Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rti-sel.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Witness for Peace and the Freedom Riders (Re: American Hostages) Message-ID: <379@rti-sel.UUCP> Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 12:48:16 EDT Article-I.D.: rti-sel.379 Posted: Mon Aug 26 12:48:16 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 10:01:39 EDT References: <333@SCIRTP.UUCP> <726@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP> <338@SCIRTP.UUCP> <463@im4u.UUCP> Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC Lines: 63 Summary: In article <463@im4u.UUCP> riddle@im4u.UUCP writes: >Well, if some of you feel the comparison is inapt, how about comparing >Witness for Peace with the *Northern white* freedom riders? Here's what >Eldridge Cleaver had to say about them ... > > ... The > racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register > as murder, really, unless the victim is white. ... > >This principle is the same today. ... >If a group of Nicaraguans or Costa Ricans had gone down the >river that day, they would have been subjected to far worse dangers at the >hands of the contras, most likely without a peep from the U.S. press; yet >U.S. citizens' safety is somehow treated as special and newsworthy. ... One of the big problems I have with the Witness for Peace action is that the freedom riders were clearly working against the status quo; the state and local government forces clearly supported these acts of violence on the streets and in the courts. Exposing violence in the South put direct pressure on the people in power to change things. But in Nicaragua (as in El Salvador), the people ordering the brutality wash their hands of it: contra leaders have clearly stated time and again that they have no policy of violence and that these murders are isolated acts committed by individuals. Thus the leaders operate from a position of moral superiority clearly intended to convince the USA public that these fellows ARE just like our founding fathers (heh, heh ... does that mean good ol' George Washington supervised the murder of Tory children, the rape of Tory women, and the torture of political prisoners?). Whatever the facts in the case, the American public as a whole apparently believes that the contras are morally upright Joes a whole lot like the Green Mountain Boys, and that isolated violent acts are to be expected because these people are after all barbarians. But if we stand behind the Prez on this one the contras will win and immediately institute a paradise of democracy, trickle-down benefits for all, and supply-side economics. Right. The bottom line for me is this: what exactly are the Witness for Peace action going to accomplish? Whose minds in our society is it going to change, and whose minds in Nicaraguan society is it going to change? My contention is no one's, so the energy is wasted and people are laying their lives on the line for no good reason. I respect the Friends for their courage and dedication in past situations, I just happen to think they're wrongheaded on this one. >As for the criticism that Witness for Peace "stages media events," that's >hardly criticism. ... >Were Gandhi's salt march and Martin Luther King's actions >"staged?" ... >But the evils that Gandhi and King were fighting were real, and their >"media events" were merely planned demonstrations of that reality. ... Mr. and Mrs. America saw the bodies of the murdered nuns in El Salvador being lifted from their grave. Mr. and Mrs. America saw the Sandinista sympathiser eat rice, lie down in his grave and have his throat brutally cut by his contra captors. Did Mr. and Mrs. America change their minds about the contras or the thugs in El Salvador? Do you think the actions of a group perceived by many Americans as leftist religious nuts will go any further toward changing peoples' minds? -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly