Welcome to the Calc Website

Click: HERE to watch the August 6th / 9th Nagasaki Day Commemoration.

Thanks to all who joined and/or donated to the Poetry Benefit for Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. Here is the link to the recording that we can continue to enjoy.

As most of you must know by now, a powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake recently struck Haiti, leaving devastation in its wake. Hundreds of people have been killed, and the terrible counting has begun.

Centered on Haiti’s southern peninsula, the earthquake severely damaged the cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie. Hospitals in the area are overwhelmed. And, to make matters even worse, Tropical Storm Grace is poised to hit Haiti this weekend.

We are reaching out to you today on behalf of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund to ask for your immediate support for earthquake relief. We remember the 7.0 magnitude earthquake of 2010, where 300,000 perished and over 2 million Haitians ended up in tent cities. And we remember the ways in which funds collected by major aid organizations in the name of earthquake relief somehow never made it to those in need.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund has no paid staff or overhead. They will send each and every dollar directly to grassroots community organizations on the ground in Haiti. These groups are the ones positioned to provide the most effective support for families and communities impacted by the earthquake. When the 2010 earthquake hit the capital of Port-au-Prince, HERF funded mobile health clinics, women’s groups and community organizers who brought relief for thousands of families.

When Hurricane Matthew devastated the southern peninsula in 2016, we supported the work of grassroots activists who organized caravans with health care workers, medicine and food for people in the affected areas. To repeat, each and every dollar raised went directly to Haitian community organizations.

Now, Haitians are mobilizing once again at the grassroots community level, forming work brigades to respond to this new disaster. As they confront this crisis, we ask for your solidarity and support.

Please Donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

We Thank You!
Ecumenical Peace Institute of Northern California

Haiti Emergency Relief Fund Board of Directors

Walter Riley, Attorney at Law, Co-Chair
Sister Maureen Duignan, O.S.F., Co-Chair
Seth Donnelly, Educator and Long-Time Haiti Solidarity Activist
Nia Imara, Astronomer and Artist
Pierre Labossiere, Co-Founder, Haiti Action Committee
Marilyn Langlois, Human Rights and Community Advocate
Robert Roth, Educator and Co-Founder, Haiti Action Committee

Solidarite, Èkumenik Lapè Enstiti (EPI)

We would all love to see a more compassionate community, part and parcel of who we are. Former nun, theologian and author Karen Armstrong initiated the Charter for Compassion, bringing together the three Abrahamic faith traditions. From that came Compassionate Cities. California is in the process of becoming Compassionate California. Daniel Zwickel initiated a Compassionate Bay Area program, which holds monthly CyberCafés every 2nd Monday. Please email us if you are interested in joining the conversation.

The annual EPI Good Friday 2021 Virtual Interfaith Worship and Witness
Lawrence Livermore Lab Webinar has taken place.
The video is being uploaded as I write, but here are photos you can peruse:
Good Friday at LLNL 2021 Photos. ^ Order of Worship

Here are the links to Good Friday 2021:

Zoom Good Friday at LLNL 2021: https://youtu.be/7RpZgZ6X99k
Zoom Good Friday at LLNL 2021 High Def: https://youtu.be/B229JU4J0tM
Benjamin Mertz' Good Friday Prelude 2021: https://youtu.be/c8vpiJN4V_U
Good Friday 2021 at LLNL Marylia Kelley: https://youtu.be/N9E07lqppCg
Good Friday 2021 at LLNL Jackie Cabasso: https://youtu.be/sQrl9RhyagY
Good Friday 2021 at LLNL Homily Rev Michael: https://youtu.be/T6-ZN339DuA

For more on the Livermore Lab Interfaith Witness and Worship, click: HERE

EPI Fall 2021 Gathering

Sanctions and Economic Warfare

A to Z, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and 39 countries in between

Is it worth the price?

With abundant thanks to Mark Coplan, here are the links:

EPI Fall Zoom Gathering 2021 (2 Hours): https://youtu.be/g_cydSXxjsE

EPI Fall Zoom Gathering 2021 Sanctions (35 Minutes): https://youtu.be/Rq3VZXnL6cM

EPI Fall Zoom Gathering 2021 Haiti Update (27 Minutes): https://youtu.be/HS0cWlUZaHQ

The Program PDF may be downloaded: HERE y AQUÍ en español.

[Please note that as of 2:18 pm, Nov. 6, the videos are being processed,
and may not be viewed as of yet.]

A special report by the Sanctions Kill Coalition, September 2021:

“We don’t deserve this”
The Impact and Consequences of US Sanctions

Our featured speaker was Rick Sterling

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is active with the Taskforce on the Americas and other organizations including Syrian Solidarity Movement and the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. Rick has researched and written articles challenging the trend toward corporatization of higher education. He is an active supporter of KPFA (listener sponsored radio) and Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine. Rick was a full-time activist in his early years, had a 25-year detour working as an engineer in the electronics and aerospace industries, primarily at UC Berkeley, and has now returned to work full time where his heart is: progressive international causes.

Pierre Labossiere of Haiti Action Committee
and EPI board member reported on
current struggles for democratic self-rule in Haiti.

Pierre Labossiere is Co-Founder of the Haiti Action Committee (HAC) and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) established in the Bay Area in 1991 and 2004 respectively. Working with Haiti's grassroots movement that is engaged in the struggle for justice and democracy, HAC and HERF provide information regarding conditions on the ground, assist refugees and support community-based initiatives and institutions working for the liberation and the rebuilding of Haiti.

Our featured musicians were Betsy Rose and Silvia Brandon-Pérez singing original songs.

Betsy Rose is a singer, songwriter and community activist and Bay Area legend and an icon whose insight, warmth, humor, wit and wisdom have added a wealth of songs to the world of folk and progressive music for over forty years. ... Betsy has performed and taught widely throughout the United States and Canada, India, Australia and the Czech Republic. Visit her website: Betsy Rose Music

Rev. Silvia Brandon-Pérez is a rebel priest, singer-songwriter, an interpreter for torture victims and one of EPI's board members. Silvia is Cuban-born, a multilingual translator, author and an ordained Catholic priest who provides paralegal services for people who can’t afford it. She also runs a Catholic Worker House from her home in Hayward, California, that provides temporary shelter, showers, food and even clothing for people down on their luck, called the Oscar Romero and Simone Weil Catholic Worker House.

From Carolyn’s Poetry Corner, “Scarrs Run Deep”

Invoking the Flood

—Port-au-Prince

Sudden rain descends outside our dining room.
Drops the size of thimbles strike the courtyard awning
in rackety thunder.
People run to bring cushions in from chairs
take down clothes from the line
shut windows.

Run-off from the brief downpour
converges on the city below
built on the dump.
The child care center is knee-deep in brown water.
Mud and garbage flow in a filthy slurry
from surrounding suburbs down to Cité Soleil,
the city of the sun.

A wall surrounds the city of toil
where people slaved for a dollar a day
in cavernous buildings now echoing empty.
In the brief rain unsound foundations crumble.
The wall goes down crushes lean-to shacks.
Five people die.

Laws of gravity, reverse!
Water, flow uphill!

Cleanse of filth the city of darkness.
Purify each crack and corner
of the city of greed.
Wash clean our lives.
Prepare us to build a city of light.

© 1995 Carolyn S. Scarr

Recipe

Into a quart jar
place two cups water
taken from a ditch
beside the pasture
where the cattle once grazed.
If you do not live near a pasture
water from any drainage ditch
or from an urban creek
may be substituted.

Add one cup water
from the toilet bowl
where you rinsed the baby's diaper
when she was sick.
Be sure you do not
flush the toilet first.

Ask your husband
to urinate into the jar.
Only a little is needed.

When your neighbor washes his car
scoop up some of the run-off.
Add half a cup to the jar.

Put in a tablespoon or more
of fine dirt.
Screw down the lid.
Shake well.

Although the cholera
and typhoid bacilli
will probably be lacking –
and the amoebae –
following this recipe carefully
will result
in a reasonable facsimile
of the solution drunk
every day
by millions of people in Iraq
whose sewage treatment plants
and water purification systems
were bombed to smithereens in 1991
and cannot be rebuilt
under the conditions of siege
referred to as
“sanctions”
and maintained by military blockade
principally by the United States of America.

You might take your jar
to your congressperson or senator.
Ask that person
to keep it on the table
where he or she sits
in the halls of Congress
until the water runs clean
from every tap in Iraq
and no baby
dies of dysentery.

This recipe can be increased
to serve 22 million people.

June 3, 2000
Carolyn S. Scarr

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS IN HONDURAS ARE KILLED TOO:

THE CASE OF BERTA CÁCERES

Program/Seminar by the Western Institute for Social Research in Berkeley: Cosponsored by EPI

Friday, November 19, 6-8pm

[Click here for information]

Poetry Benefit for Haiti Emergency Relief Fund is past.
A link to listen to the recorded event will be available soon.

devorah major, San Francisco’s third poet laureate, and
Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco’s current poet laureate,

Download: FLIER

Good Friday Virtual Livermore Lab
Interfaith Witness and Worship
“Swords into Plowshares”

With Rev. Michael Yoshii.	Join Zoom webinar gathering: Opening music 7:45 a.m. Worship 8:00 a.m.

Music featuring: Betsy Rose	and: Benjamin Mertz

Our January 22 Demonstration in support of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, on the day it went into effect, was terrific and well-attended. You may view photos by the intrepid David Bacon on FLIKR.

(Should the FLKR page be no longer accessible, you may view a formatted for EPI webpage by clicking HERE. Thank you again, David, for sharing your art/craft with us! )

It’s not too late to head our year-end appeal

We are your peace and justice community.

You may click on the image above for the PDF flier with details.

You may click on the image below to view full-size;
Click here to go to the website for more details.

Pastor Will’s sermon, “Keeping Faith in the Face of Empire”

Mark Coplan’s Good Friday, 2019 Photos:
Interfaith Worship & Witness

Civil Disobedience

Videos:
Good Friday Service at Lawrence Livermore Lab 2019 (1 hr 23 minutes)
Good Friday Action at Lawrence Livermore Lab 2019 (11 minutes)

Thank you to all who participated!

Jeanette reading names of the dead and distributing fliers at the EPI Living Graveyard
Photos by her niece, Amanda Scarr

Jeanette Louise Smith, 1946 – 2019

After a long struggle with Alzheimer’s Jeanette succumbed to a stroke on Wednesday, June 19, 2019.

A lifetime lover of music and a magnificent singer, Jeanette passed away peacefully with the music of Lior who performs regularly for the residents of Lakeside Park, and with Gloria’s Healing Touch, and finally with the Oakland Threshold Singers.

Jeanette graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in biology, got her Juris Doctor from McGeorge Law School and became an attorney in 1976. She worked early in her career for California Rural Legal Assistance, then Legal Aid for Seniors, and subsequently for the State of CaliforniaÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Department of Health Care Services.

After her retirement and while she still could, Jeanette was a regular participant in the Living Graveyard, a witness for peace and justice in the Middle East. Reading the names of the California dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jeanette often grieved over the names of Hispanic GIs with whom she identified from her work with CRLA in El Centro.

Jeanette is survived by her sister, Carolyn Scarr, brother-in-law, Tony Scarr, niece Amanda Scarr. She was also very close to her cousin, Velma Carroll.

Memorial service will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 17 at Trinity United Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way, Berkeley 94704 (between Dana and Ellsworth). Please call or email and let us know you are coming: epicalc@lmi.net (510) 527-8370.

For Dr. Martin Luther King
on his Birthday

“I have labored in vain

I have spent my strength

for nothing and vanity”

Isaiah 49:4

He is dead

who led us in the ways

that make for peace ––

the turbulent roads of nonviolence.

And we would not go

not all the way;

we lost the hope that justice

could be reached by ways of peace.

Yet still he lives

in the dream rising again

that if, like him, we will,

God works through us.

“I will give you as a light

to the nations,

that my salvation may reach

to the ends of the earth"

Isaiah 49:6

Carolyn S. Scarr
January, 1987