People for Peace and Justice
of Utah
Speeches made at action in Salt Lake City, Utah
People for Peace and Justice of Utah
|
a grassroots organization advocating nonviolence and justice
March 20, 2004 ~ The World Still Says No! to War Speeches made at action in Salt Lake City, Utah |
 The Reverend Dan Webster, Episcopal Peace Fellowship Remarks of the Rev. Dan Webster, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Paul Jones chapter, March 20, 2004, Salt Lake City, Utah, peace rally at the City-County Building. One year and one week ago to this day we stood on the steps of the state capitol and we said, NO TO WAR. Today we stand here and we join with millions: The world STILL says NO TO WAR! One year and one week ago I spoke out against preventive war as unjust. I was not alone. Leaders of most major religions in this country had spoken out against the planned war. One year and one week ago, I spoke out against the perverted interpretation of sacred scriptures to justify violence and death. I was not alone then. And I am not alone now. Before the outbreak of this war some people of faith and people of no faith met on the street corner in front of the federal building for weekly peace vigils. Others wrote letters to newspapers and congress members. In the run up to the war a group of faith community representatives met with Senator Bob Bennett. We shared our deep concerns that not all peaceful possibilities had been exhausted…that there were other non-violent options still available to our leaders. We then heard Senator Bennett go on about the threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and how they posed an imminent threat to the American people. In a letter I received more than a year ago from Senator Bennett, he said this: …we must ask ourselves if we are comfortable ignoring a madman who is in charge of a country that is deliberately and aggressively creating more weapons of mass destruction…and pursuing the means of delivering those weapons to the United States. Some are asking, where have you been this past year? We haven’t heard much from you. Well I can tell you some people of faith who are committed to peace have been praying for peace. We have met in churches, synagogues and mosques. We have lifted our voices and our hearts to God sometimes using the words of our Holy Scriptures. We have taken comfort in the words of those who have gone before…such as St. Seraphim of Sarov, a 19th century monk in Russia who said: Have peace within yourself and thousands around you will find salvation. Many of us have found hope in the words of modern day prophets such as retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He lived most of his life under aparthied in a repressive South Africa. He knows what it’s like to live in a police state. Desmond Tutu says, Peace never comes from the barrel of a gun. He has called the war in Iraq unjust, illegal and immoral. And just last month Archbishop Tutu called on the leaders of Britain and the United States to apologize. Tutu said: It is a large-hearted and courageous people who are not diminished by saying: ‘I made a mistake.’ President Bush and Prime Minister Blair would recover considerable credibility and respect if they were able to say: ‘Yes, we made a mistake.’ One year and one week later, thousands of Iraqi men, women and children are dead. Hundreds of American, British, Spanish, Polish and other coalition men and women are dead...AND THE WORLD STILL SAYS NO TO WAR! Some religious leaders and peacemakers have been called unpatriotic. Some of us have even been called, ‘traitors.’ Let me tell you, I love this nation. We are fortunate to have a Constitution that provides for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and freedom of the press. I’ve spent my entire professional career, as a journalist and now as a priest, working for institutions protected by the First Amendment. For the past ten years I’ve spent a lot of time studying religion and theology, sacred scriptures and what people believe God does in their lives. I believe God must be weeping. Tears must be flowing in heaven whenever God hears the words of Holy Scripture used to justify such death and destruction. I believe God’s tears flow when anyone in any war is told what they are doing is God’s will and they will be rewarded. I believe God’s tears flow when the president of the United States claims God is on the side of this nation to justify this war. Last April, the president rallied the troops with these words: The freedom you defend is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity. And surely God must be weeping, hearing the president conclude last January’s State of the Union address with these words: The cause we serve is right…and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true. May God continue to bless America. Let me just say this. As someone who has studied Holy Scripture, as someone who has studied the shameful history of religious oppression and dominance, as someone who believes in and prays to a God of peace and justice and love...GOD HAS NOT ANOINTED THIS NATION, OR ANY NATION ON THIS EARTH, TO FORCIBLY IMPOSE A FORM OF GOVERNMENT, RELIGION OR VALUE SYSTEM ON OTHER NATIONS. We are all equal in the eyes of the creator. We are all human beings trying to live together on this gift we call planet earth. We will not be successful if we continue to pollute it with violence and hatred. We will not be successful if we continue to pollute it with aggression and oppression. We will not be successful until we find ways to use words and not weapons. We will never be able to live together on this planet in peace until we can respect the dignity of every human being, EVERY HUMAN BEING. Three weeks from now in Christian churches around the world we will once again tell the Easter story of death and resurrection. We will tell the story of Jesus being arrested. And when one of his disciples pulls a sword in his defense, Jesus says: Put your sword back in its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. We will tell the story of Jesus shedding tears in the garden...tears not just for what he expected would happen to him, but tears for what we do now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia and too many other war torn places on the planet. We will tell the story of Jesus whose dying words included: “Father forgive them.” And we will tell the story of resurrection, of a Jesus who appears to his frightened disciples in a locked room. And his first words to them? Peace be with you. In one gospel account he doesn’t say it just once. He says it a second time. It was a theme in his life and in his teachings. It is a theme in many of the world’s religions. They are words that bear repeating. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Predictably Unpredictable by Louis Borgenicht, M.D. year ago today I spoke at the Capitol at the outset of the War in Iraq. Since then things have changed in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Predictable was the human cost of the war: to date 8,000-10,000 Iraqi civilians, 678 Coalition troops, and 11,000 Iraqi soldiers have died. These figures are very likely inaccurately low and do not include the larger number of those wounded or those who died of starvation, infectious disease and other ancillary calamities of hostilities. Both predictable and unpredictable was economic cost of the war and ongoing, seemingly interminable occupation. By the time I have finished speaking for five minutes: The war will have cost nearly $107, 747, 533, 247. Utah’s share of this is $471,000,000, enough to provide health insurance for 144,000 children for a year or permit 48,000 children to attend Head start for a year or allow Utah to hire 6,400 teachers for a year or pay for construction of 4,800 homes. Another way of looking at this reality is to examine some figures from the Congressional Budget Office. They are stark and shocking. In January 2001 we had a 5.6 trillion dollar surplus. By January 2002 the surplus had dropped to1.6 trillion dollars. By August 2003, the tables were turned and we were faced with a 2.3 trillion dollar deficit, which continues to grow as I speak. A simple way to make sense of these astronomical numbers is to relate them to time. Consider.... One million equal to the time between today and 17 years ago. One billion equal to the time between today and 1971. And one trillion equal to the time between today and 31,000 years ago. Finally unpredictable are the ultimate consequences of our administration’s foolhardy, simplistic, unilaterally imperialistic perspective on the world. It is as if the War on Terrorism, whatever that has come to mean, is the central focus of Neo-conservatives, everything else be damned: the poor and hungry in our nation and around the world, civil rights at home, education, health care and protection of the domestic and global environment. As disturbing is the fact that the Bush administration would have us view the world through their fear colored glasses. Many of us refuse to do so. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, in an essay entitled Despair is Not and Option, has recently put all this in perspective: Many people believed at the time that the trauma of 9/11 would change the world. My feeling was that our American response would be far more crucial. The President, after all, did not have to declare war. He could have called the terrorists mass murderers, their deeds crimes against humanity. He could have said to the American people and the world, We will respond, but not in kind. We will not seek to avenge the death of innocent Americans by the death of innocent victims elsewhere, lest we become what we abhor. We refuse to ratchet up the cycle of violence that brings only ever more death, destruction and deprivation. What we will do is build coalitions with other nations. We will share intelligence, freeze assets and engage in forceful extraditions of terrorists if internationally sanctioned. I promise to do all in my power to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force. As a result we squandered the widely felt sympathy that was ours on 9/11, symbolized by the headline in Le Monde the following day: Nous sommes tous Américains. We also squandered the near-record budget surplus that could have helped victims abroad as well as the homeless and hungry in the United States, where poverty is a tragedy that great wealth makes a sin We have a responsibility to ourselves, our children and our childrens’children to speak out in protest and campaign against (to use his words) the most Misundestimated president in history. We do not share his vision of the world which four years ago President Bush described in the following terms: When I was coming up it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who they are, but we know they’re there. We have had eloquent presidents who had a clearer view on reality and I would like to close with the words of one of them. Fifty-one years ago he said: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. These are the words of President Eisenhower. Where is he now that we need him? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This speech was written by Tyler Bugden from East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah and read by Amanda Madden. My name is Amanda Madden. I am 17 years old, a junior at East High School. I am a member of ATAPA a youth political organization. I'm a volunteer tutor at Mountain View Elementary. Through Spy Hop Productions at the University of Utah, I am making a documentary about youth activism. I plan to major in film making in college. My goal is to make documentaries about important social issues. The current mood among high school students includes feeling compelled to blindly submit to authority. Students are coercedto submit to authority without questioning , and then they are told that they are true patriots for withholding their questions and skepticism of the Bush administration. The student voice has been muted by America's doublespeak about patriotism. As we all know, patriotism is the love of one's country, and our country only exists because of the civil disobediance enacted by questioning Britain which precipitated the Revolutionary war. The love of someone's country coexists with the prosperity of that country's documents; thus let us have out first amendment rights without being perceived as reprobate and unpatriotic, and let us speak out against this administration. All Americans bear the right to question authority, hence the declaration of Independance which this country was founded on; When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws and nature' God entitle them, a decent respect to opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We students seek no conquest for separation from our country, yet we seek peace within our country under these seminal documents. Too many people tell us teenagers that our opinions are naive, unimportant and not influential. Yet we are the Americans of tommorrow, we will be the soldiers dying on our administration's battlefields, we will work all our lives to repay our nation's briefly accumulated debt, we are your children, and we are human too which entitles us to our rights. Although students cannot vote, we are resourceful in making our voices heard. Throught America's history it has not necessarily been the voters who catalyzed social change; it has been the people exercising their unalienable rights to civil disobediance. Many of the people who spoke out were America's vigorous youth; hence the Vietnam era with student protests, and the civil rights movements with student cafeteria sit-ins. Therefore, America's youth do have power, and do have important things to say. But the copious amounts of so called Patriotism-preaching propaganda today has quieted thinking and induced blind faith in our administration. Noam Chomsky recently said that there are two major powers in the world today; the United States of America, and world opinion. Thus, it is the job of America's students along with all other American's to incessantly questionthe integrity of our administration and to keep them in check. In school the other day, I learned about president Roosevelt and the beginning of America's age of imperialism. American imperialism was different from European imperialism because its strategy didn't include the divide and conquer tactics that Europe used. American imperialism hides behind exploiting underprivilaged nations by making them dependant on America's commerce. It also hides behind the racist notion of the white man's burden and that our culture and so called democracy are much better than any culture or government and that it is our duty to make the world more like us. It is rather peculiar that history incessantly repeats itself, and American imperialism has under the name of liberation and democratizing another nation. Theodore Roosevelt once said; To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public therefore let American's young and old never stop thinking on their own and never stop questioning their administration as the rrconstruction of Iraq commences, and America's grip on world power grows stronger and more wanton. |
Photos of March 20 Action