Ramblings and Reflections

Newsletter 5
January 2004

Dear Friends,

 Praise God!  Ah, the Connecticut experience during the holy seasons of Advent, Christmas and New Year 2004:  rain and rainbow, ice, sleet and snow, wind and warming breeze, swarming seagulls, crows and cardinals, hibernating trees, sun and moon risings and settings.   These all greeted us here in this beautiful month of December.  God’s creation is so awesome!  I am not in a lockdown, dungeon situation any more as was the county jail incarceration for 8 ½ months in Colorado.  I can walk out of the building day and night, except at count times, to drink in the starlight and moving clouds connecting all of us as one family across the miles of the universe./p>

Demand Peace with Justice! Every letter and card I receive speaks of your desire for peace, for justice in the world.  It is the season; 2004 is the year.  We will each have to sacrifice (make sacred) more time, more energy, more creativity to attain it.

Let us live our convictions, not allowing cooptation by politicians.

Let us sign on to nonviolence as our way of life.

Let us challenge and reject the corrupt, bankrupt system of capitalism, the war machine that wages and protects superpower domination.

Let us take back our civil rights.  In the United States one of every thirty-seven of us has been imprisoned some time.  The prison industrial system is collapsing under the weight of the Ashcroft-Bush style of “patriotism”.  Will we allow them to stop our dissent by fascist and police state tactics?  Will we be complicit in empire building, globalization, preemptive strike policies, permanent war-making and obscene corporate profiteering?

Let us challenge and reject the corrupt, bankrupt system of capitalism, the war machine that wages and protects superpower domination.

Let us take back our civil rights.  In the United States one of every thirty-seven of us has been imprisoned some time.  The prison industrial system is collapsing under the weight of the Ashcroft-Bush style of “patriotism”.  Will we allow them to stop our dissent by fascist and police state tactics?  Will we be complicit in empire building, globalization, preemptive strike policies, permanent war-making and obscene corporate profiteering?

Homeland Insecurity:  1) disregarding international law, 2) rejecting the Kyoto treaty, 3) pulling out of the ABM treaty,  4) abrogating the Land Mine Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 5) building the Missile “Defense” system, 6) continuing the dominance and exploitation of space program, 7) new nuclear weapon construction, 8) increasing war department spending, 9) arrogant stances against United Nations and other countries, 10) rejecting the International Criminal Court, 11)  Nuclear Posture Review, 12) US as Number 1 debtor nation, 13) world-wide malnutrition, starvation, homelessness, lack of basic humane living conditions, rampant disease and little care or treatment.  Billions of people live on 1 to 2 dollars a day. 14) Environmental devastation of water, land, air and space.

Our Hope – Ban Nuclearism, War, Killing:  Our lawyers will request a list of U.S. military sites on which the three of us, Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, may not set foot during our three years of probation following our release dates.  When these sites are published (or if you know one in your vicinity now) would you be willing to do a Citizen Weapon Inspection Team (CWIT) direct action procedure at the site close to you?  Is the site used for training, research, testing, construction or deployment?  Inform the public.  What lifegiving and transformative benefit would this site provide for people?  Begin a campaign and long-term commitment of vigiling, leafleting, bannering, converting, demonstrating, occupying, resisting, etc.  Unmask the enterprise of the war department and war state and convert it into what is good, righteous and essential for a peace state, a peace nation.  Let us make our country a model of nonviolence, compassion, simpler lifestyle and beatutude living.

 Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  for your prayers, loving letters and cards, money sent to our congregation and Jonah House community, books, xeroxed reports, peace journals, Catholic Worker papers, sharing family journeys, news of your witness, your resistance, woodcut art pieces, pictures, etc. The honors we have received belong to all of us who long for peace, for a nuclear free future.  Continuous gratitude for our lawyers who yearn and work for justice and truth in the courts.  Blessings in abundance in this closure of 2003 and in the New Year 2004.

Grateful Always,, Ardeth Platte # 10857-039, FPC Danbury, Rt. 37, Danbury, CT 06811

2004 Space Organizing Events

Plans for U.S. “full spectrum dominance” via space technology are rapidly moving ahead.   Please help us by spreading the word about these important events:

April 23-25, 2004   Portland Maine

for more information on the above events: globalnet@mindspring.com  or www.space4peace.org, or

Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, P.O. Box 652, Brunswick, Maine 04011, (207) 729-0517