Up Valley Women in Black

Title: The Vigil Continues
Location: Lyman Park, St. Helena, CA
Description: The Peace and Justice Vigil continues.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2010-04-03
End Time: 13:00

Title: August Vigil for Peace and Justice
Location: Lyman Park, St. Helena, CA
Description: Join us for a quiet vigil for world peace and justice.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-08-01
End Time: 13:00

Last night (June 5th) Bill Moyers interviewed investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill on the role of mercenaries in the current war in Afghanistan.  It was an interesting interview, particularly in light of the speech given by President Barack Obama in Cairo.  The following is an excerpt of the Moyers/Scahill interview:

BILL MOYERS: So, step back to that issue of military contractors. You’ve been you’ve been writing about privatization and military contractors for a long time. In the large scheme of things what do you military contractors represent to you?

JEREMY SCAHILL:Yeah. Well, I think that what we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war. Where you no longer have to depend exclusively on your own citizens to sign up for the military and say, “I believe in this war, so I’m willing to sign up and risk my life for it.” You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars. In the process of doing that you undermine U.S. democratic processes. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, ’cause you’re making their citizens in combatants in a war to which their country is not a party. I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it’s on. It’s happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale.

Is this the Bush legacy of military privatization, in which private corporations gain lucrative contracts to conduct our foreign policy? See the entire interview from Bill Moyers’ Journal by clicking here! Or visit the show at “http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06052009/watch.html”

Title: Vigil for Peace and Justice
Location: Lyman Park, St. Helena
Description: Join us for our monthly vigil for Peace and Justice.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-06-06
End Time: 13:00

Title: May Vigil for Peace and Justice
Location: Lyman Park, St. Helena, CA
Description: Our monthly vigil for peace and justice will begin in front of Lyman Park in St. Helena a 12:00.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-05-02
End Time: 13:00

Title: Vigil - One Year Anniversary
Location: Lymann Park
Description: This will be the 1 year anniversary of vigil for peace and justice conducted by Up Valley Women in Black.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-04-04
End Time: 13:00

Title: March Vigil, 2009
Location: Lyman Park St. Helena, CA
Description: Vigil for Peace and Justice
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-03-07
End Time: 13:00

Title: Vigil for Peace, Justice, and Hope
Location: Lyman Park St. Helena, CA
Description: Join us for the first vigil of 2009.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-01-03
End Time: 13:00

Peter Martin is an artist and writer who grew up in St. Helena, California.

In the spirit of Jean de Brunhoff’s 1939 classic children’s book “Babar”, Peter Martin’s “The Baby Tank” is a controversial commentary on our country’s focus on the machinery of war. Peter Martin has created a unique 21st Century character that reflects the soul of innocence in this time of terrible destruction and terror that has propelled the U.S. into two wars of Empire.

Women in Black (WIB) interviewed Mr. Martin via email about the creation and the inspiration for “The Baby Tank”, and he graciously gave us permission to link to the first four chapters of his creation. The book raises the question “What are we teaching our children by our institutional acts of violence?”

The Up Valley Women in Black Interview with Peter Martin

WIB: When did you first start thinking about creating “The Baby Tank?” What was going on in the world, in your life, in your personal world?

PM: It started with a photo. There had been a string of bombings in Varanasi, India and they had set the bomb off in a place that I recognized from when I had been there just shy of two years previous.

In front of the temple there was a huge banyan tree and surrounding it I just remember thousands of shoes. It was the spot where people take off their shoes and pay a guy a couple rupees to hold on to them while they go do their temple stuff in bare feet. I remember how crowded that scene was. Thousands of people crammed into this little space; thousands of shoes around this huge tree. So I remember the moment seeing the picture–that very same tree and just chaos. It punched me in the gut in a way I can’t describe.

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