http://www.democracynow.org /
Democracy Now! is a national, listener-sponsored public radio and TV show, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the country. Hosted by Amy Goodman (see information on the local effort to get DemocracyNOW! on Maine Public Radio ) daily shows are archived on the web . (requires RealPlayer or other media player) Read Washington Post article about DemocracyNOW!

http://www.publicintegrity.org
The Center for Public Integrity produced a report about possible conflicts of interest in defense contracting on March 28 revealing that nine members of the Defense Policy Board (including Richard Perle) had ties to companies that won more than $72 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.

And for a little comic (?) relief!
http://www.markfiore.com/ (may require Flash plug-in)
or
http://www.jimhightower.com/   (requires RealPlayer or other media player)

Clean Energy Policies Would Create 1.4 Million New Jobs
http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/bluegreen.asp

A new report released by the Sierra Club, the United Steel Workers, UNITE/HERE, and SEIU shows that a clean energy policy would create 1.4 million new American jobs while saving consumers an average of $1,275 on their energy bills in 2025.

The report, "Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger: Secure Jobs, A Clean Environment, and Less Foreign Oil" uses classic economic modeling to demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of adopting a cleaner, smarter energy policy: the creation of new American jobs, lower energy bills, and increased protection of our air, water and land.

Other Peace and Justice Resources:

• Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War
• Book Review by Michael Howard Avoiding Politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life
• RESOURCES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR, OIL AND THE MILITARY
• Videos of  Peace & Justice Activism in Eastern Maine from March 2002 - May 2003 available from the Peace and Justice Center
• Tax Cut background information
• Some useful alternative media links
• Public Statements by Peace and Justice Center members
  
• Citizens for Tax Justice has released a state-by-state analysis of the final version of President Bush’s tax cut plan, as signed by the President on May 28. .. Nationwide, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers will receive, on average, a total of $350 over the next four years, or less than $100 per year... Nationwide, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans will receive, on average, a total of $96,634 in tax cuts over the next four years. For more tax cut information, see below
• Link to Peace Action Maine Weekly Update
• For info on depleted uranium Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/uranium/index.html
  

• Programs
• Peace Education
• Materials
• Workbook & Workbook Lesson Plans

Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War
Study Finds Widespread Misperceptions on Iraq Highly Related to Support for War
Misperceptions Vary Widely Depending on News Source

College Park, MD: A new study based on a series of seven nationwide polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war with Iraq.
Such misperceptions are highly related to support for the war.

This is a book of particular value for activists. First, it holds up an illuminating mirror, enabling us to see ourselves as others see us, and it clarifies contexts we appear in but usually take for granted. Second, it illuminates those we hope to reach, who are not “in the choir,” and explains why they so often not only do not respond to our invitations and provocations, but do not even hear us.

The author, a Univ. of Wisconsin sociologist, studied three sorts of groups, not through superficial questionnaires, but by joining them, taking part in their activities, and talking to members “backstage” as well as in the group setting and in public fora. The depth of the study reveals what is made possible, or obscured, by the context of group interactions themselves, thus revealing an important dimension of agency between purely private beliefs on the one hand, and the influence of powerful institutions such as corporations, the media, and the state on the other. One group, the “volunteers”, consisted of citizens meeting to address the problem of teen drug abuse. The second, a country and western dance club, the “Buffaloes,” sought a kind of community devoid of politics. The third, the “activists,” struggled against toxic polluters in their community.        

The volunteers chose issues “close to home,” and avoided issues they thought they could do nothing about. They narrowed their focus to individual action, refusing to make connections to wider social issues such as distribution of wealth or government tax policy. But interestingly, individual members would voice wider views and sympathies “backstage,” outside the group context.  In the group, addressing wider issues was resisted because it threatened the group’s feeling of empowerment; the group struggled against defeatism, even with its modest agenda. And, although backstage participants would voice altruistic motives, issues were defined in self-interested terms: I’m here for my children, etc. The focus was on action to the exclusion of political discussion, which was perceived as grandstanding.

The “Buffaloes” always steered conversation away from political topics with humor, non sequiturs, or cliches (“It’s a shame”). Even in a welcome-home-the-troops rally at a country western club–and this may be reassuring to some who perceive nascent fascism in some such rallies–political speeches were ignored as people wanted to get back to the music. A fragile sense of community was preserved among virtual strangers by avoidance of political issues.

The activists alone sought not only to achieve objectives (stopping toxic waste production) but to challenge the terms of political discourse. But they too, under pressure from the media or agenda-setting government bodies, often framed issues in terms of self-interest and “Momism”, thus contributing to the “evaporation of politics.” The portrayal of activists as emotional and uninformed, pitted against officials offering purely technical information, reinforces the prejudice, shared by Buffaloes and volunteers, of activists as motivated by a narcissistic desire for attention, and obliterates space for shared discussion of a common good.

This book makes for at times painful reading. The Buffaloes seemed impenetrable, and given that country western music is the most popular in America, it underscored how difficult it will be to bring about a progressive majority. The study of volunteers revealed potential fellow travelers. But the barriers they erect against politics, being rooted not in egoism or ignorance, but in a psychological need for a feeling of empowerment, are difficult to breach. Such barriers, in my experience, are created among activists as well, if to a lesser extent, whenever issues seem so big that to address them threatens an overwhelming pessimism.

Most challenging was the recognition that activists struggling precisely to awaken political discourse among ordinary citizens are regularly pigeon-holed-- and contribute to that pigeon-holing. We employ theater, for example, to attract attention, but what gets communicated is the theatricality, not the analysis it was meant to foreground.

Painful reading, but not ultimately discouraging. Written by a sympathetic author, this book is useful for soul-searching and refining our strategies, identifying our own motives, and better understanding the complex motives of our fellow citizens, and how these are shaped in social interaction itself. Most heartening is the conclusion, well-supported by the data, that apathy is not a natural fact or an inevitable product of dominant institutions, but is in part produced, often with considerable effort against natural desires to understand and connect,  by all of us in local communities. If we can understand how, there is some hope it can be undone.

Mike Howard

RESOURCES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR, OIL AND THE MILITARY
Resources on political economy of Iraq war

THE IRAQ WAR IN THE CONTEXT OF RECENT US FOREIGN POLICY:
WHAT IT'S ABOUT AND WHAT IT ISN'T ABOUT; OVERVIEWS OF EMPIRE; HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

WHAT BUSH AND FRIENDS SAY ABOUT IT

OIL

MILITARY

BENEFITS TO US CORPORATIONS

WHO GETS HURT

WEBSITES YOU CAN SEARCH
A few general websites with a lot of articles on oil and related topics:

RELATED RESOURCES

Videos of  Peace & Justice Activism in Eastern Maine from March 2002 - May 2003

These videos have been produced by volunteers  Bill Phillips and Paul Perreault  who have devoted countless hours of their time to be present at events and to edit them for Public Access TV viewers. Videos are @ 30 minutes or 60 minutes long. You can purchase the videos for $10 +$5.00 shipping and handling. Make the check out to the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, 170 Park Street, Bangor, Maine 04401.   Your purchase will help Bill and Paul  to continue to produce these wonderful records of  our activism.  Additional donations of money, equipment and time to help with this project (Community Media Center) are most  welcome. If you have cable TV, watch for some of these videos on Ch2.  Times and programs change each week.  Currently Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. are the most likely times to catch these programs.

March 2, 2002 Real Security Hearing in Bangor at William S. Cohen School   -- testimony of some of the fifteen organizations in Eastern Maine  about the impact of the “war on terrorism” and alternatives.

September 28, 2002  No War on Iraq Rally at Federal Building in Bangor

December 7, 2002  Pearl Harbor Remembrance Ceremony and Rally for Real Security at Davenport Park in Bangor and march through Bangor to the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine

February 3, 2003 Dr. Tom Whitney on Cuba .  Lecture as part of the Marxist Socialist Luncheon series at the University of Maine

February 6, 2003  What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Think of the War on Iraq?   Lecture by Doug Allen as part the Marxist-Socialist Luncheon series at the University of Maine

February 12, 2003 Patriot Act Rally   on the steps of the Bangor Public Library and

February 15, 2003       Stop the War on Iraq demonstration and march in Bangor

February 21, 2003  Amy Goodman talk at the University of Maine sponsored by the Maine Peace Action Committee and the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine

March 7, 2003  “Petitioning Our Legislators” delivering signatures to the Federal Building in Bangor of more than 1000 asking our congressional delegation to take back the congressional authority to declare war

March 10 to  22, 2003  “A Week of Protest on the Eve of War   -- Collateral invasions, (Candlelight Vigil March l6th) Rallying the reserves(Rally at the Federal Building in Bangor March 20th), Escalation (civil disobedience March 20th)  and Empathy (“Die-in” at Westmarket Square March 22), Facing the Horror (Chain of Concern)

March 29th , 2003  Greater Bangor Area Veterans for Peace founding meeting .

April 19, 2003  Statewide Convergance for Peace in Augusta , rally and march

Tax Cut background information:
It helps to give a reason or two why you're personally opposed to repealing the Estate Tax.  Here are a few suggestions:

• Any tax cut really means a cut in essential services we depend on. As Molly Ivins put it in a recent column, "it's taking away after-school programs and health clinics and firefighters."
• Wealthy elites got a $320 billion tax break just last month.
• It's simply irresponsible to reduce federal taxes on millionaires by an additional $63 billion per year in the face of massive deficits.
• Only the richest 2 percent of our nation's families currently pay  any estate tax at all.  These are people with estates larger than $1
•   million for an individual or $2 million for a couple.
• The estate tax is a transfer tax on the unearned inheritance of wealth; the majority of estates are appreciated assets which have
•   never been taxed.  If we tax wages, it is only fair to tax estates. 
• Our democracy cannot afford to increase the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the rich, and widen the gap between them
•   and the majority of working Americans. 
• The Estate Tax is a vital incentive for charitable bequests & giving. Permanent repeal would have a devastating impact on charities. 
  

* The full article by Molly Ivins is at:
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57363-2003Jun13.html
 
** For more information on the Estate Tax, see:
  http://ufenet.org/estatetax/

Mike Howard's Comments at Iraq War Forum, March 16: " This War is Not Necessary"
Mike Howard's Op-ed in BDN, March 15: " A Special Appeal to Maine’s Senators "
Dennis Chinoy's statement of March 7 to the Maine Congressional Delegation

Comments of Francine Stark at February 15 rally to protest impending Iraq War