Happy Mother’s Day.

Have a great one, moms.

Darfur Alert: Rebels attacking the capital of Sudan?

Sudan rebels say they have entered Khartoum

KHARTOUM, Sudan (Reuters) May 11 - A Darfur rebel commander said on Saturday his JEM group had entered Khartoum and was aiming to take power in Sudan.

However, a security source denied that rebels had entered the city, telling Reuters that the situation was under control.

Khartoum was placed under an overnight curfew after fighting in the west of the capital.

Heavy gunfire was heard and helicopters and army vehicles headed towards the suburb of Omdurman, witnesses said. Artillery was heard later, becoming more frequent as the evening wore on.

The Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels said they had taken control of Omdurman which lies on the opposite bank of the River Nile from Khartoum.

“We are now trying to control Khartoum. God willing we will take power, it’s just a matter of time,” senior JEM commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Ashr told Reuters by telephone.

“We have support from inside Khartoum even from within the armed forces.” It would be the first time a rebel group has entered Khartoum.

The security source told Reuters several JEM vehicles had been cornered in Omdurman, saying: “It’s under control.”

Darfur rebels fought battles with Sudan’s army in the North Kordofan province bordering Khartoum on Friday and Saturday, according to a local government official and witnesses.

The army said the curfew was to preserve the safety of the civilians and the situation was under control.

“We are announcing a curfew in the state of Khartoum from 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) until 6 a.m. starting from today May 10th, 2008,” an army spokesman said on state television.

Army helicopters flew overheard and roads were closed in Khartoum as the curfew began to take effect.

Khartoum airport was taken over by Sudan’s army. One witness said he saw three Egyptian fighter planes and one Egyptian army cargo plane landing at the airport. The witness said he could see the Egyptian flag on the side of the planes.

“IT’S ALL GREEN”

The shooting in Omdurman could be heard on the telephone of one resident who telephoned Reuters on Saturday.

“It’s all green here because of the military uniforms. There is a lot of army on the streets, security men and military trucks,” another witness in the suburb said.

Diplomatic missions held emergency meetings early on Saturday. They have been on alert since early Friday.

Khartoum houses the bulk of Sudan’s population with an estimated 8 million people living in the state. Despite civil wars ravaging Sudan’s peripheries for decades, the capital has remained a haven of safety with armed clashes unheard of.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million made homeless in five years of fighting in Darfur after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing central government of neglect.

New weapons and a loose military alliance with SLA Unity has turned JEM into the most threat to the Khartoum government on the ground in recent months.

JEM is led by Khalil Ibrahim. Ibrahim is distrusted by some who they say has an Islamist agenda and has his eye on power in Khartoum rather than the rights of Darfuris.

Earlier, JEM said it was strengthening its forces in Kordofan but not attacking government troops to avoid causing civilian casualties.

A local government official said the heavily armed rebels had scattered after an army counter-attack.

The army accused Chad on Saturday of backing the rebels. State minister for information, Kamal Obeid, called the events strange and unacceptable. Clearly flustered, he told state television that JEM was “paying the bill for Chad.”

Saturday soul.

Ben Harper & The Blind Boys of Alabama: “Satisfied Mind.”

A follow-up.

SAN FRANCISCO (Los Angeles Times) May 9 - A Quaker who lost her appointment as a Cal State Fullerton lecturer after she objected to a state loyalty oath submitted a revised statement of her beliefs Thursday in a bid to win the job back.

People For the American Way, a Washington-based civil rights group now representing lecturer Wendy Gonaver, called on the university to reinstate her and adopt a policy protecting the religious freedom of all California State University system employees.

“She is willing to sign the oath as long as she can exercise her free-speech rights and note that her views as a Quaker would prevent her from taking up arms,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of the organization and a constitutional lawyer. “We would like to avoid filing a lawsuit, but we are certainly prepared to do so if we need to.”

The loyalty oath was added to the California Constitution in 1952 to drive communists out of public jobs but in recent years it has forced out religious believers such as Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Gonaver was hired to teach classes in American and women’s studies at Fullerton this academic year. But in August, just before classes were to start, she was told of the state requirement that she sign the oath promising to defend the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

A pacifist, she feared that signing the oath could commit her to bear arms. She said she would sign the pledge if she could submit a statement of her beliefs, a practice allowed at the University of California. But Cal State officials rejected her request, saying the addendum she proposed was illegal.

After the Los Angeles Times reported on Gonaver’s case a week ago, People For the American Way offered to represent her. Kolbert said the U.S. has a long history of religious freedom and that the university should protect civil liberties.

“This nation was founded by people who came here to escape religious persecution,” she said. “These are traditional American values that have been around as long as our country has been here.”

Christine Helwick, general counsel for the 23-campus Cal State system, said in an e-mail Thursday that the university now was willing to work with Gonaver and her attorneys.

The campus is now going to engage her in an interactive process to see if her issues with the Constitutionally mandated oath can be resolved,” Helwick said.

In an attempt to reach a compromise, the civil liberties group helped Gonaver refine her statement of beliefs and submitted the revised wording to the university.

Gonaver said in an interview that she was pleased to be represented by the group and that the new statement expressed her views more elegantly and succinctly than the earlier version without altering the meaning.

“In signing the required loyalty oath I must also attest to my belief that such an oath violates my right to free speech, and could be construed to express undertakings that are contrary to my nonviolent religious beliefs as a Quaker,” Gonaver said in the new statement.

Helwick said the campus might not be able to rehire her despite the revision: “The addendum she is now proposing is different in tone, scope and content from the one she originally presented. However, the position for which she originally applied last August had to be filled by someone else when she refused to sign the oath.”

Gonaver is not the only instructor who lost a job over the oath. In February, Cal State East Bay fired a Quaker math instructor who signed the oath but inserted the word “nonviolently.” She was rehired after Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s office drafted a statement saying the oath would not commit her to bear arms.

People For the American Way urged the university to adopt a new policy saying: “CSU recognizes that some of our employees may have religious or other objections to taking this oath. It is our policy to accommodate the religious and other beliefs of our employees by allowing an employee to append an explanatory statement to the employee’s signed oath.”

Kolbert said the organization would call on its members in California, who number in the hundreds of thousands, to protest the university’s treatment of Gonaver.

“We think this is an easy one to resolve,” she said.

Copyright 2008, Los Angeles Times

We’ll miss you, Dawn.

(Philadelphia Inquirer) May 8 - Dawn Staley, who carried the American flag at the 2004 Olympics and proudly bore the banner of Philadelphia sports as a socially conscious women’s basketball legend, left Temple University for South Carolina yesterday, in the process leaving an enormous hole in both her hometown and the university.

The North Philadelphia-born Staley, 38, agreed to a five-year deal to coach at the University of South Carolina that will pay her $650,000 annually, with a base salary of $250,000. The contract will be formally approved by the university’s board of trustees on Saturday, just before a news conference introducing her in Columbia, S.C.

Staley could not be reached for comment, but according to a source familiar with the negotiations, she has family in South Carolina and was eager to test her coaching skills in the powerful Southeastern Conference, the premier league in women’s basketball.

Until this week, there had been speculation that Staley would leave Temple only for her alma mater, the University of Virginia. Debbie Ryan, who coached Staley, is entrenched as the coach there.

Ultimately, though, the allure of coaching in a conference with perennial powers Tennessee, Louisiana State and Georgia proved too appealing for Staley’s competitive urges.

South Carolina athletic director Eric Hyman visited Staley in Philadelphia this week, and they agreed on a contract late Tuesday.

Her departure is a major setback for the Temple athletics brand. Staley had become one of the school’s most recognizable names and faces, a point of pride the university used in marketing, recruiting, and on Schuylkill Expressway billboards.

The Owls program hadn’t experienced a winning season in the decade before her arrival in 2000. Since then, her teams have won four Atlantic Ten Conference titles, five Big Five championships, and berths in six NCAA tournaments.

The rest here.

Dawn Staley has been a local treasure for years, and her moving on, while great for her, is a real loss for my alma mater.  I am sure that she will do great things for the South Carolina program.  But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss her.  She’s a wonderful role model for the young women (and young men) in our community.

Best wishes, Dawn, and Godspeed.

 

Support disaster relief for Burma.

Donate to UNICEF here.

The war at home, continued.

I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but it’s been bugging me.

Police in Philadelphia are desperately searching for a third bank robbery suspect who was involved in the “assassination” of a Philadelphia police officer on Saturday.  One of the suspects - the one who actually committed the murder, apparently - was shot dead shortly after the robbery, another was captured.  The FBI has joined in on the hunt.  SWAT teams are cordoning off sections of the city one at a time, as the authorities suspect that he’s still in the area.  But the search has also expanded into other states up and down the East Coast.

We receive hourly updates on the status of the case of the murder Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, who would have turned 40 years old Tuesday.  He leaves behind a grieving wife and three children.  The department is devastated, as this is the second officer to be killed in the line of duty in the last two months.  A memorial constructed at the site of his shooting grows larger by the hour.  The story leads the local news on all our local channels, and it’s all over the radio.

As with the previous case of an officer killed in action, this police officer never had a chance.  He had barely opened the door of his patrol car when he was killed by a criminal with a weapon of war, a Chinese-made SKS assault weapon that never should have been available to anyone in this country for any reason, ever, period.  So politicians and pundits are going at it again over Pennsylvania’s far-too-lax gun laws, using this officer’s death as an excuse to beat that dead horse again.  A huge reward is being offered for information on the last suspect, who will no doubt soon be caught.  The suspect’s face is featured on giant electronic billboards and in quarter-page newspaper ads.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with any of this attention.  The death of a police officer in the line of duty is always a tragedy, and I feel these recent deaths even more dearly now that we have a police officer in the family.  An assault upon a police officer is not only an attack on that person, but I also see it as an attack on civil society, on the community, on “law and order,” if you will.

But here’s the “but” you knew was coming: Why is the cold-blooded murder of a police officer, shot down in the street before he could even defend himself, worse than the deaths of all the innocent people who are also shot dead in the streets of our cities and towns every single day?

We had a weekend in these parts recently during which time SIX Philadelphians were murdered.  None of them were police officers.  By the time the TV news had announced that death toll on that following Monday evening, the story was as cold as the corpses of the victims.  Their  pictures were not plastered all over the news, their faces did not look back at us over breakfast from the front pages of the local newspapers, their memorials were not so large that they blocked the sidewalk, and no huge rewards were posted for information leading to the arrest and convctions of their killers.  SWAT teams were not tearing apart their neighborhoods looking for those who took their lives.  And that is not the first time we’ve had a weekend like that. 

Oh, and they all had families, too, I’ll bet.

The streets of my hometown are flooded with cheap guns, cheap drugs, and lives that are seen as being cheap.    The police are overwhelmed, understaffed, underpaid, under-respected, and out-gunned.  The people in these neighborhoods are either out-numbered in their outrage, scared to death and therefore scared into inaction or apathy, or worst of all, they’ve bought into the knuckleheaded ”stop snitching” mentality that stiffles any attempt by law enforcement to go after the people who prey primarily upon them and on their kids.

I get that, too.

But why do some lives seem to have more value?

Why isn’t there THIS level of outrage at EVERY DEATH that occurs?  Why isn’t every life seen as being this valuable, as valuable and important as the life of this brave officer?  Why is there this level of effort to find this killer, but not in finding those who commit the same kinds of random, senseless, pointless, and equally as cold-blooded killings that happen every other day?

Why do I get the feeling that this life is more precious that someone else’s, including yours?

And am I a bad person for asking this question?

A “Cruel and Unusual History.”

First, this:

WASHINGTON (AFP) May 6 - A seven-month hiatus on executions in the United States is due to end late Tuesday [that'd be tonight] with the execution of William Lynd, sentenced to die in the southern state of Georgia for killing his girlfriend in 1988.

If the execution proceeds Lynd, 53, will become the 1,100th person to die since the death penalty was reestablished in the United States 1976. He will also be the first person executed in the United States since a death row inmate was put to death in Texas on September 25.

Executions across the United States were put on hold for months while the US Supreme Court considered a challenge from several death row inmates, led by a pair from Kentucky, urging a ruling on whether lethal injection — the most commonly used form of execution across the United States — is unconstitutional.

On April 16 the justices ruled 7-2 that the risk of suffering to those executed by lethal injection did not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is barred under the US Constitution.

The seven justices however were split in their reasons for accepting lethal injection, all but ensuring that more legal challenges to the death penalty.

The death row inmates had argued that the three-part injection method caused needless suffering in some cases.

In death by lethal injection a first shot sedates the inmate, a second paralyzes the muscles, and a third stops the heart.

If the execution goes according to plan, the inmate quickly loses consciousness and dies within a few minutes. But if the anesthesia is not properly administered, the inmate can suffer immensely.

The rest here.

Then, this.  Be warned: it’s rough stuff.

Cruel and Unusual History  by Gilbert King (Intl. Herald Tribune via Common Dreams)

The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded, in a 7-2 ruling, that Kentucky’s three-drug method of execution by lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In writing his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890 that defines cruelty as limited to punishments that “involve torture or a lingering death.”

But the court was wrong in the 19th century, an error that has infected its jurisprudence for more than 100 years. In America’s landmark capital punishment cases, the resultant executions were anything but free from torture and prolonged deaths.

The first of those landmark cases, the 1879 case of Wilkerson v. Utah, was cited by Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the Kentucky case. The court “had no difficulty concluding that death by firing squad” did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, Thomas wrote.

Wallace Wilkerson might have begged to differ. Once the Supreme Court affirmed Utah’s right to eradicate him by rifle, Wilkerson was let into a jailyard where he declined to be blindfolded. A sheriff gave the command to fire and Wilkerson braced for the barrage. He moved just enough for the bullets to strike his arm and torso but not his heart. “My God!” Wilkerson shrieked. “My God! They have missed!”

More than 27 minutes passed as Wilkerson bled to death in front of astonished witnesses and a helpless doctor.

Just 11 years later, the Supreme Court heard the case of William Kemmler, who had been sentenced to death by electric chair in New York. The court, in affirming the state’s right to execute Kemmler, ruled that electrocution reduced substantial risks of pain or “a lingering death” when compared to executions by hanging. Kemmler, had he lived through the ensuing execution (and he nearly did), might too have disagreed.

After a thousand volts of electricity struck Kemmler on Aug. 6, 1890, the smell of burnt flesh permeated the room. He was still breathing.

Saliva dripped from his mouth and down his beard as he gasped for air.

Nauseated witnesses and a tearful sheriff fled the room as Kemmler’s coat burst into flames.

Another surge was applied, but minutes passed as the electricity built to a lethal voltage. Some witnesses thought Kemmler was about to regain consciousness, but eight long minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Perhaps the most egregious case came to the court more than 50 years later. “Lucky” Willie Francis, as the press called him, was a stuttering 17-year-old from St. Martinville, Louisiana. In 1946, he walked away from the electric chair known as “Gruesome Gertie” when two executioners (an inmate and a guard) from the state penitentiary at Angola botched the wiring of the chair.

When the switch was thrown, Francis strained against the straps and began rocking and sliding in the chair, pleading with the sheriff and the executioners to halt the proceedings. “I am n-n-not dying!” he screamed. Governor Jimmie Davis ordered Francis returned to the chair six days later.

Francis’ lawyers obtained a stay, and the case reached the Supreme Court. Justice Felix Frankfurter defined the teenager’s ordeal as an “innocent misadventure.” In the decision, Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, the court held that “accidents happen for which no man is to blame,” and that such “an accident, with no suggestion of malevolence” did not violate the Constitution.

Fewer than 24 hours before Francis’ second scheduled execution, his lawyers tried to bring the case before the Supreme Court again. They had obtained affidavits from witnesses stating that the two executioners from Angola were, as one of the witnesses put it, “so drunk it would have been impossible for them to have known what they were doing.” Although the court rejected this last-minute appeal, it noted the “grave nature of the new allegations” and encouraged the lawyers to pursue the matter in state court first, as required by law.

Willie Francis was executed the next morning. Because his case never made it back to the Supreme Court, the ruling lingers, influencing the decisions of today’s justices. In his recent majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts called Louisiana’s first attempt at executing Francis an “isolated mishap” that “while regrettable, does not suggest cruelty.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing separately, also mentioned the Francis case: “No one suggested that Louisiana was required to implement additional safeguards or alternative procedures in order to reduce the risk of a second malfunction.”

In fact, Louisiana did just that. Two weeks after the botched execution of Willie Francis, its Legislature required that the operator of the electric chair “shall be a competent electrician who shall not have been previously convicted of a felony.” This law would have prohibited both executioners from participating in Francis’ failed execution.

The court’s majority opinion in the Willie Francis case acknowledged, “The traditional humanity of modern Anglo-American law forbids the infliction of unnecessary pain in the execution of the death sentence.” Yet the Supreme Court continues to flout that standard.

In its ruling, the court once more ignored the consequences of its rulings for men like Wallace Wilkerson, William Kemmler and Willie Francis. The justices cited and applied Wilkerson’s and Kemmler’s cases as if their executions went off without a hitch.

And 60 years after two drunken executioners disregarded the tortured screams of a teenage boy named Willie Francis, the Supreme Court continues to do so.

(Gilbert King is the author of  The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder and the Search for Justice in the American South.  Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune.)

Keep this in mind tonight as we all worry over the primary races and who’s ahead on American Idol…

The cult of Quakerism?

Did that get your attention?  I’ll explain.

A while back, a Friend rose at Meeting to share a distressing story.  His teenaged daughter had invited a close friend of hers to accompany her to Meeting for Worship.  The parents of this young person’s friend told the invited party that under no circumstances was he to attend a Quaker “service,” that Quakerism is a “cult.”  The friend who shared this story was very upset by this, mainly because it showed such a lack of understanding and tolerance.

Well, as Morpheus said, “Welcome to the real world.”

There’s lots of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Quakers out there in the non-Quaker world, as most Friends know by now.  Some people are surprised that “we” still exist.  A couple years ago, at a workshop for teachers up in New Brunswick (NJ), we had to do one of those God-awful “ice breaker” activities, and the woman I was paired with was absolutely thrilled (it almost seemed excessively so, but it was kind of endearing) that she’d “finally met a real Quaker.”  She had a zillion questions, which was very cool, and she said, more than once, “You’re my first Quaker,” which was a little… interesting.  At lunch, she introduced me to her colleague as “Dave: he’s a Quaker!” 

While it was fun to share, I did feel like a bit of a freak.

As I’ve noted here before, I imagine that most Friends are used to being confused with the Amish (at least around these parts), with the guy on the cereal box (he’s not Plain, by the way), with the Shakers (”You’re the guys who make that cool furniture!”), and so on.  This confusion is fine by me: it gives me a chance to share, so I don’t mind.  I like the idea that people are interested, at least.   It gives me a chance to tell folks that the Religious Society of Friends is an active, breathing, busy, living faith community.

But a cult?

Well, there are no huge pictures of George Fox or John Woolman in our Meeting.  We don’t chant their names.  No pictures of Jesus, either, though it seems, as best I can tell, that most of our Meeting’s members (or at least half) would call themselves Christian as well as Quaker.   We don’t give up all our wordly goods to the Meeting, and we don’t shun all others for a life only amongst Friends.

And then there is that nagging question - usually brought up by non-believers, usually on the blogs I used to frequent - about whether Christianity itself is indeed a “cult.”  Some folks just love throwing that word around.  It’s soooo perjorative, and handy, too.  Well,  Jesus did indeed command his followers to leave everything they had (and everyone, too) to follow him.  That sounds like one of the defining characteristics of a cult to me.  He was, if nothing else, a charismatic leader.  And so on.

So I guess my question is…

So what?

In a book I recently finished (and reviewed), evangelical and “ordinary radical” Shane Claiborne says this:

Anytime we make a radical conversion, there is the danger that people will say we are being brainwashed or are joining a cult.  The truth is everyone in our culture has been deeply polluted by the noise and garbage of this world, and we all need to be washed clean.  We need minds that are renewed and uncluttered so they are free to dream again.  And let us not forget that the word cult comes from the same root from which we get our word culture.  So while we are not waiting for a UFO landing, preparing for a mass suicide, or stockpiling weapons, we are forming an alternative culture.  It is not simply a counterculture reacting to the dominant culture…  We are forming a new culture.  And in many ways, it is broader and more sustainable, much less “tribal”  than nationalism and much less dangerous than the cult of civil religion that is infecting the church.  And the imperial cult seems to be suspiciously closer to those infectious cults that stockpile weapons and await their suicidal fate while pretentiously fortifying themselves against any truth that would set them free from the illusions that are killing them - those cults who continue to offer blood sacrifices to Mammon and Violence on the altars of desert sand and jungle soil…

Well, can I hear an “a-men“?

When Claiborne says this, he’s talking about those who have become part of his “new monaticism,” or about when folks join his spiritual community in Philadelphia, The Simple Way, I guess, but to me, he could be speaking of Quakerism, too.  I found this passage within days of hearing the anecdote that opened this post.  (Coincidence?)  It spoke to my condition, especially when I was first convinced.  To actually believe in and then put into practice, for example, the Testimonies of peace, integrity, simplicity, and equality would be a truly radical act.  I am trying desperately to practice this more and more each day, with some life-changing results.

To have the community of Friends do this would cause a ripple. 

To be able to spread that practice could cause a revolution.  A for-real one.

So, does that make me a cultist?  Maybe it does. 

I can live with that.

Better that than confusing me with that poser on the oatmeal box.

Help wanted.

I posted this once before, but took it down right away, thinking that it looked too much like begging.

I’ve decided not to worry about that now.

If any of y’all know anything about writing grants, I’d appreciate some help.  Preferably some information on what one of these things needs to look like.  I’m going to hit the National Education Association up for one of their grants (for about $500), and I have no experience writing them.  Some of my colleagues do, but they’re as busy as I am at work, and my requests for assistance are going nowhere.

Any direction to useful online resources would be especially appreciated.  Feel free to use the email address on the “About me” page.

Thanks.

This week’s outrage from Darfur, 5/5/08.

HONG KONG (AFP) May 2 - U.S. actress and activist Mia Farrow Friday accused sponsors of the Beijing Olympics of bowing to “greed and fear” in failing to pressure China on its role in the conflict in Darfur.

Of 19 major corporate Games sponsors, only three had responded to her call to use their influence to persuade the Chinese government to help bring an end to violence and suffering in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The remaining 16 — who she said included Coca-Cola, Visa, General Electric, Volkswagen and Samsung — had “flunked” a report card issued by the pressure group she leads called Dream for Darfur.

“History will note their silence,” she said. “I’m disgusted.”

“It’s about fear and greed of the sponsors,” she said, adding only three companies came in for praise — McDonald’s, Adidas and Kodak — for writing to the UN, urging it to enforce Resolution 1769 authorising a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for the region.

However, McDonald’s later denied it had contacted the UN on the subject.

The resolution has yet to be implemented.

Farrow, star of Woody Allen’s “Hannah and her Sisters” and another 12 movies made with her former partner, was speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong as part of an international tour to highlight what she calls “genocide” in Darfur.

The UN estimates 300,000 people have died in five years of war, famine and disease.

Following the Hong Kong government’s decision to bar a number of people who had planned to use Friday’s Olympic torch rally through the city to call for Tibetan independence, she said she had wondered if she would be permitted to enter.

The visit, her first to any part of China, was the final leg of a “torch lighting” tour of regions whose people had suffered genocide, including Rwanda, Cambodia and Israel.

Outside central government offices, Farrow lit a torch she said represented the Olympic flame — a symbolic event aimed at highlighting China’s role in the Darfur bloodshed, she said.

She accused the Chinese government of underwriting the violence through oil purchases from Sudan, which she put at an annual four billion dollars, 70 percent of which was then used to purchase Chinese arms deployed in attacks on Darfur.

“I said they should take their business elsewhere,” she said of the “flunked” corporations.

“They all said it’s something for the UN to do, not us. We said OK, why not then get together and write a letter to the UN?

“They couldn’t even do that. Cowards,” she said. “It’s about fear and greed of the sponsors.”

Describing Darfur as “low-hanging fruit for China compared to other issues,” Farrow said her organisation wanted Beijing to pressure the Sudanese authorities to “stop attacking civilians” and accept the peacekeeping force mandated by the UN resolution.

“It’s a do-able thing for the People’s Republic of China, a powerful nation,” she said.

Her efforts to highlight China’s role in Darfur had “opened a window” that other groups had taken advantage of to press their own causes, she said.

“So it was not surprising to see the Tibetan people push their own frustrations forward,” she said, referring to last month’s anti-Chinese demonstrations in the Himalayan region that turned violent and led to a tight security crackdown.

“I empathise with the people of Tibet,” Farrow said.

She said she supported a boycott of the Olympics opening ceremony, an idea that has gained some traction in the wake of the Chinese actions in Tibet, which the Tibetan government-in-exile has said led to more than 200 people being killed.

On Wednesday, Chinese media said police had shot dead one alleged Tibetan independence “insurgent,” the first official admission that authorities killed anyone during recent unrest.

She supported “a boycott of the opening ceremony because that would not hurt the athletes,” she said.

“For our leaders to refuse to attend the opening ceremony would send a clear message to Beijing that their policies on certain issues are simply not acceptable,” she said.

A tough call?

Read.  Discuss.

School challenge: transgender student is age 9 - Joelle Farrell & John Sullivan

(Philadelphia Inquirer) May 3 - For school officials in Haverford Township [PA], the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl?

Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a “social transition” for their child.

The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school’s 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls’ clothes and be called by a girl’s name.

Some parents objected. Eight called the principal to ask that their child not attend the session, and some posted angry messages on the Haverford Township blog.

“Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?” wrote the parent who started the blog thread, which had been viewed more than 3,000 times as of yesterday. “Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow.”

Other parents thought the school should not have called attention to an already delicate situation.

“I did not think that the letter needed to go out,” said Valerie Huff, whose daughter is friends with the transgender student. “The kids don’t make any big deal about it at all.”

Mary Beth Lauer, district director of community relations, said there were no easy answers for school officials.

“This is something that was going to come out,” Lauer said. “Isn’t it better to be proactive, and let people know what is happening and how we’re dealing with it?”

The student has not received medical treatments to change his sex, but has told others that he considers himself a girl, according to several people who know the family.

He had begun wearing girls’ clothes, Huff said, and an approaching school event would have made the child’s gender identity an issue, according to Lauer, who declined to discuss the matter in greater detail.

In the April 21 letter to parents, Chatham Park principal Daniel D. Marsella wrote that a transgender child is one whose biological gender does not match his or her gender identity. Marsella assured parents that the talk with students, held two days later, would use “developmentally appropriate language” to explain “how we need to help this student make a social transition in school.”

When the guidance counselor, Catherine Mallam, spoke with the children, she explained that one of their classmates looked like a boy on the outside but felt like a girl inside, according to a summary of her remarks prepared by the school for parents. She asked them to accept the student as a girl and not make unkind remarks.

The students seem to be accepting their classmate’s change, Lauer said. The child is doing well but some comments on the blog have upset the child’s parents, Huff said.

About one in 5,000 people is transgender, said Walter O. Bockting, a psychologist and coordinator for transgender health services at the University of Minnesota. Bockting said he sees about 10 children a year who are 9 or younger.

“It’s a little early, but occasionally that happens,” he said.

Not all transgender people have sex-reassignment surgery in adulthood, and such surgeries are not typically performed on children, said Sharon Garcia, president of TransYouth Family Allies, a non-profit group that helped the Chatham Park student and school officials devise a way to explain the situation to parents.

So far, 49 families have contacted TransYouth Family Allies asking for help with a transgender child, Garcia said. Most of the children are between 6 and 10.

Parents of transgender children often change school districts in order to accommodate a child’s desire to switch genders, which is what Garcia said she did when her 5-year old son tried to hurt himself after professing for years that he was a girl.

“I have yet to meet a parent who did not fight this kicking and screaming,” she said. “None of us want this for our children, none of us want to go there, but it gets to the point where it’s not a choice anymore.”

The child at Chatham Park wanted to stay at the same school because of friends, Garcia said.

Bockting said families of transgender children should consult an expert and carefully consider whether to switch roles before trying it. The child’s feelings should be deep and persistent, he said.

When a young child seems set on changing his or her sexual identity, he encourages him or her to wait until puberty.

“Many transgender people have feelings that date to childhood, but puberty will give an idea how strong the feeling is,” he said.

Some medical experts think parents should not let a child change gender roles at a young age.

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studied sexual reassignment surgery in the 1970s, said a school’s decision to support a student’s transition could have long-term psychological consequences.

“They do not have a right to stop the child, but it’s different when they gather everyone around and say, ‘Johnnie is Jeanie,’ ” he said. Society, he added, should not support the decision of an immature person.

There is no evidence that the transition ultimately helps the person, he added.

McHugh said he reached his conclusions after studying the issue for 30 years, especially in the 1970s, when Hopkins was pioneering sexual-reassignment surgery.

“People came to us saying that if we changed them, we’d solve all their problems,” he said. “So we changed them, and their problems remained.”

Garcia says letting her child dress and act as a girl was the right decision.

“I went from a suicidal child to a child who tries out for a lead part in the play,” she said. “I knew society wasn’t going to be accepting, but my choices were, do this and have a happy, alive girl or have an unhappy, dead boy. So we did what we needed.”

This was posted in good faith, not out of exploitative motives, because I’m honestly interested in what you all might have to say about this.  The article caused some very lively conversation in the Agitator household on Saturday; in fact, it was some of the best debating we’ve had around here in a while, with all of us (including the Liberal-In-Training and “Jeremy” - my 20 year old, who’s nicknamed for the character in the Zits comic strip) letting loose with some serious broadsides.  Lovingly, of course.  But loudly.

So, what’s your reaction?  (Unless you’re a troll, that is.)

Here we go again. Again.

Another Quaker teacher fired for following her faith.  In California.  Again.

Teacher Fired For Refusing to Sign Loyalty Oath by Ricard Paddock

(Los Angeles Times via Common Dreams) May 2 - When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.

But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

The loyalty oath was added to the state Constitution by voters in 1952 to root out communists in public jobs. Now, 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, Gonaver objected to the California oath as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom. She offered to sign the pledge if she could attach a brief statement expressing her views, a practice allowed by other state institutions. But Cal State Fullerton rejected her statement and insisted that she sign the oath if she wanted the job.

“I wanted it on record that I am a pacifist,” said Gonaver, 38. “I was really upset. I didn’t expect to be fired. I was so shocked that I had to do this.”

California State University officials say they were simply following the law and did not discriminate against Gonaver because all employees are required to sign the oath. Clara Potes-Fellow, a Cal State spokeswoman, said the university does not permit employees to submit personal statements with the oath.

“The position of the university is that her entire added material was against the law,” Potes-Fellow said.

In February, another Cal State instructor, Quaker math teacher Marianne Kearney-Brown, was fired because she inserted the word “nonviolently” when she signed the oath. She was quickly rehired after her case attracted media attention.

It is hard to know how many would-be workers decline to sign the pledge over religious or political issues. Some object because they interpret the pledge as a commitment to take up arms. Others have trouble swearing an oath to something other than their God.

Public agencies do not appear to keep a record of people denied employment over the oath. Union grievances and lawsuits are rare.

Some agencies take the oath more seriously than others. Certain school districts and community colleges have been known to let employees change the wording of the oath when they sign or to ignore the requirement altogether. Others, including the University of California, advise employees on how they can register their objections yet still sign the pledge.

All state, city, county, public school, community college and public university employees — about 2.3 million people — are covered by the law, although noncitizens are not required to sign.

UC Berkeley was the first to impose a tough anti-communist loyalty oath in 1949 and fired 31 professors who refused to sign.

After a version of the oath was added to the state Constitution, courts eventually struck down its harshest elements but let stand the requirement of defending the constitutions. In one court test, personal statements accompanying the oath were deemed constitutional as long as they did not nullify the meaning of the oath.

Now, the University of California advises new employees who balk at signing the pledge that they can submit an addendum, as long as it does not negate the oath.

UC even provides sample declarations, such as: “This is not a promise to take up arms in contravention of my religious beliefs,” or “I owe allegiance to Jehovah.”

The California State University system takes a firmer approach.

Kearney-Brown, the math instructor fired by Cal State East Bay, said she added the word “nonviolently” just as she had when taking previous jobs as a high school teacher. The university, however, told her she could not alter the pledge.

After her case attracted media attention and help from the United Auto Workers, which represents some Cal State employees, the university reversed course. The office of Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown drafted a statement declaring that the oath does not commit employees to bear arms in the country’s defense. Cal State agreed to let Kearney-Brown attach it to her oath and she was reinstated.

Kearney-Brown said she believed she was defending the Constitution by objecting to the oath and argued that signing a pledge should not be reduced to a meaningless formality.

“The way it’s laid out, a noncitizen member of Al Qaeda could work for the university, but not a citizen Quaker,” she said.

The 23-campus Cal State system has fired instructors over the oath at least twice before.

In 2001, Cal StateDominguez Hills dismissed geography lecturer Alejandro Alonso after he refused to sign. He said at the time that he identified with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and that swearing an oath to anyone but God violated his religious beliefs.

When his request for a religious exemption was denied, he proposed signing the oath and attaching a personal statement. That also was denied. Alonso, who went on to teach at USC, has become an expert on Los Angeles gangs and runs the website www.streetgangs.com.

In 1995, Methodist minister Bud Tillinghast was teaching a course on comparative religion at Humboldt State University, when he was pulled out of class by campus police and fired because he had not signed the oath.

Tillinghast said he believed that swearing an oath to the state helped establish the government as a religion.

“I was teaching world religions and I ran up against a state religion,” the retired minister recalled. “My concern was that this was breaking down the separation of church and state and making the state a religion you swear allegiance to.”

He filed suit against Cal State for reinstatement arguing that the oath violated the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But after a court found that law unconstitutional, his suit was thrown out.

In all, Tillinghast said, he went up against the loyalty oath three times. Before being fired by Humboldt, he taught a religion class at a community college for nearly a decade. For that job, the school allowed him to sign an alternate oath.

Last year, he was named to the Humbolt County Human Rights Commission. A potential problem was averted when officials decided he didn’t need to sign the oath.

Efforts to remove the oath from the state Constitution have been unsuccessful, although the matter came under scrutiny in 1998 when a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on religious freedom.

Among those who testified was Zari Wigfall, a Jehovah’s Witness who said she twice lost jobs at Sacramento City College in 1994 because of the oath, first as a student tour guide and later as a theater house manager for a children’s play.

“Citizens are entitled to certain rights, and also minorities, including religious minorities, are given certain guarantees,” she told the committee. “And I just didn’t think that . . . because of my religious beliefs I would have two jobs taken away from me.”

She is now a dancer, choreographer and teacher in Southern California.

For Gonaver, the oath came up unexpectedly.

She was offered the job at Fullerton teaching two classes last fall, Introduction to American Studies and Introduction to Intercultural Women’s Studies. She received two appointment letters and signed a contract. When she attended an orientation session for new faculty, she heard of the oath for the first time.

After researching the issue and learning that UC allowed its employees to provide personal statements, she submitted her own six-sentence declaration to Fullerton.

In her statement, she wrote that the oath violates the 1st Amendment and discriminates against religious pacifists, such as Quakers and Buddhists. She called the pledge an “instrument of intimidation.” And she wrote that employees who sign it “while harboring legitimate religious and political objections” could be exposed to a charge of perjury.

Margaret Atwell, the Fullerton school’s associate vice president for academic affairs, replied in an e-mail that Gonaver was not allowed to submit any statement, no matter what the practice at UC. Gonaver would have to sign the oath or lose the job, Atwell said.

Gonaver refused.

Potes-Fellow, the Cal State spokeswoman, said the university stands by its stricter interpretation of the requirement and is not affected by how UC or other public institutions handle the oath.

“The university concluded that state law did not allow her to attach her addendum,” Potes-Fellow said.

The attorney general’s statement that Kearney-Brown was allowed to attach her oath did not violate Cal State’s policy because it was not an addendum, Potes-Fellow said. “We think the circumstances are different in both cases,” she said.

Gonaver said the attorney general’s statement does not go far enough in answering her objections to the oath. But if she had been offered a chance to use it last fall, she said, she probably would have signed the oath and would have been teaching all year at Fullerton.

Now, she would like to see the oath eliminated for all public employees except those who deal with sensitive information. She also would like an apology and a job next year.

“It makes no sense that they do this to people,” she said. “It’s people who take it seriously who don’t get hired.”

We need a national movement to get these things banned, starting with the California state legislature.  People of all faiths and persuasions simply need to refuse to sign them all, as just plain unAmerican.  ”Loyalty oaths” are a Cold War relic that needs to be eliminated.  Trouble is, in this “post-9/11″ world, with the “war on terror” mentality that substitutes for thinking these days, nonsense like this seems more and more prevalent, not less so.

And the thing is, those who refuse to sign usually end up winning their cases anyway.  That whole annoying “First Amendment” thang, don’t ‘cha know…

Here’s hoping that’s the case here, too.

Happy (singer-songwriter/activist) birthday.

Happy birthday to Pete Seeger, born May 3, 1919.

Smooth Saturday sounds.

Neko Case: “Hold On, Hold On.”

“Why Wal-Mart Does Not Strengthen Our Economy.”

by David Nassar, via Common Dreams

It’s tax rebate time, and no one is hungrier for the tax rebate checks arriving in mailboxes today than Wal-Mart. The retailer is advertising tax-rebate sales and has offered to cash the checks for free — all in hopes that consumers will spend their newfound money at Wal-Mart stores. But spending your tax rebate at Wal-Mart won’t stimulate the economy — and here’s why:

• Despite bringing in over $378 billion last year, Wal-Mart repeatedly underpays its American workforce. More than 80 wage & hour lawsuits, including a recently certified class action lawsuit in California, are currently pending against the company. Plus, it faces more than 200 discrimination lawsuits for unfair promotion practices, pay discrepancies and other issues, including the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit. By failing to fairly compensate its employees, Wal-Mart cheats states out of income tax revenues.
• Wal-Mart also pays poorly. While the company seeks to benefit from the government’s rebate payout, Wal-Mart’s low wages means store employees have little or no disposable income to spend to stimulate the economy. Think about what even a small raise for Wal-Mart’s 1 million+ workers would mean nationally, or what it would mean to your city or town if everyone at your local Wal-Mart got a raise.
• Wal-Mart sources the vast majority of its products from countries overseas, meaning most of the cost of a given Wal-Mart product doesn’t go into the U.S. economy. Rather than boosting the U.S. economy, Wal-Mart has played a major role in exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to countries with low labor and environmental standards. Meanwhile, the company has embraced unions in its Chinese stores and has negotiated with them to raise Chinese salaries. Apparently, what is good enough for China is not good enough here at home.
• Wal-Mart underfunds its health care plan and cuts corners whenever possible, forcing many of its employees t