United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

When his hometown newspaper published his obituary, it said that Jared Hagemann, 25, had "passed away unexpectedly while he was on duty at Ft. Lewis."[1]  --  The truth, as revealed in moving videotaped testimony by his widow, is that the suicide of Jared Hagemann, an Army Ranger, was anything but unexpected.  --  "He said he was going to kill himself," Ashley Joppa-Hagemann said at a public forum in August.[2]  --  She said that because of his experience in the Army Rangers she saw him "every single day, waking up, telling me, 'I hate myself, I hate my job, I hate my life, I hate what I've become.'"  --  An AP piece quoted his wife's testimony that before his service Hagemann "was charming, outgoing, and commanded everyone's attention when he walked into a room . . . [b]ut after each combat tour, he would return cold, quiet, paranoid, and at times increasingly aggressive and violent.  He drank more each time, had mood swings and recurring nightmares."[3]  --  "'In the last month, he put a gun to his head three times.  He told me every day was a struggle to wake up and want to live,' Joppa-Hagemann said.  'He said the things he had seen and done, no God would have forgiven him.'"  --  Hagemann was diagnosed as having PTSD, but his widow said the Army kept him from obtaining therapy.  --  AP said the Army had still not recognized Hagemann's death as a suicide.  --  The story was broken by KOMO News on Aug. 15.[4]  --  Antiwar activist Michael Prysner's article (with links to a petition) on the campaign for "justice for SSG Jared Hagemann" was posted on Michael Moore's website on Aug. 30.[5]  --  Democracy Now! featured Ashley Joppa-Hagemann on Aug. 30, where she described confronting Donald Rumsfeld at a Joint Base Lewis-McChord book signing, and charged that many soliders' suicides at JBLM are not reported as such.  --  See here for Part II of Amy Goodman's interview with her....

"Manimal House," a reggae/funk band from Portland that includes some talent with Tacoma roots, will perform in a one-night stand at Back to School Night at McCarver Park (Zina's Playground) at South J & South 23rd St. in Tacoma.[1]  --  Be there! ...

On the evening of Fri., Aug. 12, the veteran-owned, veteran-operated coffeehouse Coffee Strong, located near Fort Lewis, will host an evening event dedicated to issues raised by the case of Sgt. Derrick Kirkland.[1]  --  Kirkland committed suicide on Joint Base Lewis-McChord on March 19, 2010, after being mocked by superiors and evaluated as being a "low-moderate risk" of suicide.  --  But he had made three previous attempts to kill himself.  --  Sgt. Kirkland's mother, Mary, will speak on Friday at Coffee Strong.  --  She told the Seattle Weekly in January that the U.S. Army missed "three opportunities that it had to save him."[2]  --  A recent interview conducted with Jeremiah Kirkland, who was also in the U.S. Army and is a member of March Forward!, offers insight into the demons spawned by war that haunted his brother.[3]  --  "He was just a good person, full of compassion; and he didn’t know how to deal with killing people," Jeremiah Kirkland said.  "Some of the pictures he showed me, there was one guy all shot up, at least seven times, one through the face.  He’s going through all these pictures and saying 'this is what I did.'"  --  On Jun. 26 the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) published an extensive article on Kirkland and military suicides, which included an interview with Kirkland's mother and a Freedom of Information request by the News Tribune.[4]  --  Adam Ashton noted that "Since April 2010, four soldiers and two military contractors killed themselves within Lakewood’s city limits.  The total number of Lewis-McChord soldiers committing suicide has held steady, with nine in each of the past two years and seven in 2008.  --  In addition to the suicides that happen quietly, two Lewis-McChord killed themselves in the past year very publicly.  In August, Spc. Brandon Barrett went AWOL and died in a shootout with police in Salt Lake City.  In April, Sgt. David Stewart killed his wife and then himself off Interstate 5 in Thurston County.  Police later found their 5-year-old son dead in their Spanaway home.  --  Some soldiers who’ve sought counseling at Madigan report receiving superficial help that doesn’t address problems including sleep deprivation or depression.  They worry that a failure to find the right therapist could lead to dangerous behavior or suicides." ...

[PHOTO CAPTION: Mary Corkhill Kirkland, 49, of Indianapolis, holds a photograph of her son, Spc. Derrick Kirkland, who committed suicide while serving in the Army.]

After receiving a mixed job review,[1] Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson failed to win a contract renewal when a 6-2 City Council vote went against him on Tuesday.[2]  --  On Friday the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) characterized his departure as a "whimpering exit" after Anderson refused the paper an interview.[3]  --  Anderson's deepest problem, Lewis Kamb opined, was that he "held so tightly to control he lost it."  --  His relationship with the City Council deteriorated over time, and Anderson, once a champion of open government, "halted his weekly press meetings" in his final months.  --  BACKGROUND:  Eric Anderson, previously the city manager of Des Moines, Iowa, Evanston, Illinois, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Munster, Indiana, was hired in 2005 after the 13-year 7-month tenure of the previous city manager, Ray Corpuz, self-destructed owing to personal problems in 2003.  --  COMMENT: Anderson's 2011 job review (available online here) shows that there were many areas in which he was vulnerable to criticism.  --  But his involvement in covering up the negligence of a Tacoma Police Department sergeant who fell asleep instead of transmitting an Amber Alert after Zina Linnik was kidnapped, raped, and murdered on July 4, 2007, and his resistance to disciplining the officer involved, probably sealed his fate; the comments on the local blog Feed Tacoma indicate how strong are feelings of local residents on the subject.  --  It is regrettable that the News Tribune failed to mention in any of these articles the city government's problems with the Tacoma Police Department.  --  For a glimpse of how rancorous this relationship is, see a May 13, 2011, News Tribune story entitled "Citizen's Critical Remarks Draw Police Union's Ire." ...

Haaretz reported that "American activists attempted to set sail from Greece toward Gaza on Friday aboard a boat dubbed 'The Audacity of Hope,' defying calls from Israel to cancel and the ban by Athens.  The boat left Perama port for the open seas, a Reuters witness said."[1]  --  But "[s]hortly after leaving the port, Greek authorities stopped the boat, and the boat was sent back to the port several hours later," apparently on orders from the Greek president's office.  --  ACTIVISM:  Local activist Linda Frank urges supporters of Freedom Flotilla II immediately to contact the Greek Embassy in Washington, D.C., by phone at 202-939-1300 and by fax at 202-939-1324, to protest the interdiction.  --  And there will be a vigil in support of the campaign to break the Gaza blockade this evening, Fri., Jul. 1, 2011, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m., outside the Federal Courthouse in Tacoma (1717 Pacific Ave. Tacoma, WA 98402).  --  BACKGROUND:  Printable handouts with information on the campaign to end the Gaza blockade are available here.  --  A 7:39 video of the Friday morning departure of The Audacity of Hope can be viewed here....

Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire proclaimed Friday, May 20, 2011, "Play in Peace Day" to mark the inauguration of the Zina Linnik Project in Tacoma.  --  In a front-page story on Saturday in the News Tribune, Kathleen Merryman described the project, which features a spray park (or "sprayground") in Wright Park and a renovation of McCarver Park using themes that were dear to Zina Linnik.[1]  --  On Friday, which turned out to be the first day of real spring weather in Tacoma, Carol Ramm-Gramenz led a march from Wright Park to McCarver Park to mark the occasion; the event was photographed by Peter Haley.  --  The project spawned a partnership between the University of Washington Tacoma, the University of Puget Sound, and McCarver Elementary School students.  --  Only a few hundred thousand dollars more are needed to reach the project's campaign goal of $3.5 million.  --  BACKGROUND:  For more on the tragic crime at the origin of this project, see here and here.  --  On May 2, 2008, her killer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole....

While the City of Tacoma on Friday evening hosted "Be the Spark" at the Tacoma Dome, a half-spectacle half-religious revival peace-and-justice event featuring 1984 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu, on the other side of the country a Peace Education Summit was opening in Newark, New Jersey.  --  The Greater Tacoma Foundation-funded event was relentlessly on-message in promoting the idea of social activism but included no debate or intellectual argument of any kind and only a few gestures in the direction of social critique by a sermonizing Tutu.  --  The opening event of the Newark conference, on the other hand, featured criticism of corporations and militarism as well as sparring between two other Nobel Peace Prize winners, the Dalai Lama (1989) and Jody Williams (1997).  --  The Tibetan Buddhist and the anti-landmine activist "disagreed -- sometimes obliquely, always politely -- about the importance of inner tranquillity, the role of anger, and the moral character of the United States," the New York Times reported Saturday morning.[1]  --  "In the main panel on Friday morning," Richard Pérez-Peña said, "the Dalai Lama, wearing a deep red robe that hung to his ankles, and others said that people must attain inner peace in order to learn, and promote peace in the world.  'Too much emotion, attachment, anger, or fear, that kind of mental state, you can’t investigate objectively,' he said.  That did not sit well with Ms. Williams, an American, who is, as the Dalai Lama put it, 'quite blunt.'  'I thought it was strange to be asked to be on this panel on inner peace, because I don’t have much,' she said.  'It’s anger at injustice which fires many of us.'"  --  "[Jody Williams] went on to criticize aspects of American policy that favor corporations and the wealthy, and, without naming a particular conflict, said there was no such thing as a 'just war.'  The Dalai Lama then came to the defense of the United States, the country that helped him escape Tibet in 1959, after the Chinese Communists took over.  'America, of course, a lot of drawbacks there, but I always feel, champion of democracy[, freedom, rule of law].' he said."  --  The Newark Star-Ledger noted a common feeling in Newark that the local community "needed to be more involved in what's going on inside."[2]  --  (The Tacoma event, in contrast, incorporated dozens of local performers and speakers and drew thousands of local youth.)  --  The Newark Star-Ledger devoted an article to Mahishan Gnanaseharan, the only Newark representative at the conference, who spoke about youth violence.[3] ...

Two forums at UW-Tacoma on May 18 featuring marine toxicologist Riki Ott and Washington Public Campaigns director Craig Salins will link the Gulf Coast oil disaster to problems of constitutional reform.[1] ...

The director of Washington's Dept. of Agriculture said in a statment that “EPA monitoring confirms that Washington milk is safe to drink.  These results raise no concerns for food safety or public health.  Milk and other dairy products remain a healthy choice in your diet,” the Issaquah Press reported Tuesday.[1]  --  The Hawaii Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday that levels of radioactivity higher than those found in Spokane milk collected on Mar. 25 were found in Hawaiian milk collected on Apr. 4; officials there also dismissed the findings as insignificant.[2]  --  COMMENT:  These articles naively pretend that all radiation is created equal.  --  However, as journalist Robert James Parsons said on Sunday, "The radioactive particles from Fukushima pose as serious health danger because they can be ingested (from water and food) and inhaled.  Once in the body, if they lodge some place (e.g. the alveolar tissue in the lung), they can irradiate a sphere of some two or three hundred cells permanently.  (A one-micron particle -- one one-thousandth of a millimeter, hence microscopic -- of uranium contains some three billion atoms.)"  --  Since apple pectin has been shown to be useful in sweeping radioactive particles from the gut, he advises:  "If you live in an area where good apples are easily accessible, consider eating apples daily." ...

On Thursday afternoon, the mother of David Stewart claimed that Stewart's wife and mother of his five-year-old son killed their boy "to hurt him where it would hurt him the most," KOMO News said.[1]  --  (Stewart took his own life Tuesday morning after a high-speed chase on I-5, apparently after shooting his wife, who was in the car and who died on the way to the hospital.)  --  According to his mother, Stewart and his wife, Kristy Sampels, "had a fight on Sunday . . . and David left the home," John Flick reported.  --  "She said Sampels called family members trying to track him down.  Jordan believes Sampels got so angry that she took drastic action. . . . Investigators are trying to sort through Jordan's stunning accusation."  --  Like Stewart's aunt, his mother said he was about to be sent to Afghanistan; she also said that he suffered from PTSD.  --  A reader commented:  "Sadly, I don't think that closure will come to either family.  There are far too many questions in this case, and all the people who could answer them, are gone.  --  If David was already suffering from PTSD so much so, that he was seeking treatment, then why was he cleared to go onto fight in another war.  He should have been kept back, treated with meds, and given all the therapy he could stand. I hope the Army takes notice, that our men need more support at home." ...