Wishing you holidays full of wonder, joy, hope...and action!

I remember years ago, during a radio interview, being lightheartedly accused of always trying to save the world. Hmmmmmm, I wondered, Who wouldn't want to save this world? It seemed the only thing standing between heaven or hell on earth was people trying to make a difference. Apathy and cynicism are not a recipe for finding our way out of the troubles were in.

I often think it's because we spend so much of our time, as a society, not seeing the magic and beauty around us--we're busy shopping, or working at a job of drudgery, or stuck in traffic--and meanwhile this miracle we live in is waiting for us to notice.

Well, dang, as I work this week at formulating my New Year's resolutions (something I've never really taken seriously before), these are the things I'm thinking about and some of the patterns in my life that I hope I'm ready to really change. The Earth needs us to change, and so does my body and mind.

Courtney collects really fabulous photos of the natural world on his computer, and looking at them reminds me of the big world out there that I so easily forget between emails, chores and errands. It's the world I want to keep fresh in my mind. I share the photos below as a holiday gift to each and every one of you. May they renew your sense of wonder and bring you joy!!



























































One more gift: There are three siblings, Rebecca, Daniel and David Solnit, who are each stellar activists as well as authors. I took a workshop on grassroots organizing from David at a Peace Centers Conference in Sonoma County several years ago and was super impressed by him. Recently I've been reading his sister Rebecca's books. I especially like a small but powerful book she wrote in 2006 titled Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. I would encourage every activist (of any type), who has ever felt discouraged, hopeless or powerless (we all have) to read her book. Here's a few short exerpts just to give you a flavor of her writing:

"I want to illuminate a past that is too seldom recognized, one in which the power of individuals and unarmed people is colossal, in which the scale of change in the world and the collective imagination over the past few decades is staggering, in which the astonishing things that have taken place can brace us to enter the future with boldness. To recognize the momentousness of what has happened is to apprehend what might happen. Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters."

"Who, two decades ago, could have imagined a world in which the Soviet Union had vanished and the Internet had arrived? Who then dreamed that the political prisoner Nelson Mandela would become president of a transformed South Africa? Who foresaw the resurgence of the indigenous world of which the Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico is only the most visible face? Who, four decades ago, could have conceived of the changed status of all who are nonwhite, nonmale, or nonstraight, the wide-open conversations about power, nature, economies, and ecologies?"

"Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or his or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do...All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope. To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk."

"In 2000, Ecuadoran general Lucio Gutierrez was ordered to repress protests against government policy by tens of thousands of indigenous Ecuadorans. Instead, he set up kitchens to feed them, permitted them to occupy the Congress, and joined an indigenous leader in announcing a new government. He was jailed for this disobedience, kicked out of the army--and in 2002 he was elected president, the first time indigenous people had exercised such power anywhere in the hemisphere. Far from perfect, he still represents a crucial shift in power."

Rebecca's book is full of quotes and stories by and about Edward Abbey, Subcommandante Marcos, Arundhati Roy, June Jordan, Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Eduardo Galeano, Virginia Woolf, Gandhi and many many more people who have used their hope and imagination and courage to make a difference. Reading this book will definitely give you a lift, and who couldn't use that?!?

And now for the final wish...ACTION!! There is a continuing crisis happening at this very moment in the Gaza Strip. The suffering there is acute. I read emails from eyewitnesses and get pleas from the Middle East Childrens Alliance and others trying to address the pain and suffering, but enormous amounts of help are needed.

Part of what is most needed is for us Americans to educate ourselves and others as to what's happening. None of it, absolutely none of it, would be possible without continued US shipment of lethal weapons, supplied to Israel and used against the civilian population of Gaza, or without our tax dollars, or without the US veto power in the UN, effectively neutralizing any attempt the world community makes to help the people of Gaza.

Below are two letters I've had published recently in three area newspapers. They have illicited responses, stirred up some feelings and brought a little more attention to a situation generally ignored by these papers.

Crisis in Gaza

I remember as a young girl asking my mom how people could have let the Holocaust happen. "We didn't know it was happening" was her reply. Something about that answer made me uncomfortable, preferring to be informed and ready to speak out.

Recently I've been wondering if my children would some day ask me the same about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. "Why did no one come to the aid of 1.5 million people imprisoned, hungry and many of them sick?" they might ask. "Where was the public outrage?"

1.5 million Gazans are imprisoned in a concentration camp, literally being starved to death, while the world stands by watching. And 60 percent of them are children. What is being done to the Gazan people is a war crime and a crime against humanity as defined by international law.

Of course there are other large-scale human disasters happening at the same time as the crisis in Gaza. But no other government is given $7-$10 million/day like Israel's is. Without U.S. funding, Israel could not afford its brutal occupation, the illegal settlements and the collective punishment and imprisonment of the people of Gaza.

So whose responsibility is it to speak up first and loudest? Isn't it us, who are allowing it to happen, day by day, with our tax dollars?

Valori George, Corvallis

Crisis in Gaza is horrific, even if not like Holocaust

Reading Rachel Peck’s letter of Dec. 18, “We’re not witnessing a modern Holocaust,” in response to my earlier letter, two things come to mind: how our different perspectives may be formed by our different news sources; and what constitutes a humanitarian crisis in each of our minds.

To me, this is a humanitarian crisis: 1.5 million people (half of them 17 years old or younger) living in the densest concentration on the planet, with no freedom of movement (they cannot leave Gaza by land, air or water), 45 percent of the children suffering from acute anemia, 75 percent of the people suffering from malnutrition, widespread deafness among children due to sonic booms, widespread mental disorders and acute depression, no access to their internationally recognized waters (because Israeli military fire on their boats, kill or maim, and confiscate the fishing boats) to fish and feed a hungry population, no access to materials to repair greenhouses (destroyed by military) and other infrastructure (including water and sewage) because the borders are sealed.

The people of Gaza spend 12 hours a day without power, a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer medication. More than 230 Gazans died last year, denied exit visas in order to get proper medical care.

But it’s not only the Palestinians who are denied freedom of movement. Israel denies entry into Gaza to international human rights observers (even from the U.N.) and journalists. Why?

Valori George, Corvallis


But since these letters were written and published the situation has deteriorated enormously as the Israeli military unleashed its own version of "shock and awe" on the Gazan people, killing, maiming, dismembering and destroying.  Please take a moment to read this short piece by Ali Abunimah, one of my favorite Palestinian journalists.  And then please take action--calling the Israeli embassy nearest you, calling your congressional representatives and pressing your local paper to fully cover what is happening.  I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said something to the effect that it will not be the words of our enemies that will be remembered, but the silence of our friends.   Please don't be silent.


GAZA MASSACRES MUST SPUR US TO ACTION 
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2008 
 
"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.
A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police
stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas.  The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow. The Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah comments.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml 


It's a very strange world that we live in.  All these different aspects can co-exist simutaneously.  This life  is so full of blessings and abundance, wonder and joy, and at the same time, because of the internet and other technologies, we have instant knowledge of pain, suffering, destruction.  Good luck to us all in juggling the many realities of modern life and trying to stay sane.

Meanwhile, it is a blessing to have you in my life.  Thanks to all who made it through this long piece.  I hope to hear from you soon.   I would especially love to hear your New Year's resolutions, aspirations, victories and set-backs.

Blessings in the New Year,

Valori