In the lunch room at Akins HS

Last Friday, Hart and I had a NOY table at Akins HS in far south Austin. I always enjoy being at Akins, partly because we are set up right in the middle of the cafeteria where students wait in line at the various food counters. The students see us and our banners ("make art, not war" and "peace is green, peace is creative") and are curious. "What's this about?" is usually the first question.

Akins has a large JROTC program and several students who came up to the table identified themselves at JROTC members. Often, JROTC students are wearing dog tags. Hart had his dog tags on, too, and that got conversations going.

During the break between the two lunches, a special ed teacher came up to the table and said, "I'm pro-military." We responded that because we are anti-war, we are pro-enlisted people. That is, we are pro-human being, which especially includes people in the military who we don't want to see killed or injured. She said she'd worked as a civilian on several US military bases abroad and was married to an enlisted person. She also identifited herself as a strong Christian and was worried about the US "becoming socialistic." We had an interesting back-and-forth with her -- very cordial even though we disagreed. She said Jesus was "a warrior." Hart countered that he was a 'warrior' with words, but not with a sword.

A vice-principal who hadn't heard of NOY came up to the table and took a few pieces of literature to read while he was officiating in the cafeteria. He returned them later without comment. We've vetted our literature with several staff at Akins in the past -- with the coordinator who sets up our visits and the previous principal. We also make materials available through the counseling area and the library and have been invited to table at their career fairs in the spring.

Right before the end of the second lunch, a bunch of students decided to start filling in the "I'd rather buy ________ than war!" fliers, some of which are posted here.

Get a (Green) Job!

We made a new flier this year with a War is NOT Green! message. Did you know that the US military is the number one institutional polluter in the WHOLE WORLD?? One reason is that the US military is the largest single consumer of oil. In fact, here's a mind-boggling related statistic I just learned: The US is spending approximately one BILLION dollars per 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, and part of the reason the cost is so high is that the military is paying about $400 for every gallon of gasoline used to transport troops around the region because it is so difficult to get the fuel there.

I thought that in addition to containing facts about the un-green military, our flier should have a list of some ideas for getting green jobs. Here is what I have so far, including a few local options and some with a national scope. These are just a few of the many possibilities out there. If you think of others that you'd like to see included, let us know!

Get a (Green) Job! ...Check out these jobs and job training possibilities for creating a greener, more sustainable world -- and earning a living at the same time…

Casa Verde Builders
Casa Verde is an award-winning local Americorps program that teaches hands-on construction skills by building energy-efficient homes from the ground up. As an Americorps program, participants earn a living allowance as well as an education award to use toward college. 512-236-6100

ACC renewable energy technology training
Austin Community College offers classes in new, high-demand job fields such as solar panel installation and design.
512-223-6404

Student Conservation Association (SCA)
Founded in 1957, this program offers work for young adults in the national parks, marine sanctuaries, cultural landmarks and community green spaces in all 50 states in the US. Check out the possibilities at www.thesca.org or phone the closest field offices to Austin: 214-442-1633 (Dallas) or 713-520-1835 (Houston).

Green Dream Jobs
This website keeps a running, up-to-date listing of all kinds of jobs that have an environmental focus, including organic farming and green building.

National Alternative Fuel Training Consortium (NAFTC)

This network of training centers focuses on automotive technology used to operate and maintain alternative-fuel vehicles. The two training centers in Texas are in Ft. Worth at Tarrant County College (817-515-4614) and in Tyler at Tyler Junior College (903-510-2153).

School visits in Austin

We're continuing our school visits this fall. This week, Hart and I tabled at Austin HS along with a guest observer from Houston. On Oct. 16th, we were at Lanier, and we have upcoming dates scheduled at Travis, Akins and Garza High Schools. We're getting "It's My Life!" books out to the school libraries as well as using them as prizes for our peace wheel. The books now include a CD produced by the folks at AFSC with a pdf file of all kinds of job, education and travel opportunities focused in Texas. Hopefully, the pdf will be available online soon. I'll link it when it's up.

Today's Nonmilitary Options table at McCallum HS

Today, Hart, Craig and I did our first Nonmilitary Options table of the new school year. We were at McCallum HS in north central Austin. I had invited Allan Campbell, host of the "People United" radio program on KO-OP radio to join us there to interview us and students who came by the table because he is doing a show about us this coming Friday, Oct. 2. But, unfortunately, just as Allan started taping some student reactions, the McCallum Principal came over and said that he couldn't do it without official permission from the district. I'm not sure what that process is, but hopefully we can try this again sometime. Meanwhile, Hart is scheduled to be part of Allan's program this Friday, Oct. 2 from 1 pm to 2 pm at 91.7 FM.

At our table, we had our peace wheel, penny poll and usual materials, including the yellow "It's My Life!" books that now have a new CD included that has a good list of post-high school options in Texas. The books with the new CDs were just shipped free to us by the AFSC office in Chicago.
They have made CD's for about 10 states, including Texas, where military recruiting is highest. I gave a copy of the book and CD to the school librarian, who showed particular interest (she said her daughter is doing an AMERICORPS program in New Orleans). We gave away about 6 more books, as well as buttons, "Arlington West" videos and "Addicted to War" books to students as prizes for the peace wheel.

I changed out the people on the peace wheel slightly, adding Michael Franti (musician who coined "you can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace") and Wangari Maathai (Kenyan Nobel Prize laureate for tree-planting). No one was familiar with Ms. Maathai, but hopefully, they learned. Hart did the penny poll -- not sure yet of results. I had made a new banner, showing a large peace sign in the shape of a tree, that read "Peace is Green" and "Peace is Creative" -- trying to emphasize the environmental connection. We have a new "WAR IS NOT GREEN" flier, too.

It was "twin day" at McCallum, so some students were dressed alike in pairs.
I especially enjoyed seeing a young man and woman walking together with awesome, matching Mohawks.

We had two teachers and a couple of parents come by and like our stuff.
Student interest was good. Some remembered us from last spring and came by to do the peace wheel and penny poll again. No flak from the police this time about our buttons (showing a gun with its barrel tied in a knot).

There is an Amnesty International student group at McCallum, and their faculty sponsor was one of the teachers who stopped by. He said maybe he could interest them in bringing us in as guest speakers and showing the film, " The Cost of War." I had a DVD with me and gave it to him. It's a really good film with interviews of vets from around the state, including Iraq war veteran and GI resister, Mark Wilkerson.

Upcoming tabling dates:

Monday, Oct. 12 -- Garza HS
Friday, Oct. 16 -- Lanier HS
Monday, Oct. 26 -- Akins HS

Here's the list of peacemakers on our peace wheel this fall. Study up!

Peace Heroes and Sheroes
defending freedom through creative nonviolence

Gator is an award-winning slam poet and emcee in Austin who was president of his class at Reagan High School. He has been active with the Texas Youth Word Collective and the band, Public Offender, whose latest CD, Drop Jewels, is a call to men to stop violence against women.

Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for leading the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, a tree-planting effort undertaken mostly by women’s groups. Maathai earned a doctorate degree and has written and spoken extensively about conservation and human rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968) is perhaps the best known of all US Civil Rights leaders. Following methods used by Gandhi and the freedom movement in India, King’s oratory, writings and personal example directed the movement in using nonviolent strategies such as mass marches, boycotts, sit-ins and direct negotiations in achieving equal rights.

John Lennon (1940 – 1980) was a member of the British rock band, The Beatles, and also had a successful solo career. He and his spouse, Yoko Ono were outspoken peace advocates who expressed their views through music and performance art.

Michael Franti is a musician, composer and poet. He produces an annual POWER TO THE PEACEFUL music festival and tours with his band, Spearhead. He combines different forms of music like hip hop, jazz and reggae and is well-known for his lyric, “you can bomb the world to pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.”

Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) led worker strikes, boycotts and marches for higher wages and better working conditions for agricultural workers in the US, including South Texas. He and Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers, led the successful California grape boycott and helped organize other labor organizations in Texas and the Midwest. A statue of Chavez stands on the UT campus.

Julia Butterfly Hill is a poet, speaker and environmental activist who lived for two years on a platform 18 stories high in a 1,000 year-old redwood tree in California as a protest against clear-cutting. Her book about that experience, The Legacy of Luna, was published in 2000.

Flobots is a rock/hip-hop band based in Denver. Their lyrics promote nonviolent social change. Their current release is Fight With Tools.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869 – 1948) was one of the most influential nonviolent activists in history. He helped lead India to independence from British Colonial Rule and his nonviolent methods inspired MLK and others in the US Civil Rights Movement.

Helen Keller (1880 –1968) was the first deafblind person to graduate from college. She learned to speak and became a world traveler and author who was outspoken in her advocacy for peace, women’s voting rights and labor rights.

Barbara Jordan (1936 – 1996) was an attorney who, in 1966, became the first African- American woman voted into the Texas Senate and, in 1972, the first black woman from a southern state voted into the US House of Representatives. She later taught at the LBJ School for Public Affairs in Austin. In April 2009, a statue of Barbara Jordan (the first statue of a woman on campus) was installed at UT.

New website exposing US military violence against women

There's a new website up and running as of this week, produced by a team from California State University at San Marcos, where a proposal for a ROTC program was recently shelved as a result of well-organized opposition on campus.

The website deals with the issue of violence against women within the military.

Here is the team's objective, as posted on their home page:

This blog is part of a collaborative project designed to deepen and broaden understandings of the relationships between U.S. militarism, foreign policy, imperialism, racism, sexism, and violence against girls and women.

See the site here.

The dilemma of draft registration for men age 18 - 26

Great article about draft registration, posted today on Common Dreams and originally published in Yes! Magazine:

Registering for Peace
by Tobin Jacobrown

On Wednesday, the 29th of July, I filed a lawsuit against the federal government declaring that, because of my religious beliefs, I should not be required to register for the draft unless it could be officially recognized that I claim to object to all war.

I grew up believing not only in nonviolence, but also that I should never submit myself to a system that is contrary to my beliefs. As traditional principles of Quakerism, these were part of my religious education; but also, by Quaker teaching, a person must come to these conclusions only by checking their own conscience.

There was no time that my beliefs were challenged as deeply as when I first had to decide whether or not to register.

I had just come back from six months working with Burmese refugees in Thailand when I was delivered a letter threatening prosecution if I didn't sign a draft registration card, already inscribed with my name and address. Having just lived on the edge of a war-zone, my beliefs were as clear as ever before.

On the other hand, refusing to register for the draft is a felony and, though no one has been convicted in two decades, it's punishable by up to five years in prison. Refusal also makes you ineligible for federal aid in paying for college, and, because of a recent wave of legislation, it can even keep you from renewing your driver’s license in all but a shrinking handful of states (my home state of Washington among them, lucky for me.) According to the Selective Service System, the organization that runs draft registration, many states with these license laws have seen registration leap to 99 percent.

But a more pressing question for me was: What does a belief in nonviolence really mean? I had to go back to the beginning, to the very root of my beliefs.

To me it came down to this: if I register, I'm saying, “If there's a war and you need someone to fight, call me up.” That's not a statement I can make and still respect my conscience. To me, any lie I put my word behind is reprehensible, and one that also violates my principles of belief is out of the question. If I'm ready to give up my beliefs for a little ease or regularity, what does that make me?

I sent in the first of many letters to the SSS indicating my refusal and asking for relief on religious grounds (and making it clear that I would be happy to register for service, as long as it would be recognized that I was indicating service at a nonmilitary facility such as a hospital or school). Two years later, still denied federal college aid or recognition of my beliefs, I sat with my lawyer, Arthur Spitzer of the ACLU, in a benign waiting room deep in the DC federal court house, watching the friendly clerk as she photocopied the 15 pages of my legal complaint.

I don’t know what the outcome will be, but I’m happy and exhausted, in the capital of this nation that will always be my home, no matter how far I travel. I feel grateful to finally have a way that I can seek relief; still, I think the change that I'm asking for is mostly a change of minds.

I can't tell you how often people have said to me, “I had no idea young men still have to register for the draft.”

Many of those young men are unaware, too. Over and over I talk to men my own age who say, “I never registered.” I ask them if they're in college and, if so, if they're receiving any financial aid. If the answer is yes, then I tell them, “Well, then you did register.”

I nearly registered myself on accident when I was filling out my application for student aid. There's a tiny line in the middle of the application for federal aid: the innocuous phrase, “Register student for Selective Service?” Below that is the fine print saying that if you answer “no” you won't be eligible for any financial aid. It's such a no-brainer that so many people answer yes, not realizing that a signature at the end of the form counts as an official signature registering you for the draft.

Now, like anyone involved in the legal process, I have to be patient. The defendants have 60 days before they have to respond, and it could be several years before this matter is settled. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to a country where service means more than war—and no other people, religious or secular, have to violate their beliefs in order to enjoy their rights.



Toby Jacobrown wrote this article as part of YES! Magazine's ongoing coverage of breakthrough opportunities for peace. Toby is pursuing a lawsuit against the Selective Service System that would make it possible for those committed to nonviolence to register as Conscientious Objectors to war, as was possible before 1980. He writes about registration and nonviolence on the website registerforpeace.org

Universal Soldier

A friend recently reminded me of these lyrics from the song, "Universal Soldier," written by Canadian singer/songwriter, Buffy Sainte-Marie and famously covered by British singer, Donovan, in 1965. More than forty years later, the lyrics continue to speak to today's dilemmas.
The last stanza is controversial. Rather than placing the blame for war solely on soldiers who fight them, I see the lyrics as asking all of us, including soldiers, would-be soldiers, non-soldiers and those who pay for war, to examine our roles in war-making and peace-making. I'll dedicate this post to GI resister, Victor Agosto, who took a firm stand for peace and personal responsibility when he was court-martialed last week for refusing to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.

Universal Soldier
by Buffy Sainte-Marie
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.