SUSTAINABLE MEAT, UNSALTED
I was taken aback when reading in the summer WIN (2011) editorial that avoidance of meat in the diet seems to be a foundational tenet of WRL’s nonviolence and that you had to issue what amounted to an apology or disclaimer about including a meat-based recipe from our indigenous cousins in Minnesota.
While mass consumption of feedlot flesh is not only unhealthy to consumers but vastly accelerates ecological destruction, human beings were at their most sustainable when we were hunter-gatherers (we were also far, far fewer). Hunting for food is a core part of the American rural tradition and may become increasingly necessary as the world’s food supplies dwindle in both quantity and nutritional value and as the money economy continues to implode. Organic farming, including the raising of animals for food, remains one of the most sustainable and important human enterprises.
I would also challenge any philosophy that equates eating animals with violence, since that would define nature itself as fundamentally violent, and I propose that it was human culture that brought violence into an otherwise harmonious natural order.
I was surprised (but only slightly) that the Ojibwe recipe included hamburger, the meat that is the least traditional and possibly most damaging to the health of both body and land, rather than wild moose, deer, or bear. But if you had to issue a distancing disclaimer to the wild rice hamburger with blue cheese recipe, it should have been for its inclusion of a full teaspoon of salt, which contributes to the deplorable health of the majority of Americans, even more so on the reservations.
Robert Riversong
Warren, VT
Vietnam-era draft resister, 32-year war tax resister, former vegetarian and vegan, and now a dedicated localvore.
PEACE CALANDAR LEGACY
It was with sadness that I read in the recent WIN (Summer 2011) that next year’s WRL calendar will be the last. I have been using the calendars since the late 1960s when I was in high school. They were my introduction to the WRL. One of my mother Eve Merriam’s poems, “The Coward,” was used in the 1966 calendar, and I think she gave me her copy that year. I know I was on the WLR mailing list a few years later because I went on a WRL bus to Washington DC for the November 1969 Moratorium March Against Death.
I still have my 1969 calendar, so I probably began ordering my own then, and have ever since. In 1976, I began spreading word of WLR by sending gift calendars to friends I had made during the previous year, a practice I will continue this year. It is this aspect of the calendar that I will miss the most: thinking back over the previous year and deciding who to send an always gorgeous, thought-provoking, and useful WRL present.
Dee Michel
Northampton, MA
CALENDAR CONTROVERSY
Change is inevitable, but it does hurt—thus my sorrow at seeing that the WRL Peace Calendar has reached the end of the line. When I came on staff in 1960, the calendar was a key part of my job for several years. I learned a great deal by editing it, gathering material (on communes, on men and women who had helped change the country, on institutions that really made a difference). We didn’t have Google back in the 60s—putting the material together required seemingly endless visits to the New York Public Library.
One memory from those times is worth sharing. In the calendar that honored institutions that had made a difference, I’d written up a page on Oberlin College, which had been an important stop on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. At least in those early years, Oberlin had been a fairly radical college. However, when Oberlin got wind of the fact it would be featured in the WRL calendar, I got an angry letter warning legal action would be taken if we did not omit mention of the college. I wrote back saying I doubted they had grounds for legal action, but would send a copy of their letter, and mine, to the student paper at Oberlin.
As it turned out, I was on a speaking tour in Ohio about the time the calendar came out—and it featured both in the student newspaper and also in the student book store.
David McReynolds
New York, NY
BDS DIFFERENCES
I’m writing to clarify something I read in your editorial in the Spring 2011 issue, which states, “Initiated by Palestinians living in occupied territories, BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions] seeks to defund illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and supports Palestinians’ right to return to their homes and land.”
Many who support BDS do support a “one-state solution,” which is implied in the right to return. They would also support BDS in Israel proper. But many others, including myself, support BDS in the occupied territories but not in Israel itself. (At least, I don’t at this point.) For example, as a member of TIAA CREF, I totally support JVP’s [Jewish Voice for Peace] campaign to pressure TIAA CREF to divest from companies that profit from operating in the West Bank, and I support a cultural boycott there. But I don’t agree with a cultural boycott of Israel itself.
However, if Caterpillar—a company on the TIAA-CREF boycott list—were to destroy Palestinian homes in Israel as they do in the West Bank, I’d be against that, too. It gets complicated, and I wrestle with these issues.
On another note, as a longtime purchaser of your Peace Calendar, I’m sorry that 2012 will be its last year!
Laura Liben
New York, NY
RECRUIT TEACHERS
When it comes to critiquing war and militarism, activists do need to look to the schools, as Bill Bigelow suggests in his article (“Teaching Against War, For Humanity,” WIN Winter 2011). For far too long, the peace movement has focused on organizing mass protests while essentially conceding the long-term struggle over young hearts and minds to the Pentagon. Fortunately, for the past 40 years counter-recruiters have been doing the ideological spade work of organizing in schools.
WIN readers may have read about some of the more recent counter-recruitment victories, like the landmark Maryland state law targeting one of the Pentagon’s favorite recruitment tools (“Maryland Opts Out of ASVAB,” Summer 2010). But what makes for an effective counter-recruitment campaign? Our research suggests that one key ingredient is a commitment to recruiting allies among teachers.
Teachers are important for at least two reasons. First, they lend credibility to the movement. Having a broad base of community support is critical to counter-recruiters, and activists risk alienating potential allies if they’re perceived as antiwar agitators. As one of our interview subjects told us, “Because we’re all teachers means that we’re not going to be perceived as radicals.” Second, allying with teachers ensures organizational reliability. Teachers are middle-class professionals who tend to be stable members of their communities; they can be counted on to help during campaigns that may stretch on for years.
Given the long-term struggle that counter-recruiters are involved in, and given their need for a broad base of community support, the future of the counter-recruitment movement clearly depends on partnering with teachers.
Seth Kershner, Great Barrington, MA, and Scott Harding, Ph.D., West Hartford, CT
