Wheels of Justice

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