KC AFSC Peace and Justice Alert – February 27 2014 Educate Yourself. Share your knowledge. Take Action! For information about the American Friends Service Committee, contact us at 816931-5256 or [email protected]
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“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.” ~Susan Sontag
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Spoken word training session with KC Academy and GreenWorks
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Dear Peacemakers,
We had a great spoken word session with GreenWorks youth this week and are continuing to schedule sessions with school and youth groups. We are looking forward to the March 22 workshop and the spoken word performance that will follow.
We listened to a community leader this week from the Samuel Rogers Health Center. She shared with us their experience caring for the poorest of the poor and the recognition that provision of health care and work to promote healthy behaviors is not enough. Health researchers believe that genes, biology, and health behaviors together account for about 25% of population health; medical care accounts for about 20%; and social determinants of health-things like: early childhood development; How much education a person obtains; employment; food security; access to health services; housing status; income; and discrimination and social support. Each listening session is fascinating building and reinforcing the case that we need to invest in people and our community.
We can use your help to participate in listening sessions, suggest leaders we should speak with and help plan forums, media and lobby visits and campaigns and other actions. Contact us to volunteer to help with listening sessions, we’ll provide a little training and partner you with an experienced listener. And join us at our next Move the Money Campaign Meeting, to be scheduled.
See below for these activities, other calendar events, and articles, alerts and more.
Thanks for all of your work for our community.
Sincerely,
Ira Harritt KC Program Coordinator American Friends Service Committee 816 931-5256, [email protected]
Check out these events below:
February 28, Friday, 7:00- 9:00pm, The Interrupters Film Screening of acclaimed documentary on Chicago’s Cure Violence Program At Linwood YMCA, 3800 E. Linwood Blvd., KCMO Hosted by Aim4Peace March 3, 5:30pm, Move the Money / Listening Project Planning Meeting, at AFSC office, 4405 Gillham Rd., KCMO March 4,Tuesday, 6:30PM, Speaker on Death Penalty: Billy Moore, March 9, 2:00-4:00pm, PeaceWorksKC Annual Meeting March 22, 9:30am – 5:00pm, If I Could Change The World Spoken Word Workshop for High School-aged youth. At AFSC office, 4405 Gillham Rd., KCMO April 2, 7:00pm and April 3, 6:000pm, The NonViolent Life Book Tour, Pace e Bene’s John Dear, tells us we can be at peace with ourselves and create peace in our world, beginning in KC. Both nights are held at Community Christian Church, 4601 Main, KCMO. April 5, Saturday, 4:00 to 6:00pm, Kickoff Spoken Word Performance: If I Could Change the World Spoken Word Project at The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave, KCMO.
Articles and Alerts Low Wage Workers are Paving the Way to Democracy The Mayor Who Brought an Economic Democracy Vision to Mississippi by John Nichols National Endowment for Democracy: A Tool of US Empire in Venezuela by Kim Scipes America vs. the World by Margaret Kimberley
See full alert for complete calendar of events
Upcoming Peace and Justice Activities Click on link or scroll down for more information about the peace and justice activity
February 28, Friday, 7:00- 9:00pm, The Interrupters Film Screening of this critically acclaimed documentary on Chicago’s Cure Violence Program as they take on the inner-city with their approach to violence prevention and conflict resolution. Event will include a community discussion on violence prevention in KC Urban Core. At Linwood YMCA, 3800 E. Linwood Blvd., KCMO Hosted by Aim4Peace
March 3, 5:30pm, Move the Money / Listening Project Planning Meeting. Help plan and implement a listening project on the impact of budget cutting on our community and raising up budget priorities that invest in people and our community. At AFSC office, 4405 Gillham Rd., KCMO March 4,Tuesday, 6:30PM, Speaker on Death Penalty: Billy Moore, who spent time on death row in Georgia, and whose sentence was commuted to life after the victim's family members advocated for him not to be executed. at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, 4501 Walnut, KCMO.
March 9, 2:00-4:00pm, PeaceWorksKC Annual Meeting. Hear about the ongoing work of this active peace organization and the Peace Award recipients. Simpson House, 4509 Walnut, KCMO
April 2, 7:00pm and April 3, 6:000pm, The NonViolent Life Book Tour, Pace e Bene’s John Dear, tells us we can be at peace with ourselves and create peace in our world, beginning in KC. He talks & signs/sells his book 4/2 at 7 pm and then, on 4/3 at 6 pm, folks wanting to take a step for peace and understanding will gather for food, table talk, a panel, & plans for community-building. Both nights are held at Community Christian Church, 4601 Main, KCMO.
April 5, Saturday, 4:00 to 6:00pm, Kickoff Spoken Word Performance: If I Could Change the World Spoken Word Project at The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave, KCMO. ------
EVERY Tuesday, JOIN THIS Peace Demonstration between 5PM - 6 PM in the median strip on the south corner of the intersection at 63rd & Ward Parkway, Kansas City, Mo. For more information email '63rd Street Patriots' at [email protected]
Weekly Wednesday, Noon, Jericho Walk for Immigrant Rights gather outside KansasCity Immigration Court, 2345 Grand Blvd., KCMO Info at http://www.ijamkc.org/
Every Sundays, 3:00pm, Weekly Letters to Prisoners Kansas City, Every Sunday from 3pm until we're tired (we promise to stay at least until 4pm)! Informal gathering to write letters to prisoners... Writing assistance, supplies and stamps provided. We can provide you with a pen pal, you can write one-time notes of solidarity, letters to complain to prison officials are always appreciated, or write to people you already know. Pancho's Mexican Food, 3540 Main St., fKCMO. Organized by Greater Kansas City IWW General Defense Committee Local 15
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------News and Alerts ------Published on Monday, February 24, 2014 by GRITtv Low Wage Workers are Paving the Way to Democracy Bill de Blasio campaigned on ushering in a new era in New York City and actively pursued low-wage voters. Now that he is Mayor, what can the people who elected him do to influence what happens next? It is a question grassroots groups grapple with around the country. On GRITtv this week, Ana María Archila shares a few ideas. Archila was a founder of one of the most effective community groups in New York; now she's heading up a regional initiative that seeks to build popular democracy, not only at the ballot box, but in between elections. Video> http://www.commondreams.org/video/2014/02/24
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Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by The Nation The Mayor Who Brought an Economic Democracy Vision to Mississippi by John Nichols
Chokwe Lumumba maintained a civil rights commitment that was rooted in the moment when his mother showed her eight-year-old son the Jet magazine photograph of a beaten Emmett Till in his open casket. The commitment was nurtured on the streets of Detroit, where Lumumba and his mother collected money to support the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.
Half a century later, he would be the transformational mayor of a major southern city, Jackson, Mississippi. But just as his tenure was taking shape, Lumumba died unexpectedly Tuesday at age 66.
The mayor's death ended an epic journey that challenged conventions, upset the status quo and proved the potential of electoral politics to initiate radical change -- even in a conservative southern state.
As a young man, inspired by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s struggle to address "infectious discrimination, racism and apartheid," and shocked into a deeper activism by King’s assassination, Lumumba changed his name from Edwin Taliaferro—taking his new first name from an African tribe that had resisted slavery and his new last name from the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.
Chokwe Lumumba became a human rights lawyer “defending political prisoners people who are being prosecuted because of their political beliefs.” His clients would eventually include former Black Panthers and rapper Tupac Shakur. His remarkable list of legal accomplishments included his key role in the 2010 decision of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to suspend the sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott, Mississippi sisters who were released after serving 16 years of consecutive life sentences for an $11 robbery -- a punishment that came to be understood as a glaring example of the extreme over-sentencing of African Americans.
More> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/26-5
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Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by Common Dreams National Endowment for Democracy: A Tool of US Empire in Venezuela by Kim Scipes
As protests have been taking place in Venezuela the last couple of weeks, it is always good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Empire’s “stealth” destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in Venezuela?
Before going into details, it is important to note what NED is and is not. First of all, it has NOTHING to do with the democracy we are taught in civics classes, concerning one person-one vote, with everyone affected having a say in the decision, etc. (This is commonly known as “popular” or grassroots democracy.) The NED opposes this kind of democracy. The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people—and always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Then, once the elites have made their decision, THEN the people are presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And then NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”
The other thing to note about NED is that it is NOT independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government.
However, its Board of Directors is drawn from among the elites in the US Government’s foreign policy making realm. Past Board members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Today’s board can be found here. Most notable is Elliot Abrams of Reagan Administration fame.
In reality, NED is part of the US Empire’s tools, and “independent” only in the sense that no elected presidential administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it wanted to. It’s initial project director, Professor Allen Weinstein of Georgetown University, admitted in the Washington Post of September 22, 1991, that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
More> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/26-11 ------
Published on Thursday, February 27, 2014 by Black Agenda Report America vs. the World by Margaret Kimberley
The word imperialism fell into disuse in recent decades. If it seems slightly retro, that is only because there aren’t enough Americans committed to telling the ugly truth about their government.
During the Cold War era we were told that communism increased in influence via a domino effect, knocking down nations one by one and forcing them into Moscow’s or Beijing’s orbit. In the 21st century there is a new domino theory which puts every part of the world into America’s cross hairs.
Barack Obama has succeeded in expanding America’s influence in ways that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could only dream about. The neo-conservative project for a new American century has reached full fruition under a Democratic president, who now has many notches on his gun. He and the rest of the NATO leaders began the trail of destruction with Libya, tearing that country asunder under the guise of saving it.
Using lies and their servants in the corporate media, they constructed a tale of a tyrant and a people yearning for protection. That evil success emboldened them and their Gulf monarchy allies further and they decided that Syria would be the next domino.
That plan didn’t work quite as well as Obama and the rest of the murder incorporated team thought it would. When the British parliament said no to new military adventures Obama was left sputtering on national television. He was forced to back down from an adamant position he had taken just days earlier.
The semi-comedic setback was only temporary because the monster must be fed at all cost. The system can no longer sustain itself and brute force is the only out. There is nothing old fashioned about imperialism. This malevolent force is still alive and well.
More> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/27-1 ------
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The information and events described in AFSC Peace and Justice Alerts are intended to educate and assist members of our community in becoming active in working for a more just and peaceful world. Inclusion of a listing does not necessarily imply that AFSC KC agrees with all points of view that will be represented at the event.
The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace, and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the Quaker belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice
Ira Harritt KC Program Coordinator American Friends Service Committee 816 931-5256 [email protected] http://afsc.org/office/kansas-city-mo