PeaceJournal.org

How to Destroy an African-American City in Thirty Three Steps – Lessons from Katrina

By Bill Quigley. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps – just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars – 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans – will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems. (more…)

Turn, Turn, Turn
Cindy Sheehan

To everything there is a season.
A time for war, a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes, Hebrew Scriptures

I wish I could say I thought of something profound as
I saw the president and his wife’s picture on that
billboard on Hwy 317 in my rear view mirror on my way
out of Crawford today. I will be back for the final
weekend farewell to Camp Casey on July 6th, but I
won’t be back as the owner of property there, or as a
leader of the American peace movement. (more…)

Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan: We need you now more than ever

from the Campus Antiwar Network

We remember first hearing about you standing up to Bush in Crawford, Texas with admiration and hope. Just months before he had been re-elected, not because the majority of people supported the war, but because John Kerry offered us nothing for which to vote. He provided no alternative to the neocon strategy of more war and barbarism.

Instead, you did. (more…)

Being Hope
by Kathy Kelly

May 31, 2007

Earlier this week, the American Friends Service Committee asked me to speak about finding hope in hard times as part of an interfaith service to conclude their “Eyes Wide Open” display in Chicago’s Grant Park. The display arranged 3,438 soldiers’ boots to commemorate U.S. military people killed in Iraq, along with life sized pictures of Iraqi civilians and a collection of numerous civilian shoes to remember hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed in Iraq since 2003. I asked the audience to join me in recalling experiences I had while imprisoned at the Pekin Federal prison for “crossing the line” at Fort Benning, Georgia. (more…)