The Disuniting of America

By Jim Hightower

The Houston Peace and Justice Center endorses "Occupy Houston"

We support this action for the following reasons:

• No one on Wall Street or in Washington has been held accountable for the "Great Recession" that was caused by Wall Street greed and which has led to thousands of people losing their jobs and their homes.  
• Millions of U.S. citizens, including millions of children, live in poverty.  Millions of people who work are not paid a "living wage".  The gap between the rich and the poor/middle class continues to grow.
• Many wealthy people and corporations pay little or no income taxes.   Rather than correcting this inequity,  budget cuts are made at the state and federal levels which adversely impact poor and middle class families and students. 
• Millions of U.S. citizens, including millions of children, still lack quality health care.
• Billions of dollars are spent each year to support the military-industrial complex while human needs at home go unmet.   The billions of dollars wasted on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya should have been used to create jobs and improve the nation's educational system, infrastructure and health and human services.
• Elections are controlled by money from wealthy people and corporations.  The Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allows corporations to make unlimited donations to political campaigns, has made this problem even worse.  Public financing of political campaigns is needed.   
• The right wing is trying to destroy our unions which have been instrumental in improving working conditions for millions of Americans and are greatly responsible for the creation of the Middle Class of our nation.
• Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have been unfairly attacked and demonized by the right wing in this country.  This has led to racial profiling by law enforcement, thousands of people being deported, and the break up of thousands of families.
• Economic and racial injustices in our society and our criminal justice system have led to over two million people being incarcerated and hundreds of people being executed.   

Nonviolence is probably most distinguished from violence by the attitude it maintains towards its opponents. While the violent approach verbally or physically assaults an "enemy" in pursuit of its ends, nonviolence maintains a positive regard for the person of its opponent on all levels, even while energetically standing against the opponent's position. Member organizations of the Houston Peace and Justice Center are expected, in the course of their peace and justice work, to exercise nonviolence in word, deed and attitude.

To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?"

We owe a debt of gratitude to the prisoners at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California who were on a hunger strike for several weeks.  They have raised the issue of inhumane conditions in prisons across the nation,  particularly the thousands of prisoners who are held in prolonged solitary confinement which we know can cause long-term psychological damage.      

By David Morris

U.S. military spending now exceeds the spending of all other countries combined.

In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government—- waste, incompetence, and corruption—all but exempt from conservative criticism?

Of course, I’m talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.
 

When I moved to Texas with my wife and three children 40 years ago, I knew that the Texas educational and health care system for the state's children was far from being the best in the nation.  However, I had confidence that the situation would improve significantly as time passed and more people moved into the state.