pictures and a video

Check out a short youtube clip here.

presente!

So more on the SOA protest. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the School of the Americas, a quick background. The School of the Americas is a training facility for Latin American armies, militias and police. It's well documented that those trained by the SOA have enacted all sorts of human rights violations upon their own people. Most of those killed were "counter-insurgents," those working against oppressive regimes in their countries. One of the most famous was Fr. Oscar Romero who was murdered by soliders in El Salvador while saying Mass. In 1989 nine Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were murdered. Graduates from the SOA have been connected to paramilitary organizations, drug cartels, guerilla militias and torture camps. They learned it all at Ft Benning.

In 2001 the U.N. did an investigation into SOA and discovered training manuals teaching students torture and assassination. The school claims to be training for the spread of democracy which I believe is true. The problem is that this is democracy at any price. The school was shut down and reopened some six months later under the name Western Hemisphere's Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC. Supposedly the training changed. Yet SOA grads continue to end up in the news doing the same old thing.

The protest/vigil occurs once a year on the anniversary of the nine murdered priests. It is staunchly non-violent and deeply rooted in the social justice tradition of the Catholic church (the vigil was first organized by a Maryknoll priest). The main event happens on Sunday when a group of 25,000 (SOA Watch estimate, Ft Benning said only 11,000) show up at the gates and walk in a slow circle as the names of each person killed by someone who graduated from the SOA is sung. Everyone has a white cross and holds it up after each name saying, "presente." It's an act of solidarity, saying "although the world stood by while you died, we will never let this happen again." 

SOA/WHINSEC weekend also ends up being something like a family reunion for folks like me. I saw people I knew from Jubilee Partners, Koinonia, Open Door, LA Catholic Worker, the Jesuit Volunteers and Sojourners. There were friends, friends who knew friends and those who will be our friends next year. It's a huge celebration of the great work being done in so many different ways around the country and the world.

Technically the goal of the protest is to shut down the school. Interestingly, Amnesty International doesn't promote this as a solution. Their opinion is that even if the school closed down, it would just open again somewhere else. I think they're right. The real solution (one which SOA Watch works on quite actively) is to get Latin American countries to stop sending their militaries to SOA/WHINSEC. So far I think six countries have agreed.  

This was my first time at the vigil and I  was with seven seniors from University of Portland. Last year we only sent two students and before that I believe we went through several years without sending any students. Students at my university are highly resistant to the idea of protest. One guess as to why is the obsession with effectiveness. If it doesn't seem like it will make an immediate change through an acceptable channel (legal, safe, fast, affirmed) then we shouldn't be doing it. I think the large ROTC presence on campus also makes it difficult to allow conflict on this issue to exist. It's better (read easier) to just ignore it and try to get along. Because of this, I think the vigil is one of the most effective training tools for civic engagement. Someone described it to me as a "protest fair." While I don't love bumper sticker social justice (how about just living faithfully?) it's great for my students to see that there are all sorts of movements happening and so many young people involved.

I know one of the difficult parts for them was all the rhetoric around "making change." I couldn't agree more. Always at things like this there's a lot of talk about a better world, the end of conflict and war. That's why a visit to Koinonia Partner Farms is always so wonderful. After the vigil ended we drove an hour out visit the community in Americus, GA. I went there with my students over the summer when I was leading our Civil Rights program. It's one of my favorite places. I always appreciate experiencing the dailyness of their struggle to live racial and economic equality in the deep South. Protests are important but these are short term signs of change. People go home, forget. Lives don't necessarily change. The people at Koinonia live the message out every day and they extend their reach in amazing ways. 

The breadth of Koinonia's witness especially hit home talking to one of the older guys. He was referencing one part of the vigil (No Mas! No More!) and telling us how that originated there on the farm. But at the time they weren't talking about SOA but the Civil Rights struggle. Then it was Vietnam. Then it was nuclear proliferation. Then it was the Cold War. Struggles for justice are not going to be over until the Lord returns. If the SOA shuts down, there will be something else to take it's place, some other way the poor are brought low. There always has been. But I also know that the church (and those outside the church who teach us to be the church) will always be ready to say "presente" for the alien, the orphan and the widow who are shot down, starved, tortured or disappeared. That's the kingdom of God. 

I'll load up some pictures when I come back from Iowa. 

whoa nelly

Phew! It's been an exhausting few days with a lot more travel than expected. I am now in Iowa with Jacob's family, a day and half earlier than expected. It's all thanks to the nightmare we call holiday travel.

This past weekend I was at Ft Benning, GA with a group of students from the club I advise (The Latin American Solidarity Club). We were participating in the School of the Americas/WHINSEC protest. I will write more about this a little later but you can learn a lot about our country's most famous counter-insurgent training facility at SOA Watch.

On the way back I got stuck in Birmingham over night and, rather than fly back to Portland for t-minus 10 hours, I took the next plane to Iowa (via Louisville and Chiacgo and Omaha. ugh). And now it's snowing so hopefully Jacob will be able to get into night. Sad.

Like I said, I will share more about the particulars of the SOA protest a little later. Let's just celebrate the fact that I got 7 students to Georgia and back for a protest without being arrested.

dependent rational animals

Receiving help is hard for a lot of us. I don't think we can really know how challenging this can be until we find ourselves in a place where we are forced to receive assistance. I had two experiences this week that reminded me of how difficult it is to feel dependent.

The first was This American Life. The show was called "How to Rest in Peace" where the last segment was about a man who helped his elderly mother "practice" her suicide. He would be there when she showed him her method, to talk her through her fears, to help her think through the decision. This was a woman who greatly feared all the things associated with being old, particularly pain and disability. Rather than "lose her mind" or have someone else sponge bathe her, she decided to overdose.

I thought this was especially interesting because I now have a disabled person living with me. Jacob broke his hand last week playing hurling. He has a long fracture leading from his left ring-finger knuckle down the hand. We're looking at potential surgery for the finger and 5 weeks in a very obtrusive cast (picture below for your enjoyment).

What I've noticed this last week is how much Jacob doesn't want to be a "bother." I catch him trying to do all sorts of things, like butter bread (try that with one hand) or open plastic bags. Of course there are some things he simply can't do: wash his hair, tie his shoes and button anything. It's a lot of dependence and a lot of asking for help. There's also a lot of humility in feeling helpless about daily homecare in laundry, dishes and making the bed.

Fortunately, I have a PhD in inter-dependence from the L'Arche community. We joke that Jacob is my core member. The only difference is that he's much more stubborn about doing things on his own. Last week he didn't shower for 5 days without telling me (there's a lot of two handed waterproofing prep involved). Now that I am caring for Jacob in this particular way I can see how much strength it takes for our friends at l'Arche to receive our care.

I think about that woman who killed herself to avoid a life in the hospital. How could her world have been transformed by allowing herself to be cared for by her son; how might his life been enriched and transformed by caring for her? Living through the failing of our bodies and the willingness to carry each other gently towards death is perhaps the greatest act of loving-kindness we can experience. I am so grateful for Marilyn, Joni, Adam and Erin and now Jacob for teaching me this every day.

The woman I want to be

Making dinner for my disabled husband (if you hadn't heard, Jacob broke his hand last Sunday playing the traditional Irish sport of hurling) I was listening to one of my favorite programs, This American Life. It was an archived program about wrongful convictions. The first "act" was about these three guys who spent half their life in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit.

The woman who defended them, spent $50,000 of her own money and 600 unpaid hours to bring the case to trial, was Kathleen Zellner. And get this. Her daughter and now associate went to Wheaton College and graduated in 2002. Okay. One for Wheaton.

Seriously, after hearing this addition of TAL I ever so briefly contemplated taking out an LSAT book from the library. Then I remembered that one of our law school-graduate friend is working as a temp for Citi Bank and the other is working in-house for JP Morgan. Hmm. Maybe not.

And if any of you know Anne Zellner, tell her I think her mom is the best.

The Feminist

my handsome assistant.


For Christmas last year my little sis gave her new brother-in-law a book called "Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World." An ambitious title, I know. But he loved it And, like any book worth reading, in the process he had a moment of conversion. He became convinced that the central role of home brewing needs to go to the women. (Jacob says men are called brewers and women brewsters. I think we should all just be brewtrons, but whatever.)

The chapter that struck the ethical chord is called "The Great Beer Gender Bender" and in it the author describes himself as a femaleist (nyuck, nyuck, nycuk). He talks about the role women can play in taking back the now industrialized culture of beer, back to something that was ours.

For thousands of years brewing was women's craft in the home. He writes, "as modern industrial capitalism emerged as a main organizing force in the world, men transformed brewing from a craft into an industry; and from a culture to a commodity" (65). The 1516 Reinheitsgebot law in Germany forced controlled production of beer and in the process ousted women's in-home recipes and brewing processes. With the mass production of beer came the loss of its cultural significance.

What this means for the Florer-Bixlers: I am the brewster in the family. The beer tools are mine. The beer choices are mine. Jacob will not instruct, recommend, correct or influence. He is my assistant.

The amazing thing is, none of this was my idea. Jacob had to fight hard for this place of subordination. The beer gear was my birthday present from him but it took me a long time to get started. Something in me didn't want to mess it up or thought that he would do it better. I realized that I'd been socialized to see beer production as male.

We just bottled our second batch of homebrew, a clone of The Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen. Our first batch, a clone of Fat Tire from the New Belgium Company was awesome. I am slowly gaining confidence and am thankful to my assistant for spurring me on. In two weeks we crack our first bottle of Flo-Bix Gold Hefeweizen. If you are in Northeast Portland stop by and try some for yourself!