The Spring Issue
Our Spring Cover
The Artist as Activist
Sequeiros, Thoreau, Roy & Lennon
The Spring 08 Issue
Artist as Activist
The Interview: Alice Lovelace;
Poet and oragnizer of the U.S. Social Forum
After this War: Howard Zinn
Dowser: New fiction by Eric Webb
The Critical Art Ensemble : Amniel Alcalay
Poetry from: Leigh Marthe, Kenneth Patchen,
Yumiko Ito, Gary Snyder, Betsy Snider
Ken Saro-Wiwa: The Goldman
Environmental Prize
The Forum: Dancer as Activist by Kate T. Morgan
Film: Teresa Podlesney writes about
Art and Activist Cinema:
After This War
By Howard Zinn
The war against Iraq, the assault on its people,
the occupation of its cities, will come to an
end, sooner or later. The process has already
begun. The first signs of mutiny are appearing
in Congress The first editorials calling
for withdrawal from Iraq are beginning to
appear in the press. The anti-war movement
has been growing, slowly but persistently, all
over the country.
Public opinion polls now show the country
decisively against the war and the Bush
administration. The harsh realities have become
visible. The troops will have to come
home.
And while we work with increased determination
to make this happen, should we not
think beyond this war? Should we begin to
think, even before this shameful war is over,
about ending our addiction to massive violence,
and using the enormous wealth of our
country for human needs? That is, should we
begin to speak about ending war—not just
this war or that war—but war itself? Perhaps
the time has come to bring an end to
war, and turn the human race onto a path of
health and healing.
In the Second World War, there was indeed
a strong moral imperative which still resonates
among most people in this country and
which maintains the reputation of World
War II as “the good war,” There was a need
to defeat the
monstrosity of fascism. It was
that belief
that drove
me to enlist
in the Air
Force and
fly bombing missions
over Europe.
Only after
the war did
I begin to
question
the purity
of the moral
crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no
screams, seen no children dismembered, but
now I had to think about Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the fire bombings of Tokyo
and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany.
I came to a conclusion about the psychology
of myself and other warriors: once we decided,
at the start, that our side was the good
side and the other side was evil, once we had
made that simple and simplistic calculation,
we did not have to think any more. Then we
could commit unspeakable crimes and it was
all right.
-Read the whole essay in the spring issue
Alice Lovelace
Alice Lovelace is a renowned poet, teacher and activist, as well as a devoted grandmother and lead national staff organizer for the United States Social Forum. The first United States Social Forum took place this past summer in Atlanta and attracted 15,000 organizers and activists (many artists) from across the nation as well as 68 foreign nations to its five-day “open space” dialogue on social justice.
New Ficton by
Eric Webb: The Dowser
The emotional life that Horace tended was a small Victory Garden that, were it not for a cause, would produce no harvest. Horace was deeply spiritual in a primitive way, but what emotional juices he produced he reabsorbed and transformed through a personal alchemy into gold. A radical without emotion is a very sharp and precise instrument.
The Climate of War
by Kenneth Patchen
Therefore the constant powers do not lessen;
Nor is the property of the spirit scattered
On the cold hills of these events.
Through what is heavy into what is only light,
Man accumulates his original mastery
—which is to be one with a gentle substance
Out of which the flowers take breath.
That which is given birth
Is taken to purer beginnings.
The combats of this world
But is only upward, since death
Is not man’s creature, but God’s…
And he can gain nothing by manipulating
That which is already hidden in himself.
The sources of nature are not concerned
In peoples, or battlefields; nor are they mindful
Of the intensity with which man extinguishes his kind.
He who can give light to the hidden
May alone speak of victories.
He who can come to his own formulation
Shall be found to assume mastery
Over the roads which lead
On the whole human event.
The hour of loss of and dignity and peace
Is surely not dead.
With more splendor than these sombre lives
The gates within us
Open on the brilliant gardens of the sun.
Then do these inscrutable soldiers rise upward,
Nourished and flowering
On the battle slopes of the Unseen. For Victory,
Unlike the sponsored madness in these undertakings,
Is not diminished by what is moral; but on its peaks
Grows until the dark caverns are alight
With the ordained radiance of all mankind.
