Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
Friday, January 16, 2015
Planting Seeds of Peace
Video is from the MLK peace walk here in Washington state and flashes between the walk and Jeju Island where a large delegation from this region recently went to stand in solidarity with the people in South Korea.
Today we did about 14-miles to the Ground Zero peace center (next door to Bangor nuclear submarine base) and had supper. Soon after arriving at the peace center an 81-year-old man arrived with US Marine patches on his clothes. He told us he used to work security at the Bangor sub base in the 1970's so we sat around and shared protest stories with him and talked politics. He said he was driving by the peace center and heard the drums of the Buddhist monks. Just goes to show that these protests get inside folks and sometimes it takes a while for them to be able to step over the line to our side of the street.
Tomorrow we head back to Ground Zero for a program where I will be one of the speakers and then we'll walk to the front gates of the base for a non-violent action of civil resistance. On Sunday morning I do a radio interview in Seattle and then head home early Monday morning.
It's been a great walk and I am glad I came along to be a part of it. I figure thousands of people read my sign as we walked along the highways and through busy city streets. Jerry Mander (former advertising executive now turned writer and activist) often says that the corporations try to plant product images inside our heads and they never go away. I figure we can do the same thing with our messages for peace and justice. Walks are good ways to make that happen.
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