May 09, 2007
Goodness How Time Goes Flush
It seemed like a good idea to start this little blog, keeping track of all my articles in one handy index, but then something like life got a hold of me, and really it's enough work to get the things written and posted the first time, much less be my own librarian. So this is officially an abandoned project, in case you couldn't tell. Still, I kinda like the collection. A summer of free diving . . . Please enjoy.
Posted by gregmoses at 03:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2005
Rocha's Friends Respond to No-Bill of Cop who Killed him
Sarah and Roxanne knew Daniel Rocha in high school, so at the press conference called by Poder, LULAC, and the ACLU, they shared a sign protesting the grand jury's decision to issue no indictments against the police officer who killed him. Both Sarah and Roxanne say the same thing about the situation: "Daniel was a small guy."
"Daniel was pretty cool," says Roxanne. "I had a dance class with his girlfriend, so he was always at the door waiting for her. He always had a smile on his face. He was always making everyone laugh. He would tell a lot of jokes."
Rocha's Friends Respond to No-Bill of Cop who Killed him, Texas Civil Rights Review
Posted by gregmoses at 01:25 PM | Comments (983)
The Rocha Files: A Tragic Collection
Schroeder's claim that Rocha was doing something more than trying to get away from her boss seems incredible when compared to her boss' statement that he was hanging onto Rocha's foot. So there is no question that Daniel Rocha was playing with fire in his gangsta attitude, but there is also an expectation that cops are trained to deal with such cases in ways that do not escalate into on-the-spot executions. I think that's why they are called peace officers.
To kids, especially teenage males, we have to suggest better things, but then again, we have to be pretty careful that we not pretend to have offered Daniel a well-chosen world to work with. When I think of the comment that he had a slight learning disability, then I can see how he was following the wrong crowd, he just wasn't so quick as the one who first jumped the fence. A slight learning disability is all it would take for that moment of hesitation, then that moment of tragic motivation to follow his friend over the fence.
The Rocha Files: A Tragic Collection, Texas Civil Rights Review
Posted by gregmoses at 01:15 PM | Comments (1285)
Raw Talk Revival at Camp Casey Two
I don't know how America got to be so juvenile since then, but there was a time when a Southern boy with one glass eye could go to West Point, get a good job in the Army, retire as a Colonel, dedicate his retirement to teaching, vote as a Lincoln Republican, and die in East Texas with a mind open enough to see that Marx is simply one of the best reads going. I mean, even if your only interest is quality writing, why would you not have some affection for good ol' Karl right next to (because it's never in) the best of Reader's Digest. Too bad grandpa died before I finally re-read Marx more thoroughly. We might have had a quite wonderful chat about that. In terms of pure writing, I'd have asked grandpa if he’d ever read Adorno.
From the very beginning of the post 9/11 debacle, socialists have been quite reliable opponents of the Bush juggernaut. They predicted more or less where this was all heading, and they hit the streets early hollering about it. Some of my best sources of news these past years have come from lists organized by socialists. Moms of dead or endangered soldiers might find out they have more in common with socialists than they would otherwise think. So I hope the parties work something out. In terms of world history, America is sadly missing out on the great secret that socialism is a mainstream movement, adopted by base commanders everywhere as the best way for officer's kids to be raised. Not to mention land grant universities such as my alma mater, Texas A&M.
The Listening Tent and the Raw Talk Revival at Camp Casey Two, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 01:09 PM | Comments (1140)
New Voices Rising at Camp Casey Two
Later Saturday, out at Camp Casey Two, Dominique stood with her mother under a white canopy, facing neatly-placed rows of white crosses that glowed under the light of a full moon. With the light of day nearly faded into navy blue, Dominique and Renee stood together as down the tiny country road walked a tall trim soldier, trumpet in hand. The soldier stopped in front of them, raised the horn to his lips and played taps. There was hardly a whisper among the 300 or so witnesses who stood under the crystal clear dusk sky.
And then, for Renee, suddenly, it all came back. "I mean you act as if it's gone, but it's just not." When she was seven years old, explains Renee, her father died at camp, away from home. "It never goes away." Into the clear night air, in answer to the silence of the prairie, Renee started singing. And her voice rang through the night like a trumpet.
"Let there be peace on earth!" To the gathered crowd, Renee's singing sounded like the next perfect thing. To Cathy Courtney of Houston, Renee's first line was immediately recognizable as a 1955 hymn by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson. So Cathy joined in. "And let it begin with me." Together they sang the next line: "Let there be peace on earth, the peace that was meant to be."
'Let it Begin with Me': New Voices Rising at Camp Casey Two, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 01:02 PM | Comments (1064)
A Daytrip without Cindy
Not having Cindy Sheehan in Crawford Friday turned out okay. Her absence didn't stop the media from crowding around a noon prayer vigil. And nobody I talked to was planning to cut short their stay on account of her absence. In fact, as usual, folks were sort of falling in love with the land and each other, wondering how many days more could they squeeze in.
Take the example of Katie Sterling of Fort Worth and her traveling companion Pam Humphrey of Burleson, Texas. In the sweltering afternoon heat across Cedar Rock Parkway from the Crawford Peace House, they were tending to a field of 40 cars parked in neat rows, talking with big smiles about last night's sleepover in the network of bar ditches that has become Camp Casey. "We planned to stay in Waco with relatives, but we couldn't leave, so we slept in a ditch and it was great!" And why couldn't they leave? Because they were having too much fun.
A Daytrip without Cindy, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 12:58 PM | Comments (1325)
Cindy, the Peace Train, and the Little Ditch that Could
Two months ago while exhausted from a Summer Soulstice peace festival, and while looking with dismay into a long hot summer of war, Louisiana attorney Buddy Spell, his spouse Annie, and their guest of honor Cindy Sheehan decided they needed to do something, but not something too high energy. So they browsed through the train schedule and designated an Amtrak Crescent as their Peace Train. Come September they'd board the train in New Orleans and put out word to folks along the way to hop on for a ride to the big peace march in Washington D.C. That would be enough to keep their peace hopes on track. Of course, that was then.
"We had about 60 people signed up before Cindy went to Crawford," says Buddy, "but that has tripled." With a pre-boarding rally in Covington, Louisiana the night before Cindy and friends depart, the little town of Covington may soon be feeling like next month's Crawford. And when the train hits Union Station, Buddy says 'old fart' activists will be greeted by the Campus Action Network, and wherever they go for the weekend, they will be marching 500 strong. And that's how you go in just a couple of months from a little ol' z-net zap to a global headliner by way of the little ditch that could.
Cindy, the Peace Train, and the Little Ditch that Could, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 12:50 PM | Comments (1046)
Mona in the Field of Crosses (at Camp Casey, Tx)
"Mona, is that your son?" I ask. She looks up, slightly startled, then, "Yes, that’s him." Standing up, she twirls the picture to show me the flip side, a photo of her three grandchildren. Two of them are from her son's family, one is from her daughter's, but she has made a group photo for her son to take with him, to give him hope, to encourage him to come back alive. Back to her work with the crosses, she says in a wavering voice, "I sure hope I don't have to put out one of these for him." And we both stand there crying. "Where are all the mothers," she asks, "that these crosses belong to?" A Korean reporter looks at us, and he is also frozen stiff by this grief. His pen hovers over his notebook, but what exactly is there to say?
"Ma'am, do you want me to help you put names on those crosses?" asks the gentle voice of a brand new volunteer who has just walked the line. Which helps to get us all moving again. Under the high sun, with cicadas and crickets buzzing from their invisible homes in the grass, Mona, with her hat brim pulled down, returns to her work among the field of crosses at Prairie Chapel Road.
Mona in the Field of Crosses, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 12:46 PM | Comments (1007)
Pilgrims of Protest: Aug. 11, 2005 (Part Three)
Penny strides into the front lawn of the Crawford Peace House talking about that time up in Racine five weeks before the alleged re-election when she stood along the street with firemen and everybody, and flipped the President the bird. "Thank you," is what Penny recalls the President saying to her. "God, what a weak man!"
Like Cindy Sheehan, Penny is motivated by the death of her son, but Penny's son was not killed in an overseas war. He lost his life to the politics of health care funding in Texas. "I'm only the Governor," is how Penny recalls Bush's response when she asked him to help restore a sudden cut in funding to the cancer research trial in Arlington, Texas that was doing good things for her son. "My son died because that treatment was delayed," says Penny. And that's one reason why she flipped the President the bird.
As for why she's standing here in Texas, 1163 miles from home, she says of herself and spouse Mike, who should be shuttled here any minute from the stadium parking lot: "We have no idea what we're doing. We’ve never done anything like this before. But it's time we became teenagers!"
Pilgrims of Protest, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 12:41 PM | Comments (2834)
Tomorrow's History Today: Camp Casey Up Close
Moving a little further down side A, or Morgan Road, I see hefty rolls of measuring tape being unpacked. I happen to know what this means, because last Friday morning I had been sipping coffee with a VFPer from Tacoma. He had helped to lay out an Arlington West display there, and he spoke of the exhaustive care they took to make sure the crosses were neatly placed so many feet apart to mimic the respectful military order of graves at the Arlington national cemetery near D.C. These huge rolls of tape are the first visual evidence of what will be done today, all day, as 1800 crosses get pounded into the ground around Camp Casey and tagged with the names of USA soldiers killed in Iraq. "We need to figure out a way to also honor the Iraqis killed in this war," said my Tacoma informant. "But how do we do that? Eighteen hundred crosses are difficult enough to deal with."
Tim Goodrich is spotting his perch for the day under the windbreak along Morgan Road. This morning he has changed into desert khakis so there will be no mistaking the fact that he is an Iraq Veteran Against the War. Later in the day with the sun scorching down on his neck, I see him studying the names on the crosses. As I think about the pictures I've seen of VietNam vets at the Memorial Wall in D.C., I certainly don't ask Tim Goodrich what's going through his bowed head.
Tomorrow's History Today, Peacefile
Posted by gregmoses at 12:38 PM | Comments (902)