Prairie Voice

 We started our day by driving to the gate of Ft. Benning. We explained the history of the SOA and of the SOA vigil to the four NIU students, as we stood at the line that so many have crossed in their attempts to close this school of torture. While we were at the gate we received some abusive comments by soldiers and workers leaving the post. Also I took photos of the police setting up their on site headquarters. It occurs to me that we all want peace. It is too bad that we can’t all agree that it can best be acheived with love and respect; instead of with force and violence. If only we could see that the way to peace is not by way of fear and oppression. It is not the biggest gun that will lead to peace but the biggest heart.

Chuck went with the students over to the warehouse and assisted with the puppetista construction. I went to a Columbia Teach-In sponsored by the Witness for Peace group.

At the teach-in I lerned the multi-national corporations such as Coca-cola and many others, along with the U.S. government, were found guilty of crimes against humanity at last year’s people’s tribunal in Columbia. 

I also learned of the importance of defeating the free trade agreement that the U.S. is attempting to forge with Columbia.  The Colombian Congress has already approved the agreement and the Obama administration has approved it. The only thing which is standing between the agreement going into force is the U.S. Congress. I will share with you when I return what we can do locally to urge Rep. Foster to vote against the agreement.

Another presenter was the founder of the KillerCoke group.  You can learn more about this at KillerCoke.org The list of their human and environmental abuses is long. One of their campaigns is to get communities and universities to become Coca-Cola-Free communities and universities. We plan to have a showing of the video I purchased entitled “The Case Against Coca-Cola.” The students are going to try and organize a campaign to get coke off NIU’s campus.

When I asked the panel members about the role of mercenary companies such as Triple Canopy, DynCorp, and Blackwater in Latin America and especially in Columbia, the one panel member said,” When you hear bullets you don’t hear voices.” His intent was that the Colombian government and the multi-national corporations use these mercenary companies to terrorize the people so they won’t speak up for their rights, to stop them from organizing, to protect the business interests in Columbia and other countries of Latin America. As one panelist, a Colombian citizen, said, “If you look at a map of where the multi-national companies are located around the world you will also find that the private security companies are located in the same places.” He went on to say, “It is business based on fire and blood.”

Also the para-military of Columbia works in coalition with the private military companies without impunity. This is exactly why these companies are hired because this allows the governments and the corporations to get around the international  legal restrictions which are in place to protect the people. This allows the business interests and the governments to do what they would never be allowed or able to do with their standing military.

I also attended a workshop on Haiti. The presenter pointed out that once they called us communists, now they call us terrorists. I took eight pages of notes on the various workshops that I will not go into now. But I will share with those that are interested when I return.

I also learned some updated information about Nicaragua at a workshop presented by our friend Chuck Kaufman of the Nicaragua Network.

Today I was reminded of another reason this is such a unique experience. It is the only event I have found that brings together people from all over this hemphishere that are involved in the struggle for positive social change, that are working everyday to bring about social justice and peace in their areas of concentration. I am reminded of how we involved in the work for justice are part of a larger struggle that stretches back in time and that will continue after our time to carry on the  work is finished. It is as Alice Walker described, that those involved in the struggle for justice are part of a great relay that stretches back in time, that involves untold thousands who have struggled against the injustices of their time. We are but the current relay runners carrying the torch which has been passed to us by those who have come before. At some point we will pass the torch onto the next runners. And so it will be, as Martin Luther King said I may not be with you but one day justice will come. Not only for African Americans but for all those of all lands who suffer injustice.

When I come here I see how all of our work is interwoven, like bright stands woven into one grand fabric for change. We are not alone.

We drove beneath the soft drapings of a gray November sky. Surrounded by fields of corn and soy beans stretched out flat in all directions. Some times small wispy clouds seemed to be so low that one could think that they might be reached by ladder. I thought of how it would feel to stand on a tall ladder and have the cloud pass me, the cool droplets hitting my face.

The low gray clouds also reminded me of the day Maylan and I visited the coffee cooperative high in the hills of northern Nicaragua. That day the coffee plants were dripping from an early morning rain. We stood on the high plateau surrounded by coffee plants watching in the distance as the low gray clouds gently swept across the tops of distant lush green hills.

I thought as we drove with the constant cars and trucks around us of those people living at the cooperative in Nicaragua. They lived without electricity, without cars. They walked whenever they needed to leave the mountain top. Which is why our bus seemed so out of place and had such a difficult time getting up to their home. I wonder and had a greater appreciation for what our gluttonous  country must seem to them. How arrogant and brutal it is of us to go into these rural isolated cultures of peace and quiet, of harmony with nature and impose our will to extract their resources for our own selfish gain.

I think of Eduardo Galeano saying. “Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European or later United States-capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power.”

When I come to the SOA Vigil, I feel a connection to those who have suffered the oppression of the U.S government’s and the U.S. corporations’ endless hunger for more. I come to the vigil in part because of my since of kinship with the rural people of Latin America. Because I have seen what has become of the small farms I knew as a child growing up in rural America. We have also plundered and wasted our own resources, we have raped and decimated our own lands, and we have displaced our own people as well. All in the name of profit.

The fields that surrounded us on our drive are not the same fields I knew as a child, they are large corporate floors of production. They would be barren waste lands if it were not for the chemicals they are dependent upon.
So I look forward again to stand in solidarity with those who have lost so much and those who are stuggling to hang onto what they may still have.

May this be the year we raise our government’s conscience. May this be the year that we awaken the moral and spiritual obligation to pay back, to practice stewardship, to honor the sacred land and to respect the people who survive in quiet and peace in all the valleys and hillsides of the world. May we stop our plundering and return home to rebuild our own fields and make reparrations to our own people as well.

Chuck and I arrived beneath a clear star filled sky in Columbus at 4 am eastern time. A 14 hour drive.  We slept until 11 and we have made contact with David Stocker of Rockford, as well as our friends from NIU. Now we are headed out to  the Puppetista building. Also I plan to attend the Columbia teach-in hosted by Witness for peace. I love coming here even though the trip is so difficult. We listened to music the whole way. I just kept saying just stay in the saddle and hold on …so here we go…