[long read] "Mom, Dad, the doctor said I should call you. This is her phone. I'm in a hospital in Guatemala." Four hours later a phone was pressed into my hand. "Chris, oh good, hold on." It was my mother's voice. "Your father is boarding a flight. I just told him we reached you." Twenty years ago I participated in a delegation to El Salvador. In many ways that's where lessons I had started to get exposure caught up with me in full force. A few years before, the global campaigns for justice  first pierced my bubble in Seattle during the successful shut-down, sit-in to stop the World Trade Organization. Only two months before the twin towers created a national mnemonic for my generation, I was trying out broken Spanish and freshman microeconomic theory in a meeting with the Mayor of Nueva Trinidad. The community had formed in Honduran-based refugee encampments during the 1980s and maintained its identity, then ten years since the conflict had b

 it cleared my head like a bell right in the middle of two toddlers and dinner on the stove, unh huh mi amor yeah yeah i said. and i know their are pleasures in this text and they are pride and you know what thats not it. Wine. I could lay back with wine and feel not even as good as reading this piece again. Thank you.  As I wrote our very own Jeremy Varon, about his piece in Waging Nonviolence: Jeremy, Wow this was sweet Yes! You have a great voice. I hear it so clear and see you with a mic and an umbrella in front of the circuit court.  The way you gave us the exhilaration in the victory oh my and led us on and in the slug of time. how in your bones. I feel the notion of justice is trustworthy in you. The statement drafting months built this piece? As I know it, my belonging is conscience and it hasn't word, only state, like ice. The tension of looking at Guantanamo has made those bubbles stop. I can be refrozen, melt, but the years go and I dissipate. In you the coldblooded that

At Ft. Huachuca, was Barbara Fast one of the "bartered brides"  of the military-intelligence complex, passed from her post as superior military intel officer in Iraq (when the abuses of Abu Ghraib occurred) to Ft. Huachuca the headquarters responsible for training interrogation officers in the war on 'terror' in Guantánamo and elsewhere.    Barbara Fast, not long before she retired in October 2008, had become a Major General--celebrating her rank with an ironic no, is the theme of my reflection today, ending with the words of Prophet Ezekiel. The case for Guantánamo is always made courtesy the imprecision of language. Vital part of the war 'on terror', as necessary to hold 'the worst of the worst'. Thomas Hobbes cited the malleability of language as blameworthy in large part for insecurity and war: "To these Uses [of speech], there are also foure correspondent Abuses. First, when men register their thoughts wrong. False Secondly, when they use wor

Yesterday writing about the appeal of Mohammedou Ould Slahi, I almost mentioned the appealing, charismatic images created by Deb Vanpoolen during our Fast for Justice in 2014. When I touched base with Deb, she sent me these images!  In front of the Smithsonian Portraiture Museum, Washington DC Fahd Ghazy banner Top to bottom: banner images of Tariq ba Odah, Fahd Gazy, Shaker Aamer. Colombia Heights Station, Washington DC Images of portrait banners in demonstrations during WAT 2014 used with permission, courtesy the artist, Deb Vanpoolen. Contact:  biodiversityarts.com Other images of WAT 2014 here  Here banner exits Union Station, held by blogger CR Spicer.