MLK: Beyond Vietnam

Friends,

Last Saturday at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action we honored Martin Luther King Jr's legacy of nonviolence and his opposition to war and nuclear weapons. We shared this video of his sermon titled Why I am against the war in Vietnam with the attendees. There was absolute silence in the room throughout the 23 minutes of this remarkable video in which the people at The Real News Network put together powerful images to accompany one of the great sermons of our (or any) time.

This sermon resonates for me (as it did for everyone in that room on Saturday) as much today as it did nearly 46 years ago.  One could switch a country's name or two and it would seem as if this sermon was written in 2013.  A slight variation on this sermon was given by Dr. King nearly a month before (at the Riverside Church), and has come to be known as Beyond Vietnam.

It is a fitting meditation in this time in which we celebrate the birth of one the greatest peacemakers of all time. May we resolve to continue the struggle that Dr. King waged until his untimely death nearly 45 years ago.  Together may we move beyond Vietnam, beyond Iraq, beyond Afghanistan.  May we move beyond war altogether.

In the spirit of Dr. King and Nonviolence,

Leonard

P.S. - The video contains an abridged (abeit well edited) version of this sermon.  You can (and should) read the full sermon (showing the parts left out of the video) at The Real News Network.

 

What Moves the Heart to Action???

Greetings fellow Peacemakers,

I woke up this morning with many things on my mind.  First and foremost was yesterday's execution of Troy Davis, another name in a litany of killings that has come to identify the U.S. retributive justice system.  We have personally seen the machinations of what passes for a justice system in the trials of Disarm Now Plowshares, Y-12 resisters, and many, many more. We have seen (and continue to witenss) the dirty underbelly of the U.S. industrial-prison complex. 

Of course there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of (mostly) nameless victims of our nation's retribution on a global scale as we continue to seek out those we call terrorists in every nook and cranny of the globe and hunt them down with our hunter-killer drones and wage senseless, endless wars that only serve to build up the very Military-Industrial Complex that is the only real benificiary of such madness. 

Dennis Duvall, one of the Y-12 July 2010 Resistance Action defendants, said something in his elocution before the judge this morning during his sentencing hearing that stuck with me in this respect (and beyond): “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past four months,” Dennis began, after thanking his supporters, “and I conclude that we get what we deserve. Not the Y12 defendants, but humanity..."

Last night in his talk at the World Peace Day event in Bellevue, Washington, Paul Chapell of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation referred to the less than one percent of the population that has always been engaged in movements that have brought about change - abolition of slavery, civil rights movement, etc. - and in reality it is probably far less than one percent.  I don't know the exact numbers of people engaged in peacemaking locally, nationally or globally, and on a certain level I don't even care.  I am grateful for each and every one person who is moved beyond words to action.  We are the ones who will not sit back and wait for "what we deserve" because our hearts move us beyond apathy, beyond propaganda, beyond the the crushing weight of the other 99 percent. 

David Perasso and Gunnel Clark put together a beautiful video about Joe Colgan's continuing Tuesday vigils in front of Seattle's Federal Building.  Joe is another of those individuals whose heart moved (and continues to move) him to action.  This is (for me) a video worth sharing; it is about action, compassion and communication - all keys to change. 



In gratitude for each of (YOU) my fellow peacemakers,

Leonard