by Jean Gant Delastrada, Fall Retreat Committee Chairperson The 2023 WWFOR Fall Retreat, the Human Right to a Livable and Just World, addressed the topics of climate disruption and militarism, with a special focus on the work of young peace and justice activists. Young people around the world have been especially concerned about the speed of climate disruption and have questioned what the world of their future years will be like environmentally. Young activists are also increasingly aware of the intersectionality in peace and justice issues. FOR, a non-violent peace movement, is more and more making the connections between war and militarism and the need for a peaceful just and sustainable world. Elsie Sabel and Justin Yang, in a Youth…

This new law wastes lots of  taxpayer money and only makes the problem bigger. by Carl Nakajima, a Real Change vendor. Real change is the Seattle homeless paper, Oct 11-17, 2023, page 9 I am very strongly against the drug enforcement bill that the (Seattle) City Council passed. People I know have died from overdoses of drugs shortly after being released from jail. This is because the amount of drugs that the body can accept changes while they are incarcerated. Upon release, they took the same amount of drugs as before entered the jail. Drug use is not a habit that can be easily changed through physical punishment. On the contrary, it is a habit that can be made worse…

  by Marjorie Prince With the possible exception of those used for hunting game, I suggest that Congress enact legislation banning the manufacture, sale, and use of all handguns and assault rifles. I am saddened by the Republican Party’s disdain for any meaningful gun regulation. While mass shootings dominate the news, thousands die from suicide by guns and other fateful spur-of-the-moment acts of anger and fear using guns. (47,000 Americans died by gun violence in 2021counting both suicides and homicides)-this note has been added by the Pacific Call editor. Yet how can we curb gun violence here in the U.S. when we pour millions of dollars into fighting wars abroad? As others have noted, in war there are no winners.…

by John M Repp The U.S. Veterans for Peace held a virtual convention on August 25-27, 2023. There is a video recording of the keynote speakers that has been posted on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1LdERmcB1qk The speakers were Clare Daly, an Irish member of the European Parliament and Jeffery Sachs, an American economist and advocate for sustainable development. Sachs worked for a time as an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev in the conversion of the former Soviet state planned economy into a “normal” i.e., capitalist economy. Both keynote speakers addressed the convention on the war in Ukraine. They both agree: the war in Ukraine was provoked by the American insistence on expanding NATO to Ukraine. Both Daly and Sachs were very animated, emotional,…

Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit law firm, the only non-profit law firm in the nation, that is using the court system to force the state and federal government to establish the right of our children to a clean and healthful environment. The law firm started in 2015 and is based in Eugene, Oregon. Their first lawsuit was against the Federal Government. The executive branch, i.e. the Department of Justice, has attempted to stop the lawsuit so they don’t have to act to stop the emissions of fossil fuels. The law firm has also filed lawsuits in four states. Montana is one of those states and on August 14, 2023, a court in Montana ruled in favor of the children…

By Bruce Radtke and Cindy Cole    The US Government’s COVID-19 public health emergency order expired on May 11, 2023 – this included the Trump Title 42 order that expelled over 2.5 million migrants from the US-Mexico border.  The Biden Administration is now rolling out plans that will continue to restrict many migrants’ access to asylum, including a “transit ban”. Under the new rule, migrants who pass through countries on their way to the U.S. and do not first claim asylum there or take advantage of other lawful pathways will be deemed ineligible to claim asylum at the southern border. A recent policy requires migrants to use a cell phone app (CBP One App) and apply for an immigration appointment…

by John M Repp There are many reasons for the new cold war with Russia and China. After promising not to move NATO east of what had been the Soviet Union, the new governments that formed in the east European countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union, were invited into NATO. We now know our national security people knew they crossed a red line when they did that. On February 24, 2022, Russia has invaded Ukraine. The U.S. is supplying a massive number of weapons to Ukraine, so we are in a proxy war with Russia, some say a real war. And now China has made the most amazing change in their economy in the last 70 years.  To…

by John M Repp One of the most disturbing news reports we hear nowadays is a report of a mass shooting at a school. Usually, the report tells us how many people are killed, the location, and ends with a statement “no motive has been established”. The listener or viewer’s heart sinks.  A few years back, two professors of criminology and criminal justice respectively, Jillian Peterson and James Densley, put together a database of mass shootings in the United States since 1966, when the first one happened. In 2021, they published a book The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Politico published a review of the book in 2022. Quotes below are from the review. Many mass…

Extinction Rebellion and Citizens Assemblies by John M Repp  “only nonviolent rebellion can now stop climate breakdown and social collapse” is the subtitle of the book: Common Sense for the 21st Century by Roger Hallam (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) Roger Hallam writes that real change happens when ordinary people break the law i.e., do nonviolent direct action. He gives his book a title that reminds us of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (January 1776) which sparked the American revolution. The book reads like a short 95-page instruction manual for a nonviolent revolution. Hallam uses “reverse engineering”, imagining what a successful nonviolent revolution would look like and then works back to the steps and preparations needed to achieve it. He means…

Planes, (fancy) trains and automobiles won’t help us meet our climate goals. by Mary Paterson | July 5, 2023 (reprinted from Real Change, the Seattle homeless paper by permission of the author) Real Change began an important discussion this spring about how our state legislators and governor are ignoring the need for East-West passenger trains between Seattle, Auburn, Ellensburg, Yakima, and Spokane (‘It’s Just Negligence…,’ March 15, 2023). Modernizing our existing rail routes — think Amtrak for the 21st century — can help us reduce “vehicle miles traveled” and slash our emissions by 2030, which we must do according to warnings from scientists about climate change.  Trains on our existing rail network are a climate solution hiding in plain sight. They’d also help…