[Peace-discuss] Powerful peace rally speech

[John W.]

I thought some of you might appreciate this speech.



Speech at Peace Rally, March 19th, 2006
Pack Square, Asheville, NC
by The Rev. Thomas Brackett, Priest-in-Charge, St. George's Episcopal 
Church, Asheville, NC


Good Day, Asheville! We came to let our voices be heard - can you hear me? 
We're here for peace, not war! This is a great day, Asheville! I'm honored 
to be here with you.

I am not, though, qualified to make the request I'm about to ask of you...

I am relaying to you the pleas of those whose voices are silenced every day 
here in our beautiful country - the United States of America.

You may ask, "Whose voices are being silenced among us in this land of free 
speech? Who does not have a place at the bargaining table?"

I'm here to speak on behalf of the countless mothers whose children have 
been sacrificed to wage war on a culture that we do not even understand.

I'm here to invoke the presence of those mothers whose children were 
"collateral damage" inflicted by weapons of war that my tax dollars have, 
are, and will be paying for, for a long time to come.

I'm here to relay the pleas of the mothers whose husbands have returned to 
our fair shores with war in their eyes - whose rage, whose fear, whose 
guilt finds its best release in alcohol, in domestic violence, in our 
prisons, in drug abuse - in self-abuse.

I'm here to raise my voice in grief for the mothers and children whose 
hearts dread the nightly return of their beloved war heroes -- still waging 
our war nightly, in their living rooms, in their bedrooms.

My brothers and sisters, liberal and conservative, the hard "Straight Up" 
truth is that when we wage war, we wage war on ourselves, too. Their 
children are attacked; our children are attacked; our mothers are left 
bereft. The Hebrew sage warned us, "He that troubleth his own house shall 
inherit the wind." How right that is, here in our own country!

What are women,
Palestinian
Israeli
Iraqi
Beaten and abused
White
Widowed
Black
Childless

What are they asking . . . ?

They're asking, "How are we Americans - the most violent nation in the 
world - how are we qualified to bring peace to another culture we have 
never understood?"

We have turned a blind eye to the terror in our own streets - in our own 
neighborhoods, in our own homes - to fly to another culture and add to 
their terror, in the name of our God!

As of this morning, we have diverted nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars 
into this war machine, to benefit the coffers of a few warmongers and from 
where did we get it?

Why of course! We took it from
our aging fathers and mothers!
our children's education fund.
The $ needed to care for our homeless brothers & sisters
The Champus Funding so that when our soldiers come back ravaged by the 
terror we're funding, we tell them that they now have limited mental health 
coverage! And we have any trouble out of them, we can just toss them in 
with our burgeoning prison population!

Is this what we choose to do with the resources of the most powerful nation 
in the history of the world?

Is this what we choose to pass on to future generations - to our children, 
our grandchildren - to our sons and daughters?

We stand at one more threshold, my community - we people of Western North 
Carolina . . .

There is no peace gained by war - we all pay, and not just today - we will 
pay for this war for many generations to come.

But, here is the question I see in the eyes of the many mothers I have 
interviewed: "At what cost victory? Must this war cost me my family, my 
sons, my daughters, and even my partner?"

When I listen to their dreams, their hopes, their longings, I hear them 
calling for the long path out - not a quick fix. I hear them asking for 
real evidence of our qualifications to wage this war on terror.

And what is the evidence of our peaceful culture - of our qualification to 
go teach others - to wage war on mothers in another land?

We have none! We are not qualified! Not even our desire for cheap oil 
qualifies us! We may have warmongers scheming in the halls of our 
governments - lining their war chests with the very lifeblood of our 
children, but let me repeat, "We are not qualified to teach any other 
culture the ways of non-violence."

Before we set out for such an ambitious task; before we pride ourselves as 
a peace-keeping nation; before we attack the axis of evil - we must look 
into the axis of evil right here in our community.

Here is the long path of integrity for all of us. Here's the call of the 
voiceless mothers among us.

For centuries, we made our national wealth on the backs of slaves - we 
waged terror on the African families from whom we stole their young - their 
sons and their daughters. We did this for centuries. We waged terror on 
other shores, for centuries. Have we offered restorative justice to those 
whose family trees have been torn down at the trunk? Is it any surprise 
that the beautiful great grandchildren of the African nations now fill our 
jails? How successful have we been at teaching them to forsake terror and 
seek peace? What kind of person emerges from our prison system after we've 
had our way with them for twenty plus years? Yes, let's wage war on the 
axis of evil right here in our own country, President Bush!

These are the real struggles I've been hearing from patriotic American 
mothers in our fair town -- I cannot imagine turning my heart toward the 
Iraqi mothers whose children have been bombed, shot, land mined, poisoned, 
raped, abused, and forsaken -- whether it was by order of our leader or 
theirs!

How hard and for how long will we have to scrub our hands before we wash 
them of the blood of the children sacrificed to lower the cost of oil at 
our gas stations?

What will it take for us to be able to stand toe to toe with these 
panic-stricken mothers and look them in the eye?

How will we explain our reasons for bringing terror into their 
neighborhoods; into their homes, to the children they bore from their own 
bodies?

What is the longing of these grieving mothers? PEACE!

Support our troops? YES - bring them home!

Be patriotic? YES - insist on peace and justice here before we go anywhere 
else.

You've seen the bumper sticker . . .

I long for the day when we scrap aircraft carriers and Asheville Buncombe 
County Christian Ministries is fully funded.

I dream of the day when we close our military bases abroad to fund 
non-violence training in our high schools.

I have hopes that, instead of pushing our struggling minorities into the 
Army where they can "be all that they can be," we fund industry in our 
towns so that our young people aren't seduced into the violence of drug trade.

I am working toward the goal of removing from this land the abomination of 
the National Security Administration so that we can open our borders to the 
mothers of this world who have made us rich on the backs of their 
children's cheap labor, for centuries.

My brothers - my sisters - loved and lovers all of you . . . each in your 
own way . . .

We watch far too much CNN and FOX and C-Span and Prime Time news. Our sight 
is diminished; our memories are short; our hearing is poor!

We no longer see the violence our policies produce and the despair acted on 
in our children's homes!

We choose not to remember the terror that floods the heart when an angry 
male stands over the ones we love and wages terror on our family.

And, try as we might, we no longer hear the cries of those whose voices are 
not represented here today.

You will not hear or see them on CNN. You will not find them in political 
office. You will not see their books on the New York Times bestseller list.

And why not? Because if we heard these voices - the voices of the women and 
children affected by our own Domestic Violence - if we heard their pleas, 
we could not find it in ourselves to wage war on anyone else!

And so . . . if by some chance, after all this warring, you find it in your 
heart to go and listen for those voiceless, here's what you might do . . .

Call Jacqueline Hallum at MAHEC who works to build bridges over racial 
tensions and bigotry in our neighborhoods and our schools and ask her, "How 
do I support your war on the terror of racism and poverty and the 
inequities of white privilege here in our own beautiful Asheville?"

Call Pisgah Legal Services and ask one of their attorneys doing pro bono 
work for our immigrant brothers and sisters, "How can I support your war on 
their terror?"

Call those at our local Veterans for Peace chapter who are supporting 
soldiers struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who are tempted to 
bring combat action into their own homes, "How can we, the good people of 
Asheville - how can we support your war on terror?"

How might we learn to hear again? How might we give voice to those who have 
lost theirs?

Call Val Collins at HelpMate - one of our local agencies working feverishly 
to prevent Domestic Violence - call Ms. Collins and ask her, "How do we 
prevent the 'real' war on terror?"

Then, once you've made just one of those calls, then you and I can talk 
about peace. First, peace at home; peace in our homes.

Then, and only then should we consider sending our children to another 
country. And if we do, there will not be war. We will listen to our 
mothers. There will be peace. There WILL be peace.

For the sake of our children, please! Peace!
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