News Day

Twenty-five years ago, assassins sent by the right-wing government and army
killed Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero as he celebrated Mass. That was
March 24, 1980. This year, on March 24, Christians celebrate the institution
of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. It is fitting to remember Archbishop Romero
during this Holy Week, to remember his martyrdom and his faith.

"I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I
will be resurrected in the hearts of the Salvadoran people."

Archbishop Romero had reason to believe he was targeted for death. He preached
the Gospel in concrete and immediate terms. His life and words challenged Christians
to involvement in political affairs and to action for social justice.

"No one should take offense when the light of the words of God illuminates
the social, political and economic realities. Because not to do this would not
be Christianity for us. And it is in this way that Jesus Christ chose to be
incarnated so that this light that He brought from His Father, could bring life
to individuals and to peoples."

He challenged the government, denouncing it for oppression and for the reign
of terror it imposed on the Salvadoran people.

"When someone makes power an absolute and an idol and turns against
God’s laws, against human rights, violating the people’s rights, then
we cannot say that such authority comes from God."

As he denounced idolization of power and wealth, he challenged El Salvador’s
ruling elite. We, in the United States, are the ruling elite of the world today.
As citizens of the richest country in the world, a country which nonetheless
leaves its schools under-funded and its health care system controlled by insurance
companies and inaccessible to large numbers of its people, what can we learn
from his words?

"I denounce especially the absolutizing of wealth. This is the great
evil in El Salvador: wealth, private property, as an untouchable absolute."

As citizens of the country that repudiates international environmental treaties
and pollutes our own skies, we hear his call to responsible stewardship.

"You know that the air and water are being polluted, as is everything
we touch and live with, and we go on corrupting the nature that we need. We
don’t realize we have a commitment to God to take care of nature."

Archbishop Romero’s El Salvador was torn by civil war and terror. His
country’s army was trained to torture and to kill the "enemies"
of the regime. The United States supported the government and army of El Salvador.
Today the United States is a country at war. Some of our soldiers stand convicted
of torture. The Bush Administration has talked of choosing "the Salvador
option" for Iraq. Archbishop Romero’s words resound with power.

"I want to make a special appeal to soldiers, national guardsmen and
policemen: each of you is one of us. The peasants you kill are your own brothers
and sisters. When you hear a man telling you to kill, remember God’s words,
‘thou shalt not kill.’ No soldier is obliged to obey a law contrary to the law
of God. In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people, I beseech you,
I implore you; in the name of God I command you to stop the repression."

After the events of the past week, remembering Mary Swenson and remembering
Archbishop Romero, I was ready this morning to encounter the words of Paul Knitter
of CRISPAZ.

CRISPAZ – Christians for Peace in El Salvador – has spent 20 years
working for peace and justice in El Salvador. Its current focus areas are high-risk
youth, rural communities, economics for people, and south-north solidarity.
Looking back on his own twenty years with CRISPAZ, Knitter characterizes this
time as a "long haul" and a "good way." His analysis is
as relevant to Colombia and the United States as to El Salvador.

Like the compañera who shared with Teresa and Irma and me after Mary’s
funeral, he recognizes that "so many dreams for El Salvador have not been
realized; so much pain is still with us. … poverty due to injustice is
still as murderous as ever; political corruption and intrigue abound; the "powers
that be" are even more staunchly entrenched…. What Jon Sobrino calls
"the anti-kingdom" is stronger …"

Looking back and looking ahead, Knitter talks about mysticism as a basis for
action.

"[Mysticism] is a slippery, often sugary, word, I admit. As used among
theologians and scholars of religion, it’s a blanket term that covers the
many different ways people come to feel (yes, feel) that they are connected
with, part of, or a vehicle for Something More. I use the expression "Something
More" not as a description but as a pointer to that mysterious Reality
that stirs, in different ways and forms, within the many religions of the world.
This Something More is imaged as a personal Being in some traditions, while
in others it is conceived as a universal, compassionate energy, or as the dynamic
interconnectedness of everything. ‘Mysticism,’ then, is the word specialists
use to indicate what can happen to people when, generally through the stories
or practices of religion, they feel connected and animated by this Something
More."

Knitter goes on to speak about a mysticism of resistance and a mysticism of
quiet.

A Mysticism of Resistance
"Most, maybe all, of us have become part of CRISPAZ because we had to.
In a sense, we didn’t have a choice. Once we heard about the suffering
of the people of El Salvador, once we learned of the causes of such suffering
– especially the role of our government in it – we felt called, or
obliged to respond in some way. We felt that we had to resist – that is,
do something to remedy – the suffering-caused-by-injustice …
"There is Something that generates those feelings within us. Something
that vibrates between us and the victims of injustice. I call it Something More
because even though we feel it within the depths of our own being, it is also
a power that, as it were, invades our being and puts it in motion. The Confucian
philosopher Mencius, over 3000 years ago, called this Something "the Heart
that cannot bear the sufferings of others." We all have that Heart, he
claimed. As a Christian, I would call it the Spirit given to all of us, living
in and connecting all of us. Buddhists use similar imagery when they tell us
that we all share the same Buddha-nature of Compassion. Whatever the symbolic
name, the experience is pretty much the same – we feel in touch with Something
that requires us to resist the injustice that causes so much suffering."

Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis,
MN)
 
On Feb. 25, they found a trail of blood leading away from a farm. One hundred
men and women from San José de Apartadó, Colombia, accompanied
by international witnesses from Peace Brigades International, the Fellowship
of Reconciliation, the Corporation for Judicial Liberty and Concern America,
followed the trail to the first grave.

Two-year-old Santiago and his 6-year-old sister, Natalia, were buried with
their parents, Sandra Milena Muñoz-Rozo and Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia-Graciano,
and Alejandro Perez Cuiles. Later that day, they found more bodies in an open
field. Eleven-year-old Deiner Guerra was there with his father, Luis Eduardo
Guerra, and Luis’ 17-year-old companion, Bellanira Areiza-Guzman.

According to Amerigo Incalcaterra, a U.N. human rights official at the scene,
bodies in the graves had been hacked apart with machetes. At least one body,
that of Luis Eduardo Guerra, showed signs of torture. The search stopped at
the graves, but the story does not end there. In a deeper sense, the bloody
trail leads to the United States.

The people of San José knew knew what to expect when they left their
town to search for their neighbors. In 1997, led by the murdered Luis Eduardo
Guerra, they had declared their town a "peace community," refusing
entry and welcome to all of the armed factions in Colombia’s bloody civil war.

Since 1997, more than 130 residents have been murdered. No one has been convicted
for a single one of those murders.

Peace communities stand against both the Colombian Army and its paramilitary
allies and the FARC guerrillas. (FARC is the Spanish acronym for the leftist
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.) Peace communities forbid carrying weapons.
They insist that no fighters from any side are welcome.

At times, members of peace communities have succeeded in turning back FARC
or Army forces intent on violating their territory. At other times, armed men
from the Army or the right-wing paramilitaries or the FARC have entered and
killed.

Luis and Alfonso were friends. Alfonso was a leader in the nearby peace community
of Mulatos. As a leader in Colombia’s peace community movement, Luis had traveled
to Madison, Wis., and to Europe to raise awareness about peace communities.
But Luis was not a politician or a human rights official. He was a farmer.

Luis and his family had left San José days earlier, walking seven hours
to Luis’ fields, to harvest cacao beans.

On the way home, they were stopped by soldiers from the 17th Army Brigade and
taken to Alfonso’s nearby farm. Luis’ half-brother, also part of the group,
escaped and ran to San José to raise the alarm. A small group found blood
and human remains at Alfonso’s farm. They returned to San José to assemble
the larger search party, which found the graves.

One might expect President Alvaro Uribe and other government officials to offer
their profound apologies for the Army’s actions and a promise of investigations
and prosecutions. They neither apologized nor promised legal actions. Instead,
on March 2, the Army occupied San José.

On March 9, President Uribe denounced the peace communities, saying that no
community could bar the Army from entering.

The United States shares responsibility for the actions of Colombia’s president
and the massacres carried out by Colombia’s military. Colombia is the third-largest
recipient of U.S. military aid. Under "Plan Colombia," we help to
train and arm Colombia’s army. U.S. soldiers train their Colombian counterparts
to guard oil pipelines, and U.S. mercenaries fly helicopter missions and languish
in FARC custody as prisoners of war.

As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere,
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has been unwavering in his support of Plan Colombia’s
military aid and the Uribe administration.

On June 23, Coleman said on the Senate floor, "For anyone familiar with
the situation in Colombia, it is clear President Uribe is bringing security,
stability and law and order to a country that so desperately needs it."

On Feb. 28, seven days after Luis Eduardo Guerra and his family and friends
were killed by the Colombian Army, the U.S. State Department issued its annual
human rights report. As usual, the report praised the Colombian government for
progress in human rights.

Like the men and women of San José, the world can follow the trail of
blood from the massacred farmers and human rights workers and teachers and journalists
and labor leaders in Colombia. That trail of blood leads to our door.

One morning this March week, we awoke to almost an inch of soft, fluffy
snow. As I drove to work in the balmy, thirty-degree temperatures, I saw many
neighbors shoveling. One in particular caught my eye, a man in his fifties. He
stood on his front porch, shoveling it clear of snow that, on its own, would have
melted in a few hours. No matter. This good Minnesotan shoveled away–still
in his pajamas, and barefoot.

The Bush budget proposes a $45 billion cut in Medicaid over the next ten years. Administration official Josh Bolten says the cuts will “squeeze the anomalies out of the system.” Never mind that those “anomalies” are flesh and blood, old people and babies, people earning far too little to pay for medical care or $1000 monthly insurance premiums.

Not to be left behind, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty also insists on cuts in Minnesota’s health care coverage. Severe cuts were made last year. The Minnesota Children’s Defense Fund documents many of the cuts.

“The Smith family of Scott County and their 17-month-old son, Kalem, recently felt the effects of changes made to Minnesota’s MA Program. At
12 months old Kalem became uninsured due to reductions in the eligibility guidelines for newborns. Kalem’s father is an employee of a two-person technology company that does not offer health insurance for dependents. Kalem’s mother, Heather, stays home to care for him. … The toddler automatically received MA under the “auto newborn” at the time of birth, but lost his coverage after his first birthday because his family’s income exceeded the income limit by less than $20…”

Anna* is a 9-year-old girl in Minneapolis who has substantial hearing loss. Hearing aids allow her to function normally and develop appropriate social, behavioral, and academic skills. Due to the cuts made to GAMC, Anna is no longer able to access health care coverage, which helped her family pay for the hearing aids and supporting services she requires.”

Joanne* has three sons under the age of 14 who are without health insurance for the first time. Joanne is a full-time county employee and earns slightly more than $2,600 a month. By the time she pays for her family’s basic needs of rent, utilities, food, and car, she has $356 left each month for all other expenses. Paying her share of the monthly premium offered by her employer to cover dependents would leave her with $31 each month. This is not an option.” Last year the Minnesota legislature reduced eligibility for the Minnesota Care program — Joanne’s children are no longer eligible for coverage.

For more information on the gaping holes in Minnesota’s health care safety net, go to the Children’s Defense Fund. Write to your legislator. Write to Pawlenty. Tell them you want all Minnesotans to have access to health care — but that you especially want all children covered by Minnesota Care. Make your voice heard.

Elections in Iraq were a great success — ask any Republican. Never
mind that polling places were kept secret from would-be voters until the last
minute. Never mind that candidates’ names were also secret, or that some people
listed on ballots denied that they were candidates. Never mind that more
than half the people voting thought they were voting for president when, in
fact, they were voting for an assembly to craft a constitution. Never mind the
people killed on election day, or those assassinated during the pre-election
period.

Elections were a great success because, amid the bombs and bullets, people
voted. That is all you need for democracy. People voting — whether
or not they know who or what they are voting for, whether or not their vote
has any chance of actually influencing the policies of their leaders —
voting equals democracy. Ask any Republican.

Those who voted showed
immense courage. Many felt that voting was the only thing they could do
to show that they wanted change — whether that change meant getting rid of
the old government or getting rid of the occupying army.

In 1967, the U.S. government lauded the brave people of [South] Viet Nam for
voting, and predicted that the election turnouts meant the success of democracy
and an imminent end to war. They were wrong. War continued until the "insurgents"
finally drove U.S. forces out of the country and imposed their own dictatorship.

In 1984, the U.S. government lauded the conduct of elections in El Salvador,
hailing the triumph of democracy. They were wrong. War and murder dragged on.
As soldiers of the dictatorship killed Archbishop Romero in 1980, soldiers of
the democratic government murdered the Jesuit priests and their housekeeper
and her daughter in 1989.

So, brave as the Iraqi voters were, we should not forget the lessons of history.
Elections
alone provide neither democracy nor peace.

New York Times, September 3, 1967

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose

Washington, Sept. 3 – United States officials were surprised and heartened
today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite
a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered
voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened
by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the
election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of
the national election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the Wite House
would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Liet.
Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao
Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s
policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.
The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began
in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when
he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which
has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President
Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled
in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished
The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have
been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration’s
view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence
and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have
been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack
of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong’s disruption
of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure
in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered
voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American
officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the
polling places would be open for two or three hours less than in the election
a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in
the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern
among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election
meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

Last week the New York Times weighed in with a lengthy article on Chile’s privatization
program. Like the one that Bush proposes, Chile’s privatization, begun 25 years
ago, lets workers choose private investment accounts instead of the government-run
safety net system. Bush has cited the Chilean plan as a model for his plans
to privatize Social Security. (Of course, he does not say "privatize"
— as Molly Ivins explains, that’s a word the Bush PR people avoid at all costs.)

Chileans have found that the private pension system doesn’t work. Here’s one
example:

"Dagoberto Sáez, for example, is a 66-year-old laboratory technician
here who plans, because of a recent heart attack, to retire in March. He earns
just under $950 a month; his pension fund has told him that his nearly 24 years
of contributions will finance a 20-year annuity paying only $315 a month.

"Colleagues and friends with the same pay grade who stayed in the old
system, people who work right alongside me," he said, "are retiring
with pensions of almost $700 a month – good until they die. I have a salary
that allows me to live with dignity, and all of a sudden I am going to be plunged
into poverty, all because I made the mistake of believing the promises they
made to us back in 1981."

Part of the reason, according to the Times, is the exorbitant fees charged
by the pension funds, which earn large profits for their services in managing
the workers’ money.

The article, "Chile’s Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan"
by Larry Rohter was published January 27. It is well worth reading in full.
And thanks to Rhona for reminding me that Paul
Krugman’s analysis is also informative and understandable.

January 28

Time to step back from the overheated rhetoric and take a look at what Social
Security is and is not.

Social Security is

– a program originally
designed to provide some minimal income for old people who otherwise would
be completely destitute
– a program that has, in fact, provided that guarantee of minimal income to
retired and disabled people (and their dependents) for about 70 years and
is still going strong.

Social Security is NOT

– bankrupt or anywhere near it

– a pension plan (it’s a safety net– see above)
– an investment

– equally funded by everyone.

[Want a more sophisticated economic explanation? Go to Lies
About Social Security by economist MarkWeisbrot.)

Rich people get a big break. They don’t pay a dime of Social Security tax
on interest, dividends, capital gains OR earned income over $87,900 per year.
That’s right, folks. Every dime of earned income after dollar 87,901 is FREE
of Social Security taxes. That means that if I earn $30,000 per year, I am paying
6.2 percent of my income for Social Security every year (and an additional 1.45
percent for Medicare.) But if Carl CEO earns $175,800 per year, he pays only
3.1 percent of his income for Social Security. If Max Millionaire makes $351,600
per year, he pays only 1.55 percent in Social Security. If Betty Billionaire
stays home and lives off the interest from her investments, she doesn’t pay
any Social Security tax.

Privatizing Social Security, even in part, would yield huge profits for financial
institutions while injecting a big chunk of money into the stock market. Nothing
wrong with investing in the stock market–but that’s for money you can afford
to risk, not with the rock-bottom safety net.

I woke this morning to the news of James Forman’s death. He was one of those
heroes of my youth, one of the leaders of the March on Washington in 1963 and
the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the Freedom Rides and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. Forman composed the Black Manifesto in 1969, demanding
[still long over-due and unpaid] reparations for slavery. He endured beatings
and jail and ridicule, and kept on going.

On Democracy Now this morning, Bob
Moses and John
Lewis, two still-living heroes of that time, two colleagues of Forman, spoke
about him. John Lewis is now a Congressman,
and always a leader. Bob Moses, from a far less prominent position, does no
less good work heading up the Algebra
Project, demanding and providing the educational tools that young black
men an dwomen need to succeed.

Cornel West’s eloquent essay on hope makes a fitting meditation for this day
of loss and remembering. Here’s one paragraph from Prisoners
of Hope.

"This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the
spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to
get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies
of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown,
and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively
struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth
inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision,
courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite
to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is
to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word."

Grim political day, with House and Senate confirming Bush’s "victory,"
and the Judiciary Committee beginning the Gonzales hearings. At least one senator,
California’s Senator Barbara Boxer, stood up this year to join Rep. John Conyers
and 30 other representatives in opposing
the election charade. Because one Senator joined the House members, both
Senate and House were forced to discuss and to vote on whether to declare Bush
president. The saga
of miscounted votes, lost votes, computer tampering, voters refused the right
to vote joins the shameful history of Florida in 2000.

In the Judiciary Committee, Senators Hatch, Specter and Leahy followed the
elaborate rules of Senatorial courtesy in applauding one another’s long and
distinguished service and agreeing to call the nominee "Judge" Gonzales,
since he served as a judge in Texas. The full
transcript of the first day’s hearings repeats his Horatio Alger success
story and his assertion that, "This administration does not engage in torture
and will not condone torture," and his pledge that, as Attorney General,
he would respect the Geneva Conventions that he last year deemed "quaint"
and "obsolete." But he also said that "I think the decision not
to apply Geneva in our conflict with Al Qaeda was absolutely the right decision,"
and that, hypothetically of course, the President has the legal right to ignore
any Congressional ban on torture.

The Star Tribune got it right:
Alberto Gonzales has blood on his hands. Reports of prison torture continue
to come in, and not just of long-past occurences but of a
continuing nightmare with no end in sight.

Molly Ivins,
as always, sums it up well:

"Just to show you that such forms of accountability as are left in our
slightly tattered system of checks and balances are worth keeping, the upcoming
hearing on Al Gonzales for attorney general has already borne fruit. Voila!
The Justice Department has come out with a new memo on torture saying it is
not necessarily limited to "excruciating and agonizing pain." Say,
what a triumph for human rights.

"Further, the memo says, "Torture is abhorrent to both American law
and values, and to international norms." So there. In other words, we have
repealed the infamous Gonzales memo, just in time for his hearing.

"Now, I’m not going to conclude that Fascism Is Upon Us just because we
have an administration that not only can’t find the Constitution but apparently
doesn’t know there is one. Too early in the year for that. Long way to go. Got
to save your indignation. But it is unpleasantly reminiscent of Watergate, isn’t
it? That’s what we’re looking at here, folks — not just constitutional deafness,
but moral turp as well. All we need is one bag job and an alert night security
man. "