As I grapple with events unfolding here in the United States, I am haunted by images of the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center, of Lower Manhattan shrouded in plumes of dust and smoke. Thousands are thought to be dead after two hijacked commercial airliners were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. In Washington, D.C., a third hijacked airliner ploughed into the Pentagon, while a fourth hijacked airliner crashed into a field near Pittsburgh--apparently before it reached its target of either the White House or the Capitol. All four hijackings were part of a coordinated act of terrorism targeting the most prominent symbols of U.S. economic, military and political dominance.

Along with the horrific loss of human life and the overall savagery and terror of today's acts, there is another aspect of what has happened--and what is happening--that disturbs me. It is the uncritical coverage and analysis being offered by the mainstream corporate media. Not once have I heard any analysis of what might drive people to commit such deplorable acts. Not once has the United States' role in global oppression and, yes, terror, been identified, explored and/or critiqued. Does awareness and acknowledgment of this role excuse the terrorist atrocities of today? No, but it may help explain them and prevent future attacks.

1. At 5:00 p.m. today [Friday, September 14, 2001] I joined with about 30 others [including Kate McDonald, CSJ, and Kay Abbott] for a Peace Vigil at Summit and Snelling Avenues in St. Paul. The response we received from passing commuters was overwhelmingly positive. It was incredibly heartening. The mainstream media may be joining with the Bush regime in beating the drums of war but I really don't think such a hawkish stance reflects the mood of the general population. True, I think many people are feeling very patriotic (the increase in sales of American flags attests to this) but I think that this is more a way of standing in solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attacks, than it is an indication that people are all for a full-scale war.

2. Lenief Heimstead - September 14, 2001.

"[It is] my desire to be with others who are not seeking revenge that I'm here at Summit and Snelling at the time of the regular weekly vigil that is held here in support of peace with justice in the Israel/Palestine conflict," says Lenief. "I brought no sign of my own but when I looked over those that were available I was drawn to the one that said 'Non-Violence is the Courageous Way'.

"People who are not very knowledgeable about nonviolence sometimes think of it as a cowardly avoidance of conflict. Actually, a nonviolent response to conflict is based on love, and to exhibit this response takes a great deal of courage. As Mohandas Gandhi once said, 'A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave'."

3-4. On September 25, 2001, a rally was held in downtown Minneapolis to voice opposition to the Bush administration's plans to respond to the tragedy of September 11 with military strikes against Afghanistan. The ruling Taliban government of Afghanistan is believed to be sheltering Osama bin Laden, the man being held responsible for planning the September 11 attacks. Those who gathered in front of the Minneapolis Federal Building, however, called not for war but for the utilizing of the international criminal justice system so as to bring bin Laden and others responsible for planning the terrorist acts, to justice.

Two days earlier, I wrote the following in my journal:

It would seem that the United States is at war--a war against terrorism! This despite the fact that no such declaration has been made by Congress. Indeed, Congress has basically absolved itself of the responsibilty for deciding such matters and relinquished such authority to the president. In a so-called democracy, I find this very disturbing and difficult to fathom.

Why are people so slow in realizing the futility, the horror, the violence of war? Thousands stand and wave flags and sing patriotic songs. There seems to be a torrent of nationalism sweeping the country. And where will it take us?

I pray for peace, Great Spirit. Peace in the hearts of those in power. A peaceful heart cannot plan and wage war. I pray for a nation-wide rejection of all this talk of "fighting back" and "being at war."

I pray for the millions of Afghan refugees on the brink of starvation and disease and now threatened by U.S. bombs. I pray for the dying children of Iraq. Let the collective concern of the United States embrace these people as well as those lost and left behind by the September 11 tragedy.

It's times like these that I lose faith in organized religion as it clearly has failed to help people transcend limiting and ultimately destructive paradigms like nationalism, and to embrace instead the great spiritual truths that tell us we are all one, that we are all parts of the same body, that we are brothers and sisters.

Help me, God, to do what I can to bring about this shift, this expansion in conscious insight. "Make me a channel of your peace . . ." Make me a vessel of loving and respectful challenge. In these troubling days--these days of anger, fear and retaliation--keep me enveloped in your love. Let all my words and actions be offered to the world in your Spirit of humility, compassion and love.

5-6. Approximately 200 people attended the September 25 rally--one that resounded a clear message to passing predestrians and commuters. Similar rallies were held at this time around the country and the world.

At around the same time, Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote an essay entitled "The Algebra of Infinite Justice," in which she noted that "Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the U.S. government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an 'International Coalition Against Terror,' mobilized its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle. The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic, and a justification of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place."

7. "I think people have to speak out about this madness," says Marie Bruan referring to the Bush administration's increasing war rhetoric in response to the tragedy of 9/11. "I believe those responsible [for 9/11] are criminals. We need to bring them to justice. But war is not the way to do it. We will just end up with a lot more innocent people being killed. I do not want the United States to become the terrorist in response to terrorism."

8. "I'm here to try and salvage the United States," says Joe Palen about his presence at the September 25 rally in downtown Minneapolis to protest the Bush admininstration's plans to respond to 9/11 with war. "I'm here to try and tell others that there's another way besides retaliation, besides violence, besides bombing and killing. We all need to really speak out loudly now--more than ever before."

9. "I feel bad, but I'm not angry," says Polly Mann of the events of 9/11. "I'm saddened, but I'm not angry because I understand that there's a background to all of this. And also, I think of the 5,000 children who die every month in Iraq and I don't see two inches in the newspaper about that. So, until every death is the same as a death of ours, we're going to have trouble. Until we feel the equal pain for their loved ones that we do for the loved ones of Americans, we're in trouble and we're going to stay in trouble."

Reflecting on the Bush administration's war rhetoric and the strong support it seemingly has from the American people, Polly notes, "America is not a peace-loving country. It is a country filled with people who love their things more than they love their children. Our wealth has done us in."

For more photographs of Polly Mann see Images 4 and 5 in Gallery 1.

10. Carol Masters - September 2001.

11. On October 7, 2001, the Bush administration launched its so-called "War on Terrorism" with military strikes against Afghanistan. In response, huge protests erupted around the world. On Monday, October 8, a crowd of 500 people converged on the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis to voice their outrage and concern that the violence of 9/11 was being responded to with further violence.

12. Phyllis Cohen - October 7, 2002.

Phyllis and her partner, Elmer, became involved in justice and peace work "years and years and years ago." Phyllis' life in activism dates back to the 1930s when she protested the fascist Franco regime of Spain. "[Elmer and I] were both Unitarians and we were both opposed to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, all wars." When connecting the terror of war to economics, Phyllis notes, "Wars are inevitable under capitalism." About the U.S. role in the current crisis, Phyllis observes, "War is a form of terrorism and we're guilty of it."

13. Kathleen Ruona - October 8, 2001. Responding to George W. Bush's statement that "You're either with us or with the terrorists," Kathleen says: "That's ridiculous. We are the terrorists. It's just one more statement that Bush has made that lacks any depth of understanding, any awareness of history. And unfortunately there's way too many people who don't know the history of the United States government and the terror it has inflicted on so many people and places around the world.

"The CIA was in Afghanistan training the mujahideen six months before the Soviet Union invaded back in 1979," notes Kathleen. "Not only that, but the U.S., along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were funding the Madrassas in educating these young men and boys in a very fundamentalist, very rigid and very anti-female form of Islam. The U.S. boasted that it wanted the Soviet Union to have its own Vietnam and so did all it could to provoke the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. After ten years of war the Soviets lost and the U.S. cut funding to Afghanistan. A vacuum was created which was filled by the Islamic fundamentalists we helped train. These fundamentalists comprise the Taliban, those whom we say are responsible, in part, for 9/11. How many Americans know this history? And how would their views on Bush's so-called 'War on Terror' change if they did?"

14. "I'm here to share my opposition to the events that are unfurling right now," says Kurt Seaberg. "War will involve the killing of innocent civilians and I want to make sure I don't support that."

"I think what's needed," suggests Kurt, "is for us to step back and look at the history of our government and our own role in the world, and to start working toward another alternative [to war]. Bombing and taking revenge out on who we think might have been involved in [9/11] is just going to escalate the violence and continue the whole cycle. The only way to put an end to this cycle is to start working for peace and justice."

Kurt notes that the mainstream media's coverage of recent events has been "pretty appalling." "They've just been pretty much parroting the government's line. They're not giving the whole story. They're not even talking about who bin Laden is--that he used to work for the CIA."

In response to such coverage, Kurt recently had a letter published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune--one that encouraged readers to start critically looking at the United States' role in the events leading up to the tragedy of 9/11. "I expressed my grief for the victims of 9/11." noted Kurt, "though the paper cut that part of my letter out . . . What I wanted to say in this letter was that a lot of what's happening is a direct result of our foreign policy--supporting dictatorships, sending arms abroad, not addressing underlying issues like poverty, inequality and oppression--all of which has created a great deal of anger among underprivileged people toward the United States. So, I know this kind of sounds callous, but [9/11] is really a case of the chickens coming home to roost and it's unfortunate that innocent people had to die as a result."

15. The "Say No to War, Say Yes to Global Justice" Rally - St. Paul, October 27, 2001.

16. Chris Carroll - October 27, 2001 - one of the key organizers of the "Say No to War, Say Yes to Global Justice" Rally.

17. A participant in the "Say No to War, Say Yes to Global Justice" Rally stands on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol - the site of the event which drew a crowd of 500 people.

18. Former U.S, Attorney General Ramsey Clark - Minneapolis, November 13, 2001.

Interviewed in the August 2001 issue of The Sun magazine, Ramsey Clark observed that "[U.S.] foreign policy has been a disaster . . . for a lot longer than we'd like to believe. We can look all the way back to the arrogance of the Monroe Doctrine, when the United States said, 'This hemisphere is ours,' ignoring all the other people who lived here too. For a part of this past century, there were some constraints on our capacity for arbitrary military action--what you might call the inhibitions of the Cold War--but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've acquired a headier sense of what we can get away with.

"Our overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination--that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible; and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of our foreign policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops; the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of resources. And insofar as any people or states get in the way of our domination, they must be eliminated--or, at the very least, shown the error of their ways.

" . . . The standard by which [I] judge any foreign or domestic policy [is this]: has it built a healthier, happier, more loving society, both at home and abroad? The answer, in our case, is no on both counts."

Asked what we are to do in light of this reality, Clark responds, "I think the solution relies on the power of the idea, and the power of the word, and on a belief that, in the end, the ultimate power resides in the people . . . What all this means is that we each have to do our own part, and become responsible, civic-minded citizens: we have to realize that we won't be happy unless we try to do our part . . ."

19. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton - Minneapolis, February 6, 2002. Over a thousand people filled the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis to hear Bishop Gumbleton talk on "Peace, Patriotism and Nonviolence: Another Way to Confront Terrorism."

Bishop Gumbleton is a consistent and outspoken critic of war and the social inequality that fuels it: "If we don't close the gap between the rich and the poor, if we don't try to make our world really one with [the] human family sharing all the resources that God gave for all and not just a few, [then] violence will only become worse.

"The poor of the world are outraged [that] this gap is getting larger and larger, a gap filled with violence that is killing them and a violence that will ultimately destroy us. We must do something to bridge that gap, to bring us closer to the poor of the world, to understand why they are angry and why they hate us so much."

Bishop Gumbleton is also critical of his own church's so-called "just war theory": "[We should] take that 'just' war theology, put it in a drawer, lock it, and never open it again.

"As war is rejected as the failure that it always is and the [non-violent] way of Jesus is embraced, we will begin to experience the reign of God in our land. Any nation that continues to build up arsenals of weapons of destruction is a nation approaching spiritual death.

"It's up to us to make the choice to follow Jesus and to make his way of transforming the world a reality. It's an extraordinary challenge, but it's one that with God's help each of us can accept and live out."

20. Sarah Standefer traveled with three bus loads of people from Minnesota to participate in the "Say No To War" Rally in Washington, D.C., on the weekend of April 20-21, 2002.

"The highlight for me," said Sarah, "was the fact that 100,000 people showed up to say no to war. It was also heartening to see so many Arab-Americans in attendance."

21. Ruth Rosenblum - Minneapolis, May 11, 2002. Ruth's brother, Josh, was one of the victims of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. She is a member of Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of relatives of victims of the September 11 attack who seek to "promote non-violent responses to terrorism and the acts of September 11."

"We don't feel like it's very effective to respond to violence with violence," notes Ruth. "That is not going to bring about change. We do not have to act out of fear and anger, but we should act out of love. If we show we care about the lives of others, then people will not respond with hate and acts of terror. We must end the use of war as a supposed tool for peace."

Ruth spoke at a special Mother's Day Peace Rally at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 11, 2002. The very first Mother's Day was organized by Julia Ward Howe as a day of peace and reconciliation between the North and South after the American Civil War and to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. In her famaous Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote:

22. On July 11, 2002, close to 400 citizens converged on downtown Minneapolis to "unwelcome" George W. Bush, "President" of the United States.

Jessica Sundin, a member of the Minneapolis-based Anti-War Committee, one of the main organizers of the rally, said the demonstration was called on two days' notice and reflected growing dismay with Bush's war efforts and restrictions of civil liberties at home under Attorney General John Ashcroft.

At around the same time of Bush's visit to Minneapolis, Donald E. Winters, Humanities professor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, had a commentary in the Minneapolis newspaper Star Tribune. Entitled "Bush's Words Cast An Orwellian Shadow Across America," Winters' article notes that in George Orwell's 1949 novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the "brutish ruling party of Oceania rules society on the basis of slogans such as 'War is Peace'." In Orwell's novel "the frightening image of a never-ending war is [also] evoked." Winters observes that the so-called "War on Terror" presented by Bush to the American people is similarly "a war that will not be over until he says it is."

"George Bush's 'War on Terrorism'," writes Winters, "is in many ways a reincarnation of America's 'red scare' of the 1950s. It too was used to justify the growth of a war economy, suspension of democratic rights and the silencing of dissent.

"The U.S.A. Patriot Act [passed just weeks after 9/11] defines a 'domestic terrorist' as anyone who 'violates the law and is engaged in actions that appear to be intended to influence the government by intimidation or coercion.' Such a broad definition might have been used against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in fact used civil disobedience to fight segregation and racism.

"By keeping the specific elements of his 'War on Terrorism' as vague as possible, Bush hopes to make use of it whenever it might be expedient for maintaining his power.

"Also, by continuously waving the flag of September 11, Bush hopes that Americans will forget the shadowy means by which he became president in the first place. Under the facade of being a hero in times of peril, Bush can take a light hand with polluters and corporate wrongdoers like Enron while taking a heavy hand to all dissenters and anti-[corporate] globalization radicals.

"As [historian Howard] Zinn says . . . 'Our most deadly enemies are not in caves and compounds abroad, but in the corporate boardrooms and governmental offices where decisions are made that consign millions to death and misery--not deliberately but as the collateral damage of the lust for profits and power'.

"It is the responsibility of all of us to move out of the Orwellian shadow that Bush has cast upon the country with his talk of 'War on Terror' and 'Axis of Evil,' and begin to question the political legitimacy of the president and stand up for our First Amendment rights to dissent and question. The painful memory of September must leave us not quivering with fear and manipulatated by jingoistic jargon, but motivated by a renewed commitment to democratic rights."