In This Issue

 Peace & Justice Store

November 11, 2014

Join us at The Ed Everts Social Justice Activist Award Event to celebrate Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante with special guest Julia Alvarez and live music by Alejandro & Grupo Sabor. Migrant Justice is dedicated to building the voice, capacity, and power of the migrant farm worker community in Vermont.
 

Co-Sponsored by Main Street Landing and Radio Bean.

Click here for ticket information.

 

Please consider purchasing a ticket so a farmworker can attend and offering transportation if you are coming from Addison or Franklin Counties.  Contact Rachel if you can help.  

Violinist Michael Dabroski will perform two concerts for humanitarian relief for the people of Gaza. On Wednesday, November 12, 2014, at 7pm, he will play works by J. S. Bach as well as his own Suite for Gaza at the College Street Congregational Church, 265 College St, Burlington. On Thursday, November 13, 7pm, he will perform at Christ Episcopal Church, 64 State St, Montpelier.

 

A Vermont-based violinist praised for his "sensitive, charming, beautifully nuanced, and clearly articulated" playing, Michael Dabroski serves as Artistic Director of Music in the Great Hall - a world-class chamber music series serving Baltimore, MD, in its 41st season. He founded and directed the critically acclaimed chamber music organizations non-profit Adirondack Ensemble (1995), for-profit Burlington Ensemble LLC (2009), and most recently the Department of Music at Burlington College (2013).  Click here to continue the article. 

 

By Joseph Gainza, Pax Christi Burlington

 

We remember. We remember the six Jesuit priest scholars and academics, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter shot to death on the campus of the University of El Salvador. We remember Archbishop Oscar Romero, a bullet pierced his heart as he lifted the Host over his head during Mass in the Cathedral of San Salvador. We remember Jean Donovan and Catholic Sisters Ida Ford, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, raped and murdered on a back road in El Salvador. In every instance their murderers were trained in the United States at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.

 

While we do not know the names and the circumstances of their deaths, we remember and hold close those thousands of innocent men, women and children throughout Central and South America who, at the hands of soldiers and officers from their own national military, trained in the U.S., to fight "subversives" and "terrorists," had their lives taken from them to maintain an unjust and violent system.

 

So many lives of people whose "crime" was to speak out against injustice and for the oppressed poor, so much destruction we remember. And we act so there will be no more killing in our name.

 

Our vigil to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas -- the name has been changed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) but it carries the same shame -- where tactics of terror and death squads have been part of the curriculum, demands Congress finally shut down the School of Assassins as it is known throughout Latin America.     

 

While the school remains open, the stain on the soul of this country continues to spread and deepen. Nothing can undo the cruelty and murders of the past, we must struggle for a renewed sense of human decency and repentance in our nation and close the School of the Americas.

 

Join us on Saturday, Nov. 22 at noon in front of Burlington City Hall where, after a brief march, we will gather in a circle and remember those killed by graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC, and we renew our commitment to shut it down.

 

*Presente! literally means "here" or "present" in Spanish. There is a long tradition in Latin American movements for justice of invoking the memory of those who have lost their lives in the struggle. It is used in the ritual at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, when we remember those who suffered and were martyred by the graduates of the School of the Americas. We pronounce their names and bring their spirits and witness before us as we respond: Presente! You are here with us, you are not forgotten, and we continue the struggle in your name. 

 

On this Veterans' Day, we want to share with you the opportunities that one Vermont veteran has created. Introducing, Jon Turner: 

 

Jon Turner served as an infantryman from 2003 to 2007 with the Marines, deploying twice to Iraq as well as to Haiti on a humanitarian mission.  Since returning home, he has worked closely with veterans through creative writing, paper making and now farming, to teach a better understanding of the wartime experience. His written work has been published with Left Curve, Boston Poetry Magazine, Penthouse, Warrior Writers, and other publications.