[Music] [Music] [Music] I'm gonna let it shine this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine stay with me this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine let it shine hold your light oh come on and hold it high you know that somebody's lost lost in the harbor you can't hold it low did low you got to hold it somebody's lost if this time I want you to raise your voices as loud as you can with that song hold it hold your life hold it I wanted to grab somebody's hand somebody's lost let me see your lights in the harbor you can't hold it low you got to hold it high somebody's lost in the store one more time listening this from our souls hold your life [Music] [Music] yeah hold it high and there's a language that we all speak it goes like this [Music] yeah [Music] mmm keep it right there this little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine let it shine good evening to you all God we ask your grace and mercy to be with us as we seek to live lives of truth and justice and love grant us the power of your spirit always for we ask him in the name of that which is divine in this universe amen I'm honored to be here tonight I want to first thank the pastor of this church the Reverend Roger Ghent for allowing us to come and the congregation here and to want to recognize that this is the church certainly where Abraham Lincoln worshiped but also where the Poor People's Campaign part of it was housed right here in this church and people were in the sanctuary during those days I want to honor list the Oh Harris this co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign who could not be with us tonight taking care of members of a family I want to thank a brother great Reverend grayling for all of his work and my good sister Phyllis Bennis which all of this would not be possible for Roz peles for all of the organizers who continue to work and continue to build as we move toward the Poor People's Campaign a national call for a moral revival that begins on next month or next week on Mother's Day and I want to certainly thank the National Council of Churches the Institute for Policy Studies the National Iranian American Council code pink peace action US campaign for Palestinian rights veterans for peace with win without war jobs for justice and the American Arab anti-discrimination committee and others who have been so supportive in us having this night to come together I want tonight to talk about in the face of the war economy and militarism nonviolent dissent non-violent moral dissent non-violent moral resistance and nonviolent moral visions are a necessity today just as they were in yesteryear I come here tonight to speak and yes even to preach on a subject that cannot be ignored if we are truly concerned about a more perfect union and the establishment of justice it cannot be ignored if we are concerned about moral injury and the deepest moral foundations of faith they call us to embrace and prophetically imagine and promote an agenda of love truth justice care for the immigrant and the poor and the least of these come not tonight to speak on a subject that cannot be ignored if we truly are controler concerned about this democracy and the world a subject so important that Martin Luther King taught and we know that if every decision shaped by our nation's commitment to a philosophy and ideology that privileges militarism that nation souls its own demise dr. King stood courageously and said 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 was right then and 50 years later it is still true I come to address tonight what General Eisenhower a retired five-star Army General the man who led the Allies on d-day said when he made his remarks in his farewell speech in 1961 he said to us in the council's of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex and originally that statement was the Congressional military-industrial complex he said then the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist and we must remember that today I come tonight to address what we must address and that is how the war economy and militarism connect to what we and the Poor People's Campaign a national call for a moral revival called five interlocking and justices brother Grayland systemic racism has seen through voter suppression immigrant injustice the continuing legacy and oppression of indigenous First Nation Indian nations Islamophobia and xenophobia systemic poverty of over 140 million poor and low wealth citizens ecological devastation and our distorted moral narrative if you're going to address the other four you have to address the issue of the war economy and militarism now tonight I also come as a pastor a pastor 25 years of a church in a military base town I have to sue then console the members of my church and community when they are their loved ones go off to war and when they have deep questions about why I passed the people who've been affected by every war since World War two I've had to bury family members who came back in flag-draped caskets from the war I must minister to those among the hundreds of thousands who come back alive but scarred mentally and physically from war even in my own family members and church members I am the son of a war war two Navy veteran who was drafted as a college student at Elizabeth City State University into a segregated Navy asked to go and fight for the world safety against Hitler and had to yet had and yet had to suffer because of white supremacy in America the indignity of having the ride in the back of the Train while German war veterans rode in the front I am the grandson of a man who was a World War one veteran who served in the military and was among those threatened when they came back home in a land where black men were being hung on an average of one per day in the early 1900s and black soldiers faced riots of white supremacists who sought to put them in their place and yet I come with no hatred towards this country but with a prayerful commitment to be among those who loved her enough to be the real kind of Patriots that dare to tell her the truth and the join with others who would tell the truth I don't come proposing to know everything or I don't come naive enough to think that we do not have dangers in the world but I do come tonight from all of those different directions and Eve remembering the words of my father who was in war who still knew that war is not the answer and I come knowing as Marvin Gaye once saying years ago we must steal asked today as the new United States spends more and more on war and militarism what's going on what's going on and especially now as we have a president fueled by narcissism as a commander and the hounds of war lining up and filling up the top advisory roles who just a few days ago dropped illegal bombs on Syria that in no way met the standards laid down in the Joint War Powers Resolution the first question is not even about the wrongness of in Syria but the the War Powers Resolution that was designed to interpret the purpose of of our Constitution and to ensure that the collective judgment are both to Congress and the president will apply to the introduction of united states armed forces into hostilities it is in that place it is in that place that it says that the constitutional powers of the commander-in-chief to introduce the united states armed forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by circumstance are exercised only pursuant to one a declaration of war two specific statutory authorization and three a national emergency created by attack upon the United States its territories or possessions or its armed forces this means that the president can order troops without a congressional declaration and without an authorization for the use of military force only if there is an attack on US territory on US troops or on US territories or possession which mean the other day we drop the illegal bomb and we can never surrender this power to one man we must declare that moral dissent mara resistance and Mauro vision cannot in any way dismiss the violence of any country or leader and must challenge the war economy and militarism here in America because as we sit here tonight there are enough nuclear weapons in the world to destroy life on Earth between five to fifty times so many that they can't agree but the bottom line is the world's nuclear arsenal and our own are so powerful that we could destroy the earth many times over the u.s. spent more on military than the next seven countries combined and those were China Saudi Arabia Russia Russian Federation India France the UK and Japan we spent nearly three times as much as China and nine times as much as Russia our military spending was 26% of the world's total United States now there are around 800 or more bases in foreign countries seventy years after World War two and sixty-two years after the Korean War we must know if this is left unchecked and unchallenged and uncritically Raqqah as dr. King once said has been and still has the potential to be the greatest purveyor of violence the world has ever known the Bible says in mark chapter 5 that Jesus arrived on the other side of the country of God our scenes he got out of the boat he met a mad man from the cemetery that came upon him he couldn't be chained he couldn't be tied down he had been tired up many times with many changed night and day he rolled through the lowlands of the graves and the heels jesus saw him a ways off he ran to pray before Jesus asked Jesus what business did he the son that Jesus had with them and he said I don't want you to give me a hard time and Jesus did something interesting he asked him tell me your name the man replied my name is legion and then he desperately begged Jesus not to banish him from the country a large herd of pigs were browsing and rooting on a nearby heel the demons begged them send us into the pigs so we can live Jesus gave the order but then the pigs ran off the side of the hill everyone came out to see what had happened and they came up to Jesus and saw the mad men sitting there wearing decent clothing no longer in the graveyard but up higher and those who saw it told of us and then at first they were in awe but then suddenly they were upset they were more upset over losing their money than they were this man being healed and they demanded that Jesus go and never come back again you need to know that this text is about the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire it was a place that was settled by many veterans of the Roman army veterans that conquered lands as payment for their service this story in the Bible is about confronting Imperial material militarism marks description of this demonic pain is detailed and it's poignant the he wish we should be mindful that this sort of agony has long captured the imagination of artists and poets as well as psychologists and political reform errs describing the condition of human oppression and mark clearly characterizes this man as a victim he's a victim of militarism he's a victim of military occupation for he says my name is legion legion for we are many and that latin term had only one meaning a division of roman soldiers for such legions were based in syria to control at that time the eastern frontier including jewish palestine and we understand need to understand that this text is trying to say to us that an over commitment to militarism and war will literally drive down into the graveyard of life it is trying to say that the whole complex demonic structural complex of militarism can create a situation where we no longer know our names or our purpose but every decision is driven by military might and the war economy rather than what is right and instead of and what should be done we must wrestle with how historically the legions have come down her down through the years have held us as a nation in the low places fifty years ago the US was mired and a brutal unwinnable war thousands of miles away the war in Vietnam was a classic rich man's war fought by in between poor people mostly poor American soldiers backed by poor South Vietnamese troops fighting against even more poorest South Vietnamese nationalists gorillas and North Vietnamese troops the poor people who met in the muddy tents of Washington DC's resurrection city in the summer of 1968 where the people whose sons and fathers uncles and brothers had been drafted and sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam so focusing on militarism as a key component of what the Poor People's Campaign was all about was new to some in that movement but not all militarism was a new target for some challenging militarism as an asset necessary component of a moral revival in our nation was new to some in that first movement but not all there was a legal draft then that made all young men theoretically vulnerable to be in drag drafted willingly or not into the military the draft made the military somewhat more democratic or young men had to register to vote at the register excuse me by their 18th birthday all knew they might be sent to Vietnam but that draft didn't in fact affect everybody the same the wealthier boys and those trapped into high achievement high school classes look forward to college deferment which if they planned it right could keep them out of the military altogether that was where race and racism came in and poverty because the young men who weren't wealthy and didn't get tracked into college prep courses were disproportionately black and Latino and many were poor whites so they were the ones who were disproportionately drafted disproportionately served in the frontline combat units and were disproportionately killed the war in Vietnam reflected the militarism that had infected our whole society in the context of the Cold War we were told Vietnam was a domino and if it fell all of Southeast Asia would fall next and soon the Communists would be invade in San Diego only war could protect us from such a fate and if it meant 58,000 young American troops had to die and if two million of more Vietnamese Cambodians and like Latinos had to be killed that was just the price of freedom we didn't hear much about the origins of the war in Vietnam and I don't mean only the specific or the so called you know Gulf resolution authorizing troops to be deployed to Vietnam which we now know was based on lines I'm talking about the broader origin that Vietnam was fighting a war against French call it colonialism and when the French were finally defeated our government agreed to take up the military fight to protect the pro' rest and proxy government in South Vietnam we didn't hear much about that but mother Coretta Scott King who was right on the war question before Martin she actually led him and she spoke three weeks after his death and said this I was looking among the notes in my husband's pockets when he was shot and I saw parts of a speech which he never delivered perhaps they were his early thoughts for the message he was going to give to you today and then she said I quote these are Martin's 10 commandments on Vietnam 1 thou shalt not believe in military victory 2 thou shalt not believe in a political victory 3 thou shalt not believe that they the Vietnamese love us for thou shalt not believe that the set the government has the support of the people 5 thou shalt not believe that the majority of South Vietnamese look upon the Vietcong as terrorists 6 thou shalt not believe the figures of killed enemies or killed Americans 7 thou shalt not believe that the generals know best 8.now shalt not believe that the enemy's victory means communism 9 thou shalt not believe that the world supports the United States and 10 thou shalt not kill these these are Martin Luther King's 10 commandments on Vietnam Coretta said it was on April 4th 1967 she said that my husband gave his major address against the war in Vietnam on April 4th 1968 he was assassinated actually one year later she says I remember how he agonized over the grave misunderstanding which took place as a result of his position on the Vietnam War Coretta and Martin tried to warn America along with other groups they tried to warn America but instead politician civil rights organizations labor even preachers said they were wrong but history has proven that they were right we lost that war we didn't lose it because the media held back our troops or because politicians didn't allow the generals to use all their potential power we lost because the Vietnamese were fighting for something they believed in while I'll on our side however brave our individual soldiers were fighting as far and invaders on somebody else's land and it was an unwinnable war today the daughters and the sons of many of our core supporters of the new Poor People's Campaign a national call for moral revival are in the military steel today we don't have a legal draft and we hear a lot about an all-volunteer military except it isn't really volunteering at all it's made up through a poverty draft a no other job draft or no money for college drab and sometimes even our no other way to get my family health care draft so these days the disproportionality of the military isn't by race it's by poverty and by the rural and urban divide the military is disproportionately made up of poor young people men and women disproportionately from rural areas and small towns and one effect of that is that that most journalists writing or broadcasting in the mainstream national press don't even know don't even know really those are in the military because they come from the places outside of normally weather media reports so they don't know how to talk about it and very often they just don't all we hear is thank you for your service and that's a huge problem because today like in 1968 the United States is again fighting a steel brutal steel unwinnable war and this time is almost 18 years old the longest war in our nation's history is in Afghanistan at the moment the number of troops is significantly smaller than at the height of the u.s. and us back occupation that saw more than 200,000 troops in place at one time but there are still thousands of US troops fighting killing and sometimes dying though rally these days in that faraway war US political and military leaders during the bush-obama and today's Trump administration from both political parties and all parts of government have repeatedly told us they have said there is no military solution they say it is for Iraq Syria and Libya and other countries too and nonetheless continue to send troops and Special Forces bombers armed drones and more their militarized action giving the lie to their realistic words what was true in 1968 and what remains an ancient truth today is the understanding that in a nation in a nation we are not an exception in a nation that lives by the sword will ultimately die by the sword and what was similar to those of the first Poor People's Campaign in 1968 remained remains a powerful understanding today is that militarism was then as it is today continually an evil reality that has held the center of our nation hostage since the founding of this country ours ours is a country and there's no joy in saying it founded on two evils realities the genocide of indigenous populations who had lived in this land since time immemorial memorial and the enslavement of Africans brought to this country and change both of these deeds those realities were enabled by superior military power guns that one hour over arrows whips and chains and nuisances that won out over stolen lives and both of those realities provided this country with the land and the water that had once belonged to others and with the value of the labor of people forced to work for the enrichment of others those realities made this country or at least the elites within it richer and more powerful than any other country in history and not to tell this truth is to live the American life and to ever be bound by its distortions it is not enough it is never enough to just remember the evils of our past however for we know from our great teacher Howard Zinn that there are two narratives in our country and that we need to keep them both simultaneously in our minds and hearts the first is the painful reality that genocide and slavery are central to our country's history but there's always a second narrative always the second Rimet rim remnant and that is the crucial reality that our country has also been a country of powerful people's movement rising up against slavery and genocide with moral dissent and moral vision and moral resistance and so if we are serious about changing the present we need to understand how that past came to be and how the legacies both the legacies of genocide and slavery and the legacies of the movement against those evil remain with us today and why we must make sure that that legacy of resistance remains militarism has been a part of our nation from its founding the myth of manifest destiny gave religious cover to what sometimes only slightly more honestly identified as what was slightly more honest identified as West's foot expansion it was the doctrine of discovery that I just recently was talking about with the Apache nation whose necklace I was given just a week or so ago then it stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be discovered claimed and explored it by Christian rulers and declare that the Catholic faith and the Christian religion should be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread that the health of souls be cared for and the barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself this doctrine of discovery became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States Western expand in the US Supreme Court in 1823 case Johnson versus McIntosh Chief Justice John Marshall opinion in the unanimous decision held that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to new worlds and new lands in essence American Indians had only the right of occupancy which could be abolished that meant white European settlers using military force as they moved westward to seize the land across the continent could establish networks of forts and militarized community where Native communities once thrive killing all those who stood in their way whole communities entire nation were forced off their land on on long tricks the Trail of Tears where thousands tens of thousands died and that's why last weekend our Arizona meeting with the Apaches and the Cherokee and the pueblos and the Navajo people they've asked one thing of the Poor People's Campaign a national call for moral revival that one day when we're here in DC on Monday if we would get a copy of the doctrine of discovery of origin and burn it sin to ashes to Pope Francis and ask him to denounce it and be the kind of man we know he is because from the beginning of this country from the earliest Wars the Indian Wars racism was the key to us Wars and militarism wars were fought by us the white European colonizers against them the other who were demonized as less than human as barbarians as savages the multi-faceted democracies of the of the various Indian confederacies were ignored indigenous peoples complex integration of humanity with the rest of the living environment was dismissed manifest destiny of a continent-wide cut of country required the extermination or at least the removal and concentration of native population outside of most of the lands they had inhabited for centuries for millennia the racism toward Native people was not simply hatred over people who were different than the European it was key to legitimizing genocidal wars among ordinary self-described so-called god-fearing people in June 1864 civil war hero Colonel John M Chivington led a Colorado militia against black cattle ban of shot Cheyenne and a pet and Arapaho the encamped at Sand Creek the PBS special who is the Savage described how some regular army officers protested that to attend the peaceable village would betray the Army's pledge of safety Chivington ignore them and said damn any man who sympathizes with indians he said kill and scalp all big and little nits make lice he ordered the attack and he also not only was a colonel but at that time a Methodist minister we have to know this history in order to be exorcised from this history everything was militarized the environment became a weapon as millions of Buffalo were slaughtered so that native tribes on the plains whose culture had indeed very survival was bound up with the survival of the Buffalo died of hunger or were forced off their land diseases come into Europeans but genocidal to the indigenous people were used as Jorn Jerry warfare early weapons of mass destruction millions of native people died in 1763 Lord Jeffrey Amherst proposed sending smallpox infected blankets to native tribes around the same time he called for measures to be taken as would bring about the total expert expert expiration of those Indian nations Amherst is still the namesake of a lovely and town in Massachusetts recently I visited the Apache nation in Arizona and I heard how the Apaches were forced onto a reservation down in the river basin they had they were people who lived in the Hills they were forced down in a river basin and then the army at night opened the river flooded the river basin agents of the government in an attempt to wipe them out and the people still suffer the children still suffer with psychic trauma even today so the use of military force militarism became not just an occasional necessity or an instrument of self-defense but key to the ideological basis for legitimizing United States power the United States settlers came from Europe for a host of reason some were fleeing religious persecution others came in search of the land and profit or colonial enterprise for some it was both some came to do good they said and they did right well and militarism though was the big part of making that possible and what this history shows us is still the case that the effort to legitimize the u.s. role as a global superpower to justify the constantly expanding search for oil and gas for coltan for our cell phones and for access around the world for new military bases for the expansion of US military and economic power has been rooted in racism and militarism throughout the history of this country and it still remains key and like so many things in our country good and bad the impact of militarism does not affect everyone equally First Nations the indigenous nations who once populated this land were almost wiped out in the Indian Wars of 200 years or what would become the United States those who survived were legally forced on the reservation small and inhospitable plots of land mostly incapable of supporting healthy community their cultures political system religious practices systems of education economic life are all shadow those who survive kept the legacies of life and movements to reclaim and rebuild those cultures and society were rebuilt beginning in the 20th century but barely powerful movements for land and water rights for protection of Mother Earth for national cultural economic and social rights and yet today they still live under military treaties yet today militarism continues to affect Native American communities with military bases encroaching on native lands with weapons testings including nuclear testing carried out dangerously close to native lands or Washington State University studies showed that the huge expansion of military bases in the 20th century was concentrated in the same area as Indian Reservation meaning Native Americans faced disproportionate exposure to military dangers the study said the world wars and the cold world pushed the United States to produce test and deploy weapons of unprecedented toxicity and Native Americans have been left exposed to the dangers of this toxicity and that is why we must continue to have moral dissent moral vision and moral resistance until we exorcise this demon of militarism from our national body for african-americans the legacy of militarism goes all the way back to the first enslaved african-americans bought to the United States in the Middle Passage the second amendments reference to state militias is is mostly based on slave states demanding to preserve slave patrols it was not about guns it was about slave masters having guns to put down slave revolts and now the second amendment that was put there to make sure slave masters had guns to kill black folk is now being used to keep guns in the hands of everybody that's killing all of us it was through war and militarism that the institution of slavery was struggled over and the civil war waged and even the wealthy slave holding aristocrat made rules to send poor whites in the south to fight their whip fight while their wealth his son stayed home and the Union Army only embraced black soldiers when they were losing and then only in segregated and unfair wails notably Lincoln who sat on a pew in this church cites both north and south as the recipients of this chara beneath the war slavery was not simply the South's in Lincoln said it was America's sin and the price America paid said Lincoln was just found he said finally do we hope fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away yet if God wills that it will let it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the last shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether our America also watched between 1870 after the Civil War but but in 1870 in the 1900s when Africa faced European imperialist aggression and colonization and conquest African societies tried to resist but many many were overrun and by the earlier 20th century much of Africa except Ethiopia Liberia had been colonized by European powers and America watch the European imperialist pushed into Africa was motivated by three main factors one scholar says economic political and social and Rodney Watley wrote a powerful book he was assassinated in the 1980s but he wrote a powerful book entitled how Europe underdeveloped Africa so you cannot understand the world in which we live in without understanding the demon of militarism and in the 21st century militarism continues particularly have a particular impact on black communities militarism and war abroad has been matched by the militarization of u.s. police in communities across the country for the last 50 years when America has gone to war Obama people it has been against black and brown countries period the militarization of US police including programs through which the pentacon donates leftover military equipment to local law enforcement that was how we saw the horror of armed personnel carriers patrolling the streets of Ferguson's black community after the police killing of Michael Brown and we know that young black men are nine times more likely to be killed by the police than other people in this country and police killing rates for Native American and Latinos are also disproportionately high and yet we are giving the police departments more military firepower now than ever before the other day President Trump touted militarism in his speech in Dallas at the NRA and he brought up the history of the Battle of Gonzales which actually has an impact historically gralen on both black and Latino people he said that that battle traces back to the beginning of the texas resolution did y'all hear him the other day and he noted that the flag that they put up in the face of the mexican army in mexican territory was come and take it but what he didn't teach the nation what he didn't say was the reason the settlers took their stand in gonzales it was because the white settlers in mexico at that time that was mexico one texas they wanted to keep their slaves and they wanted to remove Texas from Mexico because Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829 and it was still legal in the u.s. stephen f austin made it clear in 1824 the principle kata that were elevate us from poverty is cotton and we cannot do this without the slave so Latino communities continue to suffer from the escalating militarism of the US border because in reality our Mexican brothers and sisters did not cross the border the border cross them and took from them what was there in the first place and it was rooted in the desire the whole slaves and now training Border Patrol agencies and military tactics guarantees more casualties at the border even before we get to the latest horror of the White House call for border states to deploy National Guard troops in the border regions poor white communities poor white communities also suffer from militarism because they end up remain the largest source of drafted by poverty recruits to the supposedly volunteer military Garret a scholar from the vet boss Foundation described how he dropped out of high school after his father died of agent unrelated cancer and ended up working small minimum-wage jobs he says I bounced around a lot until I decided to join the military one month before September 11 I was getting in trouble with the law enforcement I realized that I didn't have a lot of opportunities to go to college I thought serving in the military I would get that opportunity recruiters he said are in our high school sometimes in our junior high schools in our middle schools recruiting kids all the time he said you see I'm at the fair this is someone white you see them at the fans and other things where we see 8 and 10 year olds being allowed to pick up weapons at a table and hold them and them and feel proud holding them that's what military looks militarism looks like that's what the poverty Draft looks like and of course a country grounded in militarism goes to war westward expansion in the United States didn't stop when it hit the California coast they kept moving west across the ocean and US colonial moves in places like Hawaii and Guam and the Philippines and far beyond where the result the wars the United States is fighting around the world today are not making us safe they are fought for the same things that earlier wars were fought for resources military bases and the expansion of power and they still don't keep our children safe our young people main our poor young people are drafted by poverty and the lack of other opportunities into a military to fight wars that cannot be won and that means that they are drafted into wars where they are fighting and killing other poor people just like them just like us halfway around the world in 2009 already eight years into the war the US military admitted that there were only about a hundred al-qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan and another 300 in Pakistan and that was the same year President Obama decided on a troop surge in Afghanistan adding almost 50,000 more US troops the situation is worse than ever for Afghans now and for the 15,000 plus US troops still serving there plus thousands more privately paid military contractors there is still no chance of a real victory because no one knows what victory might look like what we do know is that the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan continues to climb thousands have been killed children all folks whole families sometimes US airstrikes have hit wedding parties where whole communities fall victims to our bomb does killing thousands of Afghans make us safer no but this is what u.s. militarism looks like and what we know is that the commitment to militarism and the continuing wars has completely distorted our economy so our country the wealthiest country in history is the only developed country that's an interest in terms considering the way we keep going to war but the only developed country that does not provide health care to all of its people our country in our country the wealthiest country in the world women are more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than in any other developed country more than ten times likely than in Belarus and for Poland here in Washington DC in the capital of the wealthiest country in history the death rate is the highest in the country and it varies by race with black women more than three times more likely to die a pregnancy related causes than white women why not because we are a poor country not because we can't afford health care or first-class education or good union jobs and a decent infrastructure for our country but because our economy is first a war economy before it is and uplifting our people economy our country we live in a country and which 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar goes directly to the military we might blame our debt on entitlement and welfare but our debt is really based on all the bump we have exploded in wars which never should have gone into and our war economy 53 cents and only 15 cents to help in poverty if this president has his way by 2023 that will be 65 cents almost two-thirds of every dollar going to the military and only 12 cents to fight poverty that's what has to change and that's why we must have a non-violent moral of direct action moral vision moral descent and moral resistant that's why we we are not poor the issue is that never that we don't have the money or that we've got to raise taxes to do right we don't need more money we need a different wheel and a different consciousness we need to spend the money differently than we're spending it and we know that if we did spend it differently our country would be very different just a few weeks ago Trump used 66 Tomahawk cruise missiles made by Raytheon and 19 joint air-to-surface standoff missiles extended range from Lockheed Martin to attack a Syrian Air Base after a steel unproved allegation of chemical weapon use they cost about 119 million that doesn't sound like much compared to the over 700 billion Congress just budgeted for military spending and by the way on the budget piece when we have Democrats bragging on a budget deal that they did right by what for the military and Democrats only bragging that they did right by the middle class and nobody talking about doing right by the poor we really have a problem but 119 million dollars could have made an enormous difference for people at home it could have paid for 11,000 veterans getting health care in Ohio it could have paid for decent pay for 1,400 more more elementary school teachers in Kentucky it could have paid for 2141 good union jobs to build safe water systems in Flint Michigan the current annual budget at 668 billion Dwarfs the 190 billion allocated for education jobs housing and other basic services and infrastructure combined out of every dollar in the federal discretionary spending that 53 cents goes toward the military what would make a safer a dangerous escalation in war across the world or a real war on poverty right here in America for jobs health care education we have to make a moral choice around the globe we see the effects of this intersection between racism and militarism we can see it in the 3.8 billion dollars of our tax money that the United States sends directly to the Israeli Defense Forces every year money that enables the military to continue its violations that gets Palestinian rights and gives the Netanyahu who continuously talks about war and war mongering Marsh more strength and to say this is not to dismiss the Holocaust it is not to be anti-semitic it is not to dismiss the tragic remembrance and it is not to dismiss legitimate enemies of the world in Israel but money can never be the basis for ignoring the lives of Palestinian children and ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people it just can't anytime money gets in a wall gets in the way of believing and working toward a just and lasting solution to the palestinian-israeli conflict that would serve the cause of peace and guarantee a two-state solution and promote peace throughout the Middle East any time money gets in the way of that then our money is being used in the wrong way and any time money is given that can be exploited and used to serve the interests of more occupation and more destruction it is wrong and just as and so we must understand that at this moment protests overwhelmingly nonviolent unarmed protests continue in the besieged Gaza Strip protests which in the last five weeks have led to 40 people killed and over 5500 injured many seriously all of those casualties are Palestinian not a single Israeli has been injured or killed and they include children journalists women and more and when Elva money causes us to be silent on any kind of destruction of the human family then our money is wrong the war economy has been around a long time and we know that it's the big arms manufacturers the military corporation the war profiteers they are the ones who are benefiting from the wars not our people war and the war the economy continue to undermine our dreams to shred the moral core of our nation we don't need a war economy to protect the truth because the money doesn't go to the troops Washington wars of the last 50 years have had little to do with protecting Americans while profit motives have increased significantly with private contractors now performing many traditional military roles there have been almost 10 times as many military contractors per soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq war as there were during the Vietnam War many of them are making far more money than under paid US soldier and Army private and combat receives less than $30,000 in 2016 at the top end of the pay scale the disparities are even more extreme but in 2016 the CEOs of the top five military contractors earned an average of 19 million dollars a year more than 90 times the two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars earned by a u.s. military general with 20 years of experience including Housing Alliance and extra combat pay and approximately six hundred and forty times the amount earned by Army traversing compact they are making a killing off of killing and they take dollars for building weapon tax dollars and in which they take the tax dollars for building weapons they sell their stocks on Wall Street and the stocks jumped 20 and 30 40 percent in fact the stocks go up when there's talk of war and go down when there's talk of peace the money goes to the corporation's about a third of it for huge weapon systems they don't help troop they don't keep us safer but they keep killing people all across the world Afghanistan Syria Yemen Nadja somewhere else I don't keep us safe it's not what makes us strong and influential around the world it's just killing people killing and making a killing US military adventures have caused staggering numbers of civilian deaths in poor countries according to the United Nations almost one-third more civilians died in Afghanistan during the first nine months of 2017 then during the same period in 2009 when the camp accounting began compared to that same period in 2016 there was a 52% increase of civilian deaths from air strikes in 2017 with women and children compromising six to eight percent of these deaths and we hear a lot about taking care of our veterans and we should you saw one on the screen tonight that's living in a homeless camp but they are also victims of this war we hear thank you for our service or your service over and over again but when our soldiers come home we know how they have to struggle struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder struggle with wounds and after struggle to get health care they come home with grievous injuries physical mental both and we know the pain of moral injury the consequences of what our troops are ordered to do in these wars perpetual war has also taken a toll on US troops and personnel in 2012 suicide listen claim more military deaths than military action a follow-up study found that in 2014 the risk of suicide was 22% higher among veterans than among us civil civilian adults by September 2017 an average of 20 veterans were still dying by suicide every day that's more than the number of black people that were being hung every day in the in the early 1900's among women in the military of sexual harassment is rampid of 2012 Department of Veterans Affairs survey indicated that nearly half of female military personnel sent to Iraq or Afghanistan had reported being sexually harassed and nearly 25 percent said they had been sexually assaulted Michael McPherson the executive director of Veterans for Peace described what happens when you find out that what you've been taught people in foreign lands or about them or people in other places is not true and when you find out that the same economic or social forces that are impacting your communities whether it be that you are a black person or a poor person or Latino or whatever are also impacting those other poor communities he said is it then and you find out that you really have a lot more in common with them than not that's when you realize that a lot of the policies that you're helping to underpin what your military are not good for your community nor good for the people you fight he said then you realize that you're not really standing on stable moral ground as a soldier and Macpherson says and then I do believe that there's something called moral injury we talked about post-traumatic stress but people can come back home and they can come home tomorrow injury like that man in the grave moral injury and it's hard to reconcile and the only way you can reconcile it says McPherson is you have to speak up you have to if you really want to follow moral paths and be delivered and you have to fight and follow what you've been taught as a child he said you really have no choice because unless you speak up and resist that moral injury will traumatize you and hold your prisons prisoner so my friends the truth is that instead of waging a war on poverty we're still waging a war on the poor at home and abroad for the financial benefit of a few it is morally indefensible to profit from perpetual war which is why the Poor People's Campaign a national call for moral revival has said emphatically and clearly if you're going to address systemic racism and systemic poverty and ecological devastation and the fall small narrative of Christian nationalism you have to add into those fact those interlocking and justices addressing the war economy and militarism and so in this campaign we demand that we have a right to protect our communities from the ravages of war and the weapons of war we demand an end to military aggression and war mongering we raise our moral dissent a moral vision and our moral resistance we demand and called it for to an end in in surplus military equipment from being sent to our police forces in our communities and we need we demand that we need to shift money from war and militarism to meeting people's needs we demand and we will demand with our moral power that we need to end the longest war of the modern era the US war in Afghanistan and we demanded when our people come home for Afghanistan we need to help them better we need a better VA we need to help them with depression and help them prevent suicide and help them with stress disorder and trauma and stop walking away from them and having them come home from the battlefield as many of them should have never gone to and have to battle for life itself there is an urgency here dr. King said it is still true non-violence or non-existence either we have a massive mall reset or we will continue to have massive moral injury leading to more people dying dying in their minds and dying in their bodies from the demons of militarism oh yes we demand a stop to the privatization of the military budget and a reallocation of the resources from the military budget to education health care jobs green infrastructure needs and strengthening the VA and keeping that system public and we demand an end to voter suppression that suppresses the votes that suppresses the votes of the very communities sent to war black people and brown people and poor white people and allows the money from those who benefit from the profits of war and militarism to have untold influence on elections and who gets elected we demand and in your voter suppression and we call on all people a margin of moral consciousness to go to the polls and vote like never before in your life we demand a ban on the proliferation of guns in our community including semi-automatic weapons we are tired of the blood thirst of the NRA that's more interested in protecting guns than it is in protecting children and humans we demand the demilitarization of our communities on the border and the interior this includes ending federal program that send this equipment into these local and state communities and we demand not only that we that we bring down the wall at the us-mexico border and we surely don't build another wall at the Mexico border we demand an end to the constant attacks and lies on Latino and Mexican immigrants and instead of really talking about building a wall and building war why don't we be a bridges and welcome and welcoming and an immigration system that will allow immigrants who have worked in this country and spent money in this country and pay taxes in this country to vote in this country so that we can change this country instead of criminalizing people let's help them raise their families and keep their families together and we demand an end to tearing up treaties and the constant Islamophobia and homophobia that die their drives so much of the war and military rhetoric and reasoning we demand a just two-state solution in Israel and Palestine my brothers and sisters Jesus found this man in the low place in the graveyard because of the hurt and the pain of militarism and the war economy Jesus came down God came down the divine came down to the low place and took him to higher ground the business people got mad when their Pig business that some scholars say was connected to feeding the military-industrial complex ran off the cliff but the man was saved the community was saved and the demon was exercise today moral dissent moral vision more resistance and a moral agenda is needed once again to break the hole of militarism and war profiteering and to take our nation in our world to higher ground my son is an environmental physics in undergrad school he told me once that those who study the environment will tell you that in geography and demographics in biology there is something known as a snake line the snake line and they noted if you get above the snake line a certain altitude that snakes can't live because they're close blooded creatures snakes can only live below the snake line and so when you're going to navigate and in territories you've got to get above the snake line in order for Jesus to get the man broken by militarism he had to go down to the graveyard but then he had to pick him up and get him above the snake line in our world today we must take our nation from the lowlands and the graveyards of war mongering and profit area which are below the snake line breathe is below the snake line racism is below the snake line Islamophobia is below the snake line homophobia is below the snake line militarizing our communities is below the spit line and we're being cold to struggle in sight to take America to higher ground I don't know about you but I know they've always been two streams in America one did wanted to go backwards and one that wants to go forward which stream are you in because I still believe in higher ground higher ground above the snake line where we build schools and not walls higher ground where we're more concerned about bread and butter than bombs and destruction higher ground where we're more concerned about a guided culture than a guided missile higher ground where we're more concerned about saving life and educating children that exploding communities a higher ground where we're more concerned about treaties of peace than triggering war higher ground there is higher ground where black and white and red and brown and Jewish and Asian and Muslim can form a Beloved Community instead of finding more ways to kill and destroy and oppress one another there is a place above the snake line it's called higher ground and we must take this nation from the low ground and the graveyards of warmongering and war economy and profiteering and Tamila and militarism to higher ground is there anybody in America that still believes in higher ground where we say like fire bro higher ground higher grill I feel like singing I'm pressing on the upward way new heights I'm gaining every day still praying as I move about your plan America Lord plan this nation Lord that this world Lord can our Congress Lord plan the Sinan lord plan our world own hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah hyah grown above the state law the McCain [Applause] a message as he gets his breath I want you to try to hold in place just one moment one moment as we come close to the end of our program this evening and I want to you know we have this report that's been put out that's a part of what you heard tonight from Reverend barber and and that has been an audit that has been done of what's been going on in this country and I'm going to invite forward just for a moment while the offering is being taken up sister Phyllis Bennis y'all know Phyllis have y'all know Phyllis you need to know Phyllis Phyllis is a tremendous and bright activists column one that teaches us and leads us Phyllis where are you I'm hiding good evening I have for the moment perhaps the worst job in this room which is to speak after dr. Reverend William barber that's something nobody should ever do but let me start with just very for a moment a quick story another story about dr. Martin Luther King how he came to write the speech that is in my view and I think the view of many the most important speech of his career which was the speech at the Riverside Church where he first came out publicly against the war in Vietnam and what happened was he was stuck at an airport familiar story he was stuck at the airport and a colleague who was travelling with him went to get food and brought it back and saw that he was leafing through a magazine and it turned out to be the ramparts magazine with a special photographic essay about the cost of the war in Vietnam for the children of Vietnam and he put the food down in front of dr. King and dr. King pushed the food aside and his friend said aren't you hungry aren't you gonna eat something and he said I don't think I could ever eat again until we do something to end this wretched war and three months later he came to the Riverside Church in New York City to come out against the war that was ravaging the people of Vietnam and Ravin in his own community and it was from that that the first Poor People's Campaign emerged and I think we know we know from what Reverend barber has told us tonight and we've known it all along that the cost of war in this country disproportionately impacts the poorest among us the people of color among us the most marginalized among us but what's very important is that we also recognize again and again that it's not only about the economic cost it's also about the social cost here and across the globe because if it was cheap to kill people in a wedding party in Afghanistan it still would be wrong if it was cheap to kill civilians in Iraq using weapons of mass or other destruction it would still be wrong it's not only because we pay the price in money here it's because people are dying over there they are poor people these days they are brown and black people and mostly Muslim they are us they are us and we have to keep in mind the necessity of fighting against militarism every step of the way as we fight against racism as we fight against poverty as we fight against environmental degradation so how do we do that it has to do with making the struggle against war part of every movement that we fight in that when we fight in all of our movements when we fight for jobs and education for health care for infrastructure and people say we just don't have enough money yeah it's because the money is going to the military so that is the call not just of the anti-war movement that is the call of the movement against racism that is the call of the movement for environmental justice that is the call of the movement against homophobia and for LGBT rights that is the movement against racism in this country all of our movements need to be talking about the impact of war and military in our countries when we talk about protecting refugees it means we call for an end to the wars that create refugees all around the world and when we fight to end police violence we fight against the reality that military weapons from our wars are coming home to be used against black and brown communities in this country why there was such an armored vehicle and armored personnel carrier in the streets of Ferguson why because under Pentagon rules they can give away their leftover goods when they bring them back from Afghanistan and somebody in the police department in Ferguson said oh yeah we'll take one of those ap geez one of those armored personnel carriers what do we need it for we don't know but we'll use it and sure enough they used it they used it so let me just end with one more quote from dr. King that I think gives us our nonviolent marching orders tonight when he said our only hope today and it was as true 50 years ago as it is tonight our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring our eternal hostility to poverty racism and militarism thank you we're almost done but that was a system Phyllis Bennis who is from the Institute for Policy Studies and she's the co-author for the poor people's report the souls of poor folk and lastly but not least Matthew Howe who is from who was a senior fellow for the Center for international policy and a veteran who resigned from the State Department to protest the war in Afghanistan hi good evening I wanna you know what I'm gonna go up here if it's okay because I need to put this down you know a few years ago I could have done this from memory but I have a brain injury from the wars that I have to read stuff now and I want to thank Reverend barber and the Poor People's Campaign for asking me to speak today about what war does to veterans but first I want to thank a few people who I see here tonight Madea and Cathy and pocky and mr. Barry for their continual courageous stance against the wars against injustice and against what is happening here in this town nearly every day so thank you you all mean a lot to me all right so you know for many veterans those of us who have taken part in the killing and in our honest about it war has made us broken people we live with afflictions of the mind the body and the soul this has always been the case and for no more complicated reason in this war is organized murder The effect of it has been and always will be a very profound and damning effect thank you even in our good Wars the civil war after the war is over 400 to 500 thousand men died of morphine addiction contemporary tales talk all the time about the old civil war vet drinking himself were shooting up or smoking himself to death in the 1870s 1880s and 1890s our other good war world war 2 16 million men and women went to war about 7 million of them saw combat of that 1 million were discharged over 1 million were discharged psychiatric casualties during their time in service and remember PTSD wasn't recognized by the VA or by the American Psychiatric Association until 1980 until it was men we're in her 60s or 70s from my generation I get a thing or two please I'm sorry one of the things also too is I take some meds that makes my mouth dry thank you from my generation veterans were killing ourselves at rates three to four times higher than our civilian peers for the youngest among US veterans in their 20s they're killing themselves at rates six times higher than their brothers and sisters who are the same age for combat units that have come home and that we have trapped we are seeing rates of suicide as high as 14 times what their civilian brothers and sisters are experiencing and this is true for all generations of veterans have been the war World War two veterans are killing themselves I rates four times higher than men their same age who did not go to war and there should be no doubt about this at all because there's been dozens of studies that have been done as early as 1981 that have concluded that there is a very real and clear connection between combat guilt and suicide and it goes back to what happened to us in the beginning we thought we were going off to be heroes but what we found was that we are no more than pawns for the weapons companies the bankers the politicians and the generals and that we were villains to those that we were occupying we did we really went off thinking that we were going to be heroes but war is organized murder though and so those of us who take up the sword are due to die by it at some point my own life is wrecked and debilitated by an anger in a rage that I unleashed without control on those I love the most and I have a guilt and a sadness that won't leave me and that brings me continually to thoughts of ending my own life but dying by the sword is just not an individual experience for veterans but also for our society because the wars that we conduct overseas are mirrored in the wars we have here at home and what reason are these Wars democracy freedom it's capitalism but we have lies and we have myths that we are told to cover up the killing we do overseas to put and keep in place dictators who will buy our weapons and sells the resources and when we come home we call them home to live in an unjust and unequal society with the largest prison complex in the world and a political system that seeks to oppress voting rather than to expand it my friends I put 10 years into the Marine Corps I went to war three times but I never served but being here tonight with you all I feel like I'm now serving [Applause] and together in this more viable we can overcome the lies and the greed that direct the killing and the suffering and we can find justice and love both here at home and abroad thank you very much and thank you all for what you're doing [Applause] and as we prepare to adjourn we're going to adjourn just like we started with some song what they saw so that when we walk out there we got a song in our hearts but fire in our spirits fire in our spirits to bring about the change that we need amen I'm gonna lay down my sword shield down down bah I'm gonna make my sword and shield down by ain't gonna study War no more I don't study War no more ain't gonna study War no more ain't gonna study War no my gonna study War no hain't gonna study War no more study [Music] peace salaam Shalom [Applause]
