[Peace-discuss] Obama on Our Violent Culture

[Chuck Minne]

Obama on Our Violent Culture
By Ruth Conniff
April 18, 2007

It was supposed to be a raucous event. Barack Obama's
Wisconsin campaign kick-off at a sold-out theater in
downtown Milwaukee started with a line of people
wrapped around the block. Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett,
who endorsed Obama for President, gave the
introduction. But the balloons, music, and
crowd-pleasing speeches were cancelled. Instead, there
was a moment of silence, then somber reflection on the
shootings of 32 Virginia Tech students just hours
before. Obama threw away his prepared stump speech,
and instead spoke about the day's tragic events.
"Please, have a seat," he told the cheering crowd.

He explained his reasons for changing the tone of the
event. Then he quoted Bobby Kennedy's famous speech
after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, about
how, with one act of violence, "the whole nation is
degraded." America, Kennedy said, seems to tolerate
violence, whether it is "civilian slaughter in far-off
lands," our increasingly coarse entertainment culture,
or the ready access to guns.

"That was written in 1968--almost 40 years ago," Obama
said of Kennedy's remarks. "We haven't made much
progress."

Within hours of the shooting at Virginia Tech, Obama
threw away his stump speech and talked about the
tragic events.
Monday's massacre, the biggest mass shooting in
American history, will prompt "all kinds of
discussion," Obama said--about crime, violence, gun
control, and campus security, among other topics. "But
I hope there will be some discussion of violence in
all its forms. . . . [In American culture] we glorify
it, encourage it, ignore it . . . . It's
heartbreaking. And it has to stop."

Violence, and the callousness Americans have for the
suffering of victims of violence, poverty, and
oppression, is ultimately "rooted in our incapacity to
recognize ourselves in each other--not understanding
that we're all connected fundamentally as people,"
Obama said. "Those who may not look like me, talk like
me, worship the same God I do, are nonetheless worthy
of respect and dignity. . . . [But] at some
fundamental level, we're still trapped in this insane
belief that we can impose our wills on each other."

Part of the reason things are still as bad as they
were 40 years ago, Obama said, in terms of poverty,
lack of opportunity, broken health care and education
systems, and "a war that never should have been
authorized and never should have been fought" (his
biggest applause line) is that "we haven't been as
engaged as we should be."

"We've given up. We look inward. . . . This same
disengagement makes us tolerate violence." He made a
pitch for overcoming cynicism and restoring " a sense
that we have a mutual responsibility to care for each
other."

Like Bobby Kennedy in 1968, Obama is talking to a
racially divided nation about prospects for
reconciliation and peace. As he delivered his remarks,
he did not know the identity of the Virginia Tech
shooter, whose background as a South Korean immigrant
is bound to stir up roiling racist and anti-immigrant
sentiment.

Obama's audience in Milwaukee, like many of his
audiences around the country, was a remarkable mix of
races and ages. There was a sense of optimism in the
crowd that seemed to derive partly from the feeling
that, as Obama put it, the diversity of his supporters
"is a symbol of what I think America should be about."

Kennedy's handlers in 1968 were afraid he would be
killed if he went forward with his planned speech to a
mostly African-American crowd. It fell to Kennedy to
give them the news of Martin Luther King Jr.'s
assassination, and the police and press traveling with
him feared that a riot would erupt. Instead, he moved
the crowd to tears with his call for a rejection of
violence and a better, inclusive America.

By invoking Kennedy, Obama was clearly reaching for
the same high ground. To the extent that he strikes a
chord with his listeners, he helps foster the hope
that we could, indeed, heal what's wrong with our
angry, violent, and divided country.



  
  
  
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