Muste Notes Summer 2004
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June 6, 2005 Dear Friends, As you can read here, the Muste MUSTE Institute has lost a board member, the peace News from the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute movement has lost a stalwart activist and we have lost a good friend. Elmer Maas’s sudden death on May 8 was a great shock to us all. Elmer served on the Board since 1991 and was always a steady and cheerful NOTES presence. He was devoted to pacifism and VOL. 12, NUMBER 4 SUMMER 2005 nonviolent action, and he lived a life consis- tent with his values. Grantee Profile: The best thing the Muste Institute can do to honor Elmer’s long service on the Iraq Veterans Against the War Board is increase our efforts to educate and agitate for nonviolent social change. Our The Muste Institute made a $1,600 grant N O T in April 2005 to Iraq Veterans Against the X ability to accomplish our mission largely A R War for an organizing skills training of B depends on your contributions. We are try- E E regional coordinators and other core members D ing hard to respond to the many activist A (see New Grants, p.3). This article is by IVAW M A groups who have asked for our support, but Y Administrative Coordinator Amadee Braxton. B O our fundraising is still not keeping pace Iraq Veterans Against the War T O H with the demand. Although many of you (IVAW) is a national organization of P responded generously to our last appeal, we recent veterans and active duty service did not raise the extra $20,000 we had members who, based on their experi- ences serving in Iraq, oppose the war sought by April 15 to increase our grant- and occupation. “People should be making. We hope you will read the enclosed aware that we are fighting average letter from our Board member Carol Iraqis, that when we’re dropping 500- Kalafatic and make the largest donation pound bombs in residential neighbor- IVAW member and conscientious objector possible for our work. We have ambitious hoods, we’re killing mostly innocent Anita Coles carries banner at the March 19 plans to expand our programs and, with women and children,” says Mike protest in Fayetteville. Hoffman, who founded IVAW with your help, the Muste Institute will grow eight other Iraq war veterans in August “When you break something in a store and strengthen its active support for peace 2004 at the annual convention of you don’t sit there with crazy glue try- and justice. Veterans for Peace in Boston. ing to piece it back together. And you Now a national organization with most certainly don’t run around with a In Peace, members in 24 states, IVAW is reaching bat breaking more things. What you do out to vets and service members who is apologize, write them a check, and get feel disillusioned and outraged that they out before you do any more damage.” have been killing and risking their lives IVAW members are doing counter- Murray Rosenblith in a war based on lies and to fill corpo- recruitment work in schools and Executive Director rate coffers. Many soldiers feel isolated colleges, defending the rights of war when they return, not wanting to share resisters and conscientious objectors, and N O T what they’ve seen with their families sharing resources on how to fight for vet- X A and friends, and not exactly feeling like eran benefits and deal with health issues R B E heroes. “Joining IVAW saved my hus- like post traumatic stress disorder and E D A band’s life,” says the wife of an the effects of depleted uranium (Gulf M A anonymous member. “When he came War syndrome). IVAW also participates Y B home from Iraq, he was depressed and in the United for Peace and Justice coali- O T O would fly into a rage over small things. tion and serves as a bridge between H P After working with IVAW, connecting longtime peace activists and the millions with other vets and speaking out, he is of Americans who disagree with what’s back to his old self again.” happening in Iraq, but who’ve never Patrick Resta was an Army medic in seen themselves as activists or protesters. Iraq for eight months in 2004. After his IVAW needs your help to end this war. return he got involved with IVAW and Get in touch with us at PO Box 8296, IVAW members lead march in Fayetteville, began speaking out against the war and Philadelphia, PA 19101; tel: 215-241-7123; North Carolina (home of Fort Bragg) on occupation. “If you really want Iraqis to fax: 215-241-7177; email [email protected]; March 19, 2005, a national day of action have democracy, let them run their own website www.ivaw.net against the Iraq war and occupation. affairs,” he said in a recent interview. —Amadee Braxton 2 • Muste Notes Vol. 12/No. 4 H C was a project he wanted to share with O L everyone, envisioned as a seven-year, Elmer Maas, N E F once a month course on the genesis and O L L I evolution of the nuclear state, leading to 1935-2005 B Y the idea that history would come to a syn- B O thesis of nuclear disarmament and peace. A.J. Muste board member Elmer T O Maas died on May 8, 2005, while on H In addition to serving on the Muste P retreat with the Atlantic Life Community Institute Board, Elmer was on the in Voluntown, Connecticut. Executive Committee of the War Born in 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri, Resisters League for several years. He Elmer’s gifts led him to the University of was patient, kind, principled, and even Chicago to study music, although his when there were the kind of rumblings parents wanted him to get a business joined projects like the 2002 Hiroshima that are inevitable in groups, Elmer was education. Elmer moved to New York Flame walk, for which he gave a reflec- a steady presence, offering his intelli- City around 1961 and lived on St. tion at New York City’s Ground Zero. gence, experience, and listening ear. He Mark’s Place with his niece, Julie Maas. Elmer played piano at many Plow- was gracious, gentle and generous. He From 1962 to 1968 he was a professor at shares support functions and enjoyed also had a good sense of humor—he Juniata College in Pennsylvania, where working as choir director at Valley Lodge enjoyed subverting authority, and liked he helped organize students into the in New York. He wrote three musicals, joking about it, too. He was endlessly civil rights movement. two of which were performed. Last year hospitable, and an amazing cook. By the late 1970s he was back in New Elmer took part in the Telling Lives Project One of the unsung heroes of the peace York, joining the 339 Lafayette Affinity of the Columbia University Oral History and justice movement, Elmer’s life was Group in the 1977 occupation of the Research Office, sharing stories and songs an example of the daily actions that per- Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear reac- of the civil rights movement with students sonify nonviolence and love—not only tor at which 1,400 people were arrested. at a Chinatown middle school. did he take risks himself, he was there In 1980, Elmer and seven other activists Elmer’s local peace organizing was for others. It seems too small to say that carried out the first Plowshares disarma- based out of Kairos/Plowshares NY, his he will be missed, which of course is ment action. He later did Plowshares #4 home community, where he coordinated true; or that his legacy goes on, which it in 1982 and Thames River Plowshares in the office and got arrested at actions —at will, with all of us. I feel as if there is a 1989. He helped prepare people for Riverside Research, the Intrepid war hole in the fabric of our resistance and about 50 other actions, did support for museum, the Times Square recruiting we will have to work together to mend it. imprisoned anti-nuclear activists and station. His life-work, the “curriculum,” —Melissa Jameson K U . O New Developments C . E V R E S E An update on projects funded by the Muste Institute E R F . U N U Muste Notes U O The Winter 2005 issue of I N Z A I V T featured the Student Farmworker Alliance . N W A and its dynamic Taco Bell boycott cam- W E J - W S E paign in support of fair wages for M U O Q tomato pickers. The Coalition of R C F A J Immokalee Workers, the Florida farm- O T Y B worker group which launched the O H O P T O boycott in 2001, announced on March 8 H P that Taco Bell’s parent company, YUM Vanunu speaks to the international press. Brands Inc., had agreed to all the cam- paign’s demands. YUM will pay a In April 2005, Israeli nuclear whistle- penny more per pound for Florida blower Mordechai Vanunu was indicted tomatoes, nearly doubling the pay of for speaking to foreign journalists and some 1,500 tomato pickers. The Student violating other restrictions imposed on Farmworker Alliance played a key role him following his release from prison a by successfully organizing students— year earlier. A former technician at the Taco Bell’s target market—into “Boot the Dimona nuclear plant, Vanunu spent Bell” campaigns at some 300 colleges and nearly 18 years in prison for exposing universities.