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Book Group Discussions

Posted on: November 10th, 2013 by BWNWAdmin 1 Comment

Walk Out Walk On by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze

The book group discussed the nonfiction book Walk Out Walk On: A learning journey into communities daring to live the future now by by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze (2011). This book is now a key part of the Building Community/Building Peace course taught by Debbie Kaufman at Portland State University. She inspired us to read it in November. Here are Dorothy Sampson’s comments on the book. You are invited to join in on this discussion.

The authors of “Walk Out Walk On” invite you on a journey.  As an armchair traveler, you don’t need to pack, but it is a good idea to unpack your judgments and assumptions, perhaps some of your cherished beliefs.  You will meet people who live much differently than you do from seven communities around the world with significantly less material goods than you have.   They are not interested in what they don’t have but rather in the resources that you might disregard or resources that might even shock you.   Working together, the “walk outs” focus on restoring agency back to the individual and local communities.   Their underlying belief is that earth and the systems that we have, with all of the problems from disparity in resources, food sustainability, ecological disruptions, urban blight, health & healing are human creations and therefore can be changed by humans.   Another belief is that we are smarter together than we are apart.

The journey is a challenge and a gift because it opens us to possibilities and with them, optimism.  A Commencement address by Paul Hawken is quoted, “Basically the Earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. . . . Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible.”

 

Book Group Discussion

Posted on: September 10th, 2013 by BWNWAdmin No Comments

In August we talked about the book Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East by David Rohde. This 2013 examination of American foreign aid engendered more diversity of response than most books we have read.

Dorothy Sampson:

If you think from the title of David Rohde’s book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East,” that he has a solution to conflict and war in the Middle East, you will be disappointed.  This is the key question Rohde poses, “Is the purpose of American civilian aid programs to help the US government achieve its political goals in other parts of the world? Or should these efforts be purely humanitarian?”  After discussing a variety of dysfunctional aid efforts, Rohde leaves the reader to ponder whether there is a possibility of giving aid without strings, although, apparently, the recipients of the aid have already decided.  After 40 years of living under an American backed dictator, 82% of Egyptians said they did not want any type of assistance from the U.S.

In addition to the questionable US motives for giving aid, Rohde explains why aid has failed more often than not.   The general indictment is not listening to the locals we are aiding to find out what they actually want.  Our failures are also tied to the inconsistencies of policy due to political shifts in the US, to the staff that rotate out of areas of need in a few months, and to the preponderance of using contractors with their own profit agendas.  The Academy of Education Development, for example, paid its president $879,530 in 2007, despite officially being a nonprofit organization.

Rohde presents several disparate situations and couches his prescriptions in imperatives about what should change and what actions must be taken and, for the reader, the prescriptions all seem highly implausible.

Anne Millhollen:

This book clearly illustrates why our foreign aid has not been effective. It helps keep us realistic in the way that Carne Ross’ 2012 book, The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century discussed diplomacy and the way that Kofi Annan’s 2012 book Interventions: A Life in War and Peace examined the effectiveness of the United Nations. We who work for peace need to know how to do so effectively.

We talk about how appropriate foreign aid is one of the roads to future peace. We view appropriate as including aid that would help provide for the food, housing, education, health, environmental sustainability, economic security, etc. that are basic human rights. Rohde shows how and why so many of the USA’s past efforts have failed. When we advocate for appropriate foreign aid in the future, let’s remember his message–to involve the local people of the country so that they actually get what they need.

Beyond War Book Group – The Things They Carried

Posted on: September 10th, 2013 by BWNWAdmin No Comments

 

The book group discussed the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien in June. Here are Dorothy Sampson’s comments on the book. You are invited to join in on this discussion.

They carried M-16 assault rifles and magazines of ammunition  and grenade launchers, ponchos and mosquito repellant, marijuana and pocket knives.  But it is the emotional and psychological baggage that continues to weigh on them long after the fighting is over.  In this book, which is neither novel nor short story nor memoir but a combination of all three, Tim O’Brien shows through shards of memory  the unreality of the reality of war for the young men who fought in Vietnam.   Echoing Tolstoy, when Count Nicholas says that men always lied when telling military events and that “in war everything goes on quite otherwise than we can imagine and recount,” O’Brien cautions,  “A true war story is never moral. . .If a story has a moral, do not believe it.  If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted or you feel that some bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.”   A reason wars continue to be fought is simply the very old and terrible lie about what war is. O’Brien’s book disabuses the reader of any notion of the glory of war.  This is the book’s great value.