Lupita’s Reward

Under this program, Alcoa was supposed to reward Lupita with a cash bonus proportionate to the savings the corporation was going to make by implementing Lupita’s idea, in this case approximately 500 pesos ($45), equivalent to a week’s wages for a typical maquiladora worker.

Alcoa management withheld cash rewards for several weeks from Lupita and nearly 100 other workers. The workers feared that their innovations were being stolen by supervisors — in the past, supervisory employees have taken credit for innovations by line workers, pocketing the cash. Things changed overnight for Lupita and her coworkers when she met Julia Quiñonez, coordinator of the Comité Fronterizo de Obrer@s (CFO), and Ricardo Hernández, director of AFSC’s Mexico-U.S. Border Program. Julia and Ricardo suggested that Lupita attend an upcoming meeting between religious institutional investors and Alcoa’s top U.S. management in San Antonio, Texas.

Ricardo provided Lupita, along with three other workers whose U.S. visas enabled them to cross the border, with background information on the ongoing conversations among Alcoa’s religious shareholders, company management, and rank-and-file workers. These conversations have taken place over the past eight years and have included five-hour meetings in San Antonio, New York City or Del Rio, Texas, a border town.

During the three-hour drive north from Ciudad Acuña to San Antonio, Ricardo also explained to the workers the contents of “Alcoa’s Values,” the company’s code of conduct. At the meeting in San Antonio, Lupita spoke candidly about the irregularities in the “Go for the Gold” program. Then Ricardo offered an interpretation of her case, so that the shareholders and the company president could more easily undertand it, presenting similar cases from other Alcoa plants at the border. His remarks were a mix of incident reports and specific recommendations to solve the problem, encouraging the company’s top leaders to put in place an immediate remedy to Lupita’s complaint as well as to several other issues raised by the workers.

A week later, Lupita and dozens of other workers were paid thousands of dollars that had been unfairly withheld by Alcoa.

Events

The study group which has been meeting on the second Sunday of each month will not meet in May. When it resumes it will study Without Apology by Chuck Fager, Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which provides counseling for conscientious objectors and military personnel considering CO status. The cost of the book i s $10 (not $9 as previously reported) and may be ordered through Marian Carter.

Pam’s recital

Service Alternatives

“Julie and I will return there on May 16, 10:30-12:30. I had on the table a poster board about C.O., my son's poster/pictures from Eyes Wide Open, signs that said ‘Service Alternatives,’ and our flyers and website URL note to hand out.

I got to educate 5 people on conscientious objection, including the Army National Guard folks (there is also the Air National Guard - I learned a bit about them, too).

The two representatives were clear at the end that if someone is a C.O., it is best if they figure that out before they get into the military, if they want to be involved in the military.

It was really great to bring to bear my experience with Quakers, C.O., and having done contract work for the military (mostly training systems for the Air Force).”

Carol will be in touch with Patty Raspino, faculty sponsor of Students for a Peaceful Society, Samuel Clemens High School, Schertz, who says, “I am wondering if it might be doable to organize a Student Peace Summit for peace and justice groups in the San Antonio area. I am sure students would benefit from connecting with each other and sharing ideas for implementing peace building activities. I’m thinking along the lines of a one day event in summertime with a couple of whole group meetings and a couple of breakout sessions for working in smaller interest groups.”

Jonathan at the EPA

EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and Tribal Affairs is composed of two groups, an EJ team and a tribal team. The tribal team works with the 65 federally recognized Indian nations in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico. It provides infrastructure grants to 63 tribal environmental offices. They also work as cultural liaison inside EPA and with other federal and state agencies as advocates for the tribes, a feature Jonathan strongly supported. A primary focus is protection of sacred sites.

The Environmental Justice team is assisting New Mexico in developing one of the leading EJ programs in the country. They have been very involved in community issues in south Louisiana following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, especially with the Houma Nation.

During the past year, Jonathan also met with indigenous communities in Malaysia (peninsular village and Borneo longhouse) and Russia (Baskiri and Tatar). “It was about 100 degrees most of the time I was in Malaysia and 35 below zero while I was in Russia.” EPA is doing a lot of international work, increasingly with indigenous communities.

At the evening’s end there was drumming and singing. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the drum for Indian people, giving both rhythm and meaning to life in the community. Listening to the steady beat, which seemed to drown out the song, we felt it carrying the song’s praise to the Creator and the Mother Earth out through the room and across the city and state. It is a spiritual experience for Indians. Jim Spickard surprised us by showing an unexpected talent, singing an Indian song with the drumming. He says,

“It's in Miwok (coastal variety), one of the Penutian languages of native California. I found it in the early 70s on a set of wax cylinders in the Lowie Anthropology Museum at Berkeley. It's one of several traditional songs collected by Isabel Kelly in the 1920s. This one is a luck song, used for playing stick-game (a form of gambling; yeah, I know gambling songs aren't very Quakerly, but I treat it as a luck song, which I think is okay). I don't know the exact translation.

"I hope that Jon was able to learn it. I saw him trying. It would be nice not to be the only person on the planet to know it. That's why I was led to volunteer.

"I, too, was a bit surprised.”

Note: the use of “Indian” rather than “Native American” is Jonathan’s preference. He says that many consider Columbus’s discovery of “Indios” people to be of people “in Dios,” in God.

Wildlife in our Lives

While Janet and Ken Southwood were having breakfast, a disheveled-looking baby possum snuffled past their window. He continued, leisurely, sniffing for insects. He badly needed a brush and comb-up. His Mom had let him out, in broad daylight, without a final inspection, and without warning him that no respectable possum goes out at that time of day.

Benjamin Lederer says, “In the past couple of weeks I picked up two sparrows from the street- one I had unfortunately hit. Within minutes both revived and flew off. It felt like good karma.”

Before Jonathan Hook’s presentation, Janet and Ken Southwood saw a swift lizard on the meetinghouse porch. Ken went over. It didn’t run. He knelt down, spoke to it and slid his hand out toward it, palm up. It let him stroke its throat. Then ... it was off!

Jim Spickard encountered a hawk drinking from a puddle in their driveway the other day. Lots of nesting birds, the local fox family, and more deer than he cared to think about. He asks, “Does anyone want some?” Ruth Lofgren sees wildlife in her life two Saturdays each month when she is a docent at the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center along with the usual wildlife in her yard: birds, squirrels, visiting cats, etc.

Barbara Miles says, “On my recent trip to the Florida Keys I saw four Key Deer, miniature whitetail deer protected as an endangered species. As with many that live close to people they are pretty tame. Also saw a Manatee in one of the canals. They are a very large water dwelling mammal, peaceful vegetarians who only eat sea moss, whatever that is. Iguanas are also pretty common there, most of them escaped pets. They get to be quite large but are harmless except to insects.”

Steve Ortman tells us, “Lisa and I have been enjoying our bird wildlife lately. As we sit on the patio after work, we have been noticing a little humming bird that has been attrac-ted to the red flowers of our ‘Bottle Brush’ shrub at the corner of the house. It is amazing how they can just hover in midair while they sip the nectar and then just as easily dart off in a straight line...out of sight.

We love watching all the birds in our backyard swoop and land. Just as fascinating are their many different calls. Lisa has learned that calls of one species of bird changes from region to region. They acquire a regional ‘accent’."

Carol Balliet says, “Well, no wildlife, but I do have a new puppy -- a little French bulldog guy named Dewey. He is so cute I can hardly stand it. His Big Friend, Vali the Ridgeback, is enchanted with him. As for dogs in general, my motto is "Can't have just one!"

Up the road from the Southwoods’ house the city mobilized to flush out a nest of wild and fierce, maybe Africanized, bees. Men in white space suits walked around and police cars blocked all ingress.

An unwelcome pair of pigeons strutted pompously across Mark Hickman’s balcony while seven great white herons followed the highway north together. And baby birds abound, wrens dodging behind bushes, little stubby blue jays, looking up at humans with a naive amazement, startled and bumbling doves crashing off through the trees. And watch for the nighthawks dipping and diving at dusk.

A Day Off in the Life of an Intern

It's spring in Washington DC. There is a war on. I'm walking down the National Mall, surrounded by people, flags, and monuments to abstract ideas I only wish we could live up to. I'm tired and my feet hurt; Tom Fox is dead; the William Penn House is turning forty.

I'm upset about the news of Tom Fox and trying not to think, so I attempt to lose myself in history and monuments. Usually I'm not much of one for symbols, and the rather phallic Washington Monument has always amused me, but the reflecting pool intrigues me. Close up, I try not to take it as too symbolic that the water is fouled with chemicals and goose droppings. I back up until the water looks pretty again, and head for the Lincoln Memorial.

There's a rally going on at the bottom of the steps—when is there not? I'm wary; the news of Tom Fox's death is too fresh for me to face a pro-war rally right now. Just a week ago Tom was supposed to be in our living room, presenting on the Christian Peacemaker Teams to our monthly lecture-and-potluck series.

After scheduling that, he left for Iraq and got kidnaped. We held the date, hoping. One of the last emails he sent was to tell us he'd be here. I think he was, but it was two other CPTers who presented last Sunday. We lit a candle for the four in Iraq and I donated more than I can afford and wondered if I could be the sort of person Tom was. Whether I could be a soldier of peace.

It's not a pro-war rally; it's a protest against the Chinese Communist Party. I climb the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and try not to brood on a monument to a divisive, bloody civil war. Reading the Gettysburg Address, I know I've had an overdose of symbolism. Everywhere on the Mall are the words "Freedom" and "Sacrifice". President Bush and I both believe that freedom takes sacrifice, but we don't agree on what freedom means. President Lincoln freed the slaves, but it took Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington to bring the disenfranchised their rights.

At WPH we're working on an "I Have A Dream.." Youth Seminar for this fall. In partnership with the Help Increase the Peace Program, we're holding a seminar on race and civil rights. Quaker youth and DC youth will spend the weekend living and learning together: learning about the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the history of race relations in DC, how to build community and talk about difficult issues, how to lobby for civil rights legislation. I'm excited and a little intimidated.

Approaching, the Vietnam War Memorial looks like a vicious gash in the ground. Must everything today remind me that the nation is as divided now as it was then? I'm almost afraid to enter the monument. Maybe I don't have the right—I didn't live it. Last month's potluck lecture was by Mike Boehm, a vet who has spent his life trying to heal. He works on microfinancing women's projects and building peace gardens in Vietnam. When my dad or Patricia talk about the war, I can see how it's still a sorrow deep seated. I'm not blind; I've seen that our country hasn't healed. Vietnam is the 800-pound gorilla of politics, especially now that we're in another unwinnable war.

But I enter, because my dad once said that the Memorial was healing for him. Names, too many names. I descend until the columns of names are taller than I can reach. The stone is reflective; those names are etched on my own reflection. Too many symbols today. Too many names written on my body.

A guest told me recently about Arlington West in Santa Monica, where they put up rows of crosses on the beach each Sunday for all those killed in Iraq. Tom Fox wasn't a serviceman, but I hope they have a cross there for him, too. He died trying to make the world a better place, sacrificing his life in the name of freedom and peace.

I'm stuck at the lowest point of the Memorial, overwhelmed by etched names, and I want to run away. It's too big and too scary and much too reminiscent of the here and now. Why did I set out for here today instead going to Meeting to remember Tom Fox with other Friends? Why did I think the Vietnam War Memorial would help?

But I don't bolt, and it's then that I experience the healing my father once spoke of. Because I've descended into this orderly hell of names, but the path leads back up. Out. I made it through. We made it through. Maybe not all symbols have to be depressing.

Forty years is a long time to survive. Today, William Penn House is thriving. We have our seminar on teaching peace in the classroom in the works; Washington Quaker Workcamps has formally become a part of William Penn House; we'll host FCNL's Young Adult Lobby Weekend at the end of this month. The Cory Room has a new ceiling and a fresh coat of paint. We're building a peace garden in our front yard.

It's spring.

Meeting for Business, April

Carol Redfield reported for Peace and Social Concerns, giving its annual report. It had prepared a webpage for the committee to be part of the Meeting’s page, prepared a flier for taking to public schools providing alternatives to military service, and made its recommendations for Meeting’s annual contributions to Quaker and other organizations. Carol will take her report to Yearly Meeting.

Bill Wilkinson, Treasurer, reported that he had, he thought, identified the gremlin which had misplaced amounts so far this year. With triumph, he pointed to two numbers which, newly, were the same, which they should be. Donations in March exceeded expenditures; payments for utilities were for two months.

Janet Southwood reported for M&O the committee’s concern that Friends tended to enter the meetingroom on Sundays after meeting had started, many coming in from conversations outside. The committee hopes that Friends would aim at arriving early rather than late. The April midweek meeting at Marian Carter’s home will be the last until one will be held at Margaret Mayberry’s home during the summer.

The committee has discussed the uses of the rooms in the meetinghouse, particularly making them friendly for children, and the matter of food and beverages in the meetingroom. It agreed that at present there is no great problem as regards the meetingroom. An Austin Friend, Jude Filler, has asked permission to use a room for a new San Antonio group of sufferers from carcinoid carcinoma, which the committee has approved.

Meeting was asked if it should be recorded as supporting the march for immigrants’ rights on the following day. After lengthy discussion it was agreed that it would and that, if Val Liveoak was able to speak at the podium, she would add encouragement for schools to use the incident as a “teachable moment” and write a letter expressing the same. Concern was expressed that school administrations were dealing with student activism merely in a disciplinary way.

Ken Southwood spoke of the meetingroom lights, which can now be fixed without more expenditure but that a safe ladder was needed. Meeting agreed that this could be purchased out of the Building Committee line.

The Meetinghouse

Now, in the new meetingroom, there is a blend with a new feature. The east window enlarges a previous feature, matching the dimensions of the room. But the slatted interior is new, marking inspiration from a different source, in part a half-ruined Australian barn which took Bob Harris’s eye. Perhaps it marks the eye of Bob as a new partner.

Lake|Flato have this year won two of ten national awards for green building, given by the American Institute of Architects. The projects “address environmental conservation and the notion of sustainable development with designs that integrate architecture, technology, and natural systems.” One of them was a project of Bob Harris, who designed our meetingroom. (Express- News, 4/22/06)

Religious Art & Architecture Awards

Lake|Flato have asked if they may submit the meetinghouse/meetingroom for an award. The Annual Religious Art and Architecture Design Awards program is co-sponsored by Faith & Form Magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture (IFRAA), a Knowledge Community of the American Institute of Architects. The Awards program was founded in 1978 with the goal of honoring the best in architecture, liturgical design, and art for religious spaces. The program offers three primary categories for awards: Religious Architecture, Liturgical/Interior Design, Sacred Landscape, and Religious Arts. Based on a previous approval, M&O has agreed that Lake|Flato may enter for the award and may take photos in the meetingroom after the concluding introductions on one Sunday.

Less tastefully, we experienced a legal tussle in April, though not one fit for “Law and Order” or “CSI.” A sewer line along our eastern boundary was broken (four feet of pipe missing!) and the question was, “Whose responsibility is it?” It is in our property. But it lies in a five-foot private sanitary sewer easement which appears to be La Fiesta’s. And it also lies in a 29-foot city drainage easement, and flood erosion may have caused the breakage. Repair will be extremely expensive. Watch this space.

Sugihara

The Ten Commandments

Y'all have a good Day.
Ye hear now ?

Personal

The village

Flags were waving in the village square:       countries sending welcome to the passers by, a dragonfly was twirling in the air       signaling that God had come to stay.

The sun went down; the moon rose high.       the wind was white; prayer was on its breath. a fly buzzed low above the village pond       and frog on lily pad tongued his meal with praise.

Red grass beckoned to a falling star       pale lights in west window were ablaze young dragonflies were dancing       round a garden jar       and yellow roses dreamed of love for days.

Apology