Heather Conn Blogs

At the start of this new year, after we in the west have enjoyed restful holidays with loved ones, how many of us are thinking of the plight of those in Syria?

 

A few nights ago, my husband and I watched disturbing footage, posted on YouTube and shown on CNN, of two police officers, with guns, stuffing a man into the trunk of a car in daylight, in the middle of a street. Another man, presumably a friend, was trying to pull the man out of the trunk. This man, clad in white, had blood stains on his upper shoulder. About a dozen people were near the vehicle.

 

The footage, shot by a Syrian citizen from an overhead balcony, ended soon after. That image stayed with me for days. Did the man escape? Did his friend save him? Were both men detained and later killed? This image made me think of so many places where similar scenes have occurred under repression, from Latin America to elsewhere in the Middle East.

 

In Syria, the police are not only torturing and killing adults, but children too. Thousands of civilians risk their lives every day, facing police bullets and tear gas, to meet in public and demand democracy and an end to their government’s brutal rule. Many are doubly risking their lives by videotaping the horrors unfolding in the streets. Snipers have killed plenty of them.

 

On this first day of 2012, I want to express the utmost admiration for the people in Syria and elsewhere who are displaying tremendous courage every day. I think of the bravery of that man, trying to save the other at huge risk to himself, and of what love and friendship will compel us to do at such dangerous times. That willingness to risk life for that of another, even a stranger, is what gives me hope for the human race. That quality is what promotes peace.

 

Here, in a land where most of us take democracy for granted, even though it has eroded phenomenally in recent years, I salute those two primary qualities, so commodified since the 1960s: love and peace. Let’s see more of both this year. They start with each of us.

Occupy Vancouver tents on their last day by the art gallery (Nov. 21)

I applaud how Vancouver, BC mayor Gregor Robertson handled the recent dismantling of Occupy Vancouver. Unlike some mayors in U.S. cities (e.g. Portland and Oakland), he deserves tremendous credit for avoiding riot squads, confrontation and violent clashes on the occupiers’ final day in front of the art gallery (Nov. 21). Thankfully, the occupiers, too, remained peaceful as they left.

On the morning of their last day in that location, I asked one young man, who was holding high a “Vive la Revolution” sign, if he expected the occupiers’ 2 p.m. departure to be violent. He told me: “Part of me hopes so.”

I watched a half-dozen occupiers take apart their tents at 11:30 a.m., two-and-a-half hours before the city had ordered them gone. The atmosphere was relaxed. A man with a throaty voice and lone guitar was singing “Democracy” at the main microphone. A handful of city officials and uniformed policed mingled with occupiers, standing on the outskirts of the mini tent city. One young man with a painted face walked up to three officers and told them “I’m glad you’re here.”

Song sparrows chittered in the trees at the corner of Georgia and Hornby. From a block away, my stomach felt the pounding, visceral beat of drums. A small group of first nations men and women had formed a circle of seats at Georgia and Granville and were drumming, with bold, rhythmic power, to protest the police handling of the murders of women who went missing on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. “I want to know what happened to my sister,” a native man said into a microphone, standing on the downtown intersection that the city had closed in preparation for protest.

The occupiers’ camp had helped spawn this display of free speech. Hurray for such an open lament. An expert in social movements, quoted recently in Canadian Press, has said that Occupy is the most important democratic social movement of the last two generations and that demonstrators who have taken over parks and other public spaces should be left alone. Occupy Wall Street has said: “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.”

“We’re observing a process of commercializing and privatizing public space, and we should be outraged by it,” says Vincent Mosco, professor emeritus of sociology at Queen’s University. “But we don’t hear about limits on public space until a genuine public movement raising significant political issues decides to make use of public space.”

 

“I hope it [Vancouver’s Occupy movement] is not dead,” environmental leader David Suzuki told about 100 people at his foundation’s Elders’ Forum, held Nov. 24 at the downtown Vancouver Public Library. Democracy is tough, he added, and today’s young occupiers need the helping hand of elders to tell them what roots they’re coming from.

“They’re trying to be different in having no leaders but that’s doomed in the world we’re living,” he said. Suzuki visited the occupy camps in Vancouver and Montreal, but he must have missed the occupiers’ elders’ tent in his home city. At a morning breakout session in his own day-long forum, several female seniors spoke in favor of the occupy movement and its desire for grassroots change. They might not have had tents pitched with the occupiers, but their hearts were alongside them.

Both individually and as a society, as we face daily challenges of injustice and inequities, we all have a basic choice to make: What will we use to motivate our thoughts and actions – love or fear? Do we choose peace or conflict? This sounds ridiculously simple, yet look at how fear fuels much, if not most, of human behavior around the world.

I like what Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, says in the five-minute documentary excerpt of Occupy Love, produced by Velcrow Ripper. We need a healing world of peace that works for everyone. People, whether they’re part of the 99 or one per cent, flourish in an atmosphere of joint creativity, intimacy, community, and open communication, where life has meaning. We can all create such a world. Let’s start now. Occupy Love.

    — photos by Heather Conn

 

 

 

Imagine the Occupy Vancouver people in Armani suits, camped out in designer beige tents with cappuccino machines and the same outdoor heaters that restaurants use. If everything else was the same – the signs, the speeches, the behaviour – do you think that the city and its fire and police departments would respond differently to the Occupy encampment? Of course. They’d offer what’s been missing so far in the relationship between both sides: respect, and meaningful dialogue regarding long-term solutions.

Sure, I understand public safety and the need to protect people, and I don’t support the use of violence by police or the occupiers. But Vancouver’s city officials would not have chosen the same heavy-handed and confrontational response of an injunction if doctors, lawyers, and business people made up the Occupy group. Instead, they would have suggested a discreet meeting, among supposed peers, and likely found a settlement that satisfied both groups.

The recent drug-related death, overdose, and bylaw non-compliance at the Occupy camp appears to have cemented a paternalistic city view that all the Occupiers are irresponsible scum, losers, addicts, etc. and therefore, they need to be punished and removed. (Think: unsightly boil = lancing.) Since when has drawing rigid lines into overly simplistic us-versus-them camps ever resulted in a peaceful solution?

The loser label certainly doesn’t describe the gentle, sixtyish woman with her hair in a bun who said to me this week in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery: “I support these people. They’re peaceful. I’m part of the 99 per cent, but I can’t stay here.” She was briefly visiting the Occupy Vancouver site to give food to a young homeless man in dreadlocks, who was living in a tent with his dog.

Such dismissive attitudes don’t consider the Vancouver pediatrician who told me, over a client lunch at Shaughnessy Restaurant, that he had wanted to join the Occupy Vancouver movement and “felt like throwing something” on its first day. These labels ignore people like “Raven,” the young man in a wheelchair with long black hair and bright eyes, who provides on-site security at the Occupy location and approached me this week with warmth and kindness.

And what about all the members of the public who have donated books to the Occupy camp library, the ones now organized in a tent on multi-shelves with categories like “Hegel,” “Analytical Philosophy,” “Sociology/Anthropology,” “Ecology,” and more? Are they losers too?

That’s one of the huge things wrong with our local Occupy scene: too many decision-makers are not looking beyond labels and minor infractions. There’s no committed attempt to understand the movement and its motives and discover what benefits it could offer regarding new approaches to housing, street youth, and many other issues. The Occupiers’ genuine search for a new way to conduct business and relate to the earth and others has devolved into an age-old stance of name-calling and enemy-making. It’s far easier to demonize a supposed foe than bring empathic listening, on both sides, and try to understand each others’ wants and needs.

This week, while I stood on the sidewalk by the Occupy tents in downtown Vancouver, making notes in my tiny pad, a middle-aged, well-dressed man stopped to tell me that he had moved from New York City to the Vancouver region after 9/11 and now worked in the local financial world. Without prompting, he gave his view of how our local Occupy scene compared to its Wall Street counterpart. He saw these main differences:

• ·“In New York, the NYPD is trying to find solutions,” he said. “Here, the police aren’t interested in solutions.”
• ·“In New York, the best minds in business are trying to find solutions. Here, where business is second-string, they’re not interested in solutions.”
• ·“In New York, they’re [Occupy Wall Street] getting help from Madison Avenue guys. Here, the market is too segmented. They need to make it clear what they want.”

Whether you agree with his perspective or not, the Occupy Vancouver issue is no longer about democracy, free speech, and creating new ways to address social ills, but about a sudden fixation with law and security. (Think: fear = riot.) With the upcoming municipal elections, winning votes and appeasing public fears and perceptions, however skewed, take precedence over truly listening to people’s needs and visions and seeking win-win solutions.

Let’s stop the double-standard treatments. All of us who have participated, at any level, in Occupy Vancouver, deserve respect, whichever side we’re on – and there are a lot more than two.

 

“First they ignore you

Then they laugh at you

Then they fight you

Then you win” – Gandhi

(on a sign at Occupy Vancouver)

 

“In times of universal deceit,

Telling the truth is a revolutionary act”

– George Orwell

(on a sign at Occupy Vancouver)

 

Under the menacing glare of gargoyles perched high on the corners of Hotel Vancouver, across from looming RBC and HSBC buildings, we gathered downtown, 3,000+ strong on Oct. 15. This Occupy Vancouver movement, spawned by weeks of Occupy Wall Street activism in New York City, had set up a sprawling camp of tents, plus tents for food, first aid, public education, and a children’s area, in front of the art gallery.

 

                                                                                                               — photos by Heather Conn

A handful of friends and I from British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast sat on the edge of the mosaic fountain in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, surrounded by people of every age, ethnicity, and background: infants, white-haired grandmothers, laid-off workers, disgruntled professionals, business people in suits, women in high heels and fashionable dress, bohemians in masks and costumes . . .They were all a highly visible part of the 99 per cent of western society seeking to be heard and counted as banks, corporations, and governments have gained hugely skewed levels of power, making decisions with little accountability over issues that affect the earth, the public good, and livelihoods. As activist Naomi Klein said a week earlier as part of Occupy Wall Street: “Our system is crashing economically and ecologically.” As one of the dozens and dozens of homemade signs in Vancouver, held high among the throng, said on this day: “Another world is possible.”

 

I was heartened to see more than a thousand people gathered by 10 a.m., after premier Christy Clark and others had dismissively predicted that few would appear at the event. More and more people kept arriving, until at least 3,000 (some reports claimed 5,000) marched peacefully in a square along four downtown blocks, starting northward at Georgia and Howe. No one smashed windows, threw food at cops, or yelled verbal abuse at passersby. Cars honked in support of the moving crowd. A police officer wore an orange flower in his lapel. The sea of signs gave heart and meaning to what was a living, growing statement (not “a protest”) shared with others who were organizing publicly on the same day in 1,000 cities across the globe:

 

“One World, One Humanity, Share the World’s Resources”

“Serve the people”

“Close the gap”

“Vancouver wakes up”

“A fair taxation system is overdue”

“We’re the #1 Highest Child Poverty Rate in Canada – Way to go B.C.”

In the first general assembly that morning, various speakers, as part of a moderating team, stood on the art gallery steps and explained the proposed working model for consensus. As defined in the handout provided to the crowd: “A consensus is a decision-making process that attempts to be inclusive and accommodating of the desires and needs of an entire group.” Workers in Venezuela and other Latin American countries have used such models for decision-making in factories and collectives. As one of the moderators pointed out: “It’s not pretty.” It was slow, tedious, and the process bumbling. We were all new at this; our capitalist system had not created models for such forms of decision-making. People would holler out occasionally: “This is what democracy looks like.”

 

Eager for action and group-based agreements, I grew impatient as different speakers read through the consensus document, word for word, using the mike and then having people within the crowd repeat each phrase in a “human mike” format. Requests went out for translators in a host of languages, from Farsi to Spanish. Hand gestures were given as symbols for how each participant could indicate whether he or she agreed with a proposal, had reservations, would stand aside (“I cannot support this proposal and will not help implement it but do not want to stop the group or block the proposal”) or would block it (“I have a fundamental disagreement with the proposal that must be addressed and has not been resolved”). This repetitive process took an hour and a half.

 

I was soon growing bored and frustrated. I had to examine my own impatience and desire for a quick outcome, over the inclusion of all questions and requests for something to be repeated. Rather than feeling energized, hopeful, and excited, this process left me feeling deflated and in limbo. But the non-stop stream of informal speakers from the crowd, who took turns at the microphone, helped to draw me back to the power of a group assembly. (The maximum time allotment for each speaker, decided by the group as a whole, was five minutes.) A speaker asked: “Do you trust the system?”

“No,” the crowd roared back. If the group thought that someone was going on too long or the remarks were too self-serving, they hooted or called “Wrap it up” or made the accompanying hand signal. Here is a selection of those who spoke, besides David Eby of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Seth Klein (Naomi’s brother) of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

 

• Bob, a unionized meter reader for BC Hydro, who will be replaced by a smart meter within a year, after receiving only a 1% pay increase in a decade: “Gordo (former premier Gordon Campbell) exempted smart meters from due process”;

 

• an artist from Montreal: “We’re losing our neighbourhoods”;

 

• Paul Grignon, creator of animated films such as Money as Debt;

 

• a representative from Zeitgeist Vancouver, part of the Zeitgeist world movement: “What are the root problems?”

 

• Activist and grandmother Betty Krawczyk: “Our environment is going, our wild salmon are going. We won’t tolerate it. Their (government/corporate) power comes with our permission, from our acquiescence. True power is in our hands. The power belongs to us, always and forever.” That brought on loud cheers.

 

• The Raging Grannies: “Your right is to be heard.”

 

Later that day, after meeting a client and some of his medical colleagues for lunch at upscale Shaughnessy Restaurant, I was heartened (again) to hear that one of them, a successful doctor, had wanted to join the Occupy Vancouver events himself. He said that he had felt like going down there and throwing something. I was surprised to hear such a remark in that context from such a professional; you never know where you’ll find someone of like mind.

The day’s events did not topple any existing structures or result in resounding changes. However, the simple act of people coming together in peace in a public space to voice discontent and seek more compassionate and inclusive alternatives was a powerful reminder that the power of the people lies innately with the people and in democratic process. We are the power of the majority and we control how much of that we choose to keep or give up.

After returning home just before the seven p.m. general assembly, my husband and I stopped to watch an astounding natural sight: thousands upon thousands of crows were flying, seemingly without end, through the sky. They kept coming and coming, a sprawling black flap of wings across blue, heading east above the Commercial Drive SkyTrain station. They appeared to be coming from downtown. I thought to myself: “Maybe they had their own gathering.” I had never seen such a massive group of crows in my life. I took it as a sign.

 

Click here for a Buddhist perspective on Occupy Wall Street, by Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Michael Stone, author of Awake in the World: Teachings From Yoga and Buddhism for Living an Engaged Life.

 

From reconciliation to quantum physics to suicide, suffering, and death, the topics recently covered by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh always returned to four things: mindfulness, love, understanding, and meditation practice. I was one of the lucky people who attended his sold-out talk “Open Mind Open Heart” on Aug. 14, which the inspirational Buddhist offered at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. I’ve long admired this insightful Vietnamese monk for his books of wisdom, his commitment to nonviolence, and his role in urging Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against the Vietnam war. Hanh is one who truly walks the talk, literally and figuratively, when it comes to bringing full presence and loving speech to life.

He sat onstage, legs folded on a simple cushion, in his floor-length brown gown and characteristic shaved head. About a dozen male monks stood to his left and about 20 Buddhist nuns to his right, all in the same brown gowns, visiting from his Plum Village retreat in France. Hanh spent one-and-a-half hours sharing Buddhism’s “noble truths”, simple stories, and ways to exercise mindful breathing to help handle challenging conflict. He spoke calmly and fluidly, with no notes, and left room for humour despite his serious subject. He laughed after saying: “If you’re suffering when you’re sitting, breathing, and walking, your [meditation] practice is wrong.”

Any summary provided here will barely do justice to the value of his words, which prompted me to begin reading his book on anger, and wanting to meditate more regularly. One reason why I like Hanh’s approach is that he practices “engaged Buddhism,” which  transforms meditation practice into activism.

Manifesto 2000: Six steps to peace

As Hanh pointed out, it’s a lot easier to talk about deep listening, loving speech, and compassionate behavior than to live it. He mentioned Buddha’s Five Precepts embedded in the Manifesto 2000, written by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, which UNESCO circulated and the United Nations accepted. The pledge, aimed to make individuals feel responsible for creating peace at the personal level, includes these responsibilities, in brief:

1.  Respect all life.

2.  Reject violence.

3.  Share with others.

4.  Listen to understand.

5.  Preserve the planet.

6.  Rediscover solidarity.

Sounds simple, right? Obviously, the world at large is not reflecting that. Yet each of us can begin with making our own behaviour, every day, more peaceful and mindful. Hanh outlined regular exercises in mindful breathing, such as recognizing a painful emotion, scanning one’s body for tension, then smiling and releasing the tension. He said that within three months, this practice would generate a feeling of happiness and joy.

“A cloud can never die”

He spoke of suicide, chosen by so many young people who cannot bear painful feelings. Yet, an emotion can last for only a half-hour if we bring our attention down to the level of the abdomen, feel it in our bodies, and release it. This takes ongoing practice. Hanh spoke of common dilemmas in life: “Many of us sacrifice the present for the future” and “Many Buddhists think they will only be happy when they are reborn.” Yet, he reinforced that joy and happiness are available right here, right now by being in deep contact with others and all around us. To love someone, he said, you have to understand your own suffering and theirs, which gives rise to compassion. This requires deep listening and loving speech, and can lead to reconciliation, even between parents and children who have had no contact in many years. He gave several examples of this from people who have attended his retreats.

Hanh reinforced that the concept of something moving into nothing, such as the common societal view of death, is not true. “A cloud can never die,” he said; it simply becomes rain or hail.

The event began with music, song, and interactive exercises, performed by the monk “choir”. It ended with a beautiful, plaintive song, performed in French and English by an elderly nun with a gentle, lined face, which invited listeners not to fear death. Overall, the afternoon was a wonderful communal experience, one for which I feel tremendous gratitude.

A current celebration of Vancouver, B.C.’s radical early-70s era presents the delightful fun and conviction (in both senses of the word) of an activist spirit. My husband Frank and I saw Bob Sarti’s play Yippies in Love at The Cultch last night, and I came away so enthused, I couldn’t sleep for too many hours later. Frank, a former New Yorker, commented: “This was way better than a lot of off-Broadway stuff  I’ve seen.)

This campy musical romp, “borrowed from a true story” of Vancouver history and Sarti’s own anarchic actions, recreates key public protests of 1970-71, using the ideals of a fictional Yippee household as its thematic lens. The love story begins unwittingly, when Andy (Steve Maddock), a U.S. surfer dude avoiding the Vietnam draft, decides to try and cross the border at Blaine, WA on May 9, 1970 — the same day that hundreds of peaceniks and Yippies from Vancouver invaded Blaine to protest the Vietnam war and claim the Peace Arch as their own. (Sarti still retains a small chunk of the Arch as a souvenir of his involvement that day.)

Caught up in this raucous group action, Andy meets plucky protester Julie (Danielle St. Pierre), a feminist single mom who cherishes her independence. She later invites him to join her household of Yippee enthusiasts (actors Bing Jensen, Emily Rowed and Rebecca Shoichet), who each play a series of characters, ranging from local Yippie motivator “The Wizard” to Vancouver Judge Les Bewley and the city’s former notorious hippy-baiting-and-hating mayor, Tom “Terrific” Campbell. All of the actors are excellent; my only criticism is that Bing Jensen’s singing voice didn’t project loudly enough to we folk in the last row.

One might expect a Question Authority play, which mocks The Man and slams capitalist power, to lay on the heavy rhetoric, but Sarti keeps the tone entertaining and educational, in irreverent Yippee style. His pithy lyrics are hilarious and the choreography routines, especially Dancin’ Doobies, are great. His use of news footage of police violence at events like the Gastown riot (on Aug. 9 1971) enhances the injustices rampant at the time, as do the excerpts from court transcripts that Sarti weaves into dialogue.

A retired Vancouver Sun reporter, Sarti projects above the stage numerous media headlines, including ones from The Sun, which aptly captured the public hysteria over peaceful protest. (As a cub reporter one summer at The Sun too many decades ago, I  benefited from Sarti’s information-sharing and enjoyed his reporting of non-Establishment events.) In the program for Yippies in Love, he thanks the Newspaper Guild, his union at the time, “for protecting my job security while I juggled two careers — while collar worker by day, white collar Yipppie by night.”

The play runs until July 3 and I urge anyone with an iota of activism in their blood to see it. Its message of grassroots action seems especially a propos while people riot and die for democracy in the Middle East, and Vancouver reels from the yahoo riots by drunken Canuck fans. (After today’s performance, Sarti is hosting a panel “Yippies and Yahoos: What’s the Difference?”)

Yippies in Love is dedicated to the memory of Sarti’s father Paolino, who fought fascism in Spain. It’s directed and produced by Jay Hamburger, artistic director of Theatre in the Raw, which bills itself as “giving exposure to voices seldom heard” since 1994. Jay appeared onstage to introduce the play, and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “The World is a Beautiful Place” to evoke the protest tone of the early 1970s. The third stanza reads:

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces.

Noted pianist and arranger Bill Sample, the play’s music director and composer, joined guitarist Robbie Steininger to energize the whole show with great live keyboard action, from ballads to Hendrix. All ’round, a wonderful experience.

While missiles flew in Libya, and Japan continues to reel from its natural and man-made disasters, I attended a medicine wheel ceremony last Sunday. The event, held on a part of Musqueam land in Vancouver, BC now known as Van Dusen Gardens, was designed to honor the spring equinox and share healing words in a sacred community space.

This was my first visit to the medicine wheel. I walked past the garden’s white and purple crocuses and mini-daffodils towards the Canadian Heritage Garden, where people sat nearby in folding chairs or on the grass on the outer perimeter of the medicine wheel, a 30-foot circle. At around noon, about 35 people gathered in this open area, which has been in active use for First Nations and other traditions since the late 1990s. The wheel was initiated by a Cree elder,  Amy (we used only first names), who shared drumming and stories with us. Under a blanket and hood and long, padded coat, she readily offered a kind smile and provided a soft-voiced presence of grace and wisdom. 

Our host Phil, a middle-aged Cree with a native drum and long, plaited ponytail, began by honoring the four directions, which correspond to mind, body, emotion, and spirit. He reinforced the need to heal Mother Earth, to ask for more balance, and he said that all faiths are honored within the medicine wheel. While each of us received a smudge (a symbolic cleansing ritual, using the smoke from burning sage or other herbs), Phil drummed and sang, drawing on music from Lakota traditions. (He spends time with Lakota friends at annual Sun Dance events in the U.S.)

Each of us was to have arrived with a stone offering for the wheel. A woman provided some small stones for those of us, like me, who came empty-handed. Phil invited us all, one by one, to address the group, saying in whose honor we were placing the stone in the circle. Clockwise, we began with those seated in the south, like me. I said that I was offering my smooth, rounded, grey stone in memory of my father, who died in October, and in honor of my mother, husband, and anyone who was trying to bring a voice to what lay hidden within them, asking that they be heard, including those in Libya willing to risk their lives for freedom. I placed my stone in the grass at the centre of the circle, putting a pinch of tobacco under it, as Phil directed us to.  

As we went around the circle in a three-hour ritual, each person stood and honored loved ones, dead and alive, or voiced concern and love for those suffering, including the Libyans and Japanese. Several people had close friends in Japan. One woman said that the Japanese men who were risking their lives to try and cool the overheated reactor at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima gave her great hope. She admired their courage and selflessness in an activity that served “the well-being of us all.”

At times, crows circled overhead in the sunny, blue sky and squawked periodically. A hawk perched in a nearby tree. Phil encouraged those who wanted to cry to invite such a cleansing. Several native elders spoke, drummed and sang. When the sun went in and it grew colder, Phil led us in an Algonquin stomp song; we moved clockwise around the circle and pounded the ground with our feet. He teased us for our lack of spirited stomping; it was more like timid tapping.

As a closing, Phil lit a ceremonial pipe and we passed it around the circle. Some wanted to draw smoke from it, others just tapped their right, then left shoulder with it. Overall, it was heartening to join with strangers in such a public ritual of combined vulnerability and strength. I liked that we moved beyond our individual pain or concerns to encompass the suffering of others around the planet. To me, this reinforced the view that we are all One.

In the spirit of this gathering, I share this poem by Judith Hill:

Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing rasberries,
Imagine grief as the out breath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

For years, I’ve wanted to hike the El Camino trail in France and Spain as my own form of spiritual pilgrimage. But every year, work or something else seems to intervene. As someone who does walking meditations and loves labyrinths, I acknowledge the grace and power of walking with slow, intentional steps, observing breath and thoughts. Joseph Campbell says: “Pilgrimage is poetry in motion . . .a winding road to meaning.”

 

An informal group on the Sunshine Coast, the Peace Walker Society, leads 10-day trips on the El Camino. I like their purpose and stated aims: “The Peace Walker Society is a group of concerted, committed citizens who recognize that peace is a process, an exquisite journey of enriching ourselves and giving back to the planet we live on. For us, there is no final destination.

 

“Our ongoing journey promotes unity and reconciliation, which transcend past conflicts and support the development of a sustainable future. Along the way, we hope to rediscover the “true self,” for in order to change the world, we must begin with ourselves.”

 

I’m currently writing a book about my seven months of solo travel in India, living out my own version of Heal Yourself, Heal the World. I’ve long admired the now-deceased woman known as Peace Pilgrim, who gave up all possessions and committed herself to walking the earth to promote peace. She refused to accept any money and survived solely on others’ offers of food and shelter.

 

Peace Pilgrim displayed tremendous trust in life and commitment to her cause, speaking informally to groups, media, and anyone who stopped their car along her path to chat. She died in 1981 — ironically, as a passenger in a car — but her spirit and vision live on through an organization dedicated to her memory and goals of peace.

 

Satish Kumar, the editor of Resurgence magazine, did an 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage in 1962, inspired by Bertrand Russell’s civil disobedience against the atomic bomb. Without any money, he dedicated himself to a peace walk from Bangalore, India to the four capitals of the nuclear world: Moscow, Paris, London, and the U.S.

 

After settling in Devon England, Kumar did another pilgrimage when  he turned fifty. Again, for this walk, he carried no money. (I would love to know his secret.) He visited the holy places of Britain, including Glastonbury, Canterbury, Lindisfarne, and Iona.

 

Kumar wrote of his travels in his 1978 autobiography No Destination; Green Books has since published an updated edition. I recommend his book to anyone who enjoys contemplative journeys and spiritual reflection. Throughout his life, Kumar has aimed to promote Gandhi’s values of peaceful coexistence and land reform. In 2001, he received the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Abroad.

 

I wish that we had more grassroots people and leaders who incorporated peaceful and spiritual values into their advocacy and activism. Although it would be great to have more more Peace Pilgrims and Satish Kumars, we can all create greater peace every day through loving thoughts and actions. Are you up for the challenge?

 
                                Franklin in 2006

She might not fit your vision of a revolutionary, but long-time Toronto activist Ursula Franklin has spent decades “fighting” for peace and social justice.

 

Now 89, this emeritus professor and author of The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, defines peace as “the presence of justice and the absence of fear.” She likes to quote the late A. J. Muste, the well known American peace activist: “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

 

Franklin was interviewed May 6 by Anna Maria Tremonti on the CBC’s The Current. Her carefully chosen words reflected her active, conscientious mind and commitment to progressive causes, from prison reform to women’s rights. Her many honors include the Order of Canada, Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, which legally declared girls and women in Canada “persons” for the first time, and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her dedication to advancing human rights.

 

During her CBC interview, Franklin advocated the practice of “scrupling,” rather than today’s cyber-obsession with “Googling.” In her view, people need to get together to air their scruples and make their opinions public; they can’t rely on experts and  publicists to suggest solutions. Too often, we hear that the problems facing society today are too complex to be left to the layperson. But the minds, especially of youth, need to be activated to address these issues, from globalization and environmental concerns to health and education.  

 

When Tremonti asked Franklin about the lack of interest in politics in today’s Canadian youth, she responded that apathy sets in when individuals, especially young people, feel that no one is listening to their concerns. Why bother to vote if no one cares about their opinions and the government will do as it pleases once it receives their votes?

 

Franklin is not willing to rest with the phrase “sustainable development“; she demands to know: “Sustainable of what, develop what, and for whom?” She continues to be an outspoken critic of policies of Canada’s federal government, especially its plan to build more and bigger prisons. Her husband Fred was much involved in the rehabilitation and support of prisoners.

 

“Besides becoming a brilliant academic in a discipline where women were remarkably scarce, she had a keen interest in politics and, of course, feminism,” says Reverend Hanns Skoutajan, one of her Toronto mentees. “She fought for salary equality among the sexes especially in her university.”

 

 He adds: “‘Revolutionary,’ I would call her, but why is it revolutionary to be deeply concerned about the kind of country and world that our grandchildren will inherit?”

 

Skoutajan met Franklin when she was a professor teaching metallurgy at the University of Toronto. He remembers: “Besides teaching, I first encountered her on an anti-war demonstration in Toronto back in the 60s. She became my mentor as she was for many others who were concerned about fascist trends evidenced in many countries as well as our own.”

 

Franklin was born in Berlin to a Jewish mother and Gentile father, a troublesome heritage in Hitler’s Germany. The Nazis arrested the whole family and sent them to different concentration camps; however, they somehow managed to survive the Holocaust and were reunited after the war. She came to Canada in 1949 to continue her career.

 

Franklin recalls, as a teenager, hearing her mother admonish her neighbours in Berlin: “Don’t you see what’s coming?” She saw first-hand the seduction of the German people to anti-Semitism, racial intolerance, the glorification of violence, and a virulent nationalism. She decided to make it her mission to point out and warn people in her new home, Canada, of similar trends.

 

To protest the war in Iraq, Franklin led a parade of professors in full academic attire out of Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto when then-U.S.-President George W. Bush was honored with a doctor of law degree.

 

Franklin and her husband Fred have found a spiritual home in the Quaker religion, known as a Peace Church. However, Quaker meetings are considerably different from other religious services: they are silent. Only when moved by spirit is a member encouraged to speak and express their view. Every person’s opinion is seen as important as the next.

 

“Having attended Quaker meetings, I was always made aware of a spiritual presence but quite unlike what I had encountered in mainline or evangelical worship services where the word of God comes from the Bible and the preacher,” says Skoutajan. “While silence is powerful and scarce in our time, when that silence is broken by some deep concern it takes on a special authenticity.”

 

In his words: “There is a Spirit alive. One need not become a Quaker to experience it, but learn to listen deeply, dare to live mindfully, and seek peace and justice for all humankind.”

 

Many thanks to Hanns Skoutajan for providing the core of this content and giving me permission to put it on my blog.

 

CodePink members in San Francisco in April 2008

 

Did you know that the original Mother’s Day was inextricably linked with a message of peace?

 

Julia Ward Howe, a U.S. poet, feminist, and abolishonist, created the first Mother’s Day Proclamation in the United States in 1870. She wrote this rousing piece in reaction to the  U.S. Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She believed that women, particularly as spouses of soldiers and those who bore sons who went to war,  held a responsibility to take a political stand for peace, not war.

 

                   Julia Ward Howe

 

Here is what Howe declared in her proclamation:

 

 Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

 

Subtle this proclamation ain’t, nor religiously or spiritually inclusive. But it’s a passionate voice nevertheless, and a remarkable one for its period. (Ironically, Howe wrote the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which became a popular anthem sung by the Union side (the north) during the U.S. Civil War.)

                                                                                                                       — Heather Conn photos

Sadly, Howe’s words still bear just as much relevance today, since humanity seems to have learned no lessons about the ravages of war.  Modern sons and daughters are dying in Iraq,  Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur.  .  .

 

In honor of this year’s Mother’s Day, I invite all women, mothers or not, and men to support any action or event that promotes peace. Start with yourself and share your message of peace with your loved ones and neighbors, sons, and daughters. We all need this message every day. I support the group CodePink Women for Peace and the practices outlined in the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Remember: There’s a difference between promoting peace and protesting against war, but don’t let language nuances stop your activism.