Activist News
U.S. Out of Japan & Okinawa
Citing the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl as the latest injustice perpetrated by U.S. military presence in Japan and Okinawa, over 200 U.S. peace activists and academics have called for the removal of U.S. bases there.Nobel Laureates George Wald and Bernard Lown, linguist Noam Chomsky, historian Howard Zinn and many WRL members including Dave Dellinger were among those urging that it would be in the best interests of both Japan and the United States for the bases to close. U.S. GIs in Okinawa account for "4.2 percent of the population but 11.5 percent of felonies like rape, murder and robbery," noted the mid-January statement.
The most recent rape has inflamed anti-bases sentiment in Okinawa and Japan, and the U.S. and Japanese governments are working on a compromise that would reduce the extent of the U.S. military presence in Okinawa while leaving overall troop levels in Japan the same.
Other signers of the statement included leaders of national peace and justice groups, including WRL, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi, Global Exchange, U.S./Japan Committee for Racial Justice, Peace Action, Women s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Baptist Peace Fellowship. The statement was originated by the Foreign Bases Project and is now circulating as a petition to be presented before President Clinton goes to Japan in April.
For more information or a copy of the petition, contact: Foreign Bases Project, PO Box 150753, Brooklyn, NY 11215; (718) 788-6071; e-mail, fbp@igc.org.
--John M. Miller
Arms fair comes to D.C.
COPEX International, the corporation that is suing the London-based monthly Peace News (NVA, Jan.-Feb.) and other British peace groups, will be producing a Covert and Operational Procurement Exhibit in Washington, D.C. in April.The goods exhibited and sold at the COPEX shows includes equipment and weapons for police, espionage, low-intensity warfare and para-military operations. The lawsuit against Peace News followed the broadcast in England and Europe of "The Torture Trail," a 1995 documentary about the trade in internal security equipment; when Peace News wrote disparagingly about COPEX s business, the corporation slapped the magazine with a libel suit.
U.S. activists will have the chance this spring to bring their opinions directly to COPEX when it holds an exhibit tentatively scheduled for April 23-24 at the Sheraton Hotel in Washington. You should note, however, that actual admission to the exhibit, while free of charge, is limited to those who can produce military, law-enforcement, government o, in COPEX s own words, "other suitable, official ID material."
Note also that the date is still tentative as the NVA goes to press; for more information, call Joanne Sheehan at WRL s New England office, (203)889-5337.
ELF Protesters arrested
Another 16 nuclear weapons opponents were arrested Jan. 14 in Clam Lake, Wis., for trespassing at the site of the U.S. Navy s remote submarine transmitter system called Project ELF. The Coalition to Stop Project ELF calls the system which uses low-frequency electromagnetic radiation to send one-way messages to submerged U.S. and British submarines around the world a "starter pistol" for nuclear because of its ability to signal the entire submarine fleet simultaneously.The demonstration, which commemorated the peace activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the 24th in a series of nonviolent direct actions that began in 1991 (NVA, Jan.-Feb.), bringing to 356 the number of trespass citations issued to protesters since then; reisters who have refused to pay fines have served a total of 28 months in county jail.
About 75 activists gathered at the secluded site deep in the Chequamagon National Forest on the Sunday of the national holiday weekend dedicated to celebrating King s life and his nonviolent pursuit of social change. Using a boom box pointed toward the fenced ELF compound, demonstrators broadcast excerpts from King s speeches, including his declaration that "war is an enemy of the poor" and his plea that activists "attack it as such."
Federal legislation to terminate ELF funding has twice passed the full U.S. Senate, but the terminations have been reversed by the so-called submarine caucus, senators who represent states with sub bases. The Stop Project ELF campaign has garnered support from regional newspaper editors, six of whom have called for termination of the system; the Stop Project ELF Coalition will return to the site in May for its tenth annual Mother s Day action.
For information about Stop Project ELF, call (715) 472-8721.
--Stop Project ELF Coalition
The Real Bosnian Heroes
Srdjan Darmanovic, Vice-President of the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro, supports legislation granting amnesty to all those who left the former Yugoslavia to avoid fighting in the war there."We believe," Darmanovic says, "that the youth[s] who fled in the wake of mobilization [campaigns] are the real heroes ... and not those who actually participated in this filthy war. ... These were the people who were right not to want to fight in a senseless conflict."
He adds that any objectors wishing to return to Bosnia should be encouraged to do so. Stan Markotich
Death penalty news Death Penalty Focus of California reports that a national opinion poll of U.S. police chiefs conducted in January by Peter D. Hart Research Associates shows that heads of police do not support the death penalty initiatives of the government.
According to the study, many police chiefs believe that the death penalty is the least effective way to reduce violent crime, that it does not deter murder, that the death penalty debate in Congress distracts politicians from seeking real solutions to crime and that strengthening families, controlling guns and drugs should have a much higher priority than the death penalty.
Death Penalty Focus also notes that a new project s preliminary findings show jurors in capital trials often misunderstand their responsibility. The early results of the Capital ury Project, begun 1990, show that 51 percent of the jurors studied had formed an opinion before hearing any evidence at the sentencing trial. Jurors also misunderstood judges sentencing instructions and did not feel responsible for sentences.
An affiliate of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Death Penalty Focus of California can be reached at 1212 Broadway, Suite 830, Oakland, CA 94612; (510)452-9505.
Jubilee Plowshares West Protesters Indicted on Federal Charges
After state charges were dismissed against three of the four activists who symbolically disarmed a nuclear submarine in Newport News, Va., last Aug. 7 (NVA, Sept.-Oct. 1995; Jan.-Feb. 1996), federal prosecutors have brought much stronger federal charges against the four.Michele Naar-Obed of Baltimore and father-son activists Rick and Erin Sieber of Philadelphia were indicted Jan. 9 on charges of damaging government property, conspiring to damage government property, destruction of national defense material and conspiring to destroy national defense material. The charges carry maximum sentences of 45 years and fines of up to $1.5 million.
For information, call (410) 323-7200.
--Max Obuszewski
National Call to "Undo 2"
In anticipation of the Supreme Court s upcoming decision on Colorado s anti-gay Amendment 2, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is mobilizing activists across the country to participate in "A Supreme Response: A National Day of Action." Along with Colorado-based organizations such as Equality Colorado and Ground Zero, NGLTF is calling on communities nationwide to turn out the day after the court announces its decision on Romer v. Evans and celebrate or demonstrate. Although the exact date of the ruling is not known at this time, NGLTF is urging activists to prepare in advance by obtaining a copy of the updated "Undo 2" action kit.A Supreme Response is the second part of Undo 2, NGLTF s national mobilization effort to overturn Amendment 2, the Colorado initiative passed by voters in 1992. The measure blocks current and future laws banning discrimination and ensuring basic civil rights for lesbians and gays in the state. Last Oct. 9, the eve of the high court s hearing of the case, 36 communities across the country participated in a national Undo 2 day of action.
Candlelight vigils, rallies, town meetings, and even a "sing out" were held throughout the nation. Communities participating in the day of action included Las Vegas, Nevada; St. Louis, Missouri; and Salem, Oregon. The Undo 2 day of action garnered national and local news headlines.
"On October 9, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people across the country served notice that Amendment 2 affects all of us, no matter where we live, and that we are united in our resolve to ensure that Amendment 2 is dismantled," said Karen Bullock-Jordan, NGLTF Field Organizer.
In January, NGLTF s Field Department distributed nearly 250 Undo 2: Supreme Response Action Kits to activists and organizations across the country. The kit, which includes background information on Amendment 2, possible decisions by the Supreme Court and their legal and political implications, organizing how-tos and other materials, will assist activists in organizing their communities to participate in this national day of action.
Colorado communities will turn out en masse at rallies across the state the day the decision is rendered. NGLTF and Colorado groups have issued a call to action to communities in other states for the day after the decision in order to allow time for news of the decision to spread and to maximize participation. The Court will release its decision this session, though it is unknown precisely when. The Court adjourns in June and experts speculate that the decision will not come before the sprin.
Individuals interested in joining NGLTF s Undo 2 Action Network, obtaining a copy of A Supreme Response Action Kit and organizing a Supreme Response event in their community should contact NGLTF s Field Department at (202) 332-6483, ext. 3206 or 3303.
--NGLTF
Ohio Peacemaker Marion Bromley Dies
Longtime activist and feminist Marion Bromley died Jan. 21 in Clifton, Ohio. She was 83.Born Marion Coddington in Akron, Marion Bromley worked as a secretary after she graduated from high school. (She was also one of the first women in Ohio to receive a pilot s license.) As World War II broke out, she grew more and more interested in pacifism and in 1943 left Akron for New York, where she worked as A.J. Muste s secretary at the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
As a peace activist in New York, Marion was arrested on more than one occasion. In 1947, reminisces WRL member Vivien Roodenko Lang (sister of late WRL staff member Igal Roodenko), she and Marion were part of an Easter Sunday Peace Walk down New York City s Fifth Avenue. "A number of us were arrested," Vivien writes, "and ... our sentences if we chose not to pay the fine ranged from three days to 30 days. This was my first confinement. I was 25 and very scared as Marion and I entered the Women s House of Detention. It was Marion s presence that made things more comfortable for me. ... She was a treasure to the peace movement and she will be sorely missed."
In New York, Marion met pacifist Ernest Bromley, whom she married in 1948. Together, they returned to Ohio, where in Gano, near Cincinnati, they founded the radical pacifist Peacemakers, a war and war-tax resisters group.
During the 1950s Marion struggled against segregation in Ohio, helping to desegregate public schools and private amusement parks. But her greatest victory, recalls fellow Ohio pacifist Larry Gara, was over the Internal Revenue Service, which in the 1970s seized the Bromleys house in Gano for alleged non-payment of taxes.
At the time, Peacemakers was very active in the resistance to the Vietnam War. According to Gara, the Bromleys made no attempt to fight the IRS seizure through legal or administrative channels. Instead, they mobilized activists in Ohio and in Washington, D.C., for nonviolent direct actions that included picketing the IRS.
When an investigation revealed that the IRS had in fact deliberately targeted Peacemakers and other pacifist groups, the IRS gave up. "We re in a no-win situation," Gara says the local IRS chief told Marion, conceding that she and Ernest could have their house back. In 1977, the War Resisters League gave the Bromleys its annual Peace Award.
In recent years Marion s ill-health curtailed her schedule and forced the Bromleys to leave the Gano house and move back to Clifton. But she remained committed to the causes of peace and justice; when she died, her family asked that memorial contributions be made to WRL.
"The War Resisters League honors her as one of the many whose sense of individual conscience and social concern helped light our way," said a WRL message to her Jan. 28 memorial service. "Small actions of resistance add up to a statement of afirmation. In the long run of human history, the best of our values derive not from the victories of great armies or the triumphs of powerful politicians, but from the network of individuals who, by refusing to flow with the drift of events, shift the river of history itself."
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The Nonviolent Activist is published bi-monthly by:
WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. (212) 228-0450, fax (212) 228-6193, e-mail:wrl@warresisters.org.EDITOR: Judith Mahoney Pasternak. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE: Virginia Baron, David McReynolds, John M. Miller (production), Judith Mahoney Pasternak (editor), Mary Jane Sullivan, Lisa Vives. NVA ADVISORY BOARD: Robert Cooney, Kate Donnelly, Larry Gara, Carol Jahnkow, Andy Mager, Matt Meyer, Craig Simpson. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Free to members, individual non-members of WRL $15 per year; institutions $25 per year; overseas airmail add $15 per year. Send check or money order to WRL. MANUSCRIPTS: Inquiries welcome via postal or e-mail. Paper manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a SASE; poetry by assignment only. Letters to the editor, inquiries, advertising rates, etc. to the address above.
Last updated March 15, 1996. NVWeb, Philadelphia USA