COLORADO SPRINGS- They couldn’t endorse Obama as the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, so the leadership closed their office and let the Obama campaign move in. The proverbial jury can now only pin its hope that the Democrats will promise peace, but the PPJPC office is no longer in the business. The staff and board have abandoned its membership, who represented a profound core of the local peace community.
COLORADO SPRINGS- Oh How Sad! After a long and storied legacy, the Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission is closing its doors. Why now –a time of rising injustice and vanishing peace on every continent?! Technically they’ve only announced divestment of their goods in order to move into a tiny office, but the PPJPC is also postponing all activity until after the election. The next event planned is a victory celebration of “regime change” even though the presumptive new regime has promised escalations of war in Asia, Africa and South America, and continued economic class war at home. And it gets worse.
The bastards, literally bastards not by coincidence I’m sure, have gutted the famed peace organization of its activities, of its participants, of its reputation, legacy and potential and now they’re selling off its possessions.
These include the group’s “memorabilia,” as if PPJPC’s aims weren’t still outgoing. Wouldn’t you think the causes still cry out for those materials? All the tools and equipment gathered over the years are now being demobilized. The posters, banners, puppets, flags, props, costumes, made by activists, for the good fight. Are you kidding me?!
And the PPJPC library, an extensive collection of books about social justice and nonviolence are being scattered to the wind of the same garage sale. These books, painstakingly assembled for the cause and donated by so many members so that the PPJPC office would have a permanent reference library are now being sold to defray the costs of moving. And keeping the staff.
For what? Administrating the liquidation? Have PPJPC members been asked to contribute more and more, chiefly so that the organization can be dismantled and slipped into a coma? To keep the staff paid? When the PPJPC membership at large figure out that they’ve been subsidizing their own deliberately paralyzing iv-drip, they are going to invent their own choice words for these soft-spoken traitors.
I’D SUGGEST someone attending the going-out-of-the-peace-making-business-sale if only to rescue the materials we’ll need to keep up the fight. If it didn’t mean giving more money to the usurpers! That’s extortion, taking our money to reclaim what we donated already! What unmitigated passive aggressive violence.
These paid staff manipulated the tendency of all small groups to take the road most traveled. Specifically, to hush up in the perceived interest of self-preservation. This manifests itself among a minority in the PPJPC who follow a cultish spiritual belief that the only way to stop a wayward wagon is to throw yourself under the wheel. Eventually it’s hoped the driver will stop out of pangs of conscience. Other concerned passengers, who might want to gesticulate or address the driver, are scolded for not giving the sacrificial sheep the opportunity to incubate their guilt bomb in peace.
These self-appointed arbiters of “pacifism” take the “peace” in J&P to mean a quiet, undisturbed, reverential, leave-me-in-peace, peace. It’s the “nonviolent” dogma that has been used to defuse slave uprisings for millennia. It’s the traditional disservice which religion deals in its role to make the oppressed accept their mistreatment at the hands of their oppressors. While we might concentrate on religion’s role in starting wars, we overlook their constant undermining of justice.
Do I have something personal at stake in this unraveling development? I most certainly do! Over the past years, I joined a number of energetic activists in raising the visibility of the local peace movement. We gave it a public signature and a heretofore elusive acclaim, which was bringing in much more public participation. What became of the green peace campaign? Jettisoned. Abandoned. Cast off by the staff and select members who didn’t want an expanded interest in their activities. What are we left to conclude about people who espouse a concern to invite community, but shun populist appeal? Hypocrites is the most polite I can muster.
I’m so sorry to have left the organization to such vultures. I owe my fellow members quite an apology.
Jimmy Carter is the American adept at doing the religious thing. He began his campaign for president with the political announcement that he had been supposedly ‘born again’ through Jesus, and he has continued to fool the naive with the same schtick. Many religious pacifist liberals types adore his book about Israeli Apartheid, and see it as almost the Second Coming of Jimmy! Now, we have the ex-Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, copy-catting the great Peanut Farmer and shuffling along with this own form of ‘rebirth’. It’s all a big song and dance!
The Capitalist System always has its carrot and stick pluralism moving full steam, and that is the role these political ‘conversions’ play, whether it be Bloody Al Gore, Jimmy ‘Peace’ Carter, or Ehud Olmert. Take these players all in with a big grain of salt. Uri Avnery, the great Jewish Israeli good heart seemingly doesn’t as he takes ‘the conversion’ of Olmert at face value in his most recent commentary, Olmert’s Final Divorce
From “All of Eretz Israel”
This type of political manipulation is borrowed from the churches, where the pastors and mullah rabbis are specialized in providing fake emotion to their masses of Believers. Benny Hinn anybody? Just a little over a year ago, I saw an example of this role playing at the Colorado Springs City Council meeting, where pastor emeritus of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, Jim White, turned the liberal crocodile tears on in full display. It was a fountain, in fact. He literally wept in front of his amazed audience as he asked the mayor and the council folk, ‘Why are we always so misunderstood?’ It was the most comical display imaginable! I say that because if I have ever seen glowing hatred in the eyes of anybody, it was in the face of Pastor Jim White when crossed. You can see that steely glare in Jimmy Carter’s eyes, too, if you only look a little.
So Ehud Olmert now wants peace with The Natives? What a con! He had the chance to achieve that but made no effort at all to concretize a Peace Initiative. Now he wants to play the saint in his retirement? What a bunch of throw up! These politicians always have all the personal character of ‘good’ used car salesmen, which is to say none. Watch the show but do not be taken in.
Why are Americans so uninterested in what their government does in their name in Somalia? We certainly have shit loads of good liberal folk running around in circles demanding that the US government intervene militarily in Sudan, do we not? But we have a virtually total silence about what the US is doing to the Somali people. More blowback from the war on terror Why is that?
One local example is how the church folk over at the Colorado Springs so-called Justice and Peace Center have never shown any signs of interest in helping fight to stop this US war which is becoming genocidal in nature. It’s off their hypocritical lips altogether. They just received a $1600 grant from a local church, but don’t look to see any of that money put to uncovering the plight of Somalians for people here in Colorado Springs. It will all go to talking about their supposed commitment to ‘non-violence’ and love of Gandhi. Wonder if they would act the same if they were Somalians in their US-Ethiopian invaded Homeland? One rather doubts it.
Here are pictures of All American troops in Somali, in an all Black country, fucking it all up. Now the US government has Black African mercenaries doing most of the dirty work for them.
COLORADO SPRINGS- Extradited desertion/political refugee Robin Long, spent several weeks jailed in Fort Carson after being refused political asylum in Canada. An army court let Long plead guilty to the charge of desertion based on a plea bargain agreement. The local PPJPC held vigils to publicize Long’s plight, and it turns out, did a little bit more.
In a just published letter to the Independent, indefatigably blow hardy local attorney Bill Durland was revealed to have been co-counsel. Durland assisted with arranging the guilty plea and as a result, Robin Long was sentenced to one and a quarter years in Leavenworth. Thanks a lot I’m sure.
Was Robin Long a war resister? Who would think he’d want to quit resisting being told by the Army what to do? Long fled to Canada because he wanted to be NOT GUILTY of war crimes. These have been his own arguments: Every soldier has a right to refuse illegal orders. The war in Iraq has been determined by international bodies to be an illegal war. Why is Robin Long pleading guilty?
Already reported was that Long’s first character witness was also someone from the PPJPC, whom Long had only just recently met, through three visitations. It was the mysteriously socially inept Pete Haney, the new-hire Dynamic Peace Director who’s presided over that organization’s declining participation. The Gazette reported Haney’s helpful testimony on behalf of Robin Long:
“I’ve observed Mr. Long in situations that would be trying to just about anyone,” Haney said. “He seemed to me to be extremely poised and lucid.”
In Colorado Springs it’s not enough that you find yourself up a creek without a paddle, you’ll find “friends” who’ll make sure to put holes in your canoe.
Two PPJPC board members, Genie Durland and Dorothy Schlaeger, wrote to The Colorado Springs Independent trying to explain why the group’s officers locked some of its membership out of the PPJPC building where we had tried to hold a meeting.
To compound the insult of locking us out of the building, the new Board Director, Jo Ann Neiman, then called the police when she saw us still attending our meeting on the sidewalk in front of the PPJPC building! She explained to the police that she wanted us to be told that we were all trespassing!
So what did Genie and Dorothy have to say about all of this?
In short, they implied that we, the members of the PPJPC who wanted to meet inside the PPJPC rented building, were violence-prone, and they used a bunch of excessive religiosity about Gandhi to do so! They mixed their own liberal religious beliefs together with what they see as the teachings of the Hindu religious leader, Gandhi. Here is how they justified the current board director calling the police on us,
‘Many who consider themselves “peace activists” across the globe engage in tactics, which fail to engender peace. PPJPC is deeply committed to nonviolence and will neither engage nor support activism employing tactics inconsistent with Ghandian nonviolence.’
Genie and Dorothy, I might ask you both, what is ‘Gandhian’ nonviolent about suggesting we are violence-prone when we are not that in the least? You do the rather violence-prone Colorado Springs municipal police a big favor in labeling others amongst the PPJPC and general public in such a manner. You are actually encouraging police violence against us with this sort of rhetoric against us, who are all people that have in fact never engaged in any violent acts at all. In short, you are playing a game of Holier-Than-Thou and The Independent was absolutely correct in labeling and titling that as being ‘Malice in the Movement’.
What also is Gandhi-like in calling the police on us to tell us that we were supposedly trespassing by holding a nonviolent meeting, of all things? What is nonviolent in locking us out from the meeting we wanted to do inside of the PPJPC building, not out on the sidewalk? And most of all, what is nonviolent in a PPJPC organized to have a single membership meeting per year? That is undemocratic community organization, not nonviolence.
This is the real issue of concern, not whether to be tactically violent, as you falsely imply that it is. We tried to hold our meeting because we want some internal democracy within the PPJPC where now there isn’t any.
We want a group not controlled by paid office staff eating up tens of thousands of donated dollars in their salaries each year, just to run the group autocratically as they determine activities of their own making for non paid volunteers to carry out. This is non-sustainable situation in the long run, and it would be much better to help work out something, instead of locking members out of the PPJPC offices. Currently the group is headed towards a financial shipwreck and that is the Big Issue. The PPJPC has no real membership accountability at this time to check their deficit spending.
We also want a board picked by the activist , than have board members pick their own replacements beforehand and then present it as pre-determined fate to the rest of us who have no current voice in PPJPC policies. Most of all, we want a PPJPC that is not crippled by police interference into our own internal affairs. This has led to those who now hobnob at the police station with the cops in secret meetings then arranging affairs of the PPJPC where the cops are called out on other PPJPC members less religiously inclined than yourselves.
Most of all, this is about trying to make the PPJPC into something other than a religious-run clique, but into a true body of diverse people that for many different reasons are against the US government’s global militarism. You two are opposed to doing so, and hide behind the figure of Gandhi to oppose those who are. The religious and those not religious must be united in a Peace movement, not separated as you would have done.
Disagree with us if you will, but do not falsely label those who differ with you as being less non-nonviolent than yourselves. You are doing the work of the violence-eager police force and local government bodies when you do so. We respect your religious beliefs in nonviolence, but we ask you to not try to force these relgious beliefs that you have off on all others as you have currently justified doing so with your current letter to The Colorado Springs Independent.
We look forward to working with you together in the future as in the past inside the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.
With “malice,” is the word the CS Indy chose. Oh boy. For our out-of-town readers, the PPJPC dirty laundry has reached the printed news. It certainly is embarrassing, but probably too, about time. I’ve spent the last two years playing politely, leaving unresolved issues behind closed doors, painting optimistic pictures reflecting where I hoped the PPJPC could be. After the latest unfortunate escalation, I listened to entreaties to keep the developments between ourselves. Now why would it fall to me to keep a lid on somebody else’s indiscretions, without so much as an apology or expression of consideration from colleagues? No, thank you.
In fact, the response has been to try to impugn my integrity. Bring that one on.
I was sent into the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission with a mission, to discover why it appeared so dysfunctional. Participation was slacking and the office appeared to be dropping the ball. Why? I discovered a staff very determined to subvert all activities, period. In the guise of handy excuses. I’ve written plenty about outright insubordination, about refusal to rally membership, about foot-dragging with publishing, websites and fund-raising. To someone experienced with effective organizations it was obvious, to others steeped in social affinity groups, perhaps not so.
What I didn’t observe was that a cadre of members are quite satisfied to leave it that way. Now, from some of the more active people, I have become dismayed to discover the PPJPC doesn’t represent the Colorado Springs peace community, it represents the at-peace community.
Since my participation in Crawford Texas with Cindy Sheehan, through our Camp Casey encampment here, I saw that the PPJPC would not fully support the growing popularity of antiwar sentiment. The group takes credit for whatever happens, but won’t provide assistance. Now they’re actually hurting other efforts by playing the nonviolence card, implying that everyone else is not nonviolent enough. I defy anyone to tell me that I am not nonviolent. I’ll knock their metaphysical block right off their sagging shoulders!
Indeed, anger is considered violent, speech is considered violent. In a silent monastery I’d agree. And I underestimated the contemplative garden this group has commissioned for itself with the PPJPC. However, they are prepared to use every violent means of untruth, manipulation, shaming, and emotional extortion to protect their private prayer club.
I’m happy to leave it to them. I won’t fall again for pleas that their efforts need more and younger blood. They’re not prepared to open the doors to energetic people with higher expectations.
They claim to be the only game in town when it comes to standing up against war. That’s how they solicit donations. I think they ought to confess their game is spectator solitaire. Then there will be enough said.
DENVER, COLO.- The Alliance for Real Democracy (ARD), formed to counter the scrappily-named Recreate 68 at the DNC, is in reality an unwitting fifth column, set up by Democratic Party allies to temper protest in Denver. The UFPJ and other sundry “non-violent” progressives are funneling their members into the less populist ARD actions to divert participation from the major DNC demonstrations. But the aforementioned underwriters aren’t providing any funding, surprise! Leaving the ARD to protest exactly what it’s supposed to: nothing.
I think it’s heartbreaking to watch earnest young activists, representing the organizations comprising the ARD coalition, trying to organize activities without any commitment from their national affiliations. And some of the more outspoken national leaders, keen to make appearances at the DNC rallies, are beginning to smell a rat. They’re making backup arrangements to coordinate with the boots on the ground, R-68.
A Fifth Column refers to a group of partisans, usually spontaneously organized, which forms behind enemy lines as a conquering army approaches. It is the additional “column” of civilian fighters which an attacker might count on to stab the defenders in the back. Franco boasted of his fifth column in the Spanish Civil War. The French Resistance represented a fifth column for the Normandy liberators.
America’s antiwar movement has had its steady divisions, between UFPJ and A.N.S.W.E.R. most notably, but the rift has become more critical with the advent of another hopeful Democratic election win. Four years ago it was Kerry, with groups like Moveon.org trying to tone down the antiwar rhetoric. This year it’s Obama, and the appeasers are out in battalions. As usual, it’s done in the name of “nonviolence,” where too vigorous protest is seen as insufficiently nonviolent for the Democrat’s fragile delusions.
When R-68 began the groundwork for DNC protests, they were vilified for evoking the Chicago 1968 police riots. R-68 repudiated the violence, but not surprisingly those statements have yet to be reported in print. Meanwhile the bad press gave UFPJ and other nonviolence apostles the opportunity to break away and form their holy alliance to give their members sanctuary from the ruffians, re unpredictable young people.
But will it really? The R-68 group includes Unconventional Denver and Disrupt 08, but neither have violent plans. Black Block script-kiddies will turn up no matter whose event. Police agent provocateurs will instigate violence no matter how pious your crowd.
Code Pink, IVAW, Veterans For Peace, and UFPJ are among the national endorsers of ARD. Tent State, SFPJ, and Students for a Democratic Society are examples of young activists getting caught in their elders’ tar baby.
Because it’s not enough to vote for Obama, you have to quash dissent for Obama. It’s the Alliance For Real Democracy For Obama.
Naturally Denver protest organizers, whether ARD or R68, have found themselves having to confer about time slots and permits, out of respect for the success of each other’s activities. As a result, the national head of UFPJ, Leslie Cagan, issued an email decreeing that no ARD organization member would participate in the major Aug 24 kickoff antiwar demonstration. This drew question marks from prominent activist leaders who want to be at the biggest rally.
Bi-monthly CONSULTA meetings were scheduled by ARD and R68 to coordinate efforts. But the morning before the second Consulta, Leslie Cagan flew in from NYC for an emergency meeting with ARD leadership to brief them on what not to negotiate. She followed this with a hastily scheduled press conference the next day on the subject of Iran, it appeared to preempt her rivals’ DON’T BOMB IRAN action planned for August 2nd.
Colorado Springs own PPJPC is an endorser of ARD. Their letter of support was read into the minutes of a recent meeting, and it read like the typical support they’re getting from everyone. I’ll paraphrase the PPJPC letter:
“We at the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission are honored to endorse your efforts at the DNC … due to critical funding shortages, we cannot offer you any monetary support at this time … Likewise, I’m sorry that I will not be able to participate in any events that week , but will try to interest our members in attending…” We’ll be with you in spirit, etc.
Why form a fifth column if you’re not going to support it? Because the ARD‘s job is to do nothing. Doing nothing is exactly how you stab activism in the back.
Whether by willful incompetence or by sabotage, the damage is the same.
ACCUSED: meeting in secret with Police, un-publicizing events, un-coordinating the volunteers, stymieing meetings, neglecting a website, and stopping others from addressing such tasks; paying themselves 130% of the budget; insubordination and interfering with the board of directors to avoid oversight; hindering, thwarting or otherwise prohibiting successful planning and execution of activities.
Time for bed. Purportedly to comply with the Pride parade organizers, and although antiwar slogans abounded in the progressive crowd, the PPJPC pushed a single message: themselves!
Notice anyone paying attention?
The self-congratulatory crew strode along Tejon Avenue like the lost battalion emerged like Rip Van Winkle. You’d thought they’d been victorious, but it was enough for them that they’ve stuck with it. I think it’s sort of like the 100 birthday. You celebrate it, but it’s not necessarily any credit owed the celebrant except for keeping their live stress free.
Behind the scenes the undertone was very unbecoming, this was an old-timer backlash, the peace community old-guard wanting to represent for old-school. With the preponderance of public opinion against the war, these long-time peace advocates are saying something akin to “we were country, when country wasn’t cool.”
Much as they proclaim wanting to attract members who don’t wear dentures, the PPJPC has elected to stick to its less offensive passive ways. Now they’ve abandoned the signature green which had brought them to prominence, and they hold no banners advocating for anything. Their logo says they are “A Voice for Social Justice and Nonviolence.” And to avoid trouble, it’s feeble and unintelligible when it’s not gagged.
After the last bow, they go around the bend, the last leg, turning right!
No kidding. With their holier-than-thou, nobody else’s nonviolence is as pure as ours, they turn their backs on community bridge-building.
After over a year of meetings between PPJPC office staff with the police here in Colorado Springs and a purge of the former activist Chair of the group, it has been obvious that the Pike Peak Justice and Peace Commission was already in a state of steep decline.
The group is hemorrhaging money from its overpaying their office staffers who are glued to protecting their salaried positions at the expense of the rest of the membership, and its misuse of its office itself, which is almost always closed to the public. The group has no internal democracy at all, and it is very difficult to work with the proprietors of the club But tonight, we really got a glimpse of what a mess this group has become, as member activists tried to come together in a meeting at the office to decide how to protest the US government plans to start war against Iran, and how to participate nonviolently at the Denver Democratic Party Convention?
Upon arrival at the offices, we found that the locks had been re-keyed, and the place where the spare had always been kept was hanging open as a kind of insult to us who had planned to meet inside. This, despite the fact that the key had stayed the same for years, and the Directors have secretly made the decision to vacate the present offices at the end of next month! Evidently they found it so imperative to keep us from using a meeting space inside the office that would not be controlled entirely by the paid office officials, that they dished out the money to the locksmith.
We decided then to sit outside and meet there instead, hardly being anything other than the non-violent pro-peace activists that we are. In fact, even though we are members of the PPJPC, we had to meet outside the space that our dues had helped pay for!
We were not a large group at all, simply because the office staff and new Chair of the group had already done what they could to keep the meeting from being publicized to its own membership. They have no plans to participate in the national protests against a War Against Iran, and did not want others to get involved in this activity. In fact, they plain just hate it when we try to democratically decide our own activities rather than taking their own orders about what should be planned by them.
It wasn’t a particularly interesting meeting, and we felt quite stymied. We had been accused of setting up another organization, but that was not the case, and the office staff well knew that. We have not paid with our time, energy, and money to build this group, just to let them run it into the ground without any effort on our part to do alternatively. We agreed among ourselves that despite being locked out by an undemocratic group of PPJPC paid workers who have hijacked the group with the help of a few Board people, that we would continue to try to build the PPJPC.
Finally, meeting over with, we had almost packed up all our signs and equipment, and what comes rolling our way? Well, if it wasn’t the Colorado Springs Police Department, who said that the Chair, that it was she who had complained to them that we were trespassing and to come over and threaten us if we did not disperse!
What a road this group has traveled since seeing one of its former Chairs literally cry in front of the mayor and city council of the city, about how we proPeace activists were peaceful and misunderstood by the community and city government. He was, in fact, the Chair of the Board that helped put the current one in charge since he has moved to another city, and his pick is the woman who is now calling the police on the members of her own group!
The office salaried trio inside, those raking in tens of thousands of dollars in wages a year as they drive the group into bankruptcy, have organized themselves into a barricade against any change happening. It is really sad to see all this donated money go to waste, as the Chair can presently organize not much more than just calling the police on members trying to meet to plan antiwar activities in the city.
They must truly be laughing and snickering at the mayor’s office, and the Chief of Police’s office? What a sad spectacle the PPJPC is becoming under this clique that now welds power over the group. All those meetings with this little clique of self important office troopers has really paid off, in helping the police mainly dismantle this group today. The cops that came by thought the whole situation worthy of a laugh. They were ‘the good cops’ though, and Officer Palodino would have done it entirely differently, no doubt.
What information was the PPJPC staff trying to keep from their members by thwarting a meeting? Below is the text of the meeting invite. Not only is the staff discouraging activism, it will act to prevent it.
“I just got back from Denver in meetings with both ARD and R68, and boy is there a lot to report! Good ideas, lots of young energy, opportunities for us to participate, alliances possibly to avoid, and some serious organizers with which to network. We’ve now got posters and fliers to distribute, and contacts for the various events. Not just for the DNC but for upcoming campaigns and actions. The August 2 national DON’T BOMB IRAN rally for starters.
We definitely want to get the word out and discuss what Colorado Springs can add to the message(s). There will be a march for the poor, a march for prisoners’ rights, antiwar, immigration, etc, and the schedules and permits are evolving everyday. Access to Denver is going to be very restricted. Do you want to be apprised about that?”
Our meeting for peace activists was conducted outside the PPJPC office.
“Chairman of the PPJPC board” Jo Ann Neiman called the CSPD and police officers were dispatched to tell us we were trespassing.
The PPJPC is not working out as it is presently organized. Currently it is organized as a non-profit corporation, has 3 paid staff members, and is run by a Board of Directors who are answerable to nobody other than themselves, because they the group as a whole simply has no membership meetings. That’s right. The group has no membership meetings and is run from top down.
Yes, there is one supposed membership meeting per year, but in reality the Board organizes itself beforehand and then presents its own decisions to the ‘membership meeting’, which is in fact a public event organized as a sort of pep rally with the office staff and Board in charge of arranging all of the show beforehand. All decisions are made prior to the membership meeting, and not during the year’s one ‘membership’ meeting itself.
During the rest of the year, the Board of Directors simply decides among themselves who is to replace any Board directors that might be necessary to add per vacancies. The group, as a whole, is completely absent from making these decisions, as it is absent from having any voice in choosing office staff. In fact, there is no group as a whole other than those who donate money, who are considered the membership, rather than those who might be doing the main volunteer work and active in protests against The War. In actual reality though, donors make no membership decisions and are not even consulted regarding them.
So what has been the result of this form of organization? In one word, the result has been total disorganization and chaos. The group simply does not have a membership at all beyond its ‘Board’ and paid staff. The group is not run democratically at all, but rather as a group of volunteers that do what the office staff arranges for them to do, supposedly with leadership direction given by the Board of Directors. In fact, even that is not usually the case, and decisions on what to do usually are principally made by the paid staff, and them pretty much alone.
How much does the paid staff take in salaries from the group? At $10/ hour for 3 people over one year, the amount is a whopping sum of over $50,000 a year! Yet, this same staff of 3 are most often missing from actions that are in protest of war in the city. That’s right. They are no shows, over and over and over again!
Well, do they do other things then? Not really. The PPJPC is a group that pays for a building, has three paid staff members, and then does not keep it open most hours of the week! How are these hours of business for you? The building is kept open from 10 to 2, Monday through Friday. And even that is not on a regular basis! Last years cost for this building not kept open? Way over $12,000 which is just rent alone being counted!
All this would be comical if it was not so sad. We have a group spending over $62,000 a year to pay three staff and keep a building open 20 hours a week. In addition, the 3 staff are largely absent from attending antiwar protest activities in this city! In addition, the group largely does not even organize most protests against war and in support of justice in this city. Oftentimes, the group merely seems largely to be taking credit for work that others are doing.
The PPJPC needs to be organized differently, or the people of Colorado Springs need to be informed that this is a group that is not the actual local organizing vehicle for protest against The War. It is a waste of dollars to donate to this group as presently disorganized as it is from top down. Your money is going to pay office people who are not real organizers or participants in much of anything happening in this city.
This is a group that did not organize itself to protest The War when Barack Obama recently came to town! Today, Barack Obama is advocating more US troops be sent to fight the War of US Occupation of Afghanistan. Where was the PPJPC? But it is not just this example that shows the inactivism of the PPJPC. Less than a year previous to the Obama visit to Colorado Springs, Dick Cheney came to town. The PPJPC only turned out 7 people in protest of Dick Cheney! Where were the ‘Board of Directors’ and paid office staff of the group? They were essentially not present at this protest.
Neither the ‘Board of Directors’ nor the paid office trio, participate in The Springs area’s only weekly vigil against the war. None of them! Despite the open use of torture being the main political issue in the country, none of the ‘Board of Directors’ or paid office staff, have challenged the Colorado Springs municipal government to pass a statement against federal use of torture. Why not? $62,000 plus a year paid in salaries and a building and where are they?
The time is now to demand a reorganization of this group, or failing that, we must organize another group that will do the necessary work of opposing War and standing for Justice. The group as presently disorganized is an actual impediment to doing antiwar work in this community. We sincerely hope that the PPJPC can turn itself around, but it will take much work before that that can be accomplished.
We propose now that the group immediately hold monthly membership meetings that are empowered to lead the group and not just respond to direction made by paid staff and a very few of the ‘Board of Directors’. The group must make itself democratic if it is going to effective in opposing the ‘Global War on Terrorism’, and regularly scheduled membership meetings are essential to making the group more democratic. At this time, it doesn’t even have a declared purpose in opposing ‘The Global War on Terror’. That must change, and the group must be made into a democratic community organization, or it will simply not function.
In making this analysis, no animosity is held towards anybody. However, for this group to move forward in changing itself for the better, the group must reorganize. Part of that reorganization must include a decrease in the costs of supporting 3 paid staff members, who think it their task to run the group, for the group. We issue the following challenge to these 3 paid staff members…
If you are in fact dedicated to opposing War effectively, then do so like the rest of us who give our time and energy for free. Stay active with the group, but give up your paid staff positions so that reorganization of the group can progress. We hope that you will work against The War, even if not paid to do so? Thank you most sincerely for what you have already done in fighting injustice and aggression. But the time has come, to stop receiving a salary from the PPJPC. We hope that you will make your personal transition to civilian life soon? There is no longer the money to spend in the manner that was done before with so little results. Your salaries are hemorrhaging major money from the community that wants to support Peace activities here, and your personal activities are largely not that productive for what is spent in paying you.
It may not be clear in Colorado Springs that the national antiwar movement is trying to deal with the probability for a coming military attack on Iran, because the local group Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission has planned nothing so far. They are asleep at the wheel downtown in the PPJPC offices. United for Peace and Justice has called for a series of actions next week, but where are the local paid crew at PPJPC here in town? MIA once again?
The national United for Justice Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has 5 suggestions for local actions, of which #2 and #5 seem to be the most important ones to take. Here they are listed below…
2) Ask your mayor to sign on to a resolution urging the Bush administration to pursue diplomatic engagement with Iran. At least 36 mayors have already signed on — now is the time to approach your mayor! For more information visit the Cities for Peace website.
5) You can organize a visible presence in a busy location in your town: a vigil, an afternoon of leafleting or tabling, a human billboard, etc. Be sure to pick a time and location that has a lot of pedestrian or vehicle traffic!
The local group pays out $600 a week in salaries to 3 guys who seem to be only there in the offices to pull down their salaries? I sincerely doubt that any of these 3 would be there without the money they get in their paychecks. Why are they not organizing these vigils suggested? Why are they not organizing municipal government resolutions against US government use of torture and against plans to go to war with Iran? That’s what they should be getting the money paid to them to be doing. What are they doing instead?
Not only is it the national UFPJ that is planning actions nationwide, but also another national grouping called StopWarOnIran.org. They are planning demonstrations on August 2 around the country. Where is our local PPJPC in the planning of these events? What is their unaccountable to no one other than themselves Board of Directors doing to plan for this event? Where are the 3 office staff who think it their business to impede others and keep organization of the group entirely under their control, even as their salaries are bankrupting the group? Why are they always doing nothing?
Time is running out to do activities against this planned war with Iran, BEFORE the attack occurs. The PPJPC here in Colorado Springs simply is not doing the work that needs to be done. This group needs to be reorganized so that it is not run top down, but bottom up. Organize today to stop this war on Iran from happening.
1) Isolation 2) Simulated drowning or ‘waterboarding’ 3) Sexual humiliation and/or rape 4) Forced positioning 5) Sleep deprivation 6) Refusal to allow legal representation 7) Refusal to state the ‘evidence’ being used against prisoners
8 ) Refusal to classify POWs as being actual POWs instead of criminal prisoners 9) Trying POWs as if they were civilians, even though they are being tried in military courts 10) Refusing to inform families of POWs that their relatives are in custody
Hey, that’s quite a few methods of US government use of torture, is it not? And to think that they are still trying to pretend that they are not using torture! And to think that the United Nations has taken no actions against the US government for using torture! And to think that the local peace group here in Colorado Springs, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, still has not found itself capable of asking the city council to pass a city resolution against the US government use of torture! Sad…
BTW, that photo is a picture of US troops ‘waterboarding’ a POW in Vietnam. You can click on the photo to see those American faces better. They’ve always used torture on POWs from other countries, so why support them? Why support the US troops in doing what they do?
Those that have paid the slightest attention to recent events in Afghanistan will have noted the lies of the US government where they claimed that their bombings had not this past week hit and killed any civilians at all. The reality is quite different though. We might note however that the BBC covers its report of these lies by putting the word civilians in parentheses! How indecent the press is in covering up for the liars of DC and London. US ‘killed 47 Afghan civilians’ They are part of the lying and pretense, too.
But let’s think for a second about who is making these accusations about killing civilians? It is the British and US puppet government in Afghanistan itself! So why put the word civilians in parentheses? This is shameful behavior by the servile press of the US and Britain, is it not? They just have to continue to lie on behalf of their own governments? It makes themselves look utterly stupid in doing so.
What does it say about our societies, where we have governments that torture poor countries like Afghanistan with occupation, war, and bloody mayhem? Look in the mirror, Public. Why have you not protested against these atrocities?
I especially find the role of the local ‘peace’ group the PPJPC repugnant in this regard. I am about the only member of this group that has ever even mentioned the word ‘Afghanistan’ in any of their banners and signs, activities and events. Instead they are out there hugging cops, ‘talking’ it over with Fort Carson Pentagon propaganda whores, etc. Meanwhile, the bloody assault on the people of Afghanistan goes on without any ‘peace’ group attention! Just pathetic!
We need to stop believing in the DC Pentagon lies about what they are doing in Afghanistan. This was is every bit as badly intentioned as the war against Iraq is. Just because the Democratic Party is so onboard in their Afghan adventure is no reason for supposed antiwar groups like the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission to sit on their butts about the issue of US atrocities there.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.- Have I missed something, is the war over? Is militarism on the wane, injustice and inequity only distant memories? Why has the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, with its legions of dedicated members and earnest donors, decided to hibernate? Gone are the email notices, the meetings, the actions and the leadership. Gone evidently are volunteers and office activity. All of this follows a recent fund drive where membership dues were solicited only three months after last year’s takings. To pay for what? A full staff returning nothing to the members? Check out the inaction online or at [in]Active For Justice. Did the PPJPC lose its commission to represent the peace community? I have to hope so.
If you have any helpful information about the identity of this Neighbor Wilson, please contact us immediately. We are particularly interested in his whereabouts and identity before 2006. Your email replies will be kept in the strictest confidence.
These pictures were taken at the 2008 Broadmoor protest, which is distinguished from other actions because here activists come into face to face contact with defense industry people and the intelligence community. On this mild overcast morning, do you notice anyone else wearing sunglasses? Is he hoping not to run into an old colleague? Or a previous target?
The age of the internet means it’s a lot harder to plop an infiltrator into an activists group because suspicious folk can Google for provenance. You’d have to say you came out of a monastery to explain your lack of record of past activities. In Colorado Springs, it’s suspected that THE NAVIGATORS and YOUNG LIFE, among others, are used to launder US intelligence operatives into the population at large.
Here’s an opportunity to test the new waters which the internet presents for the Witness Protection Program and other government embedding techniques. Let’s pass around a picture far and wide and see what previous identities come to light.
The Gazette of Colorado Springs today published a national AP report gloating about how activists planning protests in Denver during the Democratic Party convention have been split into two different organizing groups. The Denver Post, too, has a commentary about this split… Convention protest hit by groups’ split The cops and corporate press could not be happier with this unfortunate development.
The split has several causes, not least of is that Democratic voters amongst Peace-antiwar group’s memberships really don’t want much of a protest at the Democratic Party Convention at all. Here in Colorado Springs we have the same phenomena, where many Democratic Party glued liberals are doing all they can to ignore the Denver protests and will avoid at all lengths going 1- hour North to participate in them.
The local Colorado Springs based Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission is currently playing dead on dealing with this upcoming big Colorado event. Their 3 paid staffers and Board cliquers have other things on their agenda, like perhaps napping for a year or so? Don’t look for them to help build up much (if any?) of a good vibe for going up to Denver to protest there. Heck, the word ‘protest’ is kinda radical, is it not? And these people are as ‘peaceful’ as deep sleep. They only get violent when woken from their sleep, in fact.
Actually there really is little of a new split here. Those who want to protest will, and those that don’t want to protest will try to hinder those that do. What else is new these days in antiwar circles? The Democratic Party people amongst us really should be labeled Inactivists.
The great American socialist Eugene Debs had this to say about Jesus Christ and those who would convince others that Christ was a turn the other cheek, milquetoast pacifist.
‘I told my friends of the cloth that I did not believe Christ was meek and lowly but a real living, vital agitator who went into the temple with a lash and a krout and whipped the oppressors of the poor, routed them out of the doors and spilled their blood and got silver on the floor. He told the robbed and misruled and exploited and driven people to disobey their plunderers, he denounced the profiteers, and it was for this that they nailed his quivering body to the cross and spiked it to the gates of Jerusalem, not because he told them to love one another. That was harmless doctrine. But when he touched their profits and denounced them before their people he was marked for crucifixion.
(Eugene Debs,Speaking to a reporter for Call from his prison cell in 1919 while serving time for making anti-war speeches.)
Contrast this image of Jesus to the one that many in the so-called Christian ‘Peace community’ try to sell us on. Here, we have Jesus, The Living as a revolutionary, not some sort of dead, worshipped saint. We have a model to try to follow that is totally different than the one that is given to us so often.
Jesus the Dead, or Jesus the Living? You choose.
“Integrating Air, Space, and Cyberspace Domains” is the theme of this year’s War in Outer Space crowd. Yes, these corporate Welfare Muthers will be bringing the kids to the summer picnic in Keystone Colorado next week. There’s so much to do at this Vail Resort property! I hear the food will be just marvelous! Space Warfare Symposium And the scenery!
My favorite Welfare Queen of them all is ATK where they give you a visual show at their web site that includes Space War craft, Pentagon sold fighter bombers buzzing The Statue of Liberty, and huge belts of ammo (their specialty in sales) for the hired mercenaries.
These Pentagon-fed Welfare Queens like to make you think that they are protecting ‘homeland security’, but they really are just selling the idea that they deserve to continue to be welfare recipients ….all the way to Mars and back! They are just pigs feeding at the trough.
Where’s the Justice and Peace paid staffers, too? The ‘Space War Symposium’ picnic will probably be able to hear their snoring all the way to Keystone! Another no-show for the paid supposed agitators it seems? They may well be too busy to come while occupying themselves trying to downsize the group, without giving up any of their own salaries, of course.
The monthly AFPJ collaborative Iraq Moratorium event was another success, in spite of PPJPC dropping from the scene. But enough peace activists dedicated to keeping the antiwar message visible converged as usual. Mark will have video footage at CSaction.
The issue of how the US government under the Bush Administration, with the help of its Democratic Party and Republican Party collaborators, has legalized and openly allowed the use of torture despite it being internationally illegal is a big issue in our country. Many Americans are up in arms about this, and rightly so. One of the first duties that the pro-Peace/ antiwar community must do is to fight to end governmental use of torture on prisoners held. Common sense guides us on this one. We have to stop open US governmental use of torture NOW.
So where is the local Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission on this one? This is a group that has a pastor leading it at this time, and that also has 3 paid staff members working in its office. What are they doing to fight governmental use of torture against captured prisoners?
It has been months now when I first brought up the need for the PPJPC to demand that the city government pass a resolution against governmental use of torture. After all, Colorado Springs is a part of the USA, so governmental torture of prisoners is something done in our name.
Yes, they do claim that we have a democracy here in the US, so it is claimed that our government represents all of us when it makes policy decisions. Certainly a local peace group then should be demanding that government make the right policy decisions.
At the time it was proposed by me that the PPJPC make it our mission to go to the city government meetings held down at City Hall to try to get a resolution passed demanding an end to governmental use of torture, it was agreed that this was a good idea. It was agreed that the group would move on the issue.
Sad to say, the PPJPC has done absolutely nothing to bring any measure or resolution proposal to the mayor, Lionel Rivera, nor to the Colorado Springs city council. Nobody has ever in this group mentioned any reason to why it should not proceed with this campaign, but the paid office staff and pastor board director have merely chosen to silently do nothing.
These same people do often go to meetings arranged by the city police, where they then proceed to take their marching orders as to how to proceed with their ‘protests’, or not to proceed???, as spoon fed to them by Colorado Springs city attorneys. But they have not found the time to take a measure to the city government to demand that a resolution against the use of governmental torture be passed and sent to Washington DC. Do they really have any excuse for their inaction? I think not.
It is time that the PPJPC begin to carry out its mandate to oppose war and promote justice. We are not doing that at present, but instead are merely acting as a corporation, a non-profit one though. Yes at the present time, we in the PPJPC are of no particular profit to the community, since our group is failing to actually adequately fight on behalf of Justice and Peace.
We, as a group, are failing to demand something of Mayor Lionel Rivera and the city council, and are allowing them to be merely city government hacks captured by Pentagon and Lockheed Corporation. We, at the PPJPC, are failing in our mission to oppose war and injustice. We are failing at being a viable community action group, one that is activist and democratic. We are failing to oppose our government’s active use of torture on POWs.
French imperialist troops in Chad, backed by the US and UN, are helping regionalize and spread the Darfur fighting, rather than helping stop it. Since the entrance of these troops into the region, we have seen attacks on both the capital of Chad, and also on the capital of Sudan. See CHAD: STATE OF REBELLION section of BBC’s reporting.
Worse, the regionalization by US and European backed troops of the North African conflicts, threatens to also destabilize the peace accords in Southern Sudan, and also to spread new wars into the Horn of Africa, where the US has effectively destabilized peace for Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia! The UN now admits that it has helped create, working alongside the US, a greater humanitarian crisis in Somalia than currently exists in Darfur. Plus, the UN and US have hardly definitively settled down the conflicts of Eastern Congo, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda.
None of this has stopped the liberal bleeding heart imperialist community from demanding more US/ UN/ French/ British action in Africa. The entire US and British antiwar communities are riddled with these pro-war folk posing themselves off as Gandhian pacifists, who just want to stop genocides…. by calling in the troops!
This is the real desert cooked up by a supposed ‘peace community’ that is in love with hugging the cops, hugging ‘the troops’, and hugging the Democratic Party politicians. They hug the supposed ‘Green’ corporations and Pentagon, too! In the Colorado Springs area, these folk have all but totally taken over the PPJPC (Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission) non-profit corporation, hiding themselves behind Jesus in the mean time.
All the antiwar community faces a real battle against these pro-war forces inside the ‘peace’ community, masquerading as pacifists. Their real program is to glue the antiwar movement to the Democratic Party Right, immobilize public protest, and to defang and derail all activity outside of small little gatherings of the most conservative of liberals.
Meanwhile, the Darfur conflict is becoming further spread, the Iraq-Afghanistan conflict is being further spread, and the American public has lost all desire to fight against the Rightward shift of its corporate elites. What a mess! And the greatest impediment to moving forward from this impasse, is once again folk posing themselves off as being ‘liberals’. Very sad….
