Category: Uncategorized

Melanie Dietzel 2001… Peace and Justice Center: A Meeting Place for Activists

Melanie Dietzel’s article, I believe in the old Arkansas Times – March 28, 2001 Wednesday, March28:  Carol Conger-Tarvin welcomes about fifty folks who have gathered in the meeting room of the Fayetteville Public Library. It is a collection of familiar faces to anyone who has been involved in peace and justice activism. Behind Tarvin hangs… Continue reading Melanie Dietzel 2001… Peace and Justice Center: A Meeting Place for Activists

The Social Contract Breached

Got some good response from a newsletter post last week, so I’m including it here to memorialize the death of George Floyd and those Black folks who died before him. And to emphasize the way authoritarian systems abuse their power to hold on to it. Violence has to be the default technique for problem solving.… Continue reading The Social Contract Breached

Networks and power: Baptists take over the South with a network strategy

Here’s an interesting example of a network strategy at work in history.  It was identified by Jacob Huneycutt, an Arkansan studying history at the University of Arkansas.  He reported his findings last year in this paper, “A Spirituall Kindome:  The Importance of the Particular Baptists’ Transatlantic Network of Voluntary Interdependence and Cooperation to the Success… Continue reading Networks and power: Baptists take over the South with a network strategy

How we got this solid foundation of authoritarian values

One point about the indentured servant story is here:  what makes us think we can build a culture of peace on this foundation?  It’s the value system that invented concepts of peace through strength — from the perspective of the ruler, where peace means you have the power to crush troublemakers efficiently. Just to be… Continue reading How we got this solid foundation of authoritarian values

Laying down the footers

There’s a story in this book you won’t like. At least one. The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, Theodore W. Allen, 1997. Chapter 4 page 49. It’s the year 1607 in Virginia Colony. The scene is the dawn of the new America.  Dense, vast, dark forests, inscrutable native… Continue reading Laying down the footers