Loose Leaf Notes

Animated Woman: If Obama is president the black people are gonna take over. They’ll line us white people up and shoot us.

Postal Clerk: I think you should go home and go back to bed so you can wake up again.

Posted by Colleen at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

I wish all the billboards across the country read: "Give back the votes your brother stole" and the poets would shout from every street corner, "The emperor wears no clothes” … ~ Colleen

So my poet friend Mara, a Hillary Clinton supporter, knew she might change her mind and vote for Barack Obama in the Virginia primary when a Roanoke council member, speaking on Hillary’s behalf at the Roanoke rally Hillary had to cancel at the last minute, stood on the venue platform and said this: “We aren’t electing a poet, we’re electing a president.”

Mara gasped.

The next day she called me to tell me that not only was she was seriously considering supporting Barack but that he had won a Grammy for best Spoken Word recording. I thought she was joking because I had watched the Grammys and had not seen any such thing.

I googled some keywords and pulled up an article titled: Obama wins big in California. Knowing Hillary had won the California primary, I dug a little deeper and discovered that, indeed, Obama had won a Grammy for his audio recording of his book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”

The audacity and the irony: Over the weekend Barack prevailed over Hillary in a sweep of primary wins, and then won a Grammy, beating Bill Clinton who was also up for the award for his own audio book recording.

Maybe we should read some excerpts from Barack’s book at our Spoken Word Open Mic this Saturday at the Café Del Sol.

Posted by Colleen at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

1. It was a mother and daughter date of historic proportions. My friend Mara and her young daughter Kyla (pictured) attended Sunday’s pre-primary rally for Hillary Clinton, our country’s first female presidential candidate who has a chance of getting the Democratic nomination.

2. A crowd of nearly 2,000 took an hour to slowly file into Patrick Henry High School. Everyone was pumped and all eyes were on the empty stool in the front of the gym where Hillary would speak from. But then the event MC, who had previously been conducting a Hillary Trivia Quiz and passing out Hillary T-shirts, announced the bad news twenty minutes before she was due for her 5 p.m. appearance. Due to brush fires caused by high winds, her plane was not able to land at the Roanoke airport.

3. As far as the rally went, candidate Hillary had to concede to a higher authority: Mother Nature. The consolation for the disappointed crowd and the woman in the bleaches behind me who had been there since 9 a.m. was a speaker phone call from Hillary. She apologized for not being there and reported that her husband Bill would be speaking on her behalf at the same venue the following evening.

4. I had a contingency plan to spend the night with my son Dylan and his wife Alexis after the rally, so I could attend the Obama rally at the Roanoke’s Jefferson Center the next morning. But besides the fact that the wind was uprooting trees and blowing over traffic signs, I heard that Obama’s rally tickets sold out in ten minutes, so I headed back up the mountain and prepared for a night in front of the TV watching the Grammies. I learned later that night that Obama cancelled his Roanoke appearance too.

Post Note: You can listen in on Hillary's conference call, see Mara's Hillary the Riveter button and Kyla's pink "Hillary Rocks" button HERE. Whenever I get confused about who I'm going to vote for in the Virginia primary I watch THIS.

Posted by Colleen at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I want President Bush to have a dream … like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had … I want him to be visited by the ghosts of Iraqi children … who cry out "But mankind was your business"

A little Bach flower remedy for calming the nerves and some deep breathing was in order.

“I’m glad I’m not on a web cam because I didn’t dress for the occasion,” I joked to Pokey Anderson, co-host of The Monitor, a Pacifica radio program out of Houston, Texas.

I was about to read my poem “Dream for President Bush” over the phone while she recorded it for her upcoming show this Sunday. After I posted the poem on my blog a few weeks ago, it was excerpted by Blue Gal on the Crooks and Liars website, which is where, I assume, Pokey found it.

She laughed and kept me talking so that she could adjust the controls to match my voice. “What’s the weather like there?”

“It’s dreary and raining. Not too cold but cold enough to have my wood stove going.”

“Wood stove?” she questioned.

“Yes. People still use wood stoves up here in the mountains of Virginia,” I said.

Dream for President Bush was written as a spoken word poem during a solo writing retreat in November of 2002. I had rented a cabin just down the mountain for a weekend get-away by a lake. While writing it, I paced the cabin floor in front of a roaring fire, shouting the lines in an emotional outpouring, as if they would reach Bush and awaken something in him. I knew the reason for the rush to war was being trumped up. I knew invading a country unprovoked, even a dictatorship, was going against international law and would set a shameful precedent that our country would come to regret. I knew that Saddam was holding warring fractions in Iraq together with force and that without him a vortex of violence would erupt. If I knew these things, those in power certainly did. The Bush administration wasn’t being honest. The Democrats caved, the corporate media caved. I had a lot to get off my chest that weekend and I did it through writing the poem, which was more of prayer than a protest.

In the first year after writing the poem, I was invited to read it at a peace vigil in Roanoke. I read it for a cable TV show in Hull, Massachusetts, the town I grew up in, after running into a Hull Times reporter who recorded it at the January 2003 Peace March on Washington. I passed out copies at the march and handed one directly to Representative, Cynthia McKinney, and to actress, Jessica Lange, both speakers at the event. Someone read the poem at a Blacksburg Peace Rally that I wasn’t able to attend. Here in Floyd, where I live now, I’ve read it at open mics at The Pine Tavern, The Black Box stage, Oddfellas Cantina, and the Café Del Sol. When I first read it at the Pine Tavern to a packed house, the war had already begun. Although the poem was overwhelmingly well received by the crowd, one couple got up and walked out. The last time I read it, this year at the Café Del Sol, no one got up and left the room.

I want President Bush to be haunted … by the ghosts of our Founding Fathers … until he learns this lesson: that killing civilians is a terrorist act … and preemptive strike is invasion …

According to The Monitor’s website, they are a weekly news analysis show founded by Mark Bebawi on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in response to the poor quality of available news coverage at the time. “Since then it has evolved into a weekly examination of many large stories ranging from Climate Change to changes in the world’s economy,” the website reads. The guest list for past shows is impressive and includes Daniel Ellsberg, Molly Ivans, Seymour Hersh, Arianna Huffington, David Cobb, Helen Thomas, Gore Vidal, Frank Rich, Robert Fish, Scott Ridder, William Rivers Pitt, Howard Zinn, and others.

When I wrote Dream for President Bush I was fired up. Sadly, I’m more apathetic now. While I believe every human being can be redeemed, like Scrooge was, it’s unlikely that President will ever have a vision worthy of a leader. And even if he did, so much damage has already been done. No matter what course a president from either party takes now in Iraq more people are bound to die.

The poem that needs to be written now is one that calls for action to hold the Bush administration accountable for its chronic ineptness, corruption, and abuse of power. Otherwise we can expect the low standard our country holds now to remain, be repeated, or worsen. Such a poem, like the one I wrote, should not be considered political, but rather one that reminds us of the core values our founding fathers intended for this country and inspires us to do whatever we can to protect them.

While reading Dream for President Bush over the phone to Pokie, I found myself getting up from my chair, walking while reading, closing my eyes to feel the meaning behind words, and looking up from the typed words on paper as if someone was in the room listening.

If President Bush doesn't have a real dream soon … he should step aside for those who do … He should impeach himself … and ask for forgiveness … for imposing his nightmare on the world …

Post notes: You can hear the poem broadcast live this Sunday between 6 and 7 p.m. Central Standard Time (that’s 7 - 8 p.m. here) at the KPFT website HERE by clicking on the “listen now” icon in the upper right hand corner. Or, you can listen after it’s aired at The Monitor’s website HERE, archived under the Sunday, December 30th show. The photo is of a collage I made a few years ago, incorporating the first stanza of the poem.

Update: Not only can you read the poem in its entirety HERE, you can hear the clipped audio of me reading it on the show HERE. Thanks to Jeff for figuring out how to capture the poem from the hour and a half show, and to Nelson for helping me post it here at Loose Leaf.

Posted by Colleen at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

The following was written as a spoken word poem in November, 2002, before the US invaded Iraq. It was an emotional and cathartic outpouring of expression which took place over course of a three day solo retreat in a cabin at Fairystone Park in Stuart, Virginia. Later, it was read at several Peace Rallies, open mic poetry readings, and for a cable show in Hull, Massachusetts, where I grew up. It was also passed out at the October 2002 and January 2003 Peace Marches on Washington, and was handed directly to Representative Cynthia Mckinney and actress Jessica Lange. It’s being reprinted at the request of readers who encouraged me to after I posted a few excerpts in an entry about a recent Spoken Word event in which it was read.

I want President Bush to have a dream
like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had
I want him to be visited by the ghosts of Iraqi children
who cry out, "But mankind was your business"

I want all the Tiny Tims of the world
to get their 401k money back
from the white collar criminals who stole it

I want them to not go to war for oil,
good ratings, or weapon sale quotas
because this white collar mafia is in power

I wish President Bush would have an affair
I wish he'd take off his black pointed cowboy boots
and look at the moon more often

And then I wish he'd wake up
and be inflicted with what Jim Carey had
in the movie "Liar Liar"

I wish all the billboards across the country read:
"Give back the votes your brother stole"
and the poets would shout from every street corner,
"The emperor wears no clothes"

I want his mouth washed out with soap
every time he says "weapons of mass destruction"
and for him to wear a Darth Vader helmet
if he ever says "the axis of evil" again

I hope President Bush looks out his White House window
when we descend on Washington marching for peace
like hordes of starlings who know their way home
because it is in their nature

I want President Bush to have a dream
like the one that Martin Luther King had
I want him to be visited by the ghosts of King,
John Lennon, Paul Wellstone, and the Kennedys

I want the New York Times to cover the story
when his mother scolds him for being a bully
I hope he gets some Gi Joes for Christmas
and starts to play with real toys
and not with real people

I think President Bush should go back to school
and look up some words in the dictionary
or study history - like the Roman Empire
I'd like him to write on the blackboard 100 times,
"I will not promote propaganda - or the far right agenda"
" I will not join gangs"

I want President Bush to be haunted
by the ghosts of our Founding Fathers
until he learns this lesson:
that killing civilians is a terrorist act
and pre-emptive strike is invasion

I want him to break out in song
at his next Address to the Nation
singing "Give Peace a Chance" is all we are saying
and "We Shall Overcome"

I want President Bush to have an epiphany
or else I want him gone
I want Americans to say "yes" when the polls ask,
"Should regime change begin at home?"

And I want him to stop shouting "Fire!" in the theater
when he is the one with the matches
I want him to care about children
more than slogans and re-elections

If President Bush doesn't have a real dream soon
he should step aside for those who do
He should impeach himself
and ask for forgiveness
for imposing his nightmare on the world

Post notes: You can read about the Washington D.C. Peace March of January 2003 HERE.

Update: You can hear me reading Dream for President Bush on the Pacifica Radio show The Monitor on December 30, 2007 HERE. Read about how the radio recording came about HERE. Thanks go out to Jeff Blakley for excerpting the poem from the show and to my brother-in-law Nelson for creating the link.

Posted by Colleen at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

My friend Rob has been embroiled in a painful controversy regarding a book titled “The Truth About Slavery.” He has publicly asked the reasonable questions: What is a book with such a sensitive topic doing being sold by its author at our town’s yearly craft faire; and isn’t the authoritative title misleading for a book full of one man’s personal perspective?

Rob recently asked me what I thought about the controversy and fellow blogger Doug encouraged local bloggers to spread the word about racism in our midst. I generally don’t set about to write on any specific topic, but if I find myself thinking a lot about something, sentences usually start dictating themselves to me. When that happens I feel almost honor bound to write. While, I’ve been slow to respond in writing for many reasons, I’ve been thinking about the controversy a lot, and about Rob and others who have taken some heat from speaking out.

Firstly, there’s no question that slavery is abhorrent. Born in Massachusetts with a grandmother from Ireland and all of my great-grandparents from places other than the America, I consider myself more a product of immigration than a Yankee, and so I was confused the first time I was labeled that way while visiting my grandparents in Florida when I was young. As a young teenager, I watched the Civil Rights movement play out on TV, feeling upset by the violent reactions to it, but also proud of those who put their lives on the line to secure the most basic of human rights for themselves and others. Every time an African American breaks another barrier, I swell with emotion. Empathy for those who have been oppressed may be rooted in my Irish American heritage. The Irish were completely subjugated by the English for centuries. Under the Penal Laws, Irish Catholics were not allowed to speak their language, go to school, or own land in their own country. Poverty created by that kind of colonialism in the face of the potato famine was like giving Indians blankets infected with scarlet fever to kill them.

But histories are complicated and the “official versions” don’t always match realities, particularly as they apply to wars. From the limited amount of reading I’ve done on the Civil War I have concluded that slavery was not the initial motivation for the start of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation came a few years into the war; some believe to give the war more moral justification, which reminds me of the Iraq war. If we had prevailed in Iraq, historians would likely describe the invasion as a noble act of liberation fought in the name of democracy. Those of us living now know that “democracy in Iraq” only became a stated goal by the Bush administration after WMD were not found, and that even the WMD justification for invasion was a trumped up premise that disguised a hidden motive. Even conservative Alan Greenspan believes (and stated so in his recent book) what many of us have suspected from the war’s beginning, that the U.S. invaded Iraq to pursue geopolitical advantage in the Middle East and for access to oil.

I’ve lived for over twenty years in the Virginia and have many Southern friends. My friend Wade reminded me once that the winners of war are the ones who get to write the history about it, and when they do they tend to put themselves in the best light. He and other Southerners believe that the Civil war was a war about centralized government versus state’s rights and that it was fought for economic interests. Lincoln needed to save the Union because the industrialized North needed the rich agriculture lands of the South. History bears out that a tariff voted in by the North and benefited by them hurt the South who then moved towards secession, setting off a chain of events that led to war.

The problem is when those who put forth the non-idealistic motives of the North during the Civil War feel the need to also defend slavery. They tend to talk about the entire history of slavery, as if to say ‘see, everyone was doing it.’ Even worse is when they point out how well taken care of most owned slaves were, or how content many of them seemed to be. They don’t realize that others experience this kind of defense as condescending, demeaning, simplistic, hurtful, and ignorant of the psychology of captivity.

I haven’t read the book that has stirred the controversy and don’t plan to. From the little I have seen – a list of chapters and clips others have excerpted and printed – it appears that the author is trivializing slavery. It reminds me of those who deny that the holocaust existed or pose childish questions, such as ‘why didn’t the Jewish people fight back?’ In truth, throughout the holocaust and American slavery many did resist captivity and were killed doing so.

I have another older friend who grew up being taken care of by black women servants when the south was still segregated. At first I was shocked when she spoke so calmly about the idyllic rural life she lived and the sense of community she felt between blacks and whites before desegregation brought turmoil. My friend is not a racist. I came to understand that she was relating her direct experience as she felt and remembered it. I also know that the status quo may be comfortable but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

I don’t believe most change causes turmoil as much as it brings existing low grade turmoil to a head. Every couple knows that unspoken disagreements can fester into deep resentments that can be seriously damaging to their relationship. Arguments can clear the air and lead to opportunities for positive change, but not if one party remains defensive because they want to be right.

We view the world through our experiences of it. My perspective on dropping the atomic bomb is far different than my father’s. He, a WWII combat solider fighting to bring down Hitler, saw it as a quick end to war and was relieved not to be shipped off to Japan to face the probability of being killed. In defending the dropping of the bomb, he was not able to fully acknowledge or grieve the deaths of a quarter million innocent Japanese civilians. He especially was not able to do that with the gruesome images of mass graves and other horrors that he saw at Buchenwald Concentration camp in the forefront of his mind.

Do ends justify means? Does change have to come with bloodshed? I wish there were more examples of honoring what was righteous, while at the same time allowing remorse for what was wrong. But most of us have a hard time acknowledging the dark side of our country’s history, North or South. 10/9/07

Update: Christian Trejbal of the Roanoke Times covered this controversy on October 14th HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Bye-bye, Miss American pie … Drove my chevy to the levee … but the levee was dry …

I picked up the CERC Museletter mail at our local post office, dropped it on the front seat of my car, glanced over to it while turning the key in the ignition, and noticed the front page headline of The New River Free Press: The Last Waltz.

It was an unusual title for the twenty-four year old peace and justice publication. I knew it wasn’t an editorial about The Band’s music, and couldn’t be referring to President Bush, no matter how much I wished it was. I let the car idle as I picked up the newspaper and read what at first seemed unthinkable.

This is the 275th – and final issue of the New River Free Press. What a long, strange trip it’s been, nearly a quarter century of advocacy journalism – speaking out against social and economic injustice, speaking up for peace, human rights and environmental protection, speaking back to the powers that be. And striving to speak the truth.

I first met the Free Press community of activists in 1986 when I was new to Virginia and when the Klu Kux Klan came to Floyd. I stumbled upon the march while downtown and was shocked to realize that the Klan still existed, still recruited, and held marches in broad daylight. Uncomfortable and trying to explain the event to my young sons, I was relieved to see a group passing out protest signs and flyers denouncing what the Klan stands for. They were faces from a neighboring town that I would come to know over the years.

As stated in the Last Waltz editorial, "the Free Press has been more than a monthly news publication. It has been a vehicle for social change: an activist organization, a resource center for individuals and emerging grassroots groups, a meeting place and work place and work space for student and community groups, a communications hub in the network of local, regional and national progressive organizations, a sponsor and co-sponsor of nationally and internationally known speakers and performers."

I’ve attended lectures and rallies sponsored by the Free Press, marched against the war in Iraq alongside familiar Free Press volunteers and supporters, written commentaries that have been published in paper, and helped to distribute it in Floyd. But first and foremost, I’ve been a reader. The Free Press has been instrumental in my education of local and world affairs, an active model and catalyst for my own activism.

Although The Museletter, Floyd’s own alternative homespun newsletter has been in print for nearly as long as The Free Press, our readership has always been only a slim fraction of The Press’s average of between 5,000 to 7,000. Still, as a Museletter volunteer I’ve always felt a kindred connection. I felt this especially when I saw photos of the Free Press cut-and-paste layout in a Roanoke Times tribute for the Press’s 20 year anniversary. Although on a larger scale, the layout scene didn’t look that different from how the Museletter is put together. I have gleaned information from the Free Press and reprinted it in the Museletter, and they have, on occasion, used the Museletter announcements for their community calendar page.

Soon after reading the Last Waltz announcement, I was led by Doug at Blue Ridge Muse to another article about the end of the Free Press and learned that I wasn’t the “last to know.” The July 20th issue of the Roanoke Times Current begins, “The New River Free Press kept its final scoop secret for months.” After the last issue hit the streets, Kim Kipling, Free Press volunteer editor and philosophy professor, called the other volunteers to let them know that, “Elvis has left the building,” the paper reported.

Citing changes in the printing press medium due to the internet and lack of new Free Press volunteers as reasons for ending the Press’s long run, Kim’s wife, Susan Anderson, a math teacher who was recently elected to the Blacksburg town council and is the longest serving Free Press volunteer, said, "It was better to stop the paper while we felt it was strong than to kind of limp out.”

Mostly I feel sadness about the end of an era, along with concern about the lack of alternative news coverage the loss of the Free Press will create. But I also understand that change is inevitable and retirement, particularly in this case, is well earned. I hope to attend the Free Press “open house” and book give-away, scheduled at their headquarters beginning at 4 p.m. on July 25th. I have a need to say goodbye, and to say “good job” to all those involved, especially to Kim and Susan, who both promise that, although the Free Press’s run is over, they intend to remain politically active.

Photos: 1. Kim and Susan, reprinted from The Roanoke Times coverage of the Free Press’s 20th anniversary in 2003. 2. Current and last issue of The New River Free Press (scribbled on by me). Read more about the Museletter HERE and HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The following was first published at Just Response and also can be found in the March/April issue of The New River Free Press.

We teach our children not to resort to violence as a way to solve problems, and yet our country models it to the deadliest degree every day in Iraq. Even though violence can only provide temporary fixes because it doesn’t address root causes, we continue to accept war as a fact of life. While it could be argued that it is never the right response to conflict, some wars are easier to explain to children and to ourselves than others. For instance, not many protested U.S. military action in Afghanistan after 9/11, where those believed to be responsible for the attacks were said to be based.

The invasion of Iraq has been more difficult to justify and was questioned from the start by many Americans and much of the world. It was not fought in self-defense; Iraq posed no immediate threat to us. There was no active genocide to stop. The rally cry to liberate Iraqis from Saddam’s brutal rule was as empty as the one for disarming him of the WMDs that he didn’t have, considering that most of his worst offenses happened years before while the U.S. was supporting and helping to arm him.

If the Bush administration would have stated the unspoken reason that many suspect for the invasion – geopolitical advantage in an oil rich Middle East country – would the American people have stood for it? The insurgency that took hold in Iraq, fueled largely as a reaction to occupation, interrupted U.S. plans that were already set in place to privatize the country. The privatization of Iraq would have provided long term U.S. control there and a windfall for U.S. businesses. In my mind, privatization is nothing more than a modern term for colonization.

Zbigniew Brzenzinski, national Security Advisor under President Carter, said on a recent PBS News Hour segment, “The American effort in Iraq is essentially a colonial effort. We're waging a colonial war. We live in the post-colonial era. This war cannot be won because it is simply out of sync with historical times.” Colonialism almost always results in long standing bloody violence. Those who resist the occupation of their country and use unconventional weapons because they do not have armies are considered terrorists across the board.

Now that the war is so unpopular, people are looking for who they can blame for it. Even Democrats, the majority of which voted against the 2003 Iraq war resolution, are being lambasted for not coming up with solutions, as if it’s their responsibility to fix Bush’s failed policy. Democrats who voted to give Bush a blank check in Iraq should be criticized for being so late in complaining, but I don’t think a Democrat, or most Republicans for that matter, would have chosen to invade Iraq. Everything that is happening in Iraq was predictable and was predicted. Even Republicans in Bush’s father’s administration were concerned about the ramifications of getting rid of Saddam and creating a vacuum of power in which longstanding warring fractions would emerge. The Bush Administration chose to ignore warnings and intelligence that didn’t fit their plans. Their justification for invading Iraq was built on rhetoric and a house of cards, and so it was bound to fall.

I feel the heartbreaking horror of 9/11 being rubbed in everyday when I see the faces of U.S. soldiers memorialized on news shows. Three thousand American deaths on 9/11, three thousand more since then with no end in sight makes me wonder if the 9/11 terrorists have already won. Even worse and less publicized are the numbers of innocent Iraq civilians killed as a result of the invasion – more than when Saddam was in power. How do we justify “collateral damage?” Is it any more preferable than terrorists killing civilians?

I’ve lived through presidencies that I was unhappy with before. I don’t expect to always have someone I voted for in the White House. But the very least I expect as an American is that my leaders won’t perpetrate wars. The world is paying a high price for George Bush’s learning curve in foreign affairs, for his reckless disregard of international law and order, and for his administration’s negligent lack of post war planning.

Debates about what to do in Iraq will no doubt continue, but sending more troops or not is not the most fundamental question. The problem is the war itself. If we couldn’t prevail in Iraq when the insurgency was young and Iraq seemed there for the taking, what makes anyone think we can win now that it’s strong and a civil war is taking place on top of it? So doubtful that an escalation of troops will help the situation in Iraq at this point, retired General Anthony Zinni recently said, “the debate is wrong. I think Congress is debating the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.”

How will history judge Bush’s presidency? I don’t want to wait that long. If Bush was the CEO of a big company he would have been fired or prosecuted by now. A vote of no confidence, Impeachment, and Congressional investigations are in order. President Bush is ultimately the one responsible for the nightmare taking place in Iraq, and he should be held accountable for it. ~ Colleen Redman

Posted by Colleen at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

The thing I’m most disappointed about lately is that I didn’t hear Robert Kennedy Jr. when he recently spoke at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Being only 45 minutes away from the Tech campus, I’ve been able to hear some distinguished authors and inspiring activists over the years, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Helen Caldicott, Kathy Kelly, and William Sloane Coffin. I’ve also missed other keynote speakers, like Ralph Nadar, Dennis Kucinich, and Jessie Jackson.

I didn’t even know that Robert Kennedy, son of the assassinated Democratic icon, was planning to be in the area. I had to settle for hearing about it after the fact from my friend Alwyn over lunch last week, and from the Roanoke Times article by Greg Esposito that she had clipped for me.

Kennedy, an environmental activist, talked to the crowd of nearly 3,000 about the subject of his most recent book, “Crimes against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.” According to Esposito, before Kennedy blasted the Bush administration for having the worst environmental record in history, he made sure to let them know that he wasn’t being critical for partisan reasons, pointing out positive progress made in the past under both Republican and Democratic leadership.

I know the Bush administration has set back progress on environmental protections, but being reminded so clearly was distressing, especially in light of recent scientific consensus on the reality of global warming and the destruction likely to ensue. Some of the offenses noted by Kennedy under the Bush administration included: rolling back environmental regulations, dropping lawsuits meant to protect the environment, and naming lobbyists for oil, timber and utility companies to head federal organizations designed to curb environmental abuse.

He was especially hard on the scientists, which he refered to as "biostitutes," who were paid by big oil and coal companies to produce reports questioning the reality of how human activity contributes to global warming, which wasted precious time that could have been spent coming up with solutions to reverse those trends.

But the talk wasn’t all doom and gloom, according to Esposito. Kennedy made some comedic points too. Referring to a study done by the University of Maryland which showed how misinformation affected how people voted in the 2004 presidential election, Kennedy joked, “Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on.”

So when is Al Gore coming to Tech? Or did I miss that too.

Photo: A pond full of algae with a clear opening in the center at Manatee State Park, Florida.

Posted by Colleen at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Days after former American President Gerald Ford passed away, a Reuters newspaper article titled “Ford Speaks from the Grave, Criticizes Bush on Iraq” caught my attention. Apparently even Ford thought the invasion of Iraq was not in the best interest of our national security. He told journalist Bob Woodward in a July 2005 interview, which he requested not be made public until after his death, that he thought fellow-Republican President Bush made a big mistake in his justification for invading Iraq.

Not long after President Ford’s passing, former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein was executed in what the New York Times called a “sectarian free-for-all.” An invasion of questionable legitimacy that has led to civil war in Iraq spawned a trial and an execution that were equally criticized for lacking legitimacy. One Washington Post writer, referring to the video-taping of Saddam being hanged, characterized the execution as “history as a snuff film.”

The contrast between the deaths of Ford and Saddam was dramatic. Compassion for Ford’s family and appreciation for him as a descent and moderate man who expressed discomfort at his party’s turn to the “hard right” were replaced with frustration and repulsion when I learned of Saddam’s abrupt and clandestine hanging.

As brutal as Saddam the dictator was, at one time he brought progressive reforms in health care and education to Iraq. He also managed to hold longstanding warring fractions together. Has the U.S. done any better? Will Bush be held accountable for pushing a war that so many urged against, for overthrowing a dictator and leaving a power vacuum in his place? More than 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion with no end in sight.
The mass graves in Iraq are filling as never before.

Saddam’s trial, which Amnesty International called a “shabby affair marred by serious flaws,” was cut short and Saddam was executed only for the 1982 murders of 148 Dujail villagers accused of plotting to kill him, while trials for his most grievous offenses were cancelled. How does that bring closure to those who suffered under his rule? Robert Scheer, syndicated columnist for The Lost Angeles Times points out the importance of fair trials in a commentary titled “Silencing Saddam” – At Nuremberg in the wake of World War II the U.S. set the bar very high by declaring that even the Nazis, who had committed the most heinous of crimes, should have a fair trial. The U.S. and allies insisted on this not to serve those charged, but to educate the public through a believable accounting. In the case of Saddam, the bar was lowered to the mud…

Some have speculated that Saddam was executed because he knew too much. If the trials continued, Saddam’s defense lawyers were likely to present evidence of complicity by the U.S. government, which was supporting and helping to arm him during the time when most of the crimes he was to be tried for took place. U.S. policies played a role in the violent climate that exists in the Middle East today. We need to look at those policies honestly if we want to improve the situation.

Like President Ford in the 2005 interview with Woodward, Saddam left some final words. After his sentencing he wrote a letter that he had hoped to read but was denied the right to. In it he urged Iraqis to set aside internal conflicts and unite in driving US-led forces from the country. He also spoke of a compassionate God and of his life a sacrifice.

World leaders should be held accountable for the actions they take in the name of the state. If those actions are deemed to be criminal, a fair accounting and punishment are in order. The execution of Saddam was more like a revengeful lynching than a just punishment. It provides no answers, or opportunity for reconciliation for those involved. Rather, it raises more questions and suspicions. It guarantees to further inflame secular violence in Iraq and to fuel more hatred between those of different backgrounds. It also reflects negatively on the U.S. government, whose credibility in the eyes of the world may already be at an all time low.

Posted by Colleen at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

The Bush Administration and its supporters would like to know, whose side are you on? Are you one of those terrorist-supporters who wants to “cut and run” in Iraq, or are you a true American willing to “stay the course,” even though the course has cost the lives of over 2,500 U.S. soldiers and more than 40,000 Iraqi civilians, with no end to the violence in sight

Distilling the issue of Iraq down to side-taking sound bites is a familiar Bush administration tactic, one that was used to sell the Iraq invasion to Americans (whether or not they wanted it) over three years ago. Unfortunately, such dramatized tactics further divides our country and stifles constructive debate, and when the current argument for “staying the course” includes the chilling warning “if we don’t fight terrorist there, we will fight them here at home,” it feels more like a form of bullying than a rationale for foreign policy.

Personally, I can’t begin to answer the heartbreaking question of what to do about Iraq without first expressing my frustration and then asking two pressing questions that have remained unanswered: “What are we doing there in the first place, and who will be held accountable for the misrepresentations that got us there and the failed policies that have followed?

With a big megaphone and a world stage to shout their message from, the Bush administration’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “Mushroom Cloud” scare tactics drowned out the voices of reason. They ignored world opinion, the U.N. Security Counsel, most of our allies, and the opinions of many Middle Eastern policy experts when they pursued a war based on a hypothetical threat with an urgency that was unwarranted. Some of those voices of reason were the same ones who counseled President Bush’s father during the first Gulf War, predicting that taking Saddam out of power could open the way for something far worse. As bad as Saddam’s rule was, they knew his dictatorship was holding Iraqi warring factions apart.

The war in Iraq has been a mismanaged disaster and has created deadly repercussions in several ways. First, by becoming invading occupiers of a country that had not attacked us, we played into al Qaeda hands, giving them a ready made cause for recruiting more America-hating militants into their ranks. Secondly, after seeing the ousting of Saddam and what can happen to a country that can’t protect itself, both Iran and Japan have stepped up their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Lastly, and most tragically, is the large numbers of innocent Iraqis that have been killed because of the war. More civilians are dying on a daily basis than did under Saddam’s rule, and because modern Iraq is a country made up of Western-imposed boundaries that force rivals to live side-by-side, it has all the signs of being an ongoing source of civil violence (if not all out civil war) in a similar way that the Israel and Palestine conflict is.

Upbeat portrayals of progress in Iraq, made by the Bush administration, have been as off target as their claim that we had to invade Iraq because of its stockpiles of WMDs. They contradict the Pentagon’s own mid-May to mid August assessment, which was grim and included the following conclusions: Concern about civil war has increased in recent months; Iraqi casualties have shot up 51 percent; and sectarian blood-letting is gradually spreading north.

With support for the war dwindling more each day, the Bush administration has picked up their megaphone again. This time the word “Fascism” has replaced “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Instead of images of mushroom clouds we get those of Hitler, along with inflammatory remarks comparing those who don’t support the war to those who ignored the holocaust when it was taking place.

Will tough talk like that save Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s job? Will it rally enough fervor to get a few Republicans re-elected in November?

“Staying the course” is a noble sounding phrase, meant to play on the best in Americans. But as Americans, isn’t it our duty to guard against governmental abuse of power, to assure that our soldiers aren’t put in harm’s way unnecessarily, and to demand accountability from our government officials when they are?

I find it difficult to accept the advice of “staying the course” from an administration that has led us so far off course.

Post note: The following was written for the Roanoke Times and The New River Free Press.

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” -- Nelson Mandela

What do you believe? Is it true?

In an effort to examine her belief systems and better understand what divides us, Rachel Pickett has taken to the road to talk to people across the country.

According to her blog, where she chronicles her journey, some of the states she’s visited since leaving her home in Oakland California on August 1st include Arizona, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia. I met up with her and her current traveling companion, Andrew Dunlap, on the front steps of the Floyd County Courthouse to find out more about what she calls “The Summer Inquiry Project.”

Although Rachel's last name is Pickett, she’s not protesting anything. She’s only asking the question. “Want to Talk about Politics?” her sign reads.

“I kept thinking people should be doing something to heal the political diviisions in our country. But then I thought, Maybe I should be doing that. What could I do to help heal the divide?” she wondered.

Do people actually stop to talk politics with a stranger? “What’s the ratio of people who stop to talk and those who walk by?” I asked.

“About 80% look and 20% stop to talk,” she answered.

“Have you had any negative feedback?” I continued.

“Not once we start talking,” she answered. The majority of people have been friendly. Some have bought her lunch or offered her a place to stay. About the worst thing that has happened since the start of the trip is that someone rode by on a bicycle and said “Not with you,” in answer to the question on her sign, Rachel told me. One unlikely positive interaction happened at a KKK parade. Rachel’s interest in learning what motivates beliefs allowed her to approach a KKK supporter and pursue what turned out to be a meaningful exchange.

Inviting conversation, rather than trying to change minds, in the hope of finding common ground is the theme of the Inquiry Project, which was inspired by the work of best selling author Byron Katie. Katie, referred to as “a visionary for the new millennium,” in a Time Magazine profile, has devised a series of 4 questions designed to invite a deeper exploration into beliefs.

“That’s Dunlap with an a” Andrew (on the left) said when he saw that I had misspelled his name in my notepad. He isn’t the only Inquiry Project activist who has accompanied Rachel on her journey. When Rachel was in West Virginia her mother took part in the initiative. Before that it was an Aunt in Kansas who held the sign asking “Want to Talk about Politics?”

Talking politics can be a tricky proposition, one that often causes people to get heated, which is exactly why it’s a good place to begin developing listening and conflict resolution skills, Rachel thinks.

Both she and Andrew are working towards their master’s degrees in social work, and Rachel plans to work in education after graduation, perhaps designing school curriculums for practicing conflict resolution. She’s also recorded some Summer Inquiry Project interviews that she hopes to develop into a documentary. Some of the interview questions she posed included “Do you think there’s a political divide in this country? If so, how does it get there? What might work to bridge it?

“What next?” I asked when I learned they would be leaving Floyd that day.

“A couple of cities in South Carolina, Birmingham, New Orleans, and Austin,” she rattled off.

By now several passer-bys were craning their necks in our direction. I didn’t want to monopolize the possibility for Rachel and Andrew to bridge more divides and strengthen common ground with others. She had told me that many of their inquiry interactions ended with a sharing of email addresses and other contact information. I was no different. After giving her my email address, I wished them good luck, and thanked them for caring.

Walking to my car, I felt a sense of encouragement and thought to myself, “How easily new friends are made."

Posted by Colleen at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

We have never had a presidency in which the single unifying thread that flows through its major decision-making was incompetence - stitched together with hubris and mendacity on a Nixonian scale. ~ Carl Bernstein

In a recent Vanity Fair article, Watergate veteran Carl Bernstein called for an investigation into the Bush presidency for what Bernstein describes as “the most disastrous five years of decision-making of any modern American presidency.”

The 35% of Americans who still support President Bush will likely accuse Bernstein of having a liberal bias, but they can’t suggest the same for the 6 retired military generals who recently broke their silence in a call for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, charging mismanagement the Iraq war.

Similar to the climate that existed when the Nixon presidency was threatened with impeachment, more and more conservatives are publicly questioning not only President Bush’s rationale for and handling of the Iraq War, but the self-appointed authority he claims gives him the right to wiretap Americans without going through legal channels. Bush’s selective declassification of information for the purpose of having it leaked in an effort to win support for the war is another indication of misuse of power, as is the leak, traced to the highest level of the Bush White House, which outed a CIA operative in order to discredit her husband, a critic.

Whether it be the handling or Iraq or Katrina, the re-writing of torture language that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal, or gulag-like detainee practices, the cost in lost lives and U.S. credibility under the Bush Administration makes the impeachment of Clinton for lying about an affair seem trivial.

With some polls suggesting that close to 50% of Americans would support the impeachment of President Bush if it was determined that he deliberately lied to justify the invasion of Iraq, the idea of his impeachment is less of a fringe idea every day. In fact, Congressman John Conyers, the senior Democrat who took part in Watergate proceedings against President Richard Nixon in 1974, has called for a committee of inquiry into the grounds for Bush’s impeachment. Meanwhile, evidence continues to come forth suggesting that the invasion of Iraq was neither a last resort nor an urgent undertaking, as Bush told the American people it was. The 2002 Downing Street memo which states that Bush “fixed the intelligence reports (WMD) around (Iraq war) policy” is one such piece of compelling evidence.

I’m a registered Independent who is fiscally conservative and votes for Democrats because they represent my interests in civil rights, woman’s rights, labor rights, human rights, and the protection of the environment better than their counterparts. If there’s anything good to come out of the Bush presidency for me personally, it’s that the separating gulf between my values and those of moderate Republicans has narrowed.

I agreed with Republican William F. Buckley Jr. when he said: “It's important that we acknowledge in the inner counsels of state that the war in Iraq has failed so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure."

I agree with conservative columnist George Will’s assertion that, “Terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the 'sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs….(which) is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws 'necessary and proper' for the execution of all presidential powers."

And I agree with Republican Senator Arlen Specter’s response to Bush's attorney general’s claim that the president’s secret order to wiretap Americans was legal. "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser," Specter said.

As much as I feel America has been set back by the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration, I find solace in the hope that sensible people of all political persuasions will ultimately unite against incompetence and the over-reach of power.

Photo: The work of one dedicated Freeway Blogger puts my label gun graffiti efforts to shame. To see more, go visit him here.

Posted by Colleen at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Have you ever been to a peace march or felt strong enough about something to protest?

I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. I followed the first Gulf War and the devastating effect the sanctions had (primarily on children) intently, and I wrote political commentaries on the subject. I never thought Saddam had weapons to the degree that the Bush administration insisted they did, and I never believed that Iraq was an immediate threat. I participated in two Peace Marches on Washington DC to protest the rush to war. The first was in October of 2002 followed by another in January. Below is an informal article I wrote that appeared in “The Museletter,” the Floyd community forum that I co-edit, about the January march.

…There were 30 buses from the Boston area, where I am originally from, and I must have radar for those folks because I kept running into them. I was shocked to discover that a “Hull Times” reporter from the small town I grew up in was there. He interviewed me for the Hull newspaper and recorded me reading my Christmas poem, “Dream for President Bush” for the Hull cable TV station (“Hi, Mom and Dad!)…I want President Bush to have a dream... like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had...I want him to be haunted by the ghosts of Iraqi children who cry out, “But mankind was your business...

I wore my friend Jayn’s green down parka and held a sign that said “Pre-emptive Strike is Invasion.” I marched with my husband, Joe, and my son Josh, who came up from Asheville, N.C. with a group of friends. We hooked up via cell phone with some other Floydians and Blue Mountain School alumni, and used our camcorder to interview people, capturing the diversity and huge numbers of those who came out to march.

Everything from the great parking space we got, and the hot tea that was had along the marching route made the day seem almost magical to me. I heard Ron Kovic (Vietnam Vet that the movie “Born on the 4th of July” was based on), a member of British Parliament, Congressman John Conyers, Jessie Jackson, Elizabeth McAlister (Peter Berrigan’s wife) speak passionately at the pre-march rally. I met actress Jessica Lange and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and gave them both a copy of my poem… I want his mouth washed out with soap...every time he says “weapons of mass destruction..." and for him to wear a Darth Vadar helmet if he ever says “the axis of evil” again... Read the article in its entirety…

Continue reading "Peace March on Washington ~ January 18, 2003" »

Posted by Colleen at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

The following poem, written for the New Year 2004, was a featured "Poem of the Day" at Poets Against the War online that year and also appeared in The New River Valley Free Press. I think it still applies.

Sign of the Times

Put a “Do Not Disturb” sign
over the forest
Hang an “Out of Order” sign
on the White House door
Proceed with caution
Yield to your conscience
Handle the whole world
with care

Photo: Peace March, Washington DC, trying to stop the invasion into Iraq, taken from the top of a school bus.

Posted by Colleen at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~ Isaac Asimov
Leaving the Café Del Sol, after our Scrabble game on Sunday, my friend Mara and I discovered that we were unexpectedly stuck in town, but we also had front row seats to our local Veterans Day Parade.

Unlike most parades with festive themes, this one was understandably solemn. While I enjoyed watching the girl scouts and boy scouts, the high school band, and the veterans – many of whom were WWII vets like my father, marching by – I also had many mixed feelings. I felt respect mixed with deep sadness underneath a growing frustration with wars that aren’t about self-defense and the rash leaders who send young men to fight them.

I like to photograph scrabble boards to capture the setting and ambiance of the games I play, and so I conveniently had a camera in my hand when the above scene crystallized in front of me. It spoke to the ambivalence I was feeling.

My friend Mara’s car, covered with anti-war bumper stickers, stood out like a parade float as a color guard of men with rifles flanked by. “Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding” one bumper sticker quoting Albert Einstein read. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” read another one with a picture of Gandhi on it.

The parade marchers and Mara’s car were facing in opposite directions. I stood transfixed, as though looking at an artist’s installation. I focused my stare at the place where the marchers met with and then passed Mara’s car, as though it was a threshold of hope. At some point even polar opposites will meet and what appears to be polar opposites may not really be. We all exist together on this street, in this town, in this country and world, I thought, as I noticed a few neighborly faces in the parade ranks and lifted my arm to wave to them.

Posted by Colleen at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

This is a photo of me and my brother Bob. One of us voted for and still supports Bush. The other thinks he’s ruined U.S. credibility and should be recalled or impeached. You could say we’re on opposite ends of the spectrum, but when you add to the equation that Bob leans towards Libertarianism and I tend to be fiscally conservative, maybe not. Regardless of how one might label me or my brother, we still love each other.

I’d like to thank my readers for the recent civil discourse on current events here at Loose Leaf. One of the things I love about blogging is that I get to interact with a variety of people that I probably wouldn’t cross paths with otherwise. Getting a peek into other people’s lives and risking letting them see mine, via our blogs, can be humanizing. The more I do it the more I can see the multi-dimensional nature of each person, and that, as human beings, we are more alike than we are different.

What about you? Do you live with someone on the other side of the aisle or with a different philosophy of life? Are you able to agree to disagree?

Post Note: The photo was taken by my sister, Tricia, at our brother Jimmy's annual memorial picnic at the Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts.

Posted by Colleen at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Subtitle: Is this what smaller government looks like? AKA Spending his way out of the doghouse

The following is an excerpt from a commentary I’ve submitted to several publications. ... The inadequacies of FEMA can be traced back to President Bush who undermined the progress it made under President Clinton by appointing a political crony with no emergency management experience to lead it, and then privatizing parts of it. In May of 2001, Bush’s FEMA appointee, Joe Allbaugh, suggested to Congress that FEMA had evolved into “an oversized entitlement program.” When Allbaugh resigned to pursue corporate opportunities in Iraq, he left his even less qualified college roommate, Michael Brown, in his place. Folding FEMA into Homeland Security further weakened it. No guidelines were provided for how Homeland Security would pick up the slack, or if they were provided, Homeland Security director, Michael Chertoff, didn’t seem to be aware of them.

Far-right Republicans, like President Bush, have shown little interest in preventative programs that help people and solve problems, like the UN or FEMA. Their answer to everything seems to be privatization, which sets the stage for corporate cronyism and greed. The only government program they clearly support is the military. For years, Republicans complained about the Welfare Program, less than 1% of the federal budget, while spending for the military under their administrations skyrocketed and deficits rose to record levels.

The outpouring of support that Americans have given to those in need has been a testimony to their generosity, but I don’t understand how so many can continue to tolerate an administration that elects to invade another country with the intent to impose democracy, while at the same time it’s systematically eroding domestic programs designed to protect its own citizens.

The Republican catch-phrase, “Get government off our backs,” sounds like a liberating ideal, but the reality is that the images of human suffering that followed Hurricane Katrina’s wrath is what smaller government can look like.

Two weeks after Katrina, with his approval rating the lowest of his presidency, President Bush took the uncharacteristic step of admitting that the response to the disaster was a failure of government at all levels. He’s promised to study what went wrong, but it’s never a good idea for a likely suspect to investigate himself. In order for a study to have any meaning it must be an independent one.

Of course, it shouldn’t take a large tax paid study to determine that the responsibility for recent emergency response failures lies largely with the Bush administration. Their agenda, like that of other far right administrations, aims to weaken social programs because they consider them to be too costly. The irony is that, especially in the case of Katrina, the government will spend more to make up for its grievous failings than it would have cost to prevent those failings by fully funding and supporting domestic programs already in place.

Post Note: I've added the entire commentary in the extended entry for those who might be interested. See below...

Continue reading "Unprepared for Katrina" »

Posted by Colleen at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" Newt Gingrich
Contrary to what some Bush supporters think, that his critics are now trying to blame him for the weather, no one has said that President Bush is responsible for Hurricane Katrina. The criticism is related to the slow response to the crisis, at the expense of human lives. In times of crisis, the president’s job is to lead and set the tone, neither of which he did when it would have counted most.

Frank Rich of the New York Times writes, “The president’s declaration that ‘I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees’ has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleeza Rice’s ‘I don’t think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.’ In fact, there were documented warnings for both and neither excuse holds up.

Reporting from New Orleans for the nightly news last night, John Roberts was asked, “Is there anything good happening there?”

“There’s a lot of good,” he answered and went on to talk about the large numbers of newly arrived National Guardsmen. “But it’s too late,” he added, sounding frustrated. “There are no people here now.”

The majority of the people are either dead – an estimated 10,000 another reporter predicted – or they have moved on to makeshift shelters.

Below are a few quotes culled from the last few days of news to ponder. Decide for yourself what part President Bush played in the slow response to the Hurricane Katrina:

“It took him most of a week to get there” …and then “…he launched a rescue mission to restore his own image after mounting criticism of an apparent shortage of federal leadership.” Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times staff writer.

“A president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy…” Frank Rich from “Falluja Floods the Superdome” New York Times.

"They can go into Iraq and do this and do that, but they can't drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It's just mind-boggling." Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

“And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water. …Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?” Keith Olbermann MSNBC

“Race is perfectly appropriate to talk about. 88% of all black people didn't vote for Bush, so maybe the slow response was payback?” Comment found on http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog

“We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. … Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we’ve got to start with some new leadership. It’s not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now…” Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans (pictured above, broke down and crying uncontrollably, being interviewed by Tim Russert).

Post Note: For two informative articles on this subject, which deal with FEMA's role in the disaster and at what point a state of emergency was declared, see "Time to Take the Blame," and "Trying to Avoid the Finger," both found at Capitol Hill Blue. My sister also has a post on her blog "A Particularly Persistent Point of View," which ties in and is a well worthy read.

Posted by Colleen at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Donating money to The Red Cross for the victims of Hurricane Katrina is all well and good, but the satisfaction I felt doing so didn’t compare with that of preparing a personal care package for someone in need that I’ve never met. I did this recently when I learned that a Floyd couple would be driving to New Orleans to deliver some much needed supplies. The act of collecting personal belongings to give away, gave me an emotional connection with those who have lost everything that I wasn’t able to feel by just witnessing the devastation on the TV.

I found myself thinking about young mothers and their children. I wondered who might walk in the sandals I packed. What would I want to receive if I was in their position?

Included in my modest box of donations were: sheets, towels, a notebook and pen, children’s books, a matchbox car and a stuffed animal, brightly colored alphabet cards, 5 days of brand new women's underwear, several combs, bars of soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, t-shirts and shorts, a Reeds Lumber cap, canned goods and a can opener, and a hibachi stove with coals.

What would you include in a care package to New Orleans? What would you want to receive if you were one of the displaced there?

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Some folks feel protesting is wrong, that you should mind your own business. But when the biggest earth mover in the world shows up at your gate, you suddenly realize that industry regulation is your business. ~ Author and poet George Ella Lyons, talking about strip mining in coal fields of Kentucky.

If a family member was perpetrating domestic violence, I hope I would confront him, seek help, and maybe even call the police or 911, if necessary. I wouldn’t expect to be labeled anti-family for doing so. I wouldn’t expect my actions to be perceived as disloyalty towards the perpetrator, and especially not towards other family members.

Abuse of power thrives in silence and silence is often obtained through fear. Name calling is one of the easiest ways to instill fear and stifle dissent. It can temporarily stop debate – debate that might be uncomfortable, but could also lead to understanding and change. But it doesn’t stop problems. In fact, without a constructive forum for dissent, resentments go underground, where they are fueled and can cause existing problems to be magnified.

Our country was founded on protest and revolt against governmental abuse of power. Yet, today when Americans protest controversial government policies, they are frequently labeled as un-American or unpatriotic. In an April, 2003 commentary, “Rediscovering Patriotism,” published by The Roanoke Times and commondreams.org, I wrote: I believe a patriot is one that is an active and informed participant of his or her government, one who is passionate about upholding the ideals its country stands for, not just in word but in deed. This could mean going to war to defend your country, but it also could mean guarding against the overstepping of your country, such as when it initiates offensive wars against weaker nations.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who is camped out near President Bush’s Texas ranch, is demanding that the President answer her questions. She has become the unlikely lightening rod for so many who have grave concerns about the war in Iraq and believe it to be an elective war of aggression that was misrepresented to the public and then rushed into without proper post war planning. While Sheehan’s vigil is supported by many, others are angry and trying to discredit her.

I have no doubt that Cindy cares deeply about the troops in Iraq and all the lives that have been lost there. I believe her actions are a result of following her conscience. If there is any common ground between her supporters and detractors, I think it lies somewhere in the likelihood that the majority on both sides of the issue come from a place of caring about others. They just express it in different ways.

I’m amazed and encouraged that one ordinary woman has a better chance of holding President Bush accountable for the war in Iraq than the nearly half a million protesters who marched on Washington D.C. in 2003 in an attempt to stop a war they believed didn’t have to happen.

Posted by Colleen at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

I had lunch with one of my dearest friends yesterday, a poet and an environmental activist. Although she’s more than 20 years older than me, she remains faithfully active, while I have become somewhat burned-out, fed-up, and a little apathetic when it comes to world affairs.

Over our Indian rice and dahl, she recommended an exciting new book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit-man,” in which the author, John Perkins, describes how, as a highly paid member of the international banking community, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. “It’s very important to read this. The situation is worse than I thought it was,” she said, as she held up the hardcover book with a photo of the author on it for me to see.

Of course, then the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came up. My eyes began to glaze over. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t absorb any more of the world’s suffering created by U.S. policies, especially since those in power and so many Americans are fervently invested in continuing with business as usual.

Trying to change the subject to something more current, I said, “Have you been following the protest of Cindy Sheehan outside Bush’s Crawford Texas Ranch? It’s gotten some good coverage. I’m sure some view her as a radical, but I wonder if I could be so brave. And what does she have to lose; she already lost her son in Iraq?”

“Did you write about her on your blog?” My friend asked.

"I started my blog partly to get away from writing about politics," I answered.

“Why?” she pressed.

After explaining the intent and focus of “Loose Leaf” and how I wanted my writing to be less serious and more personal, I continued by giving her my policy on blogging politics, “I don’t do gratuitous politics, but if it comes up in the context of story or a stream of thought, I don’t shy away from it,” I answered. “Besides, I’m tired of preaching to the choir,” I added.

Just a few days before this, while in the Café de Sol to play scrabble, I pulled up “Loose Leaf” at the wireless computer station to show one of my Writers’ Workshop members who rarely touches a computer.

“How many hours a day do you spend on this?” was about all he said.

Later in the day, I thought to myself, "Hey, I didn’t ask him how many hours a day he watches TV, or how many hours a day he’s wasted at a job doing someone else’s work..."

But is does seem that, while blogging gives me a good forum to keep my writing practice sharp, it also can distract me from larger projects. And with so much pain and suffering and corruption in the world, shouldn't I be doing more?

Ah…still explaining what the heck I’ve been doing lately to my friends…and sometimes to myself.

Post Note: For a thought provoking article, which I found via blogcruiser, check out “Writers make good bloggers, but does blogging affect good writing?” written by Tom Dolby and published recently in the San Francisco Chronicle. Also, here are a couple of good links on Cindy Sheehan’s activism as posted on Moveon.org: "One Mother in Crawford" Editorial, The New York Times, August 9,2005. Video Testimonial by Cindy Sheehan from TrueMajority. To read some of my past politcal commentaries you can go to my website.

Posted by Colleen at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Small town group of peace pro-fessers on March 19th, 3rd anniversary of the Iraq War. This photo (or one just like it) made it on the front page of our local newspaper.

Posted by Colleen at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don’t hide my politics. I don’t think of them as something separated from the rest of my life. The laws that politicians make directly affect my personal health and welfare, as well as my civil and human rights. During the 2004 election, an African American man was being interviewed by a nightly news reporter. He said something that still sticks in my mind: “If you don’t vote, you might as well be saying…do whatever you want with me.” You could also put it this way: “If you don’t engage in some politics, you might just as well say, do whatever you want with me.” It was politics that brought us the Iraq War under false pretenses and with no post war plan.

I’m a registered Independent and my politics are generally progressive. I come from a working class background, and so I think if the top 1% wealthiest Americans can have a big tax cut, the working class should get a minimum wage raise. Without a decent wage and affordable health care, how does President Bush think the average family can invest in the stock market for their retirement, as he proposes they should? When I think about the stock market, I think about men jumping out of windows when it crashed during the Depression.

I’m fascinated by how many people will vote against their own personal interests in order to vote for an “image.” Never before has politics been so contrived, marketed, and superficial. In the news of late, the Bush Administration has been implicated in a series of questionable and potentially illegal practices that have included: distributing fake news spots to promote their policies, allowing fake reporters in the press room to toss them soft ball questions, and paying pundits, who are supposed to be independent, to further promote their agenda. Unfortunately, the makers of product advertisements are held more accountable than some of the claims the Bush administration has made.

After the recent presidential election, I was devastated that the administration that has given us the worst e