Small steps -- and a serendipitous encounter -- in journey toward peace in Iraq

Last week in Minneapolis, I was introducing a small group of emissaries from Najaf, Iraq, to the Open Book Literary Arts Center, just a few blocks from the Mississippi River. Open Book is home to Milkweed Editions, the Minnesota Center for Books Arts, and The Loft Literary Center. The visitors from Najaf were all nicely impressed by the facilities. Then we headed to the basement of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

It was there we encountered a member of the Combat Paper Project. Christopher Arendt, a lanky 25-year-old veteran with a stocking cap and tattoos on both arms, was in the middle of a weeklong residency where veterans of war cut their uniforms and pulp them into paper to be used for art projects and writing their stories. Arendt was busily preparing the green paper he made from his uniform to typeset the next page of his story.

"Did you fight in the war against Iraq?" one of the delegation members asked.

"No, I was stationed at Guantanamo," Arendt said. "But I'm a member of the Iraqi Veterans Against the War." The Iraqi group broke into applause. Arendt then explained how he made the paper and ran a page through the press.

"For the first time I feel like my uniform is being put to good use," another veteran said.

A new Sister City relationship
Everyone in the room had made long journeys to reach this moment. The group from Najaf was part of a 14-member delegation in town to celebrate the new Sister City relationship between Minneapolis and Najaf. The visit from Sept. 18 to today is the first official exchange between the two cities.

On July 31, 2009, the Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution by unanimous vote establishing Minneapolis and Najaf as official Sister Cities. A Sister City relationship is a formal agreement for sharing cultural, educational and citizen resources and for building relationships over the long term, both between the two cities and between individuals. The Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP) and its partner organization in Iraq, the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT), spearheaded the Sister City initiative. 

Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, had seen the focus of much of the U.S. war against Iraq. Many insurgents used the largest cemetery in the world located there as a hideout. As one of the holiest cities for the Shia — and a major pilgrimage stopping place because it is holds the tomb of Alī ibn Abī Tālib, whom the Shia consider the first imam — Najaf also suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein's reign.

These emissaries, 11 men and three women, came to Minneapolis for the sole purpose of fostering long-term relationships between the peoples of the two cities, to start a better relationship with America and make peace. As delegation member Kadhim Al-Mhanawi put it, "We come here so the message of peace can wipe out the message of war."

In addition to spreading a message of peace and reconciliation, the delegation also hopes to make contact with Americans who can help rebuild their city and nation. "You succeeded in bombing us into the Middle Ages," Al-Mhanawi said. Now he wonders what our next step will be. One of the greatest needs right now is the creation of a cancer treatment center in Najaf. There is only one such center in Baghdad, and people have to wait months for treatment after traveling great distances to be seen by a doctor. Cancer is now epidemic in Iraq. Partnerships to train doctors and health-care workers would go a long way to solving many of the current ills that beset everyday citizens of Iraq.

From engineers to public officials
The visitors represent a wide range of vocations: teachers, engineers, professors, city council members and the dean of liberal arts at the University of Kufa. And the women — a university professor, a PhD student and former city council member, and a Najaf Chamber of Commerce member — were clearly on equal footing with the men as they interacted with their Minnesota counterparts.

It was by chance this group encountered Christopher Arendt and the Combat Paper Project. Based at the Green Door Studio in Burlington, Vt., the project provides papermaking workshops worldwide. Its goal is to use art to help individuals reconcile their personal experiences and challenge traditional narratives surrounding service, honor and military culture. (You can read more about the Combat Paper Project here.) The Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Susan Hensel Gallery were sponsors of the residency that the Najaf delegation happened upon.

Afterwards Christopher said to me, "I hope this story travels all the way to Najaf, where just one person can hear that I am sorry for what we did there."

And the visitors from Iraq hope next that a group of Americans will travel to Najaf in the coming year. Peace takes small steps like these to happen. And moments of serendipity.

(Article first published at MinnPost.com, October 2, 2009.)

Maxine Hong Kingston: The Art of Making Peace

Maxine Hong Kingston had already written three seminal works* by 1991 when, driving home from her father's funeral, she saw the hills of Berkeley burning, and with them the novel she was working on, The Fourth Book of Peace. She risked her life to save it, but nothing remained except a block of ash.

Faced with the question, "Do I start over?" Hong Kingston said no.

That's the short answer. The long answer is the story of the rest of her life and why she is this year's guest speaker for the English Department's Esther Freier Endowed Lecture in Literature Series. On September 30, Maxine Hong Kingston addresses the University community with a lecture titled, "The Art of Making Peace."

Hong Kingston is revered as one of this country's great living authors. "She is a figurehead for Asian writers in particular, and one of the best known Asian writers today," says Josephine Lee, associate professor in the Department of English and one of the founders of the University's Asian American Studies program. "Her work rose to prominence at a time when interest in ethnic literature and women's literature began to arise, answering what it means to be a writer of color and a woman," Lee says.

Lee notes how Hong Kingston's work is not dated. "People remain impressed by the beauty of her work and how fresh it still is." The themes of Hong Kingston's books have great resonance for the issues of our time: immigration, assimilation, exploitation, racism, transnational cultural identities, how violence structures memory, what it means to be an "American," and what exactly is literature.

Department of English professor and recent department chair Paula Rabinowitz interviewed Hong Kingston early in her career (Michigan Quarterly Review, 1982). "I had been doing research on her work," says Rabinowitz, "and much of her discussion was on genres. Hong Kingston clearly stated that her two books (The Woman Warrior and China Men) were not novels or fiction. It was eye-opening as to how a writer perceives her work compared to a critic." The interview has been reprinted many times and is a keystone in the discussion of Hong Kingston's literary career.

A chapter in The Woman Warrior titled "No Name Woman" is one of the most anthologized pieces of writing in contemporary American literature. "It is one of the texts," says Rabinowitz. "She invented the post-modern memoir."

After the fire
Hong Kingston has a long-standing commitment to peace, beginning in the 1960s with her days at UC Berkeley, where she protested the Vietnam War. After losing her unfinished novel to the Berkeley fire, she started working with veterans of war, forming writing groups to help veterans tell their stories. This work led to the publication in 2006 of Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

Hong Kingston has continued to go out on the streets, protesting the wars of this generation. She was arrested twice in 2003, for a protest against the war in Iraq and a Code Pink anti-war demonstration on International Women's Day (March 8).

And she has continued writing. One of her recent books is The Fifth Book of Peace, pulling together ideas from the lost novel (which was to be a sequel of Tripmaster Monkey) and setting them against the story of the fire and stories of growing up during World War II.

"It is important," says Rabinowitz, "to think of people as living writers, living people who are making tremendous contributions to the present."

Maxine Hong Kingston is a true role model for those who wish to live engaged in the present.

Maxine Hong Kingston presented the Esther Freier Endowed Lecture at the Sept. 30, Ted Mann Concert Hall. Free, hosted by the Department of English.

*The ground-breaking memoirs The Woman Warrior, China Men, and the edgy novel Tripmaster Monkey.

(Article originally published in The Brief, University of Minnesota. Photo by Gail K. Evenari.)

The Art of Peace: A Reading Celebrating International Peace Day

Saturday, September 26, 2009

7:00 - 8:30 pm

The Loft Literary Center
Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis

Free - All are welcome!

The Loft’s Peace and Social Justice Writers Group will present a reading that celebrates peace and offers hope for the future

The Loft’s Peace and Social Justice Writers Group consciously explores the nature of peace, and through our activities aims to renew and maintain a sense of hope for the future. We gather monthly, and by sharing our writing and discussing works by writers who inspire and move us toward action, we endeavor to refine our talents and use our creative craft to promote peace and sustainable justice in our world.

The group meets the fourth Wednesday of the Month (January - October), 6:30-8:30 pm, at Open Book’s “Book Club Room,” third floor.

Come, join us as we gather at the crossroads of peace, creativity, and imagination

Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History : Stories of truth and peace for a new generation

I will be participating in this great event. Here are the details:

Monday, April 6, 2009 7:00 P.M.

O’Shaughnessy Auditorium
College of St. Catherine
2004 Randolph Avenue, St. Paul

Howard Zinn, Lou Bellamy, Winona LaDuke, Dipankar Mukherjee, Tou Ger Xiong, Isabell Monk O’Connor and many more will give voice to unsung people who have shaped history.

Featuring music and poetry of Jearlyn Steele, and Prudence Johnson. This performance is based on Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

For more information, go to http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/Zinn

January 20, 2009

by Michael Kiesow Moore

Before this day ushered in by destiny,
how long did we hold our collective breath?
The trees themselves held back their exhale.

Coyotes stopped serenading the moon.
The gay grasshopper put away his fiddle and donned black.
Instead of lullabies, mothers gave their children tears.

The distraught whippoorwill forgot her song.
Actors dropped their lines and sat down in the hushed audience.
Babies emerged from wombs silent, accusing.

Opera houses throughout the lands locked their doors.
A cellist broke a string and never played again.
The flamenco dancer fell out of time, then just fell.

The rock star ambled off the stage and even the radios grew quiet.
If children started to sing, they were told to hush.
On the streets they stopped saying please and thank you.

The perplexed stars asked each other, what happened?
Poets lost their metaphors, some could only write in verbs.
We all know what happened to the blues in New Orleans.

Then on this day ushered in by destiny, a sigh fills the world.
Listen to the collective in and out — mostly out.
We are learning to breathe again.

Soon you will hear the song. Listen.
The whippoorwill is about to sing.

The Human Rays of Hope for Lasting Peace in Gaza

It has long been my faith that peace anywhere in the world depends on the courageous efforts of average people who want the cycles of violence to end. I do not need to enumerate here the painful stories of how so many civilians – especially children – have been harmed in the latest violence that has taken place in Gaza. Can there be hope for peace in this war-torn region? In my search for an answer, I have been heartened by the numerous efforts that thousands of individuals on all sides of the conflict have been making to build lasting relationships with each other, which are vital to turning these difficult days of blood into days of hope.

Below I note some of the many groups forging these important human bridges of reconciliation, to build permanent structures of peace. These people embody what Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed when he said, “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”

If you know of other efforts we should be aware of, please list them in the Comments.

An Interfaith Declaration for Peace. On Tuesday, January 13, 2009 around 300 members of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities gathered in the Boston Commons for a silent vigil calling for an end to the violence in Gaza. Boston-area religious leaders from all Abrahamic religions jointly wrote a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This is one of the best frameworks for peace I have seen and the full statement is provided at the end of this article.
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/206691/index.php

All Nation’s Café. Since December 2003, the All Nations Cafe has been a fertile ground for innovative projects which allow people from warring nations to meet each other even at the worst of times. Their motto is “transforming checkpoints into meeting-points. Significantly, the All Nation’s Café is physical place on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, located in a buffer zone between the Israeli Army checkpoint and the Palestinian Authority. The All Nations Café is easily reached by Palestinians from East Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem and the villages and refugee camps that surround them. It is also a safe place for Israelis from Jerusalem, from the Galilee and from the West Bank settlement block of Gush Etzion to come. Internationals reach it from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. More than a coffee shop, they put on many programs and meet in each other’s homes besides at the café.
http://www.allnationscafe.org/index.php

OneVoice Movement to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The OneVoice Movement is an international mainstream grassroots movement with over 640,000 signatories in roughly equal numbers both in Israel and in Palestine, and 1,800 highly-trained youth leaders. It aims to amplify the voice of the overwhelming but heretofore silent majority of moderates who wish for peace and prosperity, empowering them to demand accountability from elected representatives and work toward a two-state solution guaranteeing an end to occupation and violence, and a viable, independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel.
http://www.onevoicemovement.org/

Pieces for Peace. More than 150 Palestinian and Israeli youth have met over 3 years to create a 330 square feet of mosaic dedicated to a joint vision for peace.
http://www.mideastweb.org/pieces4peace.htm

Soccer for Peace. This is a non-profit organization aiming to unite children of war-torn nations in their shared love of soccer. Though conflict exists in every corner of the world, so too does soccer - the most watched and played sport on earth. United in their love of the game, participants in their programs form organic relationships, implicit in which are the trust and respect necessary for constructive dialogue. Soccer for Peace believes that sport can serve as both a metaphor and vehicle for peace in our time.
http://www.soccerforpeace.com/

Gaza and Israel: An Interfaith Convocation of Prayers for Peace and Conversation. The St. Paul Interfaith Network (SPIN) invites the community to an opportunity for sharing prayers and conversation in response to the current crisis in Israel and Gaza and more generally to the urgent need for an alternative to violence throughout the world.
When: Martin Luther King Day, January 19, 7:00 to 8:30 PM
Where: Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, 700 Snelling Avenue South, St. Paul, MN 55116

Directories of Israeli-Palestinian peace groups:
http://www.mideastweb.org/mewgroups.htm
http://traubman.igc.org/peace2.htm


AN INTERFAITH DECLARATION FOR PEACE

We, members and leaders of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities in Greater Boston - all having deep and symbolic ties to the land and peoples of the Middle East - are anguished by the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza. Recognizing the legitimate needs of all peoples, including all those living in the Middle East , for dignity, peace, safety and security –- regardless of religion, race, or national origin -- we issue this joint statement with the hope and belief that our interfaith voices will be heard clearly, above the din of war.

As guiding principles,

We acknowledge the long, complex, and painful history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
We acknowledge the wide range of deeply-held beliefs, and intensely-felt narratives on all sides
We acknowledge that all sides are capable of assigning blame to others, and asserting justification for their cause
We observe that violence by any side begets more violence, hatred, and retaliation
We deplore any invocation of religion as a justification for violence against others, or the deprivation of the rights of others
We decry any use of inflammatory rhetoric that demonizes the other and is intended, or is likely, to promote hatred and disrespect
We believe the conflict can be resolved only through a political and diplomatic solution and not a military one.

In the face of many competing narratives, we recognize that the overriding common need of the peoples of the region is the prompt implementation of a just and lasting peace. Toward that end, and particularly in response to the current hostilities,

We call upon the United States and the international community immediately to intercede to help reestablish a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, toward the goal of a permanent cessation of hostilities
We call upon Hamas immediately to end all rocket attacks on Israel , and upon Israel immediately to end its military campaign in Gaza
We call for an immediate end to all strikes on civilian centers and citizens, both Israeli and Palestinian
We call for lifting of the blockade on Gaza as to all non-military goods, for an immediate and significant increase in humanitarian aid to address the needs of the people of Gaza , and for all parties involved to join in taking responsibility to address those human needs
We call on all parties involved in the conflict to work sincerely and vigorously toward a just and lasting peace that addresses and promotes the national aspirations of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples
We call on President-elect Obama to make clear that as President he will urgently assert US leadership to achieve a comprehensive diplomatic resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts

Through this joint statement we affirm our commitment to engage with one another, even, and especially, during times of great stress. We also affirm our common humanity and our common belief – as Jews, Muslims and Christians - that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must cease, that there is no military or violent solution, that all human life is valued, and that all parties must cooperate to make the peace – a just and lasting peace desperately needed and deserved by all the peoples of the region.

Signed:

Salwa Abd-Allah, Executive Council, Muslim American Society of Boston (MAS Boston ), Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC)
Tariq Ali, President, Harvard Islamic Society
Hossam AlJabri, President, MAS Boston-ISBCC; Trustee, Interreligious Center for Public Life (ICPL)
Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, President, United Church of Christ Mass. Conference
Abdul Cader Asmal, Past President, Islamic Council of New England and Islamic Center of Boston ; Trustee ICPL
Rabbi Al Axelrad, Hillel Director Emeritus, Brandeis University
Diane Balser, Executive Director, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom
Dorothy C. Buck, Ph.D., Director, Badaliya
Rev. Nick Carter, Ph.D., President, Andover Newton Theological School
Dris Djermoun, President, Islamic Center of Boston (Wayland)
Diana L. Eck, Professor, Harvard University
Imam Talal Eid, Islamic Institute of Boston ; Chaplain Brandeis University
Ashraf Elkerm, Board Chairman, Islamic Center of Greater Worcester
Rev. Dr. Terasa G. Cooley, Unitarian Universalist Mass. Bay District Executive
Mercedes S. Evans, Esq., Committee on Contemporary Spiritual & Public Concerns (CSPC Committee) (Civil Rights)
Imam Abdullah Faruuq, Imam, Mosque for the Praising of Allah (Roxbury)
Michael Felsen, President, Boston Workmen's Circle
Lisa Gallatin, Executive Director, Boston Workmen's Circle
Zekeriyya Gemici, President, MIT Muslim Students Association
Rabbi David Gordis
Rabbi Arthur Green, Rector, Rabbinical School, Hebrew College , Newton
Rev. Raymond G. Helmick, S.J., Instructor, Conflict Resolution, Boston College
Arnold Hiatt
Rev. Jack Johnson, Executive Director, MCC
M. Bilal Kaleem, Executive Director, MAS Boston-ISBCC
Anwar Kazmi, Executive Council, MAS Boston-ISBCC
Alexander Kern, Executive Director, Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries
Nabeel Khudairi, Past President, Islamic Council of New England
Idit Klein, Executive Director, Keshet
Margie Klein, Co-Director, Moishe/Kavod House
Mary Lahaj, Muslim Chaplain, Simmons College
Geoffrey Lewis
Imam Taalib Mahdee, Imam, Masjid Al-Quran, ( Dorchester )
Rev. Bert Marshall, Church World Service, New England Director
Jerome D. Maryon, Esq., President, CSPC Committee
Michael J. Moran, Pax Christi Massachusetts
Sister Jane Morrissey, SSJ, Pax Christi Massachusetts
Merrie Najimy, President, American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee, MA
Imam Khalid Nasr, Imam, ICNE-Quincy
Imam Basyouni Nehela, Imam, Islamic Society of Boston
Rashid Noor, President, Islamic Center of New England
Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow
Rabbi Barbara Penzner, Temple Hillel B'nai Torah
Rev. Rodney L. Petersen, Ph.D., Executive Director, Boston Theological Institute
Dr Asif Rizvi, President-Elect, Islamic Council of New England
Rabbi Victor Reinstein, Nehar Shalom
Rev. Anne Robertson, Executive Director, Massachusetts Bible Society
Qasim Salimi, President, Boston University Muslim Students Association
Robert M. Sarly, Trustee, ICPL
Rev. Mikel E. Satcher, Ph.D., Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church
Professor Adam Seligman, Boston University
Rabbi Sanford Seltzer, Chair, ICPL
Enid Shapiro, Trustee, ICPL
Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE, Episcopal Bishop, Diocese of Massachusetts
Alan Solomont
Rabbi Toba Spitzer, Congregation Dorshei Tzedek
Rev. John K. Stendahl, Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Newtons
Sidney Topol
Rabbi Andrew Vogel, Temple Sinai
Peter D. Weaver, Bishop, United Methodist Church , Boston Area
(Organizational affiliations for identification purposes only)

Gaza and Israel: An Interfaith Convocation of Prayers for Peace and Conversation

The St. Paul Interfaith Network (SPIN) invites the community to an opportunity for sharing prayers and conversation in response to the current crisis in Israel and Gaza and more generally to the urgent need for an alternative to violence throughout the world.

When: Martin Luther King Day, January 19, 7:00 to 8:30 PM

Where: Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, 700 Snelling Avenue South, St. Paul, MN 55116