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Handful 2015-09 1 Handful of Salt Volume XXXVIVXXXVIV,,,, Number 333 September ––– OctoberOctober---- --- November 2015 Calling Young Activist 40 years...half a lifetime? 40 years...a long time to be in a career Leaders! 40 years...a fabulous accomplishment for By Teresa Kinder, YALPista class of 2015 peace and justice in Spokane. and PJALS Office Manager Summer is quickly nearing an end Yes--beginning in October 2015 , and meaning only one thing: it is time for a new culminating in October 2016--PJALS will be Young celebrating its 40 th Activist anniversary in Leaders substance and style. Program We hope you (YALP) can all join us for our class! membership meeting As on September 10 th a YALP where we will honor graduate our volunteers; as it is from 2015 I you who have been sincerely responsible for PJALS urge remaining a strong everyone to voice in our join YALP. James, Victoria, Chris, Bri, Ryan, Teresa, Roupe, Trung, Kasey, community today. YALP was and Jamie — YALPistas of the class of 2015 So join us at instrumental in giving me the foundational the Community Building on Thurs Sept 10 skills of organizing and activism. The (Continued on page 7) connections with other youth cannot be understated. YALP is the only place I can find In This Issue Page where young minds can come and work together. Rusty Nelson: Losing WWII 3 Last year’s cohort was made up of Respect immigrants 4 members of the labor movement, the LGBT community, social work students from Eastern Death penalty at the tipping point 5 Washington University, multi-generational How many Presidential candidates have 8 (Continued on page 11) you moved? Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane Affiliate of the Fellowship of Reconciliation 35 W. Main, Ste 120M, Spokane, WA 99201 · 509-838-7870 · www.pjals.org 2 The Handful of Salt is published quarterly by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane. Its name comes from Mohandas Gandhi’s salt tax protest in India, a successful, nonviolent, grassroots action that created significant social change against overwhelming resource advantages. Steering Committee: Louise Chadez (Vice Chair), Cly Evans (Chair), Dom Felix, Jessica Jahn, Adrian Murillo, Taylor Weech, Deb Svoboda, Ray Thorne (Secretary) Welcome Dom & Adrian! Thank you Deb Svoboda for serving as Chair! Staff: Liz Moore, Director; Shar Lichty, Organizer; Teresa Kinder, Office Manager, Andrew Lackey, Administrative Assistant Volunteers: Christy Anderson-Crosen, Krista Benson, Andy Castrolang, Lee Chilberg, Deb Conklin, Tim Connor, Pauline Druffel, Bart Haggin, Mark Hamlin, Kelly Matthews, Mary Naber, Rusty Nelson, Teresa Nevins, Mike Nuess, Dale Raugust, Tom Schmidt, Lynn Sexton, Alison Smith, Patrick Van Inwegen Contact PJALS: 509-838-7870, www.pjals.org, [email protected] Volunteers Make It Happen Contact Shar at 838-7870 or [email protected] to share your time and talents. WANTED: Bookkeeping Assistant, Steering Committee Nominations Bookkeeper, Treasurer, or CPA are now open! We’re seeking new members of our financial The PJALS Steering Committee is our gov- team! We need volunteers to work with and erning board. Steering Committee members eventually replace our current interim serve for 3 years to set forth the vision of our Treasurer and bookkeeper, Mike Nuess. work, approve and oversee programs, raise Duties include tracking income and expenses funds. For more information and a nomination in Quickbooks, issuing checks to vendors, form, contact Liz Moore at [email protected]. semi-monthly payroll, reconciling bank statements, filing various reports and WANTED: Volunteer Coordinator information with the state, completing annual Recruits volunteers via email/telephone; tracks IRS reporting, and reporting monthly to the volunteer hours in database. Plans for PJALS Steering Committee. volunteer needs for events of various sizes and Become a Handful Contributor. schedules accordingly. Must posses excellent verbal & written communication skills & have We welcome your articles, subject to editing knowledge of Word/Excel and Google Docs; for space and appropriateness of content. knowledge of Salesforce preferred. 10+ hours Contact [email protected] a month. Training provided! 3 Rusty Nelson on but as moral leaders for peace and nuclear Peace and War disarmament. That it has been 70 years is frightening. Not so much because so much Losing WWII time has passed for those of us already upon the scene and affected by the war, but because We did it, again. We those with the power to pull the plug on this observed the anniversaries horrible science of death have not pulled the of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and plug, but have run gleefully with doomsday Nagasaki. A few of us gathered by the river technology spilling in their wake, like children and recalled the 70-year-old tragedy that still playing with scissors and matches in a paper casts a pall upon the entire population of our house. planet. There was a brief but important We've built and tested A-bombs, H- discussion of several aspects of the bombings, bombs, big and bigger, with multiple mass premeditated murder and extended warheads and billion-dollar delivery systems. suffering of scores of thousands of Japanese Remember the nuclear subs with enough civilians, and the thoughtful and determined missiles and payload to destroy the entire way survivors have brought their cities back to planet with one attack from an undetected spot life, not only as thriving commercial centers in the ocean? Remember the rail-mounted MX missile system proposed for Fairchild Airforce Base, back when there were nukes aplenty, already, for the ancient B-52s we saw over Spokane almost every day? It's been about 50 years , now, since Americans began peeling away layers of secrecy and President Truman's coverup about the decision to use the bomb after the war was virtually over. And still, we beg that we not be told the truth. We don't want to know that the Japanese had been ready to surrender since April and were being stonewalled by U.S. generals who couldn't stand for the war to end without deploying our precious weapon, developed by some of the world's finest scientific minds and thousand of laborers who Nancy Nelson, retired co-director of PJALS, as she knew only that they were being well-paid to participates in the PJALS Hiroshima Day Remem- somehow support the war effort in strange brance on August 6. Members placed white flowers locations like Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and in the Spokane River and then delivered 11,000 Hanford. We don't want to know that the signatures in support of peace with Iran to Senator second bomb, built at Hanford, was dropped Murray and Rep. McMorris Rodgers. On Aug 25 on Nagasaki before Japan could comprehend members of PJALS and Veterans for Peace met what had happened at Hiroshima, much less with Senator Cantwell’s staff as well. (Continued on page 9) 4 Respect Immigrants communities of social conscience guiding policy direction towards the protection of the By Adrian Murillo, PJALS Steering politically and economically vulnerable. Committee Nationally and locally, social conscience is spawning a greater I moved to awakening, gaining Spokane a year ago. When momentum, steadily I first learned of the city’s climbing that moral arc “sanctuary” ordinance as it towards justice for all. now stands, I thought to No human being myself: I’ve landed in a is illegal just as no baby is city with a social born illegitimate anymore; conscience. I can do good that way of thinking and work here. This tells me talking has no moral Spokane is for all. standing in this changing Good progressive world. There are policy direction starts with documented and our common ground, undocumented people and humanity’s shared needs and vulnerabilities. no one has the credible 99% of us populate this common ground authority to burden and threaten the struggling to survive, hopefully among undocumented with negative, slanderous hospitable people and neighbors. judgment, criminal stereotyping or racial But some people reject this common profiling. ground, swept away by reactionary and racist Protecting the victims of civil wars political currents. They insist true security and drug wars, official corruption, the ravages requires social conditions of rampant of poverty and ecological ruin is nothing to be suspicion and paranoia about the changing ashamed of. The message we must keep on face of things. sending is that we refuse to be the misers of The anti-immigrant group Respect love like the xenophobes among us. Washington wants police and city employees I hope PJALS members and allies to embody and implement their racism and deepen their commitment to supporting and vigilant cynicism, create a climate of fear and organizing Latinos in this area because despite uncertainty. What’s next? The enforced the fact there are many kinds of immigrants in display of armbands designating status? this area, it is Latinos and Mexicans in But local law enforcement cannot particular who get singled out by one local solve a situation which is—in scope and city council member and many right-wing scale—a complex, geopolitical issue. demagogues like that pendejo Trump. As Hannah Arendt noted in The It is long past time to recognize and Origins of Totalitarianism: “The Rights of accept Mexico is family, connected by blood Man had been defined as inalienable because and history, and deserves to be seen as a they were supposed to be independent of all primary relationship of the U.S. governments. There can be no social justice without Adrian 5 The death penalty is at the These three cases represent what most folks would call "the worst of the worst." tipping point Capital cases require the jury to be willing By Shar Lichty, Organizer to consider a death sentence and this was the case for the two cases that went to PJALS has worked for over 30 years trial—and yet those juries returned with a to end the death penalty in Washington and we sentence of life without parole.
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