by Abby Bernhard (2012 Peace Activist Trainee) Take four experienced activists, eight high-school students from around Seattle, and a myriad of daunting political, social and environmental issues. Mix them all together, add in dashes of wisdom from guest speakers on subjects that include racism, LGBTQ, homelessness, bullying, immigration, Palestine and Israel. Transfer the students to the streets of Greenwood and Westlake. Sprinkle in some history lessons on successful peaceful nonviolent movements. Let the students cool off and reflect outside of Joint Base Lewis McChord and at Garfield Community Center. After four weeks you will have transformed Peace Activist Trainees into real peace activists. Presto-change-o! From July 9th to August 2nd the Peace Activist Trainees (PATs) and their mentors met in…

Elsewhere in this Pacific Call you will find the brochure for the upcoming Fall Retreat:m “We See A Train a’Coming: The Climate Crisis, the Coal Train, and Beyond.” Note that there are several differences from previous years.  The biggest difference is that there is no Friday night portion.  The Retreat will be an all day Saturday event November 10, 2012. Other differences are the reduced price and that you will need to bring your own lunch. We are trying something new this year and hope you will come and bring several of your friends. See related article from May-June 2012 Pacific Call on Dirty Coal and Your Future.  

by Ellen Finkelstein “There is no war without the warrior /Just silent tanks, guns and mortars” (from “Not My War,” for IVAW by Pat Humphries of Emma’s Revolution) I heard 4 young veterans on the Iraq Veterans Against the War “Right to Heal” tour speak last week. I found their stories incredibly moving and compelling. It put a human face to and made me feel the reality of the horrifying statistics: 20-50% of those deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan suffer from PTSD; military suicide rate increased 150% from 2001 to 2009; 1 in 3 women in the military are sexually assaulted. While I have known about the ongoing crisis at Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) and the impact on service…

by Larry Kerschner If you have the feeling that you are being watched, you probably are not paranoid.  Welcome to the NationalSecuritySurveillanceState.  A recent book The Daily You by Joseph Turow shows how ads, discounts, news and entertainment are being customized and personalized on the basis of data being collected and coordinated by powerful but not well-known media agencies.  When you fill out a survey, swipe your card at Safeway, download a Groupon coupon or Google any information on the Internet, these media agencies are developing an individualized profile of you despite their claim that this process is anonymous. The Department of Defense provides a “free” test to all school districts in this country called the ASVAB which is supposed…

by John Repp         Republicans and corporate media are always talking about taxing the rich as “redistribution of wealth” as if the capitalist economy is not itself a great redistribution engine. In its normal workings, capitalism redistributes the money and labor of poor and working people to the rich. As John Ruskin wrote in Unto the Last (1862), a book Gandhi read that changed his life, rich and poor are relative words like north and south. Most people think of wealth as an absolute and think that everyone could become wealthy with the right application of knowledge and effort. If that were true, why aren’t we all wealthy? The wealthy have an answer: the poor are ignorant and lazy. But…

by Ruth Yarrow Come with me into an old south Seattle church, up the back stairs to a small office, where Vernon, a African American with a wonderful open smile, is typing, and Michael, Chinese American with bright eyes, answers my questions.  Director Michael Woo helped found Got Green, an organization working to ensure that our low income communities and communities of color will help spearhead a real green economy and develop a new generation of grassroots leaders. Since they began in 2008, they trained young weatherization workers who came to our  house and our neighbors’ homes, installing energy saving bulbs and weather stripping.  They collected thousands of signatures to demand that federal stimulus dollars help employ low-income workers of…

by Ted Nation      Several members of Western Washington FOR are working informally with Power Past Coal, a growing coalition of organizations sharing a common interest in preventing the West Coast from becoming a high volume coal export corridor. This is in response to proposals from major coal and shipping companies to strip-mine coal inMontanaandWyoming, transport it throughWashingtonandOregon, and sell it toAsia. Under current proposals, Arch Coal, Peabody Energy and the Australian-based Ambre Energy would ship as much as 130 million tons of coal per year throughWashingtonState. There are additional shipping terminals proposed inOregon.   Many climate scientists propose that the world totally phase out the use of coal if we are to have any chance of stabilizing global temperature.…

by Brenda Collier, Treasurer This is a special edition of Pacific Call given over to articles about WWFOR’s current crisis.  If we do not do anything, we could have a large deficit at the end of our fiscal year (which ends on June 30, 2012) and will have completely exhausted our entire cash reserve.  My projection is for a possible deficit of as much as $10,000 which on a budget of $70,000 is not good.  Maybe this is only to be expected with the current bad economy, but we have to deal with it while we still can. The Finance Committee is working on plans for raising funds, and we also need to look at ways to make WWFOR sustainable. I…

by Marcia Mullins “To sustain:  to keep in existence; to supply with necessities; to support the spirits, vitality, to encourage”   We can think of sustainability in financial terms –  the financial “necessities.”  (See Brenda Collier’s articles.) We can increase our financial base or we can increase the level of financial support from our current base, or we can cut our staff, shifting the focus from organizing to coordinating, or we can lay off staff completely, shifting to chapter-based activities coordinated by the Area Committee.  But finances are only ONE of the ways in which we supply WWFOR with “necessities.”  Perhaps, more importantly, is the question of who in our membership is willing and/or able to contribute time and energy to…

by Brenda Collier There are many peace and justice organizations, that address only a single issue,  but WWFOR recognizes how all environment, justice and peace issues are interconnected.  Many organizations give lip service to nonviolence, but for FOR nonviolence is the key to solving the problems facing our communities and the world.  That is why WWFOR is important to me. There are many different levels of FOR membership throughout the region – from the Olympia chapter with a myriad of activities, to places where there are just one or two people. It is important to have this link for all FOR people in the region. It is good to meet and share ideas with people from all over Western Washington…