<nettime> Starhawk interviews

[radtimes <resist@best.com>]

Starhawk: "A Deeper Movement"

What are your hopes for September 29 in Washington D.C.?

I hope we can do something there that will help us build the movement we 
need to have right now - which is a bigger and broader and deeper movement 
than we've ever had before.
The IMF and World Bank meeting cancellation relieves us of the need to stop 
them from meeting but it doesn't make the issues go away. It doesn't change 
the reasons why we were attempting to do direct action to stop the meetings 
- the incredible level of structural and economic violence that has been 
posed by their policies. We're in a difficult situation right now in the 
United States, and in Canada I'm sure it's not that different. On one hand 
it's hard to fight the tide of war hysteria. And we have a huge security 
culture in the establishment that is now going to have carte blanche to do 
what it wants.
But I think this event has also galvanized a lot of people who now want to 
be a part of the peace movement and who now feel moved to take action; 
people who haven't been active and radical before.
We can bring together those people with the anti-globalization people. We 
can expand the agenda so that it's about peace and justice and start 
talking about what justice really means. As a movement, we have to offer 
people something. We have to put forth a positive vision of the world that 
we want, along with our critique of the one that we've got.

What actions are now planned in Washington D.C.?

The Mobilization for Global Justice basically bowed out. The International 
Action Center is carrying on with its march on the White House. And a new 
coalition is forming around a big peace march on Sunday (September 30).
The Anti-Capitalist Convergence has just put out a really beautiful call to 
action that talks about the reasons for calling off the direct actions, the 
mood of the country and people's own feelings of shock and horror. The call 
is to have a convergence and use the time to educate ourselves, for 
dialogue and movement building. There will be a March against Hate and War 
on Saturday morning (September 29). Then they will set up an autonomous 
zone in a park to demonstrate the world that we want to create: providing 
free food, free medical care, cultural events and a Food Not Bombs 
community dinner.
--------------------

A Moment in Human History

<http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=2652>

by Erin George
September 24, 2001

"The earth is a living being and a conscious presence. And she wants us to 
survive."

You've said that the anti-war movement "has to be a peace and justice 
movement." How is our justice different from the justice that George Bush 
is calling for?

Justice is something that restores a balance. It's not just about revenge - 
it means you have to address the causes of violence. We live in a world 
that's tremendously unjust and getting more so all the time - economically, 
socially, politically.
We have a system right now that doesn't allow people to have a voice in 
some of the major decisions that affect us.  We've got this political 
system where you vote but then you go to your work and the boss gets to 
make the rules and that's somehow still a democracy. It's not a democracy 
if somebody else can make decisions that take away your livelihood or your 
right to safety in the workplace.
Democracy has to include the economy, otherwise it's just window dressing.
In the United States, the prime value is profit and everything else is a 
side dish. Democracy has to include the prime area that we actually live in 
and work in, which is the economy.
It's not a just world if 400 billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 
40 per cent of the population. It's not a just world if every individual 
doesn't have the opportunity to develop their maximum creativity and 
contributions to society. It's not a just system if the United States is 
funding the Colombian military, which works hand-in-hand with the death 
squads there. And it's not a just system if we don't admit that the 
[Central Intelligence Agency] trained and funded [Osama] bin Laden in the 
first place.
The United States has to take a look at [its] role as global terrorists. 
And that's going to be an extremely unpopular position to take at this 
moment, but I think that it's got to be said. We [Americans] have to 
actually look at the reality of what we as a country have been doing. I 
don't look forward to making that case to the American people. It's hard - 
it's like telling someone their mother is an abuser.
And we have to actually look at Israel's assassination of political leaders 
of the Palestinian opposition - that's terrorism. Israel came so close to 
potential for peace and they shafted it with provocative acts, like 
Sharon's, that set off anther Intifada. We can't have peace in that area of 
the world unless there's a measure of justice for Palestinians.
As a Jew, I don't look forward to making that case either. I was raised in 
the 1950s, when Israel was the great beautiful dream that made up for all 
of the horrors and suffering and genocide of the Holocaust. It's really 
very hard for American Jews to wake up from that dream and realize what a 
nightmare it has become.
So if the United States is going to start throwing around the word justice, 
then we've got to look at justice in the larger sense.

How can the anti-globalization movement help build a peace movement?

We have to find a balance between holding on to our radical agenda - which 
for many people is much more radical than they have grasped - and being 
open to working with, dialoguing with and educating those people.
People on the Left have a tendency to judge the people who are less radical 
than we are, to scorn their middle-class bourgeois values. It would be a 
wonderful moment in human history if we could get beyond that and 
understand that it's our job as activists not to put people down because 
they aren't radical enough, but to figure out how we can actually motivate 
them.
It might be a good moment for us to start a different kind of dialogue than 
we usually have. Where we go out and ask people how these issues impact 
them and what their hopes and fears are rather than just immediately 
telling them what we think they should know and think and feel and what 
risks they ought to take.
There is tremendous hope for building this movement. There are a lot of 
people out there who don't want to be bombing women and children in 
Afghanistan.
Once the U.S. troops get ground casualties, we're going to see public 
opinion start shifting. People don't get what a war really is. They haven't 
got it that the nice kid in the navy suit on the front page of the 
newspaper is going to end up shot and dead. Once that starts happening, 
then it becomes real.  Then the patriotic rhetoric peels away and something 
different takes it place.

What are some of the lessons from previous anti-war movements?

I think we made some bad mistakes in our anti-war organizing in the Vietnam 
era. We really attacked and vilified the people in the military and that 
was a mistake. They got drafted, they got caught up in the patriotic 
rhetoric. They were 18 years old, what did they know? They got sent to a 
situation that was incredibly traumatic and then came home to people 
spitting on them.
And we didn't ask ourselves what base of support we had for the actions 
that we took. Especially during the later period, when things got more and 
more radical and groups went into the politics of despair - small radical 
cells doing things that were more in the nature of armed struggle rather 
than peaceful demonstration. If you don't have the base of support for it, 
then essentially it's counterproductive, it pushes people away and it 
creates a tremendous backlash.
There are a lot of lessons that we've learned since Vietnam, too. We didn't 
really have a feminist movement yet, we were beginning to have a 
Black-power movement and the first inklings of a gay liberation movement. 
So our organizing didn't reflect any of those insights about diversity and 
a feminist analysis of war.
Hopefully we can draw on some of those lessons and not have to relearn them 
all. Maybe we're at the point where we can build strong coalitions that 
understand the struggle against this war is a struggle against racism. And 
it has to involve a feminist of analysis of this macho syndrome.

What role do you think magical energy plays?

At this point I have to believe it plays some kind of role, or else we 
might just crawl in a hole. Magic is the art of changing consciousness at 
will. The images that we hold in our mind and the energies that we put out 
do have an impact on the consciousness around us. We can help to shape that 
by the energies that we put out consciously, by the intentions that we hold 
and by the words that we use.
It's especially powerful if we're out there taking the action ourselves: 
doing it on both the outer and inner level. The other thing is that the 
magic and the ritual can really help sustain our spirits, and that's 
something we all really need right now.
I have a deep faith that there is a great creative force in the universe 
that is ultimately stronger then the forces of violence, and that if we 
align ourselves with that creative force, then we have that energy to draw 
on. The earth is a living being and a conscious presence. And she wants us 
to survive.

You went to New York. What did you see there?

When I was in New York last Sunday, we did a little healing ritual as close 
as we could to the site. It was like a pillar of smoke had replaced those 
buildings. It was oddly beautiful - you could feel all the spirits in that 
smoke, and that they were ok. They had an entire country of people praying, 
sending them energy, grieving for them and helping to send them over to 
wherever they need to go. I felt like I could hear them say, "Don't use our 
death as a weapon."
-----------------
Starhawk is an American peace activist and feminist who combines activism 
and earth-based spirituality. She has been active in the anti-globalization 
movement providing direct action training for demonstrations in Seattle, 
Prague, Washington D.C., Quebec City and Genoa. Starhawk is the author of 
the bestseller The Spiral Dance. Her writings about the anti-globalization 
movement are available at www.starhawk.org.
She was in Toronto last week and spoke about the recent tragedy in the 
United States at a St. Lawrence Centre Forum attended by 450 people.
"The events on September 11 were horrible and insupportable in any way. 
They can't be defended and they can't be excused. But these events don't 
come out of a vacuum - they come out of a world that is polarized between 
rich and poor. We can't address the issue of terrorism if we don't address 
the issues that drive people to terrorism," she told the audience. "And the 
issues that the anti-globalization movement was working on didn't go away 
after September 11, if anything, there is more urgency now."
----------
Erin George is an activist with Toronto Mobilization for Global Justice and 
a freelance writer.
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