PROJECTS • WORLD WITHOUT EMPIRE

WORLD WITHOUT EMPIRE CONFERENCE & PEACE FESTIVAL

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2010 APRIL 23-24 | UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY

 

World without Empire
A Peace for Life Conference in New York

By VIVIAN DE LIMA

9 AUGUST 2010

 

Going into the Belly of the Beast

“It is like painting a bird in flight” as Chris Ferguson poetically referred to the planning of the New York conference on World without Empire, “ideas change from time to time.” And it may be added that the shape depends on where one’s easel is positioned.

The idea for a Peace for Life (PfL) conference in “the belly of the beast” started on highly optimistic, almost ideal expectations, driven by the challenge to connect the missing dots within what are believed to be fairly large but fragmented progressive groupings in the United States. The concept paper reflects this longing for a potent emancipatory movement: one that looks at the various problems in the United States from within the perspective of global problems as a consequence of its hegemonic policies, without losing sight of the more specific issues (albeit with great implications on universal human condition), mainly gender, spirituality, and ecology, whose advocates, arguably, are among the most dynamic of U.S. activist groups.

The concept paper (which in itself went through various alterations), having been prepared by deeply involved U.S. activists, is a sort of a terse manifesto for a U.S. movement that aspires to be effectively anti-imperialist, or anti-empire. Among the stated imperatives are a) connecting the grassroots groups and intellectuals; b) forming movements from within racial/ethnic and immigrant communities, the poor and the unemployed; c) forging linkages and creating convergence with anti-empire movements around the world.

The dream was to convene a “people’s congress” to begin to set into action the tortuous task of forging these linkages and convergences; it proved to be a total impossibility, at least for the time being. (The activity had been rescheduled three times since its inception in 2007). Eventually the unreality of the wonderland revealed itself when the time came to talk “of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.”

It was thus inevitable to scale down everything: convene a small conference, shorten the number of days, and refocus its aims. Nevertheless, it would deal, just as well, with resistance against empire and visioning a world without empire. And in addition it would introduce to Peace for Life a non-hierarchical feminist method of dialogue (specifically the fishbowl) as an option for a more direct exchange of ideas among participants.

With the heroic efforts and boundless optimism of U.S.-based dedicated souls—through a bumpy ride with stirring twists and turns, both great and small—the two-day World without Empire Conference and Peace Festival eventually opened on 23 April 2010 at the Union Theological Seminary (Union) in New York.

The opening day at the Union’s James Chapel was celebratory and expectant, betraying little of the conference’s tumultuous passage into becoming. Hyung-Kyung Chung, professor at Union and head of the WWE Conference host committee, gave the welcome remarks and functioned as the master of ceremonies. Carmencita Karagdag, PfL coordinator, and Kathryn Poethig gave the conference orientation. Carmencita acknowledged the institutions and individuals that made the activity possible and provided an introduction of PfL and the focal areas of its activities. She underscored that as a movement for interfaith solidarity against empire PfL rests mainly on the issues of social injustice and class oppression, along with inequities that result from privileging based race, gender, and ethnicity. Kathryn recalled the PfL journey through its various activities from Manila until the WWE conference being opened in New York.

Three dialogue sessions on women, militarism, and building alliances were set on day one; two fishbowls for the morning of day two and the Peace Festival in the afternoon and evening. The conference was attended by 24 foreign participants from Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Togo, and the Philippines. U.S. participation fluctuated from 40 to 60 depending on the session. They comprise nationals and permanent residents of foreign nationalities, most of them affiliated with theological or church institutions. As in all Peace for Life activities, the sessions began with artistic presentations, courtesy of the students of the Union: Lisa Radakovich Holsberg, Kim McCrae, Roger Holland and the Union Gospel Choir, and Derrick McQueen.

Women’s Voices

The first dialogue session moderator, Omega Bula from the United Church of Canada, started herself and each of the four presenters by way of situating themselves within their socio-economic-cultural context, and for next five to seven minutes their views of empire and their own struggles. The deeply experiential narratives and the discussions that ensued expressed profound anxiety over complicity and cooptation in a society where everything is “infused by imperial being”.

Charlene Sinclair of Union’s Poverty Initiative (“I am a black woman from an urban poor background”), pointed to the numerous drawbacks in organizing the poor in the United States, where the negation of one’s poverty is a considered “a mantle of success,” and it is a long way to creating the consciousness to recognize that one’s poverty is a result of structures that created the level of impoverishment that made one believe otherwise. She bemoans the fact that people “do not connect with each other as human beings, in alignment with each other and acting collectively as people in the empire, struggling for what is essentially a human right.” She concluded her sharing with a reply to her opening questions: Is it possible to dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools? “Possibly they aren’t really the master’s tools; they are tools that are rightfully ours, and those tools can be used for our liberation.” Is resistance possible in a place of privilege? “It is not just possible; it is a moral and categorical imperative!”

Althea Spencer-Miller, professor of New Testament at Drew Theological College (“an immigrant from Jamaica ethnically mixed as a result of colonial experience, but skin color compels me to see myself as a black woman”) traced the roots of the many socio-political problems of Jamaica to its colonial heritage and neo-colonial experience. An example of this is the development of a “garrison politics” where politicians and bureaucrats work in close collusion with criminal syndicates. “The colonial distortion continues,” she said, “even the church colludes with the powers to continue the distortion; the interpretation of the Bible remains the usual European colonialist enterprise.”

Brigitte Kahl, a biblical scholar originally from East Germany, now a professor at Union (“a citizen of a country that has vanished”) expressed her utter disbelief that “people who are victims of empire are caught up in the veil of its deception; they desire empire and empire privilege; their bodies and soul offered to the highest bidder.” She lamented the “betrayal and perversion” of the great hope of the East German people’s Revolution of the Candles into “a wholesale acclamation and justification of capitalism as the only eternal order.” She said that the “fall of socialism” that had become “the common currency of propaganda” was never the intention of East Germans “when they moved out of an irreparably broken system of party dictatorship that called itself socialism but couldn’t trust its own people.” Their vision is a human society that can organize and direct itself, where limited resources are not squandered on war-making. Regretfully, this vision has receded even farther away in the aftermath of 9-11.

Emmi de Jesus, secretary general of Gabriela, a women’s organization in the Philippines (“an organizer and activist of the national democratic struggle in the Philippines for the most part of my life”), provided a counterpoint with her angst-free sharing of Gabriela’s experiences with the struggles of mostly poor urban and rural women in the Philippines. Theirs are clearly marked by straightforward social analysis and the clear aims of eradicating the daily violence of deprivation and disempowerment experienced by women and their families.

In response, Samuel Cruz, a Union professor, reiterated the concerns over the issues of complicity. Bishop George Mathew from the Syrian Orthodox Church of India” on the other hand, pointed to the importance of the discourse on gender and empire. He shared the opinion of previous speakers that the Bible would be a great resource for contesting empire despite its having played contrasting roles in the empire projects: both oppressive and liberating. The task he said is to name the empire and cast it out.

The conclusion of the session pointed to the essentiality for a counter imagination, of which, expectedly from the mostly Christian participants, the Bible was identified as a very vital resource.

Militarism

Nothing about the American Empire project is more palpable or directly violent than militarism. Eunice Santana, PfL moderator from Puerto Rico, made this very clear in her introduction of the second session. She focused on the U.S. Empire’s core military project: the “war on terrorism,” which is a pretext to wage war against any hindrance to U.S. hegemony, primarily aimed at securing capital, resources, and markets. She stated that one of the major elements of the U.S. conquest and domination strategy is its geopolitical outreach through a network of military bases and installations that cover the entire planet, and even the outer space, ready to turn it into, if not already, a battlefield. There are over 1,000 military bases and installations in 63 countries; over 255,000 military personnel deployed; some 845,000 buildings and equipments covering a land area of over 30 million acres, but the real extent of these are “difficult to know because there are many military secrets.”

Deborah Lee of the U.S. NGO Women for Genuine Security gave an account of her group’s work dealing with the vulnerabilities, survival and resistance of women, whose lives are affected by the presence or legacy of U.S. military bases in their areas, mainly the Philippines; Korea; Japan, especially Okinawa; Puerto Rico; Palau; Northern Marianas; and Guam. She gave an indictment of the U.S. concept of security and its engagement “in a continuous war for over a hundred years, and [doesn’t] see that budget cuts on social services and debts are among the effects of militarization.” She concluded that genuine security has to do with concerns of women, children and local communities and is based on justice, respect, a long-term view of sustainability, and issues of land. Lilia Solano from Colombia gave her country’s case as an example of the extent of U.S military’s intervention into the political, economic, and social life of presumably sovereign states. Colombia “is a country where the U.S. fights three wars: Communism, drugs, and terrorism—in the interest of multinational companies” and concomitantly “they practically rule the country.”

Two other presenters skewed from the subject of militarism but dealt, nonetheless, with issues essential to the empire discourse. Mubarak Awad, a U.S.-based Palestinian who is president of Non-violence International, talked of the occupation of Palestine “from empire to empire” throughout the ages and the creation of 22 nations by colonialists of what had been a single Arab nation in the Middle East. Junaid Ahmad from Pakistan, “as the only Muslim in the conference” felt compelled to deal more with “Islamic issues,” mainly Islamo-phobia and the way the discourse on Islam, even among progressives in Islamic societies, have been “thoroughly co-opted by the imperial project.” He spurned the constant reference to “moderate Islam,” which has nothing to do with religious or theological orientation of a particular government, organization, or individuals, but by how they relate to the United States and Israel.” He ended with a rhetorical question often raised in interfaith dialogues—”Isn’t Islam really a threat?—to which he replied with another rhetorical question—”Why is Christianity (or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism not a threat to our way of life?”

As a respondent, Hans Koechler, president of the NGO International Progress Organization based in Austria, focused on the legitimation strategy of imperial militarism, he proffered that various movements and groups could challenge it by critically analyzing the doctrine behind it. Taking the particular case of the U.S. “war on terror”, he emphasized the necessity to “deconstruct the doctrine behind the military effort.” As a final recommendation, he urged that leaders of various religious communities, especially the Christian leaders in United States and Europe to ‘stand up and admonish state leaders who wage wars in the name of all humanity or in defense of religious values as violators not only of international law but also of basic moral principles.”

The second respondent, Gary Dorrien, a professor at Union and Columbia University, for his part, gave most of his five minutes to the notion of genuine security, in relation to which he called to mind the Joint Vision Statement 2020: America’s Military Preparing for Tomorrow prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Military, where the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance” was set forth as a comprehensive strategy for accomplishing unparalleled U.S. dominance: “The overall goal… is the creation of a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of military operations—persuasive in peace, decisive in war, pre-eminent in any form of conflict.” He lamented the fact that the Obama administration had shown no sign for scaling back this military empire, and that the various solidarity and peace groups have very little to show for their efforts to deflect this trajectory.

It was an active discussion that ensued. Many were comments on big concerns missing in the presentations (for the obvious reason that the five- to seven-minute time allotment necessarily limited the range of the topic presented). Among those mentioned were the linkage between anti-empire struggle and internal democratic movement; language of violence; effect of military spending in poor countries; connection between militarism and ecological destruction.

Building Alliances

Chris Ferguson, World Council of Churches (WCC) representative to the UN, the session’s moderator introduced a slightly modified format meant to make the session not just fully dialogical but would also enable it produce concrete proposals that would help PfL to move forward in alliance building. Participants, without moving out of the plenary hall, were to engage in something like pocket workshops, which he called “completing the circle.” (Alluding to a charming bit of Early Christian history, it was said that in the anti-empire struggle under Roman persecution, the people called Followers of the Way had devised a secret communication by scratching an arc on the sand to be completed by another Follower to form a circle that eventually became a fully drawn fish that could move. The ritual would be completed with a kiss, referred to by the Romans as conspiración—breathing together—from whence the word conspiracy was derived).

The discussion circles were in two parts. The first was to concentrate on the obstacles to alliance building in the anti-empire movement, while the next—to happen after the short reflections from three presenters—would look into the opportunities.

Ulrich Duchrow, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, identified three philosophically complex and interlocking impingements to people’s organizing under the empire’s regime of neoliberal globalization. Resistance movements continue to be fragmented despite untold devastation brought about by global capitalism’s policies not only in the global south but also within the disadvantaged populations of the industrial centers of capitalism. The deterrents to a strong, cohesive anti empire resistance include: a) The competitive ideology of capitalism itself, wherein human beings are defined (based on Thomas Hobbes’s and John Locke’s) mainly as individual proprietors competing for more wealth, power, and reputation. b) The domination of money in the contemporary exchange society: “money is like language, more and more the money subject rules over the communicative human social being”. Within this logic, the empire forces dictate the facts and rationality (including the theology of churches) of the society in terms of the money enterprise. c) The mindset created by the psychological–social destruction of people divided into winners and losers, an axiomatic condition that goes with accumulation of property and capital.

Allan Boesak, a theologian from South Africa, gave a concise didactic presentation, where he emphasized, what he called, seven insights gained from the lessons of the South African experience. He credits alliances built on genuine solidarity as crucial to the success of their anti-Apartheid struggle. Among the benefits he mentioned were a) they help us to see that where we are, is everywhere; b) they help us to resist the temptation to let the empire to define us and our goals and to colonize our mind. He also credits alliances for playing an important role to people in struggle: “When our faith is no longer strong enough, to carry us, the faith of brothers and sisters across the world will.” He warned, however, against alliances being romanticized and sacralized: “We cannot romanticize yesterday in the battles we have today. They must always be critically assessed in every new situation.”

Robina Winbush from the Presbyterian Church-USA gave a very personal account of the meaning and importance of alliances in the context of American society where, despite its purported commitment to egalitarianism, race is still very much coupled with poverty and disempowerment, and fragmentation and identity politics continue to define many groups. She cautioned that until African Americans start dealing with one another, with Hispanics, Latinos, Asians, and indigenous persons, “we [would] continue to define ourselves in relationship with the dominant power, and we [would] always be without power.” And going on wider a scope, she gave the imperative that “there should be an alliance between those who struggle within the seat of power and those who struggle outside the centre of power because the struggle is fundamentally the same.” She also brought out the problem of being co-opted because “it is so easy when you are in a system of privilege and power.”

Within the very limited time, the first round of discussion raised a number of obstacles to alliance building, albeit disparate in terms of topical range and context (“capitalism in its entirety as the main barrier for communities and individuals coming together” or “fear of seeing our own complicity”). There were several mentions of language and the difficulty of communication not just on account of language, along with problems relating to religion and theology, specifically the idea of an individual’s personal relationship with God, which effectively disengage social justice issues from faith.

The second round (opportunities for building alliances) had an even wider diversity in terms of perspectives. It was apparent that there were differences in the understanding of what “alliance” meant. Those from the global south with long history of liberation struggle spoke of “alliances” between organized groups, whereas others spoke of “alliances” in terms of individuals relating to a bigger group or to one another for the same concerns.

The Fishbowls: “United States of Exception”

The two-part open fishbowl held in the morning of the 24th of April had for its title “The United States of Exception.” This, as Kerry Poethig who prepared the program explained in her introduction, was a merger of two concepts: “U.S. Exceptionalism” and the ‘state of exception.”

U.S. Exceptionalism traces its lexical collocation and conceptual roots from 19th century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville who considered the circumstances and value formation that created the United States as exceptional (distinctive). The idea has through the years been a subject of much discourse and deconstruction, wherein the attributes of “Exceptionalism” have been staunchly supported (dedication to democracy, liberty, individualism, laissez-faire, etc.) or detested (arrogance, privileging itself as to be exempt from international law, “Manifest Destiny”, etc.) depending on which part of the political divide the characterization is coming from.

The ‘state of Exception” is a newer concept put forward in a book of the same title by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, published in 2005. Agamben defines what he calls state of exception as a “coherent set of juridical and political phenomena” that transforms what is started as “provisional and exceptional measures” into the “normal operation of the state.” These provisions are embedded within existing laws (e.g., declaration of martial law) that enable the government (or sovereign) to suspend law when the state is in crisis or under siege—military (“real state of siege”) or a political or “fictitious state of siege” (“fancied emergency”)—which can be a tool in legally transforming governments into totalitarian dictatorships. A distressing development, according to him, is that a “permanent state of exception” under “fancied emergency” has become the “dominant paradigm of government and one of the essential objectives of the modern state. He points to the United States in the aftermath of 9-11 with the “war on terror” and the USA PATRIOT Act as a clear manifestation of a permanent state of exception and what he refers to as “extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security”, it being the sole “criterion of political legitimation.”

Hyung-Kyung was the moderator for the first fishbowl. With much humor and providing imaginative appellations in her introduction of speakers, she kept the discussion alive and on track. She held on to the speaking time limit dutifully and gracefully, passing a rose to the speaker as warning that time was up.

Theoretical Perspectives

For the first round of the fishbowl, Neferti Xina Tadiar of Columbia University and Barnard College used her five-minute allotment to give a methodical, straightforward explication of her insight on the thesis that permanent war is an imperative for a modern empire. She points to the United States being in a permanent state of exception and a permanent state of emergency as evidenced by the Bush’s “Operation Infinite Justice,” which couldn’t be anything other than declaration of infinite war; one with no limit in purpose or time.

She holds that the way to understand this permanent war is to think about imperialism, about global capitalism, where war is necessary to shape the political environment of a global system of multiple free-capitalist states; it is the system of global capitalism that the permanent state of exception seeks to shape and guarantee. The pervasive presence of the U.S. military throughout the world, though not necessarily engaged in active warfare, amounts to the “endless possibility of waging war. This readiness is there because war has assumed a global counterinsurgency policing function to any challenge to the order of neo-liberalism and capitalist restructuring.

Furthermore, in a more indirect way, war serves the financialization aspect of neo-liberalism. Financialization is about people becoming no more than subjects of credits, mortgages, investments, debt servicing: reducing life itself as the commodity that underwrites the extraction of wealth. It is about profits, and risks are necessary in order to have profits; war is the guarantee of inequalities that create risks that are necessary for competition and for the markets to work.

For the second round, Neferti explained that the problems of empire go beyond military wars; “there are the wars of everyday life on people.” The capitalist way of life “depends on the depletion and the disposability and the dispossession of people.” Hence there is a necessity not only for resistance but also for changing the way that people see and understand their way of life, and for learning “different ways of living that are viable and sustainable and do not depend on the exploitation and oppression of others.”

David Wildman of GBGM United Methodist Church for his part spoke in alternately serious and satirical way on the current U.S. wars, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan, which he analyzed as “legitimation wars for the purpose of mobilising more support for the ongoing agenda of empire.” These wars never got wholehearted support from the U.S. public, as manifested in the massive anti-war marches and the election results of 2006 and 2009 which were clear rejections of the war-making agenda of the government. Neither changed the course of the country’s war program; “the result of these massive outpouring and change in political configuration at the table was a surge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.” Eventually, more U.S. soldiers had been wounded since Obama took office than under the seven-and-a-half years under George W. Bush.

He continued his analysis with one of the more insidious aspects of the U.S. war agenda: the externalization of the cost of war-making to those at the heart of empire. This is done through the “classic framework of Apartheid—some people count, and some people don’t.” Effectively there is Apartheid in the allocation of public funds; in the delivery of criminal justice; in the provision of social services, education and health care (“you have the most sophisticated health-care system in Afghanistan – if you are a soldier; you don’t have one for Afghans or civilians in the United States”).

In the second round, David gave the assessment that the empire, on the one hand, is more vulnerable than ever, weaker than ever, but on the other hand, “our capacity to resist is also profoundly diffused and fragile; so it is not necessarily an opportunity.” He gives a categorical verdict that the U.S. has lost in Iraq and is losing in Afghanistan. In both cases, every military expert knows there is no military solution; yet, the only solution the U.S. cares about is a military solution.

He believes that it is time for the U.S. churches to have their own “Kairos Document.” He called to mind the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s Kairos Document, where churches took a stand and challenge to end the theological complicity and the institutional churches” complicity with the evil system of Apartheid. Also, the December 2009 anniversary of the Resolution for the Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees where the Palestinian Christians offered their own Kairos-style document to challenge themselves to end their complicity, to end complicity in the occupation of their land and of their lives; to challenge their community, and to challenge the international community about ending their complicity.

He exhorted the U.S. participants to take their experience in the conference to challenge “our deep complicity with militarism.” How do we take it up? How do we turn this upside-down world right side up again?

In a resounding preaching fashion, Peter Hetzel of the group Evangelicals against Empire identified the problem of global oppression as rooted in gold, guns, and God. God, he states, is also used to justify certain oppressive social order. He sees the need to have a much more prophetic critique of the system and to focus on women’s leadership. He doesn’t think U.S. president Obama has changed anything, but he credits him for showing the way of organizing and its merits. He advocates for organizing against oppression and refers to the ‘spirituality of organizing” and the “dialectics of prayer and action/action and prayer as key to creating new spaces of ‘subversive fellowship.”

Christine Pae from Denison University in Ohio, as the last of the four presenters, gave a brief explanation of American Exceptionalism from its romanticized notion of liberty and freedom associated with the 19th century American frontiers, which popularization rested on the American sense of innocence victimization. This notion was part of the process of constructing empire. The other side of innocence is anxiety over the inevitable collapse of empire, which Americans know will someday happen, ‘so they live in constant fear” of what would happen to them in the aftermath of that collapse. She ended with an apocalyptic pronouncement on the shared power of religion: “World without empire is possible if we truly believe in the second coming of the world without empire.”

Shared Reflections

With very limited time, the exchanges only managed to accommodate but a handful of comments and questions, but, nevertheless covered a wide range of concerns, from very practical suggestions to requests for more elaboration of complex theoretical ideas.

One comment was from David of Echo Park in Los Angeles on Obama’s presidency, which despite the great hopes of many Americans, had not produced any change, especially if one talked about the U.S. Empire and American Exceptionalism.

In response, Neferti stressed that the continuities between Bush’s policies with Obama’s ought not to be collapsed with the hopes that gave rise to Obama because “the struggles and protests against the Bush regime were driven by very radical hopes and aspirations that became co-opted under the sign of America,” and “it is important that we do not condemn the hopes”, that we “fight against the theft of those struggles by the state.”

Junaid, in a rejoinder, was more circumspect about the mobilising that occurred around Obama with its ambiguous slogan of hope and change. “It was not organizing in scale or nature of the 1960s when social movements, civil rights, anti war, even anti-capitalist movements had specific issues.” As far as America in relation to the rest of the world is concerned, the response of many Americans is still characterized by arrogance (“the shining city on the hill standing for freedom and democracy”), ignorance (“willed ignorance, they want to believe that America stands for everything that is good” and couldn’t be bothered to with what happens to the rest of the world), and cowardice. And this concerns even the Left and the liberals. “Have we done enough to undermine empire?” Pointing fingers at the powerful is not enough. The struggle is about putting “your bodies upon the gears” (referring to Mario Savio’s iconic 1964 speech); it is about authenticity: “What one thinks or says is what one does.”

Lilia Solano joined the fishbowl with a comment on the covert exercise of terrorism and torture that had long been practiced under U.S. dominion especially in Latin America. George W. Bush transformed terrorism into an explicit state policy.

A teacher participant also joined in and pointed out the important role of the American educational system in perpetuating or in subverting empire and capitalism, which to her disappointment was not talked about. She finds it necessary for students to learn about empire, capitalism, and “the real American history.”

Athena Peralta pointed to the relevance of the discussion on the war-financialization-risk nexus to their WCC project on Poverty Wealth and Ecology and requested for more discussion on social reproduction as an opportunity.

Neferti, in response, spoke in an emphatic way that told of a strong conviction: ‘social reproduction, often naturalized as women’s work—women create and sustain life—are the places for our political models, our redefinition of value, of belonging (that is not possession). Political movements, despite themselves, use militarist metaphor (which is about destruction) to explain what it means to be political. There is a need for a redefinition of the fundamental concepts that are still at the heart of what we understand to be valuable, whether politically or economically because the ethic there is not about the creation of life; it is fundamentally about the accumulation and possession of power and value. And until that is questioned, until it is redefined, we will not have adequate political models to figure our way out of here. We will only have other empires, or mini empires, or paramilitaries everywhere proliferating.”

Victor Hsu reminded everyone of the need to constantly pressure the international bodies, mainly the UN Security Council that they have reneged on their duty to remove the ‘scourge of war” that remains to hound the planet.

David Wildman gave the last word: Beware, he said, of Pilate’s Barabbas doctrine—the use of smaller enemies to stifle dissent. Part of the reason for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is to repress dissent in the United States because the government has lost all moral and economic arguments for its policies. Furthermore, war spending creates scarcity in government spending so that the accountability of government to serve the people is limited. As such, the best way for a U.S. company to make money and amass profits is to do war contracting because with war there is no questioning and accountability of war profiteering. He identifies the issue of war spending as a “critical crack” that could enable domestic protests in the United States to form alliances with anti-bases struggles globally.

Experiences of Local Struggle

“How do we take advantage of the vulnerability of empire to promote activism? How do we break away from the challenge?” These were the two questions raised by moderator Luciano Kovacs (WSCF-North America) to start the dialogues for the second fishbowl.

Tiokasin Ghosthorse, broadcaster in First Voices Indigenous Radio and a Lakota national, spoke of the spirituality of the Lakota people, their resilience, and their deep spiritual connection with Mother Earth. Their spirituality manifests in their concept of “Life” that goes beyond the “civilized world’s” notion of what is alive, and freedom that also means “you are my responsibility.” He illustrated these by comparing Lakota language to English, of the many English concept words of which none exist in their native language. In a question by Hyung-Kyung on what makes the Lakota people survive the empire? His almost mystical reply was “We look at living in this empire as a myth; everything about it is temporary.”

Nimalka Fernando of Women’s Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka gave a short history of Sri Lanka’s colonization—Portuguese, Dutch, British—and the 30 years of the separatist Tamil war. She describes Sri Lanka as a country that has never been able to unite its citizens into a whole nation. It is in eternal crisis because the nation state was formed without giving expression to the nationhood of the people: Tamil, Singhalese, the Muslims. “We have remained refugees even after we were so-called liberated from the British.” Currently, Sri Lanka is under the U.S., but only indirectly through India.

The last war against the Tamil separatists was fought in the name of war against terrorism. The ruthless model to fight the LTTE forgot the people; it subsumed the issue of minority and minority consciousness in the name of terrorism – it is a war without witness, without accountability. It is also a war that indirectly involved other states: “China provided the arms; Pakistan and China supported Sri Lanka, and India approved of the war.”

Lenny Valeriano of the Student Christian Movement of the Philippines talked about resistance in the Philippines, how the student movement forms but a part of the bigger national struggle led by the basic sectors. She narrated many of the mass actions that the students had been involved in and how the Philippines is very much within the ambit of the U.S. agenda on counterinsurgency and counter terrorism.

Evangeline Rajkumar of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) presented another aspect of empire: “It keeps on changing; it presents different faces each time.” She pointed to the importance of recognizing it in the way it is intermeshed, interlinked, and interdependent with patriarchy, race, gender, class. The logic of empire is simple that it is so internalized, so normal that we become used to it and we do not see any alternative.” This is made possible, she said, because even the language and our lived experiences had been stolen from us. To illustrate, she cited how we had come to accept the definition of ‘security’ in terms of defense budget. “We have forgotten to see a friend, a neighbor, a sister, even our own families.” The only way out of this, she suggests, is for people to be connected; to find a solution in a collective manner by creatively imagining a different logic—the logic of life, of human relationship. Theologically, she spoke of empire with its bid for absolute control and absolute power to be nothing less than a claim for omniscience, omnipresence—to be God!

The time available for discussions and comments proved inadequate to accord full discussion on Debbie Lee’s question on how people in resistance should view the claim that the Empire is in a state of crisis.

Kerry gave a comment that despite the US being in a state of perpetual war, there is little resistance, merely tiny pockets of resistance against empire. This is so because what we have now is a state of peace that is indistinguishable from state of emergency. There is an Illusion of peace that’s why there is no resistance. “We don’t feel the effects of war, particularly the middle class.”

Other interventions were on the language of empire and of Israel being another country that practices Exceptionalism.

Bearing Witness

The closing ritual and concluding comments were done ritualistically by Elizabeth Tapia of Drew Theological College and Maake Masango of University of Pretoria in South Africa. Eliz did a theatrical “What did you see? What did you hear? What did you experience?” and did wrap with a rap (rendered in a less than hip-hop way). Maake did his usual story telling that invoked the texture of primeval Africa. He ended with a commentary on the conference itself: “Yesterday was mainly theoretical; we spent our time defining the monster that has come. Today, we entered the space of the little empires destroying humanity. We came back to reality—to life! Peace needs to be refined by bringing justice. But LIFE is a gift of God. We have to give the next generation a gift of life and apologize for what we have done to the earth.”

 

PEACE FESTIVAL
Intergenerational Panel with Union Students

The Peace Festival organized by the World Student Christian Federation, which formed part of the conference, started with a panel discussion by students of the Union Theological Seminary dubbed as “New Voices of Resistance.” Presentations were delivered by Kyeongil Jung, Ruth Batausa, Peter Cava, and Jeremy Kirk, with Catherine Bordeau as moderator. The two respondents were Katie Cannon, also from Union, and Puleng Lenka Bula from the University of South Africa.

All presentations, except for Peter’s were personal narratives of their journey into their current activism. For Kyeongil it was the evolution of his spirituality and belief system (a merger of Marxist, Christian liberationist, Buddhist doctrines). He has arrived at a conclusion: “Wisdom, compassion, and meditation will bring us to a world without empire.”

Ruth spoke as a liberation theologian with her advocacy that “education has to unravel the ugliness of imperialism and its impact on the weak”, and that it should be “transformative of ourselves.”

Jeremy focused on the anxieties of “existential crisis of complicity”. (“How to denounce empire when the voice I use is always part of an imperial voice; my power—even when used for good, is always white, male, heterosexual—and even the use of it is a symbol of imperial success.”) Merely recognizing complicity, he determined, would not be enough, and he had arrived at a practical way of dealing with it: a) “Where I put my body matters; I choose to put it near those who suffer most”; b)” If thinking globally inhibits acting locally, just act locally. (Shouldn’t we take care first of people around us?)”

Peter gave a discussion of media literacy, of looking thoroughly at the subtext and subliminal messages of popular literature and media subjects that perpetuate the empire ideology. As a case he deconstructed the vampire book/movie 30 Days of Night and similar materials.

Reactions

The discussion that followed was a lively one, with the panelists enthusiastically adding further elaboration of their presentations.

For her response, Katie Cannon appreciated the “intergenerational” session as the passing of the mantle of responsibility from the older generation to the next. She shared with the aspect of dealing with empire at the personal level: “As people of conscience, what does it mean to deal with empire within before dealing with empire without?”

Puleng’s response, as she claimed, was a view from within the context of South Africa. She analyzed the central notions discussed by the panelists and added a few more that dealt with ideas presented during the conference proper.

She started with the notion of “intergenerational” and what it means to engage in intergenerational discourse. She stressed that age had little to do with it. Instead, she relates it to the classical African concept of ubuntu: “We build our communities from ancestors who have lived before us, given us the heritage of life and the insights that we build on, and the wisdom of spiritualities that we hold on to. It also recognizes the generations of living that are yet to come, who will never be known to us, but are nevertheless our responsibilities in terms of how we share knowledge and how we live that knowledge we proclaim.”

On the utility of media and education for visioning alternatives and resources for promoting a life affirming agenda, she cautions that thinking of them merely as tools could be dangerous. “We need processes, resources and agenda that will enable us to be consistent, to be attentive to ensure that systematic injustice is also dealt with structural and systematic approach to transformation.”

On resistance and resilience, notions also mentioned during the conference proper, she questions to what extent resilience is a life-affirming force without resistance or urgency to counter the manifestation of empire.

Lastly, she felt compelled to comment on how the entire conference seemed to have failed to have a common definition of empire. She offered the definition formulated by the Globalization Project of Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa and Evangelical Reformed Church in Germany, which is “a coming together of economic, cultural, political and military power… an all encompassing global reality serving, protecting and defending the interests of powerful corporations, nations, elites and privileged people, while imperiously excluding even sacrificing humanity and exploiting creation….” She added that empire is not anonymous—it is economic globalization; it is war on terror.

Artistic Extravaganza

With the talking sessions done, everyone was ready for the celebration. But first were the “workshops” conducted by small groups mostly organized by and composed of youngsters coming from communities of color and immigrants within New York. These groups were into community issues like food safety, recycling, achieving inner peace, folkloric dancing along with music, dance, and hip hop than inform of social issues.

The “Artistic Extravaganza” started at 7:00 and was also held at the James Chapel. It was a well-attended two-hour affair. The setup was traditional with performances done on stage in front of a seated audience. The presentations included traditional and contemporary dance numbers, martial arts, poetry, theatrical interpretation, songs, choral singing, rapping and instrumental music. The performers included Union students, community cultural groups, and individual artists. The cultural group of the Filipino migrant center contributed several numbers. Members of the audience, on Hyung-Kyung’s request for offerings to help defray the cost of holding the program, generously obliged.

Dancing and lots of socializing followed at the Union Social Hall.