Rev. Danny Fisher

In the comments section of a recent post about the situation in Myanmar, Neal J. King asked a really good question–and one that I suspect has been on a lot of people’s minds of late: “Is there anything substantive that we can do [to help the anti-junta/pro-democracy movement currently being led by the Theravāda Buddhist Sangha]?”

As it turns out, yes, there is.

This, courtesy of a fellow Buddhist chaplain from across the pond–the great Sujatin Johnson: Avaaz.org is currently compiling names for an international petition that they will sent to the U.N. Security Council when it reaches 100,000. The text of the petition simply states:

To Chinese President Hu Jintao and the UN Security Council: We stand alongside the citizens of Burma in their peaceful protests. We urge you to oppose a violent crackdown on the demonstrators, and to support genuine reconciliation and democracy in Burma. We pledge to hold you accountable for any further bloodshed.

As of this moment, there are 40,081 signatories. Help the numbers grow. Stand with the monks here.

(Also, for some thoughtful reflection on the monks’ activism in Myanmar, check out a terrific piece in this morning’s Los Angeles Times.)

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As far as other worthy urgent actions, please support the ONE Campaign in their efforts to ensure the passage of the GROWTH Act (H.R. 2965/S. 2069).

Decades of research shows that when women in the developing world have the resources they need to feed their family and educate their children, they will do just that. The GROWTH Act works to give women these resources so that they can care for their families and start to build a brighter future for themselves and the next generation.

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The GROWTH Act (H.R. 2965/S. 2069) will provide solid, realistic steps to expand poor women’s options for securing jobs, accessing credit and starting new businesses. These simple steps strengthen economic opportunity for women, who are essential to breaking the vicious cycle of poverty.

Support the GROWTH Act here.

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The People’s Email Network has also just posted a very important action page related to the deeply troubling amendment to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization bill proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

Here is the language from the amendment:



3. that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
   
4. to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.
   

The policy of the U.S should be to “combat” Iran with “all” “military instruments”?!?

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We need every warm body we can muster to call and email their senators RIGHT NOW, before they pull another fast one and sneak this one through in the dead of the night. Call them toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-614-2803 or 866-340-9281, and the submit the action form…to make sure your message gets through.

Get in touch with your senators here.

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Lastly, if you have a moment, please visit http://www.tearitdown.org, the home of Amnesty International‘s campaign to close Guantánamo Bay. Academy Award-winning screenwriter/director Oliver Stone talks about the project in a P.S.A. below.

Back in June and then again just a couple of weeks ago, I posted about the “long-delayed, post-Sept. 11 federal directive intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.” The directive calls for the judicious purging of religious texts from prison libraries. This is a task that is currently being carried out by prison chaplains.

As I said in the aforementioned posts, I am very concerned about the directive. In fact, I think it’s wrong-headed and dangerous.

I now have a couple of updates. First, my friend Jeff Wilson over at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review has posted the list of “approved” Buddhist titles in a terrific blog post on this story. I would underscore that these titles are presently the only Buddhist books approved for prison libraries–any others would be purged. Jeff sums up the sorry state of this list well, writing:

As you might imagine, the list for Buddhist works is far, far shorter than the allowed list for Christianity, although the latter has certainly inspired more religious violence than the former. Furthermore, it is a highly distorted list, drawing almost entirely from a few narrow strands of Westernized elite Buddhism. There is almost nothing from the Pure Land tradition despite its pioneering of Buddhist prison ministry. There is barely anything from the Nichiren tradition, even though Soka Gakkai is probably the most popular Buddhism behind bars. Asian-Americans barely make the list, although they’re 75% of the American Buddhist population (some Asian teachers did make the cut, though many with large American audiences are conspicuously absent). You won’t even find a single work by D.T. Suzuki–apparently he’s a terrorist. There are no koan collections (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones does contain some koans); there is not a single Sutra. At least Christians get the Bible and Muslims can have the Koran. In fact there are very few traditional Buddhist works in translation at all, whether scriptures or famous commentaries by masters of the tradition–by far the majority are recent works written in English. Women aren’t well represented, and all of the women who did make the list are white. There don’t appear to be any African-American authors. The very idea of a limited list approved by the government is draconian, and the list that has been produced is a travesty.

Jeff sounds all the right notes in his post–you should read it. (And do check out my interview with him if you haven’t already.)

Jeff also points readers to a relevant urgent action from Sojourners. (My friend Donald was also kind enough to email me and others about it.) By following this link, you can write to Harley Lappin, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, asking him to “put an end to [the] absurd policy [stipulated in the federal directive] and immediately return the censored items to library bookshelves.” It takes a few seconds–please write him.

Below is an editorial from today’s Washington Post. I would like to state that I agree with it entirely and that I hope and pray for the kind of multilateral, international response to the situation in Myanmar that they suggest.

Yesterday brought momentous and awe-inspiring news from one of the world’s most oppressed nations. Defying their military government, tens of thousands of Burmese marched through the center of their largest city, Rangoon, as well as in more than two dozen other towns and cities. Estimates of the crowd in Rangoon ranged from 50,000 to 100,000–by far the largest protest since a student-led uprising in 1988. The new movement, led by Buddhist monks, has slowly mushroomed from a protest against price increases and police brutality into a full-fledged democratic uprising, thanks to the unresponsiveness of the regime and the astonishing courage of the monks.

But Burma is not the Philippines or Indonesia, and yesterday’s events were a cause for fear as well as joy among its long-suffering democratic opposition. The hope that a country of 52 million could imitate the “people power” revolutions of its neighbors is tempered by the awareness that the first instinct of the ruling junta will be to repeat the bloodbath with which it crushed the 1988 uprising–massacres in which an estimated 3,000 Burmese died.

Whether that happens may depend in large measure on what the generals hear from the outside world in the next day or two. So far, the messages have been mixed. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out against the regime on Sunday, and officials said that President Bush would support the demands for change and single out top generals for sanctions in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today. The secretary general of the Association of South East Asian Nations, which counts Burma as a member, also urged the regime to avoid violence, as did the European Union, the Philippines and Singapore. But little had been heard publicly by last night from the governments whose words matter most–India, Japan and especially China, whose investments and diplomatic support have propped up the dictatorship for years.

Some Burma experts speculate that Beijing may be quietly restraining the generals from cracking down. But silent Chinese diplomacy and familiar U.S. denunciations are not likely to be enough. What’s needed is forceful multilateral action making clear that the time has come for the regime to negotiate a political settlement with the country’s democrats, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi–coupled with explicit warnings of consequences if violence is used against peaceful protests.

The U.N. General Assembly offers a ready venue for concerted action by Asian and Western governments. Ms. Rice has said that she would like to see the group of countries that now negotiates with North Korea–the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China–evolve into a regional security structure; if so, this would be a great moment for it to collectively address the situation in Burma. Mr. Bush should make it clear that the United States will hold China responsible if there are massacres in Rangoon–and that the fallout could tarnish the 2008 Olympics. One way or another, Burma’s rulers must get the message that a powerful international alliance stands with those who are bravely parading across the country.