote in our general election. We must unite and make sure our voices will be heard.

Our country lost two civil rights icons in less than 24 hours recently, Rep. John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian, both of whom died on July 17, 2020. The AHR Issues Committee pays homage to Lewis and Vivian, leaders for human and civil rights who dedicated their lives for equality and the right to vote in the United States. If it had not been for these two men, and other activists who shared their courage and dedication, the civil rights movement would never have had the power it did.

The struggle for human and civil rights continues. Right to vote laws must extend across the nation, and apply equally to all voters.

John Robert Lewis, Georgia Congressman Who Advocated “Good Trouble”

John Robert Lewis, who dedicated his life to advancing human and civil rights, died at the age of 80. Read this detailed, impressive obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5^th Congressional District from 1987-2020 and spent nearly four decades championing the causes of marginalized communities.

Never one to rest on past victories, he continued to speak and listen to young people throughout his life. Consider this quote on youth climate activists released in September 2019:

“These young people are saying we all have a right to know what is in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, and the food we eat. It is our responsibility to leave this planet cleaner and greener. That must be our legacy."

Watch this Note to Self Video: (7 minutes): Georgia Congressman John Lewis was born and raised on a cotton farm outside Troy, Alabama. He later became one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement. In this ongoing series, Note to Self, Lewis recalls getting into what he famously calls “good trouble.”

C.T. Vivian, Champion of Nonviolence

The Rev. C.T. Vivian, civil rights leader and champion of nonviolent action, died at the age of 95.

Read his obituary on NPR, which explains that in spite of suffering multiple beatings during his protest activities, including his notorious showdown with Dallas County Sheriff James G. Clark, “he held fast to one principle: ‘In no way would we allow nonviolence to be destroyed by violence.’” He continued to have a long and distinguished career of standing up against oppression and seeking justice for all.

One of Vivian’s famous quotes is, “You are made by the struggles you choose.”

This video provides a brief outline of his remarkable career. His Oral History was recorded in March 29, 2011 by Taylor Branch. 

Next month’s AHR update will include tributes to Ella Baker, the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” and Fannie Lou Hamer, who worked tirelessly to secure voting rights for African Americans. 

Global Ceasefire Passed Unanimously!

By Joan Goddard
WILPF US Program Committee

On July 1, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a legally binding resolution to enact a 90-day Global Ceasefire. The US previously voted against the Global Ceasefire.

The UN resolution focuses on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing countries in need. However, excluded from the cease fire are all military operations against Al-Qaida, ISIL, and other groups designated terrorist by the Security Council.

Extending the global ceasefire and defunding the military would be major steps toward an enduring peace. In the US alone, counting all of the funding sources, the Department of Defense budget totals $1.25 trillion-dollar a year (see this article in The Nation: America's Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think). Just a 50% reduction in these US “defense” expenditures would make over half a trillion dollars a year available for funding the Green New Deal, public health care coverage, and social benefit work on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Watch next month’s eNews for more on progressive alternatives to military expenditures and total dollar costs and other effects of the US military.

Middle East Committee Wants to Build Bridges Not Walls

By Barbara Taft
Co-chair, Middle East Committee

“Bridges Not Walls” is a new Middle East Committee campaign showing how we’re all interconnected.

Israel’s Separation Wall is a physical barrier making it easier for Palestinians and Israelis to view one another negatively. The bridges enabling them to see each other as human have disappeared, preventing contact.

The U.S./Mexico border wall creates the same de-humanization, encouraging negative stereotypes. When walls prevent human contact, we stop looking one another in the eye and responding to cries with human touch and care. We miss that touch now with COVID-19. Differences are amplified when we’re separated. Separation is rooted in the “divide and conquer” concept.

Let’s tear down artificial walls, physical and psychological, and see what we share in terms of our humanity. Let’s build bridges to connect us all. Over the next three years, our goal is to find these connecting bridges, learn the issues, causes, dreams, and goals of others and work together.

More information to come on the Middle East Committee's webpage and in future eNews articles!

August 13th ONE WILPF Call: Voter Suppression during COVID-19  

By the ONE WILPF Call Team

How can you anticipate and recognize potential voter suppression going on in your state and city? What can you do about it in a time of pandemic? How can you maintain social distancing and still get the message to vulnerable communities about getting out to vote?  

The next ONE WILPF Call on August 13, 2020, focuses on recognizing and addressing voter suppression in this time of COVID-19.  

Speakers Molly McGrath, Advocacy Director from the Wisconsin ACLU and Chris Carson, outgoing national President of the League of Women Voters, will give us the tactics and responses they're advocating, and we'll be planning a September Solidarity Action in response.  Join the call at 7 pm eastern/6 pm central/5 pm mountain/4 pm pacific.

Register here.

This is a Maestro Call... you phone in using your phone and also follow along on your computer screen. Once you register you'll receive an email with the call-in number and PIN number, and a link to the visual interface/social webinar. You'll receive a reminder 2 hours before the call, coming from michael@teamgood.org.   

The graphic has been made available to all 41 WILPF branches to use on banners, lawn signs, or flyers. The Solidarity Event Planning Team has already customized the graphic for 13 branches with branch name and contact info. and can do so for more branches. Follow the instructions in the July 3^rd email sent to all branch contacts.

By Cherrill Spencer and Margaret Pecoraro
Co-team Coordinators of the Ceasefire/75^th Solidarity Event Planning Team

August 2020

As we described in our July eNews article, “Launching Our 2020 Solidarity Event Season,” we are embarking on a solidarity season lasting from August 6^th to September 21^st which is focusing on these three themes:

• the Global Ceasefire request by the UN Secretary General, 
• the 75^th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, 
• the founding of the United Nations in 1945.

Our planning team, coordinated by Cherrill Spencer (Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA  branch,  cherrill.m.spencer (at) gmail.com) and Margaret Pecoraro (Tucson, AZ branch) have prepared sixteen (!) resource guides and sent them to all 41 branch contacts by email. And we have more guides we are still working on. Our first six guides were all about how to use the ~1000 peace cranes, handmade for us in Japan, that each branch received back in June from our headquarters. These delicate origami birds remind us of the fragility of life and urge us to share in a commitment to abolish nuclear weapons.

At least eight of our branches have already created public displays of these cranes, in the windows of shops, on cafe tables, on statues, and in trees: Burlington, VT; Corvallis, OR; Des Moines, IA; East Bay, CA; Fresno, CA; Greater Phoenix, AZ; Humboldt, CA, and Peninsula/Palo Alto, CA. Here is a photo of a shop window display of peace cranes arranged by our Corvallis, OR branch taken by WILPF member Leah Bolger.

Resource Guides to Help Branches Organize Activities

For the benefit of members who are not associated with a branch and would like to use some of the resource guides they have been placed in four pdf files which you can reach by clicking on their file titles:

• ActivitiesCommemorateH&NBombs6_9Aug.pdf
• Resource Guide ReadingsSongsFilmsBooksMedia.pdf
• Resource Guide HibakushaTestimonies.pdf
• Resource Guide #5 Songs Poems from Tucson BranchR1.pdf

The second set of six resource guides the solidarity planning team has assembled were designed to help branches plan, organize, and carry out activities concerning the 75th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and for branch members to use that awareness and knowledge to advocate in their local community for nuclear disarmament.

This film by David Rothauser is one of the many films, books, readings, songs, and other media listed in one of the resource guides.

As most of us and our communities continue to shelter-in-place, we are turning to arranging online activities and these resource guides have many ideas for pertinent films to watch online, informative articles to read online, songs to sing (with others during a Zoom event, for example), websites to visit where you can read hibakusha stories (hibakusha are survivors of the H&N bombings), and so on.

An activity that can be carried out individually is to fast for disarmament. A detailed guide about the international peace fast will be sent to branch contacts soon, but here are some broad guidelines that will help you decide if you will take part. The organizers of the International Peace Fast ask that those who sign up as fasters follow these broad guidelines:

1. Make a sincere commitment that’s intentionally directed at ending nuclear weaponry;
2. Publicize your branch’s fast – through news releases & social media – and the fact that people around the world are fasting for disarmament;
3. Alter your diet in a notable way (notable to the peace faster, maybe not to others), such as:
   – not eating between certain hours that one would ordinarily be doing (e.g. fasting from food – not water – between 10am and 4pm, at least one day);
   – cutting out at least one staple (carbs, flesh/meats, caffeine, etc.) from your diet;
   – doing one of the above for at least one day between August 6 and 9.
4. If a branch member chooses to fast for several days then other branch members can offer moral support via phone calls and visits following local COVID-19 rules.

Examples of Branch Activities, August 6-9

Some of our branches would have had outdoor ceremonies with lots of attendees to commemorate the bombings and to demonstrate against nuclear weapons, and on account of the pandemic they have instead arranged online events with knowledgeable speakers, reflections, and suggestions such as lighting candles in your driveway. So far, we’ve heard from three branches who will have outdoor activities with reduced attendance: In Fresno, California WILPFers will gather at the Peace Garden of California State University, Fresno, at 8 am PDT on August 6 to observe a camphor tree planting, the tree is related to a tree that survived the Hiroshima bombing. In Des Moines, Iowa at 10:58 am CDT on August 6, WILPFers will gather around the Japanese Bell of Peace and Friendship near the Iowa State Capitol to hear speeches from their mayor and others, to strike the bell 75 times, and sing with their Raging Grannies. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, our WILPF branch will join with other peace organizations at 8 pm CDT on August 6 on the Bradford Beach for a candlelight vigil.

Our WILPF branches that are co-sponsoring online events include Monterey County, CA (see article in this eNews); Humboldt County, CA, and our Tucson, AZ branch have kindly invited ANY WILPFer who wishes to join them in a ZOOMed gathering at 10 am PDT on August 6 to write to debdivya@gmail.com for the ZOOM link. This branch has held interesting Hiroshima commemorations for many years (they provided our resource guide #5 full of readings, poems, and songs for this occasion) and they will be lighting candles, showing off their peace cranes, reading Hibakusha stories, and singing some nuclear disarmament songs. That evening at 8 pm EDT they are co-sponsoring an online event replacing a large demonstration that would have happened outside the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. This website has all the details: https://paceebene.org/hiroshimaday2020.

WILPF US has joined with 165 other anti-nuclear organizations to form a coalition to amplify our common nuclear disarmament voice in order to reach a much wider public on this 75^th Anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The coalition has a very informative website and will be hosting two 9-hour-long livestreaming virtual gatherings on August 6 and 9, which will include several WILPF events. You can find the detailed schedule at: www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/events. For example, the Tucson Raging Grannies will be singing at 4:55 pm EDT on the 9^th and our DISARM Committee’s webinar featuring hibakusha Dr Hideko Tamura will be shown at 6 pm EDT on the 9^th. To find other WILPF events go here: www.hiroshimanagasaki75.org/local-events

So our solidarity season is off to a fine start and thanks to our many branches who are taking part. Our planning team will be in touch with the branch contacts again with a new set of resource guides to help your branch plan some activities after August 9 that will focus on the Global Ceasefire request by the UN Secretary General; the founding of the UN in 1945 and its current work; arms control treaties; and connecting militarism to the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustices, the warming climate, and ecological devastation.

This 1947 map shows the dotted line of a projected pipeline route of TAPLINE. It would eventually terminate in southern Lebanon, following the CIA’s first coup in 1949 overthrowing Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatly, who objected to its routing through Syria.  Photo credit: Chelsea Green Publishing, used with permission.

By Charlotte Dennett
For the Earth Democracy Issue Committee

August 2020

Death has a way of awakening the consciousness of those confronting it. Today, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are beginning to face the ultimate question: did we sacrifice American blood and treasure for oil?

Leaders of two veterans’ groups, VoteVets and the more conservative Concerned Veterans for America, have joined forces to press for changes in war authorization measures by Congress and an examination of “why we are in endless wars.” This desire to challenge the increased power that has been given to the executive branch to wage wars has made for some strange bedfellows in Washington, DC, with veterans and congressional representatives on all sides of the political spectrum calling for more transparency with regard to US military involvement.

This is a significant development, to even consider reducing military involvement, and it comes as polling shows there is greater support among the American public to decrease military spending (especially on nuclear weapons) and direct the funds instead toward much-needed domestic programs and services.

Persistent Grassroots Organizers Claim Recent Victories 

Consider also some recent, earth-shaking news: indigenous and black leaders celebrated major victories in struggles against two giant oil pipelines which, they have claimed for years, could bring endless environmental harm – even death – to their sacred lands and peoples.

On July 6, a federal judge ordered the shutdown of Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access Pipeline long fought against by the Standing Rock Sioux and their allied water protectors in North Dakota. That same week, Dominion and Duke Energy announced cancelation of the Atlantic Pipeline which was to cross West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. According to a spokesman for Dominion, this move occurred as the result of “legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States.” Let’s thank our Earth Democracy WILPF activists in North Carolina, Lib Hutchby and John Wagner, who for years worked to defeat this project.

Coupled with the Supreme Court’s rejection—the same week—of a Trump Administration effort to proceed with the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline to transport oil from Canada to Nebraska, the New York Times ran a story titled: “Is This the End of New Pipelines”? According to the article, defeats of three pipeline projects “reflect increasingly sophisticated legal challenges, shifting economics and growing demands by states to fight climate change,” as well as stronger grassroots opposition. 

Hovering over all of this is the scourge of climate change, causing worldwide protests against the fossil fuel industry, which has brought us extreme weather events that impact vulnerable communities of color and the poor worldwide.

A Daughter’s Quest 

In my new book, The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil, I began to make these links while investigating the pipeline-related death of my father. Daniel Dennett was America’s sole master spy in the Middle East (for the Central Intelligence Group, predecessor of the CIA) when his plane crashed following a top secret mission to Saudi Arabia. This was way back in 1947, when I was only six weeks old, but it has relevance to today.

My father’s mission was to determine the route of the Trans-Arabian oil pipeline. (TAPLINE — See map above.) In the mid-1940s, the United States was just emerging as a major world power due to the exclusive American concession to develop Saudi Arabia’s vast oil riches. At the heart of this development was the greatly-anticipated construction of this 1,000-mile pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula delivering Saudi Arabia’s oil to a terminal point slated to be on the eastern Mediterranean, in either Palestine or Lebanon. From there it would be shipped to Europe, its oil a major factor in the Marshall Plan and postwar recovery.

In my research, I discovered an article in the New York Times dated March 2, 1947, entitled “PIPELINE FOR U.S. ADDS TO MIDDLE EAST ISSUES; Oil Concessions Raise Questions Involving Position of Russia.” Written two weeks before the plane crash, it was my first introduction to the intrigues shaping what would become the deadly politics of the Great Game for Oil.

Pipe Dreams and Nightmares

With 12 pipeline maps in my book, I illustrate how endless wars in the Middle East and Asia, starting with George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, are in reality pipeline wars. Which, to my mind, raised yet another question: can we make the link between pipeline wars in the Middle East and pipeline struggles (not yet full-fledged wars) in the United States? And again, the answer is yes. The connecting link is the struggle to control and profit from energy, and the determination on the part of the fossil fuel companies to protect (as my father wrote in 1947) “the oil at all costs.” 

My father died two years before that overriding mission took its first dangerous toll: In 1949, the CIA overthrew Syria’s democratically elected President Shukry al Quwatly, who resisted TAPLINE transiting through Syria because of Syrian opposition to the new state of Israel. The army chief who replaced him gave TAPLINE the go ahead, and the pipeline passed through the Golan Heights and ended up in Lebanon.

Four years later, in 1953, the CIA overthrew another democratically-elected nationalist: Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had nationalized Iran’s oil, and replaced him with the Shah of Iran, who opened up Iran’s oil to a consortium of Western oil companies dominated by British Petroleum (BP). Ultimately the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 led to the current regime in Iran.

Competing pipeline schemes in Syria are believed to have caused the civil war. Map created by John Van Hoesen. Used with permission of Chelsea Green Publishing.

In 2011, the CIA stepped up its efforts to undermine the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad after he rejected a natural gas pipeline favored by the US and its allies that was to originate in Qatar and pass through Syria. Assad’s plan for an alternate “Islamic pipeline” carrying natural gas from Iran through Syria to Europe was the last straw for the West, and the beginning of the Syrian civil war.

Can We Learn From History?

These are just some of the costs of the deadly Great Game for Oil. As my book shows,  protection of oil “at all costs” goes back to 1911 when Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, converted the British navy’s reliance on coal (of which Britain had plenty) to a more efficient oil (of which Britain had none). He predicted Britain would have to fight on a “sea of troubles” to secure oil, and seizing Iraq during WW I became a “First Class war Aim.” Once secured, the oil needed a pipeline outlet on the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1917, Britain formally favored a Jewish homeland in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration. By 1933, the pipeline terminated in friendly, pro-European territory: Haifa, Palestine which by 1948 would be Israel, now the most heavily-armed pro-Western oil protector in the world. 

You may contact Charlotte at chardennettlaw@gmail.com or by phone 802-881-1872.

Publicity still for the 2019 film The Laundromat, directed by Steven Soderbergh, production companies: Netflix and Anonymous Content.
 

By Marybeth Gardam
Chair, Women, Money & Democracy (W$D) Committee

August 2020

The Women, Money & Democracy (W$D) Committee of WILPF US (formerly the Corporations v Democracy Issue Committee) is asking members to engage in some social activism this summer and fall. Holding a movie watch party and Zoom discussion is easy, fun, and offers a way to engage new potential activists. Even in the midst of pandemic, it’s possible to reach out!  

We’re asking members and branches to set a “movie night” and invite their members, neighbors, co-workers, and friends to view the film The Laundromat on Netflix. This film combines the education you would get from a documentary on financial fraud with a story line that captures the audience, and it includes a great cast.

Within the following week, schedule a Zoom discussion that invites everyone who watched the film to meet and talk about what they learned, how the film made them feel, and how they might decide to address the issue of corporate fraud and government complicity. Zoom accounts are free, but you might want to take advantage of someone you know who has a paid account, so the discussion can last a bit longer than the free 45-minute version of Zoom.  

Toolkit Available to Help You

We’re developing a TOOLKIT for making the most out of your Laundromat Watch Party, including:

• Scheduling the Viewing and Discussion
• Sample Invitation 
• Strategic Outreach – Fine-tuning your invitations list!
• Where to Find the Film
• How to Do a Zoom Call
• Talking Points 
• Next Steps for Action  

To get the whole package, contact us at mbgardam@gmail.com.   

Why Watch This Film?  

Its cast is pretty impressive: Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, and a collection of really wonderful character actors you’ll recognize from other roles.  

The story is entertaining AND there’s a lot of educational background about the way offshore shell corporations operate. Read A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times.

Connect the Dots. Understanding how corporate fraud and government complicity affects real people and their savings is a great way to understand how to dismantle all that power.       

Why Watch This Film with WILPF?

We’re stronger together. If we can think together about how corporate fraud and government complicity affects we the people, maybe we can unify around some strategies to address the issues locally and nationally.

WILPF has been working on corporate power issues for a long time. Our Women, Money & Democracy Committee is recommending this film as a way to introduce the subject and share personal stories of how financial misadventures hurt people we love. We’ll provide some solid next steps too, so your movie night won’t be just a one-off action. You can build on it!  

It’s a great way to involve folks who haven’t been active for a while. Or reach out to people who are not yet engaged with WILPF but who care about economic justice.  

Any WILPF Member Can Participate

At-large members don’t need to sit this out!

You can easily invite friends to your own virtual watch party and use the toolkit we offer to make your follow-up Zoom call a success.   

Pass the popcorn, invite your friends and neighbors, and engage in social activism from home!