Some recent Common Dreams website links

I'm on an activist blogging trajectory lately. What's that all about? I think I feel bad about missing the various antiwar activities. Too busy advocating for affordable housing (yes, we still need it, at least around here), raising two sons who I hope will be peacemakers, and remembering to hang out with my wife and my meeting sometimes. And not get too sucked into blogs or Facebook or stuff like that. Though I did find out that a college friend, Jeff Gordinier, has a book coming out on Monday: X Saves the World. Congrats, Jeff!

Anyway, back to the slacktivist thing. I check on the Common Dreams website from time to time. Another college friend, Jeremy Toback, first told me about it, probably five years ago or so. It has links to lots of pieces in the press and online media. Here are some good recent links I got from Common Dreams. The first one links to the original story, the rest link to the Common Dreams citation.

First off, Wow!

Florida Legislature makes formal apology for slavery
By Josh Hafenbrack and John Kennedy | Sun-Sentinel.com, March 26, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - In a watershed moment in Florida's race relations, a solemn state Legislature on Wednesday apologized for the Florida's long history of slavery, expressing "profound regret for the shameful chapter in this state's history."

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Published on Thursday, March 27, 2008 by The Christian Science Monitor
Fight Violence With Nonviolence
Unarmed civilian peacekeepers are saving lives today.
by Rolf Carriere and Michael Nagler
About the Nonviolent Peace Force, which was cofounded by San Francisco Meeting member David Hartsough!

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Published on Thursday, March 27, 2008 by TruthDig.com
Body of War
by Amy Goodman

Typically unmentioned alongside the count of U.S. war dead are the tens of thousands of wounded (not to mention the Iraqi dead).... [T]he Web site icasualties.org reports an official number of more than 40,000 soldiers requiring medical airlifts out of Iraq.... Tomas Young was one of those injured, on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City. Young is the subject of a new feature documentary by legendary TV talk-show host Phil Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro, called “Body of War.”

[I heard part of this interview. It was quite something. Donahue was interviewed on KPFA -- he was awesome in his smooth delivery and his critique of the mainstream media, in which he used to be a leading practitioner.]

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Published on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
Anti-War Campaigners Have to Change Electoral Tactics
Neither Clinton nor Obama has a real plan to end the occupation of Iraq, but they could be forced to change position
by Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill

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Published on Thursday, March 20, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus
Resisting the Empire
by Joseph Gerson [AFSC staffer]

Victories are within sight for people in a growing number of nations where communities that host U.S. foreign military bases have long fought to get rid of them.

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Published on Thursday, March 20, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Words to the Die-In Participants: We as a People Have the Power
by Daniel Ellsberg

These were my remarks to several hundred activists and supporters participating in a die-in in downtown San Francisco at noon, March 19, 2008, on the fifth anniversary of the launching of shock and awe in Iraq....

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Then there was this in one of my local papers today:

PBS to air study on link between money, health
Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

If you tell Dr. Anthony Iton where you live and how much money you make, he'll tell you how long you're likely to live. The public health director for Alameda County said he was startled by the results of taking the county's deaths and mapping them according to U.S. Census tracts....
     Iton, who appears in "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?," a four-part PBS series that explores why social factors - economic status, race, neighborhood conditions - can be more powerful predictors of health and life expectancy than biology or even some behaviors such as smoking.