DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

An article by Cassandra Basler from National Public Radio (reprinted as non-commercial use)

April 19: When Lane Murdock, a high school sophomore, heard that 17 high school students and educators had been killed in a shooting in Parkland, Fla., she says she felt numb. To her, and so many others, mass shootings can feel all too common in the U.S. “In the time I’ve been in high school we’ve had the Pulse, Las Vegas and now, [the Parkland] shooting,” Murdock says.

So that same day, Feb.14, Murdock started a  Change.org petition  that so far has received more than a quarter-million signatures. Her ask? A walkout to protest violence in schools that she planned to coincide with the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. Murdock was born in 2002.

Lane Murdock, a high school sophomore, says she felt numb after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and knew it was time for her to try to make some change.

On one of the last days of spring break, she and seven other students from her high school in Ridgefield, Conn., gather around a few tables at their town rec center. They have been working hard, even losing sleep, trying to get organized for the day. As Murdock says, “Success knows no sleep.”

This is, by far, the biggest event they have ever planned. She and her team have more than 2,500 walkouts across the country registered through their website. They’ve drafted a long to-do list, including everything from securing a stage for speeches for their local walkout, to reaching out to the national press.

“Prioritize,” Murdock tells her team, “We’re not going to be able to get 100 percent of these things, I can guarantee that, but it’s important that we get the important things.”

Murdock wants the walkout to go down in history but acknowledges that it won’t represent every student’s perspective. Some polls show that young people are no more liberal  than older generations on gun control.

And other students who live with gun violence regularly have said they don’t feel represented  in the social movements following the shooting at Parkland.

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“There’s gun violence that’s been happening every day that isn’t a school shooting,” Murdock says. She wants the day to be inclusive. On the other hand, she knows it will be uncomfortable.

“We get hate comments online all the time because we’re angering people, and we’re angering people because we’re scaring them, and if we’re scaring them it’s because we’re doing something,” she says.

She wants people to know that she’s imagining this day to be very different than the March For Our Lives  or the 17 minutes of silence on March 14 in honor of the victims in Parkland, Fla. This walkout will last from 10 a.m. through the end of the day.

“People ask me, like, ‘Why? Why all day?’ ” Murdock says. That’s because “this is a topic that deserves more than 17 minutes.” Part of the plan for the day is to get students together in what they refer to as “a call to action,” registering voters or writing to elected representatives about the need for further gun control, for example.

These student organizers have gotten help from a national nonprofit called Indivisible, a group that says it aims to “fuel” young people to “resist the Trump agenda.” Paul Kim, a senior at Ridgefield in charge of communications for the event, says Indivisible helped the high school organizers map their outreach online.

“I got every chapter signed up in Texas,” Kim says, talking about all the walkouts they’ve registered. “And these people emailed back … I could like feel the Texas in the email. The accent, everything.” The group laughs.

To Murdock, the widespread support she says they’ve seen shows that sensible gun control doesn’t have to be partisan.

“It is not conservative or liberal. It is just about making sure our children don’t get harmed in school and we don’t live in a community and in a country that has institutionalized fear,” Murdock says. “I think we’re all sick of it. That’s why we’re doing this.”

She grew up with that fear. Her school had regular lockdown drills after 26 students and educators were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School when she was in fifth grade. It happened just 20 miles from her classroom.

She says there is a reason why she felt desensitized when she heard about Parkland. She and her team of fellow organizers at Ridgefield say that gun violence in the U.S. has gone on for too long.

“Change happens through patience and this fight does not stop after April 20,” Murdock says. “There is going to be a lot of work to be done after April 20 and that is going to include you guys and it’s going to include tons of students all across this nation,” she says talking to the group.

At 10 a.m. local time on Friday, thousands of students will march out of their classes wearing orange for gun safety and chanting for change.

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

An article from Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Leaders of the student-led anti-gun movement, who inspired classroom walkouts across the country on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, say they plan to maintain their activism through the long summer break.

This week’s protests [on April 20] marked the second mass student walkout since a 19-year-old man opened fire at a Parkland, Florida high school in February, killing 17 people. It signaled the emergence of a growing national campaign led by young people to lessen gun violence and toughen laws on firearms sales.

Youths take part in a National School Walkout anti-gun march in Washington Square Park in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

But the movement faces a major early challenge as the traditional three-month summer break approaches for most U.S. public schools at a critical moment in their bid to be heard by politicians in their home states and Washington, D.C.

“The reason why this has been so huge (is that) we’re in school, we talk to our classmates, we spread it around, everybody’s around so it’s kind of easier to show up,” said Vivian Reynoso, 17, a junior at Tucson High Magnet School in Tucson, Arizona, who helped organize rallies for both nationwide demonstrations in the past month.

“Of course you fear (losing the momentum),” said Reynoso, who like her peers in the campaign was born a year or more after the Columbine shootings. “I’m pretty sure even the Parkland victims are afraid of that. That’s why we need to be pushing, even if it’s summer, to keep telling people to keep talking about the issue and not to forget to about it.”

In the nearly two decades since Columbine seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage in 1999, killing 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide, school shootings have become almost commonplace in the United States.

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Students at Columbine, which has not held classes on April 20 since the massacre, did not take part in the walkout, and were encouraged to do community service instead.

Even as students prepared for Friday’s protests wearing orange, the color of the anti-gun movement, news began trickling out that a 17-year-old student had been wounded in a shooting at a high school near Ocala, Florida, some 225 miles northwest of Parkland.

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The debate over guns in America, where the right to bear arms is protected under the Second Amendment of the Constitution, has raged nearly since the nation’s founding.

The students hope to succeed where other activists have failed in enacting stricter legislation on gun ownership, either at the state or federal level.

As anger fades over the Parkland shootings, the test for students will be in organizing for gun reform. Many of the protests featured voter registration drives, with students aiming to make it a major issue for midterm elections in November.

“Who knows whether they maintain the energy or not but there are historic examples of student-led movements that have played an important role in moving things forward, (for example) the Civil rights movements,” said Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We’ve seen these kids take a real leadership role on this issue,” said Winkler, author of a history of the debate over gun control in America. “Whether they can sustain it not remains to be seen.”

The March 24 “March For Our Lives” rallies in cities across the United States were some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations in decades, with hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters taking to the streets.

Friday’s walkouts, though smaller in scale, signaled the determination of the students to press on with their movement.

“The way we’re viewing the summer right now is it’s really an opportunity to put in a lot of work on some really big plans we have going for the return to school in August,” said Gavin Pierce, 21, a college junior studying film in Los Angeles and an organizer of the “March for Our Lives” pro-gun control group.

    “Everyone is really eager to keep this going and to keep on organizing until we see real change,” Pierce said.

Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Ben Klayman in Detroit, Zach Fagensen in Miami, Edgar Mendez in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, Karen Dillion in Mission, Kansas and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang

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An article by Irene Kai / Ashland Culture of Peace Commission in the Ashland Daily Tidings

This is a journey of pure magic and grace. I went with my daughter to the U.K. for an art exhibit in early September 2015, and on a whim we decided to tour the Snowdonia National Park in Wales. We drove deep into the mountains on a narrow two-lane road with hair pin turns on the “wrong” side of the road. As dusk fell, we decided to go back to town. The nearest turning outlet was behind the mountain, so I drove into a hidden nearby space to turn. As I turned, I suddenly saw a two story tall glass tower with a flame inside near the top of it. An inscription on the glass said: “The World Peace Flame.” I was awed. Deep in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, I was greeted by a living flame representing World Peace. At that instant, I felt as if the flame ignited the sacred flame in my heart. I realized World Peace begins with me.

World Peace Flame Monument, Snowdonia Mountain Lodge, Wales

I went into the building behind the monument where a woman told me the history of the World Peace Flame. In 1999, the princess of the Netherlands went to five continents to collect seven sacred flames, flew them via military and commercial jets and united them in Wales. The Asian flame was from the eternal flame that burns at Gandhi’s memorial. The monument in Wales is the original World Peace Flame Monument. I was invited to light a candle from the flame and I brought it back to Ashland.

I came to Ashland 20 years ago via Hong Kong, New York, London and Los Angeles, not knowing anything about Oregon. Over a decade ago, I was attracted to the local Native American culture, and became very involved with the Ashland Native American group and befriended Roy Hayes, Chief Joseph’s great-great grandson. 

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How can culture of peace be developed at the municipal level?

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I learned deeply about the culture of the Native American’s history in the Rogue Valley. 

Jacksonville was once a thriving Chinatown 200 years ago. Hundreds of Chinese migrants came to southern Oregon as laborers for the gold miners. The ditches they dug are still visible today. When the gold dried up, they were chased out and some were killed. They vanished without a trace. This group of migrants were from Toisan, southern China, the village of my family. They were my ancestral relatives.

On Sept. 21, 2015, the International Day of Peace, my partner David Wick and I launched the Ashland Culture of Peace Commission (ACPC). During the launch, I lit the candle I brought back from Wales. During the ceremony, I was inspired to bring the World Peace Flame monument to Ashland, to honor our ancestors and to heal their sufferings.

By bringing healing and peace to our ancestors, we, the descendants will be able to release the burden of the sufferings of our linage and learn to practice living in peace for ourselves, our children and their children. 

The physical official live eternal World Peace Flame on our city ground will become a beacon of light that represents hope, healing, forgiveness, unity and humility for all who see it. The only other World Peace Flame in the United States is in the Civil Rights Museum in the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tennessee, the assassination site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For almost three years, I told anyone who had influence in the city of Ashland that I would like to install a World Peace Flame Monument in Ashland. Everyone thought it was a great idea, smiled and said: “Good Luck.” One day, David Wick and I wandered into the Southern Oregon University Sustainability Center. We walked into the old farm house and saw the architectural drawing of the “Thalden Pavilion — The Center of Outrageous Innovation” on the wall. I saw a tower next to the main structure and said to David, “That is the perfect place for the World Peace Flame!” 

Barry and Kathryn Thalden, strong supporters of ACPC, agreed to have the World Peace Flame installed at the base of the obelisk and informed us that it will be flanked by two 28 ft. cedar teaching poles, carved by Russell Beebe, a local Native American sculptor. How perfect!

ACPC is responsible for our part of the construction for the housing of the World Peace Flame. I invite you to join me on this magical journey of grace to bring the World Peace Flame to Ashland. With your generous donations, it will become a reality. Please visit our website at www.ashlandcpc.org.

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An article by Greta Zarro for Common Dreams (reprinted according to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)

America is up in arms about guns. If last month’s “March for Our Lives,” which attracted over one million marchers nationwide, is any indication, we’ve got a serious problem with gun violence, and people are fired up about it.  
But what’s not being talked about in the mainstream media, or even by the organizers and participants in the March for Our Lives movement, is the link between the culture of gun violence and the culture of war, or militarism, in this nation. Nik Cruz, the now infamous Parkland, FL shooter, was taught how to shoot a lethal weapon in the very school that he later targeted in the heart-breaking Valentine’s Day Massacre. Yes, that’s right; our children are trained as shooters in their school cafeterias, as part of the U.S. military’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) marksmanship program.  

Members of the Patch High School drill team compete in the team exhibition portion of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps drill meet at Heidelberg High School April 25. (Photo: Kristen Marquez, Herald Post/flickr/cc)

Nearly 2,000 U.S. high schools have such JROTC marksmanship programs, which are taxpayer-funded and rubber-stamped by Congress. Cafeterias are transformed into firing ranges, where children, as young as 13 years old, learn how to kill. The day that Nik Cruz opened fire on his classmates, he proudly wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the letters “JROTC.” JROTC’s motto? “Motivating Young People to Be Better Citizens.” By training them to wield a gun?  

I want to know why America isn’t marching against the military’s marksmanship programs. I want to know why millions aren’t knocking on their representatives’ doors and refusing to pay their taxes, until congressionally-approved firing ranges are removed from schools. Meanwhile, military recruiters hobnob with students during lunch break, then train them how to shoot in that same cafeteria and lure them to enlist. No doubt, the military’s pitch is slick, and economically enticing. That is, until the trainees turn on their classmates and teachers.

Perhaps what’s key above all, however, is that JROTC, and U.S. militarism as a whole, is embedded in our sociocultural framework as Americans, so much so that to question it is to cast doubt on one’s patriotic allegiance to this nation. To me, this explains why the Nik Cruz JROTC connection is not even an option on the table in the dialogue about gun violence. Why, at last month’s March for Our Lives in D.C., when my colleagues held up signs about the JROTC marksmanship program, marchers nodded in approval and bragged that they were JROTC trained.  

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The culture of war is pervasive in our society, through military-funded Hollywood films and video games, the militarization of the police, and JROTC and ROTC programs in our schools. The Pentagon receives the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all of our children, unless parents tell their children’s schools to opt them out. Nearly all of us are culpable, wittingly or unwittingly, in supporting the spread of U.S. militarism through our silent complicity and our tax dollars.  

The average mass shooter in this country is, by and large, an American male with a history of mental illness, criminal charges, or illicit substance abuse, according to a recently released March 2018 report by the U.S. Secret Services. He is not an ISIS terrorist or Al-Qaeda plotter. In fact, findings show that, above any ideology, mass attackers are most often motivated by a personal vendetta. What the Secret Services report does not talk about, however, is the disproportionate number of mass attackers who have been trained by the U.S. military. While veterans account for 13% of the the adult population, the data shows that more than 1/3 of adult perpetrators of the 43 worst mass killings between 1984 and 2006 had been in the U.S. military. Further, a 2015 study in the Annals of Epidemiology found that veterans kill themselves at a rate 50% higher than their civilian counterparts. This speaks volumes about the damaging psychological impact of war, and, I would argue, the deleterious potential of the warlike “us vs. them” mentality that JROTC and ROTC programs instill in the minds of developing youth, not to mention the very real marksmanship skills that they teach.  

While military recruits with access to a gun pose a risk to Americans at home, meanwhile, our soldiers abroad are not much more effective at policing the world. As military spending has skyrocketed in recent decades, now accounting for over fifty percent of U.S. federal discretionary spending, according to the National Priorities Project, so has terrorism.

Despite our country’s endless state of military “interventions” in other nations, the Global Terrorism Index in fact records a steady increase in terrorist attacks from the beginning of our “war on terror” in 2001 to the present. Federal intelligence analysts and retired officers admit that U.S. occupations generate more hatred, resentment, and blowback than they prevent. According to a declassified intelligence report on the war on Iraq, “despite serious damage to the leadership of al-Qaida, the threat from Islamic extremists has spread both in numbers and in geographic reach.” With the U.S. government spending a combined $1 trillion annually on war and preparations for war, including the stationing of troops at over 800 bases worldwide, there is little left of the public purse to spend on domestic necessities.

The American Society of Civil Engineers ranks U.S. infrastructure as a D+. We rank 4th in the world for wealth inequality, according to the OECD. U.S. infant mortality rates are the highest in the developed world, according to UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston. Communities across the nation lack access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation, a UN human right that the U.S. fails to recognize.

Forty million Americans live in poverty. Given this lack of a basic social safety net, is it any wonder that people enlist in the armed forces for economic relief and a supposed sense of purpose, grounded in our nation’s history of associating military service with heroism? 
 
If we want to prevent the next mass shooting, we need to stop fueling the culture of violence and militarism, and that starts with ending JROTC marksmanship programs in our schools.

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A multimedia gallery from Telesur

Thousands demonstrated across the United States [on March 24] to demand gun controls in the wake of February’s school shooting in Florida, which killed 17 people. The nationwide March For Our Lives rallies, some led by student survivors, aim to break the legislative gridlock stymying efforts to restrict firearms in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common.

Across the United States and outside U.S. embassies, hundreds of thousands of campaigners took part in the ‘March for Our Lives’ anti-gun protests. Photo:Reuters

With slogans such as ‘If they choose guns over our kids, vote them out,’ protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Florida high school where 17 people were murdered called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue. Photo:Reuters

Celebrities sang and survivors spoke, rallying the crowds with chants of ‘Never Again’ and promising that the Florida Parkland students would challenge congressmen and ‘Vote Them Out.’ Photo:Reuters

Students listen as Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Florida, addresses crowds at the ‘March for Our Lives’ event. Photo:Reuters

Protesters hold photos of school shooting victims during a demonstration demanding stricter gun controls in New York City. Photo:Reuters

Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez addresses the ‘March For Our Lives’ event before pausing for a full 6 minutes and 20 seconds silence – the time it took for the gunman to kill 17 of her Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School classmates. Photo:Reuters

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On Friday, Trump signed a US$1.3 trillion bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence. Photo:Reuters

“I have learned to duck from bullets before I learned to read,” said Edna Chavez, 17, a student at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, who lost a brother to gun violence. Photo:Reuters

“Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,” Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old high school junior, told the crowd. Photo:Reuters

Student marchers filled streets nationwide, including in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego and St. Louis. Photo:Reuters

Shooting survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida led the demonstration. Photo:Reuters

More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled, with events as far afield as London, Tokyo, Mauritius and Stockholm. Photo:Reuters