Pacific Pivot: U.S. Foreign Policy Is Still Making Provocative Moves By Larry Kershner In November 2014, I visited  Jeju Island, South Korea. I went with a group, organized by Fr. Bill Bichsel of the Tacoma Catholic Worker, to stand in solidarity with villagers of Gangjeong Village who are opposing the construction of a naval base in their village.  The base is supposedly a Korean Navy base but a look at the plans clearly shows that wharfs and docks are fitted to the size of US naval vessels. The longest submarine in the Korean Navy is 53 meters but the sub pen being built is in the 200 meter range of the US Trident submarine. At fifty hectares, this base will…

Inequality Kills by Stephen Bezruchka For nearly two hundred years America was one of the healthiest and longest-lived countries, but today, over thirty countries have better health by many measures. What happened? In answering this question, the distinction between health and health care is a critical one, but something that seems not to be well understood by the lay public, health care professionals, or policy makers. Every time we hear the word health, we should ask ourselves whether that term refers to health itself, or to the much more limited concept of health care. If the culprit of the decline in health is not health care, are individual health-related behaviors, often blamed for the high death rates in some groups,…

By Mary Anne Mercer, senior lecturer, University of Washington Department of Global Health Obstetrician Dr. Muhsin Al Sabbak of Basrah, Iraq, accompanied by an environmental toxicologist, Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, recently spoke in Seattle on increases in birth defects since the US-sponsored wars in Iraq.  The presentations were sponsored by the University of Washington and various community groups. Dr. Al Sabbak is chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Basrah Maternity and Children’s Hospital in southern Iraq and has served on the faculty of the Basrah Medical School for nearly three decades. After the first US-Iraq war in 1991, he began to track birth defects among the infants he delivered. The rates began to rise in the late…

By Abby Brockway As a Christian, obedience is a theme that has been in my life and appears as I study scripture. My story of obedience began on a cold January evening when I spoke at a climate rally in Seattle. After the talk, a spiritual leader representing an indigenous group called Idle No More encouraged me to think more about obedience. I did just that. Last summer, Lummi leader and Master Carver Praying Wolf Jewell James stopped at Saint Marks Cathedral in Seattle on a journey with his totem pole from Montana to Alberta. Letters of apologies signed by various church leaders in the Northwest was presented to James Jewell and to the Lummi Nation acknowledging the historical disrespect…

By John M Repp A review of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate 2014 by Naomi Klein What is wrong with us? Why can’t we answer history’s hard knock on our front door in the form of super storms, record droughts, floods, wildfires, globetrotting diseases, food shortages and finally threats of tipping points like the melting of the West Antarctic glacier and massive releases of methane from Arctic permafrost. The answer is denial, denial of climate change. Naomi Klein tells us exactly when and how she broke through her denial of climate change. It came when she heard a young Bolivian woman tell her in late 2009 that climate change was both terrible threat and an opportunity. When she…

By Bruce Pruitt-Hamm They say “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” After nearly 40 years of enjoying paid staff, the Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation (WWFOR) is transitioning to become all volunteer… and all active! Following chronic budget concerns, our “board” decided this spring to terminate the position of our WWFOR Organizer of 10 years, Ellen Finkelstein. A “Transition Committee” was commissioned and has been working for months to ensure that the regional organization continues and expands its tradition of networking unpaid activists (aka “volunteers”). WWFOR has, using volunteers, organized (with Oregon FOR) a Northwest-wide annual conference at Seabeck conference grounds on Hood Canal for over 60 years. The WWFOR is updating that tradition with new technologies for networking and…

By Larry Kerschner   The end result of the war between the U.S. Empire and the Spanish Empire in 1898 marked the beginning of the global American Empire.  Spain had been losing control of its empire due to internal corruption and external national liberation movements, especially in Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines.  On September 23, 1868, at Lares, nearly 1000 Puerto Rican revolutionaries declared the first Republic of Puerto Rico.  Many of these rebels were former African slaves who had escaped. The revolt would be known as El Grito de Lares (the Cry of Lares). These revolutionary forces eventually controlled the mountains and much of the rural areas around the towns with Spanish garrisons.     Although unable to push…

Insights from 2014 PATs Farhiya Abdi and Amy Olson and trainer Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm. Reflections from a Trainer by Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm I wonder what passersby at Westlake Mall were thinking when they saw a gaggle of high school students solemnly rising up by the escalator, in black and white striped t-shirts, their hands clasped behind their backs with handcuffs. Signs on their front read such things as “12 years old; Incarcerated for unruly behavior; ordered to pay court costs.” Their backs each revealed another message: “We do not deserve this.” Although this sight may have been taken differently depending on the eye of the beholder, the intent was to evoke the question: is youth incarceration the answer? This act of guerrilla theater…

by Larry Kerschner It seems like there are an awful lot of trains going off the tracks lately.  On December 14 of last year, a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe train derailed north of Centralia, spilling three rail cars, including one carrying methanol.  On January 13, 2014, a BNSF train derailed two cars just south of Auburn. During a two-week period during early May of this year there were three separate train derailments in Grays Harbor County.  On May 22, a Puget Sound and Pacific train derailed north of Centralia.  On August 4 three train cars, including a tanker car carrying methanol, derailed on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks north of downtown Centralia.  On July 2, a coal train…

by Larry Kerschner Protest activity surrounding the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred during the week of November 30, 1999 and put Seattle on the world map. However, the first time 65,000 protesting people in the streets of Seattle were known around the world for a radical attitude was during the Seattle General Strike which began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days. At that time the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a collection of unions of skilled craftsmen who saw no need to join in labor struggle with semi-skilled or unskilled workers. AFL unions…