Friday, February 21, 2020

Baltimore Activist Alert -- February 22, 2020


65] Poor Peoples' Campaign Mobilization Meeting – Feb. 22
66] Tree Maintenance – Feb. 22
67] February Food Distribution – Feb. 22
68] Animal Safe Haven and Adoptions – Feb. 22
69] “The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins” – Feb. 22
70] Fair Development Plan for Zero Waste -- Feb. 22
71] Facts or Fakes? -- Feb. 22
72] Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Canvass – Feb. 22
73] Organize Your Friends with a Bernie Victory Captain -- Feb. 22
74] “The First Rainbow Coalition” – Feb. 22
75] Write letters supporting the Plowshares
76] Two Berrigan Books still in print
77] Emergency Demonstration against an attack on Venezuela or Iran  
78] Donate books, videos, DVDs and records  
79] Do you need any book shelves?
80] Join the Global Zero campaign.
81] Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil
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65] -- There is DC Poor Peoples' Campaign Mobilization Meeting on Sat., Feb. 22 at 10 AM at the John Wesley AME Zion Church, 1615 14th St. NW, WDC 20009.

66] – On Sat., Feb. 22 from 10 AM to 1 PM, get with Tree Maintenance, hosted by Gunpowder Valley Conservancy at the Loch Raven Reservoir, TowsonCheck out gunpowdervalleyconservancy.org. Newly planted trees need TLC to survive. Spend several hours to help young trees grow into healthy forests! Tree maintenance involves removing invasive plants, checking planted trees to see if the shelter needs to be removed and removing if necessary, digging out the planting tube, and making sure the plant is upright. Community service learning hours available. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/609988343153273/.

67] – On Sat., Feb. 22 from 10 AM to 1 PM, help out with the February Food Distribution at the Franciscan Center of Baltimore, 101 W. 23rd St., Baltimore 21218. There is a need of 50 to 60 volunteers to help us unpack and setup a food market to give away 10,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables. Check out https://www.facebook.com/events/2484359231836287/.

68] –  On Sat., Feb. 22 from 11 AM to 3 PM, get with a Meet And Greet, hosted by Animal Safe Haven and Adoptions, Inc. at Pet Valu, 895 E. Fort Ave., Baltimore 21230.  Murray is ready to meet the public and hopefully find his forever family! He is a fuzzy orange adult who loves to look outside and play with other cats. Special guest kitties will also make an appearance! See https://www.facebook.com/events/128788908462546/.

69] – On Sat., Feb. 22 from 11 AM to 12:30 PM, meet the author Antero Pietila who wrote “The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins,” hosted by Enoch Pratt Free Library, 5108 Roland Ave., Baltimore 21210-2132.  Pietila's thirty-five years with The Baltimore Sun included coverage of the city's neighborhoods, politics and government. He also served seven years as a correspondent in South Africa and the Soviet Union. The book reflects the whole spectrum of those experiences. A native of Finland, where he graduated from Tampere's School of Social Sciences, Pietila became a student of urban racial rotations during his first visit to the United States in 1964. He later obtained a Master of Arts degree at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.  He is also the author of “Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City” (2010).

The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of the book for sale at a book signing following the program, which is in conjunction with Undesign the Redline, exhibited at the Central Library November 1, 2019-January 31, 2020 and Southeast Anchor Library, February 1-February 29, 2020. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/431054730904597/.

70] On Sat., Feb. 22 from noon to 3 PM, United Workers <justsociety@unitedworkers.org> invited you to the upcoming release of Baltimore's Fair Development Plan for Zero Waste at 525 W Redwood Street, Baltimore 21201 in the University of Maryland School of Social Work Auditorium. Come together and launch the Fair Development Plan for Zero Waste which aims to address the city’s worst air polluter - the BRESCO trash burning incinerator. Build on the momentum of recent environmental breakthroughs -- the passage of the Clean Air Act and the plastic bag ban -- to end our reliance on incineration and landfills. This plan calls for truly green businesses and infrastructure such as composting and recycling facilities, expanded residential collections, resources to maintain vacant land and to prevent illegal dumping, which all culminate in hundreds of local living wage jobs. RSVP here: http://www.unitedworkers.org/events. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/204315524073875/.

71] – On Sat., Feb. 22 from 12:30 to 2:30 PM, come to a SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University Training: Facts or Fakes?  It is will take place on the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus- Croft Hall, Room B32. Did Obama really shake hands with the president of Iran? Did Trump's lawyer plot with Russian spies to hack the Democrats? Are Fox and MSNBC reporting from different planets? As the 2020 presidential race heats up, we'll test our skills at separating truth from fabrication, using real images and video clips, and work together on ways to make things better. With pizza!

Scott Shane was a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times from 2004 to 2019, covering national security and other subjects. He won Pulitzer Prizes in 2017 and 2018 with Times colleagues for coverage of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and other issues. His latest book, “Objective Troy: A Terrorist, A President and the Rise of the Drone,” tells the story of the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011 at the orders of President Obama. He has written on interrogation and torture, the CIA and targeted killing, WikiLeaks and secrecy, the National Security Agency, and many other topics. He is a former Moscow correspondent for The Baltimore Sun and his first book, “Dismantling Utopia, is a firsthand account of the Soviet collapse. Register online at bit.ly/FactsorFakesSNFAgora.  Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/207421580400561/.

72] – Progressive Prince George’s is promoting the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Canvass  on Sat., Feb. 22 from 1 to 3:30 PM to Reclaim Our Schools at the PGCEA HQ, 8008 Marlboro Pike, Forestville 20747.  Join PPG and talk to voters about supporting community schools and the Kirwan commission funding recommendations.  RSVP at https://secure.everyaction.com/8Q7UmWifNEKg59JFP4LnXQ2?emci=3fa33d44-d14d-ea11-a94c-00155d039e74&emdi=ac6592b1-de4d-ea11-a94c-00155d039e74&ceid=131431.

73] – Organize Your Friends with a Bernie Victory Captain on Sat., Feb. 22 from 3 to 4:30 PM at George Mason, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030.  Visit https://events.berniesanders.com/event/227876/. Your friends, family members, coworkers, and classmates are looking to you to help make their decisions about who to support for President! Studies show that friend-to-friend organizing, organizing the people you know, is the most effective strategy for increasing turnout in an election. Bring a friend to this fun event where we make plans to organize our personal networks for Bernie using the campaign’s official BERN App. We can’t leave a single vote on the table! Please bring a smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

74] – On Sat., Feb. 22 from 7 to 10 PM, Current Movements presents “The First Rainbow Coalition” at Eaton DC, 1201 K Street NW, WDC 20005.  This is a film screening & panel discussion looking at solidarity movements then & now.  In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latino group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young Patriots. Finding common ground, these disparate groups banded together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition. The film is directed by Ray Santisteban.  A panel discussion on solidarity movements then and now with Lynn C French of the Panther Party and Nnennaya Amuchie of Black Youth Project 100 will follow the screening.

Current Movements is a nonprofit organization to connect grassroots activists, movements, and organizations through art, film, and technology. As part of its mission, it hosts a monthly film series in partnership with Eaton Workshop highlighting the grassroots activism taking place around the world and here in the DMV. Look at https://www.facebook.com/events/1325098070995403/.

75] The PLOWSHARES SENTENCING is PENDING, so please WRITE THE JUDGE. Now is the time to write letters to Judge Lisa Godbey Wood regarding her sentencing of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. The group is collecting letters, especially from those who know the defendants, testifying to their character and the good work that they are doing in their communities which will not be done if they are serving long terms in prison. These letters are not the forum to criticize the law, the legal process or government policies. Rather it is the place to point out positive things about the defendants that should mitigate a harsh sentence.  Letters should be sent to defense attorney Bill Quigley at the address below. He will compile them and distribute to various defendants' attorneys for delivery to Judge Wood. The attorneys suggest it would be helpful to get these done by Thanksgiving or the week after in order to get processed and delivered. Sentencing may be in January or possibly February.   The best letters are simple, polite, and tell good things about the person you are writing to support.

The suggested format is as follows:
Date
Sender’s Name
Sender’s Address
Judge Lisa Godbey Wood
C/o Bill Quigley
Loyola University New Orleans Law Clinic
Campus Box 902
7214 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118
Regarding Sentencing of: Mark Colville [or] Clare Grady [or] Martha Hennessy [or] Fr. Steve Kelly SJ [or] Elizabeth McAlister [or] Patrick O’Neill [or] Carmen Trotta (or all seven of the Kings Bay Plowshares)
Dear Judge Wood,
Suggested outline for the letter:
- Explain who you are.
- Explain who you are writing about, how you know them, and what good they do for their community.
- Explain why the Judge should not send them to jail.
- Thank the Judge for reading your letter.
Valediction,
Signature
For more ideas and details for your letters, you are welcome to see the defendants' biographies here: https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/about/bios/.
Thank you for your attentiveness to the trial, your support for the defendants and their families, and your focus on the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons.
As Fr. Steve Kelly says, "The nuclear weapons won't go away by themselves." We do this work together.
76] – Two books by Fred Wilcox are still in print.  The first one is “Fighting the Lamb's War Skirmishes with the American Empire” by Philip Berrigan and Fred A. Wilcox with a FOREWORD by Tripp York.  It can be purchased by Wipf and Stock: https://wipfandstock.com/fighting-the-lamb-s-war.html.  It is a Memoir in paperback/ISBN: 9781532660078/240 pages/republished 8/21/2018/ Retail Price: $26.00/and Web Price: $20.80.

The second one is “Uncommon Martyrs The Berrigans, the Catholic Left, and the Plowshares Movement” by Fred Wilcox, who profiles members of this anti-war movement, whose Christianity compels them to acts of civil disobedience against the military industrial complex.  The ISBN is 0201522314/$6.50 for a hardcover, and it can be purchased at Powell's Books.  See https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/view/7094/uncommon-martyrs.

77] –   The Trump Administration is again beating the war drums.  Most recently, the target is Iran.  Should the Trump administration initiate an act of war against Iran, consider joining us. It is a violation of U.S. law for the Trump Administration to attack a country that has not attacked us, as only Congress can declare war. The Trump administration is nevertheless beating the war drums for war against Iran and Venezuela. Should a war criminal, John Bolton, convince Trump to attack either of these countries, such a military strike would demand an immediate and unequivocal response from us to show that we will not tolerate his abuse of power.

Let's mobilize to show that we the people will not tolerate another military adventure, which would be bound to have profound negative consequences. If a military strike against Iran or Venezuela takes place, then meet at 33rd and N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218. If the attack is before 2 PM local time, then the event will begin at 5 PM, local time. If the attack occurs after 5 PM local time, then the event will begin at 5 PM, local time, the following day. Contact Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net.   

78] -- If you would like to get rid of books, videos, DVDs, records, tarps and table cloths, contact Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at comcast.net.

79] -- Can you use any book shelves? Contact Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at comcast.net.

80] -- Join an extraordinary global campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons: http://www.globalzero.org/sign-declaration. A growing group of leaders around the world is calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and a majority of the global public agrees.  This is an historic window of opportunity.  With momentum already building in favor of Zero, a major show of support from people around the world could tip the balance. When it comes to nuclear weapons, one is one too many.

81] – A Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil takes place every day in Lafayette Park, 1601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 24 hours a day, since June 3, 1981. Go to http://prop1.org; call 202-682-4282.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

“One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" - Daniel Berrigan


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