New leaders demand U.S. leave Vieques
Controversy over the U.S. Navy's bombing range on Vieques in Puerto Rico "may become the new president's first foreign policy crisis," Juan Gonzalez writes in In These Times (1-22-01).

"The Vieques dispute, which briefly attracted major media attention in late 1999, promptly disappeared from most radar screens in this country after President Clinton reached a compromise agreement on Jan. 31 with Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello," Gonzalez says. "But the controversy never went away for the 3.8 million U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico who inhabit this nation's last major colonial possession. ...

"From the moment it was announced, the agreement faced widespread criticism, both in Puerto Rico among those who wanted an immediate Navy withdrawal, and in this country from the Navy's staunchest supporters in Congress who opposed giving up the range. On the island, several huge demonstrations were organized by a coalition of church groups, and hundreds of people were arrested throughout the year for civil disobedience on the range in attempts to disrupt maneuvers. But it wasn't until Election Day that the full impact of the Clinton-Rossello agreement became clear.

"While throughout the U.S. most people were fixed on the presidential race and the Florida recount, few noticed that down in Puerto Rico, opponents of the Vieques agreement had swept to an amazing victory. Rossello's pro-statehood New Progressive Party, which had backed the agreement, lost virtually everything -- its majority in both houses of the Puerto Rican legislature, the governor's mansion and the post of resident commissioner, the island's nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives.

"Popular Democratic Party leader Sila Calderon was narrowly elected Puerto Rico's first woman governor, and the polls showed that her strong opposition to the Vieques agreement was what provided her margin of victory. Within days after the election, Calderon met with Carlos Pesquera, head of the New Progressive Party, and Ruben Berrios, head of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, and the three leaders sent a joint letter to Clinton calling for an immediate withdrawal of the Navy from Vieques. Calderon promised that her first official act as governor would be to organize a referendum separate from the Navy's that would include the immediate withdrawal of the Navy as an option. In effect, she declared the Clinton-Rossello agreement dead."

Whose bullets?
Diana Roe of the Christian Peacemaking Team in Hebron writes in the Social Questions Bulletin (Methodist Federation for Social Action) about picking up a spent bullet on the street:

"'Hey you! Stop!' an Israeli soldier shouted. 'Give that back!' I turned around and reached into my pocket and handed him a bullet. Then I realized that I had given him one I had collected Saturday morning walking back from the Hart iSheikh neighborhood after meeting a family whose house had been attacked by multiple missile and gunshot fire.

"I reached into another pocket and handed him the right bullet. 'Here, this is the one from this street. Can I have that one back? I got it yesterday in the Hart iSheikh neighborhood.'

"'No, you must give them all back to us,' he answered. I did not argue with him. After all, he was right. No matter where I found these shells, they were fired by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]. ...

"Yet these days on every coffee table, bowls that used to hold cookies, flowers or apples now hold some of the fruit of the latest horror that comes from an occupying army. 'Have a cup of coffee and see what our children found in their bedrooms.'

"So I gave the bullets back to the IDF soldier. Yet he is only partly right. I could have said, 'Excuse me, sir, but I think those are mine. You see, I come from the U.S. It is my country that has paid for your army. It is my country that vetoed UN resolutions and thus enabled your country to carry on this brutal occupation. It was my congressman who joined over 400 other congressmen in supporting your country's assault on the people in these neighborhoods."

Relevant economics
French graduate students of economics are demanding an education that relates to "real-world problems such as unemployment and global economic inequality," according to Dollars and Sense (1-2/01).

"The movement began in a most unlikely place -- the elite Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, an institution with a long history of training top-level French intellectuals and politicians," Jennifer Berkshire writes. "The graduate students began circulating a petition demanding 'a pluralism of approaches' to the teaching of economics. Within weeks, hundreds of students from other economics departments across the country had signed on.

"The students' criticism caught many economists off guard -- one went so far as to dismiss the protests as part of a 'Trotskyite plot' -- and the French media quickly reduced the battle to one between 'anti-math' forces and their 'pro-math' opponents. But the students and their supporters insist that the struggle is about politics.

"Gilles Rivaud, a Ph.D. student at the University of Nanterre and a leader of the economics student protest movement, argues that economics courses should enable students 'to actively participate in debates about the world. They don't, and this is what we consider their primary fault.'"

Doing what God says?
A federal appellate court overturned the death sentence of a convicted murderer because the prosecutor had told jurors that imposing a death sentence would be "doing what God says" (Church & State, 12/01). According to the report, "the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voided the death sentence imposed on Alfred Sandoval, who was found guilty of murdering four people in Los Angeles in 1984." When the jury was deadlocked on imposing capital punishment, the prosecutor told them that "God will destroy the body to save the soul. Make him get himself right." The appeals court ruled that the prosecutor's argument was "improper and highly prejudicial" and said that jury members should not be told to put "an asserted higher law" before secular law.

Citizens Budget Campaign
Citizens Budget Campaign, a group of citizens' organizations in Western Pennsylvania, is asking churches, neighborhood associations and other groups to endorse a set of proposals for "tax and budget priorities that respond to increasing economic inequality." They are calling for:

1. A Fair Economy: a living wage, tax reform and income security (protection and not privatization of Social Security);

2. Quality Living: health care measures including HMO reform and coverage for those who lack adequate protection; affordable housing and a safe environment;

3. A Democratic Society: racial equality and an end to practices such as racial profiling, unfair sentencing structures and housing discrimination; voting reform, including abolition of the Electoral College; and campaign finance reform;

4. A Peaceful Foreign Policy: opposing missile defense and other "Star Wars" initiatives, and commitment to international cooperation through the U.N. and other organizations that support democratic principles.

New staffer for EPF
Jacqueline Goler Lynn will be taking over from Mary Miller as executive secretary of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship July 1, when Miller retires from the post. Lynn is currently chair of the Peace and Social Justice Commission of St. James' Cathedral in Chicago and has worked extensively on the issue of gun violence.