Northwest News

Women in Black Establish Silent, Strong Presence in Portland

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

Peace activist Robin Bee says she began organizing Women in Black protests in downtown Portland during March of this year “when things started getting really bad in Israel.” Not a recognized organization, Women in Black is a loose international peace network started in Israel in 1988 by Israeli women protesting their government’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In 14 years it has evolved into an effort undertaken primarily by women who, dressed in black, stand in silent vigil to protest war, ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, rape and all forms of violence throughout the world. The United Nations recently recognized Women in Black when it awarded its Millennium Peace Prize to the Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency of Papua, New Guinea—an organization aimed specifically at getting women involved in Women in Black peace actions.

“I am Jewish, and have been to Israel,” Bee explained, recalling her experience in the late 1980s with Volunteers for Israel. “I first noticed how safe I felt there in Israel, and how democratic it seemed,” she added. As time passed, however, and Bee began to observe the Palestinian side of the story and directly “started hearing from them about their struggles,” she said, she spent more time with Israelis outside of the mainstream and became interested in the Israeli peace movement. The focus of Women in Black’s efforts in Portland, according to Bee, is “to give people information not coming across in the mainstream media.”

Participants get their information from Web sites—such as Gush Shalom’s, which represents the Israeli Peace Bloc—and incorporate it into flyers which they offer to passersby. After six months of presence in downtown Portland, Bee thinks “we’ve been getting some notice.”

Since March a small but dedicated group of women and one man has congregated every Wednesday at noon in downtown Portland at a corner across the street from the very popular Pioneer Courthouse Square. Doug Willbanks, a retired x-ray technician who joined the Women in Black vigils a few months ago, said that he got serious about working on the Palestinian/Israeli issue about a year ago because he wanted “to have more say [about] this issue because it’s so unfair.”

Willbanks looked into the history of the conflict, did some library research and found some good Web sites. Eventually, he was led to Robin Bee and Women in Black. In the early actions, he recalled, “people would just walk by—and some still do.” After several months of faithful Wednesday appearances, however, people “would walk over and have an expectation. Now,” he noted, “they walk over and ask for information.”

At a recent vigil, Willbanks said, the group handed out some 200 flyers in one hour.

Women in Black is joining a coalition-building effort to increase public awareness of the politics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Other groups involved are Friends of Sabeel–North America, Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, National Lawyers Guild, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Freedom Socialist Party, and Arabs for Building Community.

“Iran Beyond the Media” Workshop

Portland State University’s Middle East Studies Center and the Oregon Geographic Alliance combined efforts to sponsor “Iran Beyond the Media: A Workshop for Educators” held Aug. 3 to coincide with an Iranian cultural festival the following day, both held on the university campus. Designed for teachers from the elementary grades through college, the workshop offered an overview of political, physical and cultural Iran, along with recommended strategies, idea sharing, and an examination of curriculum materials. Educators were provided up-to-date resources and presentations to assist them in developing lesson plans.

The first speaker for the day-long interdisciplinary workshop was Dr. Masoud Kheirabadi, assistant professor of international studies at PSU who also teaches at Marylhurst College near Portland. A native of Iran, Kheirabadi is the author of Iranian Cities: Formation and Development. His presentation on “Contemporary Issues in Iran: Religion, Politics, and International Relations” focused on what he described as “a confused country” with major ideological gaps between rulers and the general population. Iranian society is undergoing dynamic changes, he explained, including freedom of the press, under which open criticism of the government increasingly is tolerated—except by Islamic hard-liners, who moved to close newspapers in 1998 and imprison reporters.

Kheirabadi defined the current Islamic Republic of Iran as a “theocracy” with “a relative degree of democratic process. The problem,” he said, is that whatever legislation is passed by the Majlis [parliament] has to be approved by a council of guardians.” If “they distinguish a law as not Islamic,” he noted, “it will not become a law.”

Members of the council, he explained, are selected by a supreme leader of jurisprudence who is not elected by the Iranian people, is “considered to be responsible only to God” and has the highest decision-making power. For this reason, Kheirabadi continued, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who worked to enact progressive laws such as women’s suffrage and a reduction in the authority of hard-line clerics, has limited powers under the Islamic constitution. Even though Khatami was re-elected in June by 77 percent of the vote,Kheirabadi said, “The president is like a puppet. He is a knight without a sword.”

In spite of threats to democracy in Iran, Dr. Kheirabadi believes that it still is “one of the best Middle East countries”—a judgment he bases on his frequent visits to his homeland and the “major improvements” he observes there, such as increasing literacy and the involvement of women in politics. He is encouraged by the activism of young Iranians who “have no memory of revolution” and who, he said, “are fed up with the policing of every aspect of their lives.”

Dr. Reza Kamali, dean of behavioral and social sciences at Portland Community College, discussed “Continuity and Change in Iran.” In 1979—six and a half months after the revolution—she visited her homeland of Iran for the first time in 20 years. Remembering her then-91-year-old father—“a poet, cleric, and philosopher who has written 11 books, one on the status of women in Islam”—Kamali criticized what she sees as “so much distortion on Iran and other places” in mainstream American media and encouraged the audience to “become ambassadors of peace, not just for Iran, but for the whole world.”

Kamali condemned Washington’s refusal to recognize the Iranian revolution and U.S. economic sanctions for causing great suffering in Iran. Insisting that “America was cruel,” she at the same time referred to the sanctions as “a blessing because [Iran] has become self-sufficient without U.S. help.”

Addressing the tendency of Americans to criticize the oppression of women in Iran, Kamali explained that “it’s not the real picture of women [there].” She pointed out that 58 percent of university students in Iran are women. The more serious issues, she maintained, were poverty and government repression, and depicted anti-government movements as “passive because of the high price” one pays for political protest. While Iran places a tremendous emphasis on education, Kamali noted, she added that only a small number of Iranians have access to higher learning and that, of the 1.2 million students who recently took college entrance exams, only 200,000 will be able to attend university.

Other presenters at the workshop and their topics included: Kimberley Brown, PSU vice-provost for international affairs, who spoke on “Language and Culture in Iran”; Ann Huntwork, a social worker and community volunteer who lived in Iran with her husband and five children from 1959 to 1972, and Faith Chalmers, who also lived in Iran and has over 16 years experience in international education and intercultural communication, who gave a joint presentation on “Dealing With Stereotypes”; Jean Campbell, assistant director of PSU’s Middle East Studies Center, and Gabi Ross, a teacher who works with students of diverse cultural backgrounds, who discussed “Teaching Strategies and Resources Related to Iran.”

Sr. Elaine Kelley is the administrative officer of Friends of Sabeel–North America.

SIDEBAR

Friends of Sabeel–North America Moves Headquarters to Portland, OR

The Rev. Richard Toll has been named the new chair of Friends of Sabeel–North America (FOS-NA). A longtime friend of Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel in Jerusalem, Reverend Toll is pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Milwaukie, OR, just a few miles south of Portland. Joining Rev. Toll in Portland as administrative officer of FOS-NA is Sr. Elaine Kelley, a Washington Report writer who lived in Bethlehem for four years working in NGO development and, from 1998 to 2000, as development officer at Bethlehem University.

Reverend Toll succeeds Betsy Barlow, who served for over five years as coordinator of the U.S./Canada support group for Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. Barlow, a former Washington Report education columnist, retired last year as program coordinator for the University of Michigan’s Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies in Ann Arbor, MI. She will remain an active member of the Steering Committee and plans to continue working on the development of new Sabeel chapters in the U.S.

Readers may contact FOS-NA at its new address and phone: 2036 SE Jefferson St., Milwaukie, OR, 97222-7660, phone (971) 544-1313, e-mail <fos-naadmin@umich.edu>.

—E.K.