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Midwest Summit
FOURTH MIDWEST PEACE AND JUSTICE SUMMIT
This year, the Midwest Peace and Justice Summit format will consist of a mixture of cultural events, public demonstrations, two plenary sessions, and three series of workshop sessions, each broken down according to various themes of peace and justice. The tentative schedule of Summit events is below. Fuller details on the keynote address, plenary sessions, and workshops, as well as the presenters can be found in the links on http://www.mpjs.org
FRIDAY, April 4, 2008
4:30-5:30 pm: Statewide Peace Rally in front of the Federal Building (Corner of Pennsylvania and Michigan)
7:30-9:30pm: The Summit will host two dramatic presentations. The first is “Theatre of Social Change” from the Novox Theatre Group. The second is “The Nobodies: Stories of the Child Soldiers
in Uganda,” performed by a Butler University student group. The performance will be followed by a Q&A session where cast and others involved in the productions will discuss the role of theater in the movements for peace and justice. (These performances are tentative scheduled for the new IUPUI Campus Center Building on the comer of Michigan Street and University Blvd.)
SATURDAY, April 5, 2008 (All held in the IUPUI IT Building at the corner of Michigan and West streets.)
8:00 - 9:00 am: Registration; a light breakfast will be offered.
9:00 - 10:30 am: The first Summit plenary session will be held discussing the “Next Steps to End the War in Iraq.”
10:45 - 11:45 am: The first workshop session will consist of four different workshop options: “The Need for a Department of Peace” by Kathryn Hessler,” “The Tao of Peace” by Jim Wolfe; “Democracy in Burma” by Kim Overdyck.; and “The Iraq Refugee Crisis,” by Charlie Wiles.
12:00 - 1:00 pm: A free lunch will be offered at the summit. This will also be an opportunity for informal reports and commentary from activist groups
1:15 - 2:45 pm: The Summit’s second plenary session will discuss “The Role of Progressive Activism in the 2008 Elections.”
3:00 - 4:00 pm: The second round workshop sessions will consist of four different options: “Human Rights Activism” by Debby Peddie of the Indiana Information Center for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and Amnesty International; “Indiana Healthcare Initiatives” by Julia Vaughn, Mark St. John and Eric Wright; “Indiana Clean Elections,” by Nick Hess; and "Socialism is the Only Answer to All of Today's Problems" by Ronald Haldeman.
4:15 - 5:15 pm: The third workshop session will consist of four different workshop options: “Sustainable Economics” by Greg Buck; The Justice for janitors Campaign for Socioeconomic Justice” by Leslie Mendoza-Kamstra; “The Peak Oil Crisis Is Now” by David Pilbrow; and "Fair Mart vs. Mall Mart: True Security in a Violent Culture" by Jim Goetsch.
5:30 - 6:15 pm: The Summit will be hosting a pizza dinner on-site.
6:30 - 8:00 pm: The Plowshares Keynote Lecture. This year’s distinguished lecturer will be Professor George Wolfe of the Ball State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. The title of his address is “Non-Violence as a Spiritual Path: How to Become More Dangerous Dead than Alive.”
Sustainable Footprint
Our fundamental aim is to cooperate in getting our ecological footprints toward and to a sustainable level, including the impact of housing, while conducting quality lives. See www.myfootprint.org to appreciate. We can use our interim and future sites for educating on sustainability. Even our shortcomings are opportunities to teach. For instance, if building codes do not allow us to create straw bale cob buildings we might use that knowledge of code in our promotion of reforming code in support of sustainability.
The website of Campaign for Sustainable Economics provides some reflection of what is sought. Its URL is http://www.sustainableeconomics.org
Ultimately, it would be wonderful to have fully dedicated members with diverse talents, including in art, music, waste reduction, vegetable gardening, landscaping, plant identification, rain water collection, food preservation, building design, interior design, cooking, construction, strategic planning, web design, repair of human powered vehicles, education, activism, and overall resourcefulness.
Since December 21, 2007 we have had three meetings and numerous conversations for getting to know one another and for developing our vision. We have an investor. The initial location (105 Arsenal Avenue, Indianapolis) will be rental housing. At this point residents will need outside income.
Characteristics of this group’s current members include respectfulness, creativity, resourcefulness, neighborliness, concerned about personal health and having postsecondary education.
Serious candidates are preferred over those who just need a roommate situation. Both short- and long-term nonsmoking residents are welcome to apply.
Beyond the Rhetoric of Withdrawal
Beyond the Rhetoric of Withdrawal: Our Unknown Air War Over Iraq
By Ed Kinane
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower.
….
The American air war inside Iraq is perhaps the most significant – and underreported – aspect of the fight against the insurgency.
-– Seymour M. Hersh, “Up in the Air,” Nov. 29, 2005, New Yorker
There’s an air war over Iraq. It’s invisible (here). It’s deadly (there).
The Iraq air war may be the longest such war in history. In one way or another it has been undermining Iraq’s sovereignty, destroying its infrastructure, and killing and maiming Iraqis for some 16 years.
Despite global pressure to withdraw, Bush Inc. – and indeed the broader US power structure – has no intention of giving up Iraq. The potential oil bonanza is too huge. And Iran – with its oil bonanza – is next door.
That air war is intensifying. The US dropped five times as many bombs in Iraq during the first six months of 2007 as it did in the first half of 2006. 1
“When the troops are cut, we’ll still be bombing the hell out of the place.”
to download the entire article: http://www.network4peace.org/uploads/resources/1188222375.doc
This article was copied from www.vcnv.org
Meeting with Senator Evan Bayh
Indiana Peace Activists met with Senator Evan Bayh at the Lake County Government Center in Crown Point. Fifty peace activists and other interested persons attending the meeting. People came from Bloomington, Lafayette, Indianapolis, and South Bend as well as from Lake County and Newton County.
Go to the Resources section of this website for a recap of the meeting by Nick Egnatz.
Press coverage:
Lakeshore News Channel 56 covered the event on the evening news.
Gary Post Tribune
http://www.post-trib.com/news/520023,bayh.article
NWIndiana Times
http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2007/08/22/news/lake_county/doc9fcfa85a1ba330ac8625733f000c0937.txt[url]
Here is a letter from Sue Eleuterio, one of the organizers or the meeting, correcting the coverage in the Post Tribune:
Dear Mr. James,
Please thank Teresa Auch for her article in today's Post Tribune on Code Pink's meeting with Senator Bayh but please make two corrections. First, I was arrested at Senator Bayh's Hammond office, not in Washington DC and secondly and more importantly to me, I told your reporter that all I could think about when Senator Bayh said it would be 7 months to a year for withdrawal was the American military and the Iraqi families who would lose loved ones if the war continues. Please issue a correction- I do not want the families of our military to think that I only care about Iraqi families- my concerns are for the families around the world who continue to suffer due to this war.
Thanks
Sue Eleuterio
The Post Tribune article also contains some interesting facts about the security measures taken for the meeting!!!
Introduction to Network4peace.org
Network 4 Peace encourages the exchange of ideas, expertise and resources between group members. Network 4 Peace has created this online and technical infrastructure whereby local groups can work closely with other Indiana groups and their members by recruiting other groups to endorse, participate and co-sponsor their projects. This site seeks to facilitate resource sharing, increased communication and encourage seamless action execution among member organizations.
Network 4 Peace, as represented in this website, does not represent a coalition at this time and will not endorse actions. Member organizations can band together and endorse actions, but Network 4 Peace will not. This structure emphasizes the cooperative function of the organizations using this tool, focusing on providing resources, enhancing communication and creating opportunities for peace and justice organizations across the state to work in close cooperation to execute common actions. At this time, Network 4 Peace will not normally be an instrument to form a common policy under a single organizational name.
This structure is designed to allow member organizations the greatest possible flexibility in sponsoring projects and affiliating with projects which other groups sponsor, thus creating actions with statewide impact, without creating divisions within the Indiana activist community.
There may come a time when member organizations using the Network 4 Peace tools choose to convene and form a governing or policy body with a specific mission or goals. The tools that this website represents will be at the disposal of that policy body when it emerges.