February 13, 2008 Dear Friends,
The loss of our dear friend and colleague Ralph DiGia has hit all of us hard here at MUSTE the Muste building. Ralph lived a great News from the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute life, and left the movement with a great legacy. His boundless sense of humor, his smile, his jokes and his passion for life infected us all. As someone who spent more NOTES than 70 years in the peace movement, Ralph understood better than most of us VOL. 15, NUMBER 3 SPRING 2008 that our mission won’t end anytime soon, and that we should enjoy ourselves along the way. Ralph always felt he was lucky to The Cost of Empire:The Iraq/ be working for a better world, and he shared that sense of happiness with all of Afghanistan Memorial Installation us who knew him. We’re gratified to report that our end- The Muste Institute made a $2,000 acknowledge the ongoing senseless of-year fundraising letter has drawn an grant this past December to allow the deaths, both military and civilian, Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Installation to enthusiastic response. Thanks so much to resulting from these wars. So he created be updated and transported to additional the Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial all of you who contributed. If you haven’t sites for display. This article was written for Installation, a series of three by six foot yet done so, it’s not too late. Your support Muste Notes by Joe Mowrey, coordinator vinyl banners with the names, faces and is needed and appreciated. of the installation. brief biographies of U.S. Military per- We hope to have news about the future In the Spring of 2003, Tim Origer, a sonnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. of our building in the next issue of Muste disabled veteran, was attending weekly The Memorial also includes information Notes. Meanwhile, thanks to your dona- demonstrations against the invasion about civilian deaths in both countries. tions, we are keeping up our vital and occupation of Iraq held at a major The installation, which currently assistance to grassroots groups engaged in intersection in Santa Fe, New Mexico. consists of 95 banners containing nearly This was shortly after the infamous 4,500 names, is now 600 feet long and is nonviolent action for social justice here in “Mission Accomplished” statement growing every month. In the last five the U.S. and around the globe. made by George Bush on the deck of a years our group of volunteers has U.S. aircraft carrier. Someone driving by installed the Memorial at dozens of Sincerely, yelled at Tim, “Go home. The war is locations in northern New Mexico, over.” In response to this kind of heck- including the University of New ling, he conceived of a memorial to the Mexico, the College of Santa Fe, Tewa U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq as Women United functions and the New Murray Rosenblith well as in Afghanistan. Tim, a combat Mexico State Capitol in Santa Fe. The veteran who lost his leg to a land mine Executive Director banners have also been carried by in Vietnam, feels it is important to marchers in demonstrations and com- munity parades. Y
E While those of us involved with the R
W project make no secret of our opposition O
M to war, the Memorial itself contains no E O J political content. Its impact seems to Y B transcend the politics of those who O T
O experience it. This allows us to put a H P human face, not only on those whose lives are being sacrificed in these tragic occupations, but also on the antiwar movement which is often characterized in a negative, “anti-American” light. Gathering the information and for- matting the Memorial is often a gut-wrenching task. After two years of working on the project Tim became overwhelmed by the constant exposure to the faces and stories of the young men and women whose lives are forfeited to these ongoing occupations. At that A solitary moment for a viewer of The Afghanistan/Iraq Memorial Installation on the campus of the point, I took over the research and pro- University of New Mexico as part of the annual Peace Fair held by the Peace Studies Department. continued on page 2 2 • Muste Notes Spring 2008 Memories of Ralph 1914-2008 S
Ralph DiGia passed away on D Ralph shows off his L
O famous smile at a
February 1 at the age of 93 at St. N Y
E Muste Institute
Vincent’s Hospital in New York City R C where he had spent several weeks M board meeting in D I the early 1980s struggling to recover from a broken hip. V A Ralph joined the staff of the War D with fellow board Y Resisters League in the 1940s after B member Linnea O T serving a prison term as a draft resister O Capps. H during World War II. He remained P active in the League for the rest of his life. He was also a founding board member of the Muste Institute and con- tinued to serve on the Institute’s advisory committee. An effort to describe Ralph’s incred- ible life would take a whole book. Instead we share with you some memo- segregation in the prison mess hall. population. But not for very long. Several ries from Muste Institute board About 16 of us COs, including Ralph of us former strikers were hustled off to secretary Bernice Lanning and advisory and me, were then put in a separate other federal prisons because the author- committee member Albon Man. wing of the prison, where we were ities were afraid that we would continue Bernice Lanning: “I was not part of locked in individual solid-door cells. So to make trouble at Danbury. Ralph and I the movement yet, it was the first we had to communicate with one were taken in a car (flanked by a couple demonstration I was ever on, it was at another by lying on our cell floor and of guards) to the federal penitentiary at the old Women’s House of Detention in hollering through the cracks under our Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to spend the Greenwich Village, and I was picketing doors. I had many conversations with rest of our sentences. Ralph was a won- for the first time with my friend Ralph under those circumstances. derful person to do prison time with. His Catherine, and I noticed that people “After four months we won the strike sunny disposition kept everybody’s went off the line and got coffee and and were let out into the general prison morale up.” came back. So I went across the street, and there at the corner of Greenwich and Christopher there was a man served with in Iraq were on it. He was (continued) holding a lot of papers. When I’m Memorial so overcome with grief at the acknowl- nearer to him, they start to fall out of his duction of the banners. It is sometimes edgment of those deaths, he could think hands, so I reach over to take some, to painful work, but to look into the eyes of of no other response. On another occa- help him. He had the most beautiful the casualties of war is to truly grasp the sion, a young man discovered the name smile anyone had ever seen. And he need for opposition to the folly of vio- of an old childhood friend of his whom said, ‘give them out, give them out.’ I lence as a solution to political conflict. he was unaware had died in Iraq. didn’t know what to do. I walked a few There is a large veteran community We hope that the Memorial will have steps. And someone took one. I was in New Mexico and we experience fre- a short lifespan. The horror of the occu- leafleting. And I did all of that for the quent encounters with veterans pations of Iraq and Afghanistan must rest of my life. And it was his smile. returning from both Iraq and come to an end. It is up to each of us to That’s really what it was. I afterwards Afghanistan, many who have served reach out in whatever way we can to heard from so many people who had more than one tour of duty. Perhaps the wake people up to the senselessness of the same experience.” most powerful personal experience I war. I will consider our project a success Albon Man: “I got to know Ralph have had with the Memorial was the the day we are able to put it away per- well when both of us, as nonreligious day an Iraq veteran took down a banner manently and devote our energies to COs, were sent to the federal prison in and brought it to our table. He asked us other much-needed activities related to Danbury, Connecticut, in 1943. There to remove the banner from the display human rights and social justice. we went on a work strike against racial because six friends whom he had —Joe Mowrey
Board of Directors David McReynolds Executive Director Superintendent Karl Bissinger Peter Muste, Chair A.J. Muste Murray Rosenblith Salvador Suazo Susan Kent Cakars Jill Sternberg James A. Cole Nina Streich Memorial Institute Program Director Newsletter Designer Christine Halvorson Robert T. Taylor 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012 Jane Guskin Judith Rew Melissa Jameson Martha Thomases, phone (212) 533-4335 fax (212) 228-6193 Carol Kalafatic Vice Chair email
The Muste Institute’s CR Fund makes Chico Peace and Justice Center, Chico, ature and a street theater project to reach grants for grassroots efforts to inform CA: $500 for the Partners in Peace project, youth in the Fort Worth area. young people about the realities of military distributing informational materials to Recruiter Watch PDX, Portland, OR: service, help them protect their privacy Chico and Oroville-area high school $1,000 for outreach materials, exhibits from recruiters and refer them to non-mili- career centers and orienting guidance and transportation for low-income tary education and employment options. counselors on the use of these materials. youth to participate in Life After High Our next deadline for proposals is April 11, NC Choices for Youth, Carrboro, NC: School: Career and Educational 2008. Guidelines are on our website at $1,000 for outreach to youth in the Opportunities, a fair highlighting alter- www.ajmuste.org/counterrecruit.htm. Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill “triangle” natives to military service. Arlington West Film and Speakers area with distribution of locally-oriented Salinas Action League, Salinas, CA: Project, Los Angeles, CA: $1,500 to materials aimed at countering specific $1,000 for a project providing new screen and distribute the film “Arlington military recruitment tactics. counter-recruitment activists with West” for students in Los Angeles area Peaceful Vocations, Fort Worth, TX: organizer training manuals and infor- high schools, exposing them to the reali- $1,000 for the Step It Up ’07-’08 campaign, mational materials to distribute to ties of military service. including tabling with informational liter- targeted youth in and around Salinas. D N A New Grants, L K A O E C
December 2007 N A T S I S E CRITICAL RESISTANCE OAKLAND R L A C
Oakland, CA: $2,000 I T I
The Oakland chapter of Critical R C Y
Resistance has fought prison and jail con- B Participants at the third annual Beyond Prisons Day mobilization in March 2007. Critical O struction in California since 1999. This T
Resistance Oakland helped bring together more than 400 people, most of them former prisoners O H
grant goes to expand and strengthen a P network of grassroots activists and com- and family members of prisoners, from around California to the state capital, Sacramento, to say munities impacted by incarceration, to “No!” to prison construction. build public opposition to California’s Nevada to educate the public about the oping countries. This grant goes to edu- plan for 53,000 new prison beds. dangers of nuclear weapons. This grant cate 300 women in rural areas of western IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN MEMORIAL goes for efforts in Nevada and New Kenya near Kitale about their property INSTALLATION Mexico to build grassroots opposition to rights and to support their efforts to Santa Fe, NM: $2,000 “Complex 2030,” a $150 billion organize in defense of these rights. The The Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Department of Energy plan to ramp up issue is especially important given the Installation features the names, faces and nuclear weapons production, consoli- AIDS pandemic; women who lose their brief biographies of U.S. military per- date the entire U.S. plutonium stock in husbands to AIDS are at risk of sonnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as one location and systematically rebuild becoming homeless and landless if they well as statistics and information about every weapon in the U.S. arsenal. can’t defend their inheritance rights. civilian deaths. This grant goes to update OLNEYVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD OREGON PEACE INSTITUTE the memorial and transport it to addi- ASSOCIATION Portland, OR: $2,000 tional sites for display. Providence, RI: $2,000 The Oregon Peace Institute distrib- MOVING TRAIN Olneyville Neighborhood Association utes resources for peace and nonviolent Burlington, VT: $2,000 began in 1998 when residents started conflict resolution. This grant goes for a Moving Train is the production com- meeting at a local church to address speaking tour bringing Sami Rasouli, the pany of Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller, who day-to-day living conditions. This grant founder of Muslim Peacemaker Teams, produced the acclaimed 2004 documen- goes for an immigrant defense network from Iraq to the Pacific Northwest in tary “Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral to respond to immigration raids, September 2008 to speak about nonvio- on a Moving Train.” This grant goes for a including a telephone hotline, Know lence and the situation in Iraq. new film project, “Peace Has No Borders,” Your Rights trainings, and organizer about a former U.S. soldier who went trainings for immigrant communities AWOL in 2005 because of concerns about around Providence. The A.J. Muste Memorial Institute the war in Iraq and now lives in Canada. OPPORTUNITY FUND FOR makes small grants to groups NEVADA DESERT EXPERIENCE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (OFDC) engaged in nonviolent education Las Vegas, NV: $2,000 Salt Lake City, UT: $1,000 and action for social justice. Our next For more than 25 years, Nevada OFDC is a grassroots volunteer deadline for proposals is April 11, Desert Experience has organized nonvio- organization started in 1997 to address 2008. Guidelines are on our website lent actions at the nuclear test site in poverty and social injustice in devel- at www.ajmuste.org. 4 • Muste Notes Spring 2008 Rica: $6,385 in October 2007 to purchase NOVA Fund Grants 2007 computer equipment and carry out educational and organizing work The NOVA Fund has supported by the Appleton Foundation, for coordi- toward creating a culture of peace and active nonviolence work in Latin nation and support of educational work promoting the defense of people’s America since 1999. The fund does not promoting active nonviolence and social human, civic, social, economic and cul- accept unsolicited proposals; grant rec- justice in Latin America. In September, the tural rights in Costa Rica. ommendations are made by an NOVA Fund granted $3,950 to pay travel SERPAJ Morelos, Cuernavaca, associate of the Muste Institute with costs for four SERPAJ activists to partici- Morelos, Mexico: $17,875. Grants in June years of experience supporting Latin pate in a meeting on “Human Rights and 2007 included $6,000 from the NOVA American nonviolence efforts. Free Trade Treaties” held in Costa Rica Fund, plus a $10,000 sponsored grant SER PAZ, Guayaquil, Ecuador: September 23-27, 2007. SERPAJ founder suggested by the Appleton Foundation, $10,000 in July 2007 for the Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and activist-singer for the SERPAJ-Morelos “Think Out “Neighborhood of Peace Youth Sara Mamani came from SERPAJ Loud” Gandhian Collective’s research Movement,” training and educating Argentina in Buenos Aires; Blas Garcia and education work on social conflict current and former gang members in Noriega of the recently formed Grupo Pro and nonviolence in Mexico and its the Ecuadoran coastal city of Guayaquil Serpaj—Colombia flew in from efforts to support active nonviolence, to encourage and support them in non- Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean peace-building and autonomy. In violent efforts for social justice. coast; and Efrén Hernández Maldonado, a November, the NOVA Fund granted SERPAJ America Latina, San José, Costa Chontal indigenous activist, came to the $1,875 for two activists from SERPAJ Rica: $30,450. Grants in June 2007 meeting from Villahermosa, Tabasco, Morelos to travel to the International included $13,500 from the NOVA Fund, Mexico. Congress on Peace and Nonviolence plus a $13,000 sponsored grant suggested SERPAJ Costa Rica, San José, Costa held January 29-30 in India. NOVA Travel Grants, October and December 2007
R Workshop participants share their In October 2007, the NOVA Travel A Z
A experiences at the women’s meeting Fund made four grants, totaling $4,800: L A Asociación de Trabajadoras S of the Network of Small- and A V Despertando a un Nuevo Amanecer E Medium-Scale Producers of the A I
R Chaco region (RPMPCH) in
(ATDANA), Trujillo, La Libertad, Peru: A M December 2007 in Yacuiba, Bolivia. $1,000 for ATDANA president Gladys Y B At left, activist Primitiva Martinez Gloria Campos Chirado and organiza- O T
O of the Yacuiba-based group tional secretary Sonia Otiniano de H Sánchez to participate in the Summit for P AMUPEI (Women for Equality) the Friendship and Integration of the tells how indigenous peasant women Iberoamerican Peoples, held November in Bolivia have organized 7-10, 2007, in Santiago, Chile. themselves, while three activists Fundación PLURALES, Córdoba, from the Argentine delegation, Argentina: $1,500 for a group of 10 rural sponsored by Fundación women from Córdoba province to par- PLURALES, listen intently. ticipate in the Meeting of Women with a Gender Perspective of the Network of participate in the 18th National Meeting Colombia. You can read about these 10 Small- and Medium-Scale Producers of of Christian Base Communities, sched- grants in the electronic edition of Muste the American Chaco region, held uled for February 26 through March 1, Notes, posted on our website, December 14-17, 2007, in Yacuiba, Gran 2008, in Coatzacoalcos, in the south- www.ajmuste.org. Chaco, Tarija, Bolivia. eastern state of Veracruz. Federación Nacional de Mujeres con In December 2007, the NOVA Travel Total October-December 2007: 15 Discapacidad de Perú, Lima, Peru: $800 Fund made 11 grants, totaling $8,680. grants, $13,480 for Lucy Deifilia Muñante Valdez, vice These included $1,400 to the Parroquia president of FENAMUDIP, the de San Francisco Javier in Cerocahui, Peruvian National Federation of Chihuahua, Mexico for 46 activists from The NOVA Travel Fund makes Women with Disabilities, to participate the northern Mexican state of grants for grassroots activists in in the First Regional Meeting of Women Chihuahua to participate in the same Latin America, the Caribbean and with Disabilities for the Strengthening National Meeting of Christian Base indigenous nations to attend and Establishment of Networks, held Communities mentioned above. regional meetings. Deadlines are November 22-26, 2007, in Santo Another 10 grants in December went every two months: February 1, April Domingo, Dominican Republic. to groups from Colombia, Chile and 1, June 1, August 1, October 1 and Centro de Derechos Humanos “Juan Peru to participate in the First World December 1. Guidelines are in Gerardi”, Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico: Congress of Waste Recyclers and Third Spanish on our website–see $1,500 for 45 community activists from Meeting of Latin American Recyclers to www.ajmuste.org/novaintro.html. Coahuila state in northern Mexico to be held March 14, 2008, in Bogotá, ESSAY SERIES ON NONVIOLENCE
A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute ESSAY SERIES #3: Henry David ESSAY SERIES #9:Aldous Huxley ESSAY SERIES #15: David
No. Thoreau — the — Twentieth Century 15 McReynolds — A. J. Muste Memorial Institute ESSAY SERIES original architect of visionary and prolific A. J. Muste Memorial Institute longtime activist with ESSAY SERIES
resistance — On the writer — Science, No. the War Resisters 14 Duty of Civil Liberty and Peace DAVID League, Socialist Party McREYNOLDS Disobedience presidential candidate A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute qty:______A. J. Muste Memorial Institute ESSAY SERIES ESSAY SERIES ESSAY SERIES ESSAY SERIES A — A Philosophy of qty:______Philosophy JEANNETTE of RANKIN #10: Paul Goodman Nonviolence Nonviolence “Two Votes Against #4: Jessie Wallace — pacifist, anarchist, War” and qty:______Other Hughan — suffragist, activist — The Morality Writings peace activist, founder of Scientific Technology; on Peace Peace Agitator: of the War Resisters The Psychology of Being The Story of League — Pacifism and Powerless A.J. Muste, by Nat Hentoff #1: Martin Luther Invasion; On Duelling qty:______#13: (Spanish) A 250-page King, Jr. — America s qty:______Martin Luther biography with leading apostle of #11: Some Writings on King, Jr. — Spanish many photos, human dignity — Loving #5: Emma Goldman War Tax Resistance — language translation profiling the Your Enemies; Letter — fiery orator, #7:A. J. Muste — thoughts, poems, tales of Loving Your grandfather of A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute A. J. Muste Memorial Institute from a Birmingham Jail; anarchist,ESSAY SERIES agitator ESSAYfor SERIESforemost ESSAY20th Century SERIES fromESSAY resisters, SERIES Enemies, Letter from the U.S. peace Declaration of peace and liberation — pacifist theoretician and including Juanita a Birmingham Jail and movement — Independence from the Preparedness:The Road activist, minister, Nelson,Allen Ginsberg Declaration of minister, labor War in Vietnam. Also to Universal Slaughter; socialist — Who Has the and Pete Seeger Independence from activist, pacifist and resister. available in Spanish — The Individual, Society Spiritual Atom Bomb? the War in Vietnam. qty:______Introduction by see #13. and the State qty:______qty:______Larry Gara. qty:______qty:______#12: Sidney Lens — qty:______#8: On Wars of peace and labor #14: Jeannette #2: Barbara #6: Rosa Liberation —three activist, socialist, Rankin — first Deming — the Luxemburg — essays on pacifistY occasional political woman in Congress, Wear Your RIL RA T Peace Shirt PO RIN feminist connection to courageous leader of responsesEM FtoP armed candidate — six articles suffragist, pacifist — T T O Muste Institute nonviolence —On freedomOU struggles, “Two Votes Against War” Germany s democratic spanning three decades t-shirts are black Revolution and socialist movement — including analysis of on the state of the U.S. and Other Writings on cotton with a four- Equilibrium Prison Letters Gandhi s position labor movement Peace” color geometric qty:______qty:______qty:______qty:______qty:______design and the words: “There is no way to peace, peace The Essays of A.J. Muste is the way – A.J. The Essays of Muste” Available in Edited by Nat Hentoff, preface by Jo Ann O. Robinson. Originally issued in 1967, this new A.J.Muste large and extra E D I T E D B Y 500-page edition includes Muste s Notes for an Autobiography, plus essays on pacifism, Nat Hentoff large. Shirts are P R E F A C E B Y Jo Ann O. Robinson civil rights, trade unionism and foreign policy, written between 1905 and 1966. made in the U.S.A.
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Essay Series Quantity Pamphlets (total qty:) _____ x $2.00 each ($1.40 each for 20 or more) $ ______1 Martin Luther King, Jr. _____ Sampler Pack _____ x $20.00 (one each of all 14 available pamphlets) $ ______2 Barbara Deming _____ The Essays of A.J. Muste: _____ x $20.00 * $ ______3 Henry David Thoreau _____ 4 Jessie Wallace Hughan _____ Peace Agitator: _____ x $5.00 * $ ______5 Emma Goldman _____ T-Shirts: (L)_____ (XL) _____ x $15.00 $ ______6 Rosa Luxemburg _____ I am enclosing a tax-deductible contribution for the Muste Institute’s 7 A. J. Muste _____ work promoting active nonviolence and social justice: $ ______8 On Wars of Liberation _____ 9 Aldous Huxley _____ * for bulk rates, contact the Muste Institute office 10 Paul Goodman _____ TOTAL ENCLOSED $ ______11 War Tax Resistance _____ SHIP TO______Please make check or money order 12 Sidney Lens _____ payable to AJMMI and send to: 13 Martin Luther King, Jr. (Spanish) ______A.J. Muste Memorial Institute 339 Lafayette St. 14 Jeannette Rankin _____ NY, NY 10012 15 David McReynolds ______A.J. Muste Memorial Institute NON-PROFIT 339 Lafayette Street ORG. U.S. POSTAGE New York, NY 10012 PAID NEW YORK, NY PERMIT NO. 02030
New Freeman Intern N Uruj Sheikh, the new Freeman I K S
intern at War Resisters League, is a U G
student at New York City’s Pace E N A University and a volunteer organizer J Y with Students for a Democratic B O T
Society. She grew up in New Jersey, O H where she continues to live with her P family. Her early activism included letter-writing campaigns and partici- pating in the Shalom Club at the all-girl Catholic high school she attended. She later became involved in SDS and also worked on civil rights issues at the New York office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Uruj was introduced to the War Resisters League by Francesca of the anti-war movement, among and interns. Fiorentini, who does editorial and other projects. Her internship started The Harrop A. and Ruth S. Freeman design work at Left Turn magazine in mid-January and lasts until May, Peace Internship Endowment was cre- and was also on the staff of WRL. though she expects to stay involved ated at the Muste Institute in 1996 by a When the League organized a dele- beyond that time. Uruj is especially bequest from lifelong peace activists gation to the US Social Forum in June excited about this opportunity to learn Ruth and Harrop Freeman to provide 2007, Uruj went with the group and more and develop her organizing and stipends to interns in the War Resisters became more involved. As the leadership skills. She believes paid League national office. Information newest Freeman intern at WRL’s positions are important; she hopes to about how to apply to the internship national office, she plans to help with also help with fundraising so the program is on the WRL website at youth organizing and an assessment League can afford to hire more staff www.warresisters.org.