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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
"For Gandhi’s method to work, there must be a government capable of shame"
First: Please join me in wishing Happy Birthday to our prodigal Expendable Mudge...
And now...on with the show:
In her excellent 1995 book, Bridge of Courage, Jennifer Harbury quotes a Guatemalan compañero responding to a plea for non-violent resistance: “Don’t talk to me about Gandhi; he wouldn’t have survived a week here ... There was a peaceful movement for progress here, once. They were crushed. We were crushed. For Gandhi’s method to work, there must be a government capable of shame. We lack that here.”
Sounds like a good time to re-post this nugget from Derrick Jensen:
I just got home from talking to a ... longtime activist. She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the forests of Oregon. Whenever activists learned a hillside was going to be sprayed, they assembled there, hoping their presence would stop the poisoning. But each time, like clockwork, helicopters appeared, and each time, like clockwork, helicopters dumped loads of Agent Orange onto the hillside and onto the protesting activists. The campaign did not succeed.
“But,” she said to me, “I’ll tell you what did. A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills, and they sent messages to the Bureau of Land Management and to Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber companies saying, ‘We know the names of your helicopter pilots, and we know their addresses.’”
I waited for her to finish.
“You know what happened next?” she asked.
“I think I do,” I responded.
“Exactly,” she said. “The spraying stopped."
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