716-332-3904 2/25/19
Friends,
We hope you will join the Latin American Solidarity Committee tonight for a discussion on Farmworker issues and state legislators, 7-9pm, Canisius College Science Hall (Jefferson and Main Sts., one block north of Delavan). Sponsored by Peace Action Canisius and the Latin American Solidarity Committee.
There will also be a Prisoners Are People Too Monthly Meeting for those interested, at the Rafi Greene Center, 1423 Fillmore Avenue. 7-9pm.
We look forward to our Women’s March Events, starting this Thursday, with the first of two forums and discussions on building solidarity within the women’s movement and the Women’s March. 5:30-7pm, Central Public Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY. 2nd Floor Meeting Room.
2/28 – 5:30-7pm, Women’s March/Women’s movement Forum and Discusson #1, Central Library, 1 Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY. 2nd Floor Meeting Room.
3/7 – 5:30-6:30pm, Poster/Sign-Making Party, WNY Peace Center, 1272 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY. Parking and entrance at the back of the building. Materials and light refreshments provided.
3/10 – WOMEN’S MARCH!!! 3-4:30 pm. Gnohnyo (traditional indigenous blessing) at 2:45 pm. Niagara Square. Join us for the Women’s March!! After weather and permit changes, we will rally, and we will march!
3/13 – Women’s March/Women’s movement Forum and Discusson #2, Frank E. Merriweather Library, 1324 Jefferson Avenue, Buffalo, NY. Co-sponsored by We Are Women Warriors. We hope all will join us or rejoin us to continue the conversation on building solidarity within the women’s movement and where we go from here.
More Women’s History Month events at http://www2.erie.gov/csw/index.php?q=feature/2019-womens-history-month-calendar-events. More specifically http://www2.erie.gov/csw/sites/www2.erie.gov.csw/files/uploads/2019-WHM-Calendar.pdf.
As a note, because Friday, March 8, is International Women’s Day, and because information had previously been shared with people about formerly planning to rally and march on that date, we will still be at Niagara Square on that day. If there are people who are unable to join us on Sunday, or would like to join us both days, come on out, stand in solidarity with us and women across the entire world in honoring International Women’s Day. 4:15pm, Niagara Square. But we don’t want people to lose focus on the official Women’s March date, which is that Sunday, March 10!!
Lastly (for now!), Please join us this Friday, 3/1, 9pm, for The Dooley’s w/special guest Jamie Holka!!! A fundraiser for the WNY Peace Center at Sportmen’s Tavern, 326 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY. $10. Tickets can be purchased at the door, as well as online through the Eventbrite link on our calendar, http://wnypeace.org/wp/event/the-dooleys-fundraiser-for-wny-peace-center-w-special-guest-jamie-holka/, and our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/events/2288153521473440/, or by searching at Eventbrite.com for The Dooley’s.
Many more events on the website!
Many thanks, peace, solidarity, and yes – Love
We shall overcome #Unitethestruggles #Loveislove #PowerWITH-NOTPowerOver
No hate, no fear as we are #StillResisting. Peace, Thanks, Solidarity, and yes Love.
716-332-3904 2/17/19
Friends,
Join us tomorrow (Mon, 2/18) for a rally against illegal national declarations of emergency and abuse of power. 12-1pm. Niagara Square.
We’re still holding space daily for India Cummings. This will culminate on Thursday, 2/21, 5-6pm with a press conference at the Erie County Holding Center. (Join one of our taskforces to stay involved). Visit our facebook page for more information. https://www.facebook.com/WesternNewYorkPeaceCenter/
NYS Budget Principle Statewide Tour. Friday, 2/22, 10am-12pm. PUSH Buffalo, 429 Plymouth Avenue, Buffalo, NY. The New Hope, New York Budget Principles offer a path forward to focus on fighting poverty and racism, reducing inequality, strengthening our democracy, protecting our environment, fixing our state and local tax structure and creating a bottom up economic development model for the state.
Hands Off Venezuela International Day of Action, Sat. 2/23, 1-2:30pm, Federal Building, 130 S. Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY.
Due to city permit changes, WOMEN’S MARCH-Buffalo/WNY will be held on Sunday, March 10, 3-4:30pm, Niagara Square. A no-permit gathering on Friday, March 8, 4:15pm at Niagara Square will be held with the possibility for an International Women’s Day walk. We’re also encouraging everyone to support the Women in Black vigil on that Saturday,12-1pm, at Elmwood and Bidwell, and National Women’s Month events here in Erie County. http://www2.erie.gov/csw/index.php?q=feature/womens-history-month-calendar-events-0
Peace, thanks, solidarity and love.
wnypeace.org
by Kathy Kelly
February 13, 2019
Constant
military surveillance of Afghans yields almost no real intelligence about the
problems they face each day. An unusual group of volunteers uses a far
different approach.
Hossein, a member of the Afghan Peace
Volunteers, (APV), which hosted my recent visit to Afghanistan, rolled up his
sleeve to show me a still-healing three-inch wound. Thieves had broken into his
family home in Kabul. When they were discovered, one of the robbers stabbed
Hossein.
An APV coordinator, Zekerullah, was robbed and
beaten by assailants in broad daylight. Ata Khan lost his camera and mobile
phone to a gang of young thieves who accosted him and eight other people in a
public park during the daytime. Habib, a recent young graduate of the APV
Street Kids School program, suffered blows from several attackers a month ago.
“I didn’t have anything they wanted to take,” he
said, assuring me he is OK even though his lower back, where they beat him, is
still sore.
Attacks like these—which all happened within the
last six months—are predictable in a chaotic war-torn city that absorbs new
refugees every day. Some have been forced off their land by drought and food
scarcity, while others flee the terror of violence carried out by various
warring parties, including the United States. In 2018, the United States
dropped 7,632 bombs on Afghanistan, more than any other full calendar year since
the U.S. Air Force began documenting its attacks in 2006.
According to the United Nations, in the first
nine months of 2018, there was a 39 percent rise in the number of casualties from
airstrikes, compared to the same period of the previous year. Within Kabul,
violent bomb attacks by the Taliban and other groups have become horribly
normal. Rising unemployment rates, now at 25 to 30 percent, also afflict
people. The International Labor Organization, reporting two months ago, said
Afghanistan has the highest unemployment rate of any country in the world. My four young
friends are very lucky, on many counts, that they are still alive.
And they’re trying to make things better. Two
days ago, thirty-five young people gathered for the seventh of twelve weekly
orientation classes. Topics covered include ecological sanity, combating inequality,
confronting world hunger and abolishing war. Muhammad Ali, age twenty, teaches the course.
The APV maintain a waiting list of young people wanting to join the next cycle
of classes.
“The people coming to the class learn
information they’ve never heard about before,” Muhammad Ali says. “We think
about ways to make peace and to live with respect for nature.”
U.S. efforts to improve Afghanistan’s decaying
education institutions have been woefully inadequate. Reconstruction projects
have been riddled with corruption. Millions of dollars have been poured into
various militias, while seemingly endless shipments of weapons arrive in the
country. Drones and military blimps prowl the skies, supposedly in search of
“bad guys.”
But the militarization of the society and the
constant surveillance from remote cameras yield almost no real intelligence
concerning the problems ordinary Afghans face each day, as they try to survive.
Negotiations over Afghanistan’s future are being
guided by people in charge of huge arsenals and sophisticated intelligence
networks. The outcome would be better if U.S. leadership would take an interest
in the APV’s approach to “surveillance.”
In stark contrast to “intelligence” operations
carried out by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, the APV
continue building their database, recording details about destitute and
impoverished families whom they invite into projects aiming to help needy
families subsist.
Traveling on foot, the Afghan Peace Volunteers
gather their “intelligence” by sitting on the floor with families in precarious
homes, respectfully collecting information in spiral notebooks. They ask about
rent expenses, access to clean water, and whether the family can afford beans
over the course of a week. Families who have little-to-no income and who must
depend on a child’s earnings for food and rent are especially welcome to join
the APV Street Kids School.
This year, more than 100 children have gathered
every Friday to study reading, writing, and math. Equally important to the APV
are the weekly nonviolence classes organized around themes mirroring the course
taught by Muhammad Ali.
The children apply what they learn by
participating in APV projects. They help plant trees, tend gardens, and serve
meals to day laborers. They join in clean-up projects along the city’s
riverfront. Every year, they climb a high hill, carrying kites, as part of
their “Fly Kites, Not
Drones” campaign.
Families whose children participate in the
Street Kids School receive a vital monthly contribution of rice, cooking oil,
and beans. The children know they are helping their families as well as
themselves. When I ask what fuels her energy to coordinate classes and
activities at the Street Kids School, Masoma, who has been with the school
since its inception, responds immediately: “It’s my passion.”
Concerned for the future of the 100 children who
finished their three-year program last year, APV members have begun working on
ways to help them gain skills in various trades. They’re also forming
cooperatives to enable future employment.
Where you stand
determines what you see. I admire the APV blend of idealism and practicality,
doing “the things that make for peace,” even as they face daily anxieties in
the chaos and upheaval that mark life in a war zone. They take time, day in, day out, to
notice and care about people in need. They aren’t afraid to share resources.
Facing violence, they control the urge to retaliate. And they clearly see the
futility of entrusting their futures and those of the neediest people they know
to predatory power brokers who have already plundered and killed people in
murderous wars.
A version of this article first appeared on the website of the Progressive magazine.
Photo credit:
Dr. Hakim
Photo Caption: Muhammad Ali teaching a “relational learning circle” class
during
orientation at
the APV Borderfree Center
Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) While in Kabul, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers
(ourjourneytosmile.com)
