10 Good Things About 2009

By Medea Benjamin

My almost annual list of ten good things about the waning year has never before posed such a tremendous challenge. In the face of this challenge, I decided to try a minimalist thought experiment, blocking out the many baneful events that colored 2009, and instead seeking out the small, yet powerfully bright notes to inspire and give us hope for the year head.

1. Tens of thousands of people from around the world took to the streets of Copenhagen to call for meaningful action to address climate change, despite continuous attempts to squelch it. Inside Copenhagen’s meeting halls, indigenous peoples from small island nations and the Himalayas spoke powerfully about their rights and their needs. 

2. Michelle Obama planted the White House’s first organic vegetable garden, a garden that provided food for her own family’s table and helped to educate the nation’s children about healthy eating.

3. According to recent polls a majority of Americans now see the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, and seventy-five percent say no new troops should be sent to that country. Public opinion is on our side.

4. Last year, CODEPINK launched a campaign calling upon the FBI to add Luis Posada Carilles, a ruthless terrorist who was responsible for downing a Cuban airplane in 1976, to the Most Wanted List and arrest him. On April 8, he was indicted on 11 counts. 

5. The creative use of Twitter by protesters in Iran brought thousands of people into the streets of Teheran, including students, young people and thousands of young women.  Their courageous and innovative use of social media kept the rest of the world informed of events, slipping out from under the country’s blanket of censorship.

6. The Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian rights garnered the support of many groups around the world. The growing list of BDS successes is too long to enumerate here, but to choose only one: In February South African dockworkers, remembering the long history of Apartheid in their country, refused to offload an Israeli ZIM Lines ship in Durban.

7. One of Obama’s first acts in office was to lift the Global Gag Rule, which ended restrictions on U.S. funding for organizations that provide family planning services and that are often the first responders for women in the fight against HIV.

8. The Washington, DC City Council voted in mid-December to legalize same-sex marriage, making it the first jurisdiction south of the Mason-Dixon Line to do so.  Same-sex marriage is now legal in Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut and will be legal in New Hampshire on January 1st. DC Mayor Fenty signed the bill on December 18, 2009.

9. 2009 may go down as the beginning of the end of the failed “War on Drugs”. The Obama administration announced that the federal government would no longer arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients and caregivers as long as they were following their state’s medical marijuana laws.

10. Obama’s Nobel Prize victory sparked a global debate about what it takes to be a real peacemaker. Obama will donate the 1.4 million prize to charity (undisclosed as of yet which).There is no more “wait and see.” The election of Obama signaled a national thirst for fundamental change, and a great many pinned their hopes on just one man, one President. But big events seldom seed big change, and after nearly a year, it is clear that real change still comes over time, not overnight; from the many, not the one or the few; and through persistence and pushing from the bottom, not the top.

I looked around and saw the women of CODEPINK, the impassioned environmental activists in Copenhagen, the young Israeli refuseniks, Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya, and all our friends and allies working for peace and social justice around this country and the world, and realized that WE are the hope and change we have been waiting for. 

Even after all the disappointments of this year, the items on this list and our own strength and persistence give me immense hope in the possibilities to come as we greet the New Year. 

So here's a toast to our power and our passion—we have our work cut out for us in 2010!

Dear Friends,

Congressman Kucinich is making a major impact in his challenge to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. See the following:

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?

Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Keep up the good work!

Washington can be a very lonely place when you are fighting for progressive ideas like Medicare for All and an end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is for that reason I wanted to thank all my friends at PDA for your hard work this past week. 

Last Wednesday, I had an opportunity to meet with your national director Tim Carpenter, following his visit to the White House, and PDA’s political director Steve Cobble. They met with five other members of Congress that day in an effort to save my amendment.

Later that evening, as a result of the leadership and grassroots work of Progressive Democrats of America and its allies, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) affirmed their support for a states' right to enact single-payer healthcare in their letter to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.  Read the letter here. 

We succeeded in putting the CPC on record supporting states like California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and others across the country to continue the fight for single-payer healthcare at the state level.  I know without PDA leading this fight we would have not won this important battle in the struggle for Medicare for All.

I also want to congratulate the California Democratic Party, which voted last week to end the U.S. occupation and air war in Afghanistan.  I commend the authors of this resolution, especially my friend Norman Solomon, the national co-chair of PDA's Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, and Marcy Winograd, PDA candidate for Congress.  I also commend the leadership of Karen Bernal and the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, and I applaud the work of PDA’s California chapters in helping to pass this timely resolution.

What a great week we had together! Please keep fighting to build the movement for Healthcare NOT Warfare.

In peace,

Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Progressive Democrats of America is a grassroots PAC that works both inside the Democratic Party and outside in movements for peace and justice. Our goal in 2009: Expand progressive influence in Congress as we build on our 2008 electoral successes. PDA's advisory board includes seven members of Congress and activist leaders such as Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, Thom Hartmann, Jim Hightower, and Lila Garrett.

Join a PDA Issue Organizing Team; learn more here.

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