Stoking the fires of activism
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Washington
The reasons to rekindle the fires of activism are abundant and
close to home, according to notable stalwarts of peace and justice causes who
gathered to kick off a 40-day effort, the Peoples Campaign for
Nonviolence. The campaign is an attempt to galvanize political will around a
host of issues ranging from nuclear disarmament to U.S. militarism, from racism
and poverty to sanctions against Iraq. The event is aimed at Building a
Culture of Peace and Justice.
A standing room-only crowd at the opening ceremony in the chapel
of Howard University here also provided a graphic depiction of the composition
of any new movement that might emerge from the 40-day experience.
It was those absent from the chapel July 1 who were conspicuous to
Helen Caldicott, Australian physician, author and veteran crusader against
nuclear arms.
The 500-plus audience appeared equally divided between members of
the Seattle generation -- a label granted college-age activists after their
recent demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization -- and
their white-haired elders.
Said Caldicott, looking out, Weve lost a generation. I
was in the IMF/World Bank march (in Washington in May). There were two kinds of
people. Kids age 15-23, thousands and thousands of them, and old codgers like
me and Dan Berrigan, and nothing in between.
Jesuit Fr. Dan Berrigan, the peace activist who was first arrested
for protests against the Vietnam War and later for actions opposing nuclear
weapons, shared the platform with her.
Were missing a generation, but for the first time in
20 years I felt a real hope and optimism, she said. Those kids are
organized -- on the Internet, and in colleges. They talk to each other.
They understand the World Trade Organization, she said. Now we have to
teach them about the nuclear situation.
And nonviolence, echoed the panelists, not least Berrigan.
The panelists, in addition to Caldicott and Berrigan, were Irish
Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire; Marian Wright Edelman, a lawyer, civil
rights activist and founder of the Childrens Defense Fund (NCR, March
24); and Jonathan Schell, author of Fate of the Earth. They were primarily
concerned with the two issues they said have disappeared from the national
consciousness, yet have never gone away: the continued nuclear threat from
weapons, stockpiles and nuclear reactors, and the always increasing diversion
to the military of vast resources away from those in need.
All so overwhelming
Listening intently were young people such as Viterbo College
freshman Kathryne Nelson who, with 37 friends from the Martin Luther King Jr.
Peace Project in La Cross, Wis., had traveled by bus for this opening session.
In the audience, too, was a young man who told the panelists, Its
all so overwhelming at times -- the connection between militarism, racism,
poverty. Is there a tactic you can suggest to work for nonviolence?
The panelists provided some answers, but faced an even larger
question. In Schells words, Were, honestly, not living in a
very socially active time. Can we recharge our political batteries
to recreate a will that has been missing since the end of the Cold War -- to
take action in the political sphere together?
The answer may be in the outcome of what Jesuit Fr. John Dear,
organizer of the Washington campaign, told the gathering was a modest but
unprecedented attempt to bring all faiths together to mobilize for
nonviolence. Dear is executive director of the peace group Fellowship of
Reconciliation.
Unprecedented, yes, but hardly modest -- 40 days ending Aug. 6
(the 55th anniversary of Hiroshima) -- bringing together Buddhists and Jews,
Quakers and Muslims, Presbyterians and Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans. All
of those groups are bringing hundreds of their members to Washington to work
for a ban on land mines, to pray for peace, consider war tax resistance, engage
in street theater against the anti-missile scheme called Star Wars,
lobby for nuclear disarmament, protest sanctions on Iraq and do civil
disobedience.
The whole thing came about because someone reached across the
generations. Maguire said she was visited in Belfast by a young Frenchman who
asked her if she would rally all the living Nobel Peace laureates to press the
United Nations General Assembly to declare the first decade of the millennium,
the years 2001-2010, an International Decade for a Culture of Peace and
Nonviolence for the Children of the World.
Maguire did as the Frenchman asked. The United Nations agreed. The
Washington campaign is the Fellowship of Reconciliations kick-off
response.
We have 10 years ahead, Maguire told the chapel crowd,
to move from a culture of violence and death to one of peace and
nonviolence. We in Northern Ireland have a message to the world: that
militarism and paramilitarism dont solve deep ethnic and political
conflicts. Theyre conflicts of human relationships and military and
political institutions.
Change is essential, she said. The institutions, the
superstructures that we had before the Cold War, no longer meet the needs of
the human family.
We need new structures and institutions and new
answers, Maguire said, and thats all right. We can find them.
We need young people wholl take responsibility. When were conscious
were not alone, we can believe its possible. We have to believe
passionately in ourselves and our ability to bring hope and a sense of
love.
Explained Schell, Anti-nuclearism is a kind of pacifism for
beginners. Its just so easy to get the point. War is impossible with
nuclear weapons. Jesus knew that -- what else did he mean when he said those
who live by the sword will die by the sword?
Said Schell, This is a historic moment in the nuclear
age. The mitigating factors once used to justify have disappeared, he
said. Theres no Hitler, no Stalin. Theres -- what? -- even
rogue states have been downgraded, in a little propaganda juggling, to
states of concern.
I think God has given us [Americans] an opportunity, a
miraculous opportunity, which we did not deserve, he said, to rid
ourselves of an evil of our own making. And if we cant do it, God have
mercy on us, for well head into a world even more dangerous than the Cold
War.
The U.S. hypocrisy gap
And the most vulnerable in that world are children. It is
time to close the hypocrisy gap between societys needs and the
glorification of violence and war in our culture, said Edelman. We
have 13.5 million poor children, 6 million in extreme poverty, hunger and
homelessness. How can we look ourselves in the face? What stops us from doing
what is right and decent? We spend more in a day on the military than we spend
in a year on Head Start.
Because of warped priorities, she said, wed rather
spend $20,000 to $30,000 a year to lock up a child after theyre in
trouble than invest a few thousand to give them a head start and a decent
education. Paraphrasing Gen. Omar Bradley, she said, Were
military giants and ethical infants.
Edelman looked out at the audience and said, Im so
glad for your presence because so many people are waiting for Gandhi and Dr.
King to come back. Theyre not coming. Were it. We must remake this
world.
Caldicott, in a frequently biting commentary on U.S. military and
economic policies, and on the incredible danger and medical effects
of all things nuclear, including nuclear power, said she writes her
books, like a doctor talking to her patient. Those words were
prescient.
The evenings most dramatic and tense moments developed when
people struggling with what they believe are radiation risks resulting from the
recent Los Alamos fire turned to Caldicott for advice.
A group of 70 intergenerational peacemakers had traveled from Los
Angeles, New Mexico and Colorado on the Loretto Peace Express, a special coach
sponsored by the Sisters of Loretto and hitched to Amtraks Chicago
Limited. Hot and tired (the train ran three hours late), the travelers arrived
at the chapel after the session started.
During question time, a Loretto Express traveler said that many
New Mexico residents had been contaminated from airborne radioactivity
resulting from the extensive forest fires in and around the Los Alamos nuclear
facility. She asked what actions the anxious residents could take.
Caldicott said, My heart goes out to you. New Mexico was
designated years ago as the national sacrifice state. During the fires, planes
were supposed to be airborne monitoring and measuring radiation. They did not
do it.
A Los Alamos National Laboratories spokesperson told NCR in a July
6 phone interview that Los Alamos has 50 continuous air monitors around the
site and brought in additional portable monitors during the fire. He said that
during the fire no radioactive constituents outside the norm for a forest fire
were detected. All forest fires, regardless of location, he said, release as a
natural consequence very small amounts of radioactivity. That activity was
detected in amounts of 1 to 10 percent above normal background radioactivity.
No other hazardous material releases from heavy metals or other toxics were
detected outside the norm of any forest fire, he said.
At opening ceremony, Caldecott continued to express concern about
exposure to radioactivity. The rains will come soon and wash the radiated
waste down from Los Alamos, she said. Sometimes you just need to
move, especially if youve got children. Theyre 10 to 20 times more
sensitive to radiation than adults.
But those whod ridden the Loretto Peace Express, a
contingent that included Native Americans who live close to Los Alamos, would
not let it rest there.
One rider said shed lived in a Los Angeles barrio, and when
her three teens were shot at, they moved. Were educated, said
the woman. We were able to do that. Another said, There are
many poor in New Mexico who cant move, they do not have the education or
the wherewithal. Yet their lands are being laced with plutonium and uranium.
What else can we do?
Pediatrician Caldicott, visibly moved, insisted, The bottom
line from the medical perspective is theres nothing we can do. There are
no answers. Once you get strontium 90 in the body of a small child, it stays
there. Later that child may get cancer or leukemia. Once she gets plutonium in
her body she cant get it out.
Just say no
Millions of Americans, said Caldicott, live
within a short distance of a nuclear dump or a nuclear reactor. And what the
politicians dont understand about the human genome is that the nuclear
waste will damage the human genome.
Thats the problem with all things nuclear. We have no
answer medically except to treat the cancer when it occurs, she said.
Caldicott looked at the Native Americans seated to one side of the
chapel. Look at the people, she said. What can they do? With
incurable disease you have to prevent it. But the reactors are generating tons
of radioactive waste every year.
In a rising voice, she said, A democracy has to rise up and
say, No, we will not do it any more. Jesus kicked over the money
table. Weve got to kick over the nuclear table. This stuff is everywhere.
All in the name of national security. Or to turn the lights on.
Einstein, said Caldicott, said the splitting of the atom changed
everything about life, sweeping us toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Were starting to see it now.
A somber audience applauded. Later, outside, the mood relaxed a
little over ice cream. The July Fourth weekend would continue with a Sunday
nonviolence workshop organized by activist Jim Lawson, and a Supreme Court fast
and vigil protesting the death penalty, sponsored by the Abolitionist Action
Committee.
Monday there was public witness and direct action at the White
House with the American Friends Service Community, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps
and the Atlantic Life Community. July Fourth brought A Clown, A Hammer, A
Bomb & God, a Plowshares action play; A Good Pie Day, a
play on genetically modified foods; and a vigil, leafleting and an interfaith
prayer service for nuclear disarmament held at Lafayette Park and organized by
Kairos Theater, Pace e Bene, Nevada Desert Experience and the Methodist Peace
Fellowship.
Four days out of 40.
National Catholic Reporter, July 14,
2000
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