Kudzu to You

Kudzu has filled the embankment across the street and climbed the evergreens in the vacant lot, suffocating them with a wall of green. I've been out in the garden today enjoying the cool freshness after those drenching and cleansing rains. My crockpot is filled with a vegetable soup, made with lots of bits and pieces from what I could find in the garden, in the fridge, and on the shelf, and some yellow tomatoes from a friend who had access to an ample harvest.

Last night I stood with about six other Women in Black, though we were in various colors of rain gear, as the drizzle continued throughout our vigil. At Vance Monument where we stand, some contractor has left our public square torn up for months with numerous ankle-breaking potholes along the edge of the street. Twice folks lost their footing and nearly fell, so we hauled one of the orange traffic marking barrels from the roadside and put it in the big hole to prevent a fall.

I've been mindful today of the folks in DC trying to take to the streets and call for an end to the war. I just didn't have it in me to make that long road trip, though others from Asheville are there.

The other day a Friend shared his belief that "the age of protest is passed." He was speaking of street protests as opposed to the on-line, virtual activism that he engages in. I wouldn't trade the conversations and shared experiences "on the picket line" so to speak, for even the most erudite Internet exchange. So I do both, and value more the interactions and the comradeship of my fellow protesters...oh, I mean peace activists.

Another criticism I sometimes hear: "I'm tired of being against things. I want to be for something." Well, don't we all. So, though the semantics of our ways of looking at the matter may differ, it doesn't change the fact that there are sociopathic despots in power who each day, and with every new Executive Order, are acting to criminalize dissent and deepen the roots of oppression.

There may quite soon come a time when "the age of protest" will indeed be past, as the risks of speaking out against government wrongdoing results in escalated police intervention, and fewer people are willing to take a public stand.

Rev. Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus objected to being prevented from entering Congressional chambers because he wore a button: "I love the People of Iraq." He was thrown to the floor by six capitol police and hauled away.

I think it is crucial now that we use our civil liberties in earnest and reclaim and hold public spaces for public discourse and, yes, even civil dissent. Too much sitting still at the computer, however "connected" we feel, may give that creeping kudzu of repression a chance to gain a chokehold on our once evergreen freedom to stand, to speak, to act, and yes, even to cruise the slow lane of the information superhighway. Let's use every avenue of civil action to make it clear that this Bush crime wave is stopped and these criminals are held accountable.

Blessed Be the Change

Today I've got three minutes with the Network of Spiritual Progressives at the podium for the Peace On Earth, Peace With Earth gathering. Here's text of what I might say:

Gandhi said it quite simply: My Life is My Message. It’s a lifelong process to be the Change we want to see in the world.

Forty years ago, when Martin Luther King, Jr. came to my Memphis hometown to stand with the striking sanitation workers, I was first touched by the transforming power of active nonviolence—the soul force of Satyagraha.

It is an honor today to share with you in this celebration of another great soul, Mohandas Gandhi. His experiments with nonviolence inspired Dr. King, and worldwide movements for dignity, liberty and justice.

During the Viet Nam war, my older brothers returned home to die the agonizing and lonely deaths from Agent Orange and Post traumatic stress. I see their faces in every young soldier seduced into the ranks of the U.S. Military in its endless wars of aggression.

I’m inspired by men and women I’ve known who faced prison rather than participate in the organized murder of war; and I’ve joined those who refuse to pay the taxes that fuel the carnage.

Gandhi understood One has to speak out and stand up for one’s convictions.

To be the change, we first need to understand just what is the change we need?

Gandhi knew: The earth provides enough for everyone’s’ need but not for everyone’s greed.

It’s in the accumulation of things beyond our needs

that the seeds of war find fertile soil.

We know the numbers, how billions a day are squandered on war making,

Killing millions, mostly noncombatants, caught in the crossfire of our deadly weapons.

Like ten-year old Salee, whose legs were severed by U.S. bombing in Fallujah. She will be here in Asheville Sept.19th.

Can we hear her cries, and dare we open our hearts to her pain?

We know that the air, water and soil that sustains all life is polluted, that the roads we travel are corridors for radioactive waste moving from the nuclear bomb factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, through the heart of our city and beyond.

We know of the un-housed poor among us, with no safe and certain place to rest, while developers clear the common grounds of ancient trees to build towers of privilege.

The seeds of war flourish whenever profit is the dominant principle.

With every choice we make we move closer to the change we seek

Or to the change we fear. We must be careful. We must be mindful.

Yet we carry on with business as usual, as if we have all the time in the world.

But the climate emergency is not a distant threat.

Mountain-top removals are escalating.

The fragile, irreplaceable diversity of life is everywhere under threat.

And it is profoundly true that an injury to one is an injury to all.

The undocumented among us are hunted, exploited, and scapegoated.

The war weary soldiers are sent back, again and again by the despots who rule with criminal impunity.

We build more prisons than schools, health care is out of reach.

And equal justice was drowned in the floodwaters of Katrina.

The corporate media are the stenographers of a corrupt power structure. Yet we cannot say we did not know.

It’s hard to face the truth, hard to live with integrity in a militarized culture marked by greed and fear.

But we who gather here today do so because we have the courage to hold these awful truths in awareness—even as we must acknowledge that we are all complicit in, and benefit from the illegal wars, these immoral occupations, this burden we place on the earth.

So we must stop. That is all there is to it.

Hand wringing guilt is no more going to bring the change so urgently needed than mind-numbing diversions, or the piety and privilege we cling to that lulls us into complacency.

Whatever the risk to property or privilege, career or liberty, we must stop.

We must stop supporting this system of destruction.

We cannot wait. Not until the next rigged election, not until we secure our own place, not until the risks are less, or the strategy clear. We must start where we are. Now is the time to turn the tide.

Are we stockholders in corporations that profit from war? Divest

Are we taxpayers fueling the very evils we abhor? Refuse

Are we soldiers in an army of destruction? Disobey

Are we fearful? Face that fear

We must build the new in the crumbling shell of the old. Constructive programs energized from the grassroots are critical. Government is not our savior, just ask the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

We who fail to stand up for a warless world, we who fail to find a way to speak out for the Earth, to intercept the runaway train of state, it is we who are killing with the bullets of indifference, the poison of despair, we who are failing the vulnerable and the voiceless whose lives depend on our courage.

Gandhi believed that Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty. He also knew that Inaction in a time of conflagration is inexcusable.

We must be the change. Blessed Be the Change.

Be the Change?

Some nefarious desperado stole my bicycle from the front porch while I was away over the weekend. It's a blue mountain bike with lots of stickers: Money is not Wealth, Support Certain Elders, Wild Women Don't Get the Blues, and such. Not hard to miss with all the messages.

But I miss it. A friend offered use of an old road bike he has on hand, so I'll be wheelin' about town again in due time. But if anyone spots my trusty old bicycle, I really would like it back.

I've been giving some thought to the three minutes I've been given to speak at the Peace on Earth, Peace With Earth September 11 gathering in Pritchard Park. The theme is Gandhi's phrase: "Be the Change."

Long ago, when I first read Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, I was determined to set out on my own experimental path. The question before me: How to live with integrity as a pacifist in a militarized, violent culture. Its been quite the journey over the years. I set out first to step aside from cooperation with the war makers. Having seen the damage of war in the lives of my older brothers, I simply could not contribute. As my favorite t-shirt says: "Not with my body, not with my mind, not with my money." Easier said than done, as anyone who has challenged the war machine knows.

But Gandhi's life challenges on much deeper levels than our outward complicity with war taxes, military service, war profiteering, consumerism, etc. All too often I've had to come face to face with my own violence, all those unhealed places where I can be riled and angered, and my ongoing complicity in the destruction of the Earth. We are all mired in this dominator system, to one degree or another. So when I'm asked to speak, to share truthfully from my own efforts to "Be the Change," it is a daunting challenge.

This Gandhi quote is worth thinking about.

So long as I lived under a system of government based on force and voluntarily partook of the many facilities and privileges it created for me, I was bound to help that government to the extent of my ability when it was engaged in a war, unless I non-cooperated with that government and renounced to the utmost of my capacity the privileges it offered me.

I've been thinking about the person who took my bicycle. What desperate need compelled him to make off with an old beater of a bike? Was he just cruising the neighborhood to see what he could easily take? The house was dark, as were the two empty houses nearby on the block, priced way out of reach of any working people in this town.

Thomas Merton, a Gandhi scholar, wrote:

A society that lives by organized greed or by systematic terrorism and oppression (they come to much the same thing in the end) will always tend to be violent because it is in a state of persistent disorder and moral confusion. The first principle of valid political action in such a society then becomes non-cooperation with its disorder, its injustices, and more particularly with its deep commitment to untruth

On The Fly

Blogging now on a laptop, used but quite serviceable. It gives me the chance to pick up wi fi on the fly and change my scenery while writing. Right now I'm in Eaties cereal bar with Bugs Bunny on the big screen. Otherwise its a spacious and quiet spot to get some work accomplished.

I fasted for the day Tuesday, joining with 1194 others on the U.S. Climate Emergency Fast
I took time to allow myself to really feel the impact of our lifestyles, my lifestyle, on the health of the planet. The fasting kept me mindful of my own appetites and habits of eating, and connected me with others working on the front lines of environmental justice.

On my last post reporting on my weekend on the hill at Highlander Center, I realize I attributed a quote to the wrong speaker, so I want to make that correction now: The "Squirrel eatin', cow-herding" comment was made by Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, the National Co-ordinator of the Clergy and Laity Concerned About Iraq. He is the author of the 2001 book, Urban Souls, and a professor of preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education.

I'll go back to that last post and edit to correct.

"That's All Folks!"

Highlander: A Weekend on the Hill

Music, song and words of challenge and hope echo in my mind from a weekend “on the hill” at the Highlander Research and Education Center's 75th anniversary celebration. Harry Belafonte’s song,Turn the World Around, united a van load of folks as we rode through the dusk into the apricot-hued sun along the two-lane highway from New Market to Knoxville for the opening reception.

We were in good company for singing. Some in the van were with the Vukani Mawethu choir, who carry forward the freedom songs of South Africa and the gospel, spirituals, labor and civil rights songs so vital to freedom movements. Others were part of the Labor Heritage/Rockin' Solidarity Chorus. It was just a taste of the power of the weekend ahead. Not until later did I realize that our shuttle driver was artist and musician Maurice Turner, the Chairman of the Board at Highlander.

By the time we arrived at the historic Laurel Theatre located in the 1898 Fort Pillow Presbyterian church, we were primed for a joyous time. Inside, the caller was explaining the steps to the Virginia Reel while the fiddlers, with bows poised, waited to strike up the music. Before the night was over, the wine casks were empty and we all had been energized by the intergenerational, multi-cultural music and dance that was especially vibrant when the Seeds of Fire youth organizing and leadership program participants took to the floor.

Back on the hill at the 106-acre farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, we settled into our sleeping tents as people arrived all through the night. By Saturday there were folks from every continent, thirty-five states and ten countries. As many as 1,000 crowded into open-sided tents on metal folding chairs for cultural sharing, workshops and conversations.

Paula Nelson began the open Plenary with a Cherokee prayer and blessing, in a spirit of remembering whose land we inhabit and on whose shoulders we stand as "heirs to a fighting tradition."

So many notable people were gathered on the hill, freedom fighters all, from labor, civil rights, native American struggles, Environmental justice, Katrina survivors, Immigrant rights workers, LBGTW organizers, cultural workers, farm workers, educators, film makers, story tellers and song writers. We talked about our work, our struggles, our victories and our challenges and about how to maintain courage and bravery for the long haul.

Hollis Watkins, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a founder of Southern Echo, sang with a strength rooted in his 40+ years as a freedom fighter. He credited his training in the new citizenship schools in the early days of Highlander for his successful work in movements from the Mississippi Freedom Summer to his current work with Southern Echo.

Speaking on the importance of intergenerational organizing, Watkins said "The young people have come and are ready to move this organization, if old people are not ready to do what needs to be done, then respectfully move around them. The struggle is much bigger than we are."

I'm a "squirrel eatin' cow-herding southerner," Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, told the assembly. Rev. Sekou is a Professor of Preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program in Chicago, IL., and the National Co-ordinator of the Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq.

At a plenary session with six former Highlander directors, all elders in many movements, these words of encouragement were shared: Be strong, be brave, have fun, dream and don't be afraid to take risks, and remember: an injury to one is an injury to all as we struggle together to change the world.a Professor of Preaching at the Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education in the Graduate Theological Urban Studies Program in Chicago, IL.

"This felt like a place that lifted the soul," Asheville resident Frank Adams told the gathering as he recounted the story of how he and wife Margaret found the land where Highlander Center is now located. "That's my birthin' rights to Highlander," he said. When Frank and his family arrived on the hill for the weekend, he told me it took an hour and they only made it a few feet, they were greeting so many old friends.

Old friends, new friends, songs and stories passed from generation to generation. Highlander is one of those all too few places where we can come together, learn together, meet and make change together.

On Sunday afternoon, As Guy and Candie Carawan and others were acknowledged for their long years of dedicated work at Highlander, there came, over the hill and through the cow pastures a marvelous sound and an uplifting sight. It was the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass band with a rendition of We Shall Overcome like none I've ever heard. The tent was rocking, everybody dancin' and singing, and the hills of Tennessee once again echoed the voices of freedom.

So I'll take you out with this You Tube video clip of the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band at Highlander.

Raging Grannies Storm Asheville

Now and again Asheville's audacious raging grannies take to the streets, sometimes joined by our sisters in dissent from Burnsville and Celo, to bring a little pep to the people's movement to Impeach the current criminal Bush regime and to speak out against all forms of violence, foreign and domestic. We've brought our songs, and those we've borrowed from other Raging Grannie groups to peace rallies, public squares, and in impromptu strolls through town. On one of our recent ventures we were captured on film. I discovered this video of our shenanigans recently on YouTube.

Locally I'm a WNC contact person for Grandmothers for Peace International. Sometimes we grandmothers are willing to listen, as the women of Burnsville, NC, have done sitting in rocking chairs in the town square, calling for conversations about impeachment. Sometimes we bring our seasoned sauce to the streets in costumed cavorting as another way to keep the issue of impeachment on the table, on the streets, and in the press as a most necessary legal remedy for crimes in high office.

If you want to join with the Asheville Raging Grannies, let Denise know. We Women in Black, have many facets! If you want to become a member of WNC Grandmothers for Peace, contact
Clare .

In November, 20,000 or more folks will gather again at the gates of Fort Benning to call for closure of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) and accountability for the crimes against peace perpetrated by graduates. Once again the call is out for 1,000 grandmothers to take action at the gate. Join us! Check out SOA Watch for more information.

Here's a song you might practice:

We Grannies Work for Peace
(tune: The Farmer In the Dell)

We Grannies work for peace
We work that wars might cease
We sign our songs condemning wrongs
And hope to tame this beast.

We Grannies know for sure
The price that's paid for war
We've sadly lived through many, and
We don't want any more.

We say it's an offense
To slaughter innocents
Destroying health and lives defies
Morality and sense.

War kills and maims, destroys
Ends lives and hopes and joys
We Grannies call for No More War
Please do not buy war toys.

No More War
No More War
No More War

And when this cause is won
And war is really done
Will we go home to sit and knit???

Fade off?
Not us!!!
Rage On!!!

- the Ottawagrans

Photo: Clare and Denise joined by Buddhist Peace Walkers Bro. Utsumi and Sr. Denise at 2005 Asheville Peace Rally

Black Dogs, Girl Scouts and Eagle Feathers

A native American Elder and Peace Maker Carlo Hawk Walker, held the large eagle feather aloft as he addressed about 150 people gathered at City County Plaza for the "Take a Stand" rally. He spoke from the heart against the war as a veteran of Viet Nam and also as the father of a wounded Iraq war veteran. He was accompanied by his grandfather, a veteran of WWII. The two had earlier joined the weekly Veterans for Peace vigil at Vance monument held a few hours earlier.

The Move-On called demonstration at City-County Plaza brought out people who we seldom see in other, locally originated peace vigils. It is always good to see new faces on the street calling for an end to war, but why do they not take a stand at other times? Perhaps they require the authority of an official invite through a national email list? Does it feel safer to come out to the streets as part of an orchestrated, clearly defined vigil, rather than the weekly ones sustained for nearly five years by local folks?

The vigil was held near the triangle of city parkland bequeathed to the people by George Willis Pack, but recently sold at a discounted price to Black Dog Realty, a for profit condominium developer.

Drawing our attention to the condemned Magnolia tree that still graces the grounds, Carlos implored the vigil participants to "follow your prayers." He urged us to consider not just the lives of the two-legged, not just the lives of the U.S. dead, not just the lives squandered in this war, but in all greed-driven forms of violence that have devastated the Earth and all living beings.

Girl Scout Troop 116 of the Pisgah Girl Scout Council, placed a peace pole in the people's park on February 20, 1999. "May Peace Prevail on Earth." Countless lives have been squandered in wars since that hopeful act by the Girl Scouts.

As we stood together in the shrinking common ground at City County Plaza reading the litany of deaths and injuries in this war, the mood was somber and prayerful. But we must follow our prayers with action. Can we appeal to the City for a prominent and secure place in the heart of Asheville to move this peace pole? Let us not allow the hopes of the Girl Scouts to be bulldozed.

In October 2003, the Mountain Xpress noted this about the Peace Pole:

Best Ironic Subversion

The Girl Scouts of America's Peace Pole in City/County Plaza

Even though last winter's Support Our Soldiers rally wasn't strictly a pro-war demonstration, those citizens making an overt plea for peace that same day were relegated to neighboring Pack Square. And even as the martial clamor grew louder around the courthouse, City Hall and other bastions of local government, at least one discreet voice kept quietly delivering the same message it had proclaimed since being dedicated in 1999 by the Pisgah Girl Scout Council's Junior Troop 116: "May Peace Prevail On Earth." With the words printed in four different languages, the pole continued its international vigil for peace mere yards from the weekly pro-soldier rallies in the plaza.

From its vantage point near the shrub-lined fence in front of City Hall, the pole was the image of humble persistence amid a sea of leafless trees sporting blue bows on every branch. -- BP

Image lifted from Asheville Citizen Times

The Scent of Rain

Rumbling thunder and a stiff breeze carry the welcome scent of rain as I sit to write. A flock of small black birds wings upward in unison into the gray sky. The air quality has been dreadful this past week.

Saturday I walked five miles with the Canary Coalition on the Relay for Clean Air. I have meant to join in that good action for the past several years. This time my friend Rae and I caught up with the walkers as they set out from the Parkway to walk through the privileged enclave of Biltmore Forest and then along the pedestrian hazard and traffic blight of Biltmore Avenue on into town.

The folks greeting us as we arrived at the end point had warm pizza and cool water and great cookies. There was a band from Silva, and lots of folks cheering our arrival. The Canary Coalition's Avram Friedman said the group has about 1500 members and does not take corporate or foundation money in the interest of maintaining its grassroots independence. He speaks of clean air as a civil right. Jean Larson, a member of the board and one of the walkers, told me the 100 mile relay represented the 100 miles that used to be the distance one could see in the summer. Now, sadly, that is reduced to a mere 20 miles.

Its good work with a vital and very grassroots group.

Photo: Volunteer David Wheeler offers a glass of cool water to author at end of five mile walk.
Lifted from Canary Coalition website

Freeway Blogging: Distracting Dissent?

Jonas Phillips has had enough of the war, of the lies that sustain it, of the erosion of civil liberties, and of the myth of equal justice under the law. When Scooter Libby had his sentence dismissed by Bush Jr., Jonas and Kindra knew the time had come to pick a corner in Asheville and take a stand. They aren't alone.

I first noticed them standing across from the Vance monument in Asheville while I stood in the weekly silent vigil with Women in Black, a vigil that has sustained every Friday since late 2001, before the war began, despite police arrests and city efforts to close the park to dissent. I noticed the Phillips family standing there when I joined the Veterans for Peace on the opposite corner in that long-standing, every Tuesday vigil. Soon we were all talking and sometimes standing together, sharing concerns, conspiring to practice Democracy, determined in our citizen duty to dissent, becoming "known associates" in the critical efforts to reclaim Democracy.

The signs Jonas and Kindra carry are clear: End the War. Impeach Bush and Cheney, and they hold them high, often joined by their young daughter for an hour or two, day after day on that Asheville corner. They call for passage of H.R. 333, the Impeach Cheney resolution put forward by Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

In recent months, before work, Jonas took a stand with his cardboard sign on the Haywood Road overpass above I-240. Other folk have been standing each Monday at the Flint Street overpass. Susan of the WNC Peace Coalition, David of the Mountain Greens, Jim of Veterans for Peace, and I have stood, at one time or another, on the Flint Street bridge with our Honk to Impeach signs. Wezel and I stood there yesterday, stopping briefly to unfurl a large banner visible to thousands of passing motorists. The responses are always overwhelmingly positive. Our signs are no more distracting than a commercial vehicle with a corporate logo painted on its side passing overhead.

Yet Jonas was arrested, cuffed and hauled to jail while we Flint Street bridge bloggers were not. When approached by an officer a few weeks ago, we were merely cautioned not to hang the sign over the railing. So while the police and the Department of Transportation scramble to find out just what "crime" to charge this active citizen with, all of us who care for Democracy must find a way to rise and stand with one another. Honking is not enough. Take a stand, find a corner, a bridge, any visible spot to practice free speech. It is the criminals in the highest offices of this land that must be cuffed, not patriotic citizens putting civil liberties into action.

Chief Hogan, in a letter to the City Manager that Councilman Freeborn forwarded to me writes:

[The] Department of Transportation has established an administrative order, 19A NCAC 2E.0415, Advertising Signs within Right of Way. This rule states: It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation to erect or place any advertising or other sign, except regulation traffic and warning signs approved by the Department of Transportation on any highway or the right of way thereof, or so as to overhang the right of way, or to permit the erection or placing of any advertising or other sign, as herein prohibited, on any highway right of way which is situated over any land owned, rented, leased or claimed by such person, firm or corporation…

I have been advised that this is a Class 1 Misdemeanor.

Today, Curt Euler has reviewed the ordinance use to take enforcement and we will be examining the content and intent of this ordinance as part of our internal investigation. I have included it so you can see the potential violations under this ordinance.

After reviewing 16-1 of the City Code, person, singly or in a group, can be charged under this ordinance if

1. The person obstructs vehicular or pedestrian traffic (I interpret this to mean physically does not act to obstruct traffic); or

2. The person causes to be obstructed vehicular or pedestrian traffic (i.e. some indirect act that causes vehicular or traffic to become obstructed)

Since the City Code does not define obstruct, the plain meaning of the word means – to hinder or prevent from progress, check, stop, also to retard the process of, make accomplishment difficult or slow. Another definition is to block up; to interpose obstacles; to render impassable; to fill with barriers or impediments. Therefore, I think it is possible \that a person’s conduct on top of a highway overpass can impede the vehicular traffic below. However, I think the officer must state how the person’s conduct obstructed the traffic, as opposed to, MAY obstruct traffic. Hence, a person can use hold a sign over his or her head over the overpass until the traffic below becomes “obstructed” or “to slow the traffic on the highway”. If the traffic is not messed with, then I think there is no violation of the statute.

As we move forward in investigating this matter, we will take into consideration at a minimum the following issues:

Did our actions impede the legitimate exercise of freedom of speech?

Do our actions represent a proper balance between the public’s safety and security when compared to the rights of an individual expressing his or her opinion or free speech?

What is the intent of the Department of Transportations Administrative Rules and what level of concern do they have as it relates to traffic safety and the displaying of signs on highway overpasses?

Once we answer the above questions, we will establish a clear policy and train personnel in the policy to ensure we have a fair and appropriate response to similar events in the future.

Nothing Left to Lose

The young woman wailed out the lyrics of the familiar Janis Joplin song, Me and Bobby McGee, with heartfelt passion and no small amount of talent. She looked a bit rough-- in that out of work, been walking around all day in the hot sun way. Women in Black had just ended our silent vigil at Vance Monument. We were circling up sharing names when she approached, breaking into song.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose
Nothing, I mean nothing honey if it ain't free, no no
Yeah feeling good was easy Lord when he sang the blues
You know feeling good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

We invited her into our small circle. "We're about to learn a dance. Would you like to join us?" She was so agitated, yet stepped forward as she told us, "Buncombe County took my baby, he was just three days old and they took him." She reached into the back pocket of her blue jean shorts and pulled out a photo of a newborn infant. "They had no right to take my baby, he was my product," she wailed. Then she burst into song again.

"What is your baby's name, " we asked, "We'll dance for your baby." Then we took her hands and began the simple steps of the Elm dance, a Latvian circle dance in honor of all the lives lost to nuclear radiation after Chernobyl. Buddhist eco-philosopher Joanna Macy uses the dance in her healing rituals and describes it as:

a dance of intention, it helps us strengthen our resolve, not only for the well-being of those around Chernobyl, but for wider healings, as well. And the custom has arisen, in the last half of the dance, to call out spontaneously the names of those whose healing we desire, salmon, redwoods, topsoil, the schools, the prisons, Bosnia, the Amazon. Entering the dance then is like entering a sort of neural web in which we can experience our interconnected-ness with all beings. Or it's like a sonic Indra's Net, letting us feel our mutual belonging and how it can sustain us.

So we danced with this grieving mother to the haunting lament of the Latvian song, and it seemed to calm her down. As she went on her way, a few of us then walked to the condemned Magnolia near city hall to add the power of the Elm Dance to the energy already surrounding the tree from last week's Wiccan ritual.

On my last visit to the Magnolia I noticed the Peace Pole. It was placed there on February 20, 1999, by Troop 116 of the Pisgah Girl Scout Council. "May Peace Prevail on Earth." Surely the County has not also sold out the Girl Scouts? Photo by Jim Genaro from Asheville Daily Planet of recent Wiccan ritual at the Magnolia.

Sunflowers at the Gates of Hell: Oak Ridge

I sat for awhile again this afternoon beneath the Magnolia at city hall, the tree is slated for execution by a short-sighted developer. I hoped I could find some strength sitting there beneath that old,old tree. I thought about executions, about Darrell Grayson, murdered last month by the State of Alabama who refused to allow DNA evidence that could have exonerated him. I thought about Hiroshima and the murderous mushroom cloud. I thought about Iraq, and the millions who are dying. I thought about my country and how deeply sad it is to realize the truth of our war crimes.

Its August 6th. Sixty two years since the U.S. dropped the Atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. There are still living victims of that war crime. There are still those who make excuses for the genocide.

Saturday I walked with several hundred people a few miles through Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the site of the Y-12 Nuclear Bomb plant. They expected us, and expected that once again there would be those few among us who would not leave voluntarily at the order to disperse. Five were handcuffed and taken away by local police after they affixed themselves to the metal barricade that separated the Federal facility from the City Street.

Wednesday three others will be on trial for a similar act of resistance last year.

Its hard to stand at the gates of the Y-12 where scores of heavily armed officers stand ready to arrest. Its hard to keep returning, year after year, to demand that the war crime of manufacture of nuclear weapons cease. But we must, and we do, week after week, year after year, sometimes just the faithful few who live nearby; other times hundreds of people traveling from around the country. This year two intrepid Asheville folk bicycled there, others joined the 9th annual Buddhist Peace Walk to the gates, or were part of a relay run from Ohio. Still more came by bus and carpool.

It was hot, hot, hot. But not as hot as the incinerating fires that the U.S. unleashed on the people of Hiroshima. All along the route to the bomb plant we tossed Sunflower seeds to symbolize hope. Sunflower seeds that might have the strength to push through the hard, toxic clay of denial that covers the ground around Oak Ridge.


Image lifted from: Ground Zero 1945

Wherever we turn our collective national wrath, or our voracious greed, it is the most vulnerable who bear the brunt of the violence.

So I will sit with that lovely condemned Magnolia every day that I can, for as long as she stands, and I will think on these things, and accept her gift of a sweet breeze and remember that her roots go deep, deep into the soil, and I'll scatter a few sunflowers there...

HAH-RRRAH-HEE-AH!!!

Tonight a circle of chanting, tree-honoring folk summoned by Coven Oldenwilde to "draw a magical line in the sand," circled a mature beauty of a Magnolia tree, one whose double trunk merges in a graceful union opening into low hanging branches. This tree has stood for nearly a century on park land across from the Asheville City Hall. Now this public green has been sold to a developer. Sold. How could this happen? Sold to make way for a private, high-rise building project that will profit a few at the expense of all.

This Magnolia stands in solitary dignity, a remnant of a time when the grace and power of native trees was recognized and honored. This magnolia has sheltered mountain fiddlers, young lovers married beneath its fragrant bower, and generations of mountain residents who have gathered season after season for dance and song and music.

I encircled the tree with many others tonight, chanting sounds of power and strength. Words of ancient times. "Barbarous words of power," according to Lady Passion, High Priestess of Coven Oldenwilde, to strengthen and to protect the tree.
Many who gathered to honor this tree fear that it is in imminent danger, and call on everyone who recognizes the value of our city trees to come sit with this Magnolia throughout the next week. Come on your lunch break, after your work, on the weekend, any time you are nearby. Be a companion to this tree in its time of need. Bring a book, a picnic, a friend. Call all your friends and keep vigil beneath the wide spreading branches of Asheville's Magnolia.

And when those who made the deal to sell this piece of Asheville's soul, when ever they look out from their office window, let them see a tree no longer holding the ground alone and defenseless. Let them see a tree accompanied by a continuous stream of human allies standing guard, sitting beneath our treasured Magnolia, or being held in its strong branches, each protecting the other.

Where will we draw the line? When will the destruction stop? Don't let that tree fall alone.

Top photo by Barry Summers
Small shot lifted from Asheville Citizen Times

Take Back America!! Patriot Tour

Join the Veterans for Peace, Chapter 099, on August 6th at 7 pm. in the Simpson Lecture Hall, A-B Tech (Victoria Road, Asheville), to hear Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col, USAF, Ret. called "The Best Public Speaker in the Country" by the Los Angeles Times. Dr. Bowman has a lot to say, and a lot of experience to back his views:

As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I can tell you that the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON.

This patriot is spending the last months of his life challenging We, the people to "Take Back America." Bowman is touring the country, despite Agent-Orange induced cancer, to challenge and encourage an active citizen response to the tyranny that threatens our country.

It is we, here at home, who are the foot soldiers battling to preserve our cherished freedoms by exercising them, in spite of opposition and ridicule. It is we who protect our civil rights through speaking out. We are the Minutemen sounding the alarm against tyranny. We are upholding the spirit of the American Revolution. We are preserving the freedoms that the troops in the desert have a right to come back to. The troops getting shot at in Iraq are not protecting us. We are protecting them, and their honor and their freedoms.

Image lifted: commons.wikimedia.org

Seven Distinct Beats

Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo

With this simple, yet profound chant, accompanied by the seven distinctive drum beats, the Buddhist peace walkers set out on the first steps of the journey to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We gathered in the rain at Asheville's little-known Iraq Peace Park. The place had the feel of an abandoned graveyard when I arrived a little before 8 a.m. Saturday. I began clearing some of the weeds that were taking over the path along the wall of engraved stones honoring the life and marking the death of many of the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. This commemorative wall was Charlie Thomas' vision, and a labor of love of many who donated the land, cleared the site, built the wall, engraved the stones, and set them in place along the boundary stretching from Courtland Ave. to the backside of the Montford Park Amphitheater.

But the war continues and the deaths keep mounting and the concrete block wall stretches out with thousands more deaths and too few hands to place the stones...

The monks of the Nipponzan Myohoji order blessed the wall with their chanting as the rains fell, just as they did standing with Women in Black Friday in the midst of the Belle Chere carnival.

"Tell Charlie how moved we are by his work in building this wall," they told me.

Perhaps we who seek peace, we who yearn for justice, we who grieve these needless deaths, can find a way to bring new life to this peace park.

Photo: Sister Denise and Bro. Utsumi, with Women in Black vigilers, including Claire Dema and son Maxum.

Standing our Ground

The carnival atmosphere of Belle Chere shifted dramatically today as the rains and winds blew in hard and fast. I walked up to join the Women in Black for our usual 5 p.m. Friday vigil. As the rains came and the people scattered for shelter, we stood our ground, joined by the Buddhist Peace walkers from Atlanta who are here to begin their 9th annual pilgrimage to Oak Ridge for the August 4 gathering at the gates of the Y-12 bomb factory.

They chanted and drummed while we stood in silence through the rains. We felt strong. It was good to be there to bear witness, to make space, to hold in our hearts those who suffer the violence. The rains are cleansing, and a fitting beginning for a 100 mile walk to the gates of hell at Oak Ridge where we will drum, and pray, and plead for an end to the madness of preparing for nuclear war.

Meanwhile, Belle Chere is happening just a few blocks away, and I'm off to find some music...

Photo from Anne Craig

What ya gonna do when they come for you?

Somebody complained to the authorities when they noticed the up-side down flag that Mark and Deborah Kuhn flew outside their Asheville home last week. Not only was it up-side down, but they had pinned explanatory notes to the red, white and blue:

"It is a distress signal. Help your country." and "The upside down flag is not a sign of disrespect."

The Kuhns were engaged in a legal and Constitutionally protected expression of dissent. Like it or not. But to call it a "desecration," is to exaggerate. Apparently it offended someone enough to call the authorities, and to make a personal visit to the Kuhn's in combat camouflage clothing. Intimidation? An attempt to terrorize?" That seems like the real crime here. We dissenters, who take seriously our duty to country to speak out against high crimes and misdemeanors, against illegal and immoral wars, are accustomed to the middle finger salute, to the occasional shout of "get a job." Sometimes we are assaulted, like I experienced on the 4th of July while helping to hold an "Impeach" banner among the crowd gathered to celebrate freedom. In this case a beefy young man (who later bragged about it in the downtown restaurant where he works) forcefully grabbed the banner and ran.

But back to the issue at hand. According to Supreme Court decision, reported on the Freedom Forum website, desecration of the American flag is legal in the United States, and that includes such treatment as burning and otherwise showing one's disrespect. But the Kuhns note stated explicitly they meant no disrespect.

North Carolina law states that it is a Class 2 misdemeanor for anyone to "mutilate, defile, deface or trample upon the U.S. flag or the North Carolina state flag. [N.C. Gen. Stat. Sec. 14.381]."

The Asheville city police who first responded to the complaint against the Kuhns, according to the report in the Asheville Citizen-Times, saw no need to pursue the matter. But less than a week later, Buncombe County Sheriff's deputy Brian Scarborough walked up to their door. He wanted to issue a citation.

When the Kuhns' refused the officer entry to their home, and declined to produce Identification cards so he could issue a ticket, the situation escalated. The officer claims the Kuhns closed the door on his hand, breaking the window in the process. But they did close the door, and that is an important point. They did refuse consent to an illegal entrance into their home by an officer whose provincial understanding of the law, combined with his lack of restraint and judgment, and with no warrant or probable cause, engaged in an illegal breaking and entry that resulted in a horrific violation of rights and a demonstration of out of control police power.

So, if you have a flag, turn it upside down today. Fly it as a potent symbol of distress. Fly it in solidarity with Mark and Deborah Kuhn. We must not stand by while dissent is criminalized and outspoken citizens are assaulted. Call the Buncombe County Sheriff Department's Public Information Officer, Lt. Randy Sorrells, at 828-250-4473 and voice your concern. There is a pending criminal case, according to Lt. Sorells, and well there should be.

Fire and Rain

I spent my morning turning the compost and shoveling heaps of the crumbly black dirt around my beans. The afternoon rains have kept me close to home.

From today's on-line Citizen-Times I learned:

The City Council voted 6-1 to follow the advice of Police Chief Bill Hogan and not pursue training and other partnerships with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Councilman Carl Mumpower voted no.

This was a good decision, though the comment page on the Citizen-Times website is filled with vitrolic criticisms.

Rather than attend the council meeting, I chose to stand with the Veterans for Peace in the Tuesday 5-6 vigil for an end to the wars. On my way to town I stopped again at the Flint Street bridge to hold a "Honk for Impeachment" placard. The cars and trucks passing below were bumper to bumper. It gives good exposure to any message. Monday a policeman stopped to inquire what we were up to. "No problem holding the signs," he assured us, but cautioned not to hang them over the bridge. A reasonable request.

Councilwoman Cape, driving past over the bridge Tuesday stopped to ask me, "What does your sign say? I turned and showed her and she beeped her horn.

Trouble is, it will take much more than public demonstrations, honking a horn, or signing an Internet petition to evict the criminals in the White House and Justice Department. The CoDe Pink women try a variety of means and grab a lot of press, but still the war grinds on. Cindy Sheehan came out of her brief retirement to lead a group to Congressman Conyers office. These actions, for all the dedication and creativity of the organizers, really don't have the kind of power that is needed. I just don't want to wear cute pink outfits and storm the Capitol, nor do I want to follow Cindy and her crew to Washington. Neither am I sure that her threat to run for office if Pelosi doesn't vote to impeach is a wise move. It seems she has been running on the adrenelin of grief and anger and I wonder if that can carry her through a political campaign.

I understand her determination. She must do what she feels she must to stand against this tyranny and war. And we each have to take a stand, take a risk, and make our dissent visible while we can. Some, like the group "Breasts not Bombs" interpret visible dissent in a more daring way.

Abraham Lincoln had it right when he said:

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Now with a drizzle of rain still falling, the sky is lighting up with a fireworks display from somewhere in the direction of the Grove Park Inn. Sounds like a bombing raid. Such spectacles we require to entertain and distract ourselves.

At least the undocumented immigrants among us can rest a bit easier in Asheville for now without the local police on the beat empowered to deport. I just don't understand why so many seem so eager to hunt down and deport the working poor. We could learn a lot from our Hispanic brothers and sisters about survival in hard times.

Save by an evil chance...

Today I joined Susan and Jim on the Flint Street overpass for a bit of Freeway Blogging. Click here for a short, upbeat video. We also wear orange to show ourselves in solidarity with the folks working hard to wake up Congress to the urgent need, the absolute duty, to impeach Dick Cheney, George Bush and on down the line of criminals. Though I counted about a dozen negative gestures, most in the cars and trucks--and there were thousands passing-- honked or waved to indicate support.

I learned a few new dances during Celtic Week at the Swannanoa Gathering last week. The gym at Warren Wilson was packed with dancers, and the musicians were a lively and talented group. Rodney Sutton called the dance the night I attended, his white head bobbing up and down, his feet flying as he clogged on stage while we all whirled away with a half sashay. In these times of tyranny and terror it is important to find space for joy. In the Contra line, everyone has a smile as you pass. Reminds me of a stanza from the Yeats poem: The Fiddler of Dooney

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance

The gathering in Swannanoa was such a culturally-rich contrast to the Friday Downtown After Five crowd. Outside the Grove Arcade there were more strange faces than familiar ones among the men in polo shirts and plaid bermuda shorts guzzling beer in the streets, a foretaste of the invasion that is Belle Chere. Though I liked the New Orleans beat, the music was too loud and the street too crowded to enjoy any conversation. My friends and I from Women in Black ducked into the perch above Rosanne's Grove Corner Market. On my way home, I saw a friendly group of musicians holding a crowd outside the Flat Iron building with that traditional American fiddle Tune, Black Eyed Susan. I ambled home in good spirits as the sun set leaving a dusty rose hue to the sky.

Dance, make merry, and join the efforts to impeach this dangerous son of a Bush!

"Powering Down" with Transition Town

It's a crisis facing the entire planet, yet in Asheville tonight just fifteen people circled in the community room at West Asheville Library to seek solutions. They are members of Transition Town Asheville, a group seeking a "community based integrative plan," to deal with the issue of peak oil.

The group has been meeting and studying the issues for months and hopes to adopt a 12-point plan based on the ideas of Rob Hopkins available through his website: Transition Culture

Hopkins, now living in Ireland, maintains the Transition Culture website to share his research and to help other communities learn "how we apply these principles to whole towns, whole settlements, and in particular, to how we design this transition in such a way that people will embrace it as a common journey, as a collective adventure, as something positive."

"Our ultimate objective is a social and caring one," a steering committee member said. That was obvious to me in the sincerity of the folks who joined the conversation circle seeking to find ways to educate the people of Western North Carolina about the coming peak oil crisis, and to find community solutions to minimize suffering.

I brought up the issue of the ongoing wars and the military consumption of vast amounts of oil, hastening the crisis. "Can you make it part of your 12 steps to include work to end the war?" The reaction from transition town folk was swift.

"This group is focused on what are we going to do, not on what are we against. If you say, 'Transition Town Asheville is anti-war, it is polarizing. Some people won't come."

Apparently speaking out against militarism and war is seen as too negative to be included as part of the work of this group. Yet reading the recent Michael T. Klare article, The Pentagon Vs. Peak Oil, I don't see how one can address issues of peak oil without also calling for an end to the oil wars. Klare begins his article with this bit of information:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis—either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. Read more

We're offering a "realistic appraisal of what we're facing," one of the group leaders said. "A future without fossil-fuel dependence could be better," another offered. "A beauty of this movement, in the end, is that as we build nation states that are less dependent on oil, there may be less reasons for nations to go to war," another participant offered.

For information on what you can do, individually, day to day, beginning now, check out this: Riot for Austerity

Image lifted from: Permatopia

Singing for Justice

I had a nice visit with my old neighbor Peggy Seeger, a founder of the now-scattered Woodlawn Witches. She came by last night and we enjoyed catching up on what's been happening in our lives since she and Irene moved last year.

"We got hitched," Peggy said gleefully. Peggy lives in Boston when she's not on the road with her music, or visiting with Irene in New Zealand, at their home there. She's been back in Asheville this week to attend the Swannanoa Gathering. Today she stopped by again to say she would be a guest on WPVM with Easy Mark, due to air today.

Peggy shared a new song she's been working on titled "Dick and the Devil." She was sitting in Maggie (her travel van) stopped in the middle of Woodlawn. "It sounds better with the piano," she said, as she launched into the lyrics.

She told me of her visit to share her music recently at a men's prison. I remember the times she visited me at Alderson Prison during my time there. In this prison nation, where we lock away more than 2.3 million, it is no small thing to visit the folks held inside and to witness first hand some of the injustice.

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now is airing once secret tapes of Georgia executions, including a botched electrocution that had to be repeated, torturing the condemned, before the prison observer declared on the tape, "He does seem to have quit moving entirely." The execution lasted more than twenty minutes.

In Alabama, my friend Esther has been working tirelessly with the group Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty on behalf of another condemned man, Daryll Grayson,who is scheduled to be executed this month by lethal injection. In Alabama, DNA testing that may exonerate this man is not being allowed, and only $500 dollars was allocated for expenses of his defense. Alabama wants to execute 3 men this month. Please write to the governor about this now! You do not have to be IN Alabama to write.