Pushing Forward, The Fight For Skateboarders Rights

This video was put together by a group of students at the Horizons school who were a part of our "Be The Change" curriculum. During the course of the curriculum these students banded together to form a group called, "Pushing Forward".

They meet regularly not only to enjoy each others company and skateboard, but also to explore ways to promote skateboarding as a healthy lifestyle. For Pushing Forward skating is a great way to stay in shape, and stay out of trouble.

One of their goals is to chip away at the reputation skaters have in Atlanta. They believe that skateboarders should have the same rights and street cred that bicyclist have.

Check out their short PSA:


Join their Facebook group!

Questioning War From the Inside

by Lily Moseley

Chamblee High School Senior

A former senior CIA analyst and intelligence briefer for Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush turned political activist, Ray McGovern has used his ethos in politics and his experience with war to validate his outspoken opinions against the war in Afghanistan.

McGovern graduated from Fordham University where he majored in Russian and proceeded to obtain a position in the CIA, where he worked as an intelligence briefer and analyst for 27 years.

“So I went back and I signed up for Russian [as my major]. Within a couple months the first man in space; another couple months there was a crisis in Berlin with Russian tanks and German tanks, then there’s the Bay of Pigs thing. So there became a real need for translators or people who knew about the Soviet Union and so it was a kind of natural step to go into the Army first, where I served two years as an officer, and then go into the CIA in the analysis part.”

Since his retirement from the CIA, McGovern has repeatedly protested US involvement in both the war in Iraq during the W. Bush administration and the war in Afghanistan during the Obama administration. McGovern has challenged the sincerity of several authorities including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he quoted Rumsfeld as saying that he knew where the Weapons of Mass Destruction were after it had been confirmed that none existed. In addition, he was arrested for disorderly conduct when he stood silently in protest during a speech made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

McGovern’s strong thoughts against the wars are influenced by his experiences with the War in Vietnam and the Cold War.

“Many of the officers that I finished officer infantry school with at Ft. Benning were killed in Vietnam; many of my classmates at Fordham ROTC were killed in Vietnam and when you think of the immense nature of, not only the 50,000 names on the memorial in Washington, but of the 3 million Vietnamese [killed]. So, what kind of people are we that will acquiesce in the killing of 3 million Vietnamese? That soured me on these stupid wars. And then of course skipping all the way to Iraq, we could see, before the war, that the evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction or ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda [was nonexistent.]”

McGovern also cofounded the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an organization of retired US intelligence workers who have criticized government policies and issued memorandums criticizing the policies of former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Additionally, he coined the acronym O.I.L. (oil, Israel, logistics).

“I don’t think there’s anyone that thinks we would have attacked Iraq if their main export was cabbages, so I think that’s pretty clear. I is for Israel, and the reason is that the people who were planning and executing this invasion of Iraq were people so-called Neo-Conservatives, and their big problem is that they have difficulty distinguishing between what they see as the strategic interests of Israel on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States of America on the other. Israel wanted us to be involved big time in Iraq; they thought that it would make things more safe for them, which turned out to be just the opposite. The L is for logistics, the strategic military bases that the people think are needed to protect our interests there for the oil and for Israel.”

McGovern has encouraged opposition to the war in Afghanistan, expressing the need for taking action against it.

“Writing letters, writing articles and speaking are good things to do, but I’ve come to the point where I’ve concluded that that’s not enough, that I have to put my body into it, that we need to indulge or resort to nonviolent civil disobedience or civil direct action. We should care. And young people, I think, are sold short; I think people just kind of write them off and say, ‘well this time [unlike in Vietnam] they don’t have any vulnerabilities so they don’t care.’ I think they do care.”

Obama’s CIA pick has Afghan war bias

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Gen. David Petraeus to be CIA director raises troubling questions for anyone familiar with the need for tell-it-like-it-is intelligence analysis.

Sadly, the selection of Petraeus suggests that the president places little value on getting the objective analysis that was originally the CIA’s raison d’etre — the kind that could (and often did) challenge more narrowly focused views of the Pentagon. What could Obama have been thinking in giving the top CIA job to the general with the most incentive to gild the lily regarding “progress” made under his command?

Will Petraeus look kindly on discordant views regarding the wisdom and likely outcome of those wars? What is likely to happen to the careers of those CIA analysts who long since concluded that the troop “surges” pushed so publicly by Petraeus will merely squander the lives of American troops (not to mention billions of taxpayer dollars) and, ironically, make our country more vulnerable to attack from terrorists?

Petraeus already has a record of looking skeptically at CIA analysts. That is why he relegated them to straphanger status during the decision-making process in late 2009 on what to do about Afghanistan.

When Obama expressed doubts about the value of a major escalation in Afghanistan, Petraeus assured him that the sending of 33,000 additional troops would work. It won’t.

Before Obama acceded to the wishes of Petraeus and fellow generals in late 2009, CIA analysts weren’t even assigned to do the kind of National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, which has almost always been de rigueur before key presidential decisions like a large-scale escalation of war.

To his credit, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who became director of National Intelligence in August 2010, bucked that tide. He insisted that two NIEs be prepared last fall — one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan.

The estimate on Afghanistan concluded that the U.S. could not prevail without a firm decision by Pakistan to prevent Taliban fighters from crossing the border into Afghanistan. The one on Pakistan said there was little chance that the Pakistanis would do this.

The sobering conclusions of those NIEs were supported by a treasure trove of 92,000 documents written mostly by U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009 and released by WikiLeaks on July 25, 2010.

This more granular reporting from WikiLeaks laid bare the futility of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan — particularly the forlorn hope that the Pakistanis will “change their strategic outlook” and help pull U.S. chestnuts out of the Afghan fire.

The most explosive revelations provided embarrassing detail on the double game being played by the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence, or ISI. The German magazine Der Spiegel put it this way: “The documents clearly show that this Pakistani intelligence agency is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan.”

No one disputes the authenticity of the U.S. reports released via WikiLeaks. But there is zero indication that their publication, just eight months after Obama’s fateful decision in late 2009, might have spurred a reassessment.

With U.S. Special Forces kicking down Afghan doors at night, drones terrorizing alleged “militants,” and whole villages destroyed in order to “save” them from the Taliban, Petraeus’ approach is a truly strange way to go about winning hearts and minds. By naming him head of the CIA, Obama has made it immeasurably more difficult to change course.

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington. Mr. McGovern recently spent several days in Atlanta speaking at a number of events organized by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition.

AFSC/SCAP Featured in Documentary Film!!

Last Friday evening Peripheral Visions did a film screening of several short documentaries. One of them, called "Last, Best Option", chronicled the work AFSC does to promote non-military options for Atlanta youth. About fifteen of us went to the screening, none of us had seen the film so we were all pretty anxious. The film makers(Kristy Breneman, Kristan Woolford, Victoria Temple, and T.J. Hicks) did an amazing job of capturing the spirit of what we do in Atlanta. All of us were just blown away with the quality and the content of the film.

At the event raffle tickets were sold with all of the proceeds benefiting Student Career Alternatives Program's scholarship program. At the end of the night we were presented with $470! Big ups to everyone with the Peripheral Visions crew for making last Friday such a great night for us. The film is something we're all really exciting about using in the future to shine a light on the work we do.

Film maker Kristy Breneman also worked with our own Josie Figueroa to put together a great short film on our Migrant youth Voice Project.

You can see both short films, meet the youth who were featured in them, meet the film makers, Help lift up the youth we work with, and enjoy a delicious three course meal by attending this event on May 29th. Just Click THIS for the details.


'Last, Best Option'
by
in collaboration with Members of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and its Student Career Alternatives Program (SCAP)
Last, Best Option explores the work of the Student Career Alternatives Program (SCAP), an initiative of the southeast regional office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The short documentary looks into the ways in which SCAP seeks to educate, activate, and empower young people who are struggling to find future paths, especially those students who feel military service is their "last best option." Veterans, active duty soldiers, military recruiters, students, SCAP organizers, and volunteers all add their own unique voices to a discussion of what this young and innovative program is doing to promote peace and help at-risk youth within the Atlanta area community.


Here's Josie introducing and answering questions about Migrant Youth Voice:




Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

Students Demand, "Don't Defund Our Future"

This is one is a series of public service announcements that Horizons School students created as part of our "Be The Change" curriculum. Students created this while the Georgia house and senate where still debating whether to enact massive cuts to the HOPE scholarship, of course most of you know that those cuts did go through. Now more than ever we need young voices added to the choir demanding a fairer Georgia, a Georgia the provides opportunity to those that need it most as opposed to handing opportunity over to those that need it least.

So give the short PSA a look and share it if you would like