Rally For Peace

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End the War; Begin the Peace
Photo: L.E. Baskow, www.LeftEyeImages.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."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence" (Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City)

"Jesus took the biblical command to love your neighbor and extended it to loving your enemy too."

- Gabrielle Chavez, Pastor; Christ the Healer; United Church of Christ

"The rest of the world, almost unanimously, looks at America as the No. 1 warmonger. That we revert to armed conflict almost at the drop of a hat -- and quite often it’s not only desired by the leaders of our country, but it’s also supported by the people of America."

- Former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter

Time To Break The Spell

One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.

The Saturday afternoon "peace rally" and march scheduled this year is on track to accomplish exactly the same goals as all the previous rallies and marches protesting the violence the United States has perpetrated on the Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis over the past decade or so: zilch. Mission not accomplished. The killing continues. The torture never stops. And Portland's "peace rally progressives" fail to recognize the futility of their feeble attempts to stop a monstrous death machine hell-bent on destroying all that lives.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, people are waking up and making dramatic changes. In recent weeks, the Egyptian and Tunisian people have successfully toppled the brutal dictators who once oppressed them. Tyrannical thugs our government propped up for decades joined other deposed despots flung onto history's dung heap after their former subjects decided they'd had enough. And right now it looks like the people of that region are just getting started!

What's the response from "peace rally Portlandians" thus far? The kind of response you'd expect from folks who utterly fail to recognize that people half a world away just showed the entire planet what real democratic change looks like. Another rally is scheduled for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Another set of empty, flaccid slogans is put forth. The usual suspects of "cosponsors and endorsers" are rounded up. And the same old annual farce proceeds once again.

The Revolution That Stillbirthed

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyám is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We quote King here at length to remind us of an urgent warning he delivered to Americans more than four decades ago: "there is such a thing as being too late." Still hopeful that we might yet still wake up, King implored Americans to choose "nonviolent coexistence" over "violent coannihilation." But he also knew we'd fail to make that choice if we did not "rapidly begin" to make "the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society." King deeply understood that a society where "machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." He clearly saw how a "nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

A sniper's bullet ended King's life nearly 43 years ago, on April 4, 1968. On November 2, 1983, Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Reagan, along with many other right-wing politicians, strongly opposed the bill. But the public was overwhelmingly in favor of a King holiday, which became law after "the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history." The first actual observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day happened on January 20, 1986. Apparently we love our martyrs. Especially once we've put them safely in their graves. Whether Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi or King, we'll deify them. Invent religions in their name. Quote them. Make idols of them. Or turn their name into a national holiday. But do we grasp anything they attempted, both in words and deeds, to teach us? If so, why do we fail to act on that understanding?

Only Convenient Caring Please

Deathly Spirits

In the summer of 2001, Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary for Housing under Bush The Older, gave a presentation called "How the Money Works on Organized Crime" to "a wonderful group of about 100 people at an annual conference for a spiritually focused foundation in Philadelphia."

After walking through the various profits generated by narcotics trafficking, financial fraud and other types of organized crime, as well as the intersection of this money with the stock market and campaign fundraising, for about an hour, I asked the group what would happen to the stock market if we decriminalized or legalized drugs?

The stock market would crash, they said.

What would happen to financing the government deficit if we enforced all money-laundering laws? Since most bank wire transfers are batched and run through the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this should not really be that hard, right?

Their taxes might go up. Worse yet, their government checks might stop, they said.

I then asked them to imagine a big, red button at the front of the lectern.

By the power of our imaginations, if they pushed that button they could decriminalize narcotics trafficking or whatever actions were necessary to stop organized crime and stop all money laundering in the United States.

Who would push the button?

It turns out that in an audience of approximately 100 people committed to spiritually evolve our society, only one person would push the button.

Upon reflection, 99 would not. I asked why. They said that if they pushed the button, their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop. I commented that what they were proposing is that an entire infrastructure of people continue to market narcotics to their children and grandchildren to ensure that their mutual and pension funds stay high in value.

They said, yes, that was right.

In other words, these socially concerned and "spiritually evolved" people had more concern for avoiding any disruption to their affluent lifestyles than they had for the worsening social, economic and ecological cataclysm tightly intertwined with such affluence. This is precisely the social malaise King identified. A society where "machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people." Where the commitment to "shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society" was never made. As a result, "the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism" grew even larger.

Ours is a nation of people who forsook "nonviolent coexistence" and instead chose "violent coannihilation." A nation that continued, "year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift." Indeed, ours is a society that has embraced "spiritual death."

And you wonder why the wars don't stop?

Not Negotiable

The most tyrannical among us apparently take great pleasure in telling anyone within earshot what's "not negotiable." Republican legislators in Wisconsin, for example, declare that their intent to "effectively eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public employees" is "not negotiable." Shortly after the terror strikes in New York and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001, who called for a national discussion on what might have led up to such an event? Our political, "spiritual" or business "leaders"? Nope. Not a chance. Instead we got Dick Cheney, who asserted that "the American way of life is non-negotiable." And to protect this non-negotiable way, Americans would be compelled to operate on "the dark side" and "spend time in the shadows." End of discussion. Apart from the veiled references to an emerging torture policy, apparently Dickey Boy was just mouthing the same sociopathic spittle spat from the mouth of George H.W. "Pappy" Bush a decade earlier, at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

It's cheap 'n' easy to criticize thuggish rhetoric expressed by the more reactionary elements within our society. But who are they speaking for? The cheap 'n' easy answer is that they are looking after their own self-interests, or their political, economic, business or class interests. There's a great deal of truth to this. If we step back, however, and examine where such rhetoric fits within our entire society, we quickly discover that we're all essentially walking their talk to one degree or another. We've allowed greedy, covetous, grasping, gluttonous, materialistic, "I've got mine; fuck you!" ethics fuel the most essential gears that grind unceasingly deep within the bowels of our daily culture. Our economics demand profit "maximization" for the entity seeking the profits, while also requiring that same entity--whether an individual person, a corporation or government--to quickly cast aside all "externalities" as an unwanted byproduct for others, usually those who can least afford it, to deal with. Which brings us back to our "red button problem" as described above.

The depraved ethics characterized by someone gaining "advantage" at another's "expense" is a story that is at least as old as civilization. And a brief examination of the sordid, indelibly stained history of our own Republic shows anyone who cares to look that these same ethics intimately intertwine with our culture's other main currents. Even reviewing some of the major ethical failures that have plagued our society just since King's 1968 assassination is revealing. A comprehensive list would extend for miles, so let's quickly refresh our memory with just a handful of lowlights...

Slouching Toward Coannihilation

The United States is the world's leading jailer.

Incarcerated Americans: 1920 - 2006.

Significant criminality, ethical breakdown, missed opportunity, tragedy and farce infecting U.S. social relations, domestic and foreign policy, economics and culture.
An overview beginning (roughly) with the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and continuing through the end of the 20th Century.

• Years of continued perpetration of the U.S. war on Vietnam, long after any rational hope for a "successful outcome" had passed.
• Continuation of F.B.I.'s COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program): A series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.
• The October 1973 "oil crisis" and our failure to take meaningful, long-term and permanent steps towards maximizing energy efficiency and self-sufficiency.
• The 1979 energy crisis (or "second oil crisis"), which came in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, and our failure to put the entire U.S. Middle East foreign policy under vigorous scrutiny or to take meaningful, long-term and permanent steps towards maximizing energy efficiency and self-sufficiency.
• The Southern Strategy; War on Drugs; The New Jim Crow. Among other social pathogens, these political and social policy initiatives have given rise to massive incarceration of Americans, a growing prison-industrial complex, and intense political and economic repression of African Americans and poor people in the United States.
• The growth of prisons and the prison industry in the United States since the late 1970s has led to the United States--with less than 5% of the world's population--becoming jailer for 23.4% of the world's prison population.
• The October 25, 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, a tiny Caribbean nation, prompting President Reagan to proclaim: "Our days of weakness are over! Our military forces are back on their feet, and standing tall."
• The Reagan-Bush C.I.A.-backed Contra War on the people of Nicaragua, destroying the gains made by the revolutionary Sandinista government to deliver genuine democracy, literacy, health care, education, childcare, unions, and land reform. The ten-year war cost of 60,000 lives, 178 billion dollars, and destroyed the Nicaraguan infrastructure and economy.
• The Iran–Contra crimes perpetrated by the Reagan Administration.
• Real estate, tax and other financial fraud leading to the Savings & Loan (S&L) Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.
• U.S. policy in Central America and the Caribbean, which "have been in the iron grip of the United States for a century and therefore they tell us a lot about ourselves. What you find if you look is one of the world's worst horror chambers ... starvation, slave labor, torture, massacre by U.S. clients. Virtually every effort to bring about some constructive change has led to a new dose of U.S. violence."
• The December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama.
• The August 1990 U.S. invasion of Iraq. "Like Noriega in Panama, (Saddam) Hussein had been a US ally for nearly a decade. From 1980 to 1988, he had killed about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least 13,000 of his own citizens. Despite complaints from international human rights group, however, the Reagan and Bush administrations had treated Hussein as a valuable ally in the US confrontation with Iran.... (Hussein's invasion of) Kuwait, however, crossed a line that the Bush Administration could not tolerate. This time Hussein's crime was far more serious than simply gassing to death another brood of Kurdish refugees. This time, oil was at stake."
• The Iraq Sanctions: A near-total financial and trade embargo imposed on Iraq, which began on August 6, 1990 and ended May 22, 2003 after Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad in the wake of the 2nd U.S. invasion of that country. Half million Iraqi children died as a result. More children than died in Hiroshima. Was the price worth it? Well, killing so many kids was "a very hard choice" but apparently caring, concerned and free-thinking folks in the West thought "the price (was) worth it."
• The 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, the continuing U.S. involvement in the Somali Civil War, and The Oil Factor in Somalia.
• Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War? How did the U.S. end up on the same side as Osama-Bin Laden in Bosnia and Kosovo?
• The disgraceful conduct of America's military contractors: middle-aged men employed by DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia, having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds.
• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the surge of neoliberalism, the push for globalization and the destruction of local communities.
• Concentration of media and Internet access so severe that a tiny handful of corporations control the media the majority of Americans are routinely exposed to. Broadband Internet availability is generally controlled by one or two providers in a given community, if it's available at all. Publicly owned media is nearly non-existent and community-owned broadband initiatives are routinely snuffed out by corporate interests.

The quick 'n' dirty overview shown above is somewhat scatter-shot and barely scratches the surface in terms of examining significant social and policy trends in American culture from the late '60s to the end of the 20th Century. Even so, it presents an ugly, disheartening picture. Worse, this examination stops just as the disintegration of American "values" becomes really interesting. It stops before the U.S. Supreme Court appoints George W. Bush to the U.S. Presidency. Before the September 11, 2001 terror strikes, and that event's instantaneous, craven and obscene exploitation by politicians, military strategists, corporate hucksters and others, and the equally despicable suppression of any genuine, coherent discussion of the probable causes leading up to this catastrophe. Before the bait and switch U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. Before the massive psy-ops campaign, waged by the Pentagon, White House, U.S. State Department and corporate-owned media outlets on people everywhere, and designed to sell the planned invasion of Iraq. Before that war crime, the illegal invasion of Iraq, commenced on March 20, 2003, despite massive protests from people all over the world. Before U.S. torture torture policy came to widespread public attention after the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal came to light. Before the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), first passed in October 2001 and reauthorized in 2005 by a supine, cowardly Congress.

The Pandora's Box of horrors the USA PATRIOT Act has unleashed upon the world includes:

- the suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, which gave all people the right to not be held indefinitely by a government, a part of English Common Law dating back to the 13th century's Magna Carta, and a key basis of the legal underpinning of the US Constitution;

- warrantless surveillance on American citizens, illegal under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA);

- secret wiretapping of American citizens, illegal under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986;

- secret "extraordinary" renditions (torture flights), which allow for the kidnapping, extradition and torture of people suspected of having ties to terrorist activities;

- Guantánamo Bay, Bagram, and "the archipelago" of American prisons and torture centers around the world;

- waterboarding, extreme sensory deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement and other physical and psychological tortures.

Worst Of The Worst

We're told that the torture dungeons, like the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have kept Americans safe from the predations of our world's most dangerous "enemy combatants." Hordes of evildoing, insurgent killers running loose, inflicting death and mayhem upon innocent good-doers. Until they're captured by our brave soldiers, or by a local bounty hunter, or by some Blackwater-type thug and taken off the Global War On Terror's (GWOT)'s battleground, then stuffed into a torture chamber hidden away in some undisclosed hellhole. They're the "worst of the worst," these evil doers. Each more dangerous than a thousand Hannibal Lecters hopped up on supermethcrack, their razorsharp teeth gnashing furiously as they stare at us ravenously. We know it's true because our Dear Leaders told us it's true. Our most trusted corporate media personalities, showing grave concern and demonstrating sincere conviction, promptly deliver the communiques our Dear Leaders entrust them to tell us. Repeatedly. Relentlessly.

And we're doing it all for America! The brightest beacon for liberty ever to light up our world. Illuminating our path to freedom and the promised land. The path on which the whole world must tread. At the point of a gun. To ensure our freedoms, our Dear Leaders warn us to cower in fear. To nurse the bitter hatreds we harbor for the evildoers. Crazed extremists who hide behind every lamp post. Our Dear Leaders insist we give up our civil liberties, quietly, without complaint or so much as a whimper. They demand that we pledge eternal loyalty to war without end. They entice us to give in to our inner sadist and embrace torture. We must do as we're told. Just as we've done since that terrible day. Like we've so often done long before that terrible day. Like we still do today. Because they're the "worst of the worst," these evildoers. And freedom isn't free if the Homeland isn't secure. And there's no secure Homeland as long as freedom remains free. And you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

But now the worst of the worst have infiltrated us. Just like our Dear Leaders told us would happen. Young, cleancut soldiers in our Army are passing secrets to the enemy. Not to wild-eyed Muslim extremist insurgent enemies. But to English-speaking, white haired Aussie hackers with pompous egos and leaky wikis. These new evildoers aren't hijacking jetliners and blowing up buildings. They're handing us information and asking us to look at it. Information that reveals secrets about mayhem happening all over the world. Details we don't want to look at or know about. Data which traces the dots that visibly connect the carnage happening in our name to our complicity for allowing it to happen. So we let Bradley Manning writhe in a his torture cell, waiting impatiently for our Dear Leaders to stuff Julian Assange into the next cell over. And we hope we can just go back to sleep and maybe all of these problems will just go away.

(This litany will continue...)

External Links

• America and the Middle East: Lessons from our past
• Discussion List: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/thatrallylist

To subscribe, email: thatrallylist-subscribe [at symbol] lists.riseup.net.

• Peace and Justice Works; Iraq Affinity Group Rally & March Info Page
• The world is going to hell and you can't stop it.
• Building A Powerful Left in the United States

Please Note

As of this writing, Dave Myers, a PortlandWiki contributor and administrator, is responsible for the commentary and other edits shown on this page. -WikiMaster (talk) 11:26, 21 February 2011 (PST)

- The goal of the above commentary is not to unduly criticize the hard work and commitment of the many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of folks in and around Portland who continue year after year to work for peace.

- Instead, the hope is to direct sharp focus towards examining the underlying causes and conditions that may contribute to the less than stellar results "peace communities" in Portland and elsewhere have had in moving our society away from the obscenity of unending military and economic conflicts with our neighbors on this planet that we all share.

PortlandWiki is a publicly available wiki that invites editorial contributions from folks who care about the Portland community and who wish to contribute their knowledge and information to this site.

- For the most current list of contributors to this page, click here.

Past Events

Rally For Peace
what	Antiwar Rally & March
date	Saturday, March 19th, 2011
time	12:30-1:30 p.m.
where	Pioneer Courthouse Square
cost	What's life worth?
calendar	[Calagator]

Rally For Peace | Saturday, March 19, 2011 | Portland, Oregon.

Antiwar Rally & March to Protest the Continuing Occupation of Iraq!

Rally Marks the 8th Anniversary of the Illegal Invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the United States, Great Britain and a Coalition of the Killing.
Day/Date: Saturday, March 19th, 2011.

12:30 PM - Music

1:00 PM - Rally

1:30 PM - March

Place: Pioneer Courthouse Square, SW Broadway & Yamhill, Downtown Portland.

Slogans

Theme: Eight Years in Iraq - Nine Years in Afghanistan: How's the War Economy Working for You?

• End The Wars And Occupations! Bring The Troops Home Now!
• Fund Jobs, Healthcare, Human Needs, Not The War Machine!
• Stand For Civil Rights At Home And Abroad!
• Take Action!

Cosponsors & Endorsers

Peace and Justice Works Iraq Affinity Group | Veterans for Peace - Chapter 72 | Iraq Veterans Against the War - Oregon Chapter | War Resisters League of Portland | Portland Peaceful Response Coalition | Portland Jobs with Justice | Portland Labor for Peace and Justice | Metanoia Peace Community | Jewish Voice for Peace | Portland Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild | Military Families Speak Out - Oregon | East Timor Action Network / Portland | the No War Drum Corps | pdxjustice Media Productions (media cosponsor) | Portland Area Rethinking Schools | KBOO 90.7 FM Community Radio (KBOO.fm - media cosponsor) | Economic Justice Action Group of the First Unitarian Church | Freedom Socialist Party | Northwest Veterans for Peace | Little Light of Mine Friends Worship Group | Women in Black | Sisters of the Road Café | Living Earth | Augustana Lutheran Church | People's Activist Cafe | Flying Focus Video Collective (media endorser) | Shelly's Garden | No War Drum Corps | Physicians for Social Responsibility | Alliance for Democracy - Portland Chapter | and others ...