Wheels of Justice

Wheels of Justice provides first-hand account of foreign conflict CHARLOTTE TAYLOR AND GWENDOLYN GAUSE Arbiter Staff Issue date: 3/20/08 Section: News

Media Credit: MARVIN LEE SCHWENK/THE ARBITER Wheels of Justice speakers Mark Turner and Salam Talib fielded questions from the audience Monday in the Bishop Barnwell Room in the SUB.

The Wheels of Justice tour brought a message of hope and peace as it rolled into Boise Monday. Wheels of Justice is a non-profit organization that tours the country in a bio-diesel bus and educates Americans on the conflicts in Israel-Palestine and Iraq.

Speakers Mark Turner and Salam Talib visited Boise State Monday and Tuesday evenings as part of the tour. Turner and Talib, like all other Wheels of Justice speakers, are volunteers.

The presentation, held in the Student Union Building Bishop Barnwell Room, began with an introduction by Boise State English professor Marcy Newman, Idaho Peace Coalition spokesperson Liz Paul and Wheels of Justice Bus Driver Bill Hill.

“If anybody would have told me in 1999 that we’d be doing this nine years later, I would have told them they were crazy,” Hill, a Vietnam veteran, said. “This is the only way that we as Americans have been speaking out against what our government does.”

The first speaker, Mark Turner, spoke to a crowd of about 40 people on his experience in Palestine and the devastation that the Israeli occupation has caused.

Turner is the founder of the Research Journalism Initiative, a program that provides video and audio resources for Palestinian students to share their stories first-hand.

“We produce material that could be incorporated as curriculum here in the U.S.,” Turner said. “We give [American students] the opportunity to engage Palestinian students in this through video conferencing.”

Turner described the state of Palestine as one without electricity, fresh water or raw sewage treatment centers. Poor conditions and violence have escalated to the point where, according to Turner, the Palestinian situation could be considered genocide. He attributed this to the Israeli occupation with influence from the United States and United Kingdom, as well as both foreign and Israeli corporate interests.

“We’re talking about corporations determining the life or death of Palestinians,” Turner said. “Israel does not have the right - none of us do, thank God - to violate human rights law.”

Salam Talib, born in Iraq in 1975, spoke about his life in both before and after American occupation Iraq.

“War is the first thing I know in my life, and it is the last thing I know when I left Iraq,” Talib said.

He explained what Iraq was like under the rule of Saddam Hussein, and the state of Iraq after American troops invaded in 2003. Hussein, according to Talib, was brutal and deprived the Iraqi people of many resources. He described secret police knocking on doors in the middle of the night, and civilians being executed in front of their families.

“The Iraqis thought whatever the Americans can be, they can’t be worse than Saddam,” Talib said.

However, Talib stated that Iraq has worsened considerably since the American occupation began.

“Americans don’t knock on the door, they knock down the door,” Talib said.

He went on to describe looting as a direct result of an American military process referred to as “securing the building.” He also shared a personal experience where he would have been shot had it not been for his ability to speak English.

Talib described an Iraq with no jobs, no public records, no justice system and no infrastructure. “It’s not just like Saddam, it’s worse than Saddam,” Talib said.

He explained that, in his opinion, American troops should pull out of Iraq immediately, because the longer they stay, the longer it will take the country to recover.

The audience was attentive and asked many poignant questions about the situations in both these regions. Some audience members shared personal stories of friends and family members who are overseas.

“They were speaking from their true life experience,” audience member Gail Hawkins said about Turner and Talib. “It was very personal.”

For more information on Wheels of Justice, students can visit justicewheels.org.

Turner stressed, however, that there is no source available where students can go to get the truth.

“If kids want answers, they have to build the mechanisms to get those answers themselves,” Turner said.

Dear friends:

Here are snippets of experiences in the past two days with inspiration on the wheels of justice bus tour — which is trying to get people mobilized to stop these wars and occupations in Iraq and Palestine:

• Discussion with Cindy and Craig Corrie and others from the Rachel Corrie foundation on meaning of activism, sacrifice, and what individuals can do to effect social change
• Dennis Mills, a Quaker and a key member of the Rachel Corrie Chapter (Olympia) of Veterans for Peace hosted us in Olympia (with his wife Anne in their lovely home) and we had wonderful time exploring issues like the meaning of peaceful transformation.
• Joseph, a college student who with quiet but determined demeanor (wearing a home-made T-shirt sign that said “Rachel Corrie Lives”) got permission to park the bus in a visible place at Centralia College to table and flyer in front of the student center.
• Abbie, a high school student who accidentally discovered us and volunteered to flyer at Centralia College for us. Their home was one of many devastated by recent floods in the area.
• Robert Poteat with Veterans for Peace who puts together a monthly professional show on public access TV.
• The teachers and the students in the classes we did (on social movements and economic geography) at Washington State University and Clark College.
• Rick and Holly of Matrix of Matrix Coffee House (matrixcoffeehouse.com) in Chehalis, WA for hosting us and good company/discussion.
• Time on the bus to discuss plans and strategy with Mike Miles, an inspirational leader who ran for congress two times, who lives with seven others on a community farm in Northern Wisconsin, building a peace center, traveled several times to Iraq and Palestine etc. A guy with incredible talents in many areas (even being song writer and guitarist).
• The energy and inspiration of Bill Hill whose title of a volunteer bus driver is the understatement of the year. A Vietnam war veteran, organizer, motivator, sets up our tables of books and material, mechanic, bicycle enthusiast, coffee expert and much much more. All this for a guy in his 60s.
• Karim of the Islamic center who, even though we could not physically meet because of our schedule, helped network us with others in the Muslim community on our upcoming schedules in Oregon.
• A gentlemen who noted us in a parking lot of the gas station and stopped to thank us for coming to town.

This I think is what life is about: people to people contact and building friendhships one person at a time (and after 7 years on the road, we have thousands). It is also a growing, learning experience. The bus will be in the northwestern part of the US for the next three weeks so it is not too late to get us in your community here or network us with those you know in this corner of the globe.

================== Mazin Qumsiyeh http://qumsiyeh.org http://justicewheels.org

Greetings from the bus! We’re out in Butte, Montana - which we’re told is “the armpit of Montana” but seems quite lovely to us, the gigantic scar of strip-mining towering above the town notwithstanding. This morning was great - we got to talk to two “Western Civilization” classes at Montana Tech before encountering support, debate, smoke, and a small bit of hostility (and a lot of support) at the Butte Elk Club this evening.

We gather scores of email addresses at each presentation, people stay after to talk to (and compliment) the presenters, get more information and buy the Palestinian goods (and Anna’s book) we’ve been tabling with. We’ve done well passing the hat, which is how we get to the next event. We’ve had some amazing on the ground organizers in Montana.

Tomorrow we head to Boulder (is there a Boulder in every western state, or is it just me?) to talk at a senior center, an alternative high school, and the Montana-usual evening pot luck event. I gotta say, Montana hospitality is definitely under-rated - we’ve been getting it pretty good up here. The forecast says snow for Butte on Wednesday, and I think we’re all glad to be dodging that.

On Friday, Anna and I fly out of Missoula, leaving just Ceylon and Bill on the bus for the last two events in Kalispell and Whitefish, MT. I have no doubt that the two of them can carry the show and then some, though I don’t envy the task. My time on the bus has flown by - I’ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun, and I hope I get a chance to do it again sometime soon.

We see change, significant change, as this country becomes more comfortable with openly discussing the Israeli occupation of Palestine; the taboo has been broken and the lie of silence can’t blanket honest discussion and witness any more. I worry, though, that American activists are burning out on Iraq; reconnecting with other activists across the country and seeing how connected we really can be is putting wind back in our sails that we carry our efforts further and farther. We are not alone, you are not alone, and, until we’ve exhausted all our efforts and run out of ideas, we have no reason to despair or burn out. We can be creative, we can try things we haven’t tried, and we can do things we’re afraid to do. Let nonviolence be our tool and courage be our motor…the rest are obstacles that have already been climbed. Let’s gather the strength to step further outside our comfort zones and end this war.

Much love to all of you, -Michael, Ceylon, Anna, Bill on behalf of the Wheels of Justice Tour