Category Archives: Justice and peace

Vigil

This evening, the greater New Bedford Women’s Center held a candlelight vigil here in downtown New Bedford to honor victims of domestic violence. Over a hundred people gathered in front of city hall, where mayor Frederick Kalisz and other New Bedford political figures spoke briefly. People took candles and walked from there to our church for an hour-long program arranged by The Women’s Center.

Local singer-songwriter Susan Lainey sang a couple of original songs, Pamela Macleod-Lima of the Women’s Center spoke about domestic violecne, and there was a moving tribute for all those who died of domestic violence this year in Massachusetts. For me, the most moving moment came when Mike Santos talked about his three year old grandson who died of domestic violence.

The Women’s Center had this statement in the printed program: “Each year, thousands of men, women, and children in this country fall victim to domestic violence. While the U. S. Department of Justice estimates that more than 90% of all domestic violence victims are female, domestic violence affects men, women, and children regardless of age, race, ethnic background, sexual orientation, income, or religious beliefs.” If you or someone you know is living in domestic violence in the greater New Bedford area, call The Women’s Center’s business phone at 508-996-3343 to get information about safety planning — or call their 24 hour helpline at 508-996-6636 if you witness domestic violence. If you’re outside the New Bedford area, find out about local hotlines and helplines in your area now, before you need to know — or call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.

I wish you could have a better sense of what it felt like to be a part of this moving program. Unfortunately, it looks like news coverage will be light. There was one cameraman from Fox News in Providence; there may have been a reporter from the local newspaper (though I wasn’t aware of one)

Quarter of a million?

Washington, D.C.

I arrived in Washington late last night, and stayed with my friend Elizabeth, who is a lawyer, a Quaker, and a yoga teacher (not in that order). Got a call on my cell phone as we were headed over to the peace march and rally — the rest of the contingent from First Unitarian could not make it down due to a mix-up on their bus seats.

Got to the Ellipse for the rally a little before noon. An interesting group of speakers and not the usual suspects — not many aging (white) activists from the sixties, no leftover (white) hippies — instead, more people of color speaking, and a fair number of younger speakers.

The march around the White House and up and down the streets just north of the Mall was supposed to step off at 12:30. The speakers were still going strong, but Elizabeth and I wandered over towards where the march was supposed to start off. I saw a blonde woman walking quickly in the other direction, surrounded by a small coterie, who were surrounded by photographers and videographers. People around us started following here: “Cindy Sheehan! Cindy…”

The crowd kept getting thicker and thicker. Elizabeth, a long-time resident of Washington, said, “There’s a lot of people here.” I had figured there would be maybe fifty thousand people, the march organizers got a permit for a hundred thousand — but Elizabeth’s best guess was that it was more than hundred thousand, based on seeing past events in and around the Mall.

We finally wormed our way through the crowd and got to where the march was supposed to be starting, but all we saw was people just standing there on the street waiting to start walking. I began to think that the sheer numbers of people who showed up had overwhelmed the logistics of the march. We tried to skirt around the beginning of the march route, and after an hour of working our way through the crowd, and taking a wrong turn here or there, we wound up where we could see the marchers coming down the street towards us. Elizabeth has been having back problems, so she kept heading north and caught a bus home. I joined the march.

The marchers were heading along at a good clip, a steady stream of people through the streets of Washington. I looked around to see what kind of people were marching. For the large part, they were stunningly normal-looking. Yes, I saw a few college kids in dreadlocks, a few anarchists dressed in red and black, someone on stilts. But mostly I saw normal, ordinary people. Many middle-aged people, quite a few elders, quite a few younger adults — and a fair number of children and teens.

Being a minister, I noticed the people who announced their religious affiliations: Methodists for Peace, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Quakers for Peace and Justice, Church of the Brethren, Unitarian Universalists for Economic Justice, an Episcopalian group, Ethical Culture Society — in other words, lots of liberal Christians and other religious liberals. A fair number of Muslims, too. One tiny contingent of Buddhists.

I got to the end of the march by three thirty or so — the people Elizabeth and I had seen waiting to start marching were still standing in the same place where we had left them — the pre-march speakers were still going strong. I wandered over to where the post-march “Operation Ceasefire” concert was supposed to happen.

A band called Living Things was playing some pretty good hardcore with a peace and justice message. A far cry from the folk singers you might have heard at rallies in the late seventies, when I first demonstrated in Washington for peace (we were trying to end the Cold War and the nuclear arms race back then) — much hipper, far more upbeat. Living Things were followed by some speakers, including Maxine Waters who gave the best speech I heard all day. Although her speech was clearly a partisan Democratic speech, and al though she didn’t get into religious or moral reasons for ending the war in Iraq, it was still an excellent summary of reasons for getting out of Iraq now.

Maxine Waters was followed by a young woman from Louisiana Peace network — I missed her name — but she made the obvious link between what happened in New Orleans, and the fact that we’ve committed too much money and personnel to Iraq. Two dynamic African American women in a row. For me they were the highlight of the whole event. One of the organizers of the event came on next and announced three hundred thousand people at the march and rally. Then Joan Baez came onstage. It sounded like she hadn’t warmed up her voice — her famous vibrato was not happening, her intonation was way off, her voice cracked — it was past four, so I decided to leave.

So how many people were actually there? The New York Times did its usual weak coverage of Washington political rallies including their trademark statement, “The National Park Service no longer gives estimates of crowd size.” A good reporter could have gotten a crowd estimate from another source — with modern satellite images, no doubt someone has come up with a pretty accurate estimate of how many people were there — but the New York Times wasn’t interested. We’re on our own to come up with a guess. I’d guess more than the hundred thousand that had been planned for, but less than the three hundred claimed — somewhere in that range. A lot of people. A lot of people who are praying for true peace now.

Update 9/26:

The Washington Post had good solid coverage of the march in a cover story yesterday. Reporter Petula Dvorak wrote in part:

Protest organizers estimated that 300,000 people participated, triple their original target. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who walked the march route, said the protesters achieved the goal of 100,000 and probably exceeded it. Asked whether at least 150,000 showed up, the chief said, ‘That’s as good a guess as any. It’s their protest, not mine. It was peaceful — that’s all I care about….’

There were more Americans at the march than we have sent to Iraq. Dvorak goes on to report that,

Roughly 147,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq. Since the war began in March 2003, 1,911 U.S. members of the military have been killed and 14,641 have been wounded.

Peace march

Getting ready to head off to the peace march in Washington, D.C., tomorrow. A small group of people from this congregation are heading down to witness for peace.

When I was trying to decide whether or not to go down, I called my friend Elizabeth, who lives in DC. I asked her if this peace march was worth going to — Elizabeth has connections with the world of political activism, and since I can’t afford to head down to Washington every five minutes, I’m cautious about which actions of public witness I’ll get involved in. It’s not like I have a lot of money to throw around, and of course I could give that money to a charitable organization.

I called her, explained that I was thinking of heading down, and asked, “So is it worth my while to go?”

“I’m going,” said Elizabeth decisively. “It may not be all that well organized. But this war has gone on too long, and we’ve got to do something.”

As she often does, she helped me clarify my thoughts. From a religious point of view, I am willing to say there is a possibility of a just war, but there is no possibility any longer that this is a just war. We are sending our servcemen and servicewomen into risk of serious bodily harm, no doubt about it. But when a war can no longer be considered just, we are also sending them into risk of serious moral harm, causing them to make impossible moral choices. For they cannot say that at least their actions are in service of a just war.

If the war in Iraq can no longer be considered a just war, the implications for our country are serious. To use traditional language, even a just war requires repentance and penance by religious persons — but war that is neutral in terms of justice or even unjust will require even more repentance and penance. At this point, much of this country is not even ready to engage in repentance and penance for a just war, let alone a war that cannot be considered just. I am beginning to think of my upcoming trip to Washington in terms of a pilgrimage and a beginning act of repentance. Or if you prefer less tradititional religious language, I might say that this is a first step towards the healing of the web of relationships that has been damaged by the war.

Yikes. Who knew I felt so strongly about all this?

In any case, don’t know if I will be able to post to this blog while I’m in Washington, but I should be able to post again no later than Monday.

Candlelight vigil

First Unitarian hosted a candlelight vigil this evening, sponsored by the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry (RCFM). The Traviglini/Lees amendment is being voted on tomorrow by the state legislature, and there were eight such candlelight vigils around the state to show that there are lots of religious people in Massachusetts who support equal marriage rights. Over a thousand people showed up at the Boston vigil.

We got a late start planning our vigil here in New Bedford. We had managed to get the word out to a few sympathetic local religious groups, and I was hoping for at least fifty people. But yesterday (Monday), there were reports in the media that the amendment was not going to pass — after those reports I fielded one phone call from someone who wanted to know whether or not they should even show up, and I’m sure there were people who just decided to not come.

At 5:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the vigil was supposed to begin, I went out to unlock the front gates, and I saw city workers blocking off Union Street and County Street in front of the church property. Now, RCFM had pulled a permit for us to use the sidewalk, but we had not expected to have the streets blocked off — in fact the whole point for having the vigil on the sidewalk was to make sure people saw us. I didn’t pull the permit, so maybe there was confusion and we got a permit for a street demonstration or something — or maybe it’s just a standard public safety measure — or maybe someone thought we were too controversial and wanted to protect us. Who knows. But traffic sure got backed up, and if you got stuck in traffic because of our little candlelight vigil, you have my sincere apologies — it wasn’t supposed to be that way!

With traffic getting backed up, nearly everyone was late to the vigil, including the field coordinator for RCFM. But we got going at 6:15.

Rev. Ann Fox, minister of the Fairhaven Unitarian Universalist church, gave the opening words. Mark Montigny, our state senator, spoke about his support for equal marriage rights. He said he sees no reason to mess with our “beautiful state constitution,” which has upheld human rights for centuries. Tony Cabral, another one of our legislators, showed up unexpectedly, and he told us that the fight to preserve equal marriage rights has just begun, for even though it’s likely the Traviglini/Lees amendment will go down tomorrow, the next step will be a voter referendum that will be heavily financed by rich interest groups from outside Massachusetts. John Bullard, former mayor of New Bedford, spoke next, telling us that equal marriage rights is one of the inalienable rights, a part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Of the nine mayoral candidates here in New Bedford, only Matt Morrisey showed up to voice his support for equal marriage rights, saying that he felt all New Bedford citizens deserved the right to marriage. Amy Mello, field coordinator for RCFM, finally made it by about 6:30, and she filled us in about what RCFM is doing (and to find out more about RCFM, visit www.rcfm.org).

By the time everyone who wanted to got to talk, it was 6:40, and dark enough to light the candles and stand out on the corner of Union and County Streets. I should say, the blocked-off and eerily quiet corner of Union and County Streets. We had about 35 people by that time, far fewer than I had expected, but a nice group — Catholics, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Jews, Pagans, Unitarian Universalists, and maybe some others that I missed — ages from 13 to 70’s — women and men, gay and straight.

Right at seven o’clock, we put out our candles (we wanted to be good citizens, and end right on time so the city could open up the roads again). Rev. Karen McArthur, the pastor at Pilgrim Congregational Church, offered the closing words, pointing out that while some states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriages up into the 1960’s, Massachusetts ended those laws in the 1840’s. Massachusetts, said Karen, has often been at the forefront of equal rights issues.

It wasn’t the most organized candlelight vigil I’ve ever been to (you could say that it was an improvisational event rather than strictly choreographed). But I felt it was well worth my while. We may not have made much of a public statement, but the fact that people from so many different faith traditions got together to support equal marriage rights made it worth my while. And it was good to have politicians, an ex-politician, and an aspiring politician with us. Seems like there is hope for equal marriage rights in this state.

By the way, no one from the press showed up (and yes, RCFM did send out press releases). So this blog entry may be the only report you will read of this event.

Organizing

Just got a call from the Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry, to discuss the candlelight vigil that will happen out in front of First Unitarian on Tuesday (Sept. 13, 6-7 p.m.). Looks like Mark Montigny, the state senator for this area, will be speaking, but that’s not quite definite yet. It’ll be nice if he’s there, but it doesn’t matter as much as getting people to come down, light a candle, and stand in public witness for marriage equality.

And I’ve been spending so much time thinking about Hurricane Katrina that I’ve let other issues slip from my mind. I should be thinking about Hurricane Katrina — but can’t lose sight of the ongoing issues — marriage equality, peace abroad and in our streets, economic justice, everything we keep working for and hoping for.

And in amongst all the organizing, you have to reserve some time for personal renewal — which I’ve been neglecting recently — time to go for a nice, long walk.

Neither right nor left

I’ve been skimming my way through the 1,000+ page Duelfer report. Fascinating reading. Wow.

It presents a far more nuanced view of the origins of the current Iraq conflict than I have been getting through the news media. Unfortunately, partisan political points of view have had the tendency of obscuring actual events. I mean, we all know the New York Times is blatantly Democratic, and the Wall Street Journal is blatantly Republican — and frankly, I’ve long felt their news reporting has lost some nuance because of partisan bias.

The Duelfer report seems far more balanced — plus it places the entire Iraq conflict into historical context. If you want to blame someone there’s plenty of blame to go around — or to be more blunt, if you want to blame the opposite political party, you’ll find plenty of ammunition no matter what your party affiliation. But I think that misses the point of the Duelfer report. Blame is less important at this point — understanding is what we should be striving for. Given the expense and the cost in human lives, obviously we all want to avoid another conflict like this one if at all possible.

Unfortunately, what I get out of the Duelfer report is how simple misunderstanding was a major contributing factor leading to the Iraq conflict. For example, in my post yesterday, I quoted from a section of the Duelfer report that pointed out how badly Saddam Hussein misunderstood the United States. You can also find examples of how we in the United States managed to misunderstand Saddam Hussein — for example, how we misunderstood how Saddam Hussein had to maitain a fiction that Iraq was capable of producing weapons of mass destruction even when it wasn’t, in order to save face and to keep Iran aggression at bay. It also seems we in the United States misunderstood the extent to which Saddam Hussein posed a threat — he was worse in some ways than we had expected, and not as bad in other ways.

I continue to be bothered by the fact that the Democrats and the Republicans — the “liberals” and the “conservatives” — continue to point fingers of blame at each other, continue to indulge in shrill rhetoric rather than reasoned debate that might lead to a deeper understanding of the situation in Iraq. I find this increasingly unacceptable. We need to understand what’s going on in Iraq in order that we may end the Iraq conflict safely, effectively, and as quickly as possible. I am concerned that reasoned debate about the Iraq conflict, and about foreign affairs in general, has degenerated to the point where liberals and conservatives have essentially stopped talking with one another — particularly within Unitarian Universalist circles. We all need to get over being angry with each other. That’s just a waste of our time. We need to re-learn how to have effective, and openly democratic debate and conversation.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this — 1. Read the Duelfer report. 2. Find a Unitarian Universalist who has the opposite political position from you (liberals, find a conservative, and conservatives, find a liberal). 3. Ask that person what s/he thinks — then, before you respond, repeat back to them exactly what they said, and ask them if you got it right. 4. Then ask them what we, as Unitarian Universalists, can affirm about the religious implications of the Iraq conflict — again, before you respond, repeat back to them exactly what they said and ask them if you got it right.

In other words, let’s see if we can move towards dialogue — and understanding — as “seekers after truth and goodness,” and as “not agreeing in opinion.”

Just war, unjust war?

In a democracy, citizens have to keep themselves informed about key events and issues. That’s why I’ve been working my way through the Duelfer Report, the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And from a religious point of view, this report poses the difficult question — is the second Gulf War a just war?

The report now available on the Web in HTML and as extremely large PDF files. Forget the PDF files, they’re too big — go straight for the HTML version of the report at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html

I was struck by this passage:

Saddam did not consider the United States a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel, and he hoped that Iraq might again enjoy improved relations with the United States, according to Tariq ‘Aziz and the presidential secretary. Tariq ‘Aziz pointed to a series of issues, which occurred between the end of the Iran-Iraq war and 1991, to explain why Saddam failed to improve relations with the United States: Irangate (the covert supplying of Iran with missiles, leaked in 1986), a continuing US fleet presence in the Gulf, suspected CIA links with Kurds and Iraqi dissidents and the withdrawal of agricultural export credits. After Irangate, Saddam believed that Washington could not be trusted and that it was out to get him personally. His outlook encouraged him to attack Kuwait, and helps explain his later half-hearted concessions to the West. These concerns collectively indicated to Saddam that there was no hope of a positive relationship with the United States in the period before the attack on Kuwait.

Although the United States was not considered a natural adversary, some Iraqi decision-makers viewed it as Iraq’s most pressing concern, according to former Vice President Ramadan. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam and the Ba’th Regime considered full-scale invasion by US forces to be the most dangerous potential threat to unseating the Regime, although Saddam rated the probability of an invasion as very low.

Clearly Saddam Hussein misjudged the political situation in the United States. As I work my way through the rest of the report, perhaps I’ll have additional comments. You look at the report, too, and tell me what you think….

Education and Unitarian Universalism

The April 13, 2005, issue of the Geneva Sun reports that Kane County voters overwhelmingly approved a bond issue to raise money to purchase land for open space.

However, the Sun also reports that voters in the Geneva and St. Charles school districts turned down tax increases to fund public schools. Most other tax increases for public education that were on the ballot in the area also failed (notably, in the Glenbard school district, according to the Chicago Tribune).

While I’m all for preserving open space, I feel schools are an equally high priority. Clearly, voters did not agree with me — the tax increases for schools were voted down by substantial margins. While final vote tabulations are not quite complete, it looks like Geneva voted down additional school funding by a whopping 13% margin.

It’s true that tax increases are not always the answer to better schools. But remember that Unitarians and Universalists have historically supported public education in many ways — pursuing careers in education, serving in policy-making positions, volunteering in the public schools, doing research in education, etc. We believe in democratic principles, both in our religious life but also in public life, and we have long held that good education is essential to a working democracy.

Unitarian Horace Mann advocated for public education in the 19th C., and his Unitarian sister-in-law, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, brought kindergarten to the United States to improve the chances of inner city children. A century and a half later, it’s time we Unitarian Universalists got more involved in education policy.