WAND
Michigan celebrates a banner weekend January 2004
 |
Here
we see WAND Executive Director Susan Shaer, U.S.
Senator Carl Levin, WAND Michigan president Clare
Mead Rosen, WAND national chair Pan Godchaux U.S.
Senator and former WiLL member Debbie Stabenow.
(more pictures at bottom) |
 |
U.S.
Senator Carl Levin addresses the crowd. |
On
Saturday evening, in a cozy clubhouse in West Bloomfield,
Program Chair Ruthie Fuller organized a general membership
meeting that included a delicious dinner buffet and
rare chance to hear a very special guest from Massachusetts:
our fabulous executive director, Susan Shaer,
who energized the membership with news from national
and what’s happening with our many national
coalition partners in Win Without War, National Voice
and others.
Also
with us Saturday eve to share her usual tasty insights
on what’s goin’ down was WAND national
board chair and our favorite Republican, Pan
Godchaux. National and Michigan board member
Fern Katz was there, too, as was
a handful of elected local and state officials, including
our own Liz Bauer, member of the
State Bd of Ed and coordinator for WiLL in Michigan.
Because
the night was still young when the last guests left
at 8pm, the board gathered for a nightcap with Susan
at the home of Ken and Joan Israel.
(Never underestimate the power of a free meal and
a nightcap to keep an overworked board happy to carry
on the good fight.)
On
Sunday morning, the WAND Michigan board -- joined
by former board members, elected officials, longtime
WAND donors and the whole family of the late Arlene
Victor -- honored our senior US Senator Carl
Levin with the “Arlene Victor
Humanitarian Award” for Levin’s
longtime dedication to peace and real national security.
The engraved crystal award was presented at a scrumptious
brunch buffet organized (right down to raising the
dollars to pay for it) by a dynamic quintet of WAND
stalwarts whose professional skills and panache left
everyone impressed.
The
mighty fine five are Joan Israel, Lorraine
Lerner, Joyce Kaplan, Marilyn Schechter and Annabel
Cohen. Held in the home of Steve
Victor, the award was preceded by informative,
entertaining remarks by everyone from WAND Michigan
president Clare Mead Rosen to WAND
national chair Pan Godchaux and executive director
Susan Shaer, to our other fantastic US Senator and
former WiLL member, Debbie Stabenow.
Carl
Levin added to the general levity by injecting amusing
remarks along the way from his chair in the “audience,”
but he warned in his acceptance remarks that what
he had to say was going to be anything but lighthearted.
Namely, that the nuclear peril is far greater now
than it was during the worst years of the Cold War,
due to this administration’s arrogant reversal
of decades of US policy, under both Republican and
Democratic presidents. A chilling if not surprising
conclusion, given the American Napoleon who is now
our Commander in Chief.
This
first-ever event for WAND, was tagged with a shining
“10” rating by a person whose judgment
we consider matchless: Arlene’s remarkable
daughter Jackie Victor the one who, as Arlene
often said, first raised Arlene’s own political
consciousness and got her hooked on the insanely simple
idea of turning around the battleship known as the
Military Budget and redirecting some of its bulging
cargo to human needs.
OTHER MICHIGAN WAND
JANUARY EVENTS
The board will help pay expenses to dispatch Clare
Mead Rosen as its “ambassador” to Helen
Caldicott’s symposium on the increasing danger
of nuclear war “Three Minutes to Midnight”
which will meet in Washington DC Jan 24-27.
A stunning array of speakers, including Helen herself,
promises to make this a remarkable conference. Helen,
as everyone knows, is not only the founder of WAND,
but also of Physicians for Social Responsibility and
a new group, the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.
In coalition with its partners in the Detroit Area
Peace with Justice Network and in conjunction with
WAND’s involvement nationally, WAND Michigan
is also participating in the “People’s
Agenda” a grassroots campaign to help US communities
frame and organize politically around issues important
to them.
The
national effort is being facilitated by the Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington. Our liaison par
excellence to DAPJN is Kim Bergier, along with Clare
Mead Rosen, repping WAND locally. Led by Detroit’s
US Congressman John Conyers, the People’s Agenda
in Michigan will hold a press conference on Martin
Luther King Day Jan 19 to announce the first of what
we hope will be many Michigan community workshops,
this one in Detroit, on Jan 31. Word has it that IPS
backer Harry Belafonte (“Mr. B” to those
who know him in the peace community) will himself
attend.
MICHIGAN
WAND REPORTS "A VERY SUCCESSFUL EVENING" IN
DECEMBER
From the savvy Roeper student who pointed out that the
Geneva conventions were outdated and gave US the loopholes
to create Guantanomo, to the Mexican grandfather in
his jeans and work boots who told us in heavily accented
English he was a naturalized citizen of this country,
here for 35 years, but that he genuinely didn’t
get it -- Why would a land like America ever pass such
an un-American law like the Patriot Act? -- a variety
of citizens (more than 85 in all) participated in the
Patriot Act panel and Q&A at Roeper on December
17, sponsored by Michigan WAND.
"The
small arena stage venue was ideal and Middle School
director Emery Pence affirmed that they'd love to
host us again," said chapter leader Clare Mead
Rosen. "The only remotely critical comments I
heard were from two different attendees who mentioned
that they thought it would have been an even more
interesting, more exciting program if there had been
a real difference of opinion among the panel; they
had expected as much from the title we gave the program
-- a valid point.”
Thanks
again to Ruth Fuller and Linda Kohlenberg for making
it all happen, and to Liz Bauer for moderating with
great finesse and cordiality and, of course to, our
outstanding panelists, Supreme Court Justice Marilyn
Kelly, ACLU Communications Director Wendy Wagenheim
and Steve Kaplan, Assistant Prosecutor, Macomb County.
WAND
Michigan INFO: Clare
Mead Rosen
