Spirit in Action
Messenger for Peace
Joe Elder received on October 3rd, 2009, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Network for Peace & Justice. Joe has traveled the world with quiet off-the-record messages and worked for peace from Vietnam to Sri Lanka. A University of Wisconsin professor of sociology and Asian studies, he has inspired thousands of students to broaden their horizons. Raised in Iran, son of Presbyterian missionaries, he was a CO in the Korean War and has been a Quaker since the 1950's.
- Broadcast on:
- 27 Sep 2009
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- other
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing better song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And my lives will deal the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Better sing your dead song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - Today for Spirit in Action, I will be speaking with Joe Elder, and he has some great experiences and insights to share. He and Esther Heffernon, a prison activist and Dominican nun, who was my guest last week, will be co-recipients of Peace Maker Lifetime Achievement Awards at the annual Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice session to be held on October 3rd in Madison. Joe Elder grew up a missionary kid in Iran, was a CEO during the Korean War, is a sociologist with focus on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And he served as a message bearer between Asian nations at war, helping to restore peace on the battlefield, so to speak. He joins us by phone from Madison, Wisconsin. Joe, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. - Thank you for inviting me to be on it. - You're a sociology professor in Madison there, and Asian studies. Are those normally studies that are linked, or is this just happens to be your specialty? - It happens to be my specialty. The University of Wisconsin actually receives federal grants to be a specializing campus in various parts of the world. So we get federal grants to be national resource institutes in hybrid American studies, African studies, South Asian studies, Southeast Asian studies, Central European studies. And each of these means that there are a number of faculty on the campus, and probably more important, number of people who teach the languages. So the students who want to become specialists in these areas can come and take graduate training and learn the languages of the area. They founded the Center for South Asia in 1961. So Wisconsin has been receiving substantial federal money since then. It's about a quarter of a million dollars a year to teach rarely taught South Asian languages, and have special faculty. So if people do want to specialize, they can come to Madison, Wisconsin for their training. That probably is the major reason I was selected to come to Madison. I have a PhD in sociology from Harvard, and I was teaching at Overland College, but Madison wanted to have a sociologist who was also a South Asianist. So I was flown here to talk to the people, and I found very exciting. The notion that I could be teaching sociology, and also have as colleagues, people who would teach Sanskrit, and Tamil, and Telugu, and Kannada, and Malayalam, and be specialists in Hindu philosophy, and so on, was just too great an opportunity. So I came here in '61 and have been very, very happy here. It's sort of an ideal job in a great location, and it's been very fulfilling. - Does this mean that you speak those languages, or at least some of them yourself? - I think some of them, but nowhere near all of them. Our department teaches probably 13 or 14 languages. The university teaches over 60 languages when you get into African languages. The languages that I can make do with, which means I could probably order a cup of tea with, include Farsi, which is Persian, because I was born in Iran, my parents are missionaries, and so I was a two-language speaker as a kid. I could flip from Farsi to English. Then in school, I learned French, Latin, and Greek. Then I went to India, who was in South India, so I learned some Tamil, a Dravidian language. Then I decided what specialized in India generally. In India is the most widely spoken language, so then I studied Hindi. During my PhD training, I went with my wife and two kids. We lived in a tent in a village in North India where Hindi was the language everybody else spoke. So my Hindi became pretty good. We were there for two years. And then after I came to the University of Wisconsin, there was a chance to take a group of grad students in Nepal and do some research. So I studied enough Nepali so that I could be something of a translator. So that sort of is the spread that I wouldn't say, I speak from all, I certainly couldn't teach them all, but I can maneuver in all of them. - You're probably somewhat known amongst listeners of public radio as one of the people who's shared on University of the Year. What kind of subjects have you shared on there? And I'm also looking, as I ask these questions, for the thread that's a connection to your piece in justice work. - The course they picked out, the University of the Year was of course I teach pretty much every fall. It's called Introduction to the Civilization of India, Modern Period. So it's very general, it's a kind of thing that people driving in their cars or listening to the radio while they're at work could find entertaining and enlightening. I deal with India essentially from the period just before the British came through the British period, the struggle for independence. It's on the writing of the Indian Constitution. And then a lot of stuff back in front. What is a caste system? How does it work? What is India doing to address the issue of even playing fields today? What's it doing in the creative arts? What's it doing in films and so on? So it's a huge fun course to teach. And it does allow students to get a pretty broad exposure to this very interesting, very ancient civilization, but also very active modern civilization, which I think should be a part of every liberal arts student's exposure to the world, spend a little time out of the West and into a section of the world with a very rich, very different culture. Don't you think it should be part of the required studies for those who are taking conservative arts majors as well? Probably, there are places that do this, Columbia University for Columbia College, requires I think still that every one of its undergraduates be exposed to two civilization courses. It could be Far East, it could be South Asia. It could be what was then called the Near East, which actually is West Asia. The Near East is itself a colonial hangover, could be Africa, but the notion that any liberal arts student should step outside of the West and look at a very rich, very different tradition that has come into contact with the West and has exchanged with the West, but shouldn't be exclusively limited to the civilization of Europe in the United States. Chicago, I think, also does have to get a BA. You must have taken, I think, two civilization courses. University of Wisconsin has a lot of requirements, and it's not mandated that one take a civilization course, but a typical liberal arts students does have to take courses in literature and the social sciences, so somewhere along the line they could easily take a course on African civilization or East Asian civilization, one hopes that they would. Uniquely or interesting enough, they must take a course in ethnic studies, the notion is that this is a requirement, and ethnic studies is typically a view of the different groups in the United States, so you're looking at Native Americans, you're looking at African Americans, you're looking at Hispanics, and a view of that history, and perhaps in terms of immediate concern, that's a required course, it is important, but I would personally like to see some insistence that in addition to taking ethnic studies, there should be some non-Westan studies that every liberal arts student would have to take at some point, just to step outside of the little closed world, which is reflected so much in what we think of as Western civilization. - And I'm assuming that this has a connection to peace and justice values, which are really important to you, and I think are illustrated throughout your lifetime and certainly all of your time that you've been in Madison. - It probably does, although if one looks into one, like one teaches courses, one teaches courses, 'cause these are things that fascinate one, and attract one and one does research in, and one wants to share with students. The stuff I'm most interested in the course tends to be things that do get into issues of peace and justice. I do have two lectures on Gandhi, for example, in the India course, a one on the role Gandhi played in organizing a very impressive, non-violent, active resistance to the British rule, which eventually led to India's independence, and then I have a lecture criticizing Gandhi by all the people who said that he was doing the wrong thing or he slowed India's independence down, so it's not here is the right thing to do, but an absolutely fascinating figure and the sort of impressive citizen of the 20th century that I think people should be exposed to. I also bring in Tagore, who won the Nobel Literature Prize from India, and he had a very interesting view of world citizenship. He was critical of Gandhi, for example, for being too much of a nationalist. His notion was that nationalism itself is kind of dangerous because people who are internationalism tend to think, well, it requires me to say something and do something, including going out and killing people, then I should do it. And Tagore said there's a seed in that of great danger, and Gandhi don't be too nationalist because we don't want to become just like all the other Western countries. So I must say I bring those ideas in because I think they're relevant ideas, but they came from people in India from a very different background. And then they do talk about nuclear weapons and the fact that India chose to develop nuclear weapons, and then they back and forth on that. The Kashmir dispute, which is one of the ongoing sort of danger spots in Asia, and what can be done. So the very material, you know, it lends itself to issues of peace and justice, and things have to do with U.S. foreign policy, and the way in which we elect people to represent us and formulate our foreign policies. - You've helped, I think, Joe, in terms of helping navigate our foreign policy, possibly in peaceful directions. But I want to go back first to a comment you made. You grew up as a missionary kid in Iran. What was that like? I was asking that from two points of view. You were living in a foreign country, but you were also a child of a missionary family. What variety of religion were you sharing there? - My parents were Presbyterian, and very dedicated Presbyterians. They met when they were essentially about college age. There was something at that point, which college students, Christian college students, were being encouraged to be missionaries, and both my father and mother were secretaries for this student volunteer movement that was urging people to go to Africa and Asia and bring Christianity to those countries. So their romances emerged because of their common concern for the spread of Christianity and the need to carry the other parts of the world. So it was natural after they got married to pick a place where they themselves were the missionaries. And my father had been in that part of the world during World War I. He had worked for the YMCA in Armenian refugee camps just north of Iran. So after he finished his seminar training and married my mother, they came to Iran and decided that's where they'd spend their life, which they did. They retired from Iran. It's interesting being a missionary kid. First of all, you had nothing with which to compare it. You know, this is your life. You grew up in an Iranian community. There are high walls around your yard as there are everybody else's. You live a kind of an isolated life. It was a very missionary life. We had morning devotions. We miss a grace at every meals. We had nighttime prayers. We went to Sunday school. We went to church. We memorized a lot of Bible passages. And you grew up assuming this is what one should be doing. It wasn't until years later that I began to realize great difficulties any Presbyterian would have going to a Shiite country and trying to convert the Shiites into something which they would say, well, we accept Jesus as a prophet, but we have a revelation we feel is more relevant. It was secure. It was comfortable. And then reward two came. And the huge mess that the war created in terms of disrupted lives, we didn't suffer anywhere near as much as people who really were in the war zone. You're not being backstage in the war. You watch refugees coming in. You watch typhus epidemics. You saw food riots. You saw food shortages. We were essentially very safe. But we saw a lot of people whose lives weren't safe. And then we met a lot of GIs. And you talk to people who have been ripped up from their jobs in farms or schools or what have you with the total disruption of their family life and then being put in positions which were lonely and discouraging and sometimes led to drug use and sometimes suicide. You know, this is just incredibly awful. It should be some way of not having things happen which are so disruptive and so damaging to so many people. So when I left Iran at the age of 15, which is as far as the school went and came to the United States, went to boarding school and went to college, the whole generation ahead of me were World War II veterans. We were the first freshman class in Oberlin and then a minority of veterans. Everybody ahead of us had been in the war. And I was struck mostly with how these people who fought the good war and risked their lives and managed to live were pretty depressed about what they had seen and what they had done. And there's some gripping stories that they told about what they had been required to do which they found haunting. And so this sort of concern about is there some way we can keep these horrendously awful things from happening became a concern and also in the sense that the military is not something I could participate in. You are required to do things which are degrading and extremely destructive for whatever purpose based on more liberty or democracy or whatever. So when the Korean War came along and the draft was reinstituted, I had reached the point that I was not going to serve in the military. But I was a Presbyterian, John Foster Dulles, who was the architect of the U.S. foreign policy who was a Presbyterian and felt God was on our side and was against the communists and so on. So I didn't have a lot of allies and Presbyterians to defend my position. I had to fill out a questionnaire of many, many pages asking why I felt I should not serve in the military. Well, the first question was, do you believe in a Supreme being yes or no? And the rule of that time was you could not be a conscientious objector unless you check yes, it had to be based on the belief in a Supreme being. That was to avoid people who simply said, this is an ethical issue. Well, I couldn't obviously say I believed in a Supreme being by that time. And I didn't want to say no because then my application would be tossed out. So I did a very student-like thing. I didn't check either and I wrote an essay. I see my essay. And in the essay, I said, what do you mean by Supreme being? I chuckle now, but I think probably when my draft board read that essay, they thought we don't want somebody like this sitting on a bunk in a barracks. I'm asking, what is a Supreme being? It's not going to be good for any of us. I was never called to the draft board. I never had to sort of go through the rigor of what you do if your mother was being raped by an enemy soldier or something. And then nine months later, I got this ruling that I did qualify as a conscientious objector. So that was sort of a plane which it was essentially the hideousness of war that led me to take a position that this was not something I could participate in. I had to talk to people who had been in the medical corps. What if you were a noncombatant? And what they said is, look, Joe, when you're in the army, whatever you were told before you were drafted, just goes by the board. We were told to carry weapons. We were involved in things we didn't want to be involved with. So if you go in, you live in a sense forfeit at your ability to make moral decisions. So that was sort of the quincher, in terms of my saying, either jail or CO, but not in the army in any way. He sees the bread we pray, love is a river rolling. Love is a chance we take when we make this earth our home. Gonna make this earth our home. Feel the cool breeze blowing through the smoke and the heat. Hear the gentle voices and the marching beat. Sing and call back with fire, draw the missiles down. And we'll call this earth our home. He sees the bread we pray, love is a river rolling. Love is a chance we take when we make this earth our home. Gonna make this earth our home. We have known the atom, the power and pain. We've seen people fall, and if they're killing rain, if the mind still reasons and the soul remains, it shall never be again. He sees the bread we pray, love is a river rolling. Love is a chance we take when we make this earth our home. Gonna make this earth our home. A peace grows from a tiny sea, as the acorn grows into the tallest tree. Many years ago I heard a soldier say, when people want peace, better get out of the way. He sees the bread we pray, love is the river rolling. Life is a chance we take when we make this earth our home. He sees the bread we pray, love is the river rolling. Life is a chance we take when we make this earth our home. Gonna make this earth our home. Fred Small with his song, "Peace Is." I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and this is "Spirit in Action." And we're speaking today with Joe Elder about the way he's worked for Peace for the past 40 plus years. We're getting to some amazing stories including how he served as a message bearer, seeking openings for peace in Asian countries. But first I want to probe a little more into the motivations that brought Joe to a post-war. You said, Joe, that you were horrified by the stories of the horbleness of war. But I also get a sense that there's a really strong ethical thing that's part of your concern. Can you balance those out? I mean, is this just distaste for war? Is it ethics that you're bringing from your Presbyterian background? What kind of basis is there in a more full picture? This is "Spirit in Action." And I am looking to share with people what motivates and sustains someone doing good in the world. And certainly we're being a lifetime worker for peace, and being recognized for that as you are by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice is certainly this qualifies. What was the basis that got you going in this direction? It's how sort of trite, which is simply a notion that every person is sacred, that I have no right to take somebody else's life. That's sort of the minimum each of us has is a life span. And for one person to deprive another person of that is I think the ultimate sin. Now, I don't know where that comes into some sort of formulation, but one looks at the golden rule in virtually every religion, and it is simple as that. Don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you. So it would be very broad, probably it was embedded in my Presbyterian background and the golden rule and so on, but it just seems so obvious at a certain point that if we are to live with each other, we have to start with the premise that each of us is a sacred human being if you want to use that term, and entitled to live. And if you start with that premise, then something like war, something like executions just become the worst thing that people can do to each other. Eventually, you continued on with your studies and you became an important resource, I think, in terms of Asian studies, came to Madison. And at one point, I think you served as kind of a conduit on a gentle, quiet level between the US and countries in Asia. How did that come about? What was that work about? It was a surprise, it so often happens in life. I was at that point, this was in December of '65, I had just become chair of the department. It was December, I had a call from the American Friends Service Committee, which is the Quaker Service Organization in Philadelphia, saying that they were looking for an American Quaker to go with two British Quakers to India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan had a very ugly brief war in the summer of '65. There was a ceasefire, but not a piece. There were prisoners of war on both sides, there were civilians who had been caught on both sides of the border. The Quakers had a long history in India. Horace Alexander, who was an important Quaker, had worked very closely with Gandhi. In fact, as an English citizen, he carried messages from Gandhi to the Viceroy and backwards. So the London Quakers thought maybe with this country that now is two countries, there might be some background of Quaker activities that could be helpful. We have friends in Pakistan, we have friends in India, we have a long tradition of working with Gandhi, so maybe we could do something. They had two British Quakers who both had experience in that part of the world, but they were looking for an American Quaker, so it wouldn't just be a British project, and there weren't that many American Quakers who knew very much about India. Anyway, I got the call saying, could I free myself for three or four weeks to go with these British Quakers to India and Pakistan, essentially on a fact-finding mission. Just what's happened and is there any way in which Quaker friends of both India and Pakistan could do something useful? Well, we were just hitting the bad time of the year for chairs, as budgets and personnel and new courses and all the kind of stuff that goes with campus activities. Well, I said, "Gee, I'm sorry, there's no way I can get it away in the next month or so, it's just way too busy." And I hung up, and I turned to my secretary and said, "You know, that very interesting offer to do something which could be quite intriguing," and she said, "What was it?" And I said, "What chance to go with these two British Quakers to India and Pakistan and the fact-finding mission, but I can't do it with all this stuff we have to do." And she, without realizing it, said, "Who needs you?" They've had experience. If this is something that seems useful, why don't you call them back? Well, within about two minutes, I called back and said, "Could I reconsider the offer?" And they said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, I'm willing to go, let's see if we can put it together." So within a week or two, I was in Washington with the Quakers talking with the ambassador from India and the ambassador from Pakistan about this project. And then during my winter break, I flew to England and met the two other British Quakers, both much wiser and much more seasoned than I was. And then the three of us flew to Pakistan and began essentially a month of moving back and forth between India and Pakistan on a fact-finding mission. Well, very quickly, it turned out that the fact that we were going back and forth was something that leaders on both sides of the border were quite excited about because once countries are having bad relations with each other, the first thing they do is to close their embassies. And so they can't talk with each other. In this case, they close their high commissions because their members of the Commonwealth, they don't have ambassadors, they have high commissioners. So they had not been able to talk directly with representatives of the other country since that summer. And all they had been able to hear was vitriol from the other side's radio and insults and they knew they were prisoners of war that weren't being perhaps harmed and their refugees and so they didn't sit on the arrest. So very quickly, we found ourselves being moved up to quite high ranks of people saying when you get to the other side, could you say this or that or the other? Because there was nobody else doing it. Just before we flew out there, the Soviet Union actually had brought the leaders of Indian Pakistan together at Tashkent and they had signed a ceasefire agreement to restore normalcy. And then the Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bajrashastri, had a heart attack and died in Tashkent. So here was this moment when peace was to be restored. The Prime Minister of India had died. The President of Pakistan had signed a treaty. He said he wasn't going to sign, so he was going to go back to Pakistan and be given a very hard time because each side agreed to give up the territory they'd conquered in the war and each side promised they weren't going to. So at this point, the fact that there were three Quakers who were willing to go back and forth on both sides represented an opportunity. So we did end up meeting the new Prime Minister in India who was Indira Gandhi and Indira Gandhi remembered the Claykar Horrors Alexander and we had a couple of very pleasant talks with her and then she asked us to speak to President Ayokhan on the Pakistan side. So we found ourselves carrying messages between the leaders of two sides which were confidential and we're basically well intentioned. Each side was stuck with a public position of hard line and so on. But each side said we are more reasonable than we can appear to be because we have to appear to be tough whereas we do realize that there are ways that we have to negotiate our way through this. So that was the first time I became involved in these kinds of behind the scenes, quiet message carrying and once into that then there were several other occasions when the British Quakers who had funding for this kind of thing needed an American Quaker. So I ended up doing similar projects in Sri Lanka and Korea and Vietnam and so on. But I think you also went kind of as an emissary or made caring information from the U.S. government over there. This isn't just between Pakistan and India or whatever. I think in '69 did you carry messages to Asia from the U.S. government? When the Vietnam War started I was in a proponent of the war from the very beginning. It was a disaster from all points of view and it went back to my sense of how can we do such incredibly horrible things even if they are ostensibly for good reasons. So I was an anti-war activist and along the lines, this was in the summer of '69, the Tet Offensive had happened, the American public was beginning to see how messy the situation was in the sense that we had gotten into something which we wish we hadn't gotten into. So I had agreed to volunteer to work with the American Friends Service Committee in Southeast Asia and just get off the campus. At that point Richard Nixon had been elected president and he had said he was going to bring peace and he had a mother who was a Quaker so there seemed to be various ways in which things might open up. I was going to go to probably Bangkok and plan for what the Quakers might do after the war was over. If Richard Nixon was able to bring peace then the Quakers should have a plan to move in to try to do something about this whole region which had been so badly torn up by the war. In that connection I was part of five Quakers who went to Stockholm to attend a conference sponsored by the North Vietnamese to speak with countries, people's parties, groups who were interested in them and at that meeting since we were the largest delegation, we were the American Friends Service Committee, we got to have a formal dinner with the delegation from North Vietnam including Madam Bin who was their foreign secretary and at the dinner she commented on the fact that she was concerned that Quakers were trying to do what they could for civilians in South Vietnam and North Vietnam and then she said something which is the difference. She said we now are prepared to have a Quaker come and talk to us in Hanoi about what Quakers might do for the North Vietnamese as part of the policy of the Friends has been when a war breaks out, typically it's the civilians who are most damaged and you're trying to help civilians on all sides of the conflict because humans are humans regardless of what country they're in and we had set up a big hospital in South Vietnam, we were quite active there and we wanted to do something in the North but it was difficult because the war was on. The Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, Robinson Clark, reached over and put his hand on my shoulders, well here's the person we're going to send to Hanoi, so my job was reassigned from spending the summer sort of talking about how we might work with the Mekong River Project which was an inter-country project benefiting Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam to become the representative between the American Friends Service Committee and the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi. So that's how I spent my summer instead and I did go into Hanoi twice once to find out what the North Vietnamese felt the Quakers and Mennonites could do which wasn't very much in terms of money but symbolically it was important and then the second time to deliver a series of medical supplies that they'd asked for and once I was going into North Vietnam and come back out they wanted me to carry a message to Washington and then the relatives of men missing in action got in touch with me and asked me to carry messages back in and then the State Department asked me to see what I could do about the prisoners who'd been shot down in North Korea so I didn't end up carrying messages sort of between the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi and people in Washington. But always I think as an agent of peace which is a lot different than someone who's working in the Department of State, they've got a job and they've got to do what the government says, they're serving a national interest. I guess you've never identified yourself with a nation or are you one of the people that sometimes conservatives accuse of hating America? I'm sure they could accuse me of hating America or being a traitor and being a draft soldier and they're entitled to call me whatever they want but the thing that struck me is so unique is when you say you are a Quaker the fact that you are an American Quaker or British Quaker or an Australian Quaker or a French Quaker kind of dissolves and it's the Quaker thing, the fact that you refuse to bear arms, you sort of begin by saying I'm not interested in anybody's army beating out, anybody else's army. So what you lose in terms of the sentence of being a patriot or having a salary, you gain by being recognized as an individual who presumably could be trusted. When we have been carrying these messages we sort of evolve the policy that first of all the two conditions of carrying messages between parties who are at war with each other, first of all each party must want us to carry messages. Now those we aren't spokespersons for side A against side B. In the minute they both don't want us we will not become message carriers and the second is that both sides must agree to tell absolutely nobody that we're doing it because if it becomes public who we are carrying messages then the press follows us or who knows who else is interested in following us because they could make inferences of policies and we don't want to become part of any sort of campaign of any kind and in all the work we done essentially that has worked quite well especially in Sri Lanka where I was part of a team from 1984 to 1996 where we were carrying messages between the Tamil Tigers and the government then I think only a one or two occasions that had confidential I've seen to be breached, it was very important because we were carrying messages which if they had been known by the sides of the leaders who were asking us to carry these messages the leaders' lives would have been in great danger because the leaders were typically saying look I have to say these pretty fierce uncompromising things but I'm quite willing to shift if the other side is willing to shift often the most dangerous people for the leaders of the people in Exnotch below who are trying to maintain a very tough line, frequently found the leaders were more thoughtful, it was always a case but they did realize that the cost of whatever they were doing militarily was terribly painful and if there were some relatively honorable way in which peace could come it was to their interests so we were on the side saying there may be some way that this violence could be brought to an end and typically that was one of their negotiating because they were quite willing to keep on fighting but if there were some alternative that would make sense they were willing to think about and talk about it too. I think you were doing this at least part of the time as an associate of the American Friends Service Committee or of Quakers in general does this mean that there's also Presbyterians and Catholics and you know Muslims and everybody running around doing this kind of message building of dialogue between the opponents? There were a few other groups and often there were just other people we discovered at some points that the certain journalists could work this way, that if there were a journalist who was whose integrity was respected who had written fair stories after having interviews that they would be used, I guess I haven't realized how helpless leaders are when their countries are at war with another group, you really can't talk with them and they are the most important people to deal with so there aren't a lot of other groups, there aren't a lot of other groups that have credibility, you see if the American shows up and says "I want to be helpful" the premise would be there with the CIA, if they're a religious group, the angelica where they're just grouped in is a suspicion that ultimately this is an effort to convert people, so there is a kind of neutrality that Quakers or Mennonites have because of their historical heritage. We can't entirely get rid of the fact that we are Americans and English speakers during the message carrying between India and Pakistan, it was almost cute, I didn't realize how wise the British Quakers had been to tuck an American into the team because at the time we were carrying messages, India was quite angry with Britain, they felt that Britain had not been supportive of India's position and so on one of our occasions when the three of us were sitting in somebody in the Indian foreign policy section of the government, the Indian official with whom we were speaking turned his back, literally turned his chair around, so he had his back to the two British Quakers and talked to me because he said we're very angry with the British, with the British Boycatty casting corporation, but I can talk to you, this is pretty funny, we're all in the same room, but he had to make the point that he felt the British had been harmful to the Indian position and so the fact that I was there was a plus because then my British Quaker friend served what he was saying but he was able to maintain his sense of India's angry with Britain and I'm an Indian representative so I can't be friendly to the British, we almost always try to have at least two Quakers for much of the Sri Lanka work, I was working with the British Quaker of India's background, he was a British citizen but his name was Raman Worthy and he had been, he grew up as a Tamil, so he could speak some Tamil, he spoke Burmese Tamil which is a little bit different for Sri Lanka Tamil, but a lot of stuff is happening when you're talking body language and emphasis and you sit down after one of these things to make your notes and realize how different interpretations could come, so there's kind of a check of each other and we did typically keep very confidential notes and what happened and then relay these back to the groups of centers so they had some source of information for sending future teams out. We're speaking today with Joe Elder, my name is Mark Helpsmeet, this is Northern Spirit Radios Program, Spirit in Action, Joe Elder is a spirit in action and he's going to be recognized on October 3rd by Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, their website is WNPJ.org. Joe Elder will be sharing the stage with another worker for Peace and Justice also being recognized Esther Heffernan, a Dominican nun and sociologist at Edgewood College, activist on prison reform issues and my guest for last week's spirit in action program. Joe Elder is being recognized for his service to the world, particular in Southeast Asia or in Asia in general, he grew up in Iran as a son of missionaries, he was a conscientious objector during Korean War and what we're talking about right now is the way that he's passed messages between people who can't come to the table themselves to speak, it's a kind of unusual position to be in. You know Joe, do you get nominated for this by anyone in particular? When you started out, you started out because some British Quakers invited you to go along as an American Quaker, is there any way to confer official status or is it just that you look like a person who might be acceptable in this? I mean, I'm an American Quaker too, so does that mean that maybe I could go and be passed between two countries to help with communication? You might be surprised, they're looking for volunteers, the fact that I could speak some Indian languages was a plus, they wanted somebody who, and it didn't turn out to be the case, I could translate, I could help get the taxis, I could move around, somebody said that you're the perfect delegation, you have Leslie who is very senior, so he was probably in his 60s, very, very dignified, new Gandhi, and we had Adam Curl who was sort of mid 40s, very energetic, very official, very smart, very good administrator, and I was the sort of 30 year old typewriter carrier who took notes and they shifted and things that worked out, so that was just very good and they chose me I think because I didn't know India, by then I lived there, lived four years and spoke something about two languages and could get in and out, and then I had a job I could walk away from for a while and my secretary said who needs you, who was embarrassing to realize that I wasn't that essential, I had to be able to back up, they come to my classes, I could come back and pick up, so I was just fortunately placed so I could respond to them, and I'm sure if I had said I wasn't able to they would have kept calling until I did find somebody, on the Sri Lanka thing I ended up going on teams with, sometimes with other Quaker personnel, there are several Quaker offices in Geneva, Switzerland and some in London, Ramamorti was linked with a program in London, so he was sort of on the employee staff, but they did want a second person, they wanted a person in the region, a person who could just sleep on the floor if necessary, who didn't mind the crazy working hours and stuff, and once you've done it then you have that experience, and it sort of accumulates, you know by the time you're in your third or fourth trip you can say we've done this in Korea, we've done this in Indian Parkside, is there some way in which we could do it here, where we might be helpful, and so it builds up a kind of a legacy that says well if you were helpful in similar situations perhaps we could think of using you. Are there situations where you think that you Joe and your compatriots traveling back and forth, that you can point to and say I think we saved lives, I think we brought peace, I think we shortened the war, those kind of things in specific cases, do you think that you've been able to see that kind of outcome? It'd be extremely hard to link an event, a trip with any particular event, history is extraordinarily complex, and one cannot tell. I do think that the fact that the US public brought the war in Vietnam to an end was kind of a significant thing, here was a government that had thrown all its resources huge amounts of money, incredible amount of personnel into a war which many of us felt was a terrible thing, and to bring Nixon down to bring Johnson down in the sense that they had to acknowledge it was a failure was I think a credit to the whole peace movement and I would see Quakers just one small part in it, and one looks at, one looks at Iraq, again it's hard to say this thing did that for the fact that from the very beginning in Iraq there were these voices saying this is not the right thing to do, and at this moment their voices saying that if I've got a son should stop, somebody has to be there pointing this thing out, and it's not just Quakers, it's a lot of concerned people, the effort to prevent the Iraq war from starting I thought was very impressive when it was quite clear that the President Bush wanted to go to war, there was huge protests all around the world of Catholics and Protestants and others who were trying to bring some kind of a halt to this, so one can say to the extent we were part of that movement and able to define issues was a small contribution. In terms of particular things it's very hard, there were several times in Sri Lanka, we were trying to just get them to the Tigers and the government to meet together. There were a couple of meetings in Timpoo, Bhutan that India sponsored, and the Tigers and the coming up together, and we had been urging them to do that and the Indian government did it for us, I'm not sure to what extent we contributed to it, but we were certainly pleased to see it happen, and sorry to see that the agreements in Timpoo never worked out, there were violence broke out and each side maintained that the other side wasn't showing integrity and then they went back to the war and it continued until a few months ago, and one of these again horrible things that went on way too long and lost far too many lives. I want to talk about one more element of your service in terms of peace and justice for which both you and Esther Heffernon will be recognized by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice on October 3rd. You've been doing service I think to peace and justice by teaching, and you've taught Asian Studies as we talked about a little bit earlier. You also taught LGBT typesites, I don't know which letters you use for this, how did that come about? You said the sequence right, okay, the whole issue of our lesbians and gays, sort of immoral debased people who should be kept in the shadows, are they other people just like us who have a different sexual preference? Ironically, the first time I sort of had to address this was when I was on the board of directors of the American Friends Service Committee and clickers go by consensus, so when you're a nominating committee you come up with nominations and everybody denominates agrees that this is the group that's going to become the new board and then you pass it out to the board and unless there's something truly strange your nominations hold because everything is not my consensus. And as we sat down, we received instructions from the board to find we had to come up with four nominations, two of them had to be gays or lesbians with, I suppose, maybe 1966 or 1967 or something like that and it was truly bizarre. There was not one of us who knew of a Quaker who was gay or lesbian, much less one who was experienced and would want to serve on the board but the decision made by the board that there are Quakers and Lesbians in our midst, we don't just want a token, we want to begin with at least two because Quaker, lesbians and gays should have a voice. So we sat around looking at each other, so they never got, well, it was weird, weird meeting and then set out to find senior responsible, well-known Quakers who could serve on the board of directors and we did come up with them eventually and eventually it turned out that there were plenty of responsible Quakers who were gay and lesbian but who had been in the closet because that was the way people were. So that was sort of the first time I had to say where are they and I realized when we did find them and they were wonderful people, they just did not want this part of their life to be known. They realized what a great burden it must be to be gay and lesbian and then realize that this huge part of your life you just cannot let people know. So that was sort of where I got involved, then I was teaching a course at that time called Conflict in American Society and it was clear that the whole LGBT issue was coming up, so while it occurred, so I said we're going to bring some speakers in to our class, we're going to get a lesbian to come in, we're going to get a gay person to come in and by then there were groups here in Madison that were identified and were offering speakers and the response in my class was horrendous when I said we are going to have a gay man come and talk about the conflicts that he feels one of the men in my class said I am not going to come to class or if I come I'm going to keep my back to the wall so he doesn't jump me. They thought that is just a truss, where does something like that come across. So the sense of the need for information, the need for respect came in. The next major event was on the Madison campus, we have an ROT, we have a 3ROTC and a reserve office of training court units and they prevent gays and lesbians from serving. You have to fill out a form and if you're a gay or lesbian you can't come in or you commit perjury. Well there are several students who said this is against our code for the campus which is not to discriminate, the city of Madison, which is not to discriminate, which is state of Wisconsin not to discriminate, how come on the UW campus we have 3 major organizations that just announce we are not going to allow gays and lesbians who want to serve to serve. So I found myself as part of a faculty group to call a faculty meeting to ask the regions to terminate the contracts with these 3 ROTC units until they allow gays or lesbians in as part of our campus policy, city policy, state policy. Well huge, bruhaha, you know, touch the military without getting a lot of excitement going. So we did have a faculty meeting and we presented the pros and the cons of asking the regions to terminate the contracts because they violated the principles that were on the campus and the city and the state and we won, we won not an overwhelming majority but you know a substantial majority of faculty votes which we then passed on to the Board of Regents and they did not act on it, they weren't abridged to because they make the rules. But the issue was there and it was clear to the whole campus that here were these 3 major government supported organizations that openly discriminate. So a campus committee was set up and I was asked to be on the committee and then asked to be the chair of the committee. So for about a decade I was the chair of the committee trying to introduce issues of LGBT equality on the campus. One of the issues was trying to get domestic partner benefits for campus people, another was to get the dormitories to be fair and orientation of freshmen and so on. Sometimes about 1997 or '98 each year we sit down and say what should we do, what should we do. And this year we kept saying there should be courses on LGBT issues that there should be looked at as a phenomenon and there are three or four of us faculty on this committee and we each would look very sheepishly at each other. Somebody should teach a course and finally one of the other faculty members who is in the medical school and I said okay we will put together a course, there should be a course called introduction to lesbian and bisexual studies. So we did put together a course and it has now been on the books for nine years. It fills up right to the top, we have an enrollment typically of 200, all sorts of people take it, it's not just gays or lesbians or questioning people, it's people who feel we have social workers who want to be aware of what's going on, we have people from other countries who are interested in what's happening in our country so this could happen let's say in Hong Kong or Singapore. So it's a very interesting class to be in and you certainly discover yourself touching all sorts of arenas of life as people who do acknowledge that there are people who are just like us except there are sexual preferences for people of their own gender rather than the opposite gender. Do you see this Joe as a religious spiritual issue? Spiritual to the sense that the dignity of everybody is important, we go back to the basic breakdown is each person has the right to be who they are and if you say you are not of the same quality as I have you do not have the same rights as I do that's a violation of the sort of basic premise that led me to be a conscientious objector. These are people, this is the way they are just as if they were from another country or another race and to denigrate them is in a sense a serious damage to justice. So I guess he comes out of the same thing and it's come with its own rewards in case neither be a student who says you know the very fact that the course deals with us as citizens and raises the issue of we do want to have families and we do want to be respected and we do want to be a run for public offices who we are is all important and it's sort of like the civil rights of the women's groups they know you finally get to the point here they are just and like we are and the rights are there and we should be sensitive to them. We've got just a little bit more time Joe and I wanted to cover one more area that I think that you've worked in. One of my guests three years ago now I think already it was Mike Baim who's active with organization called Madison Quakers Inc which is kind of a strange name considering you know the idea of incorporating a religious group particularly Quakers who are so un-corporated is just kind of an interesting thought but he had told me in that conversation that you were one of the big supporters of his work of reconciliation and helping back to Vietnam. Could you say a little bit about the history with that? Sure it was again one of these serendipitous things I felt real concerned for Vietnam World War II was the war in which I sort of developed this great sense of this is the greatest insult to humanity to have wars. The Korean War was the one where I saw it took my stand and I will not participate with the military but I'll do whatever I can to prevent it. Then these series of caring messages was part of what I was doing then came to Vietnam War and it was just horrendous I mean to be a part of this massive invasion based on all kinds of misinterpretations and limitless violence and so on. So the war ended I'd been to North Vietnam twice I'd been to South Vietnam where the Quaker hospital was I'd seen the amputees I'd seen the burn victims I'd met the Quaker staff who were there and then America walked away and I thought this is this is just atrocious you know we tear the country up and we just made some agreements that we would do something about it and then found all kinds of ways to back away from it. And then we refused to allow Vietnam into the economic circuit. So we punished Vietnam having shredded Vietnam and I thought this is just again incredibly unjust so looking for some way to do some little tiny thing the possibility of helping to raise funds for micro loans came along in the early 1990s there was a group setting up micro loans for women in Vietnam the smallest kind of thing you could do and this person was looking for people in Madison to help out and I said sure we can help out and that's where I met Mike Mike was at some of these meetings and then it grew from there Mike is an incredible person I mean just amazing veteran of Vietnam War who has done an enormous amount of a person who says I got to give my life to doing something Mike is the one but very quickly was there Mike needed some kind of organization some fundraising and so it was sort of natural that Quakers do this because we had had a hospital project in South Vietnam we sent medical supplies to North Vietnam we had long track record of being concerned about Vietnamese and this is just one way to get working again so we did set up a 501c3 which does sound odd you know Madison Quakers incorporated but then you become go through a process and people who give money can get a tax deducted and that's helpful and Mike has been has just done this amazing series of things he's raised over $700,000 on his own through Madison Quakers Inc to build a complete triangle of schools to get a peace bar going to get micro loans going and it probably wouldn't have put me possible but for the small organizational structure which then gives you a place to send your mailings and the place for the checks to come in Paul McMahon is the treasurer he's himself a Vietnam veteran very small board of the concerned people who've been to Vietnam so it's a tiny tiny way of trying to do something to make up for the incredible damage long lasting damage you know Agent Orange type damage which still continues to be a known for the fact the US was there for so long. Well from my discussion with Mike you were a key influence and support at times it's easy to be daunted by the disinterest of the mass of society and Mike related to me that your steadfast support had been so simple to him so I want to thank you for that I want to mention that website it's called Me Lai Peace Park and for those who don't know how to write how we transliterate that language it's M-Y-L-A-I Peace Park Me Lai Peace Park.org that's where you can find about this project of reconciliation and learning a little bit of a helping hand to Vietnam. We've been speaking today with Joe Elder he will be recognized on October 3rd for a lifetime award by Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. You can contact them by the website wnpj.org. Thank you so much Joe for your work you've planted seeds of peace everywhere and it's been a pleasure to know you for many years too thanks so much. Well Mark it's been great fun talking with you thanks so much. That was Joe Elder joining us today from Madison Wisconsin for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website Northern Spirit Radio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world home. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world home and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.