Martin Luther King Jr: Digging Deeper

MLK, GZ and the Heart of Nonviolence

(Originally published in the January 2013 edition of the Ground Zero Newsletter, http://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/January-2013.pdf  by Leonard Eiger; This essay may be copied and distributed freely.)

"When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men” (Martin Luther King Jr.).

This month Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action honors the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. on January 19^th at The Center and on January 21^st in the MLK Seattle March.
Just what does an organization working to abolish nuclear weapons have in common with Dr. King?  The quote above by Dr. King sums it up, speaking to the root – or what should be called the taproot – of violence in the hearts of human beings that spurs “scientific power” to “outrun moral power,” thereby threatening all humanity with nuclear weapons.  

When we hear about Dr. King – generally once a year around the time of his birthday, January 15th – the corporate news media refers to him as “the slain civil rights leader.” But Dr. King was so much more than that.  The TV images the media convey are always the same ones – battling segregation in Birmingham in 1963; reciting his dream of racial harmony in Washington in 1963; marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965; and lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis in 1968.

In the early 1960s when Dr. King was challenging rampant, legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies, showing graphic footage of police dogs, bullwhips and cattle prods used against southern African Americans who sought the right to vote or eat at a public lunch counter.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965 Dr. King began challenging our nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that the civil rights laws meant nothing without human rights, including economic rights. He spoke out against the huge gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

Dr. King did not suddenly become an opponent of war (and nuclear weapons) once the major civil rights struggle was over.  As early as 1954 he said in one of his sermons that “the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb that was created by physical science.  Not so much the atomic bomb that you can put in an airplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people – as dangerous as that is.  But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness – that’s the atomic bomb we’ve got to fear today.”

Dr. King understood that the overt manifestations of violence – war and nuclear weapons – were deadly symptoms of a much deeper malady of the human heart.  He understood violence all too well, both through experiencing it firsthand and through a deep study of Christian and Gandhian nonviolence.

By 1967 Dr. King had become one of the country’s most prominent opponents of the Vietnam War as well as a staunch critic of overall United States foreign policy. He spoke of the difficulty of working for peace in an atmosphere of mass conformity. “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.”

He went on to say that, “the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.  We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.” There is no other choice for us, because, “silence is betrayal.”

 Dr. King saw the connection between war and the evisceration of social programs in this country. He “knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam [or Iraq and Afghanistan today] continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.” Dr. King saw “war as an enemy of the poor”.

Dr. King spoke of “a far deeper malady within the American spirit” that, of course, is greed. He said that it is our "refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments" that governs our foreign policy, and makes the United States the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He called for a “radical revolution of values” wherein we “shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” He said that playing “the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside…will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

As a true modern-day prophet Dr. King was not afraid to warn people in the U.S. that, “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He hammered away at the need for everyone to speak out and use the most creative methods of protest possible, not just against the war, but also for “significant and profound change in American life and policy.” He believed that, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

Ground Zero has, for over 35 years, carried on in the spirit of nonviolent direct action as we, too, seek “to keep the world from committing the suicide of nuclear war.”  In a grand experiment in truth we “explore the meaning and practice of nonviolence from a perspective of deep spiritual reflection, providing a means for witnessing to and resisting all nuclear weapons” (from Ground Zero’s mission statement). 

Michael Honey, in his book “Going Down the Jericho Road”, spoke clearly to King’s commitment to nonviolent direct action in a passage about James Lawson, who worked closely with King.  “Like King, he [Lawson] spoke of ‘soul force’ or satyagraha, as the crucial ingredient needed to keep the world from committing the suicide of nuclear war and to defeat racism.  For him, pacifism meant: ‘We will make the choice according to the methods that we use, not according to the ends that we seek.’”

For me that statement goes to the heart of Ground Zero.  Although we seek an end to nuclear weapons, the end(s) do not justify just any means.  We understand the dangers of compromising the spirit of nonviolence in order to hasten the process.  We understand that we may not see the fruits of our labors in our lifetime(s), yet we continue speaking out and resisting nonviolently, unabated in the struggle, knowing that the alternative is unspeakable.  There is no other choice for us because “silence is betrayal” [to future generations].



A very public display of Dr. King's prophetic message -
at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action's MLK Nonviolent Direct Action
at the Bangor Trident ballistic missile submarine base in 2012

As we prepare to celebrate Dr. King this month and rededicate ourselves to the long struggle to abolish nuclear weapons I think it appropriate to let him have the last word, something to create a broad perspective for us to live into:

“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.”  --Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution

Ten Steps for Radical Revolution in USA

By Bill Quigley.  Bill is a human rights lawyer who teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and works with the Center for Constitutional Rights.  You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com  

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  1967

One.  Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously.  Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights.  No application needed.  No exclusions at all.  This is our highest priority.

Two.  We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy.  Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people.   Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence.  This is unacceptable.  Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule.  Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights.  Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

Three.  Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights.   Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights.   We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

Four.  Leave the rest of the world alone.  Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now.  Defense of the US is a human right.  Global offense and global police force by US military are not.  Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons.  Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home.  Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations.  The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner.  USA is one of many nations in the world.  We must start acting like it.

Five.  Property rights, privilege, and money-making are not as important as human rights.  When current property and privilege arrangements are not just they must yield to the demands of human rights.  Money-making can only be allowed when human rights are respected.  Exploitation is unacceptable.  There are national and global poverty lines.  We must establish national and global excess lines so that people and businesses with extra houses, cars, luxuries, and incomes share much more to help everyone else be able to exercise their basic human rights to shelter, food, education and healthcare.  If that disrupts current property, privilege and money-making, so be it.

Six.  Defend our earth.  Stop pollution, stop pipelines, stop new interstates, and stop destroying the land, sea, and air by extracting resources from them.  Rebuild what we have destroyed.  If corporations will not stop voluntarily, people must stop them.  The very existence of life is at stake.

Seven.  Dramatically expand public spaces and reverse the privatization of public services.  Quality public education, health and safety for all must be provided by transparent accountable public systems.  Starving the state is a recipe for destroying social and economic human rights for everyone but the rich.

Eight.  Pull the criminal legal prison system up and out by its roots and start over.  Cease the criminalization of drugs, immigrants, poor people and people of color.  We are all entitled to be safe but the current system makes us less so and ruins millions of lives.  Start over.

Nine.  The US was created based on two original crimes that must be confessed and made right.  Reparations are owed to Native Americans because their land was stolen and they were uprooted and slaughtered.   Reparations are owed to African Americans because they were kidnapped, enslaved and abused.  The US has profited widely from these injustices and must make amends.

Ten.  Everyone who wants to work should have the right to work and earn a living wage.  Any workers who want to organize and advocate for change in solidarity with others must be absolutely protected from recriminations from their employer and from their government.

Finally, if those in government and those in power do not help the people do what is right, people seeking change must together exercise our human rights and bring about these changes directly.  Dr. King and millions of others lived and worked for a radical revolution of values.  We will as well.  We respect the human rights and human dignity of others and work for a world where love and wisdom and solidarity and respect prevail.  We expect those for whom the current unjust system works just fine will object and oppose and accuse people seeking dramatic change of being divisive and worse.  That is to be expected because that is what happens to all groups which work for serious social change.  Despite that, people will continue to go forward with determination and purpose to bring about a radical revolution of values in the USA. 

Who needs the UN???

Friends,

Remember John Bolton?  As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations he once said “There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.”  This from a lawyer who once boasted that he never took any international law classes while in law school!  Some ambassador (not much of a lawyer either).

Well, the U.N. bashing continues, this time from (who else???) our very own Congress!

Just yesterday the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives voted 23-15 for the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act (pretty much right down party lines).

The bill would require Washington to cut 50 percent of funding for the U.N. unless it converted to a voluntary contribution system permitting Washington to fund only those agencies and programmes "that advance U.S. interests and values" (hmmmm... wonder what those are???).

The bill would also require Washington to quit the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC); withhold contributions to any U.N. agency or programme that upgrades the current "observer" status of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO); and end U.S. contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N. body charged with aiding Palestinian refugees since 1949.  (Hey, we don't need no stinking human rights, and surely the Palestinians don't need any - RIGHT?!?!?!?!)

Wow!!!  This is something Bolton and all the rest of the neoconservatives (not to mention War Street) must be loving!  Let's face it - The U.S. is already doing whatever it wants to do around the world, and the U.N. just gets in the way.

Of course, if one looks at the U.S. track record of de facto weakening of the U.N. through various means, including withholding contributions for many years, it is obvious that the National Security State has trumped any desire to work in concert with other nations in the spirit of the intent of the U.N.

In 2008 President Obama attempted - and I suppose he's "attempted" many positive things in his tenure as President - to raise the status of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. to a cabinet level position as it had been in the Clinton administration.  But alas, that got shot down.  The corporate media quoted Bolton (and no one else that I could find) in one story as saying it was unwise to elevate the position to the cabinet again. “One, it overstates the role and importance the U.N. should have in U.S. foreign policy.”  In another story he questioned whether the U.N. — whose culture he said is “impervious to change” — should be so central to U.S. foreign policy.

Well, it certainly can't be "central" to a U.S. foreign policy awash in targeted assasination, torture, illegal detention, illegal wars, conducting covert operations inside the borders of sovereign nations, and that's barely a partial list of transgressions. 

We really do live in what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as The World House, this huge dysfunctional family that has to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools, and with the horrendous tools of death that we have created (e.g. nuclear weapons) he was not understating the case.  The statue at the U.N. that depicts the beating of swords to plowshares should be a reminder of why the United Nations was formed and of its mission. 

You can read the propaganda at the Committee on Foreign Affairs Website about what they call "landmark legislation."  Then click here to see if your member of Congress is on the committee, and let him/her know what you think we should do regarding the United Nations.

Working Together for Peace,

Leonard

P.S. - By the way, a recent poll by the UN Foundation and Better World Campaign shows strong support across the political spectrum in the U.S. for the United Nations.  Click here to read more about it.

Haiti - The World Has Moved On...

Report from Haiti: Where’s the Money?

By Bill Quigley. Bill is a law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans and with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats in Port au Prince. You can reach him at quigley77@gmail.com.

Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and in any small pocket of land. Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street. This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made two million homeless. 

What I did not see this week were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake. No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings. No public works projects. No housing developments. No public food or public water distribution centers.

Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?”

The world has moved on. Witness the rows of padlocked public port o lets stand on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne. The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church. The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men, and the elderly. It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Sixty hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security.

I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about eight feet by eight feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin. When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop. In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny children’s clothes, a group of women from the grassroots women’s group KOFAVIV told us Oxfam used to help administer the camp but quit in May. When Oxfam left, the company that had been emptying the port o lets stopped getting paid and abandoned the toilets. Some people padlocked them and now charge a couple of cents to use the toilets, money most residents don’t have. There is no work to earn the money for pay for toilets. The Red Cross has just visited the camp that morning telling them they would be evicted October 17. Where will they go, we ask? We have no idea they told us. Jesus will provide, they told us.

Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the US government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the UN? Where is the money? The people of Haiti continue to be plagued by the earthquake of more than 20 months ago. They are our sisters and brothers. They deserve answers. They deserve help.

****************

Editor's Note:  Bill Quigley highly recommends the Institute for Justice and Decocracy in Haiti, an organization working hard for the human rights of Haiti's poor.  Check out their Website where you can learn more and take action to make a positive difference in the lives of the Haitian people.

The Pen IS Mightier Than the Sword

Friends,

It's true; the written word is a powerful tool.

Amnesty International tells of Sami al Hajj, a sudanese cameraman, who was held at the infamous Guantanamo resort for SIX years without a single charge being filed against him. Worse - He was beaten and tortured, and in desparation he started a hunger strike, and nearly died as a result.

Thousands of people wrote letters on Sami's behalf during Amnesty International's Global Write-a-thon, and as a result, Sami was released and reunited with his family. As I write this post I am looking at a photo of Sami. As I look into his eyes I try to imagine what he must have felt as the days, weeks, months and years slipped away from him as he tried to remember his wife, Asma and his son, Mohammed. You can learn more about Sami's story here.

There are countless prisoners of conscience being held against their wills around the world, and yes, even in the United States. Amnesty International organizes regular letter writing campaigns throughout the year, but also sponsors a major annual Global Write-a-thon once a year. It was last year's write-a-thon that led to Sami's release from Guantanamo!

YES - Our letters DO make a difference. Click here to read about the many successful letter writing campaigns. But even though our letters do not always result in freedom, they always give people hope and remind them that they are not forgotten.

This year's Write-a-thon is going on right now, and is shaping up to be the biggest yet. Even our local high school's Amnesty International Club is participating. You can help make it a success, and bring hope (and maybe even freedom) to prisoners of conscience. Click here to sign up for this year's event, and then click here to find cases needing our letters. Then, start writing!

While you are at Amnesty's Website you can also check out the Freedom Writers Network , which focuses each month on three different cases of victims of human rights abuses. They also have an Urgent Action Network that focuses on cases involving immediate and life threatening human rights violations.

Peace,

Leonard

no HONOR in KILLING

Friends,

I was just reading an article by Irene Kahn, Secretary General of Amnesty International, about violence against women. Irene wrote of how a thirteen year-old girl, Aisha Ibrahim Dubulow, was stoned to death in October by a group of men in Somalia; she was accused of adultery, although according to her father she had been raped and tried to report it. What brings men - and it is primarily men that are involved in such acts - to perpetrate such inhamane acts against women (for any reason)?

Amnesty International launched a global campaign in 2004 to Stop Violence Against Women. Despite the successes that can be attributed to the Amnesty campaign, violence against women is still a widespread problem worldwide, including in the USA. As Irene makes clear in her article, poverty and violence "combine to restrict women's choices and put women at risk from violence." And worse; "70% of the world's poor are women."

It seems evident that it will require not just changes in laws (plus accountability) to protect women, but real poverty reduction and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. If you are interested in women's issues, particularly from a human rights standpoint, Amnesty International is an organization for you. Check out their Violence Against Women Webpage.

You can also email your Senator to advocate for passage of the International Violence Against Women Act (S. 2279).

I will close with a poem that I wrote in 2007 in response to a report of an honor killing, another horrific form of violence against women. This is the first time I have shared it publicly.

Peace,

Leonard

**********************************

no HONOR in KILLING
By Leonard Eiger
Written June 3, 2007

Where is the honor in killing
a young woman, only 17
whose only crime was to
fall in love with the wrong man?

She was Yazidi,
He was a Sunni,
They were in love.

Her name was Doa,
and Doa’s love was so strong,
she ran off with the young man
and converted to his faith.

But they kidnapped her
and dragged her back
and stoned her to death.

The rage that brought the men
of her family and neighborhood
out for revenge was blinding
even in the full light of day.

“Little more than an internal matter”,
“simply a tribal and moral incident”,
“nothing to do with religion”, they said.

She was Yazidi and he a Sunni,
and so her relatives decreed that
she must pay with her life for
“crimes against their religion.”

But what was the real crime,
and who were the criminals,
and when will the killing stop?

There is no honor in killing.

Author’s Note: Doa Khalil Aswad was a 17 year old who lived in Northern Iraq, and was a member of a religious minority called the Yazidi, an ancient Kurdish faith with strong links to Sufism and non-Islamic ancient Babylonian beliefs. On April 7th, 2007 she was taken from her house by some Yazidi men (including some relatives) and was taken to the public square where she was stoned to death for being in love with a young Sunni Muslim man. Quotes used in the poem are from a May 6, 2007 ABC News report, The Dishonorable Death of Doa, at http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3142288.

STOP Violence Against Women

Did you know that while Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasill, Alaska, her administration cut funds that paid for rape kits (used for evidence collection in suspected rape cases) and then "shifted the burden onto the victims"?(1) That's right folks; they charged the victims of sexual assault for rape kits! AND, that's a lot of victims! That same article cited some alarming statistics (from Amnesty International) - that "one out of three women in the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime", and that "in the United States, a woman is raped every 6 minutes." Just one more thing; the Alaskan rape rate is 2.5 the national average. Whoa!

I'll spare you any more about Sarah Palin. I'll leave the serious commentary on Palin to real experts like John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the comedic think tank at Saturday Night Live . We need to discuss an issue of real importance - Violence Against Women. The statistics above tell a serious story, a story of a world in which women still do not have an "equal" place at the table. And while we in the United States seem to think we are more advanced than so much of the rest of the world, the problem of violence against women in our own nation is significant.

Although much of the conversation about violence against women has surrounded domestic violence, there is another systemic form of violence against women that has only started to get the attention it deserves - sexual violence against women in the military. It's one thing to sign up for military service knowing one could be injured or killed in combat, but should rape by a fellow soldier be a consideration? A recent ABC News story quoted Congressional Representative Jane Harman as saying that "Women serving in the military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than be killed by enemy fire in Iraq",(2) and recent investigations by the Government Accountability Office bear this out.

Beyond the risk of sexual assault of female military personnel, civilian spouses are also at risk, and based on the phenomenal rate of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) coupled with the inculcation of the use of violence and dehumanization occurring in soldiers that will (if they have not already) return home, there is a huge potential for physical and/or sexual assault of their partners.

So long as people are indoctrinated to see other human beings as something "less than",they can justify whatever they choose to do to them; it gives "power over" others and "provides the common thread between military campaigns and assaults against women" according to Lucinda Marshall.(3) It's a story as old as time, and it is high time to create a new story. It is time to take a stand against violence, and particularly the violence connected with militarism that translates into so many other forms of violence, including violence against women.

Although it will be a long struggle to stem the tide of militarism that grips our nation, we can still take important steps to reduce violence against women at home and abroad.

TAKE ACTION: You can join the Stop Violence Against Women Campaign at Amnesty International. While you are there, consider advocating for the International Violence Against Women Act currently being considered by Congress (and introduced by Senator Joseph Biden).

Peace,

Leonard

References
(1) "A Culture of Violence Against Women: More Than Rape Kits", http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/16-8
(2) "Sex Assaults Against Women in Military 'Epidemic'' http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5491514&page=1
(3) "The Connection Between Militarism and Violence Against Women http://www.awakenedwoman.com/marshall_militarism.htm