Published on Monday, January 26, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
'Globalization From Below' Tackles the 'Great Recession'
by Jeremy Brecher, Brendan Smith, and Tim Costello
[As tens of thousands of activists from around the world gather in Belem, Brazil for the World Social Forum, social movements everywhere are debating how to respond to the ever-deepening economic crisis. This article is excerpted from the longer Discussion Paper "GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW" TACKLES THE "GREAT RECESSION" prepared by Global Labor Strategies.]
At the pit of the Great Depression in 1930, an American country music group named the Carter Family recorded a song called The Worried Man Blues. It began:
"I went down to the river and I lay down to sleep
When I woke up there were shackles on my feet."
Though many subsequent verses describe the horrific outcome, there is no explanation of what had happened or why – just an awakening to a seemingly endless catastrophe. The song immediately became an unprecedented national hit. It's hard to imagine that its success didn't have something to do with capturing the sense of being the helpless victim of incomprehensible disaster that so many felt in the face of the Great Depression.
The seemingly sudden collapse of the global economy in 2008 has similarly left millions, indeed billions of people all over the world a victims of a catastrophe that appears both inexplicable and unending.
But what's now being dubbed the "Great Recession" is neither incomprehensible nor irremediable. On the contrary, it can be understood as an expectable result of a capitalism that has been globalized and at the same time "freed" by neoliberalism of control in the public interest.
The economic globalization that transformed the world at the turn of the century promised, according to its advocates, a glorious vista of prosperity that would provide unprecedented economic growth and raise billions of people out of poverty. In practice it generated personal and national insecurity, growing inequality, and a race to the bottom in which every community, nation, and workgroup had to reduce its social, environmental, and labor conditions to that of its most impoverished competitor.
But economic globalization also gave birth to a new convergence of global social forces that opposed this kind of globalization. People all over the world fought back against this "globalization from above" with their own "globalization from below." They used asymmetrical strategies of linking across the borders of nations and constituencies to become a counter power to the advocates of globalization. They created a movement – variously known as the global justice movement, the anti-globalization movement, global civil society, or as we call it, "globalization from below" -- that some in the media even characterized as "the world's other superpower."
The anti-globalization/global justice/globalization-from-below movement developed in response to the expansive phase of globalization and neoliberalism. Now the global economy has entered the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial crisis has turned out to be the start of a cascade of other economic crises that are reshaping the global economy as definitively as an earthquake reshapes a city. Current leaders of the world's nations have utterly failed to develop a solution. The likely impact of their failure on ordinary people around the world is incalculable.
The advocates of globalization from above propounded as an article of faith that markets are self-regulating and that all would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds if only governments, labor unions, citizens organizations, and the unruly mob let them alone to do their thing.
The times they are a-changing. US government officials long known as market fundamentalists seize banks, buy mortgage and insurance companies, and commit $7.7 trillion – half of the US annual product -- to government intervention in financial markets.
The Clintonite "moderates" who once gutted the social safety net and sacrificed commitments to jobs programs in order to build up budget surpluses now propose vast public works programs financed by budget deficits. The IMF, scourge of "irresponsible" countries that didn't balance their budgets, advocates a trillion-plus dollars in global government deficits and claims to have replaced "structural adjustment conditionalities" with condition-free loans.
These programs may well fail in halting the downward spiral of the global economy. But they open the door to new forms of more social and public economy. That's one reason conservatives normally oppose them – and one indicator of how serious the present crisis really is. The economic crisis makes it possible to put proposals on the table that have long been ruled inadmissible.
While economists have asserted with great confidence that one after another trillion dollar "solution" would save the global economy, one after another has failed, raising the specter that it cannot be saved in its present form. Peter Boon and Simon Johnson of the website baselinescenario.com recently raised that possibility in the Wall Street Journal. They note that economists generally believe even the Great Depression of the 1930s could have been stopped by proper monetary policy. But, Boon and Johnson argue, governments may simply not be able to prevent such huge deflationary spirals. "Perhaps the events of 1929 produced an unstoppable whirlwind of deleveraging which no set of policy measures would truly be able to prevent." Their implication seems evident: The same could be true today.
The multi-trillion dollar rescues and bail-outs so far just attempt – possibly futilely -- to save the status quo. But what can we do if the status quo can't be saved? Can globalization from below really provide an alternative solution to the great recession?
It has already started to do so. A landmark was the meeting of a group of social movements and NGOs in October, 2008 on the occasion of the Asia-Europe People's Forum in Beijing that developed a sketch for a "transitional program for radical economic transformation." The "Beijing Declaration" laid out alternatives that are "practical and immediately feasible" that put the "well-being of people and the planet at their center." This requires "democratic control over financial and economic institutions." It includes proposals for finance, taxation, public spending and investment, international trade and finance, environment, and agriculture and industry. It provides a brilliant first expression of a globalization-from-below alternative to the failures of globalization from above.
The basic vision of the Declaration is summed up in its title: "The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for transformation." Its goal, in other words, is not to shore up the status quo and return to the destructive form of globalization that preceded the crisis. Its objective is almost the opposite of the eight-trillion-dollars-and-counting of bail-outs, rescues, and subsidies provided to business in recent months by the world's governments. It aims instead to provide "a transitional program for radical economic transformation" to a "different kind of political and economic order."
"Transitional program" may sound like antiquated socialist rhetoric – a call to take state power and nationalize industry. But both the goals and the methods are very different. Indeed, the Declaration points a path between merely reestablishing the status quo and assuming that actions must be "revolutionary or nothing."
No "maximalism" here. "To capture people's attention and support" the Declaration argues, proposals must be "practical and immediately feasible." That is possible because, even under the domination of globalization from above, people have been developing alternatives within the world's nooks and crannies. The unfolding economic crisis provides the opportunity "to put into the public domain some of the inspiring and feasible alternatives many of us have been working on for decades."
The goal linking these alternatives is "the well-being of people and the planet." And that requires a focus not primarily on restoring the financial system, but first and foremost on the great human and environmental crisis the world is facing in relation to food, climate, and energy.
Such common human interests are not the principal concerns of the people and institutions that now call the shots in national governments or the global economy. The "well-being of people and the planet" will not be achieved by economic jiggering. Instead, "democratic control over financial and economic institutions are required."
The vision of such democratic control, however, is not of either a centralized national or a centralized global economy. It is closer to what Walden Bello elsewhere described as the "co-existence" of a variety of "international organizations, agreements and regional groupings" that would allow "a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic world with multiple checks and balances" in which nations and communities can "carve out the space to develop based on their values, their rhythms, and the strategies of their choice."
The current economic crisis creates opportunity for transformation, the Declaration argues, because it severely weakens the power of the US, the EU, and the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. It undermines the legitimacy of the neo-liberal paradigm. And, where global pseudo-consensus once asserted that "there is no alternative" to liberal capitalism, the future of capitalism is now becoming an open question.
Of course, this moment can also be seized by "fascist, right wing populist, xenophobic groups" who will try to "take advantage of people's fear and anger for reactionary ends."
What is the agency for pursuing constructive alternatives and resisting destructive ones? It starts with the "powerful movements against neo-liberalism" that have been built over past decades. These will grow along with public anger at the abuse of public funds for private subsidy, the crises of food, energy, and the environment, and the deepening recession.
As social movements from around the world converge in Belem, Brazil at the end of January for the World Social Forum, they will be in a position to take the next step toward realizing their potential as the world's "other superpower." Indeed, it is the convergence of the already existing networks and understandings of globalization from below with the new outrage at what neo-liberalism has done to the world that provides the opportunity to show that another world is indeed possible.
Tim Costello, Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith are the co-founders of Global Labor Strategies, a resource center providing research and analysis on globalization, trade and labor issues. GLS staff have published many previous reports on a variety of labor-related issues, including Outsource This! American Workers, the Jobs Deficit, and the Fair Globalization Solution, Contingent Workers Fight For Fairness, and Fight Where You Stand!: Why Globalization Matters in Your Community and Workplace. They have also written and produced the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Global Village or Global Pillage? GLS has offices in New York, Boston, and Montevideo, Uruguay. For more on GLS visit: www.laborstrategies.blogs.com or email smithb28@gmail.com.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Another Take on Mr. President
Published on Monday, January 19, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Return of Triangulation
by Norman Solomon
The mosaic of Barack Obama's cabinet picks and top White House staff gives us an overview of what the new president sees as political symmetry for his administration. While it's too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, it's not too soon to understand that "triangulation" is back.
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton was adept at placing himself midway between the base of his own party and Republican leaders. As he triangulated from the Oval Office -- often polarizing with liberal Democrats on such issues as "free trade," deregulation, "welfare reform" and military spending -- Clinton did well for himself. But not for his party.
During Clinton's presidency, with his repeated accommodations to corporate agendas, a progressive base became frustrated and demobilized. Democrats lost majorities in the House and Senate after just two years and didn't get them back. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, numerous left-leaning causes fell by the wayside -- victims of a Democratic president's too-clever-by-half triangulation.
Now, looking at Obama's choices for key posts, many progressive activists who went all-out for months to get him elected are disappointed. The foreign-policy team, dominated by strong backers of the Iraq invasion, hardly seems oriented toward implementing Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to "end the mindset that got us into war." On the domestic side, big-business ties and Wall Street sensibilities are most of the baseline. Overall, it's hard to argue that the glass is half full when so much is missing.
The progressives who remain eager to project their worldviews onto Obama are at high risk for hazy credulity. Such projection is a chronic hazard of Obamania. Biographer David Mendell aptly describes Obama as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see."
But in the long run, an unduly lofty pedestal sets the stage for a fall from grace. Illusions make disillusionment possible.
There's little point in progressives' faulting Obama because so much of their vital work remains undone at the grassroots. A longtime Chicago-based activist on the left, Carl Davidson, made the point well when he wrote after the November election that "one is not likely to win at the top what one has not consolidated and won at the base."
By the same token, we should recognize that Obama's campaign victories (beginning with the Iowa caucuses) were possible only because of the painstaking work by antiwar activists and other progressive advocates in prior years. To make further progress possible, in electoral arenas and in national policies, the country must be moved anew -- from the bottom up.
As his administration gets underway, disappointed progressives shouldn't blame Barack Obama for their own projection or naivete. He is a highly pragmatic leader who seeks and occupies the center of political gravity. Those who don't like where he's standing will need to move the center in their direction.
Obama has often said that his presidential quest isn't about him nearly as much as it is about us -- the people yearning for real change and willing to work for it. If there's ever a time to take Obama up on his word, this is it.
Crucial issues must be reframed. The national healthcare reform debate, for instance, still lacks the clarity to distinguish between guaranteeing healthcare for all and mandating loophole-ridden insurance coverage for all. With the exception of Rep. John Conyers' single-payer bill to provide "enhanced Medicare" for everyone in the United States, each major congressional proposal keeps the for-profit insurance industry at the core of the country's medical-care system.
As for foreign policy, the paradigm of a "war on terror," more than seven years on, remains nearly sacrosanct. Among its most stultifying effects is the widely held assumption that many more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan. Rhetoric to the contrary, Obama's policy focus appears to be fixated on finding a military solution for an Afghan conflict that cannot be resolved by military means. The escalation is set for a centrist disaster.
During his race for the White House, ironically, Obama was fond of quoting Martin Luther King Jr. about "the fierce urgency of now." But King uttered the phrase in the same speech (on April 4, 1967) that spoke of "a society gone mad on war," condemned "my own government" as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and declared: "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now."
Barack Obama never promised progressives a rose garden. His campaign inspired tens of millions of Americans, raised the level of public discourse and ousted the right wing from the White House. And he has pledged to encourage civic engagement and respectful debate. The rest is up to us.
Norman Solomon, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, was an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." Video of his recent interview on C-SPAN, including discussion of Obama and the war in Afghanistan, is posted here.
The Return of Triangulation
by Norman Solomon
The mosaic of Barack Obama's cabinet picks and top White House staff gives us an overview of what the new president sees as political symmetry for his administration. While it's too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, it's not too soon to understand that "triangulation" is back.
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton was adept at placing himself midway between the base of his own party and Republican leaders. As he triangulated from the Oval Office -- often polarizing with liberal Democrats on such issues as "free trade," deregulation, "welfare reform" and military spending -- Clinton did well for himself. But not for his party.
During Clinton's presidency, with his repeated accommodations to corporate agendas, a progressive base became frustrated and demobilized. Democrats lost majorities in the House and Senate after just two years and didn't get them back. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, numerous left-leaning causes fell by the wayside -- victims of a Democratic president's too-clever-by-half triangulation.
Now, looking at Obama's choices for key posts, many progressive activists who went all-out for months to get him elected are disappointed. The foreign-policy team, dominated by strong backers of the Iraq invasion, hardly seems oriented toward implementing Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to "end the mindset that got us into war." On the domestic side, big-business ties and Wall Street sensibilities are most of the baseline. Overall, it's hard to argue that the glass is half full when so much is missing.
The progressives who remain eager to project their worldviews onto Obama are at high risk for hazy credulity. Such projection is a chronic hazard of Obamania. Biographer David Mendell aptly describes Obama as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see."
But in the long run, an unduly lofty pedestal sets the stage for a fall from grace. Illusions make disillusionment possible.
There's little point in progressives' faulting Obama because so much of their vital work remains undone at the grassroots. A longtime Chicago-based activist on the left, Carl Davidson, made the point well when he wrote after the November election that "one is not likely to win at the top what one has not consolidated and won at the base."
By the same token, we should recognize that Obama's campaign victories (beginning with the Iowa caucuses) were possible only because of the painstaking work by antiwar activists and other progressive advocates in prior years. To make further progress possible, in electoral arenas and in national policies, the country must be moved anew -- from the bottom up.
As his administration gets underway, disappointed progressives shouldn't blame Barack Obama for their own projection or naivete. He is a highly pragmatic leader who seeks and occupies the center of political gravity. Those who don't like where he's standing will need to move the center in their direction.
Obama has often said that his presidential quest isn't about him nearly as much as it is about us -- the people yearning for real change and willing to work for it. If there's ever a time to take Obama up on his word, this is it.
Crucial issues must be reframed. The national healthcare reform debate, for instance, still lacks the clarity to distinguish between guaranteeing healthcare for all and mandating loophole-ridden insurance coverage for all. With the exception of Rep. John Conyers' single-payer bill to provide "enhanced Medicare" for everyone in the United States, each major congressional proposal keeps the for-profit insurance industry at the core of the country's medical-care system.
As for foreign policy, the paradigm of a "war on terror," more than seven years on, remains nearly sacrosanct. Among its most stultifying effects is the widely held assumption that many more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan. Rhetoric to the contrary, Obama's policy focus appears to be fixated on finding a military solution for an Afghan conflict that cannot be resolved by military means. The escalation is set for a centrist disaster.
During his race for the White House, ironically, Obama was fond of quoting Martin Luther King Jr. about "the fierce urgency of now." But King uttered the phrase in the same speech (on April 4, 1967) that spoke of "a society gone mad on war," condemned "my own government" as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and declared: "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now."
Barack Obama never promised progressives a rose garden. His campaign inspired tens of millions of Americans, raised the level of public discourse and ousted the right wing from the White House. And he has pledged to encourage civic engagement and respectful debate. The rest is up to us.
Norman Solomon, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, was an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." Video of his recent interview on C-SPAN, including discussion of Obama and the war in Afghanistan, is posted here.
A 'Citizens' Oath of Office'
A "Citizens' Oath of Office" for Inauguration Day 2009
by Robert Jensen
Eight long years ago at a counter-inaugural event in Austin, TX, I administered a "Citizen's Oath of Office" to the people who had come together on the steps of the state Capitol to challenge the legitimacy of the incoming Bush administration and its right-wing agenda. In 2005 I offered a revised version that expanded on our duties during even more trying times.
In 2009, we welcome a far saner administration but also face far deeper problems, and hence such a citizen's oath is as necessary as ever. The Obama administration will no doubt step back from the reckless and reactionary policies of the past eight years, but the core problems of empire and economics -- U.S. domination around the world and corporate domination at home and abroad -- remain as threatening as ever. The robotic talk among Democrats of pressing on in "the right war" in Afghanistan (allegedly to fight terrorism) and a continued faith in the predatory capitalist system (albeit softened slightly in the face of potential collapse) offer little hope for meaningful change at the deep level so desperately needed.
As we celebrate the end of an eight-year disaster, we should recommit to the ongoing work required to create a truly just and sustainable world. With that work in mind, here's my suggestion for a 2009 Citizen's Oath of Office, with new language added in brackets:
"I do solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, help create a truly democratic world by (1) going beyond mainstream corporate news media to seek out information about important political, economic, and social issues; (2) engaging fellow citizens, including those who disagree with me, in serious discussion and debate about those issues; (3) committing as much time, energy, and money as possible to help build [authentic] grassroots political organizations that can pressure politicians to put the interests of people over profit and power; and (4) connecting these efforts to global political and social movements fighting the U.S. empire abroad, where it does the most intense damage. I will continue to resist corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist any roll-back of civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms. [And I will commit to collective efforts in my local community to help build joyful alternatives to an unsustainable consumer society.]"
I think these bracketed additions are crucial. First, adding "authentic" as a modifier of "grassroots political organizations" reminds us that the campaign to elect Obama was not a movement, no matter how many times he uses that term. It was a campaign to elect a candidate from one of the country's two major parties, both of which are committed to imperial domination and predatory capitalism. That isn't to argue there is no difference between candidates, but to remind us that a slogan-driven electoral campaign for such a party is not a people's movement. Authentic movements for justice do not arise out of the Republican or Democratic parties but from people coming together to challenge illegitimate authority rather than accommodate it. Strategic decisions about voting do not replace organizing.
Second, in addition to traditional movement building, it's clearer than ever that we must focus some of our resources on strengthening on-the-ground alternatives to an extractive industrial economy that is undermining the ability of the ecosystem to sustain life. Those local experiments, such as worker-owned cooperatives and community-supported agriculture, will be increasingly important as the dominant culture proves itself unable to cope with economic and ecological collapse that is no longer a matter for speculation regarding the distant future but a reality we must face now.
We can't predict the exact texture and timing of that collapse, but we can know it is coming and confront the need for real change. Imagine we are riding on a train hurtling 100 miles per hour on tracks that end at the edge of a cliff. The engineer is replaced by someone who wants to slow the train down to 50 miles per hour but is committed to staying on the same tracks. Slowing down may buy us some time, but the cliff remains.
So, like many others on Tuesday I will breathe a sigh of relief when Obama is sworn in, but I won't breathe easy.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center . His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.eduhttp://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. and his articles can be found online at
by Robert Jensen
Eight long years ago at a counter-inaugural event in Austin, TX, I administered a "Citizen's Oath of Office" to the people who had come together on the steps of the state Capitol to challenge the legitimacy of the incoming Bush administration and its right-wing agenda. In 2005 I offered a revised version that expanded on our duties during even more trying times.
In 2009, we welcome a far saner administration but also face far deeper problems, and hence such a citizen's oath is as necessary as ever. The Obama administration will no doubt step back from the reckless and reactionary policies of the past eight years, but the core problems of empire and economics -- U.S. domination around the world and corporate domination at home and abroad -- remain as threatening as ever. The robotic talk among Democrats of pressing on in "the right war" in Afghanistan (allegedly to fight terrorism) and a continued faith in the predatory capitalist system (albeit softened slightly in the face of potential collapse) offer little hope for meaningful change at the deep level so desperately needed.
As we celebrate the end of an eight-year disaster, we should recommit to the ongoing work required to create a truly just and sustainable world. With that work in mind, here's my suggestion for a 2009 Citizen's Oath of Office, with new language added in brackets:
"I do solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, help create a truly democratic world by (1) going beyond mainstream corporate news media to seek out information about important political, economic, and social issues; (2) engaging fellow citizens, including those who disagree with me, in serious discussion and debate about those issues; (3) committing as much time, energy, and money as possible to help build [authentic] grassroots political organizations that can pressure politicians to put the interests of people over profit and power; and (4) connecting these efforts to global political and social movements fighting the U.S. empire abroad, where it does the most intense damage. I will continue to resist corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist any roll-back of civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms. [And I will commit to collective efforts in my local community to help build joyful alternatives to an unsustainable consumer society.]"
I think these bracketed additions are crucial. First, adding "authentic" as a modifier of "grassroots political organizations" reminds us that the campaign to elect Obama was not a movement, no matter how many times he uses that term. It was a campaign to elect a candidate from one of the country's two major parties, both of which are committed to imperial domination and predatory capitalism. That isn't to argue there is no difference between candidates, but to remind us that a slogan-driven electoral campaign for such a party is not a people's movement. Authentic movements for justice do not arise out of the Republican or Democratic parties but from people coming together to challenge illegitimate authority rather than accommodate it. Strategic decisions about voting do not replace organizing.
Second, in addition to traditional movement building, it's clearer than ever that we must focus some of our resources on strengthening on-the-ground alternatives to an extractive industrial economy that is undermining the ability of the ecosystem to sustain life. Those local experiments, such as worker-owned cooperatives and community-supported agriculture, will be increasingly important as the dominant culture proves itself unable to cope with economic and ecological collapse that is no longer a matter for speculation regarding the distant future but a reality we must face now.
We can't predict the exact texture and timing of that collapse, but we can know it is coming and confront the need for real change. Imagine we are riding on a train hurtling 100 miles per hour on tracks that end at the edge of a cliff. The engineer is replaced by someone who wants to slow the train down to 50 miles per hour but is committed to staying on the same tracks. Slowing down may buy us some time, but the cliff remains.
So, like many others on Tuesday I will breathe a sigh of relief when Obama is sworn in, but I won't breathe easy.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center . His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.eduhttp://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. and his articles can be found online at
Obama from a Nuanced Perspective
What Peace Activists Can Achieve in the Age of Obama
by Thad Williamson
Reading the collected literary works of Barack Hussein Obama in the days since November 4 has been an interesting experience. Like many in the Richmond peace community, I volunteered for Obama in the fall, and had paid close attention to his speeches and debate performances since his stunning win in the Iowa caucuses last January. Still, I hadn't actually read his two quite substantial books (Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope).
Reading through those pages now leaves one with three distinct impressions. Dreams of My Father leaves one stunned and amazed that a person with this set of life experiences and this degree of social justice consciousness has actually been elected president. The Audacity of Hope leaves one impressed by not only the author's familiarity and relatively subtle approaches to a range of policy issues but with his ability to link a wide range of concerns within a coherent interpretive frame.
Finally, one cannot help but be impressed by the degree to which the campaign Obama waged and won was consistent with the vision of politics he lays out in his books. The basics of that vision can be summarized as follows: America is a seriously flawed place, but the basic instincts of its people are good. Our history has often been awful and brutal, but we as a people have the capacity for change. Ordinary people can be the agents driving that change, but that can only happen if we recover a faith in public life-that is, in politics. But that, in turn, can only happen if we reconnect politics to moral values in a clear way.
Obama's vision has already re-made history and opened up new possibilities for America's future political development. But now that his presidency is upon us, it's worth taking a hard look at just what Obama's world view is, and the trajectory it suggests for the next four years and beyond. While Obama repeatedly articulates a small-r republican faith in ordinary people's capacity to shape the future, it will be Obama himself calling the shots and shaping the agenda. Indeed, contrary to the hopes of many progressive activists calling for sustained mobilization and pressure to push Obama in a progressive direction, the evidence of The Audacity of Hope in particular suggests that Obama is not someone likely to bow to pressures of any kind unless or until he himself is persuaded of the wisdom of a given course of action.
So what then is Obama's world view? I will focus here on questions of war, peace, and international relations. The Audacity of Hope reveals Obama to be what might be called a progressive realist.
The "realist" part comes in Obama's acceptance of the basic framework of international politics in the 21st century. That framework is highlighted most obviously by the disproportionate power of the United States, backed by a massive military. Obama thinks the U.S. must play a lead role in world affairs, both to protect American interests and to help solve common problems, and that sometimes that lead role requires use of military force (as in Afghanistan).
Obama's realism is likely to make many peace activists uncomfortable. He does not think war is always wrong, and he does not think that American hegemony is necessarily a bad thing.
But Obama's form of realism is very different from the Bush-Cheney belief that America is both all-powerful and infallible. Obama recognizes that the U.S. historically has often played a destructive role overseas (he cites Vietnam and support for dictators, including in Indonesia as examples). He thinks that the "war on terror" (a phrase hopefully soon to be retired) cannot be won in Iraq or other military misadventures, but only by a more complex strategy in which military force plays a subordinate role. He does not call for cuts in the military budget, but does call for spending less on expensive weapons system and more on personnel and training. And he calls for paying attention to and devoting resources to the dire problems of the developing world, including Africa, for both humanitarian and practical reasons.
Obama's brand of realism is reminiscent of that of the mid-twentieth century Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was deeply interested in social justice both domestically and internationally, but also very clear that we human beings are deeply motivated by our own self-interest and that justice, reason, and even love itself can never fully tame our tendency to act selfishly, especially when we act as a group via the nation-state. Niebuhr's understanding of the human condition led him away from pacifism; instead he embraced the military fight against Nazism and fascism in World War II. Yet at the same time, Niebuhr wrote favorably of the possibilities for using nonviolent civil disobedience to advance social change, particularly with respect to civil rights, in the process helping inspire Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a world governed by power, Niebuhr believed, those who hoped to advance justice and democracy needed to be willing to use power-hence his endorsement of the basic Cold War framework (one which Obama writes admiringly about). But Niebuhr also warned of the hubris that comes with believing that our own motives are pure and that our power is limitless (just as Obama criticizes many of the side consequences of the Cold War, such as our involvement in coups abroad and the rise of the military-industrial complex at home).
What Obama hopes to do is to craft a broad new national security strategy with the same coherence as the Cold War containment strategy, but without the associated hubris. Such a strategy gives up on the idea we can spread democracy by force, but aggressively seeks to confront real security threats (such as loose nuclear weapons), using force when necessary. Importantly, Obama also recognizes the need to pay attention as well to "promoting peace," a goal which centrally must include raising the standards of living of the one-half of the world's population living on less than two dollars a day.
Overall Obama's vision, if realized, would certainly represent a historic shift of orientation, and his presidency promises a welcome return of the idea that sensible foreign policy must take seriously the perspectives of other countries and their peoples. What role might the peace community play in helping take advantage of the opportunity this presidency represents?
As noted above, I do not think it is realistic to suppose that activist pressure can alter Obama's basic framework, including his commitment to periodic use of force. Obama has made it very clear he intends to send more troops into Afghanistan (even while pursuing a withdrawal from Iraq), and I don't think public pressure can stop that particular train.
Where public pressure might pay real dividends is in ensuring that the "progressive" aspect of Obama's realist outlook is not left on the shelf. For instance, Obama is well aware of the problems of world poverty and the role the IMF, World Bank and global debt have played in accentuating such poverty. Relatively early in his campaign, he called for a doubling of foreign aid. Yet in the vice-presidential debate Joe Biden suggested increasing foreign aid might be one of the items to fall by the wayside as a result of the economic crisis.
Hopefully that was just another example of Biden putting his foot in his mouth. But the peace community and all those concerned with advancing justice need to make our voices heard and assure that the best promises offered by Obama are not sacrificed on the altar of expediency. The danger is that pledges to do something real to help the world's poor and secure the basis for long-term peace are quietly forgotten while bigger ticket items (Iraq, Afghanistan, the economic crisis) hog the headlines.
That is a danger the peace community can help avert. While we cannot alter Obama's basic framework for engaging with the world, we can insist that the new administration have the courage to live up to its own best principles.
Thad Williamson is assistant professor of leadership studies, University of Richmond
by Thad Williamson
Reading the collected literary works of Barack Hussein Obama in the days since November 4 has been an interesting experience. Like many in the Richmond peace community, I volunteered for Obama in the fall, and had paid close attention to his speeches and debate performances since his stunning win in the Iowa caucuses last January. Still, I hadn't actually read his two quite substantial books (Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope).
Reading through those pages now leaves one with three distinct impressions. Dreams of My Father leaves one stunned and amazed that a person with this set of life experiences and this degree of social justice consciousness has actually been elected president. The Audacity of Hope leaves one impressed by not only the author's familiarity and relatively subtle approaches to a range of policy issues but with his ability to link a wide range of concerns within a coherent interpretive frame.
Finally, one cannot help but be impressed by the degree to which the campaign Obama waged and won was consistent with the vision of politics he lays out in his books. The basics of that vision can be summarized as follows: America is a seriously flawed place, but the basic instincts of its people are good. Our history has often been awful and brutal, but we as a people have the capacity for change. Ordinary people can be the agents driving that change, but that can only happen if we recover a faith in public life-that is, in politics. But that, in turn, can only happen if we reconnect politics to moral values in a clear way.
Obama's vision has already re-made history and opened up new possibilities for America's future political development. But now that his presidency is upon us, it's worth taking a hard look at just what Obama's world view is, and the trajectory it suggests for the next four years and beyond. While Obama repeatedly articulates a small-r republican faith in ordinary people's capacity to shape the future, it will be Obama himself calling the shots and shaping the agenda. Indeed, contrary to the hopes of many progressive activists calling for sustained mobilization and pressure to push Obama in a progressive direction, the evidence of The Audacity of Hope in particular suggests that Obama is not someone likely to bow to pressures of any kind unless or until he himself is persuaded of the wisdom of a given course of action.
So what then is Obama's world view? I will focus here on questions of war, peace, and international relations. The Audacity of Hope reveals Obama to be what might be called a progressive realist.
The "realist" part comes in Obama's acceptance of the basic framework of international politics in the 21st century. That framework is highlighted most obviously by the disproportionate power of the United States, backed by a massive military. Obama thinks the U.S. must play a lead role in world affairs, both to protect American interests and to help solve common problems, and that sometimes that lead role requires use of military force (as in Afghanistan).
Obama's realism is likely to make many peace activists uncomfortable. He does not think war is always wrong, and he does not think that American hegemony is necessarily a bad thing.
But Obama's form of realism is very different from the Bush-Cheney belief that America is both all-powerful and infallible. Obama recognizes that the U.S. historically has often played a destructive role overseas (he cites Vietnam and support for dictators, including in Indonesia as examples). He thinks that the "war on terror" (a phrase hopefully soon to be retired) cannot be won in Iraq or other military misadventures, but only by a more complex strategy in which military force plays a subordinate role. He does not call for cuts in the military budget, but does call for spending less on expensive weapons system and more on personnel and training. And he calls for paying attention to and devoting resources to the dire problems of the developing world, including Africa, for both humanitarian and practical reasons.
Obama's brand of realism is reminiscent of that of the mid-twentieth century Protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was deeply interested in social justice both domestically and internationally, but also very clear that we human beings are deeply motivated by our own self-interest and that justice, reason, and even love itself can never fully tame our tendency to act selfishly, especially when we act as a group via the nation-state. Niebuhr's understanding of the human condition led him away from pacifism; instead he embraced the military fight against Nazism and fascism in World War II. Yet at the same time, Niebuhr wrote favorably of the possibilities for using nonviolent civil disobedience to advance social change, particularly with respect to civil rights, in the process helping inspire Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a world governed by power, Niebuhr believed, those who hoped to advance justice and democracy needed to be willing to use power-hence his endorsement of the basic Cold War framework (one which Obama writes admiringly about). But Niebuhr also warned of the hubris that comes with believing that our own motives are pure and that our power is limitless (just as Obama criticizes many of the side consequences of the Cold War, such as our involvement in coups abroad and the rise of the military-industrial complex at home).
What Obama hopes to do is to craft a broad new national security strategy with the same coherence as the Cold War containment strategy, but without the associated hubris. Such a strategy gives up on the idea we can spread democracy by force, but aggressively seeks to confront real security threats (such as loose nuclear weapons), using force when necessary. Importantly, Obama also recognizes the need to pay attention as well to "promoting peace," a goal which centrally must include raising the standards of living of the one-half of the world's population living on less than two dollars a day.
Overall Obama's vision, if realized, would certainly represent a historic shift of orientation, and his presidency promises a welcome return of the idea that sensible foreign policy must take seriously the perspectives of other countries and their peoples. What role might the peace community play in helping take advantage of the opportunity this presidency represents?
As noted above, I do not think it is realistic to suppose that activist pressure can alter Obama's basic framework, including his commitment to periodic use of force. Obama has made it very clear he intends to send more troops into Afghanistan (even while pursuing a withdrawal from Iraq), and I don't think public pressure can stop that particular train.
Where public pressure might pay real dividends is in ensuring that the "progressive" aspect of Obama's realist outlook is not left on the shelf. For instance, Obama is well aware of the problems of world poverty and the role the IMF, World Bank and global debt have played in accentuating such poverty. Relatively early in his campaign, he called for a doubling of foreign aid. Yet in the vice-presidential debate Joe Biden suggested increasing foreign aid might be one of the items to fall by the wayside as a result of the economic crisis.
Hopefully that was just another example of Biden putting his foot in his mouth. But the peace community and all those concerned with advancing justice need to make our voices heard and assure that the best promises offered by Obama are not sacrificed on the altar of expediency. The danger is that pledges to do something real to help the world's poor and secure the basis for long-term peace are quietly forgotten while bigger ticket items (Iraq, Afghanistan, the economic crisis) hog the headlines.
That is a danger the peace community can help avert. While we cannot alter Obama's basic framework for engaging with the world, we can insist that the new administration have the courage to live up to its own best principles.
Thad Williamson is assistant professor of leadership studies, University of Richmond
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Obama is No King
I think it is important to emphasize that despite the Jan. 20 inauguration's occurring one day after the national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama is not King.
He is also not a king. Therefore, do not decorate his head with a crown of thorns (or gold and jewels). Recognize that he is the elected leader of what is supposed to be a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our Constitution states that he is but a servant of the will of the people. The people must lead him - not the other way around.
Yet this same democracy, conceived with far better intentions than those of its current stewards, has been trampled on by U.S. president after U.S. president for hundreds of years in the form of illegal wars, institutional racism, and crippling poverty.
in the 1960s Dr. King spoke out against the three-headed monster: materialism, racism, and militarism. His work is far from over. The forces he resisted so courageously and selflessly are even more deeply entrenched than they were in his time. His words become more prophetic with each passing day, and I know he would still be marching were he alive. But that's Dr. King, who wore the garment of a preacher and the suit of a civil rights activist. Just as a house cannot stand if divided against itself, President Obama can never successfully confront the three core evils of this imperfect union as its head administrator. He is now the leader of the "world's greatest purveyor of violence." If only we had a new King...
He is also not a king. Therefore, do not decorate his head with a crown of thorns (or gold and jewels). Recognize that he is the elected leader of what is supposed to be a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our Constitution states that he is but a servant of the will of the people. The people must lead him - not the other way around.
Yet this same democracy, conceived with far better intentions than those of its current stewards, has been trampled on by U.S. president after U.S. president for hundreds of years in the form of illegal wars, institutional racism, and crippling poverty.
in the 1960s Dr. King spoke out against the three-headed monster: materialism, racism, and militarism. His work is far from over. The forces he resisted so courageously and selflessly are even more deeply entrenched than they were in his time. His words become more prophetic with each passing day, and I know he would still be marching were he alive. But that's Dr. King, who wore the garment of a preacher and the suit of a civil rights activist. Just as a house cannot stand if divided against itself, President Obama can never successfully confront the three core evils of this imperfect union as its head administrator. He is now the leader of the "world's greatest purveyor of violence." If only we had a new King...
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Support Those Who Work for Peace
In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I would like to urge everyone to support neither Israel nor Palestine, nor the leaders who claim to represent them. I would ask that you instead support the many organizations and individuals working (nonviolently) for peace in Israel and the Occupied Territories. This is just one of those groups. I learned about it just today:
Love Thy Neighbor
http://www.ltneighbor.com/index.html
Mission statement: To provide educational resources and programs about the plight of Palestinians in Palestine/Israel and to support both peoples' deepening commitment to nonviolence as the way to bring a just peace for themselves and their neighbors.
All across this earth, no matter how oppressive the environment or hopeless the conditions, you will always find people working for peace. Often these people do not have the support of a state apparatus or a propaganda machine. They don't have deep pockets. They are not treated as heroes or celebrities. They are often nameless and faceless. But they exist. They take to the streets when many others hide in their homes. Join them in any way you can.
Love Thy Neighbor
http://www.ltneighbor.com/index.html
Mission statement: To provide educational resources and programs about the plight of Palestinians in Palestine/Israel and to support both peoples' deepening commitment to nonviolence as the way to bring a just peace for themselves and their neighbors.
All across this earth, no matter how oppressive the environment or hopeless the conditions, you will always find people working for peace. Often these people do not have the support of a state apparatus or a propaganda machine. They don't have deep pockets. They are not treated as heroes or celebrities. They are often nameless and faceless. But they exist. They take to the streets when many others hide in their homes. Join them in any way you can.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Hope for Gaza?
Jesuit priest corresponds with Hamas
By Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
January 14, 2008
Fr. Raymond HelmickFr. Raymond Helmick
Fr. Raymond Helmick is a copious correspondent. For the past three years, the Jesuit priest has written nearly 20 letters to Khalid Mishal, founder and political leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, urging him to abandon militancy, unify with Fatah, Hamas' political rival, and organize the Palestinians in a disciplined campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
"Your military weapons are too puny to stand against Israeli weapons, but that mobilized power of a people denying, without violence, any cooperation with its occupiers is something Israel could not withstand," wrote Helmick in a Feb 2006 letter sent weeks after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections.
The missives to Mishal are the latest chapter in Helmick's extraordinary engagement with the major power brokers in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, an engagement conducted primarily through letters and, on rare occasions, meetings. Over the past two and a half decades, the priest has written to Palestinian political leaders and state officials from a series of U.S. and Israeli administrations, including the late president Yasir Arafat, U.S. presidents Clinton and both Bushes, secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.
The letters and reports, which fill three volumes, provide one of the texts for a course on the Middle East that Helmick, a theology professor, teaches at Boston College.
"Conflict resolution is a process of interpretation," Helmick said. "I'm always very anxious to analyze, interpret, and see what options people have and to talk to them about it. … Once there is an alternative to violence, violence is no longer a legitimate course. Arafat understood that. The Israelis understand that. Hamas understands that. Of course, they have to believe that other options are real, and that can take a lot of exploration."
The 77-year-old priest has a long history of unofficially monitoring and mediating conflicts. He worked with warring factions in Northern Ireland, Lebanon and Yugoslavia. In Washington, he helped establish the U.S. Institute of Peace and later served as senior associate for the Program in Preventive Diplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both assignments gained him access to American foreign policy makers. With the Rev. Jesse Jackson, he helped facilitate the release of three American prisoners held in Belgrade during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo.
But it is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that has consumed much of Helmick's attention. He became involved with the conflict through his Jewish friend Richard Hauser, a sociologist, and Hauser's wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, concert pianist and sister of famed violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The priest and couple founded London's Center for Human Rights and Responsibilities, which in 1973 hosted a Palestinian delegation sent by Arafat to make contact with European Jews.
Helmick later met with the Palestinian leader several times in 1986, two years before the U.S. government officially recognized the PLO, and for the next two decades continued corresponding with him, weighing in on the options for peace amid negotiations over the Oslo and Camp David Accords.
In his book Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed, Helmick argues that the 2000 peace talks suffered from a structural flaw -- the neglect of international law. "Disparity of power most basically defines this conflict. Unless the conflict is approached according to law the only alternative is a procedure based on power relationships and therefore determined by political and military superiority. That makes any agreement formed, nothing other than a Diktat," he said. "The law would not protect the occupation, but it would protect Israeli rights as well as Palestinians," he added.
Within a week of Hamas' electoral win in 2006, Helmick sent Rev. Jackson his assessment of the election and proposed meeting with Mishal, who lives in exile in Damascus, Syria. Jackson and Helmick had previously attempted to engage with Hamas while on a 2002 interfaith delegation to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The delegates were scheduled to go to Gaza for a session with Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, but aborted their trip after Hamas detonated a bomb at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in retaliation for an Israeli F-16 attack launched days earlier. In an impassioned letter to the Muslim cleric, Helmick lamented that the bomb, an "act of vengeance for vengeance," had made it impossible for them to meet.
"What do you want of the Israelis?" the Catholic priest asked. "Do you want them to remain in this hateful quest for vengeance or do you want to elicit from them compassion and justice? We are all responsible for our enemies, for their souls, and must seek to bring them to righteousness and repentance. That will only happen if you act with a higher morality than theirs in emulation of the compassion and righteousness of God."
Despite the F-16 attack and subsequent bombing, Palestinians were contemplating a unilateral cease-fire with Israel during the summer of 2002. Hamas' reluctance to sign a cease-fire document stemmed from their disagreement with the document's reference to the Israeli/Palestinian border, Helmick said.
"I advocated to them that they just leave the border out of the document and declare their cease-fire on the basis of compassion of Islam. That is eventually what they did, and, in fact, over the next four years, Hamas showed itself responsible in its restraint," the priest said. In 2004, the Israelis assassinated Yassin.
Jackson and Helmick finally did meet Mishal in 2006. Israel's war on Hezbollah had just concluded and the Lebanon crisis overshadowed much of the trip. Helmick reported that the Americans were warmly received in Damascus. The session with the Hamas leader and four members of his political bureau went until 3 a.m. "[Mishal] assured us that his party's intentions in no way intended the destruction of Israel. They set as their goal the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders," wrote the priest in his summary of the session.
But according to Helmick, when urged to explicitly recognize the legitimacy of Israel, one of several Israeli preconditions for negotiating with Hamas, Mishal said the time for that had not come. Helmick attributes Hamas' refusal to several factors including concern for a disparity in the Oslo Accords and uncertainty over Israel's borders. At Oslo, the PLO recognized the legitimacy of the Israeli state while Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. "The recognition was not symmetrical," Helmick said. "The Israelis did not recognize the entitlement of the Palestinian people to a viable state."
Amid the numerous proposals explored in Helmick's correspondence, common themes emerge. To the Palestinians, he consistently argues for disciplined nonviolent resistance to the occupation as the only viable option. To the Americans and Israelis, he pleads for adhering to the rule of law.
Responses to the letters have varied. There have been perfunctory acknowledgements and a few specific replies. A 2002 epistle to Ariel Sharon, in which the priest pointedly asked if the prime minister was pursuing a policy of "transfer" toward the Palestinians, elicited a pleasant note from Sharon's secretary, Marit Danon, who thanked the American cleric for his "in-depth analysis."
More often than not, the dialogue has been one-way. The silence does not bother Helmick, who said he knows political leaders cannot articulate policy in letters to private individuals. For Mishal, who has survived one assassination attempt by the Israelis, merely acknowledging correspondence could be hazardous.
Helmick believes the need to engage with Hamas is more necessary than ever. "Israel's recent incursion into Gaza is just one more effort to knock Hamas out of the picture and get it done before Bush leaves office. But Hamas is gaining in political strength. Their popularity is growing in Gaza and the West Bank."
So the priest continues to write. In the past two months, he has sent a dozen communiqués to all the major players, including letters to president-elect Barack Obama and Mishal.
(Claire Schaeffer-Duffy lives in Worcester, Mass. and writes frequently for NCR.)
By Claire Schaeffer-Duffy
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
January 14, 2008
Fr. Raymond HelmickFr. Raymond Helmick
Fr. Raymond Helmick is a copious correspondent. For the past three years, the Jesuit priest has written nearly 20 letters to Khalid Mishal, founder and political leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, urging him to abandon militancy, unify with Fatah, Hamas' political rival, and organize the Palestinians in a disciplined campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
"Your military weapons are too puny to stand against Israeli weapons, but that mobilized power of a people denying, without violence, any cooperation with its occupiers is something Israel could not withstand," wrote Helmick in a Feb 2006 letter sent weeks after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections.
The missives to Mishal are the latest chapter in Helmick's extraordinary engagement with the major power brokers in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, an engagement conducted primarily through letters and, on rare occasions, meetings. Over the past two and a half decades, the priest has written to Palestinian political leaders and state officials from a series of U.S. and Israeli administrations, including the late president Yasir Arafat, U.S. presidents Clinton and both Bushes, secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon.
The letters and reports, which fill three volumes, provide one of the texts for a course on the Middle East that Helmick, a theology professor, teaches at Boston College.
"Conflict resolution is a process of interpretation," Helmick said. "I'm always very anxious to analyze, interpret, and see what options people have and to talk to them about it. … Once there is an alternative to violence, violence is no longer a legitimate course. Arafat understood that. The Israelis understand that. Hamas understands that. Of course, they have to believe that other options are real, and that can take a lot of exploration."
The 77-year-old priest has a long history of unofficially monitoring and mediating conflicts. He worked with warring factions in Northern Ireland, Lebanon and Yugoslavia. In Washington, he helped establish the U.S. Institute of Peace and later served as senior associate for the Program in Preventive Diplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Both assignments gained him access to American foreign policy makers. With the Rev. Jesse Jackson, he helped facilitate the release of three American prisoners held in Belgrade during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo.
But it is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that has consumed much of Helmick's attention. He became involved with the conflict through his Jewish friend Richard Hauser, a sociologist, and Hauser's wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, concert pianist and sister of famed violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The priest and couple founded London's Center for Human Rights and Responsibilities, which in 1973 hosted a Palestinian delegation sent by Arafat to make contact with European Jews.
Helmick later met with the Palestinian leader several times in 1986, two years before the U.S. government officially recognized the PLO, and for the next two decades continued corresponding with him, weighing in on the options for peace amid negotiations over the Oslo and Camp David Accords.
In his book Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed, Helmick argues that the 2000 peace talks suffered from a structural flaw -- the neglect of international law. "Disparity of power most basically defines this conflict. Unless the conflict is approached according to law the only alternative is a procedure based on power relationships and therefore determined by political and military superiority. That makes any agreement formed, nothing other than a Diktat," he said. "The law would not protect the occupation, but it would protect Israeli rights as well as Palestinians," he added.
Within a week of Hamas' electoral win in 2006, Helmick sent Rev. Jackson his assessment of the election and proposed meeting with Mishal, who lives in exile in Damascus, Syria. Jackson and Helmick had previously attempted to engage with Hamas while on a 2002 interfaith delegation to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The delegates were scheduled to go to Gaza for a session with Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, but aborted their trip after Hamas detonated a bomb at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in retaliation for an Israeli F-16 attack launched days earlier. In an impassioned letter to the Muslim cleric, Helmick lamented that the bomb, an "act of vengeance for vengeance," had made it impossible for them to meet.
"What do you want of the Israelis?" the Catholic priest asked. "Do you want them to remain in this hateful quest for vengeance or do you want to elicit from them compassion and justice? We are all responsible for our enemies, for their souls, and must seek to bring them to righteousness and repentance. That will only happen if you act with a higher morality than theirs in emulation of the compassion and righteousness of God."
Despite the F-16 attack and subsequent bombing, Palestinians were contemplating a unilateral cease-fire with Israel during the summer of 2002. Hamas' reluctance to sign a cease-fire document stemmed from their disagreement with the document's reference to the Israeli/Palestinian border, Helmick said.
"I advocated to them that they just leave the border out of the document and declare their cease-fire on the basis of compassion of Islam. That is eventually what they did, and, in fact, over the next four years, Hamas showed itself responsible in its restraint," the priest said. In 2004, the Israelis assassinated Yassin.
Jackson and Helmick finally did meet Mishal in 2006. Israel's war on Hezbollah had just concluded and the Lebanon crisis overshadowed much of the trip. Helmick reported that the Americans were warmly received in Damascus. The session with the Hamas leader and four members of his political bureau went until 3 a.m. "[Mishal] assured us that his party's intentions in no way intended the destruction of Israel. They set as their goal the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders," wrote the priest in his summary of the session.
But according to Helmick, when urged to explicitly recognize the legitimacy of Israel, one of several Israeli preconditions for negotiating with Hamas, Mishal said the time for that had not come. Helmick attributes Hamas' refusal to several factors including concern for a disparity in the Oslo Accords and uncertainty over Israel's borders. At Oslo, the PLO recognized the legitimacy of the Israeli state while Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. "The recognition was not symmetrical," Helmick said. "The Israelis did not recognize the entitlement of the Palestinian people to a viable state."
Amid the numerous proposals explored in Helmick's correspondence, common themes emerge. To the Palestinians, he consistently argues for disciplined nonviolent resistance to the occupation as the only viable option. To the Americans and Israelis, he pleads for adhering to the rule of law.
Responses to the letters have varied. There have been perfunctory acknowledgements and a few specific replies. A 2002 epistle to Ariel Sharon, in which the priest pointedly asked if the prime minister was pursuing a policy of "transfer" toward the Palestinians, elicited a pleasant note from Sharon's secretary, Marit Danon, who thanked the American cleric for his "in-depth analysis."
More often than not, the dialogue has been one-way. The silence does not bother Helmick, who said he knows political leaders cannot articulate policy in letters to private individuals. For Mishal, who has survived one assassination attempt by the Israelis, merely acknowledging correspondence could be hazardous.
Helmick believes the need to engage with Hamas is more necessary than ever. "Israel's recent incursion into Gaza is just one more effort to knock Hamas out of the picture and get it done before Bush leaves office. But Hamas is gaining in political strength. Their popularity is growing in Gaza and the West Bank."
So the priest continues to write. In the past two months, he has sent a dozen communiqués to all the major players, including letters to president-elect Barack Obama and Mishal.
(Claire Schaeffer-Duffy lives in Worcester, Mass. and writes frequently for NCR.)
Monday, January 5, 2009
Children of Gaza
Dear Intefaith Peace Partners,
I was able to speak to Suhalia Tarazi , Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this morning.
I took notes and I am sharing with you as best I can her situation in Gaza.
" The situation is terrible. The injured are in their homes and unable to get to the hospital and the International Red Cross can't reach them. Gaza is now divided into three areas. 20% of the staff including 2 doctors are now unable to get to the hospital. Unfortunately a bomb went off in Jerusalem Square, right outside the hospital , only 30 meters away and it blew a hole in the hospital wall.
One of the aid's husbands was unable to reach his children. Later he discover that 1 child died and other members are all injured because a bomb destroyed a neighboring building.
The 19 year old son of one of the surgeons volunteered to work in the government ambulance. He was killed when his ambulance was hit by a missile. Three ambulances have been hit by Israeli missiles , five have died.
There is no electricity and no water. Fortunately the International Red Cross has provided Ahli Hospital with some food.
It is terrible and not safe to walk on the street.
After the invasion , Ahli Hospital on Sunday received 17 cases. Twelve were admitted to the hospital and 2 to government hospitals.
Today Monday morning 5 cases were received with 4 admitted for surgery. One doctor has slept in the hospital for the last 4 nights. Our staff is now working 2 -12 hour shifts, two shifts no days off.
Streets are covered with blood. - bloody time.
Staff members have taken people in their homes, with 20-30 people for refuge. The ambulance driver has 80 living in his home.
We all have received leaflets and telephone calls " you have to leave your home, we will attack it" Where to go for the 700,000 people in Gaza City?"
I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to speak to Suhalia and I have promised her that I will tell her story and the story of the innocents. Thank you for all you are doing to circulate these messages. Please feel free to forward them the family and friends.
I offer her hope and encouragement and our commitment to help, with prayers and financial support. Remember tax deductible gifts may be sent to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, PO Box 240, Orange, CA 92859, or on line at www.americanfriends-jerusalem.org
I will continue to keep you up to date on this catastrophe happening in Gaza. If I can be of help please don't hesitate to call or email me.
Peace, Love and Joy ,
Charles
The Rev. Charles Cloughen, Jr.
President Emeritus, American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem
PO Box 313
Hunt Valley, MD 21030
410-229-0172
frcharles@verizon.net
I was able to speak to Suhalia Tarazi , Director of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza this morning.
I took notes and I am sharing with you as best I can her situation in Gaza.
" The situation is terrible. The injured are in their homes and unable to get to the hospital and the International Red Cross can't reach them. Gaza is now divided into three areas. 20% of the staff including 2 doctors are now unable to get to the hospital. Unfortunately a bomb went off in Jerusalem Square, right outside the hospital , only 30 meters away and it blew a hole in the hospital wall.
One of the aid's husbands was unable to reach his children. Later he discover that 1 child died and other members are all injured because a bomb destroyed a neighboring building.
The 19 year old son of one of the surgeons volunteered to work in the government ambulance. He was killed when his ambulance was hit by a missile. Three ambulances have been hit by Israeli missiles , five have died.
There is no electricity and no water. Fortunately the International Red Cross has provided Ahli Hospital with some food.
It is terrible and not safe to walk on the street.
After the invasion , Ahli Hospital on Sunday received 17 cases. Twelve were admitted to the hospital and 2 to government hospitals.
Today Monday morning 5 cases were received with 4 admitted for surgery. One doctor has slept in the hospital for the last 4 nights. Our staff is now working 2 -12 hour shifts, two shifts no days off.
Streets are covered with blood. - bloody time.
Staff members have taken people in their homes, with 20-30 people for refuge. The ambulance driver has 80 living in his home.
We all have received leaflets and telephone calls " you have to leave your home, we will attack it" Where to go for the 700,000 people in Gaza City?"
I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to speak to Suhalia and I have promised her that I will tell her story and the story of the innocents. Thank you for all you are doing to circulate these messages. Please feel free to forward them the family and friends.
I offer her hope and encouragement and our commitment to help, with prayers and financial support. Remember tax deductible gifts may be sent to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, PO Box 240, Orange, CA 92859, or on line at www.americanfriends-jerusalem.org
I will continue to keep you up to date on this catastrophe happening in Gaza. If I can be of help please don't hesitate to call or email me.
Peace, Love and Joy ,
Charles
The Rev. Charles Cloughen, Jr.
President Emeritus, American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem
PO Box 313
Hunt Valley, MD 21030
410-229-0172
frcharles@verizon.net
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