This is all rooted in the European colonization of this land. Thus, our Peace Testimony must be rooted in decolonization. That is why, for example, I plan to return to the Great Plains Action Society's Urban Resilience Hub in Iowa City. This decolonial work is my peace testimony today.
Category: Economic draft
Refuse to normalize what is grotesque
The Economic Draft is the modern mechanism of conscription that weaponizes survival needs to force individuals into complicity with systems of extraction and violence. Individuals are "conscripted" not by law, but by manufactured scarcity—the threat of starvation, homelessness, and the loss of healthcare.
Actively Object, Don’t Resist
What a witness provides is testimony. This is true both in biblical teaching and in contemporary legal practice. People being trained as observers in relation to ICE gather the testimony, not just of their own eyes and ears, but of the videos they take on their cell phones. And the testimony must be unbiased. Marshall Massey
Nomination of Minneapolis for Nobel Peace Prize
The Minneapolis community's' response to the invasion of ICE agents continues to demonstrate the concepts of the new conscientious objector (NewCO). After months of prayer and writing, this concrete example of the NewCO has exploded and evolved. The Nation magazine is gathering signatures to nominate Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Take away the occasion of all wars
To "live in that power which takes away the occasion of all wars" is to actively dismantle the Economic Draft and return stolen land. The state is already obsolete; our task is to build the better world that is already here in the hands of the organized community.
Minneapolis Day of Prayer and Fasting
The situation in Minneapolis represents the physical manifestation of Christian Colonial Capitalist Violence (CCV). The "Giant Triplets" identified by Martin Luther King Jr.—racism, extreme materialism, and militarism—have combined into a singular architecture of oppression. "Operation Metro Surge" utilizes Militarism (3,000 federal agents) to enforce Colonialism (dispossession of immigrants and Indigenous neighbors) while protecting Materialism (corporate property rights). The killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent was the result of this system.
War at Home
I've watched in horror as militarized police and National Guardsmen are being deployed to our cities and communities. This is the latest episode of advancing authoritarianism under the current administration. We now have a war at home.
A wider view
And the best thing about this solution (NewCO) is that it doesn't waste time and effort trying to make incremental changes in systems that are themselves the sources of injustice. You cannot create justice as long as you are embedded in the systems of injustice.
Who is colonized now?
Today, the "Economic Draft" expands the definition of the colonized to include those trapped by manufactured scarcity: the poor funneled into the military through the Poverty Draft, the working class captured by Job Lock through employer-sponsored healthcare, and the educated class held in Indentured Servitude by student debt.
Economic draft and NewCO
he economic draft is the silent mechanism of Christian Colonial Capitalist Violence (CCV) that weaponizes the existential necessity of survival to compel labor for the military.