Sometimes it’s just important to thank a friend who steps up. Thanks, Ellen DeGeneres, for sharing this story.

http://www.upworthy.com/meet-the-tattooed-hero-who-stood-up-for-a-stranger-who-was-bullied-for-being-gay?c=ufb1

I have no strong comments about this item in the New York Times, except for the fact that it  seems to raise a significant red flag for those of us who call for alternative sentencing, restorative justice and community-based solutions to over-reliance on incarceration.

Are there massive flaws in the process of selecting halfway houses for inmates?

Sometimes it’s just right to acknowledge the First Nations people who keep Restorative Justice alive.

Native peoples keep alive a tradition of restoring offenders to their communities.  Just as many Christians believe in the power or restoration and reconciliation, many native peoples also sustain a belief in community.  Shown here, in Seattle, WA, a flash gathering comes together to unite in drumming and expressing life’s rhythm.

What? People are packing at Starbucks?  Who knew?  You mean, the nervous, close-talking guy behind me in line for his third grande-whatever wasn’t just glad to see me, he was actually carrying a gun in his pocket?

Somehow I missed the Valentine’s Day launch of a Starbucks boycott protesting pistol-packing patrons.  I usually start my days on MSNBC watching Morning Joe, which used to be “Brewed by Starbucks”, with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist and a cast of Starbucks-caffeinated politics junkies. If Mika had tried to mention the Starbucks boycott and was, as usual, drowned out by former Gingrich Congressman, Redneck Riviera Frat Boy Joe Scarborough, it had escaped my notice.  Maybe I was too busy being irritated with Joe.

The Starbucks boycott offers stickers for storefront windows, identifying the location as a "Gun Free Zone." See end of posting below.

News of the boycott arrived via snail last week. It came in a renewal reminder from the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF), and it included a nifty storefront sticker (pictured at left), “Gun Free Zone,” for me to share with my local small business.  [Transparency Disclaimer: I have been a supporting member of this organization for the past two years.]

Amid the speculative torrent of vigilante justice stories about George Zimmerman and his alleged victim, Trayvon Martin, I admit to an elevated level of interest in our nation’s patchwork quilt of gun laws.  Florida’s so-called “Stand your ground” law has been especially troubling to me, in light of the 911 recording and the dispatcher’s instructions to Zimmerman that he not continue his pursuit of the young African-American man wearing the hoodie.

But a boycott of Starbucks over their acceptance of “concealed carry”?  No way.  I have a family member who manages a Starbucks in San Diego.  Could it be?  Is she and her staff unknowingly serving caffeine to gun-hiding patrons?  Say it ain’t so, Morning Joe.

Imagine how clueless I felt as I read the EPF renewal letter:

“While states have rightfully forbidden weapons inside taverns for decades, Starbucks is alone among major retail outlets in allowing customers to bring their gun(s) – open or concealed – into its coffee shops,” said the Rev. Jackie Lynn, executive director, in the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF) press release.  She continues:

“We know guns and alcohol don’t mix. Why allow guns and caffeine? We stand with the National Gun Victims Action Council, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and many other groups working to reduce gun violence in the United States,” (the EPF) Rev. Lynn added.

 

According to EPF’s Bob Kinney (bob.kinney@gmail.com), “Despite numerous pleas to ban weapons in Starbucks, the iconic Seattle-based coffee giant upholds the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) pro-gun agenda, which was stymied most recently by a conservative U.S. federal judge in the Northern Panhandle of Texas.”

Yes, improbable as it may seen, even the Texas U.S. District Court Judge Sam Cummings – who, according to Texas Civil Rights Project director James Harrington, is one of the most conservative judges in the state of Texas – ruled against the request of three NRA-backed Texas minors to get a concealed weapon license even though the plaintiffs were under 21-years-old.

When the boycott was launched, supporters of the right to carry guns in public organized and went to Starbucks locations to support the coffee company’s pro-gun policies.  According to a report in the Los Angeles Times:

‘Those who prefer to drink their lattes packing protection on their hip turned out at Starbucks across the country on the first day of a “buycott” organized by gun owners — countering the Starbucks boycott called this week by the National Gun Victims Action Council.’

 

The likelihood of the conflict going away after a little time seems low, according to supporters of the boycott at EPF:  ”The multi-faith and secular boycott will continue until Starbucks forbids weapons in their coffee shops, noted now for a mellow ambiance within a favorite meet-up spot, and casual web-surfing without the fear of saying the wrong thing to someone packing a Glock pistol who is at a neighboring table and finishing her third espresso, the Rev. Lynn said.”

I’ll acknowledge, I’m a little ambivalent about boycotting a family member’s current source of income, but I am certain I don’t want her co-workers to be at risk for a java-jiving customer.  As I picture that customer, the lyrics of Paul Simon’s “My Little Town” come to mind, “Twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun.”

As I boycott this coffee giant, I will spend a few minutes writing to the company, to explain why.  Maybe a few more messages from customers will change their decision.

Window stickers supporting a “Gun Free Zone” are available at EPFNational.org.  Donations are welcome, too, for their Starbucks boycott and for many other global peace initiatives.

Gun Free Zone window sticker backside.

Right after September 11, 2001, I began to notice the broad public statements about radical Islam that flatly contradicted what I knew from my own personal relationships and study.  As the nation was reeling from the horrific acts of 9/11, I admit that I briefly bought into some of those statements, as if they applied to most Muslims.

Quickly, though, I thought of the young man from a Muslim culture who had worked at my bookstore. He was anything but an adherent of radical Islam. In fact, he immediately enlisted in the U.S. armed forces, right after graduating with honors from his high school in Stockbridge, GA, a small city in the southern region of metropolitan Atlanta.

Cultural critic Naomi Wolf writes about America' Islamic blind spot in a recent issue of Islamophobia Today.

Whenever a politician or rabid commentator would make sweeping statement about radical Islam, I would think of the many Muslims I have known since my years at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and would view the comments through the lens of my experience and my academic studies.

Islamophobia Today sends message to Iran: Free Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.

I’m writing today to urge my readers to bookmark Islamophobia Today, the website of Americans Against Islamophobia, or search for the group’s page on Facebook.  You are likely to gain a perspective which will seldom receive significant coverage in the mainstream media, which shows a definite preference for the video-friendly destructive actions of radical Islam. Many of the postings at Islamophobia Today are from highly regarded U.S. media outlets.  There is nothing extreme at this website.

Whatever may be occurring around the globe involving violent extremists in radical islam, we can work for better understanding in our own local communities. That understanding begins by informing ourselves of the many ways in which Islamophobia shapes our attitudes and beliefs.

CNN raised the question, “Is America Islamophobic?” as far back as September 2010.

 

A friend I met in the Restorative Justice movement shared a song with me months ago. I invite you to read the lyrics below and listen to the music at Spotify.com.

Randi Driscoll

TRUE BEAUTY
words/music Randi Driscoll

Have you ever thought about the rain…
There are those who run in it and those who just complain
Like the blind old man who, when he finally saw his face,
He said “it looks like beauty comes with age…”

Have you ever thought about fear
It’s the voice of doubt that whispers softly in your ear
It’s the time you question all the things you didn’t say,
It’s the one that got away.

I believe that history was meant to be rewritten
There are those who say “you should accept that path you’re given”
I think, what a shame if those before us, had listened?

Let your own voice, be all that you hear.
When the world tells you, “No”, cover your ears.
Let your two eyes be all that you need
So, you can decide, what is true beauty.

Have you ever thought about words,
there are those that lift you up and make you tough
And others that just hurt
If you never heard never, would you ever even know what it means.

I believe that history was meant to be rewritten
There are those who say “you should accept that path your given”
I think, what a shame if those before us, had listened.

Let your own voice, be all that you hear.
When the world tells you “No”, cover your ears.
Let your two eyes be all that you need
So you can decide, what is true beauty

There will be those who won’t trust you
But you’ll stand your ground, your head held high.
With fire in your own convictions
You’ll carry on, you’ll pass them by.
And think of how sweet that victory will be,
When you come out on the other side…..

Let your own voice be all that you hear.
When the world tells you “No”, cover your ears.
Let your two eyes be all that you need
So you can decide, what is true beauty.

Many thanks, Janet!
 

It’s probably a bit inappropriate to refer to a symphony’s music director as a “seat-of-the-pants peacemaker,” but as a blogger with an interest in community-level peacemaking efforts, I will apply the label as a badge of honor.

Stockton Symphony music director Peter Jaffe brings conflict resolution through classical music.

Through the efforts of Peter Jaffe, the Music Director of Stockton, California’s Symphony, conflict resolution through music will take center stage on Thursday, March 8, 2012. The symphony he directs will premier an original composition of “Uzu and Muzu from Kakaruzu,” by renowned Israeli composer Avner Dorman.

No stranger to conflicts of long standing, renowned Israeli composer Avner Dorman brings original work to conflict-torn Stockton, CA.

The symphonic piece is based on a children’s fairy tale popular in Israel by Ephraim Sidon. The orchestra’s formal premiere of “Uzu & Muzu” will be played Thursday at Delta College’s Atherton Auditorium and repeated Saturday as part of its “Conflict & Resolution” concerts.

Stockton is a city in decline, with a history of conflict between its Latino and Anglo communities.  NPR’s All Things Considered reported yesterday, March 7, that the city ranked number two on Forbes Magazine’s list of the “most miserable cities” in the U.S. in 2011. The town now teeters on the brink of bankruptcy as the trickle-down Wall Street recovery takes its time reaching this agricultural port city. Stockton is plagued by a history of racial and cultural divides, worsened by massive housing foreclosures and the Great Recession.

Music alone won’t do the trick.  In advance of Thursday’s symphonic composition premier by Dorman, the Stockton Record newspaper co-sponsored art and writing contests with the Stockton Symphony. As part of the Symphony’s Steppin’ Out youth programs and its Classics IV performance series, the composer met with groups of Stockton fourth and fifth grade students in the Fall of 2011, and with symphony supporters to offer samplings of his work in progress. Avner played sketches of his music from his computer software, “using a MIDI system that very closely approximates the sounds of orchestral instruments,” according to Peter Jaffe, writing on his blog.

Fourth and fifth graders were selected because, by the time they settle into sixth grade, they are very likely to have succumbed to pressure to join a gang. At that point, they are well on their way into the school-to-prison pipeline, if they survive.

Avner, an Israeli who is no stranger to conflicts of long standing, selected Uzu and Muzu from Kakarusu as his text. The author of the fairly tale, Ephraim Sidon is as well known in Israel as the Dr. Seuss is  in the U.S., The story concerns two brothers who are so close that they literally feel each other’s pain and joy, until they quarrel, and then build a wall in the middle of their home. In the musical work, two percussionists on opposite sides of the stage will represent the warring brothers. The actor Webster Williams, born in Stockton, narrates this world premiere. In the fairy tale, as time goes by, Uzu and Muzu’s descendants believe that horrible monsters and demons live on the other side of the wall. It takes four generations before the wall of prejudice is demolished.
http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=148145028&m=148170065&t=audio
The staging of the performance in the suffering city of Stockton, embodying the work of an artist from another conflict-torn region of the world, seems to me to be represent a shared yearning for resolution of conflicts that have existed too long.  Can music resolve conflicts of long standing? By themselves, maybe not. But the community meetings, the writing and art projects, and the music, when combined, might stand a chance. Indulge me:  Like chicken soup…it couldn’t hurt.  Would it kill you to share a nosh and try una copa?

When emails show up in my inbox from “Funny or Die,” I set aside the serious concerns and enjoy some good laughs. These guys produce some great satire. Enjoy and share.

http://www.funnyordie.com/embed/251fa6410b

After nearly two years of planning and then recording video of the lives of young people in high school and middle school teens affected by bullying for the documentary Bully, an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will prevent people in the target audience from seeing it, both in their middle- and high schools, and in theaters when it opens March 30.

Invest a moment to view the trailer, then consider signing a petition urging MPAA to reconsider its rating.

The Bully Project is a new feature-length documentary that follows “a year in the life” of America’s bullying crisis, and offers an intimate look at how bullying has touched the lives of five high school and middle school kids and their families.

For six months, this blog has featured a link to The Bully Project in the column on the right side of the page.  Since we began publishing the link, The Weinstein Company has put its marketing muscle behind the project and will distribute it.  Now, as the project approaches its release date, the young people who most need to see it may be barred from seeing the stories of their lives. [pullquote]‘Because of the R rating, most kids won’t get to see this film. No one under 17 will be allowed to see the movie, and the film won’t be allowed to be screened in American middle schools or high schools.’ – Katy Butler, Michigan high school student[/pullquote]

I was drawn to the project when I read the comments of director Lee Hirsch, back when he   and his partner, producer Cynthia Lowen, were strategizing about fundraising.  Stories abounded about bullied middle school and high school taking their own lives.  I sensed Hirsch and Lowen would take a principled approach to the project, with integrity and passion, as I read:

BULLY is a deeply personal film for me: I was bullied throughout middle school and much of my childhood. In many ways, those experiences and struggles helped shape my worldview and my direction as a filmmaker. Bullying was a subject I wanted very much to explore in a film, and it was always on the list of projects I wanted to develop. But it stayed an abstraction for a long time — I was too scared to start developing the idea in earnest because it would mean confronting my own demons, and revisiting a painful period of my life.

Then, Hirsch continued, in April of 2009 came news about two young people, two 11-year-old boys, middle school students  – Joseph Walker Hoover of Massachusetts, and Jaheem Herrera of Georgia– who took their own lives. Both deaths were linked to trauma from chronic bullying.

Carl Joseph Walker Hoover

Jaheem Herrera, at age 11, ended his life in 2009. His mother blamed his suicide on relentless bullying.

In the wake of those tragedies, Hirsch said he turned his full focus to making the film. In the years since those two tragic deaths, several other suicides have gained national attention, also attributed to the effects of sustained bullying, both in person and on the internet.

It’s more urgent than ever that the documentary, Bully, be widely available, and easily accessible. to teens everywhere.  It’s time for the MPAA censors to rethink their values.  Some coarse language is much less offensive than the brutality which far too many young people experience on a daily basis.  Would Bully be less objectionable if the abusers used  G-rated words as they drove their peers to suicide?

The true obscenity here is in in the physical, verbal (and online) violence young people endure, not some crude “language” used by classmates.  Couldn’t it also be said the timidity of the MPAA borders on obscene?

If you agree, sign the petition and urge your friends to do the same.

Corcoran, CA, inmate Christian Gomez was found dead in his cell on February 2, 2012.

When officials of the California prison in Corcoran reported their discovery of the body of Christian Gomez, age 27, on February 2, questions immediately arose.  Prison officials quickly became unresponsive to reporters’ questions about the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) inmate who had been participating in a hunger strike. A prison watchdog group which monitors California’s use of solitary confinement, Solitary Watch, published frequent reports of their concerns.

Gomez and many other inmates of California prisons had taken the ultimate step of starving themselves to protest what they called the torturous use of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation, which they said continued even after their terms in isolation had been satisfied.

Gomez was found unresponsive in his cell at an unconfirmed time on February 2. Reports from other inmates indicate that they had pounded on their cell doors and screamed to get the attention of the correctional officers. He was declared dead at Corcoran District Hospital at 12:22 PM, according to reports in a San Francisco newspaper.

I include this report here because America imprisons more of its people, both in raw numbers and percentages of the total population, than any other nation on earth.  Few will die on hunger strikes. Most will, eventually, be released back into their communities.  The more inhumane their prison experiences, the more angry we can expect them to be.

I’ve been following the reports I receive via email from  Solitary Watch for several months, and my sense was that there would be deaths at any time. All indications were that the prison was not taking the hunger strike seriously, and that they were not forthcoming with reports which could be confirmed by people from outside the system.

Christian Gomez was convicted of murder.  As often happens, his family and friends maintained his innocence all along. It’s not my purpose here to second-guess the jury, although I am well aware of the disproportionate number of African-Americans and people of color who are incarcerated in the U.S.  It is a national disgrace.

My point is that imprisoned people should not be “out of sight, out of mind.”  As responsible citizens, we must be aware of the actions taken on our behalf.  Apparently, the prison officials in California have been abusing their use of solitary confinement such that it has reached a torturous level, lots of mini-Guantanamos across the Golden State.

California's Corcoran State Prison

Currently, there are over 350 inmates in the ASU at Corcoran. According to a 2009 Office of the Inspector General report, there are over 8,000 administrative segregation beds in California. The report examined a number of ASUs, not including Corcoran, but indicated that several ASUs involved unjustifiably delayed classification hearings, holding inmates with expired SHU terms, and transfer delays. Such issues were noted by the Corcoran petition in December. The prisoners’ third demand is “(t)hat inmates not be further punished upon completion of their SHU terms,” and reads in part:

The San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper reports that the dreaded Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU):

“Inmates are being placed in the ASU after the completion of their SHU [Security Housing Unit] terms supposedly ‘pending transfer.’ These inmates are then stuck here for four, five months, in many instances even longer, before finally being transferred to general population. This practice of illegally placing inmates in ASU upon the completion of their SHU terms for long periods of time without proper procedure and with excessive delays on their transfers is resulting in unjustified punishment for these inmates.

To demand a complete accounting of the conditions surrounding Christian Gomez’s death, and the prison system’s isolation policy:

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Matthew Cate, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA 94283-0001, and Chief Deputy Warden C. Gipson, Corcoran State Prison, P.O. Box 8800, Corcoran, CA 93212