Outside the South Korean consulate in Seattle on the last day of my trip
I have just returned from my 30-day (24 city) speaking tour that took me from San
Diego, California to Bellingham, Washington. Along the way I did a total of 31
talks including six events at colleges/universities. I did 14 radio interviews
(two of which were broadcast nationally) and recorded three public access TV
programs. At least a dozen times my talks were video recorded for Internet or
local TV use.
Not once, that I am aware of did mainstream
newspapers or TV news cover any of my talks. This indicates how the corporate
media now effectively blocks out the messages from the peace community (and
other progressive movements). Years ago on such a trip it would have been
normal to frequently have a local newspaper cover such an event. But due to
cutbacks in newsroom staffs and the general corporatization of mainstream media
that is no longer the case. The same can also be said for local TV
news.
But the positive side of this is the
tremendous growth of alternative media - radio, public access TV, and video
production, which gets wide distribution via the Internet. We must all
recognize and give more support to these alternative media activists who spread
our movement messages.
My talks featured the Obama administration
"pivot" of foreign and military policy into the Asia Pacific, which is resulting
in a doubling of Pentagon operations in that region. This is particularly being
manifested in the "missile defense" encirclement of Russia and China today.
These moves on the grand chessboard are intended to give the U.S. greater
control of the declining supplies of scarce resources around the planet. The
Pentagon's role in the world today is to serve as the primary resource
extraction service for corporate globalization.
At several of my speaking events some local
elected officials were in the audience. My favorite part of these presentations
was the question & answer period. You can imagine that quite often the same
themes emerged. Here are a few of the top questions and a bit of my
responses:
- What can we
do? (We first have to decolonize our
own minds; take a trip to the Wizard of Oz to get more courage and
determination; connect the dots in our work so that we build links between
progressive organizations that sadly often work independently of each other;
remind people that the Pentagon is the world's biggest polluter with the largest
carbon boot print.)
- Why has Obama betrayed those
who put him in power? (He is a
corporate captive; google the Crown family of Chicago that in 2008 were majority
stockholders of the General Dynamics Corporation and gave Obama $500,000 and
raised $$ for him within the military industrial complex - MIC. Aviation Week
& Space Technology Magazine reported soon after the 2008 election that Obama
raised more funds from the MIC than the right-wing war hawk John McCain
did.)
- Don't the corporate bigwigs
realize that their children will suffer as well as the environment worsens and
the economy collapses? (These folks seem spiritually disconnected from our
Mother Earth. Their love for the dollar
has broken their connection and ability to see how they are fouling their own
nest. Consumerism, materialism, greed,
and hunger for power are a disease. We
have to reject the “Business Model” and the “Success” mythology. We have to embrace our Mother Earth and hear
the next seven generations cry out to us to give them a
future.)
- Who in the Congress can we
really count on? (There are a few
noble exceptions but politicians aren't going to save us - we have to do it
ourselves by getting organized and making demands to end corporate control of
our government and to convert the MIC.)
- What keeps you
going? (I find my hope knowing that
everywhere I go there are good folks doing this work.... plus I am very
stubborn. We each don’t have to solve
all these problems, we just each have to do our bit. It all adds up to create a
global movement.)
There are way too many people to thank in this email
but I want to make one exception. Global Network board member MacGregor Eddy
(WILPF) suggested I take the train from San Diego north and I did. It was a
pure joy. The ride was great (now and then I had to take a bus as well and only
a couple of times did I have to catch a ride in a car) and being on the train
allowed me to spend those travel hours on my laptop keeping up with my email
correspondence. The scenery was often spectacular. MacGregor donated most of my train travel
segments using her frequent travel awards on Amtrak, which was a huge donation
to the organization.
It felt good to be using mass transit and I always
spoke about the great pay-off that happens when we spend $1 billion on building
rail systems (19,675 jobs) instead of putting that same $1 billion into military
production (8,600 jobs). In each talk I asked the audience to raise their hands
indicating support for spending their tax dollars on either rail jobs or weapons
manufacturing. You can imagine which side easily won.
The Navy base on Jeju Island, South Korea was also a
key feature of each of my talks. At the end of many of the talks I showed a
video from Jeju Island to make things more real for people. As was fitting, on
the last day of the trip about 25 of us held a protest vigil at the South Korean
consulate in Seattle. The consulate staff handed several of our delegation a
piece of paper that inaccurately stated that the Gangjeong villagers support the
base - in fact 94% of them voted in a secret ballot to oppose the Navy base.
The Jeju issue is an important human and environmental example of just how the
U.S. pivot into the Asia-Pacific is
already negatively impacting life in that region.
This trip was a remarkable experience for me. I was
deeply touched by the kind hospitality offered me all along the way. I also
felt that each local host organizer appreciated that they were linked to a
larger effort and that made their task more valuable. I am grateful to everyone
– especially those who turned out to hear me speak.
